Mare had receded into himself, leaving Missy as the only one still even remotely attached to her senses. She knew it had fallen to her to come up with a plan, but what could they possibly do? They couldn’t walk endlessly through the streets looking for signs of life that were nowhere to be found. With each passing cadaver, hope seemed to slip just a little further away like air through a leaking balloon. It was no longer something tangible, no longer palpable in even her own labored chest. She feared that if they set out again, they’d simply continue walking until they either found something, someone, or walked themselves into the grave.
Right now she could only imagine what her little brother was doing upstairs. He hadn’t said a word after they were in sight of the house on the way back and had just walked right to the staircase and ascended without pause.
She was scared to death and the entire world felt as though it was swimming in circles around her, but if she didn’t force herself to her feet and start figuring out what the hell they were going to do, who was going to?
“Mare?” she called, her voice a weak rasp.
Clearing her throat, she rose and stumbled toward the stairs on feet under assault from pins and needles. It felt as though she was in slow motion, every movement labored and deliberate, winding down like a clock to finally meet the pace of the rest of the house that simply sat still around her. The groaning of the banister, the moaning from the steps, even the most minuscule sound of her heel squishing in her shoes was comforting. Anything that reminded her of normalcy right now was worth its weight in gold. What she wouldn’t give for the doorbell to ring or for the dog to yap endlessly next door.
“Mare?” she said from the landing, her voice a whisper so as not to sound like she was shouting in the otherwise oppressive silence.
The door to her father’s bedroom stood ajar.
Please don’t let him be in there, she thought, momentarily closing her eyes to summon her strength before taking the first step toward the last place in the world she wanted to go.
She didn’t realize her hand was shaking until she saw it reaching for the door and pushing it inward.
Mare sat on the floor with his back to her, resting his head on his father’s hand, dangling over the side of the bed, which he held tightly in his own.
“I’ll be good. I promise,” he whispered.
Missy couldn’t bring herself to take her eyes from her brother for fear she’d register the dried blood on the walls and ceiling or reconcile the stench with its origin.
“Come on, Mare,” she whispered, gently placing a hand on his shoulder and trying to coax him from the bedside.
“Just a minute,” he whispered, planting a kiss on the back of his father’s now blackened hand, which she hadn’t noticed until now was swollen so much that his wedding band looked like it was about to cost him a finger. “He didn’t mean to do it.”
“I know,” she said, still trying to ease him up from his knees.
“It was the whiskey.”
“I know, Mare.”
“He wouldn’t have ever thought of hurting us without it.”
“Come on, little brother.”
“We can’t just leave him here like this, Missy,” Mare said, allowing himself to be guided to his feet but no farther.
“There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
“I know. I just…I can’t stand the thought of him just lying here for…for God to see.”
The last four words trailed into nothingness.
A tear swelled from her eye and crept tentatively down her cheek. She fought the urge to swipe it away as the sensation was the only thing she’d actually felt besides fear in far too long.
“God knows he was sorry,” she said, though the last image she would carry of her father was a snapshot of the look of rage on his face when he had belted her.
“But does God forgive him?”
Missy averted her eyes from her brother’s. All she could see within was the little boy whose stare she’d locked onto as they’d lowered her mother into the ground.
“Mare,” she started, but never even formulated the rest of the thought.
A shadow passed over the window as though God Himself had flipped off a light switch. Suddenly, there was no flash of blue lightning through the windows. No light at all, save for dazzling dots of light that managed to permeate whatever had crossed over the sky, swirling all around them like fairies.
A roaring sound enveloped them, like speeding into a long tunnel with the windows down. It felt as though the sky itself had collapsed down upon them and was preparing to smother them.
She screamed for Mare to get down, but the sound easily swallowed her voice.
Black dots hammered the window like pebbles. Cracks splintered sideways all the way to the frame, the glass dropping free in jagged triangles without even the faintest sound of the shattering pane. Her only thought was of her brother as she threw herself at him, tackling him to the ground beside the bed where their father’s corpse rested. It sounded like a tornado had been set loose within the room, the wind roaring with all of its might as a heavy weight dropped down upon her, knocking the wind out of her.
She felt thousands of small legs scurrying all over her flesh in time to bite down on her lip to keep herself from gasping for air. They seethed all over her, scuttling through her hair and scratching their way into her ears with a sound like a mouse chewing wood behind drywall. Every nerve ending in her body positively screamed for her to slap her hands at her body to get whatever they were off of her, but she had no choice but to fight the urge and keep both hands pressed firmly over her face so that nothing could scurry up her nose or burrow into the corners of her teary eyes.
With a great whistling sound, the sky drew a deep inhalation and sucked all of the insects out through the window they had shattered only moments prior.
“Get’em off me!” Missy trilled with her first breath, flopping over onto her back and clawing at her own arms.
A dozen crushed carcasses that reminded her of enormous grasshoppers crunched beneath her as she struggled to her feet, still flailing against the crawling sensation.
Mare just stared up at her from the ground, his eyes wide, pupils dilated. His face was covered with a thin layer of brown sludge like tobacco spit, save for the white rings around his eyes and mouth. His hair was slick with it and even his clothes were damp. It looked like he’d been splashed with a couple buckets of swamp water.
“Are you okay?” he gasped, still lying perfectly motionless as though the slightest movement would prove fatal.
“They’re all over me!” she shrieked, clawing bright red scratches into her snow-white legs.
“No they aren’t!” he barked, finally forcing himself to his feet. “They’re gone!”
He clasped his hands to either side of her face and lowered his voice.
“They’re gone, Miss. They’re gone.”
She still stomped in place, but collapsed forward into his arms, allowing herself to be overcome by sobbing.
“We’ll get through this,” he whispered into her ear.
She balled her hands to fists and squeezed his back.
“You’ve just got to promise me one thing, okay?”
She took a step back and dropped her eyes to the floor, forcing herself to only rub at her skin instead of ferociously scratching it like she really wanted to.
“Name it,” she whispered, sniffing and dragging her forearm beneath her nose.
“Promise me you’ll take a shower.”
She snorted back what felt like laughter and looked up in time to see a flash of the Mare she knew and loved in his eyes.
“You look like you’ve been rolling in crap,” he said, the corner of his mouth curling upward.
“So do you,” she said, pawing the tears from her eyes. “You’ve got it all over your fa—”
The word died on her tongue, her eyes snapping fantastically wide.
Mare spun around as Missy caught her
breath and screamed.
Their father was standing up on the bed, though it looked like someone else was standing behind him, holding his body aloft. His head lolled forward, but rather than stopping when his chin touched his chest, he just continued tumbling over the side of the bed and into a heap of gushy black flesh and clothing. What now stood in his stead was something stolen straight from a nightmare.
Its head was broad and flat with a chunk missing from the middle as though someone had taken a giant bite out of it. Rich white fluid like pus burbled from the opening, spilling from its head like lava down the sides of a volcano. It swayed back and forth, gaining momentum until it stumbled off the back of the bed and slammed into the wall beneath the window, what looked like spikes on the back of its black head stabbing straight through the plaster and tearing twin gouges all the way down to the floor with the powder floating around it like snow.
Mare looked quickly down to where the creature had deposited his father’s remains, but there wasn’t enough mass there for it to have been a human form. It was as though all that was left of his father was a puddle of skin atop a mess of gelatinous fat, seeping out from the sleeves and pant legs of the clothes he’d been wearing when he died.
“What in God’s name was that?” he shouted, whirling to face his sister, who’d backed all the way against the wall beside the doorway and appeared to be trying to retreat straight through it.
He cautiously leaned forward over the edge of the bed, bracing himself on his hands and rising to his tiptoes to see past the far side.
Whatever it was, it was folded in half between the bed and the wall, legs pointing to the ceiling like a dead canary at the bottom of a cage, knees crammed against its shoulders. Its skin was black and shiny like some of the marsh snakes he’d caught as a child, only it had a texture more like that of a trout, smooth, seamless. Long spikes protruded randomly from the thing’s shoulders, while shorter nubs lined its neck. A scaly black beard hung from a chin that looked like a jagged rock formation, the mouth formed of smooth stones lining the lips halfway across the cheeks to a larger oblong scale right in front of ears that almost looked as though they’d been turned inside out. Clear eyelids snapped open and closed over eyeballs as bright as the sun, swirling with black sunspots as it clawed at the enormous wound atop its head with reptilian digits. More and more of the fluid poured from its fractured skull before it finally shuddered violently and stilled with a long hiss.
Its left hand fell limply to its side, spattering ivory goo onto the carpet, but that wasn’t what held Mare’s attention. He was enraptured with the creature’s gnarled finger, where between grotesquely knobbed knuckles, it wore his father’s wedding band.
IV
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
PHOENIX AWOKE WITH HIS OWN SCREAMS ECHOING BACK TO HIM IN THE confines of the small room. It felt as though his skin was absolutely covered with tiny legs. Slapping madly at his arms and legs, grinding his fists into his eyes, he leapt to his feet, throwing the straw he had burrowed beneath all around. It wasn’t until he’d swiped his palms across every inch of himself that he was able to comprehend that all he felt was the straw.
He could clearly remember the mosquitoes. How could anyone possibly have forgotten the excruciating pain of having every available inch of flesh stabbed by so many insects? His mind must have spared him from the pain by simply shutting down and leaving him in the darkness of his unconscious until he was able to finally awaken…remarkably unscathed.
Grazing his fingertips across his face, he couldn’t feel any sort of noticeable swelling or pocks anywhere. He could very vividly remember the moment when he’d been stung, but absolutely nothing after that.
“My friends must have spared me,” he whispered, turning round and round in the darkness.
As if in response, the sounds of scuttling filled the room, the rafters, and the walls. The basement came to life all around him.
Chitinous bodies dropped from above onto his shoulders and scurried up his legs, speaking to him in tones so silent he couldn’t comprehend their words, only the scratching sounds of their feet on concrete and each other, a choir of clicking.
They swarmed the entirety of his form, wrapping around him like a blanket that felt not frightening or repulsive, but warm, almost like the woman’s embrace. He was filled with a sense of security, of belonging, and for the first time in his life felt a sense of completeness.
The house moaned above as a great wind arose to make it tremble, the thundering sound vibrating the very foundation beneath his feet. Faster and faster the roaches moved, covering every inch of him like living armor. He could feel them on the sensitive skin of his eyelids, plugging his nose and ears.
“More man tears,” he whispered before closing his mouth and allowing the roaches to cover his lips.
As the first of the locusts pressed under the seal of the door and forced themselves through every possible fissure and crack, Phoenix was transported into a dream to leave his guarded body to stand against the plague of insects.
He remembered it now, for he had dreamed the same dream hundreds of times before, the kind of elusive visions that dissipated upon the dawn like the mist from a cold mountain lake. Water as cold as ice lapped at his bare heels, snow-white sand clotting between his toes. Steam rolled in banks of clouds from an interminable body of water to his left, water so deep blue it was nearly black faded in and out of the fog, choppy with waves. His eyes dropped to his right hand to find smaller fingers laced between his, beyond another pair of bare feet covered in white silt. He looked to her face, but all he saw was a hint of a smile before the sun beyond washed out her features. She was familiar. He’d seen her so many times that her visage was more recognizable than his own, and yet even in the dream he couldn’t reassemble her features into a tangible image.
Locusts swirled like a tornado around his body in the dank basement, filling every available inch of airspace while almost imperceptible roach feet poked through his outer layer of skin.
In his mind, Phoenix strode forward with foaming brine rising over his ankles. Shapes appeared through the mist, flirting in and out as though no more substantial than ghosts. If it were possible, they appeared even lighter than the sand, as though formed of the same substance and glazed in the heart of a celestial body. As he drew near, features formed from the smooth granite: a woman knelt with her hands clasped before her, head covered by a long shawl which flowed around the rest of her like a gown; a cherubic child with wings coming from his shoulders stood on one foot atop a tall pedestal, a horn in his right hand eternally prepared to be raised to the heavens; a man stood with his arms stretched out to either side as though welcoming Phoenix to enter his embrace. There were dozens more, simply standing there, motionless, awaiting his approach. It wasn’t until he was nearly upon them that he noticed the earth standing before them was mounded, as though the unmoving people guarded whatever was buried beneath the long lumps of white sand.
He walked carefully so as not to step on any of the mounds, weaving between them.
The locusts pounded his body, trying to force their way through the shield of roaches, until finally they were sucked back through the holes they had entered through, leaving him standing alone in the darkness.
The vision was ripped away from him like a receding tide, carrying with it the deep black smoke he could still feel in his lungs and the taste of salt on his lips.
Emerging from his ears and his nasal canals, the roaches began scuttling back down his body. They began to descend his face, their little legs twitching spastically, before just simply falling off. Hundreds of bodies dropped from his shoulders and bare arms, from his chest and suddenly trembling legs. There was no longer the sound of scratching or the clicking of so many feet on the concrete. The entire room was still around him, save for the last of the current from the locusts’ passage winding down into the silence.
He feared to move, for the thought of crushing even a single one of those insect
s, his friends, was more than he could bear. Sweeping his feet from side to side, he cleared a swatch in the middle of the bodies, just enough to allow him to drop to his knees. His fingers crossed the cold cement floor until they encountered the mess of exoskeletons, slipping beneath and lifting handfuls of the motionless creatures. With his thumbs, he traced the backs of their shells in his palms. Each and every one of them bore a large puncture wound as though a nail had been driven straight through, yet he knew that couldn’t be the case. A viscous fluid poured from those openings as he shifted them in his hands, already the first patter of droplets tapping on his knees.
“Please forgive me,” he whispered, gently easing the handfuls to the right where he set the bodies neatly atop the straw. “I am not worthy of your sacrifice.”
He swept up two more mounds of roaches, again finding each diminutive shell to have been drilled through by what he could only assume were the other insects that these wonderful creatures had been protecting him from. They must have had fierce claws or mandibles sharp enough to drive through even the roaches’ venerable shells, or perhaps whatever fluid had been injected into them had been corrosive enough to melt right through the chitin. Either way, there was nothing left of his friends inside of those hollow exoskeletons. They were nearly as light as the air itself.
Gently, he dropped those from his hands beside their brethren on the straw bed, and then began the arduous process of gathering the remainder to lay them to rest in the only manner he could imagine. They had given their lives for him in exchange for a bowl of soggy oats. To Phoenix, their lives were worth more than the single oat they each must have consumed. He would have gladly spilled a drop of his blood for each of them if it were able to fill their voided shells and again make them whole.
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