The Best of Horror Library: Volumes 1-5

by Bentley Little

  APOCRYPHON III—RESEARCH

  She graduated from high school at sixteen and gained her doctorate in entomology by twenty-two. She became a forensic expert in decomposition and the insects that populated the fleshy worlds of the dead. The microscopic realm of insect biology was as interesting as discovering that first maggot-ridden body.

  Libby laid her groundwork well, knowing cell structures, the chemical interactions that drove ants, dragonflies, leafhoppers, moths, and the basis of different groups of social insects. Colonies and hives were fascinating in the caste structure of workers and drones. Not all ant colonies had only one queen and most workers were females, sometimes able to breed when necessary. Often drones lived only long enough to fertilize the queen before dying. In some species of wasps and bees the queens mated with multiple drones and stored the sperm, releasing it over time to fertilize the continuous cycle of egg laying at their discretion.

  Libby stored the information, then began to study communication of hymenoptera; the bees, wasps, ants and their hives, colonies and social structure. She ordered yellow crazy ants from the Christmas Islands, Western honey bees and Buff-Tailed bumble bees, Asian giant hornets and German wasps. Besides hymenoptera, she brought in Kirby’s Dropwing dragonflies from Namibia, Meadow Argus butterflies from Australia, ladybugs from Canada and a host of other species. She concentrated on the pheromone trails of ants and tried to see if she could colonize species that were not hymenoptera. She tried to form messages from light, from chemicals, from Braille-like forms. Diligently, for five years Libby tested many types of command or communication and searched for any effect on hive activity, caste structures or mating.

  Her tests did not lead to any discernible change. Her research could have gone on forever. There were always many new paths to take in studying class Insecta. An estimated thirty million species were still unclassified, but Libby grew unsatisfied, feeling that she was not attaining her goal fast enough.

  It dawned on her that though she had concentrated on hymenoptera for their social behavior that she herself was not social. How could she possibly understand such behavior unless she undertook the final phase?

  First tidying her lab, Libby took two weeks off, leaving as many insects with the department as she took. After all, she worked alone and was known to keep to herself.

  She went downtown and entered a department store. For the first time ever, Libby felt a bit displaced, as if she were an ant that had lost all pheromone signals to the colony. Bewildered, she stared at the array of cosmetics, jars and pomades, lotions, scents, eye and lip colors that surrounded her. Turning a slow circle, she could not pinpoint a place to begin until a clerk approached her.

  “I want…” She made a motion around her face, struggling for what to say.

  The clerk smiled and beckoned her to follow. “I know. You’ve not worn makeup before. Don’t worry, I’ll show you what you need. With your features, you don’t need much but we can enhance and highlight what you have.”

  Libby sat through the experience, finding it alien, then proceeded to buy clothes that were more than utilitarian.

  Always a good study, she had no problem in applying the makeup. She slipped on a slinky, red spaghetti strap dress that showed her long legs. Red stilettos added to her color and then she made her way to where males swarmed. The lights and music throbbed around her, pulsating off her skin. She danced awkwardly but it seemed to matter little to the men that grabbed her about the waist and pulled her close.

  The first man offered to take her somewhere else. Libby freely gave up her virginity in a car. But she did not stay, exiting for the next nightclub. The second man took her in the restroom, and a third in the back alley where they went to “share a joint.” At the end of the night, Libby went with five men, finally finding herself in a threadbare hotel room with a naked flickering bulb. She pulled the closest one to her and kissed him, undoing his pants. When he tried to push her head down, she pulled back and sat on the table, pulling up her dress to take him in. It wasn’t long before the others followed.

  Libby repeated the swarming for a week, collecting as many men’s semen as she could. When she felt she had accomplished that task, now holding enough sperm to release thousands of eggs, she shucked off the mating colors and set to work in her home, which bordered a large, state protected park.

  She brought out the terrariums with the various insects and arrayed them about her. From bees, flies, dragonflies, beetles, grasshoppers, moths, weevils, wasps and ants, Libby extracted eggs. She required special tools, often a microscope and careful incubation so that the eggs would not wither. Some she took from the hives about her place and others from the insects directly. When she had a good yield, Libby stripped off her clothing. Under a bright light, she made small incisions on her thighs, arms and abdomen, and inserted a different species’ eggs into each opening. Although she felt the pain, it was an abstraction from the task at hand and it only aided her concentration. Overshadowing the pain was a flush of excitement, warmth that spread through her in ways sex hadn’t.

  As she laid each egg beneath her epidermis, she took out a glass case crawling with army ants. Pressing each bleeding wound shut, she applied the ants along the fleshy rim. The ants in turn seized the edges of the cut in their lightning fast jaws and locked on. Libby felt sharp pricks and then cut off the glossy black bodies, leaving the head and mandibles as sutures. She stood with her stitching of ant heads, and opened all containers holding insects.

  A few variants of Apocryphon III indicate that Libby prayed or cried at this point. These have largely been dismissed as additions by unknown sources that wished to humanize her actions. There is no indication in any Apocrypha that she ever showed intense emotion.

  It is argued that Libby was trying to become an insect and found the only way to communicate was to pass on her knowledge through her cells. Still others believe that she had in fact been imbued with the essence of Insecta from birth. 6

  APROCRYPHON IV-A—METAMORPHOSIS

  Naked, Libby walked out her door and into the park. In the white heat of the day she stood beneath the trees, her bare feet burrowing into leaf mold. Feeling the slight ripples in the air about her, she spread her arms. It may be that she knew the secret language of insects and called her disciples unto her with the release of a pheromone borne on her words. In a high voice, she trilled.

  They came, great black clouds of pixilating Insecta. The air rippled and thrummed with movement. The green bottle flies with their metallic sheen, the beetles with their chitinous clatter, the buzzing drone of bees, wasps and hornets, the flutter of moths and butterflies, the gnats, mosquitoes, the walking sticks and praying mantises. They came from miles around. Still they were only representatives of the greater horde, but one came of every type, thirty million strong.

  Onto each pore and hair the smallest insects landed, followed by others, coating her arms, her legs, her naked torso, her face and eyes and ears. When nothing could be seen but the pulsating cluster, it rose into the air, higher and higher, like an enormous runaway swarm. Lifting to the heavens like a gyrating, buzzing black host, it grew smaller and then…dispersed, scattering insects like seed pods.

  APOCRYPHON IV-B—METAMORPHOSIS

  Libby walked naked amongst the trees under the moon’s silvering light. Like Lilith in the Garden of Eden, she moved with confidence. The air seemed to blanket her as she raised her slim, bare arms to the heavens and she cried out in a voice like the chirrup of locusts. Into the skies, boiling from the ground, the myriad host arrived on the pheromone trail, the Insecta in their glory of gold and red, gunmetal black and blue, jarring green and earthy brown, a scintillating mass of color, of forms soft and furred, hard and chitinous. Sound rose like a roar, a thunder, an unearthly humming.

  Those who heard the cacophony of wings and legs, and clatter of millions of mandibles thought the end was near. The insects came from all around, swarming up her legs, onto her head. Then they burrowed, chewed and crawled
within her. Some crept in her nostrils, others into her eyes, while flies and gnats filled her ears. Other vermin and plump larvae wriggled up her legs. All made their own way and she said, “I am of the hive. Eat of me and understand.”

  She did not scream nor run, but stood, her form limned in an odd moving pointillism. When an hour had come and gone the insects pulled back as if one and departed. Where they had been, nothing remained; not bone, nor hair, nor flesh, nor sinew. It was as if she had never been.

  * * *

  Her name could have easily been Deborah or Melissa or Mariposa, as would befit a benefactor of insects. Swarmings happen from time to time near urban centers yet no specific incident can be pinpointed in North America where a woman was consumed by insects. There is no extant evidence that she existed under any of these names; that she wasn’t a myth generated for a troubled world of the new millennium.

  Is this a metaphor in which Libby imparts her knowledge to the insect race, raising them up to the next level of evolution? Indeed, praying mantises have been known to lose wings and then regain them in a single generation—a startling discovery even before the Apocrypha were created.

  More disturbing is a concept in which few scientists give credence (indeed, they refuse to even look at it), that Libby did indeed pass the mantle of a superior thinking race onto insects, and that homo sapiens’ days are numbered. The aforementioned child with compound eyes supports this belief. She not only exhibits the ocular anatomy of Insecta, but displays disturbing digestive traits as well as the ability to communicate and direct insects in hive activities. However, this mutation also supports the argument that due to climatic and environmental changes the human race is evolving into something…else.

  There are only four Apocrypha (Discovery, Experimentation, Research, and Metamorphosis), which coincidentally compare to the four stages of insect growth: egg, larva, pupa and imago. Since the appearance of the first Apocrypha, global warming and pollution have seen the extinction of many amphibious species that kept insect populations in check. As well, entomologists have recorded a change in hymenoptera hive and colony organizations and structure, as well as the evolution of some other orders into new, highly organized social structures.

  The question most debated about the Insecta Apocrypha is who wrote them? If Libby did exist and if she did not write them, then the only living beings that saw her deeds were the insects. 7

  Notes

  1 Alice Rothwell, ed. Sacred Writings of the Modern Cult Movements in North America (New York: Random, 2014) All subsequent Apocrypha quotes are from the same publication.

  2 Rachel Urghart and Roy Hammerschmidt, eds. Exegesis of the Insecta Apocrypha, Rabbi Joel Shapiro, Chapt. 1 “Interpretations of the Soul” (Numinous Press, Toronto, 2032) 14

  3 Exegesis Shandra Radakrishnan, Chapter 3 “Psychoanalysis of the Messiah and Anti-Messiah in Relation to Major Religions” 39-46

  4 Exegesis Radakrishnan, 53-56

  5 Exegesis Carl Purdy, Chapter 5 “Interpretations of Voice” 76-78

  6 Exegesis Purdy, 112-115

  7 Exegesis Shapiro, “Conclusion” 198-220

  Jerrod Steihl Goes Home

  by Ian Withrow

  Traffic on the corner of Brisbane and Montgomery is light this morning, more so than it has been in a long time, and Jerrod Steihl feels peace in the relative quiet. The air is chilly; it tastes like smoky fireplaces, or snow that has not yet fallen, and the sky is as white as empty paper. Jerrod slips his hands into his sleeves and waits for his school bus to arrive.

  “Might snow a shake,” he says to the vacant street corner and smiles, because the words aren’t his. They feel funny coming out of his mouth.

  He walks in a small circle, careful not to lose his footing on the frost-covered sidewalk. From somewhere close by, a few blocks maybe, there is the squealing of brakes followed by the roar of a diesel engine. The recognizable yellow of the school bus rounds onto Montgomery and accelerates toward Jerrod’s street corner.

  Jerrod hops a few times. Pulls at the shoulder straps of his camouflage backpack, adjusting the weight. He likes his backpack. It makes him feel cool, tough, and when the others see the swirling turns of black and army green they know that Jerrod is someone not to be messed with. Or at least they will after today.

  Mr. Williams pulls the bus up to Jerrod’s corner and the screeching of the breaks is much louder, almost deafening. Now the air only tastes like exhaust. Jerrod frowns, glances at the mountains on the far side of the valley. The exhaust reminds him of gas stations and lawn mowers and summer days on Aunt Jennie’s speedboat. It doesn’t remind him of home. The glass and metal door yawns open and Jerrod sees Mr. Williams. He’s wearing his Seattle Seahawks coat, the blue one with the puffy sleeves and the ripped collar. Mr. Williams must be a pretty big Seahawks fan. He wears the coat every day.

  “Good morning, Jerrod,” Mr. Williams says and waves a gloved hand. He’s smiling. Jerrod can see three black teeth and the large gap where four others had once been. Brenden Marshall says that Mr. Williams chews beer cans for dinner and that’s why his mouth looks this way. Jerrod’s mom used to say it was tobacco. Jerrod isn’t sure what to believe, but he thinks his mom was probably wrong. Jerrod has chewed gum before. His mouth doesn’t look like that.

  “Good morning,” Jerrod says back. He climbs the three massive steps. Mr. Williams closes the door behind him.

  “Should have a hat on, it’s too cold for naked skulls this morning,” Mr. Williams says.

  “I forgot,” Jerrod says and starts down the aisle. He doesn’t mind talking with Mr. Williams, but doesn’t like it either. Mr. Williams smells bad, like old milk.

  “Well,” he calls after him. “Better find something. Hurry up and grab a chair. Running a little late today.”

  Jerrod ambles through and, holding his backpack on his lap, slides into an empty seat. The artificial leather is cold; it seeps through his jeans and numbs the backs of his thighs. Someone behind him says something and Jerrod hears his name. A few of the kids begin to snicker. Mitch Schroeder is sitting across the aisle. He offers Jerrod a slight smile and waves. Jerrod hugs his backpack against his chest and looks out the window. He doesn’t mind Mitch as much as the rest. But Mitch is still a kid, and as Jerrod knows, all kids can be dangerous if pushed in the right way. The diesel engine rumbles and roars as Mr. Williams guides the yellow monster down Montgomery.

  The view from Jerrod’s window is a familiar slideshow of single-family homes and two-car driveways. Some of the houses are still decorated with plastic ghosts and rotting pumpkins, some have changed over to turkeys and pilgrims, and one or two have skipped all the way to reindeer and assorted lights. All are covered in the thick and unwelcoming frost that comes every year before the first flurry of snow.

  The bus pulls next to another street corner and two more children, Bennie Holliday and Karli Millstein, climb aboard. There is plenty of room beside Jerrod but the two pass by, offering only cautious glances. Jerrod leans his head against the icy glass of the window and sighs. The bus roars on.

  Soon, the neighborhoods give way to vacant fields that are overgrown with yellow, reedy grass and littered with fast food wrappers and empty beer cans. Behind the fields, mountains stand tall and stoic, like guardians of some ancient place. A column of smoke rises up from the tallest mountain as if a great fire is burning there. Rolling and melting into the paper-white sky in a season too late for forest fires. Jerrod stares at the mountains. He wonders if anyone else can see the smoke, if anyone else can hear the Voices. That single word repeating again and again:

  Home.

  Wadded notebook paper flies into Jerrod’s seat from somewhere behind him, dividing his attention and bringing him back into the bus. Someone bursts out laughing. It’s a girl’s laugh. Nicki Waters. She’s always been one of the meanest.

  “Saw that,” Mr. Williams says. “I see it again, you’ll walk the rest of the way to school.” The laughing stops, but the snickering is still t
here. The snickering is always there.

  Jerrod cautiously turns his head and looks at the paper that has come to rest beside him in the crevice of the seat. He uncurls the wadded paper. At first he thinks it may be blank, that it might be one of those “infinity snowballs” the kids sometimes throw at him. Then he turns it over and sees the message:

  “Dear Jerrod,” it reads in bubbly, circle-dotted writing. “We don’t like you. We hate you. You smell bad and you are a fat fatty fatso. You have boobs and you are a boy! Why don’t you just die because all you do is take up space? Sincerely, Mrs. Rider’s class plus Bobby Pinken and John Sears. P.S. You SUCK!”

  Jerrod stares at the note, rereading the words until his vision blurs and tears roll down his face. Wiping his eyes, he risks a glance across the aisle. Mitch hasn’t noticed. He is busy fogging the glass with his breath, drawing superheroes with his finger. Spiderman first. Then erasing with the sleeve of his jacket, re-fogging, and drawing what looks to be the claws of Wolverine next. Then Spiderman again, crude and ugly in the misty residue of his breath.

  “Spiderman always knows when to run,” Jerrod says.

  Mitch doesn’t answer. He continues to draw.

  Crumpling the paper back into a ball, Jerrod drops it on the floor and kicks it under the seat in front of him. He hears his name again. Whispers, then the words, “fat ass” and “weirdo.” He clutches his backpack, this time feeling the hard, rectangular presence of the Book.

  Not anymore, the Voices say. Not after today.

  “All right,” Mr. Williams says when the bus is stopped in front of Lewis and Clark Elementary. “I’ll see you guys in a few hours.” He swings the door open and kids file out, giggling past Jerrod as they go. Jerrod pretends not to notice and picks at an imaginary stain on the front of his sweatshirt. When the bus is finally empty, Mr. Williams says, “Come on, Jerrod. Time to move on.”