Violet Eyes (15 page)

Tiny feet tickled his chin and neck and slipped inside his ears, and when he opened his mouth to scream, it was instantly filled with the legs and wings of a horde.

Sam tried to rise, intending to run out of the house to the open air, but he had only staggered a couple of feet towards the door when he felt something strange in his gut. He was nauseous, but also lethargic. He spit the bugs from his mouth, and smashed them against his cheeks with his hand, though still more came. Finally he remembered the helmet, and pulled it down across his face, trying not to trap any of the evil creatures inside with him.

But it didn’t matter. The helmet closed, and five flies buzzed inside, trapped by the half-inch of space between his eyes and the visor. They landed on his cheeks, and bit down.

“Fuck,” Sam complained, but then he sank to one knee as he tried to walk to the door. The effects of the first wave of bites had hit him hard. “No, up,” he gasped to himself. But he didn’t answer himself. Though maybe it would have been better if he had. The sound of his words might have helped keep him awake. As it was, some poison secreted by the hundreds of flies was drawing a veil across his vision. He knew the fog for what it was, and thought of the poison kit in the back of the truck. They said its anti-venom was good for almost any bite.

He needed to get through the door and get to it. The bites on his face had turned to welts, and wept heat. Fever heat.

Sam crashed to the floor, one arm reaching out towards the door. His eyelids flickered shut, and his vision was suddenly clouded in wings. Endless wings. Flying through a purple sky…

As he closed his eyes, a brigade of spiders converged in the center of the room. They came from Mr. and Mrs. Bladich, from behind the couches, from the kitchen.

And they moved as one towards a new destination. A new source of food.

Sam Newcastle.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Wednesday, May 15. 7:43 p.m.

Binky was a pretty stupid name for a pooch, but there ya go. See what happens when kids are in charge of naming things? You end up with crabs named Crabby and dogs named Binky.

And Binky didn’t know any better, so Binky didn’t mind. In general, the cocker spaniel was pretty happy with its lot in life. It had a nice soft bed in the green room right past the doorway of the house, and it had a man and woman who loved to pet it and feed it and tell it nice-sounding things. And it got to come and go as it pleased. Some people had warned Dave and Estelle that they should really curb the dog’s freedom—God knows there were plenty of alligators nearby who would love a snack as small and tender as Binky. But Dave and Estelle had never put any restrictions on the doggy door that led from the utility room to the backyard. The cocker spaniel was pretty good about sticking in or right near their yard. And so right now, Binky was running down the wooden stairs to the harsh green grass of the yard, even though it was after dark. He had to pee.

He didn’t stay in the tiny postage-stamp lot of earth that his masters owned; nope, Binky had his own trail through the back lots of the subdivision, searching for anything that resembled good friends or good food. Not necessarily in that order.

Tonight he was going to get rid of some pressure and then maybe take a poke around and see what sorts of things he could find. There was always somebody throwing something tasty away in this neighborhood…and he often saved such things from going to waste.

Binky followed the waning rays of the light that glowed next to the big door with the little doggy door in it. The house light illuminated most of the yard—right up to the back fence. Once there, he slipped though the loose board and then he was out and on his own in the shadows of dusk—free to dash through the open field to see what there was to see.

He stopped just on the other side of the fence and lifted a leg. No point in exploring with a full bladder. As he let loose a stream, Binky shivered. It was almost as if something had crept across his back. He felt a bug bite him on his left hind leg—the leg that was holding him up, and he shook his body a little, trying to dislodge it. He couldn’t really
lift
the leg right at this moment…he was a little busy with his right leg in the air. When his main mission of the night was done, he put both hind legs down and shook his entire backside, hoping to dislodge any pests that had taken advantage of his rest stop.

But as he did so, a number of tiny bites registered up and down his spine.

Binky yelped and shook again, harder. Then he jumped forward two feet, and again. He needed to knock loose whatever was ruining his evening. The bites felt harder than mosquitoes…and they weren’t letting go.

Binky ran away from the fence but as he did, the bites suddenly grew worse. They were up and down his spine, and lower, along his ribs. And some were even tweaking him on his legs. He yowled, and rolled on the grass between Dave and Estelle’s yard and the Portrains’. But no matter what he did, the biting got worse.

He felt like something was digging into his skin and chopping it off. Never mind his fur; that appeared to be offering no protection. The bites stung. Bad.

He yelped again and two doors down, a light went on. And that’s when he finally saw what his problem was. Right there on his snout, five small black spiders had suddenly appeared. And he could see that they were not just roaming. They were bearing down with their pincers. The pain was familiar. And horrible.

Binky yelped and rolled again, trying to dislodge these nasty bugs, but instead, as he rolled across the grass, a black cloud suddenly streamed across the ground. They came from everywhere in the gully, and converged on him. They were hungry.

Binky began to feel warm and sluggish. He tried to lift a leg to scratch at his snout and knock the spiders off, but his leg only trembled. His senses seemed suddenly acute; he could see colors weaving in the twilight air, and he smelled the scent of a cat that had passed by an hour before. His nerves cried out with hot throbbing waves of pain…as if someone were poking him with a thousand needles.

Binky gave out one last pathetic whine, and the spiders’ venom finally took the dog down. He couldn’t protest against that bitter, heavy poison. His senses fed him a kaleidoscope as his limbs stiffened and refused to move. The scents and colors and heat were all he knew for a few minutes. And then he knew no more. His eyes glazed over there on the grass of the drainage gully just behind the fence that ran along the back of his yard. In his last moments, he only wanted to go home.

But the spiders were only there for one purpose. And letting their food go home wasn’t it. They bit and bit, and soon the dog’s tan fur was falling to the grass, bits of red coating each short hair. They had found a good bit of food for the night, and they would be here for hours, mining the best pieces of the small dog for their culinary pleasure…

But tomorrow, even with a whole dog to feast on, the spiders would be hungry again.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Wednesday, May 15. 6:54 p.m.

Tori pushed the shirts and blouses down the closet rail one by one, and then got to the end of the casual ones and began pushing them all back the opposite direction. Not pink, not yellow, too frilly, too blah… Finally she pulled one out that she thought might be okay. It was blue and purple and pink, with a weird almost tie-dye design, only the swirls in the design were words and distinct shapes, not completely haphazard like tie-dye. She liked the way the cut clung to her waist and it had a good V to the neckline that let her show off some cleavage, but wasn’t so deep that her dad would stop her from leaving the house.

She pulled it over her pink silk bra (she’d put it on after school specifically for Nate; she
assumed
that he was going to see it).

After slipping a silver thread of a belt through her jeans, she ran a brush through the sides of her hair and decided that she was ready.

Dressed to be undressed.

She texted Nate,
Where you at?
and he answered almost instantly.
There in 2 minutes!

She had barely walked into the kitchen when she heard his car in the driveway. “Nate’s here, gotta go!” she told her mom, with a quick peck on the cheek.

She knew her mother wasn’t crazy about her going out with Nate. And Tori watched her mom struggle with what she wanted to say almost every time they had a date. It all boiled down to “station”. Tori was a cheerleader for the Passanattee Gators, and her mother thought she should be dating one of the big, buff football players, not some geek who liked to monkey around with cars all the time. Tori’s strategy was just to never give her mom time to bring it up.

“Be back by ten,” her mom said, with a by-now familiar frown hidden in her smile. “It’s a school night.”

Tori grinned. “You didn’t ask me if I got all my homework done.”

“I can only nag on so many fronts. I have to pick my battles.”

“Well, I did!” Tori said, “And I will!”

Nate was just walking up the front sidewalk to knock on her door when Tori stepped outside. His eyebrows raised. “I didn’t knock.”

“You didn’t have to. You can hear that Charger a block away.”

“And you love it,” he said. She smiled but didn’t contradict him. Tori
did
love the Charger. It was an old ’80s car that Nate had bought used from someone. The car had been in an accident and sat in a garage for years before the previous owners finally decided to unload it, and Nate had gotten it cheap. His dad had spent weeks helping him fix it up and they’d repainted it midnight black, with pinstripes. They had even recovered the upholstery inside with a fake black leather. It was like a new car, but the dashboard still had an old FM radio with a cassette tape deck. No CDs or Sirius in this car. But it had an engine and a half. When Tori sat in the passenger seat and Nate revved it, she could feel the vibration of power right through to her heart. She loved the car almost as much as Nate…for her, it was like a visible extension of her boyfriend.

Nate put a hand to his forehead and leaned against the steering wheel to rub his temples. “Sorry,” he said when she put a hand on his shoulder. “Bad headache today.”

“You’ve had a lot of those this week.”

He nodded. “Tell me about it. I’ve used a whole bottle of aspirin, I think.”

“Maybe you should go to the doctor?”

“I’ll be all right,” he said. “It just twinges really bad sometimes.”

“Maybe some food would help,” she suggested.

“Maybe. Did you want to go to the Cheeseburger Haven for something to eat, or did you just want to head to the path?”

“Food first, fun to follow?” she said.

“Promise?” Nate asked. He pulled his fingers from his forehead, and grabbed the wheel. He looked a little pale, but forced a smile.

Tori hooked a finger in the V of her shirt and pulled down, exposing more of her cleavage along with the almost see-through silk of her bra. It had no underwire or padding…this bra was about tease.

And it worked. Nate took a breath, quick, and then said, “Fast food then.”

An hour later, sated with fresh-cut fries and greasy burgers, they walked down the path near Bayneaux Grove that they had used as their make-out spot for the past several weeks. They weren’t the only ones. As you stepped off the official walking path near the fallen pine and the large rock and followed the foot-scuffed path deeper into the trees of the wetland, the ground was littered with potato chip wrappers and beer bottles. Despite the abundant evidence of use, they had almost always been the only ones there at any given time.

Somewhere, not far away, a dog barked excitedly for a minute. The sound of its alarm led Tori to take Nate’s hand as they walked. He squeezed hers back, when the barks slowed and turned from a yowl to a whimper.

“It sounds like it’s hurt,” Tori said. But Nate shook his head. “Probably just got slapped in the butt with a newspaper for making such a racket,” he said.

Presently, the dog quieted.

The sun was setting and the dark inside the grove quickly grew thick. Nate always carried a flashlight that helped them follow the path if it got too dark. And once they were at the tiny clearing they usually kicked back in, he could telescope the flash’s midsection so that light came out of the trunk of the light, instead of the front beam. It was pretty handy—it provided a nice diffused light that didn’t totally ruin the blue velvet beauty of the night sky. Sometimes they just lay back on the ground together, had a smoke, and stared at the millions of stars overhead.

It wasn’t dark enough for the light yet, but still, somehow, Nate put his foot down wrong, or caught a root. With a startled exclamation of surprise, he suddenly went down ahead of her.

“What happened?” she said, kneeling at his back. “Are you okay?”

His voice was muffled; Nate’s forehead rested on his arm. “I’m fine,” he promised. With a faint moan, he lifted his head, and then slowly, moved to a crouch, and then finally to his feet.

“You remind me of my grandpa,” she said, trying to joke with him.

“Do you want to blow your grandpa?” Nate asked. His voice still sounded throttled by pain.

Tori slapped him. “I mean, you’re all stiff.”

“Everything aches,” he said. “I’ve probably got the flu or something.”

“Great,” she said. “Is that the guy’s equivalent of ‘I’ve got a headache’?”

He laughed. “Nope. Headaches never stop a guy. Don’t think I’m trying to get out of this! I figure, you’ve been kissing me all week. If you’re going to catch whatever I’ve got, you’re already screwed.”

“Damn, and I didn’t even
feel
it!” she said. “What a cheat.” She flashed him an exaggerated pouty face.

“Patience,” he said as they stepped out of the trees into a small clearing four to five yards across. The drone of insects mixed with the whisper of the slow-moving brook just beyond where the trees picked up again was all that broke the quiet. Nate knelt and opened his backpack, pulling out a small plastic bag from a zippered compartment.