Brood XIX

by Michael McBride

  With a moan, she swept the child's hair away from her face.

  She had to know for sure.

  The little girl stirred and furrowed her brow. And then she opened her eyes. The most beautiful shade of blue she had ever seen. They were the same eyes that stared back at her from the mirror every day. Her eyes.

  Emma's eyes.

  "Emma!" Vanessa sobbed. She drew her daughter to her chest and held her as tightly as she could. She inhaled Emma's scent, savored the sensation of her daughter's cheek against her own, reveled in the texture of her dyed hair.

  "Mommy?" Emma whispered.

  "I'm right here, baby. I'm going to get you out of here. Take you home."

  Emma's whole body shook and she started to cry. Her lips parted and Vanessa noticed that Emma only had four front teeth in both her upper and lower jaws. Only gums behind, where the teeth had yet to grow in.

  "I'm so sorry I let you out of my sight." Vanessa adjusted her grip so she could lift Emma out of the bed. "I promise...I will never let it happen again. Ever."

  "Mommy!" Emma screamed.

  The cicadas erupted in song, so loud in the confines that even the air appeared to tremble.

  A shadow fell over Vanessa from behind. She saw the expression of horror on Emma's face, the terror reflected in her eyes.

  Clinging to her daughter, she threw herself to the side.

  A knife flashed through her peripheral vision and embedded itself in the mattress. It was trailed by a thin, feminine arm.

  Emma screamed directly into her ear.

  Vanessa rolled over to shield her daughter with her body. She glanced up at her assailant from the corner of her eye.

  Sandra Matthews towered over her, only it wasn't the Sandra she remembered. This woman's hair had gone prematurely gray and was tangled and unkempt. Her eyes were wild, her teeth bared. She held the knife above her shoulder, the muscles and tendons showing through her emaciated arm.

  The cicada song ceased, leaving an oppressive silence that made the air feel somehow heavier.

  "Let go of my Chelsea right now," Sandra snarled. "Get your hands off my daughter!"

  She took a step closer and raised the knife.

  Vanessa turned her face away, looked directly into Emma's eyes, and cringed in anticipation of the searing pain to come.

  * * *

  Trey thundered down the stairs into the basement when the screaming started. There was just enough illumination from the seams around the windows to limn the cicadas on the walls. They seethed as though the plaster had begun to boil. He had never seen so many insects in one place, let alone inside of a house. Pistol at arm's length, elbows slightly flexed to absorb the kick, he reached the bottom of the staircase and veered toward the source of the light.

  The cicadas started to sing. The sound was physically painful.

  He walked in his shooting stance, finger tightened on the trigger, prepared to fire at the first hint of movement.

  The entire hallway was black with bugs. The walls. The ceiling. The partially open door at the end.

  And then the sound suddenly died.

  He heard a growl that could have been words from slightly to his left as he slipped past the door. It looked like a child's bedroom, only there was an eyebolt in the center of the torn carpet attached to a length of chain. He followed it with his eyes to where it terminated in a manacle bound around a tiny, pale ankle. Vanessa covered the child with her body.

  Another woman reared up over his sister with a knife in her hand.

  "Drop the knife!" he shouted.

  The woman looked over at him with a twisted expression of rage and anguish.

  "Drop it now or I'll shoot!"

  She turned back toward his sister, who had seized the opportunity to drag the child to the furthest reaches of the iron tether. Vanessa still had her back to the woman, who screamed and strode after her.

  The cicadas erupted from the walls, as though the entire room were imploding. They flew directly at the woman, hitting her, swarming around her. She wailed and lunged forward.

  Trey lined up his weapon through the swirling insects and took his shot.

  Blood spattered the far wall, climbing it in arcs and dots.

  The woman spun and was launched backward against the wall at the foot of the bed. She slumped down, chin hanging to her chest. The entire left half of her shirt near her shoulder was crimson.

  Trey could barely see her through the swarm, which slowly dissolved. The cicadas flew straight at him. He ducked his head against the barrage as they funneled past him down the hallway.

  When he reached his sister, only a blue cloud of gun smoke hung in the air.

  All of the cicadas were gone.

  Vanessa rolled over and looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears.

  Trey kissed her on the forehead, smiled down at his niece, and began working on the lock of the manacle.

  Epilogue

  Vanessa stood at her kitchen window, staring out into the darkness. She wrapped her arms around her chest to combat a sudden chill. Emma was upstairs in her own bed, with her own belongings, right where she was supposed to be. Buddy hadn't left her side for a second. She had spent the past two nights in the hospital, where specialists of all kinds had evaluated her health, both physical and emotional. There would be hard times ahead, they assured her. The nightmares had already begun to torment her, and she was terrified of walking from one room to the next, let alone setting foot outside. She broke into tears without warning and often screamed for no reason, but whatever it took, Vanessa would be there for her. She would never let Emma out of her sight again.

  Sandra Matthews was in the hospital as well, only under constant guard until she was stable enough to be transferred to the county jail, pending her trial. At first, Vanessa had wanted to be there, to hear the rationale behind stealing her daughter and killing her husband. She had wanted to know what kind of monster waited until her own daughter died, stomped on her until she was broken to pieces, and then dumped her in the swamp. But a part of Vanessa already knew the answers. She had lost her daughter once, and would have done anything to get her back. Hearing the words from Sandra's mouth would change nothing. The two of them were more alike than Vanessa cared to admit. Even to herself. As long as she had Emma back, she was content to let Sandra rot in a dismal prison or asylum with only the thoughts of her dead husband and child to haunt her. Vanessa knew that was punishment enough.

  The time had come to look forward, not back.

  For the first time in two years, a seemingly infinite future stretched out before her. It was a future without her husband, but she would see him again soon enough. For now, she was excited to explore the possibilities with the daughter she thought she had lost forever.

  She could hear Trey's muffled voice through the floor above her. He continued to read to Emma, even though she was already fast asleep. He couldn't bring himself to leave her either. He had born the guilt of her abduction as much as Vanessa had. While he wasn't ready to forgive himself yet, it appeared as though the process had at least begun.

  He still hadn't asked her how she tracked Emma to the Matthews's house, nor had they discussed the cicadas. Vanessa suspected that he understood that there were some things better left unexamined. Whatever had caused them to swarm as they had to guide her to Emma, she was grateful and chose not to question it. Call it divine intervention or a miracle of nature. It didn't matter. Everything had worked out perfectly in the end. And she would draw immeasurable delight from making up for the two years they had lost.

  The cicadas sang from the trees in the back yard. Soon enough they would be gone. The females would all be laden with eggs that would one day become larvae squirming around in the dirt, feeding on roots and whatever else might end up buried deep enough in the earth, biding their time for another thirteen years until they were again free to molt and live the lives they had dreamed of, if only for a single, glorious month.

  And Vanessa would welco
me them back when they did. In the meantime, she would honor the gift they had bestowed upon her by living with the same passion and intensity.

  In her mind's eye, she envisioned her perfect moment, the one held close to her heart, and allowed herself a wistful smile.

  Emma knelt in the mud in her filthy dress while Buddy raced around her. Her small hands formed mud into the shape of a bear that she imbued with the life that would one day save her own. Emma's features slowly metamorphosed into those of a girl with a slender face and short blonde hair, a girl Vanessa had only seen in photographs after the fact. The girl looked back at Vanessa and smiled the distant smile of a child who had never had the opportunity to truly live, the smile of a little girl who had never been properly mourned.

  BONUS MATERIAL

  The Generosity of Strangers

  A Short Story

  "I'm going to kill myself."

  That was how it began. Five simple words arising from the empty static.

  Jared didn't know what he had expected when he rolled over and snatched the phone from the cradle, but that string of words was the furthest thing from it.

  What in the world time was it anyway?

  Groaning beneath the weight of his disrupted slumber, Jared rolled to his right and squinted to bring the red numbers of the digital clock into focus across the room.

  3:16 a.m.

  Silence hummed into his left ear.

  "I think you must have the wrong number," was all he could think to say.

  "No," a man's voice said. There was nothing familiar about it. "There's no one else I can talk to."

  "Look...it's quarter after three and I've got class in the morn---"

  "Would you rather I hang up?"

  Silence.

  "No," Jared sighed, rubbing his palm into his eye. He rolled onto his back and stared up into the ceiling. He hated this old room. It was, after all, the same dormitory his grandfather had lived in fifty years prior. The walls were made of cinder block painted a chipping white, and the plumbing ran along the ceiling directly above his bed. Every time someone flushed one of the communal toilets down the hall, water pinged through the pipes, rattling them in their brackets against the ceiling. "I guess not."

  Breathing from the distant end of the line.

  "Do I know you?" Jared asked.

  "I doubt it."

  "Then why did you call me?"

  "I dialed your number at random."

  Jared rubbed the crusted sleep from the corner of his eye.

  "I can't talk to any of my friends," the voice continued. "Not that I really have any."

  "Is that why you want to kill yourself?"

  A dry chuckle.

  "If only it were that simple."

  "Do you go to school here?"

  "Yes."

  Jared rolled over onto his stomach and rested his chin on his elbows, staring through the parted curtains into the courtyard outside. The dumpster lid was already covered with a solid three inches of snow. Flakes fluttered against the windowpane like so many moths drawn to a flame. His roommate Matt snored from the bed across the small room. He was going to have to move the phone to Matt's side in the morning.

  "What could possibly be so bad?" Jared asked, transfixed by the swirling snow tapping against the pane. "I mean...what happened that you think killing yourself is the only option?"

  "I can't say."

  "Then how am I supposed to talk you out of it?"

  "Do you think that's why I called you?"

  "Isn't it?"

  Silence.

  Jared envied Matt... sound asleep, dampening his pillow with slobber, while he was stuck on the phone with an Abnormal Psychology test in five hours. His graduate thesis was due in less than a month, and he hadn't the slightest clue what he was going to base it on. The prospect of not graduating---of never leaving this damned dorm room---summoned the same kind of thoughts this stranger was sharing with him now.

  He needed to formulate his thesis.

  "I just wanted to talk."

  "Then what do you want to talk about?"

  Jared couldn't get a good feel for the person on the other end of the phone. At first he had thought it might have been a prank, but he wasn't sure now. The voice sounded serious enough, but from everything he'd learned about suicide, when the individual reached out for help, they usually turned to someone close...a friend...family...someone who could read into more subtle signals.

  Since he didn't even know this person, did this suddenly make him responsible, or could he simply hang up the phone and absolve himself of any guilt whatsoever?

  "I'm going to lose my scholarship," the voice said.

  "For sure?"

  "My parents are going to kill me," he chuckled humorlessly. "I'm the first from my family to go to college."

  "Then don't you think they'd understand?"

  "My father's working a second job down at the mill to pay for what the grants won't cover."

  "Have you talked to him about it?"

  "Hell, no!" the voice snapped, and then drifted off into silence again. "He thinks everything is going perfectly."

  "But it isn't."

  "No."

  Jared looked at the clock again. 3:42 a.m.

  "What's your name?" he finally asked.

  "I'd rather not say."

  "All right then," Jared said, pausing to formulate his thoughts. He knew not to push people who were considering suicide, they had a tendency to fall quite easily. "Don't you think it would upset your parents more if you killed yourself?"

  "I don't know."

  "I'm pretty sure it would."

  "You don't know my parents like I do."

  "I know them well enough to know that they'd be hurt and upset if you killed yourself."

  Hushed breathing in his ear.

  "I've got to go," the voice said.

  "What?" Jared snapped, looking again to the clock and realizing just how wide-awake he suddenly was. How was he supposed to go back to sleep now? "You call me in the middle of the ni---"

  "Can I call you again?" the voice interrupted.

  This time it was Jared's turn to be silent. No! he wanted to say, washing his hands clean of the entire mess, but what kind of person would that make him?

  "Can I call you again?"

  "Yes," Jared whispered, jerking his hand away from his head and pounding his fist into his pillow. He grated his teeth, squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and silently cursed himself.

  There was a click from the other end of the line.

  Jared pressed the off button on the cordless phone, and stared down at the handset. Finally he turned it back on and dialed *69.

  A computerized female voice answered immediately. "The number you are calling was blocked, and cannot be called back using your last call return service."

  Click.

  He set the phone back down in the cradle.

  The burgeoning hint of an idea began to take shape in his mind.

  * * *

  Jared had been thinking about it all day. He could barely even remember sitting through class. It wasn't like he had failed his test, but he certainly hadn't aced it either.

  He had sat there in his dorm room for the entirety of the afternoon, scrawling hurried thoughts into his notebook... waiting for the phone to ring.

  Waiting.

  By the time the phone actually rang, it was 2:42 a.m.

  Bolting back to consciousness as he had drifted off against the wall with his chin lolling against his chest, his feet sprawled over the side of the bed, he immediately pressed the "Talk" button on the cordless. He had fallen asleep with it in his hand.

  "Hello," he said anxiously, writing the time down in the notebook.

  "I didn't think you'd answer," that same voice said.

  "I was starting to think you wouldn't call."

  Silence.

  Jared flipped back several pages and traced his finger across the page---squinting in the wan light trickling in slanted arcs across the
room from the window---until he found the string of questions.

  "Are you still thinking about suicide?" he asked, poising the pen in the margin he had left beneath.

  "Would I be calling if I weren't?"

  He scribbled it down quickly, finding the second question.

  "How would you do it?"

  "Do what?"

  "You know..."

  "I take it I've piqued your curiosity."

  "How can I talk you out of it if I don't know how you intend to do it?"

  There was the momentary sound of breathing on the opposite end of the line.

  "Is that what you intend to do?"

  "Would it work?"

  "I doubt it."

  "Then what's the harm in trying?"

  "If I were you, I don't know if I'd be willing to invest that much of myself knowing the outcome in advance."

  Jared smiled and scribbled down the words.

  "If the outcome were guaranteed, I don't think we'd be having this conversation."

  "Are you challenging me?" the voice asked with a dry chuckle.

  "I believe that you're challenging me."

  Silence.

  "Maybe."

  "Do you have a girlfriend?" Jared asking, moving down the line.

  "No," the voice whispered and then faded into the barely audible hum of static. "Do you?"

  "Not at the moment."

  "Is that why you're willing to talk to a stranger in the middle of the night when you could otherwise be sleeping or partying?"

  "I like to think of myself as a caring person."

  Silence.

  "Then maybe I shouldn't call again."

  "No!" Jared snapped, and then more softly: "Please."

  "Why do you care?" the voice asked in little more than a whisper.

  "Maybe I think I can talk you out of it."

  "Do think that would make you a better person? Get you into heaven?"

  Jared stared down at his notes in his lap.

  "I suppose I'll call you again tomorrow then," the voice said.

  Click.

  Jared turned the phone off and then right back on, and dialed *69 again.