And always his hatred grew—for his own past. For the swarms of the people he had left behind him.
Then one night the rains came.
It must have been August, or nearly September as he made it. Ryan had a sense for the sun’s risings and settings that told him that fall wasn’t far away, something he felt without needing a calendar.
He went in the cabin and battened the windows, knowing the weather would cool soon, and then it would be tourist season. Soon people would come and fill the Causeway, some even driving off, perhaps, to picnic or to fish on his island. To explore its beaches. Perhaps find his own beach.
He found a marker, and tore apart cardboard cartons with puffed fist-like hands. He made crudely lettered signs: NO TRESPASSING! DANGER! He even managed to chuckle with what his throat had become now, when he made one that said CAUTION! UNEXPLODED MINE FIELD. Using gore from the remains of animals he had eaten, he painted skulls and crossbones on weathered boards ripped from his cabin, and posted these and the others around the island.
And yet these would not work. Eventually people, being what people are, would ignore them. Some he might kill—he was daily famished for meat now as well as fruit—but, eventually, tourist deaths would bring police also.
He searched through the cabin to find his guns, a pistol, a shotgun, which he had brought with him, but found his fingers were too large to fit around their triggers.
Yet something was happening within his body. As the first storms passed, he felt a new tickling. An anticipation among his hosts—he had begun to think of them as hosts now. Joyous, not fearful.
And then he realized what it was he must do.
He used the days of sunshine that followed to inspect his boat, caulking leaks where he found them. He cut a tarp to fit snugly over its open cockpit, and oiled its engine as best he was able, taking it out on short trips from his island from time to time to test its handling in wind and surf.
And then the second wave of storms came, and he hauled the skiff back into its boathouse—this, he knew, was more than a squall. But also he knew it would hit to the north of him—he had a sense now for wind and weather—its eye perhaps striking land north of Daytona Beach. Possibly even as far north as Georgia.
And so Ryan waited, biding his time, two, three, four weeks into September, glad of a respite after what had been a fiercely hot summer. Hurricane season, still for the most part affecting cities north of Miami, had come with enough vigor to keep the tourists in check.
But the people still swarmed in the cities to the north, on the Coast, on the Gulf, on the Mississippi, on prairies and mountains west to the Pacific. God, how he hated them! How he shuddered to think what he was once—he thought of the hooker that night in Miami, his arms on her body. The others both before and after. His—
His hosts were waiting. He felt himself calming. He loaded his boat’s freshwater tanks from the cabin’s roof cistern, now fresh-filled itself. There were prunes and dried figs he had left from his last trip to Key West, and he loaded those as well. And he, too, waited.
Then one morning he saw the sky turn gray and scaly, much like his skin when he’d seen his first host-wasp. He felt the wind freshen and knew his time had come. He went to his cabin and brought more supplies out, sailcloth, a sharp knife, cordage, paddles, and carried them out to the dock to his boat.
He pushed off to sea, as the wind seemed to hook from the south and southeast, and headed at half speed out into the Florida Strait on a course that would take him just north of Cuba. He knew what was coming—his wasp-senses told him—a southern-track hurricane barreling down the Santaren Channel to strike Cape Sable and Florida Bay. A big one, to sweep the Keys and then veer to the Dry Tortugas, and then hook back north through the Gulf of Mexico to strike the coast near Pensacola, or even as far to the west as New Orleans. But big, big, to envelop Texas to Corpus Christi, to reach as far east as Tallahassee. And he sailed to meet it.
He heard a buzz over the hum of the engine, a buzz from within him, as he made his shipboard preparations, dogging the tarp down over the cockpit so, when the first rains came, he was able to crouch beneath it, out of the cold wind, squinting out through the spray-stained windshield into a green sky over green water. He kept himself dry as best he was able and gorged on dried figs, hearing the engine’s strain.
At one point he turned on the skiff’s radio, hearing the crackle of Coast Guard warnings—all small boats to come ashore, larger shipping to clear the area from the Antilles clear to Bermuda—until its battery finally failed. His boat was alone now, alone with wind and waves, still straining east and south past Andros Island.
And then his engine died, finally, as the wind whistled around him, but not as loud now as it had been before. He lifted a tarp edge and threw out the sailcloth he’d packed before, now attached to two crossed paddles to form a sea anchor.
And he waited.
He felt more than heard the wind start to die down, and felt the crawling and scurrying of those inside him. He waited, crouching, and peered out through the strong Plexiglas windshield until the sky in front suddenly lightened.
He listened, closely, until he heard nothing—even his hosts seemed to have stopped their chatter! He listened for wind, for the patter of rain, until, satisfied, he loosened the tarp and rolled it partway back, and then heaved himself up until he was standing, supporting himself on the boat’s engine cover.
He stood in a dead calm—the eye of the hurricane!
Silence surrounded him.
And then, at first very faint, but gradually increasing, he heard his wasp-hosts resume their buzzing. He spread his arms wide as they climbed out from inside him onto his skin, to the paper-skin architecture that overarched his body in domes and towers, in cities and steeples, until every part of him that he could see—every part of him and every part of the boat as well—was massed with blackness.
With the first breeze from the hurricane’s trailing edge, the swarm began. As one mass, the wasps took to the air, whirling around him, filling his ears with their high-pitched buzzing, taking his hatred, his revulsion for the human swarms with them. He watched as their circling rose higher and higher, darkening the sky, whirling to blend with the storm around them, to course on its winds to the Mississippi, into the heartland of the continent as the storm gathered strength out of the ocean. To rain with its rains on cities and farmlands, some to ride jet streams—he thought about Collins, in England now, but perhaps with his hosts even now spreading out over Western Europe, of Lebotovski somewhere east of Moscow in his Siberian wilderness dacha—he thought about what he had read about wasps and how, when they swarmed, it was for just one reason—to seek out new hive sites.
And, laughing, Ryan still stood, the remnants of his paper skin whistling as the wind freshened, this time from the north. As the new rain fell.
Ryan rigged a sail, the skiff’s engine still balking at being started. He scarcely remembered why he had sailed out into the storm’s eye, but, somehow, he had wrestled the tarp back and ridden the wind out, all night long, until the next morning. And somehow his sense of place had remained with him to guide him back until he stood off Sugarloaf Key.
He lowered the sail and used a paddle to ease himself the rest of the way to shore. His dock was still standing, although the boathouse’s roof had been damaged and the porch of his cabin had caved in. Nothing, however, that couldn’t be repaired.
When he made it to dry land, he stood there inspecting himself. His memory was fading, of why his skin seemed covered with wispy, dry, papery tendrils, except for their gray color much like it might have been had it peeled from prolonged sunburn. And yet he felt healthy—healthy enough, despite his thinness. A gauntness close to emaciation.
Ryan located the rest of the figs on the boat, along with bottled water and a sealed tin of emergency crackers. He ate his fill of them, and then went in the cabin and foraged more food, canned soups and stews that had lain untouched since he’d first unpacked them.<
br />
He found enough dry wood to build a cook fire.
He slept on the beach, having put on a pair of loose slacks and a shirt he’d found in the cabin to guard against sunburn the following morning. When he finally woke, shortly before noon, he packed the other clothes he could find, along with the rest of his possessions, and climbed into the Cherokee.
Threading his way out the jungle trail, he drove onto the Causeway, taking his time. The road was deserted, apparently still closed, but that was okay.
There was plenty of time. Nothing to do. A bank account waited for him when he got back to Miami, with plenty of money. He missed the people, the crowds around him—at least he did sometimes—and thought, once he’d gotten himself better cleaned up, maybe he’d check out the Beach hotels. Possibly have a few drinks. A woman. . . .
Or maybe rest first in his apartment. He’d have time enough, he thought.
He drove slowly, cautiously, avoiding felled palm trees, north and east over Big Pine Key, past Key Vaca and Grassy, Long Key and Plantation. The scent of sea air, the freshness of it, even caused him to smile, and he took pleasure in the sun shining on him through his open side window.
Until deep within him he felt a new itching.
Indiana writer James Dorr’s “The Tears of Isis” was a 2014 Bram Stoker Award® nominee for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. Other books include Strange Mistresses: Tales of Wonder and Romance, Darker Loves: Tales of Mystery and Regret, and his all-poetry Vamps (A Retrospective). Also be on the watch for Tombs: A Chronicle of Latter-Day Times of Earth, a novel-in-stories due for release from Elder Signs Press in June 2017.
An Active Member of HWA and SFWA with more than 500 individual appearances from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine to Xenophillia, for the latest information Dorr invites readers to visit his blog at http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com.
Earth Mother
by
Paul Du Jat
All that was—would never be.
All that would be—never was.
I’d been in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania for two weeks. The searing heat of day and the bite of night couldn’t deter me. I had learned that modern human remains had been unearthed in an ancient layer of African rock. Carbon 14 dating revealed the fossilized bones were found in a layer dating back millions of years before any human had ever walked the earth.
My degree in paleoanthropology didn’t prepare me for what I discovered. My political connections from my days working at the United Nations allowed me access to dig at the secret site. The human remains were long gone now, claimed by the local government. They weren’t going to let another national treasure be stolen like so many other artifacts. What I found at the site perplexed me to my core.
I unearthed a stainless steel attaché case. It was dirty and dented, its once-shiny metal skin covered in a film of prehistoric dirt. I poured a bottle of water over the case to clean it. Etched into its side was a human name. My name, Oscar Crevaliz.
There was no combination lock or key access to the case. A small notch, which appeared to be a fingerprint scanner, located on the top of the case was smashed. I wondered how any of this was possible.
I immediately called Professor Thurgood, my old mentor from grad school, and told him what I had found. “How can an attaché case be buried in rock millions of years old?”
“The earth is alive and is a sentient being,” Thurgood said.
I didn’t believe him. I should have.
He continued. “Planets live and die, like every creature in this universe.”
“Doc, how does this pertain to the question I just asked you?”
“It does, lad. Just be patient for a change. Planets can communicate with each other. Some even have a sense of humor. Mars once told Earth a joke about Jupiter being filled with custard. Jupiter remained pissed off for eons.” Thurgood paused for a moment. “Ozzy, you are in grave danger.” His words ceased.
“Doc? Doc?” The phone call had dropped as the satellite moved out of range. My heart fell too. He had never answered my question, although he must have sensed the urgency in my voice. The object I found couldn’t be explained within a rational discussion. I needed to get home to New York. It took a week of bribes and anguish to smuggle the attaché case out of Africa.
Under dark gray skies, I arrived home. I would seek the guidance of my best friend, Milo, as well as that of Professor Thurgood. I handcuffed the cryptic case to my left wrist and placed a revolver in my coat pocket. One can never be too careful.
The cold Manhattan wind stiffened my muscles and caused my bones to ache. Wind-driven snow froze in my entire face. Fresh snow disguised the dirty concrete of the city with a lush carpet of white. The police sirens echoed as they bounced around the towering buildings. I could barely hear myself think in the cacophony. It felt like home.
I pondered the inconceivable discovery I had made in Tanzania as I walked along Fifth Avenue. If anyone would know how to solve this dilemma, the professor could. My thoughts were interrupted by a commotion across the street. I looked up to see an enormous hairy humanoid beast holding an old woman by the throat. Her scrawny legs flailed about as she was lifted from the ground. Frightened people scurried away; some remained to watch the spectacle.
“Stop! Put her down,” I shouted. The attacker turned and glared at me. His blood-red eyes fixated on the attaché case. He tossed the elderly woman onto the busy street and darted toward me. My fear rose as I inhaled his putrid smell. Suddenly, he stopped. The snow melted as it landed on his hairy head and broad shoulders. I sensed the cold, depraved anger that consumed him.
“Who the hell are you?” I said.
The beast lunged forward. I swung the heavy metal case at him and knocked away his long outstretched arms. I unleashed a series of hard kicks and punches, hitting the evil creature about his thick body. A feeling of alarm filled me to see him unaffected. The beast struck me in the gut, knocking me backward. My skull smacked hard against the pavement.
Searing pain in my arm and left wrist brought me back to consciousness. The beast straddled me with his hideous face inches from mine. I couldn’t get free and became angry. Then he spoke to me. “Your language is the same as the Luxorgs, but you are weak.” He tore at the flesh of my left wrist, lacerating my skin as he cut the titanium handcuffs with his razor-sharp fingers. In seconds, he’d pulled the attaché case from my wrist and ripped the case open, separating the top from the bottom. The broken case unleashed a bright yellow flame that sent violent blue and orange sparks swirling into the air above me. The beast discarded the pieces of the ruined case into the street. The onlookers who stayed to watch were long gone now. A bus tried to escape the melee by changing lanes and ran over the remains of the attaché case, crushing them to useless bits.
The red-eyed beast howled in delight and beat his chest in triumph. I drew my revolver and fired three times. The thing fell to his knees and then bounced up from the cold concrete, screaming. Streams of yellow blood spewed out of his body. He leaped on top of another passing bus. Helplessly, I looked at those evil eyes disappearing into the thickness of the storm. I lay there in the freezing puddles of bloodied snow and slush, as yet unable to rise. Strange thoughts of confusion and anger crept into my head. I was cold, wet, and alone.
My head hurt, but the blood seeping from my wounded wrist concerned me most. I wrapped my scarf around it to stop the blood. I managed to hail a cab and headed uptown to the professor’s townhouse. Upon my arrival, I saw Milo’s bright green hair through the hazy glass of the mighty front door. He possessed Ph.D.s in atomic molecular physics and engineering. He unlocked the door’s many deadbolts and opened it. His familiar smile quickly disappeared when he noticed the bloodstained scarf around my wrist. He flicked his Marlboro away and helped me inside.
“Ozzy, what the hell happened to you?”
“A hairy beastlike man attacked me. He destroyed the attaché case that I emailed you about last week. If I hadn’t sho
t him, I’d be dead!”
“Since when do you carry a gun?”
“That reminds me.” I retrieved the gun from my coat pocket and handed to Milo. “Here, put this in your bag. You know the professor abhors guns and I don’t want him to find it on me.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Milo placed the revolver in his backpack and escorted me to a small bathroom on the ground floor. We cleaned and bandaged my wounds. He gave me a set of brand-new clothes that possessed the fruity scent of spring. Milo’s white T-shirt, black leather vest, and blue jeans reeked of cigarettes.
“You’re as good as new!” he announced with a wry smile.
He then led me into what he once referred to as “the tree elevator.” Its rounded walls were covered in living tree bark. We slowly descended while Milo lit another Marlboro. “The Doc’s been worried about you,” he said. “He’s acting stranger than usual. He keeps referring to me as Guardian and seems like he’s expecting something.”
“Or someone,” I said.
The tree elevator doors slid open and revealed Professor Thurgood. The professor’s stringy white hair waved as he moved. His stern and wrinkled face reminded me of those old Uncle Sam posters. Those piercing opal colored eyes fixated on me. His irises lighted up with iridescent red and blue flashes.
Thurgood stood underneath a colossal globe of the earth. It was exquisitely detailed and at least a hundred feet in diameter. Every detail of the earth’s surface seemed to be represented.
I felt overjoyed at such beauty. “Wow, look at Mount Everest jutting through the clouds.” I took notice how half the globe was in darkness to simulate night and day.
“Look at the devastation of the rain forest in South America,” Milo added.
“It sickens me, Mr. Moss,” the wealthy old man said. “Let us return to the matter at hand. I was concerned for your safety, Ozzy. It is good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you, Professor.”
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