“Then what the hell is happening?”
A pause. “Only thing I can think of is that there was a second nest, like I mentioned to you. Real unusual, but it does happen. Two females, probably from the same brood originally, established nests near each other. This ain’t the original nest we’re talking about, but a whole new one. Wow. Haven’t seen this in a long time.”
“Can you get rid of it?”
“Sure. What’s probably happening now is the cold is killing off the drones. You must have missed a spot in the baseboard, and they’re being driven from the nest to the light and heat in your office. Why don’t you look for the opening in the baseboard while I get over there – plug that up with tape and that’ll take care of your office. Then we’ll find the new nest and knock ’em out in no time. They’re on the way out anyway.” He laughed shortly, giving a half-yawn. “Wow. Two nests. That’s somethin’…”
“Just get over here!”
Peter slammed down the phone and stalked to the sofa. He moved the coffee table in front of it, then angled the couch out, away from the wall.
A mass of sluggish hornets were clustered on the rug in front of a gap in the baseboard.
More in anger than in fright, he grabbed a wad of papers from the coffee table, rolled them into a makeshift tube and cleared the front of the opening of hornets. They moved willingly. He ran back to his desk, retrieved a length of cellophane tape, and, with a practiced motion, wadded it as he went back to the baseboard.
Already another hornet, followed by yet another sluggish insect, was crawling through the space.
Peter thrust the wadded cellophane at the opening, pushing the two new intruders backwards as the hole was plugged.
The sound of buzzing was very loud behind the wall.
And now, being this close to the wall, he noticed another sound.
A rustling movement, a thin sound as if someone was scratching weakly against the other side of the wall.
And then a pained, tepid whisper:
“Peter….”
“What –”
He stood up, brushing a few slow-crawling hornets from the wall and put his ear flush against it.
It came again, the thinnest of rustling breaths heard behind a thick chorus of buzzing: “Peter, help me…”
“Ginny!” he shouted.
“Yes….”
“My God–”
“Peter….”
He drew back from the wall, balling his fists as if he would smash through it – then he turned, throwing open the office door and dashing through and up the stairs. He ran for the back sliding door, nearly tripping over Ginny’s things in the hallway, his mind feverish.
“My God, Ginny…”
He pushed himself out into now-cold night, a full October chill hitting his face as he shouted, “Ginny!”
The backyard was lit by the sharp circle of the moon, by a few orange and white lights still lit in houses behind his visible through denuded oaks.
“Ginny, where are you!”
He heard a rustle to his right, against the house, in darkness.
He stumbled down the back deck steps.
“Ginny!”
“Here, Peter, help me…”
Breathing heavily, he found himself standing before the garden shed, its bulk looming in front of him. The sound of buzzing was furious, caught in the cold wind.
“Peter…”
He screamed, an inarticulate sound, and pulled at the shed’s door, which wouldn’t budge.
My God, she must have been caught inside the shed. The door must have closed on her and trapped her inside!
His mind filled with roiling thoughts. He pulled and clawed and banged at the door, trying to open it.
“Help me please, Peter…”
“Jesus!” The door wouldn’t move. He looked wildly around for a tool, something to pry it open with – and then spied the short handle of a spade lying close by on the grass.
He picked it up, noting faint scratches on the spade’s face – this must have been how Ginny had gotten the door open originally…
“Peter…”
“I’m coming!”
Mad with purpose, he pried the spade into the thin opening between wooden door and jamb, began to work it back.
There was a creaking sound, but the door held firm.
“Dammit!”
“Peter, please…”
He hammered on the handle of the spade, driving it deeper into the opening. He angled it sideways and suddenly the wooden handle broke away, leaving him with the metal arm which had been imbedded in it, attached to the blade. He pushed at the blade, getting faint purchase but shouting with the effort.
“Dammit!” The handle slipped, slicing into his hand, but he ignored the pain, the quick line of blood, and kept pushing and banging.
The door gave a bit, but still wouldn’t open.
Buzzing filled his ears, an angry sound now – he realized that when he opened the door the hornets might rush out at him but he didn’t care. H drove the thought from his mind.
“Peter…”
The voice was growing fainter.
He shouted, and became aware that lights were going on around him – still he beat at the handle.
The door gave way another fraction; it was almost open–
“Jesus! Open, dammit!”
With a supreme effort, which caused the broken metal handle of the spade to push painfully into his open wound, the door opened with a huge groaning creak and flew back on its hinges.
“Ginny!”
“Peter…”
There was darkness within, a seething fog of flying things – and then something stumbled out into his arms, something white and alive, a human skeleton with a skin made of hornets. Writhing alive orange and black insects covered her skull, her arms, her fingers which gripped him tightly as he stumbled backwards screaming in its embrace. The thing walked with him, holding him tightly, hornets making Ginny’s face, boiling alive in the empty eye sockets to make eyes, and hair, and lips on the skeletal mouth.
The mouth moved, the opening jawbone hissing with the movement of hornets. The writing face showed something that was almost tenderness.
“Kiss me, Peter. Kiss me…”
He screamed, pushing at the thing which would not let him go, aware suddenly that there were others nearby. He turned his head to see Detective Grant and the beekeeper Willims standing side-by-side, rooted with horror to the spot they stood in, flashlights trained on him.
“Kiss me, Peter. Samhain let me come back. The Lord of the Dead let me come back, but only for a little while. I never stopped loving you…”
The thing covered in hornets turned and looked straight at Detective Grant. There was a sudden hard look to the writhing features.
“Samhain says something is coming. He says stay out of it. If you don’t, he will kill your wife and everyone close to you.”
And now Peter felt the first stings as the hornets began to peel away from Ginny’s skeleton, covering his own face, attacking him–
“Help me!” he screamed.
Ginny melted away in his arms, the bones collapsing to a clacking pile as Peter fell to the ground, covered in angry hornets. Through his burning eyes he saw the beekeeper standing over him, wide-eyed, waving his arms, his flashlight beam bouncing, shouting something which Peter could no longer hear through his swollen ears, his screaming mouth filled with soft angry hornets, his throat, his body covered inside his clothing.
He gave a horrid final choking scream, and was silent.
Chapter Thirteen
“And that’s the way you’d like the record to read?” District Attorney Morton said. He was shaking his head as he said it – but then again, he had been shaking his head since the informal inquest had begun two hours ago.
Detective Grant spoke up. “This will be sealed, right?”
Morton laughed shortly, a not humorous sound. “You bet your ass it will be. We’re lucky nobody from the
press got wind of this.” He looked sideways at the beekeeper. “We’re not going to have any trouble from you, are we, Mr. Willims?”
The beekeeper nearly gulped. “Are you kidding? If Detective Grant hadn’t been standing next to me, do you think the bunch of you would even be listening to me? I’d be in a looney bungalow right now.” He turned to face Grant. “Tell them what that thing told you. The message from Samhain it gave you.”
Tight-lipped, Grant said nothing.
Morton kept his eyes on Willims. “Yes, Mr. Willims, without Detective Grant you would now be in a straight jacket. Especially since you’re the only one making all these claims about ‘Samhain’ and such. But since the two of you saw this strange killing take place –”
The beekeeper gulped again, and Grant nodded curtly.
“At least I don’t think Kerlan killed his wife,” Grant said. “It looks to me like she got herself stuck in that gardening shed, and the hornets got to her.” He looked at Willims, and suddenly everyone was looking at the beekeeper.
“You want me to tell you this all could happen? Sure, I’ll tell you – but I still don’t believe it. Could hornets strip a human body clean in a few days? Well, maybe. Usually hornets won’t eat human flesh, but if the opportunity presents itself, I guess they might. They probably stung her to death after she got trapped in the shed. And then the body was in there with them…so, sure, I guess it could happen.”
“And what about the supposed…” Morton consulted the papers before him. “…mobility of the skeleton…?” He let the question hang, and Grant finally spoke up.
“The damn thing looked like it stumbled out of the shed. But it could have been a trick of the light. If the skeletal remains had been propped against the door when Kerlan opened it, which would have been consistent with his wife’s trying to get out of the shed until she was overcome by the hornets, then, sure, it could have tumbled out into his arms.”
He looked over at the beekeeper, who looked at his shoes. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I saw too.”
Morton addressed the beekeeper: “And the bees covering Mrs. Kerlan like skin – that could have been a ‘trick of the light’ too?”
“Well…”
Willims looked up from his shoes to see Grant glaring at him.
“Sure, I guess so. And I guess the words we heard her say could have been in our minds –”
For a moment he looked defiant, before collapsing. “All right. It was all in our heads.”
“Fine,” Morton said. He had gained a satisfied look. He turned to the medical examiner. “Jim, you’re okay with the cause of death in both cases as being extreme toxic reaction to hornet stings?”
The M.E. nodded once.” “Yep.”
“And there was nothing the two of you could have done to save him?” he asked Grant and Willims.
The beekeeper said, “By the time we got to him he’d already been stung hundreds of times. I was able to get some of them off, but it was too late. The weirdest thing is that they wouldn’t respond to light, which threw me. When I shined my flashlight on them they should have flocked to it.”
“But they could have been so angry at that point that they would have ignored the light, correct?” Morton said sharply.
“I guess so. But I still say they should have attacked the light, and left Mr. Kerlan alone.”
“But you’re fine with the way we wrote it up in the final report?” Morton said, daring the beekeeper to contradict him.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Good. Anything else?” Morton patted his knees, making as if to rise, daring anyone in the room not to let him end the proceedings.
There was a glum silence. Once again the beekeeper was staring at his own shoes.
“I want to re-emphasize, Mr. Willims, that you aren’t to speak to anyone of what went on in here today. We’re all sworn to secrecy. This record will be sealed. Whatever was said in this room remains in this room. I don’t want to see anything in the newspapers about humans made out of yellow jackets or…” here he consulted his notes again, “…Samhain, the Lord of the Dead. You understand?”
Without lifting his gaze, Willims answered, “Sure.”
Letting a hard edge climb into his tone, Morton said, “If any of this finds its way into the press, or anywhere else outside this room, I’ll know who to call on, won’t I, Mr. Willims?”
The beekeeper nodded. His gaze shifted momentarily to Grant, whose face was blank.
“Just so you understand,” Morton continued. “There are licenses and such in your profession, and I would hate for you to have trouble in that area.”
The beekeeper nodded again.
Morton’s tone switched suddenly from hard to hearty. “All right, then – that’s it!” He stood and stretched, glancing at the M.E. “Jim – lunch?”
“Yep,” the M.E. said.
The rest of them rose, and as Grant passed Willims he leaned close and whispered sharply, “We both know what really happened. I’ll take care of it.”
On the way out of the room the District Attorney put his arm briefly around the beekeeper’s shoulder and said, “Just forget about it, Willims. Chalk it up to professional strangeness.”
Willims looked up at the D.A., and for a moment his face was haunted.
“The thing I can’t get over,” he said, “is the stuff she was saying about the Lord of the Dead, how she’d been brought back from the dead –”
Morton’s scowl turned to an angry frown. “I warned you in there, Willims–”
“I heard you,” the beekeeper said resignedly. “Believe me, I heard you.”
Morton removed his arm from the other man’s shoulder, giving him a slight shove forward. “Just don’t forget what I said.”
They were in the marbled hallway of the court building, leading toward the revolving doors to the outside world. Morton watched Willims go through them, slouching with unhappiness.
The M.E. came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Meet you at the restaurant,” he said laconically. “I’ve got to dip into my office upstairs for a minute.”
“Fine.”
The M.E. peeled off into another hallway, his footsteps echoing away on the polished stone floor.
After a moment, the D.A. composed himself into his public face of smiling bluster, and drove through the revolving doors.
Outside it was cold and bright, early November chill making the recent October heat wave a memory.
The D.A. shivered, wishing he had remembered his topcoat. But the restaurant was only a block away.
He began to descend the wide stone steps of the courthouse, which led to the street, when something small and striped orange and black, an insect, brushed by his ear and settled lightly there.
He heard the faintest of whispers before he swatted it away – as if someone were talking to him from a far distance. Later, until the voice came again and he was sure, he would wonder if he had heard it at all:
“I may want you to do something for me…”
Part Two
False Leads
Chapter Fourteen
Perhaps it was the wind that first brought him to the town of Orangefield, a wind that made leaf tornados, dervishing colors from denuded trees. Or perhaps it was the chill in the air, the first cold tendrils of coming winter that were Autumn. Or perhaps it was the children bedecked in autumn – or the windows with cutouts, or the pumpkins, wet and cold sweet inside, orange, firm and smiling on the outside. Or the season, or the fact that the town had briefly been called Pumpkinfield.
Or perhaps it was because he needed somewhere to serve his Master.
Or maybe it was the special evening that would soon be here.
His evening.
There are many ways to skin a cat.
Yes, the other voice answered. Indeed. But I am becoming tired of your failed efforts.
This Halloween will be different. I feel the power within me for this. This time I will succeed.
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And then? the other voice asked.
And then everything. And I will give it over to you, Dark One.
Do you really think you can do it directly? Without passing through that… other place?
I feel powerful. As powerful as ever.
You’ve said this before.
This time I have three sure ones to help me. The girl Wizard and two others. And…
And?
I have what you might call… insurance.
But if, like the last time, one of them fails–
Everything will succeed.
We shall see.
There is only one problem, and it will be solved soon. This man Grant, this detective, there is something about him…
You can handle him?
Not in the usual way. He is one of the strong ones, unlike Kerlan, who was disrespectful, and weak. Grant must be pushed aside.
Do it, then.
It will be done. I am only your servant.
True words. A servant without a choice. I will watch your progress with interest, Samhain.
The voice laughed, a mirthless sound as cold and dead as space.
Or should I call you Sam?
Chapter Fifteen
Jody Wendt, five years old, saw the Pumpkin Boy through the window over the kitchen sink, outlined against the huge rising moon like a silhouette against a white screen. Jody had climbed up onto the counter next to the basin to reach the cereal in an overhead cabinet. Now he stood transfixed with a box of corn flakes in his hands, mouth agape.
The Pumpkin Boy had a bright orange pumpkin head with cold night steam puffing out of the eyes, nose and mouth cutouts, and a body consisting of a bright metal barrel chest and jointed legs and arms that looked like stainless steel rails. Even through the closed window Jody could hear the creaking noises he made. He moved stiffly, like he was unused to walking: his feet were two flat ovoid pads, slightly rounded and raised on top, made of shiny metal. As Jody watched, one of the feet stuck in place in the muddy ground; the Pumpkin Boy, oblivious, walked on, and then toppled over with a sound like rusting machinery. He lay on the ground like a turtle on its back, making a hollow chuffing noise like Saaaafe, saaaafe, saaaafe. Then he slowly righted himself, rising to a sitting position and then turned slowly to search for his lost foot. Finding it, he fell forward and clawed his way toward it. He closed his hands around it. His head fell forward and hit the ground, rolling away from the body, and the hands immediately let go of the foot and grabbed the head, realigning it on the stilt body with a ffffffmp.
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