Jericho: A Novel

by Alex Gordon

  “Okay. I think I look worse than I feel.” Lauren pressed a finger to one of her shiners to see if she could gauge the swelling,

  “You look fine.” Jenny shrugged. “Of course, it is dark.”

  “Thanks.” Lauren managed a smile. But that faded when she caught sight of the men on the roof. They stood gathered around an intake vent, a shiny aluminum construction that was usually hidden behind wooden screening.

  “This is one of those times when I wish I hadn’t quit smoking.” Jenny held up two fingers in a V and pressed them to her mouth. “Maybe they just need to drop a bug bomb down there.”

  “Here’s hoping.” Lauren took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. She breathed in once more and felt her gut clench. “Do you smell that?”

  “What?” Jenny sniffed, then screwed up her face. “Did something die up there?”

  The workmen backed away from the vent. A knocking sound followed, echoing through the trees.

  Then the flies came, spewing out of the opening like a geyser from a hydrant. The workmen tried to scramble to the ladder, but the swarm wrapped around them like a blanket and swept them off the roof to the ground four floors below.

  Nyssa screamed.

  More groundskeepers pelted around the back of the house, bearing water hoses, fire extinguishers, and brooms, and ran to the fallen men. But the flies rose and gave chase, driving them back into the garage. Then, instead of returning to their victims, they swept around the house, landing on the windowed walls, the glass roof, until they coated the entire structure in a shining, thrumming, twitching layer.

  As this was going on, Lauren and the other guests fled the patio and into the garden. Carmody, meanwhile, had returned to the house, emerging soon with the head of his security team. They stood arguing on the patio about next steps to take and who to call.

  “This is incredible.” Peter stood behind Stef, his hands on her shoulders. “How the hell could Andrew let it go this far?”

  Lauren watched Stef start to speak, then shake her head, as though she couldn’t think of a defense, either. Then Jenny jostled her elbow and pointed at the house.

  “They’ve stopping buzzing. Moving. Everything.”

  Lauren listened. Heard . . . something, barely audible, like the softest tone in a hearing test. She ran back onto the patio, and headed for the far end, ignored the shouts of the others and Carmody’s call to get the hell back to the garden.

  Then everyone fell silent and headed in the same direction. They all stopped at the railing that overlooked the rear yard, the forest beyond, then raised their hands to shield their eyes from the glare as the outdoor lighting blazed on.

  Lauren saw the shadows flicker down the trail, waited for what cast them to become visible. They appeared as soon as the light touched them, the little barrel bodies, scores and scores of them, toddling like children in Halloween costumes.

  Nyssa had moved in behind Lauren and grabbed her hand. “She’s come to get me.”

  “We won’t let that happen.” Lauren turned just as Carmody and Kaster drew near. The men stopped and stared, Carmody’s face paling while Kaster just closed his eyes.

  Then the creatures stopped, and parted like a shallow, black sea.

  “Look at all of you.” Fernanda Carmody emerged from the darkness of the wood and walked down the path the creatures had made. “Such long faces. Isn’t my husband entertaining you?” The little bodies broke ranks and milled around her, tugging at her dress, pulling at her hands. “Bad husband. But then we all knew that, didn’t we, Andy? He hates that, you know. He thinks it a child’s name.” Her expression hardened. Even from a distance, you could tell. “A little name for a little man.”

  Jenny stood with a hand over her mouth. “What are those things?”

  “The children of the forest.” Nyssa pushed closer to Lauren. “The children of the howl and the cry.”

  “Are we supposed to be afraid of them?” Peter looked around, as if trying to assure himself that everyone else could see what he saw. “They’re so small.”

  “So are the flies.” Lauren put her arm around Nyssa’s shoulders. “We saw them combine to make bigger beings, creatures, then melt away and vanish when they had to.”

  “The flies are everything.” Kaster stepped away from Carmody and walked to the railing. “They can become whatever they need to be.”

  Lauren watched the man. He seemed as concerned as the rest of them, which was worrisome given his usual detachment.

  “Stay the hell away from me.” Nyssa muttered. “Go back where you belong.”

  “I can hear you, darling.” Fernanda’s voice took on an edge. “I can see you, too. Your life here is over. It’s time for you to come home with your mother.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Nyssa forced some strength into her voice. “You killed people.”

  “Not kill, darling. Change. It’s your father who kills.”

  Lauren felt Nyssa tremble, the sweat that coated her palm. “She’s staying here, Fernanda. Go back to Jericho.”

  “Oh, it’s you. The noble one. The interfering one.” Fernanda shook off the creatures’ hands and pushed through them until she stood in front of them, alone. “I know how to hurt her, Nyssa. You know I do. Come with me like a good daughter, or I will hurt her again.”

  Nyssa pressed her face to Lauren’s shoulder. “What do I do?”

  “Just stay right where you are.” Lauren elbowed Peter. “If anything happens to me, hold on to her.” She braced for the first hit, felt it as a tingle that started at the base of her neck and radiated down.

  Peter leaned in. “What’s going to happen—” He glanced at Lauren’s face. “Okay, hang on.” He took her hand, then grabbed Stef’s. “Let’s spread this around a little. She can’t hit all of us at the same time.”

  “Don’t be too sure.” Lauren felt the man’s hand tighten hard enough to hurt, heard him gasp.

  “Okay, maybe she—can.” Peter gritted his teeth. “Stef, I’m going to let go of you.”

  “Don’t you dare,” the woman snapped.

  “Your heart—”

  “—can take it.” Stef gripped the railing with her free hand, her knuckles whitening.

  Then Jenny stepped in beside the woman, and placed her hand over hers.

  “I am the queen of the flies. Feel my sting.” Fernanda laughed. “You will all feel much worse if you don’t return my daughter to me.”

  “Gene?” That from Peter. “If you have any suggestions, this might be a good time to make them.”

  “I’ll try to talk to her, face-to-face.” Kaster started toward the doors that led back into the house.

  Lauren leaned against Nyssa as the first wave of pain dissipated. She wondered why Carmody had remained silent and let the rest of them take the brunt of Fernanda’s attack. She turned and searched the patio for him, but couldn’t see him.

  Then she heard Peter swear.

  “Oh, shit.” The man staggered to the railing. “Andrew, get back here.”

  Lauren limped after him, reaching the railing in time to see Carmody stride across the lawn toward Fernanda.

  “Damn you, leave Nyssa alone!” Carmody held something in his hand, an herb bundle or some sort of charm. “It’s between you and me, Nan. Take it out on me.” As he drew near, he raised his hand and made ready to throw.

  “As you wish, Andy.” Fernanda twitched her hand. “Children, protect your mother.”

  The creatures moved as one, like a wave rising and crashing down, swarming over Carmody like bees over an invader of the hive. He wheeled and tried to run back toward the house, but the weight of them dragged him down to the ground. He cried out, but his voice muffled as they buried him, vibrating bodies emitting a high-tension wire crackle and hiss that served as a call to the others. They streamed in from the house and piled on, a milling, pulsing mass.

  A blood-covered hand pushed through the bodies, then vanished beneath.

  “Andrew.” Kaster vaulted
over the railing to the ground below. It was a drop of more than a story, but he landed feetfirst and ran toward the swarm on legs that should have been broken or at least damaged. But no, he ran, like a young man who had spent his life running.

  Then he shouted. Words. Orders. At least Lauren assumed they were orders made of words because they were short sounds strung together and when Kaster uttered them, the creatures tumbled out of the pile as if they had been doused with gasoline and lit afire, screeching and shuddering and waving their arms. Struggling to cover their ear-holes with hands that didn’t quite reach.

  After Kaster grabbed the few creatures that remained atop Carmody and flung them across the yard, he knelt beside the man, lifted his head onto his lap, and rocked back and forth. As he did, more sounds emerged, a singsong chant that drew the creatures back. But they kept their distance this time, encircling Kaster and his fallen friend, and standing, silent and still.

  “Is he . . . talking to them, or to Carmody?” Jenny stood with her hands pressed to the sides of her face. “What’s he saying?”

  “I—can’t understand it.” Stef tugged Peter’s sleeve. “Peter, have you ever heard anything like it before?”

  “No.” Peter shook his head. “They’re listening to him like they did to Fernanda. But they’re afraid.”

  Lauren watched Kaster wipe blood from Carmody’s face, then bend close and kiss his forehead. Then he lifted the man in his arms, carried him as easily as he would have a child. “He’s headed to the garage.” She hurried after Peter, who had already vanished into the dark of the dining room.

  They arrived at the garage in time to watch Kaster gently place Carmody atop a stretcher. A pair of the house paramedics then got to work, while the rest ran outside to see to the fallen workmen.

  Lauren looked past Kaster to the stretcher and stared in sick disbelief. Carmody’s face had swelled into an unrecognizable mass of lumps and open sores, his distended body straining against clothes rendered a wet mess by his blood and other fluids.

  “Dad?” Nyssa drew alongside. “Daddy?” She reached out to touch the man’s hair, but one of the paramedics steered her away, then helped the other insert a breathing tube.

  Kaster muttered under his breath and pressed a hand to Carmody’s forehead. Then he backed away from the stretcher and headed toward the entry to the outside.

  “She’s dangerous,” Lauren called after him.

  “I know what she is.” Kaster stepped into the illuminated darkness and stopped a few paces away from Fernanda, who stood on the paved pathway. She looked more like the figure that Lauren had encountered in the Abernathy College corridor, older, disheveled, her dress and skin dirt-smeared and her hair a tangled mass shot though with leaves and twigs. A true mother of the forest.

  “Hello, Gene.” Her voice held a mocking lilt. “My husband’s protector. You take such good care of your little boy.” She looked past him into the garage. When her gaze fell on Carmody’s stretcher, she smiled. When it moved to Nyssa, her eyes alternately softened with need, then narrowed with greed.

  Then her gaze moved to Lauren, and settled like snow.

  Lauren felt the chill, the hatred that formed it. Hoped that if she stayed in the shadows, Fernanda wouldn’t be able to tell that she had landed a blow.

  But of course she could tell. Another smile, this one more feral, anticipating the bloodshed to come.

  “This won’t end well, Fernanda.” Kaster’s voice sounded as it never had. Stilted, the accents on the wrong syllables. “You have one last chance. Return to the dark you love so well, and stay there. Leave the living be.”

  “So gallant. Such a defender. A defender of killers.” Fernanda put her hands around her neck. “He killed me. My wonderful husband. You all know it’s true. Do you hear me, Nyssa? Your father followed me into the woods that last night. He killed me and left me to rot on the ground like a piece of garbage.” She tried to draw closer to the place where her daughter stood, but Kaster moved to block her. “Nyssa? Is that who you want to live with? The man who killed your mother?” She reached out to the girl.

  Lauren glanced back at Carmody’s stretcher, and found the paramedics struggling to keep their patient still. Only when Nyssa forced herself past them and took his hand did he slow. He said something to her, his voice muffled by swelling, as she nodded and wiped her eyes.

  Lauren turned back to Fernanda. At first she thought a fly had landed on the outside of Fernanda’s wrist. No, not a fly. A round, black dome of shiny skin that reminded her of the welt on Sam’s hand.

  She pressed a hand to the back of her neck, felt the raised bumps of her own fly bites. Vowed to check them as soon as she had the chance even as she feared what she might see.

  “Leave.” Kaster raised a hand, sketched a sigil in the air. “Now.”

  “You tell my husband. It doesn’t end here.”

  “I said, leave.”

  Fernanda bared her teeth and hissed at him. Then she turned and headed back up the path toward the forest trail, her charges hurrying after. Soon they vanished into the shadow, leaving behind only their smell and the bodies of their dead, which had already begun to decompose, skin peeling and crumpling and fluids leaving smoking blotches in the grass.

  “She won’t quit, Gene.” Peter went to stand behind Kaster. “She’s got time on her side. And numbers.”

  Kaster watched until the last creature had gone. “I bought us some of her time.”

  “To do what?” Lauren pressed a hand to her ribs. As diluted as Fernanda’s assault had been, it had still been strong enough to aggravate earlier injuries.

  Kaster looked toward Nyssa. “She wants her daughter. But she’s as reckless in this life as she was in her old one. She can be had.” When the paramedics pushed the stretcher toward the elevator, he trotted after it, collecting Nyssa along the way.

  CHAPTER 24

  We have to go out there.” Peter paced the hallway outside the treatment room into which Carmody had been taken. “We can’t delay.”

  “She’ll be waiting. We know she won’t be alone.” Lauren dragged a chair out of an adjoining room and sat down. “The night’s their time. The wind dies, and everything is quiet. The gaps in dark space get bigger, and they walk through. That’s why most hauntings happen at night. Why we have nightmares. Why we’re scared of the dark.” She shrugged, gasped as her shoulder complained. “That’s my theory, anyway.”

  Peter crouched next to her. “Maybe the night can be our time, too. Have you ever thought of that? This dark space of yours flows both ways, right?”

  “Like I said, the night’s their time. They live in it. They’re used to it. It’s their daylight. We need a solid plan, and it has to be bulletproof, because we won’t get a second chance. They want us to blunder in now. They’re counting on it.”

  “You’re afraid.” Peter sounded disappointed.

  “Yes, I am.” Lauren shivered in memory. “Been there. Lost people. Mopped up blood with the T-shirt.”

  “Then we should leave.” Stef emerged from the shadows. “If it’s as bad as you say, then let us pack up and go. Let them have the mountain.”

  “You’re kidding, right? You know we can’t do that.” Lauren saw Stef reach out a hand to steady herself. Stood and offered her the chair, and received a sharp head shake in reply.

  “She’s right, Stef. This mess needs cleaning up.” Peter turned to Lauren. “I’ve been trying to think whose children they are. Fernanda called herself ‘queen of the flies.’ As incredible as it sounds, that can only mean . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Lauren could almost see the names and references and ancient texts unfurling in the man’s memory. “Spit it out, Professor.”

  Peter frowned, brow furrowing, as though he could not accept what he needed to say. “Beelzebub. The Lord of the Flies.”

  Lauren thought for a moment. “Beelzebabies.”

  Peter closed his eyes. “Not now, Lauren.”

  “I’m not trying to be fun
ny.”

  “Good, because you’re not.” Stef shook her head, then left them and entered the treatment room.

  Lauren and Peter remained outside, peeking through the door every so often at the bed on which Carmody lay.

  Peter answered Lauren’s unspoken question. “He’s conscious. Stef’s poultice should draw out the venom.”

  “Should?”

  “We’re winging it here. I’ve never seen anything like this. She hasn’t, either.”

  “Maybe we should have evac’d him to Portland with the other men.”

  “We wanted to. He said no. He was afraid Fernanda would send her flies to bring down the chopper.” Peter leaned against the jamb and massaged his hip, an aching remnant of Fernanda’s assault. “Besides, it’s not that kind of venom. Any of the usual treatments would prove useless.”

  Lauren inhaled slowly. Exhaled. “Do me a favor.” She turned. “Check the back of my neck.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “A raised black welt.” Lauren held her breath as the seconds passed.

  “I just see little red bumps, like mosquito bites.” Peter whistled through his teeth. “We saw a black welt on Sam’s hand. Do you think it indicates something?”

  “I saw one on Fernanda’s hand as well.” Lauren adjusted her pajama top. “I think it could be a sign of . . . the only word I can think of is ‘infection.’”

  Peter brushed past her. “Then we should check Andrew.”

  They entered to find Carmody trying to sit up while Nyssa struggled to push him down and Stef shuffled back and forth with a steaming bowl filled with something that smelled like boiled pinecones.

  The patient looked much improved. Carmody’s facial swelling had reduced to the point that Lauren could see his eyes—he looked as though he had survived one hell of a bar fight rather than an assault by otherworldly creatures. Stef and Nyssa had stripped off his ruined clothing and draped a sheet so that he was covered from waist to thighs, his bare chest and legs left exposed. It would have made for quite the picture if he didn’t resemble a badly wrapped mummy with an extreme case of eczema.