by Ira Robinson
He was big, but she never saw anything of his face. For all she knew, it could have been a woman, though it did not really feel that way to her.
The dread that coursed through her was real, instantly pressed into her the moment she saw the figure. As she looked back on it, it was almost as if the fear was exuding from it, something outside of herself that she was picking up on, instead of being generated within.
But how could that be?
She watched as a familiar pickup drove into the parking lot and stopped. Her brother got out and came through the door, bearing a small brown bag in one of his hands.
He adjusted his clothes a little before stepping through and nodded at her when he passed her desk.
"Hi, Bart," she offered, a smile crossing her lips.
He hesitated for a second beside her desk and looked at her, taking in her tired expression and sunken eyes.
"You look like hell. What's up?"
She did not let it upset her. "You're no rose of the morning, yourself." She tried to cover with a small giggle.
"So my wife tells me," he responded, nodding toward his office. "Come on back."
He walked away, greeting Noah as he passed the younger man by. Noah shouted that the coffee would be done in a few minutes as Bart opened his office door.
Sam followed, letting her thoughts drift free, though a rasp of the anxiety she had been chewing on still remained. Even if she could not speak it aloud, having her guys around her gave her at least a modicum of comfort, easing away most of the tensions that an hour before threatened to overwhelm her.
Sam passed through the office door and sat in the chair in front of the desk.
"What's up, Bart?"
He put the bag on his desk and opened it. The smell of the egg sandwich he brought from home made her stomach rattle. She realized she had not eaten in a long while.
"How's your head?"
"It only hurts when I think about it." She gestured toward the sandwich. "Mind if I have a little? I haven't eaten."
He broke a quarter of it away and handed it over the desk. It was still warm when she took a small bite. She smiled as she chewed. Bart's wife was a good cook, even with something as simple as a sandwich.
"You look really tired," he said as he bit into hia own. "You get any sleep?"
The smile faded. "Sure, a little, I guess."
"Yeah, right." He saw through the flimsy lie easily.
He rested back, bringing his sandwich with him. He brushed a few crumbs as he chewed. Sam kept quiet with her own mouthful, diverting her eyes away from his stare.
Finally, he said, "Tell you what. It's probably going to be a slow day at the festival. Why don't you go home and get some sleep, and come back before the ending fireworks tonight." He put the last bite in his mouth and said around it, "Sound good?"
She fought the urge to roll her eyes. If only he knew why she was there to begin with...
But she did not want to tell him about the night, nor risk him asking more questions if she refused his offer. He would demand to know why she didn't take the opportunity to rest when her exhaustion was so obvious.
She finally relented to his stare and nodded. "Sure, Bart. Sounds fine."
"Well, okay, then," he said, wiping his hands on a napkin he grabbed from the bag. "Get yourself home and I'll talk to you after." He tossed the it down on the desk and sat back again, tucking his fingers into his belt. The small bit of pudge across the leather pulled as he did.
Sam came to her feet and started to walk through the door. "See you later," she said as she passed through.
"Tell Noah to come here, would you?" he callout at her exit.
She hoped, as she left the building and got in her car, the light of day would dispel the dark thoughts away.
Chapter 9
Samantha shook her head slowly as she looked around.
No. Damn it, no.
She remained unmoving on the stool, staring in disheartened confusion, the painting on the easel before her still wet. Smears of muted colors and streaks of solid lines combined, but for a few minutes she could pick nothing out.
She did not want to.
She spared a glance down and saw she was in the floral pajamas she passed out in. When she came home, she gratefully curled up in her bed and fell asleep almost immediately.
Yet, here she was again, exhausted and unable to piece together how long she had been there or what exactly she had been up to. The painting was obvious, but what else had her body done while she was unaware?
How long had it been this time?
The light in the room was dim, cast off by one of the lamps; the others remained turned off. There was nothing from outside to help, either.
Had it merely been a few hours? Or had she missed an entire day, lost in the channels of memories she could not fathom.
Sam looked at the painting again, finally conceding to the draw it had on her. Even though the single light brought only subtle illumination, she could see a figure embedded into the paint. It was barely visible against the oil she put on the canvas as a background, nearly black.
The figure itself was only a few shades of black lighter, and seemed to be a view from the lower part of the chest upward.
Unease shuddered in the pit of Sam's stomach as the memory of the figure in the mist overlapped with the one on the fabric before her. The inspiration for what she saw was apparent, and she bared her teeth at it instinctively, hissing a breath through them.
The painting she made was subtle and barely discernible through the colors, but it was definitely there.
She did not know what creeped her out more: the figure itself, or the fact she did not remember painting it. Once again, something had taken over her faculties and done things against her will. Things were happening beyond her control anew.
Why the hell was this occurring? What was really going on? Sam did not know how much more of it she could take before it broke her.
The being in the painting seemed to be positioned so it was looking downward toward her feet. The hat on its head obscured the face enough so she could discern nothing of it, but the hat was doubtless the same style as the one she saw on it before.
A twinge crept through her as she realized it was the same type of hat Bart always wore, himself.
For a brief moment, her heart leaped, grabbing hold of the idea she was actually, for some reason, putting feelings she had about her brother on the canvas. Maybe transferring, with some of the frustration she had been feeling about the way he treated her coming out in her paintings.
But she despaired again when she realized it made no sense. Why would she do that, to begin with? More importantly, what she saw in the mist was not her brother.
She was sure of that much.
There had to be more to what was going on, and for her sanity's sake, she had to find out.
She had to, or risk losing herself entirely.
Sam looked at her hands, the clamminess oozing from them growing cooler as the air around them drew the heat away. She placed one on top of the other and rubbed, trying to warm them again, but small pools of dried paint stopped her.
What was that?
A hint of movement at the corner of her vision sucked Sam's attention back to the painting. She jumped to her feet, the stool clattering to the floor behind her.
The thing on the canvas was no longer looking down.
What should have been a face was a scant shade from black, veiling where anything else would have appeared, but the hat was now moved to show the thing was staring back at her.
Her mouth dropped open but no sound came out, shock tearing away any sense of thought. Horror mounted as the black began to fade, the veil coming into focus.
Where there had been only a dark patch, the paint flowed across the canvas, as marks of other colors took form, oozing into place, taking the shape of sockets where the eyes should be; they were hollow pits, showing only a dull red.
Sam stumbled backward a ste
p, then two, as more features formed and she could not bring herself to look aside, even as the fringes of her mind screamed at her to get away.
Her legs locked, as one hand rose, instinctively trying to block it all out. But the hard focus of her dread kept everything in perfect view.
When the teeth appeared, the rictus grin of a lip-less mouth, her breathing stopped midway, caught on the inhale. A soft scream shattered the silence pervading the room. Her body hesitated only for a moment longer before pushing itself into motion.
Without thinking, Sam grabbed a small can from the end table; its lid barely held fast to the top and her fingers pried it away easily.
She threw it at the painting, her hand moving automatically. It was driven by the fear pacing through her, a wolf roving through her veins.
The can impacted the top of the composition, breaking open with a metallic clatter and rush of liquid splattering all around. The easel knocked sideways but it, and the painting, remained upright, even as the dark paint from the can slid down the fabric, obscuring much of what was there.
Gobbets of thick ocher mess sloshed against the floor, and more dripped down the front. Sam's eyes were wide with the terror that still coursed through her, and each rivulet of paint making its way down took a piece of it all away.
But even as the paint drooled, Sam heard a gasping sound and, through the panic, she recognized it as laughter, driving the pace of her heartbeat to the breaking point.
It followed her into the living room, her feet stumbling as she tried, and failed, to gain control over her fear, but her body seemed disconnected from her mind. It was all too much. Too much.
The room at the front of her house was darkened, but the small light in the kitchen illuminated things enough for her wide eyes to see by, and she grabbed the revolver from the end table where she left it before she went to bed. She had not bothered to put it away in her exhaustion.
She huddled it close to her chest, rising and falling rapidly with her breathing and the beat of her heart.
Pound... pound... pound.
The hard pressure of it made her lungs ache and throb in her head, as beads of sweat dribbled into her left eye.
She squinted against it, using her free hand to wipe it away, but the sting remained adamantly in place.
The laugh droned on for a moment longer before finally coming to a stop, the echoes of it fading as quickly as it started. But even as that drained away, the familiar droning of the night life outside her house rose in volume.
Within seconds, it reached a crescendo Sam never heard before.
Strange taps against her windows distracted her fretting, one after the other. They increased in number, coming faster, and the dismay in her grew with it. She paced back and forth a few feet, the sound of her footsteps drowned out by the constant rattling of the glass.
The curtains were too thick for her to see anything from, but she stared at the window, anyway, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever was there.
Nothing was clear.
The gun in her grasp was her only comforting thought, the only thing that made her feel courageous enough to finally take the few steps across the room. She held it in front of herself, her finger against the trigger, ready to pull.
The tapping grew louder as she reached the curtain, and with the closeness, other vibrations joined in. Sliding, almost metallic sounds grated against the glass and the wood around it, but through her fear she wrenched the fabric of the sheer curtain from the sill.
It clattered down, pulled with the force of her yank, but the rustle of it was drowned out by the other noises.
She stepped aside, holding the gun away from her, pointing it at the frame in front of her.
Sam could not see through it at all; a dark mass blocked out anything beyond the pane.
It moved, pulsing with a strange pattern she could not discern. The bodies of the insects plastered against the pane jockeyed for positions, pressed together against their own weight.
There were thousands of them; some were large and familiar, others she did not recognize. Each seemed to be staring at her, drawn to her presence on the other side of the window sill. The sound of them clattering on the pane grew even stronger as the light from inside the house reached them with the missing curtain, somehow driving them into a furious frenzy.
"What the hell!" she shouted aloud, unconsciously lowering the gun.
Her voice seemed to affect the bugs. Some of them flew away, letting her catch a glimpse of the darkness beyond their bodies.
Her panic waned as she yelled, shifting to confusion and doubt at what her eyes were telling her was there.
Her addled sense of mind went against her better judgment, taking a few steps toward the front door.
Don't. Don't do this.
Her body worked against her psyche, drawn against her will. When her hand reached the knob, she had to shakily grasp it, the trembles out her control.
She took a deep breath and concentrated, bringing herself under a modicum of command, and jerked, swinging the door wide.
None were huddled on the door, nor was there any trace of the bugs along the wood of her porch. The strength of their sound, however, nearly overpowered her as the opening was made. The dissonant symphony was beyond anything she had ever heard.
Subtle smells of rot and muskiness swam in her head, but the lack of anything she could see directly in front of her forced her to take a few paces forward, breaking through the doorway into the outside world.
They were everywhere.
Her eyes could not grasp onto a lone batch and the change surrounding her from the normal rattled her senses. Thick carpets of bugs, so many she could not tell one from another, skittered and chattered all around.
She gripped the gun tighter and tried to pick out any familiarity, but the huge proportion of them simply warped everything into the surreal. It was all chaos, no sense of order in any way. Swaths of them flew away from the ground, only to land again nearby, piling atop one another. Other pockets of them crawled along the ground, and stragglers of them paced the edges of the groups.
It was too much for her to take in. A low moan from her throat was lost in the morass of chitinous life around her.
The panic shot through her again, buckling her knees beneath her. She opened her mouth slightly, her breathing breaking through clenched teeth.
She looked across the street, catching a glimpse of the light through the swarms of creatures clattering and flying through the air.
Her heart sank and her guts locked as she saw the figure there, once again staring at her as it had done before.
These things were there because of it. She knew it, felt it in the depths of her being. It was in control.
She gripped the gun tighter, putting both of her hands on it to steady herself. The dark thing seemed to watch her as she moved, sliding across the porch. She put her back to the wall of her house, and shouted at whoever - whatever - it was.
"What the hell do you want from me?"
It echoed off of her porch and into the air. The things along the ground stirred further as her voice reached them, but the carpet remained intact.
The dark one raised its arms and, as it did, the masses began to move even more. Thousands took flight, swirling around in circles toward it.
Then they came for her.
As they raced toward her, she lifted her own arms and pulled the trigger, aiming it through the flying bugs to the figure across the street.
The sound was massive, deafening her instantly. Tufts of powder and smoke rushed through the front of the barrel.
She was sure her aim was true, but the moment the gun was fired, the swarm surrounding her flew high, the carpet coming as one toward her.
She ducked, instinctively covering her face and eyes as the gun dropped to the wood slats of the porch. Sam squeezed her eyes shut and closed her mouth as the first ones smacked into her, small sparks of pain flaring across her arms as they hit.
It was not intense, but as the seconds passed and more of them drove themselves into her, it increased. The more they came, the more her skin burned and ached.
Her body became inundated until only the parts of her face not protected by her arms was cocooned in a mass, each biting and scratching her. They sucked the blood that leaked away, spreading it across the places her skin was bare.
What was covered by her pajamas was not safe, either. The bugs tore through even that, the thin fabric no match to their fangs and teeth.
