A Nest of Nightmares

by Lisa Tuttle

  ‘But I’m not a stranger anymore. And she doesn’t want me to leave.’

  Ellen was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘She’s a sick, lonely old woman – she needs someone. But what do you get out of it? Do you think she’s going to leave you her money when she dies?’

  He smiled contemptuously. ‘Your aunt doesn’t have any money. All she has is that wreck of a house – which she plans to leave to you. I give her what she needs, and she gives me what I need – which is something a lot more basic and important than money.’

  Afraid she was blushing, Ellen turned and began striding across the sand, back toward the house. She could feel him keeping pace with her, but she did not acknowledge his presence.

  Until he grabbed her arm – and she let out a gasp that embarrassed her as soon as she heard it. But Peter gave no sign that he had noticed. Having halted her, he directed her attention to something on the ground.

  Feeling foolish but still a little frightened she let him draw her down to a crouching position. A battle had drawn his attention, a fight for survival in a small, sandy arena. A spider, pale as the sand, danced warily on pipe-cleaner legs. Circling it, chitinous body gleaming darkly in the sunlight, was a deadly black dart of a wasp.

  There was something eerily fascinating in the way the tiny antagonists circled each other, feinting, freezing, drawing back, and darting forward. The spider on its delicate legs seemed nervous to Ellen, while the wasp was steady and single-minded. Although she liked neither spiders nor wasps, Ellen hoped that the spider would win.

  Suddenly the wasp shot forward; the spider rolled over, legs clenching and kicking like fingers from a fist, and the two seemed to wrestle for a moment.

  ‘Ah, now she’s got him,’ murmured Ellen’s companion. Ellen saw that his face was intent, and he was absorbed by the deadly battle.

  Glancing down again, she saw that the spider was lying perfectly still, while the wasp circled it warily.

  ‘He killed him,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Not he, she.’ Peter corrected. ‘And the spider isn’t dead. Just paralyzed. The wasp is making sure that her sting has him completely under control before going on. She’ll dig a hole and pull the spider into it, then lay her egg on his body. The spider won’t be able to do a thing but lie in the home of his enemy and wait for the egg to hatch and start eating him.’ He smiled his unpleasant smile.

  Ellen stood up.

  ‘Of course, he can’t feel a thing,’ Peter continued. ‘He’s alive, but only in the most superficial sense. That paralyzing poison the wasp filled him with has effectively deadened him. A more advanced creature might torment himself with fears about the future, the inevitability of his approaching death – but this is just a spider. And what does a spider know?’

  Ellen walked away, saying nothing. She expected him to follow her, but when she looked back she saw that he was still on his hands and knees, watching the wasp at her deadly work.

  Once inside the house, Ellen locked the front door behind her, then went around locking the other doors and checking the windows. Although she knew it was likely that her aunt had given Peter a key to the house, she didn’t want to be surprised by him again. She was locking the side door, close by her aunt’s room, when the feeble voice called, ‘Is that you, dear?’

  ‘It’s me, Aunt May,’ Ellen said, wondering who that ‘dear’ was meant for. Pity warred briefly with disgust, and then she entered the bedroom.

  From the bed, her aunt gave a weak smile. ‘I tire so easily now,’ she said. ‘I think I may just spend the rest of the day in bed. What else is there for me to do, except wait?’

  ‘Aunt May, I could rent a car and take you to a doctor – or maybe we could find a doctor willing to come out here.’

  May turned her grey head back and forth on the pillow. ‘No. No. There’s nothing a doctor can do, no medicine in the world that can help me now.’

  ‘Something to make you feel better . . .’

  ‘My dear, I feel very little. No pain at all. Don’t worry about me. Please.’

  She looked so exhausted, Ellen thought. Almost all used up. And looking down at the small figure surrounded by bedclothes, Ellen felt her eyes fill with tears. Suddenly, she flung herself down beside the bed. ‘Aunt May, I don’t want you to die!’

  ‘Now, now,’ the old woman said softly, making no other movement. ‘Now, don’t you fret. I felt the same way myself, once, but I’ve got over that. I’ve accepted what has happened, and so must you. So must you.’

  ‘No,’ Ellen whispered, her face pressed against the bed. She wanted to hold her aunt, but she didn’t dare – the old woman’s stillness seemed to forbid it. Ellen wished her aunt would put out her hand or turn her face to be kissed: she could not make the first move herself.

  At last Ellen stopped crying and raised her head. She saw that her aunt had closed her eyes and was breathing slowly and peacefully, obviously asleep. Ellen stood up and backed out of the room. She longed for her father, for someone to share this sorrow with her.

  She spent the rest of the day reading and wandering aimlessly through the house, thinking now of Danny and then of her aunt and the unpleasant stranger called Peter, feeling frustrated because she could do nothing. The wind began to blow again, and the old house creaked, setting her nerves on edge. Feeling trapped in the moldering carcass of the house, Ellen walked out onto the front porch. There she leaned against the railing and stared out at the grey and white ocean. Out here she enjoyed the bite of the wind, and the creaking of the balcony above her head did not bother her.

  Idly, her attention turned to the wooden railing beneath her hands, and she picked at a projecting splinter with one of her fingernails. To her surprise, more than just a splinter came away beneath her fingers: some square inches of the badly painted wood fell away, revealing an interior as soft and full of holes as a sponge. The wood seemed to be trembling, and after a moment of blankness, Ellen suddenly realised that the wood was infested with termites. With a small cry of disgust, Ellen backed away, staring at the interior world she had uncovered. Then she went back into the house, locking the door behind her.

  It grew dark, and Ellen began to think longingly of food and companionship. She realised she had heard nothing from her aunt’s room since she had left her sleeping there that morning. After checking the kitchen to see what sort of dinner could be made, Ellen went to wake her aunt.

  The room was dark and much too quiet. An apprehension stopped Ellen in the doorway where, listening, straining her ears for some sound, she suddenly realised the meaning of the silence: May was not breathing.

  Ellen turned on the light and hurried to the bed. ‘Aunt May, Aunt May,’ she said, already hopeless. She grabbed hold of one cool hand, hoping for a pulse, and laid her head against her aunt’s chest, holding her own breath to listen for the heart.

  There was nothing. May was dead. Ellen drew back, crouching on her knees beside the bed, her aunt’s hand still held within her own. She stared at the empty face – the eyes were closed, but the mouth hung slightly open – and felt the sorrow building slowly inside her.

  At first she took it for a drop of blood. Dark and shining, it appeared on May’s lower lip and slipped slowly out of the corner of her mouth. Ellen stared, stupefied, as the droplet detached itself from May’s lip and moved, without leaving a trace behind, down her chin.

  Then Ellen saw what it was.

  It was a small, shiny black bug, no larger than the nail on her little finger. And, as Ellen watched, a second tiny insect crawled slowly out onto the shelf of May’s dead lip.

  Ellen scrambled away from the bed, backward, on her hands and knees. Her skin was crawling, her stomach churning, and there seemed to be a horrible smell in her nostrils. Somehow, she managed to get to her feet and out of the room without either vomiting or fainting.

  In the hallway she leaned against the wall and
tried to gather her thoughts.

  May was dead.

  Into her mind came the vision of a stream of black insects bubbling out of the dead woman’s mouth.

  Ellen moaned and clamped her teeth together, and tried to think of something else. It hadn’t happened. She wouldn’t think about it.

  But May was dead, and that had to be dealt with. Ellen’s eyes filled with tears – then, suddenly impatient, she blinked them away. No time for that. Tears wouldn’t do any good. She had to think. Should she call a funeral home? No, a doctor first, surely, even if she was truly past saving. A doctor would tell her what had to be done, who had to be notified.

  She went into the kitchen and turned on the light, noticing as she did so how the darkness outside seemed to drop like a curtain against the window. In the cabinet near the phone she found the thin local phone book and looked up the listing for physicians. There were only a few of them. Ellen chose the first number and – hoping that a town this size had an answering service for its doctors – lifted the receiver.

  There was no dialling tone. Puzzled, she pressed the button and released it. Still nothing. Yet she didn’t think the line was dead, because it wasn’t completely silent. She could hear what might have been a gentle breathing on the other end of the line, as if someone somewhere else in the house had picked up the phone and was listening to her.

  Jarred by the thought, Ellen slammed the receiver back into the cradle. There could be no one else in the house. But one of the other phones might be off the hook. She tried to remember if there was another phone upstairs, because she shrank at the thought of returning to her aunt’s room without a doctor, someone in authority, to go with her.

  But even if there were another phone upstairs, Ellen realised, she had not seen it or used it, and it was not likely to be causing the trouble. But the phone in her aunt’s room could have been left off the hook by either her aunt or herself. She would have to go and check.

  He was waiting for her in the hall.

  The breath backed up in her throat to choke her, and she couldn’t make a sound. She stepped back.

  He stepped forward, closing the space between them.

  Ellen managed to find her voice and, conquering for the moment her nearly instinctive fear of this man, said, ‘Peter, you must go get a doctor for my aunt.’

  ‘Your aunt has said she doesn’t want a doctor,’ he said. His voice came almost as a relief after the ominous silence.

  ‘It’s not a matter of what my aunt wants anymore,’ Ellen said. ‘She’s dead.’

  The silence buzzed around them. In the darkness of the hall Ellen could not be sure, but she thought that he smiled.

  ‘Will you go and get a doctor?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Ellen backed away, and again he followed her.

  ‘Go and see her for yourself,’ Ellen said.

  ‘If she’s dead,’ he said, ‘she doesn’t need a doctor. And the morning will be soon enough to have her body disposed of.’

  Ellen kept backing away, afraid to turn her back on him. Once in the kitchen, she could try the phone again.

  But he didn’t let her. Before she could reach for the receiver, his hand shot out, and he wrenched the cord out of the wall. He had a peculiar smile on his face. Then he lifted the telephone, long cord dangling, into the air above his head, and as Ellen pulled nervously away, he threw the whole thing, with great force, at the floor. It crashed jarringly against the linoleum, inches from Ellen’s feet.

  Ellen stared at him in horror, unable to move or speak, trying frantically to think how to escape him. She thought of the darkness outside, and of the long, unpaved road with no one near, and the deserted beach. Then she thought of her aunt’s room, which had a heavy wooden door and a telephone which might still work.

  He watched her all this time, making no move. Ellen had the odd idea that he was trying to hypnotize her, to keep her from running, or perhaps he was simply waiting for her to make the first move, watching for the tell-tale tension in her muscles that would signal her intentions.

  Finally, Ellen knew she had to do something – she could not keep waiting for him to act forever. Because he was so close to her, she didn’t dare to try to run past him. Instead, she feinted to the left, as if she would run around him and toward the front door, but instead she ran to the right.

  He caught her in his powerful arms before she had taken three steps. She screamed, and his mouth came down on hers, swallowing the scream.

  The feel of his mouth on hers terrified her more than anything else. Somehow, she had not thought of that – for all her fear of him, it had not occurred to her until now that he meant to rape her.

  She struggled frantically, feeling his arms crush her more tightly, pinning her arms to her sides and pressing the breath out of her. She tried to kick him or to bring a knee up into his crotch, but she could not raise her leg far enough, and her kicks were feeble little blows against his legs.

  He pulled his mouth away from hers and dragged her back into the darkness of the hall and pressed her to the floor, immobilizing her with the weight of his body. Ellen was grateful for her jeans, which were tight fitting. To get them off – but she wouldn’t let him take them off. As soon as he released her, even for a moment, she would go for his eyes, she decided.

  This thought was firmly in her mind as he rose off her, but he held her wrists in a crushing grip. She began to kick as soon as her legs were free of his weight, but her legs thrashed about his legs, her kicks doing no harm.

  Abruptly, he dropped her hands. She had scarcely become aware of it and hadn’t had time to do more than think of going for his eyes, when he, in one smooth, deceptively casual motion, punched her hard in the stomach.

  She couldn’t breathe. Quite involuntarily, she half doubled over, knowing nothing but the agonizing pain. He, meanwhile, skinned her jeans and underpants down to her knees, flipped her unresisting body over as if it were some piece of furniture, and set her down on her knees.

  While she trembled, dry-retched, and tried to draw a full breath of air, she was aware of his fumbling at her genitals as scarcely more than a minor distraction. Shortly thereafter she felt a new pain, dry and tearing, as he penetrated her.

  It was the last thing she felt. One moment of pain and helplessness, and then the numbness began. She felt – or rather, she ceased to feel – a numbing tide, like intense cold, flowing from her groin into her stomach and hips and down into her legs. Her ribs were numbed, and the blow he had given her no longer pained her. There was nothing – no pain, no messages of any kind from her abused body. She could still feel her lips, and she could open and close her eyes, but from below the chin she might as well have been dead.

  And besides the loss of feeling, there was loss of control. All at once she fell like a rag doll to the floor, cracking her chin painfully.

  She suspected she was still being raped, but she could not even raise her head and turn to see.

  Above her own laboured breathing, Ellen became aware of another sound, a low, buzzing hum. From time to time her body rocked and flopped gently, presumably in response to whatever he was still doing to it.

  Ellen closed her eyes and prayed to wake. Behind her shut lids, vivid images appeared. Again she saw the insect on her aunt’s dead lip, a bug as black, hard, and shiny as Peter’s eyes. The wasp in the sand dune, circling the paralyzed spider. Aunt May’s corpse covered with a glistening tide of insects, crawling over her, feasting on her.

  And when they had finished with her aunt, would they come and find her here on the floor, paralyzed and ready for them?

  She cried out at the thought and her eyes flew open. She saw Peter’s feet in front of her. So he had finished. She began to cry.

  ‘Don’t leave me like this,’ she mumbled, her mind still swarming with fears.

  She heard his dry chuckle. ‘Leave?
But this is my home.’

  And then she understood. Of course he would not leave. He would stay here with her as he had stayed with her aunt, looking after her as she grew weaker, until finally she died and spilled out the living cargo he had planted in her.

  ‘You won’t feel a thing,’ he said.

  DOLLBURGER

  When she listened hard, Karen thought she could hear the men downstairs searching for dolls. Although she didn’t know what they looked like, she thought of them as hairy troll-like men with the large square teeth of horses. She glanced at the attic door. All her dolls were safe in there. Surely the men would never come upstairs into her room?

  The thought made her clutch the blankets to her chin, her body rigid with the effort of not breathing. The bed was safe, it had always been a sanctuary, but she didn’t know the powers or limits of these doll thieves and could only guess at protection. She’d learned about them just that morning, from her father.

  ‘Daddy, have you seen Kristina?’

  ‘Let daddy read his paper, sweetie – he doesn’t know which doll Kristina is,’ her mother said, flipping pancakes.

  Daddy dipped a piece of toast in his coffee and looked at it thoughtfully before biting. He replied with his mouth full.

  ‘Did you leave her downstairs?’

  ‘Yeah – I think.’

  Daddy shook his head. ‘Shouldn’t have done that. Dangerous. Don’t you know what happens to dolls that get left downstairs all night?’

  Karen glanced quickly at her mother. Catching the half smile on her mother’s face, Karen raised her eyebrows sceptically.

  ‘No,’ she said, in a tone that dared him.

  Daddy shook his head again and consumed the last of the piece of toast.

  ‘Well, if you leave your doll downstairs, you can just expect that when those men come looking – ’

  ‘What men?’

  He looked surprised that she should need to ask. ‘Why the men who eat dollburgers, of course!’