"Kiss me, Peter Samhain let me come back. The Lord of the Dead let me come back but only for tonight. Only for Halloween. I never stopped loving you..."
And now Peter felt the first stings as the hornets began to peel away from Ginny's skeleton, covering his own face, attacking him—
"Help me!" he screamed.
Ginny melted away in his aims, the bones collapsing to a clacking pile as Peter fell to the ground, covered in angry hornets. Through his burning eyes he saw the bee-keeper standing over him, wide-eyed, waving his arms, his flashlight beam bouncing, shouting something which Peter could no longer hear through his swollen ears, his screaming mouth filled with soft angry hornets, his throat, his body covered inside his clothing.
He gave a horrid final choking scream, and was silent.
"And that's the way you'd like the record to read?" District Attorney Morton said. He was shaking his head as he said it—but then again, he had been shaking his head since the informal inquest had begun two hours ago.
Detective Grant spoke up. "This will be sealed, right?"
Morton laughed shortly, a not humorous sound. "You bet your ass it will be. We're lucky nobody from the press got wind of this." He looked sideways at the bee-keeper. "We're not going to have any trouble from you, are we, Mr. Willims?"
The bee-keeper nearly gulped. "Are you kidding? If Detective Grant hadn't been standing next to me, do you think the bunch of you would have believed me? I'd be in a looney bungalow at Kiliborne right now."
Morton nodded. "Yes, you would be. But since the two of you saw it—"
The bee-keeper gulped again, and Grant nodded curtly.
"At least I don't think he killed his wife," Grant said. "It looks to me like she got herself stuck in that gardening shed, and the hornets got to her." He looked at Willims, and suddenly everyone was looking at the bee-keeper.
"You want me to tell you this all could happen? Sure, I'll tell you—but I still don't believe it. Could hornets strip a human body clean in a few days? Well, maybe. Usually hornets won't eat human flesh, but if the opportunity presents itself, I guess they might. They probably stung her to death after she got trapped in the shed. And then the body was in there with them. . . so, sure, I guess it could happen."
"And what about the supposed..." Morton consulted the papers before him. "...mobility of the skeleton.. . ?" He let the question hang, and Grant finally spoke up.
"The damn thing looked like it stumbled out of the shed. But it could have been a trick of the light. If the skeletal remains had been propped against the door when Kerlan opened it, which would have been consistent with his wife's trying to get out of the shed until she was overcome by the hornets, then, sure, it could have tumbled out into his arms."
He looked over at the bee keeper, who looked at his shoes. "Yeah, I guess that's what I saw too."
Morton addressed the bee-keeper: "And the hornets covering Mrs. Kerlan like skin—that could have been a 'trick of the light' too?" "Well..."
Willims looked up from his shoes to see Grant glaring at him. "Sure, I guess so. And I guess the words we heard her say could have been in our minds—"
For a moment he looked defiant, before collapsing. "All right. It was all in our heads."
"Fine," Morton said. He had gained a satisfied look. He turned to the medical examiner. "Jim, you're okay with the cause of death in both cases as being extreme toxic reaction to hornet stings?"
The M.E. nodded once. "Yep."
"And there was nothing the two of you could have done to save him?" he asked Grant and Willims.
The bee-keeper said, "By the time we got to him he'd already been stung hundreds of times. I was able to get some of them off, but it was too late. The weirdest thing is that they wouldn't respond to light, which threw me. When I shined my flashlight on them they should have flocked to it."
"But they could have been so angry at that point that they would have ignored the light, correct?" Morton said sharply.
"I guess so. But I still say they should have attacked the light, and left Mr. Kerlan alone."
"But you're fine with the way we wrote it up in this report?" Morton said, daring the bee-keeper to contradict him.
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Good. Anything else?" Morton patted his knees, making as if to rise, daring anyone in the room not to let him end the proceedings.
There was a glum silence. Once again the bee-keeper was staring at his own shoes.
"I want to re-emphasize, Mr. Willims, that you aren't to speak to anyone of what went on in here today. We're all sworn to secrecy. This record will be sealed. Whatever was said in this room remains in this room. I don't want to see anything in the newspapers about humans made out of yellow jackets or..." Here he consulted his notes again, Samhain, the Lord of the Dead. You understand?"
Without lifting his gaze, Willims answered, "Sure."
Letting a hard edge climb into his tone, Morton said, "If any of this finds its way into the press, or anywhere else outside this room, I'll know who to call on, won't I, Mr. Willims?"
The bee-keeper nodded. His gaze shifted momentarily to Grant, but the detective's face was blank; he had obviously decided the best course of action for himself.
"Just so you understand," Morton continued. "There are licenses and such in your profession, and I would hate for you to have trouble in that area."
The bee-keeper nodded.
Morton's tone switched suddenly from hard to hearty. "All right, then—that's it!" He stood and stretched, glancing at the M.E. "Jim—lunch?"
"Yep," the M.E. said.
On the way out of the room, the District Attorney put his arm briefly around the bee-keeper's shoulder and said, "Just forget about it, Willims. Chalk it up to professional strangeness."
Willims looked up at the D.A., and for a moment his face was haunted.
"The thing I can't get over" he said, "is the stuff she was saying about the Lord of the Dead, how she'd been brought back only for Halloween—"
Morton's scowl turned to an angry frown. "I warned you in there, Willims—"
"I heard you," the bee-keeper said resignedly. "Believe me, I heard you."
Morton removed his arm from the other man's shoulder, giving him a slight shove forward. "Just don't forget what I said."
They were in the marbled hallway of the court building, leading toward the revolving doors to the outside world. Morton watched Willims go through them, slouching with unhappiness.
I'll have to watch that one, he thought.
The M.E. came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. "Meet you at the restaurant," he said laconically. "I've got to dip into my office upstairs for a minute."
The M.E. peeled off into another hallway, his footsteps echoing away on the polished stone floor.
After a moment, the D.A. composed himself into his public face of smiling bluster, and drove through the revolving doors.
Outside it was cold and bright, early November chill making the recent October heat wave a memory.
The D.A. shivered, wishing he had remembered his topcoat. But the restaurant was only a block away.
He began to descend the wide stone steps of the courthouse, which led to the street, when something small and striped orange and black, an insect, brushed by his ear and settled lightly there.
He heard the faintest of whispers before he swatted it away—as if someone were talking to him from a far distance. Later he would wonder if he had heard at all what it said:
"Next Halloween..."
Table of Contents
OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS BOOKS BY AL SARRANTONIO:
Preface
The Ropy Thing
The Only
The Beat
In the Corn
Two
The Coat
The Haunting of Y-12
Billy the Fetus
Stars
Bags
The Red Wind
The Green Face
White Lightning
>
The Glass Man
Violets
The Quiet Ones
Hornets
Hornets and Others Page 23