Inferno

by Ellen Datlow

  Oliver shook himself from the fantasy.

  Emotions—hate, fear, anger, sadness in mourning the magnificent Evelyn’s death—covered him like a thick syrup (like honey). He looked at the bottle on the bed table next to him, thought about the sweet liqueur held within and its origin.

  He scratched his fingernails over his scalp, digging in deep until his neck tingled. He wanted the Cortland family out of his head, but they weren’t quite ready to leave.

  Though he did not return to the all-consuming fugue, Oliver caught glimpses, like memory, of the boys and their father: Reginald Cortland sitting in a corner on the floor of a hotel room, very much like the one Oliver currently occupied; he drank from one of the hexagonal bottles, his face streaming with tears, his hand masturbating furiously; the senior Cortland entered the room some time later to find his son dead on the carpet, the boy’s body riddled with red welts, the bottle lying next to him; Michael Cortland, the older boy, sneaked through the hidden cellar, opening one of the crates Evelyn offered him and his brother as gifts; he sat in the tunnel that connected the hooch hut to the hotel, also crying, surrounded by the pale bees; he, too, was discovered with his skin destroyed and cold to the touch.

  They couldn’t control them, Oliver thought. Without Evelyn’s command, the insects proved vicious and lethal.

  He looked to the shadowy corner of his room. The bare wooden crates, holding the hexagonal bottles, sat there. Above them, movement like sliding wax caught his eye. He traced his gaze up the wall, saw similar movement against the ceiling. With a shaking hand, he reached for the bottle. Paused.

  As for the father, Cortland believed his boys were corrupted by the beautiful Evelyn (though Oliver considered the act a generous seduction); the patriarch saw his sons’ corpses, saw the bottles of sweet liqueur accompanying them, and with the shattered mind of one truly despondent, he cast his judgment against all vice and had the chamber of spirits sealed. He would no longer break the laws of man, nor sin against the laws of his God. He turned his back on capital and embraced an extreme and unforgiving faith.

  Davis Cortland didn’t understand. He was a conservative man with a shallow mind and no capacity for wonder. Oliver knew the type well.

  Downstairs, Amanda was busy with caterers and florists. He needed to shower and dress and play the fine host. They were throwing a party to celebrate the opening of Cortland’s vault.

  He lifted the bottle from the nightstand, held it to his lips and again peered into the corner, at the motion along the walls’ surface. Cortland just couldn’t understand. Oliver corked the bottle and returned it to the crate.

  The swing band played a midtempo tune. Ball gowns twirled and men in tuxedos smiled. Oliver stood away from the crowd, in a corner by the bar where he watched Amanda flirting with Joe Hopkins. With her arm on his shoulder, his wife laughed too loudly at something the foreman said and tossed her head to the side. She saw Oliver and her joyful expression switched off until she was again looking at Hopkins.

  Oliver sipped from his martini, but the drink burned his tongue, tasted foul and poisoned. Throughout the evening, he had sampled the canapés and skewered delicacies circulated by the waiters, but they scalded and scraped his mouth, abrading his palate like bits of hot coal. He put the martini glass on the bar, wishing he had smuggled one of his bottles down to the ballroom. Nothing else would taste right to him tonight.

  Amanda ran her palm down Hopkins’s cheek. The man threw a nervous glance at Oliver, and Amanda laughed again. She slid her arm through Hopkins’s and led him deeper into the party, out of Oliver’s view. The music clanged in his ears, and the bustle of people now felt threatening, as if they were just amusing themselves until it was time to turn on him and attack. To add to his unease, his eyes were playing tricks on him, or they were failing completely. The room began melting into a single oozing image. Details blurred then bleached out. The ornate moldings dripped, and the far wall shrank as if collapsing. Around him, the smiling faces were little more than threatening smudges.

  He had to escape. With the shrill banging of the music in his head, he fled back to his room.

  Once the door was locked, he ran to the crates stacked in the corner. Desperate to have the music out of his head and the sick-making panic made numb, he pulled the bottle free and removed the cork. What remained wasn’t enough to calm him. The final drops of fluid trickled over his tongue, a mere tease. Oliver corked the bottle and replaced it in the top crate. He set the wooden case on the floor and frantically opened the second. Once the covering boards were removed he snatched a fresh bottle and chewed away the wax seal. He yanked the cork from the neck. Then, he poured the liquid into his mouth until the disturbance in his system calmed.

  He reached a hand out to steady himself and felt the wall shift and tickle under his palm. Oliver snatched his hand away.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, turning away.

  Soothed but still uncomfortable, he removed his jacket and ruffled shirt. He slid out of his trousers and socks and stood in his underwear, already feeling the need for another sip.

  He ran a hand over his belly and rubbed small circles, coaxing the swarm in his head to again fill his sex. Thoughts of Amanda and Joe Hopkins engulfed him.

  They were together, he thought. Somewhere in that damned hotel, his wife lay beneath Hopkins. Her lips were on his chest, tasting his sweat and pushing into the muscle and hair. She’d encourage him with sounds Oliver hadn’t heard in over a decade, voicing passion she had never shown her husband, and the workman, driving deep into Oliver’s wife, filling her in a way Oliver never could, strained and flexed, showing her what a real man could offer.

  Oliver poured a substantial slug of the liquid over these thoughts. It filled his head with a humming pulse, and his skin lit with friction.

  The image of his wife laid back and wide open to the workman crystallized and a mouth fell on his. Hopkins’s mouth. The weight of the workman’s chest pressed down on him but he also felt the rise of Amanda’s breasts under him. The duality of the sensations intensified until he felt hot sweat dripping from him and over him.

  His fantasy, sparked by supposition and fueled by the numbing liqueur, did not position him between the two lovers; it fed him the sensations of both.

  His cock grew warm, encased in wet skin as he thrust into Amanda’s writhing body, and he felt the penetration between his legs, a thick shaft driving deep into his body, entering him through a channel he didn’t possess. The smell of perfume filled his nose and was then replaced with a pedestrian aftershave. Hands stroked his ass and his chest and his back and his hips, and through it all, his sex burned with the gathering bees.

  A solid rapping on his door snapped him from his fantasy, canceling the pleasure that tickled and stung the base of his cock, made it retreat. Instead of erupting from him, the buzzing ejaculate fled into his body. The bees were furious. Their furred bodies, their filament-thin legs, their beating wings prickled his gut, his stomach, and his sex. They clung to the membranes and jostled for space. The discomfort and frantic movement aroused him anew, and Oliver reached for the bottle on the nightstand.

  The insistent knocking paused his hand. Oliver tried ignoring the summons, but it seemed the visitor would not be ignored. Oliver rolled off of the bed. He pulled his robe from the back of a chair and crossed the room.

  Hopkins stood in the doorway. He greeted Oliver with a hello, rich in tone and salted with unease.

  With the hive burrowing into his belly and the liqueur having numbed his mouth, Oliver said nothing, simply stepped back to allow Hopkins entrance.

  Apparently uncomfortable and eager to hide it, Hopkins made a show of crossing his arms. Oliver noted the bulk of the workman’s thickly veined forearms, and the hive ignited with frantic buzzing. Then, Hopkins unfolded the arms and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers.

  “Mr. Bennett,” he said. “I know what you must be thinking, but I want you to know I’m not the sort to get mixed
up with a married woman.”

  Oliver stared at the handsome man and thought about the gardener’s son. They were similar, he thought. Both shared a strength, a power that emanated from their skin in hot waves. The association further stirred the hive, sent it flying low in his belly and high into his throat.

  “I just want you to know that,” Hopkins said. “The last thing I need in my life is a jealous husband.” The workman laughed haltingly, forcing the sound through his lips in an awkward attempt to lighten the mood.

  Oliver stepped forward. “I’ve never been jealous of her,” he said. The foreman seemed perplexed, but this simple man would never understand the importance of such a statement.

  When Oliver imagined his wife and her lovers, he took her place in the fantasies, feeling the strength and the rough hands on his body. Her men became his hero, every one of them was the gardener’s son—his Kyle reimagined. He wrapped an arm around Hopkins’s shoulder, locking the man’s neck in the crook of his elbow. “Never of her.”

  He leaned forward and put his lips on Hopkins’s. The hive swarming at the back of his throat and deep within his belly grew to frenzy. Hopkins’s lips were warm but rigid. Strong hands pushed, and then they shoved. Oliver stumbled back, nearly fell, and then regained his balance.

  “What’s wrong with you fucking people?” Hopkins yelled. He stepped forward and landed a fist on Oliver’s jaw. The pain and concussion of the blow startled him but it was also exciting.

  You liked that? You fucking freak? You rich boy piece of shit?

  Kyle had struck him all of those years ago. Shouting obscenities and condemnations, the older boy punched and kicked and spat.

  After their beautiful time together, while the resonating pleasure of their encounter still sang in his body, Oliver could make no sense of the abuse. Confused, Oliver fled the shack. He raced through the trees and the shrubs and into the waiting hive of bees.

  Oliver tested his jaw, ran a hand over its pained arch. And the first of the white bees flew free of his mouth. It tested the air, bobbing and dipping with wings all but invisible from the speed of their beating. Another followed. Hopkins shouted a curse and turned to run, but he was too close to the door and clipped his brow on the jamb. The blow sent him back a step.

  Oliver’s mouth ached from Hopkins’s fist and from the abrading wings and bodies of the emerging swarm. Dozens of the white bees flew from his mouth to fill the gloom. Across the room, Hopkins cradled his forehead, gazing in fearful wonder at the buzzing squadron. One of the white creatures landed on his cheek.

  It stung.

  The workman’s eyes grew wide; he choked out a plea, and then slapped at the insect, crushing it to a smear of liquid on his already swelling cheek. Oliver watched calmly, his system and mind soothed by the rhythmic beating of thousands of wings. Hopkins backed to the wall, hands up, covering his face, as a vague mumble of panic tripped over his lips.

  Oliver lifted his arms and threw a look over his shoulder to the corner by the crates, suddenly alive with activity. A thunderous buzzing filled the room, and Oliver beckoned his swarm.

  Oliver walked back to the bed, but in his mind he was running through brush and speckled sunlight.

  His face burned with bee sting and throbbed with the beating he’d taken from his former hero. Nearly blind, he stumbled across his backyard to the kitchen door and tripped over the threshold. He cried, then screamed.

  A fresh pain shot along his palm, and Oliver looked down to find a stray bee squirming in a gout of pearl-colored fluid. The trapped insect jabbed its barb into the meat at the base of his thumb, protesting its capture.

  His father appeared, hovering over him, shouting about Oliver’s stupidity. Oliver held his hand out to show his father the monster that still clung to him, and his father fell silent … .

  Your dad showed me this you fucking freak. And you like it? You rich boy piece of shit. I oughtta kill you and your faggot father.

  The old man looked out the kitchen window, over the backyard, and perhaps all the way to the back of the property where the tool shed stood. Seeming dazed, red with flush, he told Oliver to wash his hands.

  Wash your hands, Boy.

  Ignoring his son’s tears and pleas, Oliver’s father walked out the back door. A housekeeper appeared moments later, drawn by Oliver’s cries. She wasted no time in helping him to his feet and to her car. She drove Oliver to the hospital where he spent the night in pain, hallucinating about his father and Kyle and bees.

  By the time he was released the following morning, the gardener had packed his family up and left the estate. Oliver never saw Kyle again.

  In the dark room, Oliver reclined on the bed. Naked, aching and swollen, he let the roar of wings clear the thoughts from his head. Painful lumps covered his chest and his belly; his cock was raw and misshapen by a dozen stings. A tear of semen dripped from the welted head and upon touching his stomach came to life with fierce movement, wings flapping and tickling his skin before pulling away to join the droning swarm above him. The small white bees speckled the air, crawled over the walls, and dove from ceiling to floor. Their scent—bitter honey—filled his nose. On the nightstand next to him, the amber bottle stood empty.

  He rolled his head, his swollen ear stinging when it touched the soft cotton pillowcase. Above the cases of liquor in the corner of the room, the ceiling already puckered with the foundation of a glorious shelter. The combed base of the hive was as big around as a serving platter and as white as snow. Drones scurried over the delicate construction, furiously adding material to the nest.

  Somewhere below, the party continued. Amanda would be flirting with some new man, seducing him with Oliver’s wealth, while degrading her husband with words of dissatisfaction. Here, though, none of that mattered, because, finally, he possessed something of his own, something his father’s trespass could not taint, something Amanda could not imagine or covet or take. It was wholly his. The Cortland boys proved too weak for this responsibility. But not Oliver.

  Like the lovely Evelyn, he would harbor and tend to his hive. He would be their master, their mother and their shelter.

  His swarm would grow in number and strength, and by winter, the walls of the room would run with pearls of honey to be collected and stored. The two cases of bottles would never be enough to hold all of the magnificent liqueur.

  “Oh please,” he whispered to the room.

  Six of his drones dropped from the platinum cloud to circle above him. Each beating of their wings brought the promise of pleasure and creation. “Please,” he said again, and the white drones descended to penetrate his skin with their barbs. Agony erupted and was quickly numbed. Euphoria followed like an echo of the pain.

  Beneath his hand, his anxious shaft, thick with knots, was already close to release. A sharp pain flared behind his ear. Oliver cried out, and the swarm’s number increased.

  The Keeper

  P. D. CACEK

  P. D. Cacek received a B.A. Degree in Creative Writing from the University of Long Beach in 1975 and has been working in her chosen field ever since.

  She has won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award for her short fiction and is the author of six novels, three collections, and more than a hundred short stories; her most recent short stories were published in the anthologies Lords of the Razor and Night Visions 12.

  Cacek is currently working on a nonfiction project involving haunted bed and breakfasts, as well as collaborating on a screenplay about Lizzie Borden based on new evidence. A hint: She did it—but not with an ax.

  She arrived just as the sun was setting.

  Summer was over and the last of the autumn leaves—the ones that had for weeks filled my bedroom window with fire and gold—were gone. Only the gray branches and twigs remained, and it was through them that I first saw her.

  “A cousin,” Zaideh told the family last year at Hanukkah as he held the telegram that had come that morning and which had become the immediate focus of all our
attention. All day we had waited and all evening, too; so that by the time he finally sat down in the big chair in the front room, our curiosity had built up inside us like steam in a kettle.

  “Just one?” one of my aunts had asked.

  And Zaideh had nodded. “Yoh, just one.”

  I can tell you that I wasn’t the only one disappointed. All of us, the children, looked at each other and shrugged. We had cousins, more than we knew what to do with sometimes, so why did this one send a telegram? It seemed such a waste after so full a day of imagining. But our parents were moved by the news—some to tears, some to anger, some to a silence that went beyond all feeling—and it frightened us, making us draw close to each other. The petty squabbles and thoughtless words that were our usual playthings were set aside as we wondered and worried about this newly found cousin.

  For almost a year we worried.

  For almost a year we made up stories.

  And, once again, we were disappointed.

  From the few snatches of conversation I’d heard between Zaideh and my parents—conversations that always ended when they noticed me—I’d expected her to be bigger, almost full-grown … but she was younger than I was. Only nine, Mameh had told me that morning.

  “And she’s had … a hard time, so you’ll have to be good to her. Like a little sister, yes?”

  I’d never wanted a little sister, but because there’d been tears in my mother’s eyes I lied. Yes, I said, of course I’d be good to her.

  I barely let myself breathe until I saw her from my bedroom window … the little girl bundled into a coat that was too big for her. Just a little girl with pale skin and large dark eyes that looked up and caught me staring through the branches.

  Just a little girl who didn’t smile when I waved.

  It was dark by the time the front door opened, closed, and the low, constant murmur of voices that had filled the house since midday stopped. Silence wasn’t ordinary in our house … there was always noise of some kind or another—pots clanging, the rustling of my father’s newspapers, the grinding hiss and occasional music from the old Philco radio that my grandfather insisted sounded as good as the day he bought it—and its absence made me press my arms against my belly.