by John Saul
Kevin rolled his eyes. “Except last night, and the night before, and the night before that! This time of year it’s so loud you can hardly sleep.”
“I like it,” Julie said. “Let’s just listen for a while, okay?”
Kevin glanced around, feeling vaguely uneasy. Why did Julie want to listen to a bunch of insects chirping? “Let’s just go on home, okay?” he said.
Julie turned to look at him, but her face was still lost in dark shadows. “You’re not scared, are you?” she asked.
Her voice suddenly sounded different to Kevin; there was a quality to it that sent a chill through him.
Not a chill of fear.
Another kind of chill, an exciting one.
He swallowed nervously. “I—I just think we should at least get back to the farm,” he said. “I mean, I’m not even sure whose property we’re on. What if they catch us?”
“What if they do?” Julie countered. “Who cares?” Her voice dropped again. “I mean, it’s not like we’re doing anything we shouldn’t be, are we?”
A nervous flutter churned in Kevin’s belly. Was it just his imagination, or was she thinking the same thing he suddenly was? “W-We could go down by the creek,” Kevin stammered, not quite answering her questions. “It’s really neat down there at night.”
Almost to his own relief, Julie didn’t answer him, but when he started across the field, she moved along with him, her hand in his.
Half an hour later, coming to the edge of a field that Kevin knew belonged to Vic Costas, they found a dirt road that wound along the edge of the valley, following the contours of the foothills. Perhaps a quarter of a mile away, he could see the lights of their house, beckoning in the darkness.
Fifty yards down the road an old wooden bridge spanned the creek, marking the boundary between the Owen farm and the one next door. When they came to the bridge, Kevin led Julie off the road and down the low bank to the edge of the water. “There’s a neat place just downstream,” he told her. “Come on.” Edging along the rocky bank, he worked his way toward a small copse of oaks that flanked the creek. There was a sandy area there, a miniature beach, where he and Jeff Larkin had often gone swimming.
And just as often fantasized about bringing girls, who, in their imaginations, would be more than willing to join them in skinny-dipping, and afterward …
Kevin shuddered with excitement as the fantasy played out in his mind.
Then he groaned silently—here he was with Julie, almost to the beach that was the site of his very best fantasies, and he hadn’t even brought a blanket!
But maybe it wouldn’t matter—maybe, if Julie wanted to go swimming, they could just sort of stretch out in the sand afterward and …
Kevin’s imagination shifted into high gear, and he felt once more that thrill of excitement in his groin. Maybe, just maybe, tonight was the night he was finally going to—
And then the fantasy exploded in his mind, blasted to smithereens by the sound of a voice.
His father’s voice.
“Better get back to the house,” he heard his father say as a flashlight came on. “I think Molly’s just about to fall asleep.”
Kevin froze. Molly? His dad and Karen? What were they doing down here? Why weren’t they in the house, where they belonged? He took a step backward, about to turn around and lead Julie back the way they’d come, when he suddenly felt his foot slip. Losing his balance, he reached out and grabbed Julie to steady himself, and heard a clatter as the loose rocks shifted beneath his feet.
“Shit!” The word exploded unbidden from his throat. A second later, out of the blackness, a dark form hurled itself at him. His balance completely destroyed by Bailey’s joyful assault, he collapsed to the ground as the big dog licked at his face. “Will you get off!” Kevin cried, struggling under the dog as a beam of light pierced the darkness, momentarily blinding him.
“Kevin?” he heard his father say. “Julie? What are you two …” The words died on Russell’s lips as he realized that he knew exactly what they were doing. Or at least what Kevin had been planning to do. “Perhaps,” he said, doing his best not to laugh out loud at the expression of acute embarrassment on his son’s face, “we all ought to go back to the house.”
“You want to see my bug?” Molly asked her sister as the family came in through the kitchen door. “Where’s a jar, Mommy?”
Karen retrieved an empty mason jar from one of the shelves in the pantry and handed it to Molly, who dropped a large june bug into it and screwed its lid tight. The beetle, which Molly had been clutching in her fist for almost half an hour, despite Russell’s insistence that they could catch another one just by turning on the porch light, lay on its back for a moment, struggled, then managed to right itself, apparently none the worse for wear.
“Isn’t it neat?” Molly demanded, handing the jar to Julie for her inspection.
Julie looked at the insect, which was now circling the container, searching for a way out. “Why don’t you let it go?” she asked Molly. “It’ll just die in the jar.”
“No!” Molly insisted. “It’s mine, and it won’t die if I feed it!”
“You won’t do anything till you put your pajamas on,” Karen interrupted, shooing her youngest daughter out of the kitchen. Then, as Molly headed through the dining room toward the stairs, Karen finally got a good look at Julie under the bright light of the kitchen’s fluorescent tubes.
Her daughter looked pale, and there was an unhealthy sheen of sweat on her forehead, as if she were running a fever. Frowning, Karen laid her wrist on Julie’s forehead.
To her surprise, Julie’s temperature seemed normal.
“You’re sure you feel all right?” she asked. “You don’t look very good. Maybe you’re finally having a reaction to the shot Dr. Filmore gave you.” Her eyes shifted to Russell. “Do you think we ought to call her?”
“It’s the middle of the night, Mom,” Julie protested. “And I’m not sick.”
“Maybe she just picked up some kind of bug,” Russell suggested. “Let’s not bother Ellen if we don’t have to. If she’s not all over it by morning, we’ll take her to the clinic then.”
Julie’s eyes rolled. “There’s not anything to get over,” she groaned. “I’m going to bed! Good night.”
She started out of the kitchen, but Russell’s voice stopped her. “Not quite yet!”
Julie turned back to look nervously at her stepfather.
Russell’s glance flicked from Julie to Kevin, who was standing near the back door, studiously avoiding his father’s gaze. “Have you two made up a story you think we’ll swallow, or do you just want to tell us the truth and get it over with?”
Julie’s demeanor turned stormy. “You’re not my father—” she began, but now her mother stopped her.
“This is one family now, Julie. Russell’s your stepfather, and you’ll treat him with proper respect.” Julie started to protest again, but this time her mother’s words stopped her completely. “Before you say anything else,” Karen said with deceptive gentleness, “I think you should know the beer is still on your breath.”
Julie’s eyes widened. “We only had one apiece,” she said.
“Which is one too many,” Karen told her. “You two said you were going to a movie,” she said, her glance going to the clock. “Obviously, you didn’t, since you haven’t even been gone two hours.”
Julie and Kevin glanced at each other, and then Kevin spoke: “The movie wasn’t any good, so we left. And I guess when Andy said he had some beer, we should have just walked home right then.” He shrugged helplessly. “But we didn’t. We went up to the power lines, and when Andy started passing out the beer, we each took one. Then we split.”
Russell eyed one teenager, then the other. “Why did you leave?”
This time it was Julie who answered. “I just didn’t like it up there,” she said, shrugging. “So we decided to walk home.”
“And that’s it?” Russell asked.
Kevi
n and Julie’s eyes met for a second, and they both nodded.
“All right,” Russell said. “Karen and I will discuss it, and let you know in the morning what we’ve decided. But I suspect you can both count on being grounded for at least a week.”
“A week—” Julie began, but Russell held up a cautioning hand.
“I suppose if you want to argue about it, we could make it two weeks,” he offered.
Julie was still glaring at him, shocked into silence by his words, when Molly’s june bug began to hum.
As she listened to the humming from the bottle, something inside Julie responded to it. Her anger toward Russell was completely forgotten. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Is it all right if I go to bed now?”
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 stirred, 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 thrumming 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 nightgown?
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 whir 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?
