Infestation

by Heidi Lang

  Rae thought again of those black marble eyes and wasn’t sure she agreed.

  “I’m still not going to apologize.” Ava crossed her arms.

  Patrick chuckled.

  The insect in Doctor Nguyen’s jar had stopped pacing and now stood motionless in that way that only insects seemed capable of. It was slightly smaller than the one that had attacked Rae, but still impossibly large for a centipede, its body covered in streaks of goat innards. It must have followed the other one out of poor Priceless Art’s stomach, and they’d been too distracted to notice. Rae wondered if that was an intentional evolutionary strategy: the first bug out went on the immediate offensive so the second could sneak on by. Or was she giving these things too much credit?

  The centipede dropped low and sidled up to the side of the jar, thrusting its legs against the crack between the bottom edge of the glass and the floor. Doctor Nguyen grunted and shifted her grip to pin the jar down more firmly. No, Rae decided. Definitely not too much credit.

  “It looks a little like the bugs we found in the town square,” Nate said.

  “Yeah, the same way a striped house cat looks a little like a tiger,” Rae muttered.

  “I think… maybe this one is a queen?” Nate was still on a chair, but he’d crouched down so he could peer in at the bug. “Maybe both of them were. They spent their gestation period inside a living creature where they would be most protected. The rest of their, um, swarm? Hive? What do you call a group of centipedes?”

  “An infestation,” Caden said darkly.

  Rae shivered, and tried not imagining the soil below Whispering Pines filling with those wriggling creatures.

  “The rest of them were wrapped around the outside of the creature,” Nate continued. “Those must be the workers, or the males, or… I don’t know. We’ll have to study them.”

  Rae frowned. “Are you actually excited about this?”

  “I didn’t love crawling through tunnels or dealing with exploding goats. But the research?” Nate grinned. “I think I’ll like that part. I mean, an alien insect, Rae! We can learn all kinds of things!”

  “I think we should revisit the shower idea,” Ava said. “Research can wait.”

  Right now, with goat blood drying on her skin and the memory of an insect trying to cram itself down her throat still fresh in her mind, Rae was more than willing to let a shower take precedence over research. “I call dibs first,” she told Ava.

  Her sister smirked. “I was going to insist you go first. You smell awful.”

  “Thanks, sis. Love you too.” Rae paused by the lab table and finally made herself look at Priceless Art.

  She had to look away again immediately, her stomach roiling. That could have been me. She didn’t want to think like that, but the image of the goat’s empty eyes and burst stomach was going to haunt her forever, she just knew it.

  “It’s unfortunate, I know,” Patrick said. “But sometimes, regrettably, there are casualties in the name of scientific exploration. Priceless Art served her purpose.”

  “Oh yeah? And what purpose is that?” Rae demanded. “She didn’t deserve to die like that.”

  “Of course not. But like Mr. Cliff here has said, the specimen we caught, thanks to this brave goat’s sacrifice, will teach us so much.”

  Rae scowled. It wasn’t fair. The goat didn’t want to be sacrificed. She’d been trapped, and scared, and alone. And then she was safe. And now?

  Rae looked again at that bloody shape stretched across the table. Vivienne had moved out of the back corner and was hunched over it, her shoulders shaking, almost like she was trying to pet the animal’s flank.

  “Vivi.” Rae reached out a hand to comfort her friend. Then froze.

  Vivienne wasn’t petting the goat. She was sliding her fingers into the blood and then licking it off, her brown eyes flat and dark.

  Rae gasped.

  Vivienne looked up, her gaze snapping to Rae’s, blood smeared all around her mouth and down her chin. She bared her teeth, and something deep in the back of her eyes flickered red like a banked fire.

  Rae instinctively took a step back. Fear slammed into her harder and faster than any insect. Dimly she was aware of Nate saying he would stick around a little longer and get started on the research, but she couldn’t look away from Vivienne. No, not Vivienne. From whatever was staring at her out of Vivienne’s eyes.

  “Rae?” Ava called from the door. “Vivienne? You coming?”

  Vivienne blinked, and she was herself again. She wrinkled her nose and wiped her bloody fingers on her shirt. But she didn’t seem to notice the smears of blood across her chin.

  “Hello?” Ava said.

  “I’m going to wait here for my mom to get off work.” Vivienne turned away, not looking at anyone.

  Rae hesitated, but she’d never ignored the truth just because it was a little terrifying. Okay, a lot terrifying. “Vivienne,” she said. “Are you—”

  “She’s fine, Ms. Carter.” Patrick put a hand on Rae’s back and nudged her toward the door.

  Vivienne didn’t turn around, and so Rae let herself be guided out of the lab. She followed Ava and Caden down the hall toward the elevator, feeling like she’d just swallowed a whole tray of ice cubes. There was something terribly, terribly wrong with her friend. Something supernaturally wrong. And no one else seemed to notice.

  Caden nudged her shoulder.

  Rae glanced at him.

  “I saw it too,” he murmured.

  “You did?” she said, relieved.

  Caden nodded. “I’ll talk to her about it tomorrow.”

  “I can do it.”

  “I know you can. But I think this might fall under my own area of expertise.”

  Rae chewed her lip. She didn’t feel right leaving this to someone else. Vivienne was her friend, and—

  Caden took her arm, pulling her to a stop. “Rae, let me help.” His eyes were such a deep, dark brown, intense and serious, framed by long, thick lashes that curled upward. “You don’t have to do everything on your own,” he said quietly.

  And Rae remembered that moment in the cave again when she’d been stuck in the crevice, gripped by claustrophobia, and he had said I’m here, Rae. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Caden nodded.

  “Hey, I thought you wanted to get home and shower,” Ava called from down the hall. “Stop flirting and start walking!”

  Rae sighed. Trust her sister to ruin a nice moment. But as she took the elevator back up into the light, she left behind thoughts of dead goats, alien insects, and blood-drinking friends and instead focused on the one thought that gave her comfort: she was not alone in this.

  28. CADEN

  When Caden woke up the next morning he could tell immediately that his parents still weren’t back yet, the emptiness of their absence radiating through the silent house. The fact that they’d left town at all was honestly weird enough, what with the unusual insects in their woods and Aiden’s sudden reappearance. That they were staying away so long was beyond strange.

  Caden picked up his phone and dialed his mom. He hoped he wasn’t interrupting some kind of last-minute additional couples counseling session, but he needed to talk to her.

  Straight to voicemail. Caden listened to his mom’s cheery voice, her “Name your Price!” and the beep at the end, and clicked off without leaving a message.

  Scowling, Caden got ready and left his room, quietly closing the door behind him. He passed Aiden’s closed door and wondered if he should check on him. But when he lifted his hand to knock, unease roiled in his stomach like an undercooked hamburger and he let his hand drop and backed silently away. He’d wait and let his mom check on Aiden whenever she bothered coming home. He had enough confrontation ahead of him today as it was.

  At school he kept a close eye on Vivienne, watching her laughing with Alyssa, chatting with an obviously anxious Rae, mocking Nate. She seemed like her normal self. And when he met Rae for a few minutes at his locker, she admitted
that there had been nothing out of the ordinary with her today. “I’m sure I didn’t imagine it,” she said. “But… I don’t know. Maybe it was stress?”

  “You think she was stress-eating blood?”

  “Well, it sounds ridiculous when you put it that way, but…” Rae sighed. “I guess I just don’t know what to think.”

  “Me neither,” Caden admitted. “But I felt something from her in the tunnels, too.” He gripped his pendant, the weight comforting in his hand. “Give me a little more time, and I’ll talk to her.”

  The bell shrieked, announcing the start of the next class, and Caden waved at Rae and hurried off down the hall.

  He had two more classes with Vivienne that day. In each of them, he relaxed his inner shields and reached out his awareness, but her energy felt like it always had. There was no indication that she was hiding anything.

  As he walked toward the buses, he tried remembering Vivienne’s expression in the cave, that sense of wrongness that emanated from her, but in the daylight it just seemed so unreal.

  “Caden!” Vivienne yelled.

  Caden jumped, almost feeling like he’d conjured her up with the power of his thoughts. He turned slowly to face her.

  She stood against the side of the school, wearing her giant backpack and a grouchy expression, her black hair in braided pigtails that hung in front of her shoulders. “Did you want to say something to me?”

  “Wh-what?”

  “Don’t stutter and act all innocent. You’ve been staring at me all day.” She crossed her arms. “And not just staring, but doing that creepy thing where you look at me like you’re digging into my brain.”

  Caden winced. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be creepy.”

  Vivienne sighed. “I know you don’t.” She chewed her lip, and Caden realized her annoyance was just a cover, disguising the worry beneath it.

  “Is there something you want to say to me?” he asked.

  Vivienne was quiet for several long, pounding heartbeats. Caden could hear the rest of the students clearing out of the school, the buses turning on, the space around them emptying. Finally she nodded. “Not here, though.” She turned and led him along the outside of the school to the maple trees in back. From there they had a view of the track field in the distance and the second field beyond it. Or at least, what remained of the second field after a giant sinkhole had swallowed most of it over the summer.

  Vivienne slid her backpack to the ground beneath a tree and sat down next to it, waiting until Caden did the same across from her. He felt a little like he always did when his mom made him practice with her. Just like those times, he found himself mirroring Vivienne’s pose: cross-legged, hands on knees, back straight. He waited for her to talk first.

  That was also something his mom had taught him.

  Think of a new client like a nervous dog. You want to let them come to you. Don’t rush at them or you risk driving them away.

  “You’re good at this whole silence thing,” Vivienne finally said. “I almost forgot that you never used to talk before Rae moved here.”

  “I talked,” Caden said.

  Vivienne snorted.

  “Okay, maybe not a lot,” he admitted. He studied Vivienne’s face. She looked different without her usual easy smile. Her lips seemed thinner, her forehead lined with worry, as if she were a middle-aged woman and not thirteen. “What’s going on with you?”

  She looked past him, out at the fields. “I told you my mom and I went caving last year, right? We were exploring the tunnels below Whispering Pines. And no, before you ask, I was never in the tunnels we found yesterday, okay?”

  “I wasn’t going to ask that,” Caden lied.

  “Yes, you were. I can read it all over your face.”

  “You can read my face?” Caden asked, surprised.

  Vivienne smirked. “No, but you totally just gave yourself away.”

  “Okay, fine, I was wondering… I mean, you seemed so familiar in them. Even in the dark.” He waited, letting that statement sit there between them like the last cookie on a tray, both of them eyeing it.

  Vivienne bit first. “It wasn’t familiarity. I can see a little in the dark.”

  “Oh. That’s, um, useful?”

  “Really? I tell you I have superpowers and that’s your response?”

  Caden shrugged. “It’s not wrong, is it?”

  She laughed. “No, it’s not wrong.” Her laughter died out. “It’s not just my eyesight. I’m stronger now, too. And faster. Those are the perks. But,” she said, sighing, “there are some real downsides.”

  “Like?”

  “Like… the whole blood thing.” Vivienne drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “When I smell it, it’s like I become a monster.”

  Caden thought of Vivienne’s face in the lab, the goat blood smeared under her chin. “How did it happen?”

  “My mom and I were exploring a tunnel when part of it crumbled, and I fell into this weird, huge cavern. The floor was solid rock, and there were all these stone columns in it. And in the center was this really creepy carved pillar…” She closed her eyes. “I remember my mom kept calling to me. She was still in the tunnel above, and she was screaming my name, and I heard her, but it was like I couldn’t do anything. Like in a dream, you know? I knew something terrible was going to happen, and I kept telling myself to turn and grab the rope my mom tossed down, but I couldn’t look away from that pillar. It drew me to it, and I reached out both hands and touched it.” She opened her eyes. “And after that, I started changing.”

  “What did this pillar look like?”

  “I couldn’t actually see it that well.” Vivienne laid her cheek against her knee. “Or maybe I’ve forgotten? I know that sounds weird. How could I forget what something looks like after it ruined my whole life?”

  “It’s not weird. It can be hard for the mind to hold on to the details of a traumatic event. It’s your brain’s way of protecting you.”

  “Nice of it,” Vivienne muttered. “I remember the carvings a little. There were faces with lots of teeth, long and gleaming. And eyes. So many eyes. And when I touched it, I remember thinking that it felt gross. Sort of like when you go camping for a couple of weeks and you can’t wash your hair? And then you try running your fingers through it? It was like that.”

  “That is pretty gross,” Caden said.

  “I know.” She managed a small, weak smile, but Caden could feel the fear shimmering around her like a cloak.

  “What happened next?” He kept his voice soft and gentle. He remembered how he’d projected calm at Rae in the caves and tried doing the same thing here. Blue light, warm and comforting as a late-summer sky, enveloping Vivienne, wrapping her in a soothing embrace.

  “I started becoming… I guess hungry is the best word for it?” She let go of her knees, dropping hands to the grass. “But I thought it wasn’t that big a deal. My mom figured it was a growth spurt. Until Emmett.”

  “Emmett.” Caden thought about that a second. He’d actually had a prophetic dream about Emmett a few weeks before his untimely demise, but he’d been dreaming from the perspective of the rabbit, and so all he’d seen was the dark shape of some large predator looming over him before he woke up. Now, staring at Vivienne, he realized who that predator must have been. “That was you?”

  “Not so loud, please,” Vivienne said.

  “Sorry.” Caden tried picturing that calming blue again, but it was hard when his mind kept conjuring that little white furry body, drained of blood. Because Vivienne had drained it…

  “I felt terrible about it. I still do. But it was like something inside me attacked that bunny. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t do anything but go along for the ride.” She shuddered. “It was the most awful thing.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Yeah, you probably can, ghoul boy.” Vivienne grinned, but it wilted quickly. “We actually visited your mom over the summer to try to get help.”

&nbs
p; “You did?”

  She nodded. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you. Or anyone, actually. My mom doesn’t like people to know we visited the ghost hunters.”

  Caden wasn’t surprised by that. A lot of people in town called on his family for this exorcism or that house cleansing, but almost none of them admitted it. Especially not someone as highly regarded as Mrs. Matsuoka. He was honestly shocked she’d been willing to go in for a consultation with Paranormal Price, secretly or not. But then he thought of the way Vivienne had looked in the cave, and again last night, blood smeared all across her chin, and he could understand why her mom had gone. “Was my mom able to help you? Did she figure out what was going on?”

  “She said I had a transference curse. Rare, and incurable, as far as she knew.”

  Caden’s stomach dropped. “Oh.”

  “But,” Vivienne said, “she did give me something to help.” She pulled her bag closer to her and opened it.

  Caden’s breath caught. He was super curious about her backpack. A backpack that she’d only started carrying around with her at the start of this school year, he realized.

  Vivienne reached deep inside, pushing away a layer of ropes, an extra jacket, a library book, and other items Caden couldn’t quite see.

  “Wow, you sure have a lot of stuff in there.”

  “A girl’s gotta be prepared. Especially around here.” She wriggled her arm around, then yanked out a rectangular blue velvet box about the size of a large old-fashioned encyclopedia. She glanced around. Caden did the same. They were alone, the school behind them, the fields ahead, and the trees above. Nothing else but their shadows dappling the grass. Still Vivienne hesitated for a long, tense moment before she undid a latch on the side.

  The lid of the box pulled back like a book cover. Nestled inside was a large round pendant about the size of one of Caden’s clenched fists. It looked like it was made of simple gray stone, a circular pattern carved into the front of it and filled in with green gems the color of deep forest moss.

  Caden leaned forward, frowning. There was something about that pattern… when he blinked, it seemed to change shape. Just a little. Enough to make him question what he was seeing. It made him want to draw it, to commit the shape to pencil and paper and pin it in place.