Homing (19 page)

Karen, too surprised by Julie's sudden acquiescence to say anything, nodded mutely.

"I'll take this up to Molly," she said, picking up the jar with the june bug in it. Saying good night to Kevin and Russell, she headed upstairs, pausing at Molly's door as she started down the hall toward her room. "How about if I take care of this for you tonight?" she asked.

Molly's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How come?" she asked. "Are you going to let him go?"

Julie shook her head, her eyes fixed on the buzzing creature. "I just want to look at him for a while, okay?

And tomorrow I'll help you figure out what to feed him. How's that?"

Molly hesitated, then nodded in agreement, and Julie continued down the hall to her room, still listening to the humming of the insect trapped in the bottle.

Julie's eyes were open and unblinking in the gloom of her room. Moonlight streamed in through the window, refracting on the iridescent shell of the insect captured in the jar at her bedside.

Though her neck was twisted into what should have been a painfully unnatural position, she was unaware of any discomfort, for her entire concentration was fixed on the constantly moving creature trapped within the confines of the glass.

As she fixed on the june bug, mesmerized, she gradually became aware again of the noises of other creatures as they moved invisibly through the summer night.

Crickets, chirping softly.

Cicadas, emitting their whirring drone.

The high-pitched whine of mosquitoes as they zeroed in on their prey.

In her mind, Julie didn't distinguish one sound from another at least not in any typical way.

No images flashed into her head, attaching a specific creature to a certain sound.

instead the music of the insects blended into a strange, hypnotic symphony, and as its rhythms penetrated deeper and deeper into the consciousness inside her, she finally rose from her bed and left her room.

Moving with the steady pace of a somnambulist, and clad only in her thin nightgown, Julie silently descended the stairs, padded on bare feet through the dining room and the kitchen and out onto the back porch.

The sounds of the night were clearer here, the song of the insects more insistent than ever.

Leaving the porch, Julie started across the yard. The cool breeze drifting down from the hills to the west caressed her nearly naked skin as she walked slowly across the yard and out into the pasture behind the barn.

She kept walking, letting the sound of the insects guide her.

She moved to the center of the pasture and lay down beneath the pale glow of the star-filled sky, spreading her limbs sensuously, like a pagan priestess presenting herself to the gods.

The nocturne swirled around her, and she stretched her body languorously, nestling deep into the grass of the pasture.

And deep within the earth beneath her, sensing her presence, a colony of ants moved, then began making their way to the surface.

In the grass, the crickets paused momentarily in their song, then began to chirp again.

A cloud of gnats, disturbed when Julie lay down in the grass, swirled in the air above her, then began settling once more. Now, though, instead of settling back into the vegetation from which they had risen, they drifted down to alight on Julie's exposed skin.

From the ground the ants appeared, creeping up her arms and legs, their legs clinging to her flesh, their antennae exploring her skin.

insects seemed to come from everywhere, flying through the darkness, creeping through the grass, scurrying up from their subterranean nests.

Julie felt a horrible crawling wave of terror come over her as she felt the insects begin to cover her skin.

She wanted to leap to her feet and run screaming through the night.

Wanted to dig her fingernails deep into her own flesh as millions of tiny legs made every square inch of her skin tingle with a burning itch unlike any she'd felt before.

But she could do nothing, for once more that terrifying force within her held her in its thrall, strangling her cries in her throat, turning her muscles Against her, holding her paralyzed beneath the teeming horde that swarmed around her.

She finally gave up, exhausted by her efforts to make her body respond to her own will, and soon she was covered with an undulating mass of life, protected from the chill of the night by a constantly moving blanket of living creatures.

Their humming drone filled her ears, steady, insistent, swelling until the unending whir overtook all thought and at last she lay still beneath the shroud of insects.

She stared up into the night sky, barely even aware of the rising moon that shone down upon her or the stars that twinkled above her like a billion tiny fireflies.

Numbed finally, her mind overwhelmed by the sheer mass of the swarms of insects that crawled over every millimeter of her skin, Julie at last drifted into sleep.

Dark, deep, dreamless sleep.

Three hours later the eastern sky began to brighten, and in the field, Julie stirred. As consciousness began to return to her, and the fog of sleep lifted slowly from her mind, she became aware of a strange sensation on her skin.

The kind of sensation she might have felt if millions of ants had been crawling over her.

She came fully awake then, and as her mind cleared, she realized that she was no longer in her bed, nor even in the house.

Her eyes snapped open in the graying light of dawn.

She was staring up into a cloudless sky.

All around her, tall grass was growing.

And something-something vile-was on her.

She could feel it distinctly now.

Her skin was crawling, For a moment she didn't dare to look at herself. But finally, slowly, she raised one of her arms.

Ants!

Red ants!

She remembered stumbling across a nest of them last year, in the park five blocks from the apartment in North Hollywood.

They'd swarmed up out of the ground, overrunning her sandal to creep up her leg, and within seconds it seemed her whole calf was on fire.

Now they were covering her whole body!

A horrible confusion overwhelmed her.

What was she doing outside, wearing just her night gown?

She had no memory of coming outside at all!

The last thing she recalled was going into her room, to bed, and taking Molly's june bug, trapped in its mason jar, with her.

Yes, she'd gone to bed, and then stared at the large beetle, listening to its muffled whirrings as it tried to escape.

But how had she gotten here?

Had she walked in her sleep?

She began brushing the ants from her body as a terrified whimper emerged from her throat. Her heart pounded as she anticipated the terrible burn of the ants' bites.

A dark thought rose in her mind: What if they all bit her?

There were millions of them! If they all sank their mandibles into her at once, each of them sending poison into her system - . .

She shuddered and tried to banish the thought, but it kept growing in her mind.

A tidal wave of panic built up within her, towering over her, threatening to crush her will.

The creek!

If she could get to the creek-get into the water-she could wash them away.

Wash them off her skin, out of her hair, off her face.

She could feel them in her ears now, and in her nose.

A scream rose in her throat, but she stifled it, terrified of opening her mouth for fear that the teeming creatures would invade that space, too.

She began running then, racing across the field, her nightgown swirling about her legs, her hair streaming behind her.

In less than a minute she came to the creek. Stripping off her nightgown, she waded into the water, moving quickly out to the center, where pools almost three feet deep lay between the boulders that lined the banks.

Ignoring the chill of the water-barely even conscious of it-Julie dropped to the bottom of the creek, totally submerging herself, her fingers working furiously as she tried to dislodge the insects from her skin and claw them from her hair.

Finally, when she could hold her breath no longer, she broke the surface, opening her mouth wide to fill her lungs with the fresh morning air.

She stayed in the water until the chill of it began to penetrate to her very bones. When she finally waded ashore, naked and dripping, she was almost afraid to look at her skin.

In her mind's eye she could still see the angry red welts that had covered her calves after the attack last summer.

As the sun began to creep above the mountains to the east, and the icy chill of the water wore off, she waited for the burning sensation to begin.

It didn't come, and at last, realizing she felt no pain at all, she looked down at her legs and torso.

She frowned, then examined the skin of her hands and arms.

Nothing!

Nowhere could she find even the tiniest bump that would betray the presence of an insect bite.

Her hands trembling, she reached down and picked up her nightgown. She shook it violently, expecting to see hundreds of the vermin fall from its folds.

Again there was nothing.

The ants were gone-gone so completely that she wondered if they'd ever been there at all.

She slipped the nightgown over her head and pulled the soft material down over her still-damp skin.

Could she have imagined the whole thing?

But it wasn't possible, was it?

How could she have imagined her skin being entirely covered with red ants?

How could she have felt them?

And not just on her skin, either.

They'd been in her hair, her ears-even her nose!

Panic welled up inside her once again, and she shuddered at the memory.

Struggling to control the panic, she started back toward the house, breaking into a stumbling run.

What if someone saw her? What if Otto were already up, fixing his morning coffee? If Kevin spotted her, running around in just her nightgown ...

How would she be able to explain it? What reason could she give for having gone out into the field in the middle of the night, almost naked?

There wasn't any reason, and now Julie ran faster, ducking around the corner of the house so that even if Otto was up, he wouldn't be able to see her.

At the back door she paused, listening, but heard nothing from inside the house. If everyone was still asleep, she could get back upstairs and Suddenly she became aware of a humming sound.

She turned, her eyes widening as she beheld a cloud of bees-thousands of them-moving toward the house.

instantly, her mind went back to the previous morning, when she'd bumped into one of the hives and the bees had attacked her. Now here they were again, coming toward her.

And she was wearing nothing but a thin nylon nightgown!

As the first of the bees streaked across the yard, Julie jerked the back door open, slipped inside, and quickly shut it again. She paused just inside, listening again, but the house was still silent, and she padded through the empty rooms and up the stairs as quietly as she'd come down a few hours earlier.

She stepped into her room, and instantly knew something was wrong.

The light from the window.

it was an odd color-black, and yellowish.

Her eyes went to the window, raised high to let in the cool night air, and her breath caught in her throat.

The screen was covered with bees; covered so thickly she couldn't see out at all. They were layers deep, climbing over one another, the humming of their wings filling the room, For a moment Julie stood frozen, just staring at them. Then she darted to the window, slammed it closed, and pulled the drapes as well, plunging the room into a darkness almost as deep as night.

Still she could hear them, their humming muffled through the cloth and glass, but clearly audible.

What was wrong? What was happening to her?

Trembling, Julie went to her bed and crept under the covers, pulling the quilt over her head despite the already building heat of the summer morning. She buried one ear in her pillow and clamped a hand over the other one, attempting to shut out the terrifying sound.

Outside, the bees found a tiny crevice in the siding on the house and set to work.

Soon they had expanded the crevice.

Then they began creeping in, filling the empty space in the wall that separated Julie's room from the one next door.

Karen was carrying a picnic basket.

It was filled with champagne, caviar, and little sandwiches, and she was walking in one of the pastures, feeling the sun on her back, listening to the birds singing and watching the butterflies flit among the blossoms. The afternoon was perfect, and soon Russell would come and join her.

They would walk down to the stream, open the champagne, and lie in one another's arms, sipping the bubbling wine and feeding each other morsels of food. Then, as the afternoon turned into evening, Russell would begin opening the buttons on her blouse....

Her reverie was interrupted by a new sound, a low tone that made the birds fall silent around her. As the sound Filled her ears, Karen turned, half expecting to see Russell coming across the field toward her.

But it wasn't Russell.

instead it was the giant threshing machine, moving toward her, its huge blades spinning, a green arc of fresh cut hay pouring out of it, a stream of pale green seeming to hang over it.

She stared at the machine, abstractly wondering where it had come from.

It hadn't been in the field when she'd arrived; of that, she was almost certain.

Time seemed to stand still as she watched the mower come slowly closer, and it wasn't until it was only a few yards away from her that she saw the empty driver's seat.

But that was impossible-with no one at the controls, how could the mower operate?

Then, quite suddenly, she knew it was coming for her.

The mower was going to run her down!

She turned, fleeing through the field, but the faster she tried to run, the harder it became for her to move her feet.

The drone of the mower grew louder, and she looked back over her shoulder.