The Demon Queen and The Locksmith

by Spencer Baum

  She was no longer a passive listener. She now controlled the volume, pitch, and timbre of the hum in her mind, and in so doing, she controlled the world around her. She could move objects without touching them, she could change things by looking at them, she could initiate destruction with her thoughts.

  It was well after midnight. Gretchen was in the alley, listening to the fire ant mound, but through the hum, she could hear what was happening back at the apartment. Ken had returned from a night at the bars. He was drunk. His day had gone poorly and he was in a mood. He yelled a tirade at Gretchen’s mother about dirty dishes and empty refrigerators. Eager to turn her thoughts to something else, Gretchen focused on the ant mound.

  Controlled rage was their sound in the hum. The fire ant colony owned the entire alley behind the apartment, and they managed their empire through violence and rage. Gretchen loved the sounds of the colony. She related to them. She heard them in herself.

  Gretchen had long suspected that the scars on her arms and legs were connected to this mound, and now she knew it to be true. In his drawings, Gerrard had given her the power to unlock her subconscious mind, to pull forth any memory from her life, even the ones her brain had hidden away for her own good.

  She was a baby, old enough to sit up, but not old enough to talk. The memory attached no words to the concepts, only base instincts, like fear. It was night. She was sleeping in her crib. Sharp, fiery stings shot into her arms and legs, one after another. Instinct pulled her to a sitting position, told her to scream, and pulled from her throat a sound that could wake a mother from a grave.

  In the memory, she could see crumbs of a cookie scattered across the crib. She could see the open window, leading to the alley behind the apartment. Baby Gretchen didn’t know what the ants were, but she knew they were the enemy. She used her hands to swipe at them, which only angered them more. They were a swarm of rage. They intended to kill her.

  Her mother appeared in the memory and rescued her. Gretchen was pulled to safety, the sound of the fire ants fading, her own sound in the hum growing stronger.

  Through the memory, Gretchen could sense their rage, and it was the rage she understood. The fire ants harnessed a rage so powerful that, together, the colony was an unstoppable force in its microcosmic world.

  She felt a kinship with them. She felt rage at her mother for leading such a pathetic life. She felt rage at Ken Childress for abusing her mother. She felt rage at herself for allowing it to happen.

  For years, this rage flowed through her blood like the poison of a thousand fire ant stings, with nowhere to go. It reached out through her scars, into the hum, and she had never understood it.

  Until now.

  In Gerrard’s letter to Julius Adams, she saw something at once horrible and amazing. It was something far away, inside a mountain in the American Southwest. She wanted it. Through her rage, she would have it.

  Standing over the mound, listening to the hum, Gretchen touched her own sound to that of the colony. Strands of music, intertwining, mixing, becoming one – she would use her power to tie herself into this colony, and its beauty, power, and rage would be in her hands.

  Peter Gerrard had once looked upon a mountain and wanted it too. Fire ants weren’t yet in North America in Gerrard’s day, and he never had the opportunity to witness the power of their fury.

  The sounds from the apartment rushed into Gretchen’s ears a second too late. A scream, a drunken shout, a strike to her mother’s face. Somewhere deep inside her, a part of Gretchen cried out. Let go, run back to the apartment, save her – but these were not the parts of her that connected to the colony, and the colony was already taking hold.

  Thousands of workers, hundreds of soldiers, one queen, living for a purpose larger than themselves, dying for the sake of the colony.

  Ken struck Gretchen’s mother again. This time she crashed into the kitchen counter, hitting her head on a sharp corner. She died instantly. Gretchen felt the rage inside her swell to new heights, and this the colony understood.

  She opened her eyes. She and the colony were now united in purpose. The ants read it in her thoughts, and at once they were in agreement about what must be done. There was a mountain in the American Southwest. They would have what was inside. But first they would feed their rage.

  In single-file line the soldiers came out, and as they marched with grace and precision, they grew. With each step they changed. They used Gretchen’s powers in the hum to double in size, then triple. Pattering steps became jackhammer strikes in the dirt. A line of ants became a horde of wild, hideous monsters, charging into Shuberville.

  It was a nighttime raid. The human part of Gretchen, fading, knew only that Ken Childress should be a target. The larger part of her that now belonged to the colony wanted more. Gretchen’s rage, directed at Ken, flowed through the colony like electricity, and matched their thirst for empire. Ken Childress could go, but the entire town had to go with him. Once the ants were seen, every resident was a potential enemy. The people of Shuberville owned gasoline and shotguns and dynamite and other weapons that could be used against the colony. They had telephones and cars that could spread warning around the world. Gretchen imagined the military sending bombers and tanks. The colony saw this vision and understood. No one could survive this night. The empire began here.

  And as Gretchen resigned herself to the necessity of a massacre, she latched onto the last piece of her mind that was hers, and ran. She ran ahead of the colony, to a small house in the heart of town. She used her mind to break open the front door. Ms. Stephenson, the librarian, came running into the front room, her pallor a match for her white nightgown.

  “Ms. Stephenson, you have to leave,” Gretchen said.

  “Gretchen? What is this? What’s happening?”

  Ms. Stephenson tried to turn on a light, but the power in Shuberville was already gone.

  Behind Gretchen the front door stood open, and the sounds of Shuberville’s demise bellowed into Ms. Stephenson’s home.

  “Get in your car and go,” Gretchen said. “I’m letting you leave.”

  “Letting me--”

  A monster crashed through the window, shards of glass and broken brick flew past Ms. Stephenson as she screamed. Gretchen held out her hand, and the monster stopped. Standing still, in the remains of Ms. Stephenson’s front room, was a giant fire ant. Large as a horse, its six legs had grown thick and strong, its body turned sharp and sleek.

  Between her screams, with only the moon to light the scene, Ms. Stephenson saw broken images of the monster. She saw its giant mandible jaws, and sensed its desire to tear her apart. She saw its antennae, which her mind later turned into horns. She saw that its head was the color of fire. She later told her son that it was a demon from hell, come to pass judgment on the world, and Gretchen was its queen.

  “Into your car, now,” Gretchen said. “Leave Shuberville, and don’t ever come back.”

  Ms. Stephenson did as she was told, seeing fire, destruction and death in her rearview mirror. She drove to her brother’s house in Vicksburg, found her son in the spare bedroom, woke him, and threw her arms around his neck.

  “Thank God you were here,” she said. “Thank God you weren’t in Shuberville tonight, Tom.”

  The Exterminator

  Go to Sanders Mill off Route 20. Follow the creek going south. Keep going. When it’s time, someone will find you. And remember, you and I never spoke.

  For more than an hour, Lou followed the creek through a mix of light forest and mucky swampland. At times he couldn’t hear his own footsteps over the croaking bullfrogs, chirping crickets, and mosquito buzz. It occurred to him that he was walking to the middle of nowhere, where he could disappear and no one would know.

  Just like Buzz.

  “Hello Mr. Sweeney,” said a voice from behind him.

  Lou turned to see a tall, slim silhouette leaning against a tree.

  “Yes, I’m Lou Sweeney. Who are you?”

  Steam rose fro
m the wetlands underfoot, hiding the man’s lower half, and creating the effect of a towering shadow floating in the darkness.

  “My name is Tom Stephenson. I’m the exterminator in these parts.”

  So it was a trap. Lou had pried his nose into a small town’s business, and they in turn had lured him out in the night to be exterminated.

  “I’m the only surviving citizen of Shuberville.”

  Lou said nothing.

  “Does the word scare you?” said Tom. “Shuberville?”

  Lou shook his head, still saying nothing.

  “Then I have a lot to tell you,” said Tom, “starting with this. When we’re done here tonight, and you leave this place, you are to speak of Shuberville and The Demon Queen like the spoken words themselves can kill you, because they can. Another radio announcer came here once, asking about Shuberville… The Demon Queen killed him.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” said Lou. “I want to know what happened to Buzz Tingley. I want to find the truth.”

  “I know,” said Tom, “I know the truth about Mr. Tingley. Years ago, on a night just like this, he stood where you’re standing, and heard the same words I’m about to tell you.”

  Tom reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small photograph. Old and worn at the edges, the black and white photograph looked and felt like it had been handled for decades. In the moonlight, Lou could see it clearly enough.

  The photograph showed a young girl, maybe thirteen, standing in front of a shelf of books. She held in her hands a framed document.

  “This is the only picture I have of her,” said Tom. “My mother took it in the library a few days before the demons came. The camera was still in her car when she escaped. My mother was the only person to survive the massacre, but she didn’t live long. Whatever mercy she was shown on that awful night was short-lived. She swore to me that the Demon Queen herself let her leave, and we all would be safe. But the next night the demons came to Vicksburg. They killed my mother, my aunt, and my uncle. They’ve been chasing me ever since.”

  “Who are you talking about?” said Lou.

  “I’m talking about Gretchen Brinkley, The Demon Queen of Shuberville.”

  Chapter 14

  Lou’s voice continued to ramble out of the espresso machine.

  “When you last heard from me it was on the radio, now some five years in the past. I told the world of a small town named Shuberville, and a little girl whose life went terribly wrong. I spoke of my mentor, the late, great Buzz Tingley, who was onto the story, and mysteriously disappeared in the pursuit. I came within seconds of saying the name of the foulest, most dangerous, most evil person of our time.”

  Kevin thought about his dad’s Tingley 2000, sitting on the kitchen counter, Lou Sweeney speaking out of the display screen, delivering a message of doom to an empty house. Kevin knew that doom was where this video was headed. He could hear it in the hum. The pulsing vibrations on the outer edges of the sound were deepening, becoming more ominous, and closing in on the hum’s center. It was an audible warning to Kevin that something terrible was about to happen.

  “And then I went off the air. Today I return to finish my story. I come to you in this unusual manner, via your Tingley 2000 espresso machine, because the evil person of whom I speak has the power to shut down your radio, shut down your television, shut down your computer. In order to deliver the story of our age, I had to create a new medium of communication.

  “So we begin at the end. The story of the Demon Queen of Shuberville. With those words, my radio program came to an unceremonious conclusion. What you are about to see is the security camera footage taken inside my studio on that fateful day.”

  The screen cut away to a shot of a modest radio studio, viewed from the ceiling. A younger Lou Sweeney sat in the broadcast chair, speaking into an over-sized microphone.

  “The story of the Demon Queen of Shuberville,” the young Lou Sweeney announced. A crashing sound filled the audio track and a cloud of dust filled the picture. A tall, slim man, it was Tom, appeared in the chaos and grabbed Lou by the arm. They ran out of view. Half a second passed with no one in the shot. Then a horrible nightmare of a picture filled the screen on the Tingley 2000. A monster, shiny and sleek, legs antennae and jaws, a living torpedo on six legs, charged into the shot from the left and trampled the now-empty broadcast desk. A second monster appeared, and turned its hideous face directly into the camera. Two meat-hook jaws opened and closed, and the screen went black.

  Jackie grabbed onto Kevin’s arm.

  The gray wall and dapper Lou in his black suit re-appeared on the screen. “I escaped that day because I knew they would come, and I was ready for them.

  “My mentor, Buzz Tingley, wasn’t so lucky. The people of the town of Shuberville weren’t so lucky.

  “It is in honor of their memory that I now share with you the story of a young woman from Shuberville, Mississippi. The woman’s name is Gretchen Brinkley...

  A worn black and white photograph, the same that Jackie still held in her fingers, filled the display screen. Lou’s voice played over depressing violins.

  “You are now seeing the only known picture of Gretchen Brinkley, the Demon Queen of Shuberville,” Lou’s voiceover said.

  For the second time, Kevin’s eyes were drawn to the framed document the young girl held in her hands. The spiral shapes…he could feel himself drifting away as before, and forced his eyes away from the screen. He saw Tom pull a handheld computer from his pocket and examine it with a grim look on his face.

  “You have never heard of Shuberville, because it no longer exists. But once, not long ago, Shuberville was a small town on the Mississippi Delta…”

  Tom left his chair and went to Lou.

  “They’re on the move,” Tom whispered in Lou’s ear.

  “How long?” Lou whispered back.

  “Fifteen minutes, maybe.”

  “Fifteen minutes until what?” Jackie said.

  Tom and Lou were startled that Jackie had heard their whispers, and neither responded. Kevin answered for them.

  “Fifteen minutes until these demons arrive,” Kevin said. He heard it in the hum. A low resonance at the bottom of the sound told him of an approaching tidal wave of destruction, rumbling silently towards them.

  “Yes, that’s right Kevin,” said Lou. He paused, letting his voiceover on the video fill the silence.

  “Many killers throughout history can claim multiple victims. Only Gretchen Brinkley can claim an entire town…”

  “Excuse me,” said Jackie. “But is this for real? Why are monsters coming here?”

  Jackie was speaking directly to Kevin, but Lou answered.

  “We knew they would come,” said Lou. “This broadcast had to be initiated from somewhere. When Amy pressed the buttons on her remote control, she sent a signal through the radio waves to every Tingley 2000 in Turquoise to play this video. Gretchen’s beasts can hear radio waves with their antennae, and trace them to their source. Buzz Tingley learned this the hard way. The day of my final broadcast, I witnessed how rapidly the demons can arrive and destroy.”

  Jackie turned to Kevin. She said nothing, but Kevin knew from her eyes what she wanted to ask. Lou had answered her second question. Why are monsters coming here? He hadn’t answered her first.

  Kevin gave her a slight nod, enough to provide his opinion. Yes, he thought this was for real. The hum swelled in his head. He didn’t know why, or even how, but he knew something terrible was coming.

  Rage.

  Rage is what he heard. Focused, physical rage was moving toward them, and it would be here soon.

  “I feel like the three of you have an interesting story to tell us, if only we had time,” Lou continued. “But we have to get moving.”

  As if on cue, the lights went out. The video on the Tingley 2000 continued to play, providing the only light in the room.

  “They’ve gone after the power plant,” said Tom. “They’re trying to stop the broadca
st.”

  “Of course they have,” Lou said. “Give it another second. We have two backup generators.”

  Now Tom appeared on the Tingley 2000 video screen.

  “My name is Tom Stephenson. I am the sole survivor of the Shuberville Massacre…”

  The lights came back on.

  “All according to plan,” Lou said in a calm voice. He nodded at Amy, who lifted her giant remote control and began pressing more buttons.

  On the Tingley 2000, black and white pictures of a small town were fading in and out. Tom’s voiceover was speaking about life in Shuberville before it was destroyed.

  “What are you doing now?” Joseph asked Amy.

  Lou didn’t give Amy a chance to answer. “Do you remember a few years ago when downtown Turquoise had a rat problem?” Lou said. Amy continued pressing buttons on the remote control.

  “Yes,” said Joseph, “I asked Tom about it once, and--”

  “And I told you I knew nothing about it,” said Tom. “That was a lie.”

  “There never was a rat problem,” said Lou, “just a few carefully placed rodents in every downtown office building. Enough to convince the city that Liberty Pest Control needed a permit to dig deep into the sewers and root out the infestation.”

  “I remember when this whole section of downtown was fenced off and covered in tarps,” Jackie said. “That’s when you built this place, isn’t it?”

  “Correct,” said Lou. “And this place is so much more than is apparent to you even now. My friends, you’ve now seen Gretchen’s demons on my video. You may have noticed their similarity to the common fire ant. The space underneath The Global Mug is not only my worldwide headquarters and center of operations. It is also the world’s largest ant trap, and we are the bait.”

  Using her thumbs, Amy pushed two buttons on her remote simultaneously, triggering a response from the television screens lining the walls. All around the room, the glass TV screens rolled down like car windows, exposing deep cubbies behind them. From inside each cubby, a huge, round, steel showerhead emerged.