by Brian Hodge
There was a grumbling sound from the dark—and what felt like a tangle of threads landed on her right hand, encircling it.
She leaped back, yanking her arm away. Had she gotten in a spider web?
It was then that she noticed the lightning bugs. They appeared suddenly, because otherwise she would have seen them before. As far as she was concerned, fireflies were one of the pleasures of country life.
But she wasn’t interested in enjoying them now, even though they were drifting up from a hole behind the judge’s pear trees in a graceful wave. They were coming in a tight group, gliding across the lawn.
If she didn’t change course, they were going to collide with her.
The sky erupted with a lacework of lightning. It was rendered fuzzy by low, nasty clouds, but it was nevertheless an astonishing display, accompanied by guttering, persistent thunder.
In the silence that followed a breeze came up, at first welcome in the wet, sucking heat. But the breeze got harder, fast. Soon it was wind, cutting and mean. Huge drops of rain began to strike her.
Even though she was out of the pear orchard, the lightning bugs were still behind her. She wasn’t being chased, of course, but it sure felt like it.
When a firefly landed on the back of her hand, she shook it off. Then she noticed one was in her hair. She reached up, brushed it away. Another came so close to her face that she could feel the breeze of its wings.
And she could smell it, a cutting mix of acid and dirty skin.
She ran like a madwoman.
3
The weeds cut into her shins. On the uneven ground she stumbled, flailed, twisted.
But the moment she slowed down a firefly landed on her face near her left eye. Before she could brush it off another joined it. Simultaneously a third started scrabbling in her ear. She thrashed, and her right hand came away dripping crumbs of pink-purple phosphorescence.
Her flight became headlong, hell-bent, desperate. She had not felt like this since she was ten and running down the middle of Garr Street in Montnoy, New Jersey, running through the dark from Steffi’s house to her own.
By the time she reached the meadow her breath was coming in ragged gasps. She was no jogger, and her run dropped to a lope. Immediately a firefly came tickling into the hair along the back of her neck. She yanked it out, threw the body away. What on earth was the matter with them?
Others appeared, cruising around her, their little lights blurred by rain. Up close she noticed legs lit by the glow of fat, segmented bellies, and between each segment was a more deeply colored glow, purple and angry, suggesting intense heat. But fireflies aren’t hot.
More appeared and yet more, and she began to hear a deeper note in their buzzing. She also became aware that a long shadow strode before her.
A moment later she tripped and fell across a stump that had looked in the light like a clump of weeds. She landed hard, rolling to break her fall—and then she saw what was behind her.
They flowed and undulated along the ground like a single creature, a burning snake five hundred feet long. This living band twisted and turned through the meadow, glittered in among the trees of the ruined orchard, glowed across the judge’s lawn. It was emerging from that hole back in there, which glowed with purple haze.
They were literally pouring out, swarming fifty feet into the air in a burning geyser.
She stared, for the moment too amazed to feel her fear. This is the state of frozen terror the snake seeks to induce.
The great mass darted at her with the speed of lightning. She felt a hot finger between her legs. Her belly shuddered with pleasure so deep and intense that it almost incapacitated her. A terrible sense of menace came with it, though, and she knew she had to run, must run, must get away.
They wanted to get her back, to take her down into their hole.
Then the Queen Anne’s lace that choked the meadow was whipping her thighs, and she was racing with the wind in her ears and the rain jetting against her face, racing for the woods, and she felt—knew—that the race was against death. Her own shadow danced before her, darting and long and getting darker as the thing behind her grew, its light increasing. It became as bright as moonlight, then sickly day.
When she reached the woods she was once again enveloped in darkness, which caused her to founder helplessly until she turned on her penlight. Recovering herself, she dashed in among the tall pines. She couldn’t find the path, not even the stream, so she just kept blundering ahead. She’d left lights on, and her hope was to see a glimmer among the tree trunks.
They came in buzzing and whining, their abdomens so bright she could observe each fiery segment. In an instant she was surrounded by thousands and thousands of them, all scrabbling at her, getting in her hair, her ears, under her clothes. Where they remained on her skin there came a sharp sort of tickly pain—almost a pleasure.
It was loathsome.
They scrabbled up her legs, tickling and pushing until they were deep between her thighs. When they got in her they felt like a single thing, a thrusting, eager finger. It was a carefully intimate presence, probing, stroking, going in, up in, deep.
When she gasped ten or fifteen of them rushed into her mouth, and she found herself crunching into their bodies with her teeth. When she tried to spit them out more came in, plunging down her throat.
She fell back, too overcome by the thick masses of them that were filling her mouth and nose to utter the scream of abandoned pleasure that was making her heart leap up even as she choked.
There were so many she couldn’t close her mouth, couldn’t spit, couldn’t swallow. She stuck her fingers into the writhing mass, into the crunching salty-sharp taste of them, and dug them out. They resisted, swarming down her throat, tickling horribly as they scrabbled along her esophagus. Then she lost complete control of herself, heaving great, rattling coughs, unable to breathe. Their sheer numbers stuffed her throat shut. She grew frantic for air. Even as waves of shimmering genital pleasure made her back arch, she began to suffocate.
She toppled over. A needle of fire cut into her face. For a moment she thought that they were setting her aflame, then she realized that it was water. Somewhere in the back of her mind a voice said, Coxon Kill, water, water will save you. She dragged herself forward, wriggling down into the stream like a grateful otter, sucking it in and spitting out jiggling masses of glowing material.
But the pleasure grabbed her and drew her back, made her ache for more. She struggled against the urge to throw herself onto the bank, to lie down and spread her legs to the undulating, buzzing creatures. The buzzing rose higher and the tickling came around her whole middle, began to infest her again, to break her with rapture. Again and again and again she came to climax, and each time the freezing water shocked her out of it. The fight continued between Ellen’s will to live and the gruesome lure of death by pleasure.
As she struggled and writhed, she came closer and closer to the long, deep pool where in happier hours she had swum above the shadows of the trout.
She sank to the bottom of the pool. In an instant all the pleasure was gone and she was screaming, inhaling water and spitting out masses of bubbles thick with bug legs and broken cellophane wings.
By crawling along the bottom of the pool, coming up for gulps of air, she could more or less avoid the creatures. They impotently pummeled her back with their bodies. In this pure water she had no trouble seeing. The insects in their millions lit everything brighter than day.
Then it was dark.
Coughing, she sat up. Her mouth was still full of the jelly-like phosphorescence, and crisp bits that crunched when she worked her jaws.
Then she realized what they tasted like.
A wave of nausea hit her. She vomited a burning white stream of matter into the night. It arced over and fell with a hiss to the surface of the stream. She watched it float away on the quick current, its glow soon lost around a bend. Seeing the goop produced another attack of nausea, then another. She almost vomi
ted her gullet inside out.
Slowly, the agony subsided. Grinding muscles went slack, helpless choking was replaced by long heaves of sweet air.
At last she stood and waded out of the pool.
It was then that she saw the tip of the swarm of insects. It was a glimmering strand in the reeds halfway down the length of the pool.
As she watched, it grew thinner and came closer, closer—then seemed to snap back against itself, exactly as if the millions of separate bodies were linked by unseen tendons.
Again it stretched toward her, the tip of it glowing fiercely as if with enormous effort. It was connected to itself, not a swarm but a single thing, and it had reached the limit of its range. It must be anchored down in that hole.
She fought to control the motion of her stomach but she couldn’t do it, not with the taste, the memory of those awful things in her, the feeling that they were still crawling along her gullet. Then she realized what they tasted like—blood and filthy, sweaty skin. If she’d licked somebody’s naked feet, she’d have tasted the same complex mix of salt and dirt and stink.
Another spasm brought up more glowing debris. She went staggering off into the woods, thinking only of finding her cabin and getting this filthy, vile taste out of her mouth.
She left the thing behind her, questing and stretching against its limits. It had wanted to get her back. It had not wanted her to leave the judge’s place.
Dear God in heaven, what was going on here?
After long minutes of blundering, she located the sparks of light that marked her cabin. The night deceived her, and what should have been a few moments’ walk became a crashing battle with unseen ditches, rough tree trunks and deceptive paths.
At last she struggled onto her porch, weeping and crying out, and went into the house. Immediately she slammed the door, locked it. For a short time she leaned against it, crying like a baby. She shook her head, no, no, no, trying to eradicate the whole experience from memory, to somehow explain what had happened, to escape from this awful feeling of defilement, of having been literally packed with filth.
She crossed the living room, dropping clothes as she went. The taste in her mouth was sharp and strong, and she had an image of herself licking open sores.
In the bathroom she gargled with Listerine, pouring it down her throat, then spitting it into the toilet. Again and again she did this, until the bottle was empty. She smashed toothpaste into her hands and jammed them in her mouth, working the paste down around her gums, in between her teeth, beneath her tongue. She brushed until her mouth was filled with foam, then washed it out.
Still the taste lingered, so she got some Palmolive dishwashing detergent from the kitchen and washed her mouth out with that, gagging from the bitterness of it, and she saw when she spit that there was a whole bug left. It was badly damaged, moving slightly. It looked like skin, like skin. Horrified, she managed to hold it just long enough to put it in a jelly jar, closing the metal top firmly and carefully.
Then she made a saltwater gargle, again she brushed, and finally felt a little cleaner. She took a long, hot shower. As she washed in billows of steam she heard thunder outside and moaned when the lights flickered. But she couldn’t stop washing. She used Jergens soap and Ivory soap and Lava soap and would have used lye soap if she’d had any.
At last, lying on the floor of the shower, her skin aglow from the soap and the hot water, she began to feel a little better.
There was a terrific crack of thunder and the lights went out. A moment later the shower stopped. Of course—her well had an electric pump.
In the silence, she listened to the quick gurgle of water going down the drain. This was replaced by another sound—a peculiar sizzling like bacon frying. She got up, listening, struggling to find something to grasp—a corner of the shower, the wall. She was so scared and exhausted that it was almost impossible to control her movements.
That sound—she’d heard it before, coming from inside the judge’s house. She found her way to the bathroom window, raised the edge of the blind.
Off in the woods she saw light—more than one light, as a matter of fact. But it wasn’t fireflies, it was a group of bright winks of light like purple jewels. They were advancing slowly toward the house, and the sizzling noise was coming from them.
It was the most menacing thing she’d ever seen. Had she locked every door, every window? What about the crawl space, were the vents closed or open? And the flue—had she closed the flue in May after she’d made her last fire?
She began to cry, her throat tight with the frustration and the fear. This was worse than the worst nightmare, and it just would not stop.
Then the shower came to life with a roar. Startled, she uttered a scream. But the lights also came back on and that calmed her down a little. At least she could do something more than cower.
Her nakedness was making her feel horribly vulnerable. She grabbed a towel and dried herself, then rushed through the house checking window locks and closing curtains.
She could no longer tell if she was awake or asleep, in nightmare or reality. Naked, cold, damp, shaking and still deeply nauseated, she prowled her three small rooms, her eyes flitting from door to window, her mind alive to every creak and sigh.
A gust of wind made her run to the kitchen, grab her two biggest knives. She advanced through the house, her teeth bared, growling softly. At some point she’d put on her white terry-cloth robe, and it hung loose about her as she patrolled.
Finally she sat on a rigid dining chair, putting her knives on the table before her. There was an occasional dribble of rain, but no more lightning, no thunder. Then she realized that she could see the dim trunk of a tree beyond the picture window.
The night was over, the nightmare past. She thought she’d like some coffee.
She was putting the coffee in the percolator when the true impact of what had happened slammed her as hard as a physical blow. She leaned far down over the kitchen counter, her eyes shut tight.
It had all been impossible.
Groaning, she held her belly as if her guts were spilling out.
A crackle from the woods made her snap to attention. Instantly, the knives were in her hands. She rushed to the window. All was still. But she knew the sound of a footfall in the pine needles that covered the forest floor.
She stepped away from the window, and then—following another thought—rushed through the house dousing lights. For a long time, she simply watched. Slowly, dawn began to define first the outline of the window, then the trunks of trees outside. Finally the first birds began their tentative peeping.
Full daylight came then, shimmering with dew. Today was Sunday. She had been planning to drive down to Ludlum, get an Albany Times-Union, and sit on the terrace of the Waywonda Inn and eat croissants and drink coffee.
But she would never reach the Waywonda Inn, would never read today’s paper. Dawn or no dawn, Ellen Maas stood at the edge of a great darkness.
Chapter 4
1
Night was the worst time for Brian. He’d wake up smelling smoke, hearing Caitlin’s first, sharp shriek, hearing Mary’s surprised shout turn to an inarticulate bellow of agony.
He sweated out the nights.
Before the fire his habit when under pressure was to retreat into the intricacies of mathematics. He would play with equations, carrying them to their angelic and logical ends.
No more.
When he’d first been released from the hospital, he had gone to the Ludlum campus, expecting to begin the return to his old life. But he’d seen Mary everywhere, heard her singing across the reaches of memory.
Memory frightened him, because his equations told him that every moment was happening forever.
They told him that Mary and Kate were dying forever.
He hadn’t even entered the physics building.
After that experience, he’d begun to spend more and more time on his land. He’d fallen in love, a little, with the farm.
&nb
sp; But he could not bring himself to repair the house, not even when he’d brought Loi home as his wife. To provide her shelter, he’d bought a bigger trailer. It was dinky, in his opinion, but she’d been awed by it. She’d managed to decorate it pretty nicely, if you liked the pictures in Trailer Home Designs.
“Loi,” he said to the empty, dark room. A glance at his watch told him that it was past two.
He looked around at her things, her furniture, her pictures, her beloved Laughing Buddha. It was plastic, it was chipped and scratched, but she loved it. He picked it up, wished on it that she would be well. Too bad it hadn’t helped her today.
He sighed, wondering if he would ever get to sleep.
What in God’s name had happened to her? No wonder Doc Gidumal was suspicious, he had every reason to be.
Apple Sally—she’d been attacking something. What? Could there have been one of those little black bears down in there? Sal hated bears.
There was her dish, still half full of Kal-Kan. She’d been a good friend, that busted-up old hound. He took a long breath, then tossed the dish in the trash.
No bear had made the noise that hurt Loi.
What would be the properties of a sound that could cause such an injury? Great intensity, enough oscillation to actually set cells in motion, enough power to burst them. It’d take an awful lot of energy to produce such a sound.
First somebody is screaming like a banshee, then you get something like that.
He went to the refrigerator, got a bottle of Bud and returned to the living room. He sat in his easy chair, balancing the beer on its wide arm.
The nature of the sound continued to bother him. It had been a sort of undulant hum, a warbling acoustic discharge. The oscillation would have been what caused the damage; it would have set up the kind of motion that could burst cell walls.
Afterward, he’d had muscle aches and a fairly severe headache—far less damage than Loi, but he was a lot less fragile than a woman at the end of her third trimester.