Homing (48 page)

Now the sound was getting louder, and he could feel the tickling sensation again. On both legs now, and on his arms, too.

As if hundreds of insects were crawling all over him The humming sound got louder, and he could feel a faint breeze, as if they were flying all around him-more of them than he could even imagine-their wings moving the air enough so he could actually feel it on his face.

Then they began lighting on his face, and suddenly, as his panic built, the little boy had a vision in his mind.

A vision of the bugs in his cigar boxes.

The bugs he'd caught, and killed, and mounted on pins.

Then he remembered. The insects he'd killed then thrown away when they fell apart as he tried to mount them. Suddenly he knew what was happening.

It wasn't the monsters and demons from his nightmares that were in the darkness.

It was all the insects he'd killed.

All the tiny creatures he'd caught in his jar, and killed. They were coming for him now, coming at him out of the darkness.

They were going to do to him what he had done to them.

He felt them crawling over his skin, heard their vibrating wings humming in his ears, felt them creeping into his ears and nose.

His howls of terror filled the darkened room, echoing off the walls to reverberate in his ears, but still the creatures crawled over him, swarming around him, the humming of their wings growing louder every second.

He began flailing his arms, thrashing out at his invisible tormentors, then rolling across the floor, frantically trying to escape the horde of creatures.

They were everywhere. He could feel them beneath him almost hear their wings and shells crush as he rolled over them.

The floor was beginning to feel slick, but no matter what he did, where he tried to go to escape them, there were always more.

The air was thick with them now, and when he flailed his arms in the darkness, he could feel them, sense them preparing to bite and to sting.

His howls rose louder He scrambled to his feet and stumbled around the blacked-out darkroom, his mind starting to shatter as he tried to escape his tormentors.

He lurched into a wall, his face striking the cold concrete, and he felt a warm gush of blood spurt from his nose.

Shrieking in pain, he dropped back to the floor Now the bugs were sticking to the blood covering his face, and he could even feel them in his mouth.

He screamed again, but his voice choked in his throat, and he sobbed helplessly as he scrambled across the floor in a vain effort to escape the teeming, swirling mass.

They were going to kill him!

He was going to die, all by himself, and no one was going to come and save him.

"Mommy . . . " he sobbed. The word was barely audible.

A horrible weakness coming over him, he crouched quivering on the floor, the terror within tearing at his mind.

"Mommy . . ."

Then, from somewhere far away, he thought he saw a ray of light.

He froze, certain 'for a split second that he must have died and the light must be God, come to take him to Heaven.

Then, as a brilliant glare burst over his head and the darkness surrounding him was washed away, he heard a sound. His sister. It was his sister, and she was laughing!

He sat up, blinking in the brightness.

Why would she be laughing?

Then he heard her voice again.

"What's wrong with you?" she was asking. "It's not even cockroaches, you little creep. It's only termites. termites can't hurt you!"

His eyes slowly adjusted to the light and began to Finally focus as he saw them.

Thousands of them, swarming up from the cracks in the concrete floor, down from the timbers that supported the floor of the house.

They swirled around his head, and he tried to get away from them, tried once more to brush them off his skin.

A shadow fell over the little boy, then he felt his sister's hand close on his arm.

He tried to pull away from her, sobbing loudly, the terror of the attack in the darkness still making his heart pound.

His sister dragged him to his feet, but he struggled Against her

"Will you stop wiggling?" he heard her say. "Just let me get us out of here! "

As he sobbed once more, his sister's hand lashed out, striking him across the cheek. He howled at the stinging on his flesh, but his howl only brought him another blow, and then another

"Shut up!" she yelled at him. "What are you crying about? It's just a bunch of dumb termites! "

Again he felt her hand slash across his face, and he howled all the louder She kept hitting him, kept telling him to shut up, but he couldn't, for every time her hand struck his flesh, a new howl of pain erupted from his throat.

Then, when he was sure she was going to kill him, she released him instead, and he fell into a sobbing heap on the floor

"Fine, " he heard her say. "If you're going to act like a baby, you can just get treated like one. Stay here until you die, for all I care."

As he sobbed, the lights went out again and once more the darkness-the horrible darkness that hummed with the terrifying buzz of thousands of beating wings-closed around him.

The bugs were crawling over his skin, creeping into his ears, worming up into his nose.

And as he lay in the darkness, the insects torturing his body and his mind, a hot spark of hatred began to smolder within his soul He concentrated on the glowing ember of hatred.

Concentrated on it, and nurtured it, and began to fan it into a raging flame.

And as he lay on the hard concrete, waiting for someone to come and rescue him from the darkness and the insects, the hate consumed him.

It was a hatred he would never let go of.

He would keep feeding it until it grew so large, so strong, that it would never go away, never be satisfied.

And always be triggered by the sight of a girl who looked like his sister A girl with a flowing mane of thick, dark hair ...

No!

It wasn't happening! It was only a memory, and he wasn't a little boy anymore, and the lights weren't even off.

Carl Henderson lay still for a moment, forcing himself to relax, closing his mind to the awful memory.

His heartbeat slowed and his breathing, which a moment ago had been rasping in panting gasps of terror, evened out.

He began to remember what had happened last night, and how he'd gotten here.

He listened, his ears searching for the sound of Ellen Filmore's murmuring voice.

Despite the insulation he'd installed in the room years ago, he knew the soundproofing wasn't perfect-he'd been able to hear the screams of the girl he'd killed, and Otto, and Ellen Filmore, and before exhaustion had finally overcome him, he'd heard her voice as she talked to Roberto Munoz.

Now, though, there was nothing.

Nothing, except for a faint hum.

A hum, he realized a moment later, that sounded like the beating wings of millions of insects.

Carl Henderson sat up, the panic he'd fought off only a moment ago suddenly rising again.

Had they released his pets?

Were they working their way into the darkroom even now?

His eyes fixed on the little pass through he himself had built. Was it about to open, triggered from the outside, and release some of the creatures he'd so lovingly nurtured into this room where he had no defenses at all?

Abruptly, all his senses came alive, all his nerves began tingling.

In his mind he saw once again the body of the girl he'd left hanging from the wall to be devoured by the ants.

And Otto Owen's body, covered with scorpions that had scurried off into the darkest crevices of the room when he'd switched on the light.

Were they still there?

What if the light went off now?

The spiders.

What about the spiders he'd released to torment Ellen Filmore? Where were they?

The hum of the beating wings grew louder, filling Carl Henderson's ears. Driven by panic, he struggled to his feet and lurched to the door, where his fists beat futilely Against the panels he himself had reinforced.

"Let me out," he pleaded. "Oh, God, let me out....

But on the other side of the door there was nobody to hear him. and finally he sank once more to his knees, the hum of the gathering swarm growing ever louder in his ears.

The swarm that Carl Henderson did not yet understand was real ...

Real, and coming home.

"My God," Karen said. "What's happening?"

Russell braked the car to a stop, as awed as his wife by what he was seeing beyond the windshield.

The air was thick with insects, swirling around the car, seeming to come from every direction. But ahead of them the churning, roiling cloud thickened and darkened, an impenetrable mass of teeming life advancing across the field from the hills, moving steadily closer to the old Victorian house in which Carl Henderson had spent his entire life.

"they're in there," Marge Larkin whispered from the backseat. She leaned forward, resting her hands on the back of the front seat, gazing between Karen and Russell.

"I can feel it. The kids are in there."

"It's like what we saw, Mommy," Molly piped, standing up to get a better view. "Except there's even more of them now! Where are they coming from?"

None of the adults in the car answered her, for all of them were simply staring at the swirling mass, barely able to comprehend that it was there at all, let alone what force might be driving it.

For several long moments the five occupants of the car sat silently, the light of dawn slowly fading as the ever building swarm moved eastward, blocking out the sun.

"I don't like it," Ben Larkin said, his voice quavering with the fear they were all feeling. "I want to go home!"

Marge Larkin slipped one arm around him and the other around Molly, drawing both children close.,"It's all right," she soothed. "We're safe. They can't get into the car."

In the front seat Russell, hearing her words, reached out to the dashboard and began flipping the levers that would close all the car's vents.

Karen, catching the movement out of the corner of her eye, glanced over at him. "They can't, can they?" she asked. Now her own voice trembled as her eyes shifted away from Russell to fix on a mass of wasps that alighted on the windshield and moved across it, finally stopping at the edges where, to Karen's horror, their mandibles began gnawing the black rubber seal that held the window in place. Reaching out, she took Russell's hand, and he squeezed it.

"We're okay," he said. "Cars aren't like they used to be.

They're sealed so tight they'll float these days." But even as he uttered the words, he wondered if he was speaking the truth.

Julie came to the picket fence separating the pasture from the yard behind Carl Henderson's house. Though her eyes gave no clue that she even saw the barrier, she stopped a foot in front of it and waited. With no break in their own pace, Kevin Owen, Jeff Larkin, and Andy Bennett moved past her and began tearing pickets from the two rails until enough of them were gone for Julie to pass through, moving inexorably on toward the house, oblivious to the dense mass of insects surrounding her, unaffected by the howl generated by the millions of wings vibrating within a few feet of her ears.

Yet inside her, the living mind of the colonizing swarm was steadily functioning, and from every pore of Julie's body pheromones were constantly emanating, directing the churning horde that surrounded her and her attendants.

As she moved up the steps onto the front porch of the house, yellow jackets and paper wasps responded to a nesting instruction and began gathering cellulose, stripping it away from the siding of Carl Henderson's house, each of them carrying off a tiny fragment, returning a moment later for another.

From the ground beneath the house, ants swarmed up, and in the timbers supporting the structure, the termites went mad, their mandibles working frantically.

As Julie opened the door of the house, the swarm funneled in as if drawn by a vacuum. Soon the whole house was vibrating with the pulse of their humming wings.

And in the basement, locked in his still-illuminated chamber, Carl Henderson began to sweat as the distant hum he'd first heard only moments ago rose to a pitch that seemed to drive into his brain like a hot spike.

As Julie moved toward the basement door-Jeff, Andy, and Kevin still following in her footsteps-the cockroaches hiding in the dark crevices of the kitchen scurried forth, disappearing into the electrical sockets, making their way into conduits, to chew on the already worn insulation of the old house's wiring.

Opening the door below the stairs, Julie and her attendants started down the flight into the basement.

Now the nests of insects that Carl Henderson had tended and n for years also began to respond. The ant colonies teemed with activity, the workers who had for generations remained content within the artificial boundaries of their nests suddenly going mad, burrowing into the lead linings of their cases. As the workers dropped away from the task, their mandibles quickly worn down by the lead, their systems poisoned by it, others replaced them. Finally the barriers were breached and the creatures joined the hordes of other insects that were already welling out of the cracks in the ancient concrete floor and the riddled beam above.

Coming to the bottom of the stairs, Julie stopped. And then, eyes fixed in front of her, she began to move again.

Toward the closed door to Carl Henderson's secret chamber.

Carl Henderson stared in horror at the insects that seemed to be oozing out of the walls. From above him, thousands were pouring out of the support beams of the house, ( from the cracks in the floor, ants of every conceivable variety were emerging.

Cockroaches appeared out of nowhere, and as Henderson looked up in ten-or at the bare bulb above him, praying its bright light might wash away the dark horror that was suddenly all around him another roach crept out from beneath the socket itself and dropped onto his face.

As he screamed and brushed the scurrying creature away from his cheek, the light went out, plunging Henderson into a black hell.