Homing (29 page)

Flopping down on the thin mattress and propping himself up on one elbow, Russell patted the bed in an invitation for Karen to sit down. "I'm not going to say it's impossible that he was right," he said. "I just don't believe it. At least, I don't believe that there's some great plot going on, like Dad did. So for tonight, let's just forget about everything and pretend we're not even at home." He glanced around the den. "This is kind of fun," he said, pulling her down so she was lying next to him. "We can pretend we're in someone else's house, and we're all alone, and"

And then the door opened and Molly stood staring solemnly at them, clutching her teddy bear close to her chest.

"I hear them again," she said. "I'm scared."

Sighing, Russell rolled away from Karen and stood up, knowing instantly that any chance at romance was over for the night. "Bring her sleeping bag in here," he told Karen.

"I'll go up and take a look, just to make you feel better."

But even as he headed up the stairs, he was certain that Molly had heard nothing at all, but simply decided she'd rather sleep with her mother than with her sister. Nor could Russell blame her for that, given the way Julie had been acting the last couple of days.

Upstairs, just as he'd expected, nothing at all had changed.

Kevin was in his room, already asleep, and when Russell pressed his ear to the wall that contained the swarm of bees, he could barely hear them.

Less than five minutes after he'd left, he was back downstairs, and when he finally climbed into the sagging Hide-A-Bed in the den and gathered Karen into his arms, Molly was already sound asleep in her sleeping bag on the floor. "Everything's fine up there," he reported. "Whatever Molly heard, I don't think it was coming from upstairs. In fact, it might not have been anywhere but in her imagination."

Karen snuggled close, feeling the strength of his body.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "It would have been fun, pretending we were all alone, wouldn't it?"

"Mmm-hmm," Russell murmured, already falling asleep. A minute later he began to snore softly, and finally Karen, too, rolled over and buried her head in the pillow.

She was too tired to worry anymore that night, and soon she drifted into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

It was nearly two in the morning when Julie awoke the first time.

She was feeling another one of those strange chills, but as she pulled the sleeping bag tighter around her body, she realized that she was hungry, too.

Ravenously hungry, just as she'd been yesterday morning.

She'd eaten a huge dinner-three helpings of the lasagna that her mother had pulled out of the oven when they'd finally gotten home from the doctor's, and a big salad, and then a piece of pie.

But still she was hungry.

She slid out of the sleeping bag, pulled on the robe she'd left on the couch, and went into the kitchen. Rummaging in the refrigerator, she found the last piece of leftover pie, washed it down with a glass of milk, then, her appetite still unsated, began looking for something else.

Fixing a sandwich, she finally turned out the kitchen lights and started back to the living room. But when she got to the foot of the stairs, she paused and gazed up into the darkness.

From above, something seemed to be calling out, drawing her up toward the blackness on the second floor.

Nothing she could see, nothing she could hear.

But she could feel it.

A vibration, resonating deep within her.

Julie stood staring up into the darkness, feeling the beginnings of that terrible loss of control over her own mind beginning to play around the edges of her consciousness.

She didn't want to go upstairs, didn't want to respond at all to the tingling sensation that was now spreading through her body or the strange compulsion that was drawing her to the stairs.

She wanted to go back to the den, slip into her sleeping bag, and drift quickly into unconsciousness, where she would be free of the forces inside her.

But a moment later-despite her own wishes-Julie walked up the stairs, almost as if in a trance, then down the hall and into her room.

Stretching out on her own bed, she began eating the sandwich.

As she ate, the vibration in her body became stronger.

And now she could hear the droning hum coming from the wall. At last, the sandwich finished, she got up and went to the wall, pressing her ear Against it.

The humming in the wall resonated perfectly with the strange vibration in her own body, and she began to experience something she'd never felt before.

It was as if she was actually feeling the droning of the bees.

Was such a thing possible?

The vibration grew steadily stronger, and Julie's own consciousness began to drop away into some bottomless darkness.

A barely audible whimper of fear emerging from her lips, she used the last of her willpower to push herself away from the wall and stagger to her bed.

Then, as she lost control of her mind to the dark force within her, a sudden bout of feverish heat swept through her, and she stripped off her bathrobe and the nightgown beneath it.

For a little while she drifted into oblivion....

Julie awoke again just before dawn, when the blackness Of night was just beginning to fade into the gray of morning.

For a second she felt nothing, then slowly realized that the odd vibration she'd experienced earlier was still there.

But it was different now. Now it was coming neither from within her own body nor from the wall a few feet away.

Now it was on her skin.

She came further awake, and realized that the whole surface of her body felt charged with an electrical force.

She lay still, waiting for the sensation to disappear as she came fully awake.

It struck her that the droning hum of the bees was louder than ever.

A cool breeze was blowing.

Julie turned her head toward the window.

The sheer curtains, which should have been billowing in the breeze, were hanging slack at the sides of the open window.

Then Julie felt something else on her face, and her heart began to speed up as a memory surged up out of her subconscious.

A memory from the other night, when she dreamed she'd been outside, naked, lying in the pasture, her body covered with millions of tiny red ants.

But that had been a dream-she was certain of it!

Now, though, dawn was breaking, and she was wide awake.

Awake, but with that same feeling of millions of tiny creatures crawling over her skin.

Suddenly an image came into her mind.

Beehives!

Beehives, on the hot afternoon when she'd first seen them.

An afternoon so hot that hundreds of bees had stationed themselves on the ledge at the entrance to the hive, their wings beating as they fanned fresh air into the colony's interior.

Fanned air, creating a breeze.

For several long minutes Julie held absolutely still. Of course she knew the idea that had come into her mind wasn't possible, but try as she would, she couldn't dismiss it.

Finally she reached out, moving her arm very slowly, and switched on the bedside lamp.

Bees were everywhere.

Hovering in the air a few inches from her face.

Crawling on the walls and across the ceiling.

Covering her skin.

A violent shudder came over her now that she could see them as well as feel them.

They were clinging to her, their wings beating so fast her eyes could see only a blur.

Yet at the same time that her terror of them began to grow once more, another part of her-that unnameable force that resided within her-responded to the breeze as it gently caressed her skin.

And the morning brightened and the gray light of dawn slowly filled her room, and the entity within expanded, sapping the last of Julie's will.

suddenly it was as it had been yesterday, when the bees swarmed over Greta and she'd known that somehow they had come in response to her own command, in response to that burst of strange energy she'd felt in her mind.

She rose from the bed and went to look at herself in the mirror over her bureau.

Her face was an undulating mask of insects, her features totally invisible, only her eyes still exposed, peering through an ever-shifting layer of bees that seemed to be moving in a pattern, almost as if they were performing some kind of ritual dance.

Fascinated by the sight, Julie gazed into the mirror for several long minutes. Soon she began to understand that the bees weren't individuals at all, but merely tiny parts of the swarm that together comprised a single being.

A being that was communicating with her.

The pattern of movement on Julie's face kept shifting and changing, and slowly she felt something happening within her mind.

She began to understand what the dance meant.

Turning away from the mirror, her mind now totally surrendered to the will of the swarm, she left her room.

The bees clung to her skin as she moved silently down the darkened hallway and descended the stairs.

More of them gathered as she left the house by the back door and started walking across the yard.

Soon they were streaming out of the house, erupting not only from the crack in the siding through which they'd first gained entry, but from the window of Julie's room as well. Like a long ribbon fluttering on the morning breeze, the swarm trailed after Julie.

As the morning sky slowly brightened and the first cocks began to crow, Julie Spellman started up into the low, rolling hills to the east of the farm, following a force of nature that neither she nor any other human could comprehend.

The bees moved steadily on her face, and now Julie could feel their pattern on her skin, her nerves tingling as the insects' legs stimulated them.

The nerves sent messages to her brain that something inside her understood.

And Julie walked on.

Soon the low hum that had emanated from within the walls of the house was silenced. Obeying the command of their queen, the swarm had departed.

"Mommy! Mommy!"

Karen groaned, tried to pull the pillow over her head, then slowly opened her eyes. Molly's face loomed in front of her. "What, honey?" she asked. "What is it? What time is it?"

"I can't find Julie," Molly told her. "It's almost six, and we should have fed Flicka and the rest of the horses by now, but I can't find her!"

The last vestiges of sleep fell away from Karen. She sat up, wincing as a sharp pain shot through her back. Too old for sofa beds, she thought as she swung her legs off the thin mattress. "What do you mean, you can't find her?

Where did you look?"

"In the living room," Molly replied. "Then I went down to the barn, but she isn't there, either."

"Did you ask Russell?" Karen asked. She'd awakened briefly when he'd gotten up an hour ago, then fallen instantly back to sleep, intending only to close her eyes for a few minutes.

"He's already gone," Molly told her. "He went on the tractor with Kevin."

"All right," Karen sighed. Pulling on her robe, she picked up the clothes she'd left on Russell's big leather easy chair and headed for the downstairs bathroom. "I'll be out in a minute," she told Molly. "Wait for me in the kitchen." Then, as she saw her daughter's furtive glance toward the ceiling, "Don't you even think about going up stairs, understand?"

"Aw, Mom," Molly groaned, but Karen silenced her with a look.

Dressing quickly, Karen started toward the kitchen, pausing at the foot of the stairs to call up to Julie. And yet, if Julie were asleep in her room at the end of the corridor, would she even hear a voice calling from all the way downstairs?

Maybe she should go up and take a look.

But what about the bees? If they were still up there ...

Recalling what had happened to Greta yesterday, Karen shuddered, and knew that for now she simply couldn't bring herself to go up to the second floor. Besides, she rationalized, Julie had probably gotten up early and was outside somewhere. Moving through the dining room and the kitchen, she went out on the back porch and rang the triangle to summon the rest of the family.

But ten minutes later, when everyone had assembled in the kitchen, Julie was still missing.

No one had seen her that morning.

It was Kevin who finally went upstairs to check Julie's room. When he came back, he looked puzzled. "She's not up there," he reported. "And neither are the bees."

Karen blinked. "The bees are gone?"

"Practically all of them," Kevin said. "You can't hear anything at all in the wall, and there are only a few flying around the window."

Molly, once more sitting at the table, a bowl of cereal in front of her, looked up at her stepfather. "Why would they go away all by themselves, if no one made them?"

Russell pondered Molly's question, but in the end shook his head helplessly. "I don't have any idea at all," he admitted. "As far as I know, they won't go anywhere unless a queen is with them, and queens don't usually just take off. They tend to stay put."

"Then where'd they go?" Molly demanded.

"Can't we just be happy they're gone?" Karen broke in.

"What I need to know is where did Julie go?"

"You're sure she isn't upstairs?" Russell asked Kevin, who shook his head. "Then she must be outside somewhere," he declared.

But another idea was forming in Karen's head.

Jeff Larkin.

Jeff, who had a car, and who hadn't seemed any happier than Julie about the idea of going over to San Luis Obispo for more tests this morning. What if the two of them had just decided to do something else instead?

Picking up the phone, she dialed the number that someone-probably Kevin-had written on the wall next to Jeff's name. Her fingers drummed impatiently on the Formica countertop as the instrument at the other end rang half a dozen times before Marge Larkin's voice finally came on the line.

"Hello?"

"It's Karen Owen, Marge."

"Karen! Hi," Marge began, but a split second later, as the worry in Karen's voice sank in, Marge's voice turned guarded. "Has ... something happened?"