by John Saul
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 Muñoz.
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 thé nests of insects that Carl Henderson had tended and nurtured 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 beams 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, termites were pouring out of the support beams of the house, while from the cracks in the floor, ants of every conceivable variety were emerging.
Cockroaches appeared out of nowhere, and as Henderson looked up in terror at the
bare bulb above him, praying that 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.
The ants swarmed over him, their mandibles sinking into his skin, each of them injecting a tiny droplet of poison into him, until, within a few seconds, his skin felt as if it were on fire.
Screaming in fear and agony, he staggered toward the door, but the sound of his pounding fists was lost in the ever-rising howl of the insects that now filled the cellar beyond the door.
And then, miraculously, the lock was opened and Carl Henderson felt the door open in front of him.
For an instant—a moment so brief he barely had time to savor it—Carl Henderson felt the thrill of escape.
Then the swarm attacked, wasps and hornets sinking their stingers deep into his flesh as the mosquitoes settled on him to feast on his blood.
Drawing in his breath to scream, Henderson choked on a cloud of gnats, and, coughing, fell to the floor.
He scrabbled across it in a desperate attempt to escape his attackers, only to feel, a second later, a new presence.
Reaching out, his fingers closed on what he was certain was a human ankle.
But even before he had a chance to plead for mercy, Julie’s swollen fingers reached down and her long, stingerlike nails sank into his flesh.
At that moment, the roach-stripped wiring short-circuited, igniting the tinder-dry wood with which the house was constructed. As he died, the last thing Carl Henderson saw, hellishly illuminated in the flames, was a face—bloated, pale, inhumanly distended but nevertheless recognizable as a young girl’s face. A face framed by long dark hair.
Julie Spellman’s face … his sister’s face.
Carl Henderson’s house, invisible in a dense cloud of insects only a moment earlier, burst into flames, the fire erupting as if from nowhere, the flames fanned by the millions of beating insect wings.
Within seconds the whole structure was a blazing inferno, the flames shooting a hundred feet into the air, even the insects around the house feeding the conflagration.
Less than five minutes after the fire burst forth, the entire structure collapsed, what was left of the already half-devoured siding and timbers dropping into the pit of the basement, sending a shower of sparks and embers in every direction.
Then, as the flames died away, leaving nothing where the house had stood but a mass of smoldering coals, the cloud of insects began to disperse.
Other cars had gathered, their occupants drawn to the site of the burning house by the black smoke rising into the sky. Now, the shaken residents of Pleasant Valley began to emerge from their cars, staring at each other, dazed, barely able to believe what they had just witnessed. Smoking rubble was all that remained of Carl Henderson’s house.
As Karen and Russell, holding Molly, stood next to Marge Larkin, whose arms were wrapped protectively around Ben, Ellen Filmore emerged from the onlookers and came to stand beside them.
“It’s over,” Ellen said. “It was Carl who turned it loose on us, and in the end, it was Carl it came home to. But it’s over now.”
Karen Owen looked uncertainly at the doctor. “But our children,” she whispered. “Julie and Kevin. And Jeff …”
Ellen shook her head, thinking of the rat she and Roberto had dissected only a little while earlier. There was no point, she decided, in telling these people what their children must have suffered. “They would have died quickly,” she said. “They probably never even knew what happened.”
For a long time Karen Owen stared at the rubble. Finally, the doctor’s words echoing in her mind, she turned away.
Let it be true, she thought. Let it be over, and let them not have suffered any more than they could bear.
EPILOGUE
The coyote stopped short, his hackles rising as the unfamiliar scent filled his nostrils. His body stiffening, one forepaw lifted off the ground, he sniffed at the breeze. Then, in the growing heat of the morning, he set off in search of the prey whose smell he had detected on the wind.
He stopped again, for now the scent was strong. His ears pricking, he listened for any sound, motionless so as not to alert the prey to his presence.
Then he heard it.
A barely audible sound, but familiar.
Something injured.
In pain.
Dying.
Nothing he would have to hunt, or even fear.
His tail rising above his hindquarters like a plume, he started forward, his body quivering with eagerness, his jowls already dripping with saliva in anticipation of his meal.
Now he saw it.
He recognized the form instantly, for he’d seen human beings often.
He hesitated again, for he’d also learned to be wary of them.
This one, though, smelled different from the others.
It looked different, too.
It lay on the ground, in a position of submission, its belly exposed.
Wary, the coyote moved closer.
The form on the ground moved slightly, its skin rippling as if something were beneath it.
Again the coyote heard the moan that told him the creature was dying. Emboldened by the sound and the weakness of the form’s movements, the animal moved closer, sniffing once again at the scent emanating from the fallen human.
The smell of death was already starting to drift from its skin.
The coyote moved closer still, reaching out with one paw to prod at the creature.
Again it stirred, and again he heard it moan.
The coyote moved toward the head and the exposed throat, its instincts urging it to sink its teeth into the naked flesh, to rip the windpipe open, then stand back until the creature died and it would be safe to begin its feast.
Creeping closer, it paused one more time, hovering above the prey, its jaws agape.
And suddenly its victim’s mouth opened and a black cloud erupted from its throat, engulfing the coyote’s head in a stinging black mass, swarming into his open mouth, disappearing into his tongue and gums, burrowing into his skin and down his throat.
At that moment Sara McLaughlin, abandoned by the colony that had consumed her, finally died.
And the coyote, bearing its pain in unnatural silence, staggered as a wave of nausea swept over it. Then, regaining its footing, it turned and loped away.
Evil has a new name.
It moves without mercy.
It surrounds you like air.
It offers no escape.
For its dark, vaporous soul
will permeate every corner of your imagination
until there’s no more breath to scream.…
Read on
for a chilling look at
THE PRESENCE.…
Prologue
LOS ANGELES
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Everything was supposed to be getting better, not worse.
They’d promised him—everyone had promised him.
First the doctor: “If you take the pills, you’ll feel better.”
Then his coach: “Just try a little harder. No pain, no gain.”
Even his mom: “Just take it one day at a time, and don’t try to do everything at once.”
So he’d taken the pills, and he’d tried harder, but also tried not to do too much. And for a while last week things had actually seemed to improve. Although smog had settled over the city so heavily that most of his friends had cut out of school early—headed for the beach, where an offshore wind might bring fresh air in from the ocean—he’d gone to all his classes. After the last bell he’d stripped out of his clothes in the locker room and donned his gym shorts before going out to the track to do the four warm-up laps that always preceded the more serious work of the high hurdles.
The event that just might, with a lit
tle more work, make him a state champion on his eighteenth birthday.
And that day last week, when he was alone on the field, the pills had at last seemed to kick in. He’d been expecting to lose his wind halfway around the first lap, but even as he came around the final turn he felt his body surging with energy, his lungs pumping air easily, his heartbeat barely above normal. On the second and third laps he’d kicked his pace up a notch, but he still felt good—really good. So on the fourth lap he’d gone all out, and it had been just like a few months ago, when he’d still felt great all the time. And on that one day last week he’d felt even greater than ever: his lungs had been sucking huge volumes of air, and his whole body had responded. Instead of the slow burn of pain he usually felt toward the end of the warm-up mile, his muscles had merely tingled pleasurably, his chest expanding and contracting in an easy rhythm that synched perfectly with his steady heartbeat. His whole body had been functioning in perfect harmony. He’d even taken a couple of extra laps that day, exulting in the strength of his body, euphoric that finally the pills and the exercise were working. He’d set up the hurdles then, spacing them perfectly, but setting them a little higher than usual.
He’d soared over them one after the other, clearing the crossbars easily, feeling utterly weightless as his body floated over one barricade after another.
When he’d finally started back to the locker room two hours after he’d begun, he was barely out of breath, his heart was beating easily, and his legs felt as if he’d been strolling for only half an hour instead of running and jumping full out for two.
The next day it had all crashed in on him.
A quarter of the way around the first lap he’d felt the familiar constrictions around his lungs, and his heart began pounding as if he were in the last stretch of a 10k run. He kept going, telling himself it was nothing more than a reaction from the day before, when he’d worked far harder than he should have. But by the time he’d finished the first lap, he’d known it wasn’t going to work. Swerving off the hard-packed earth of the track, he’d flopped down onto the grass, rolling over to stare up into the blue of the sky, squinting against the glare of the afternoon sun. What the hell was wrong? Yesterday he’d felt great. Today he felt like an old man.
