A little blood was a small price to pay to guarantee that he was actually dead.
Pulling herself together, she reached out again, taking hold of his limp wrist, feeling for a heartbeat. As far as she could tell, there was nothing, but she still didn’t trust it. Letting his hand drop back to the floor, she reached up to the collar of his shirt, her fingers searching for his neck, where she would again attempt to verify if he still lived.
And what if he does?
Janice’s mind raced. She supposed that she could always hit him again with the statue or maybe just pinch his nostrils closed and cover his mouth. She imagined that would do the trick as well.
His skin was going clammy as she pressed the flesh around his neck for signs that his heart was still pumping. As with his wrist, there was nothing that she could find.
A giddy laughter bubbled up from somewhere deep and dark; she might have actually done it.
But her happiness was short lived, almost immediately replaced with wondering what she was going to do now. Different scenarios began to play within her mind. She could call the police and say that there had been an attempted burglary, and that there had been a struggle and . . . If she used that one she was going to have to be certain to either dispose of the murder weapon or thoroughly wipe it down. She could always dispose of the body, and then report him missing. Disposal possibilities danced through her fevered mind.
Janice had been thinking about these things for a very long time, and now all she had to do was pick the one that guaranteed she would not be suspected of any wrongdoing.
She was trying to remember where Ronald stored their saws and plastic leaf tarp when she experienced the eerie sensation that she was being watched.
Still squatting by her husband’s body, Janice slowly turned toward the bedroom doorway.
Alfred sat there, perfectly still, watching her.
“It’s all right, baby,” she told the dog. Janice reached out her uninjured hand, trying to coax the Frenchie to come closer. Alfred remained in that spot, large dark eyes fixed upon her.
At first she thought it was just light reflecting unusually off the surface of the dog’s right eye, but the longer she stared . . .
“Alfred, is there something wrong with your eye?”
She climbed to her feet, slowly approaching the animal, not wanting him to run.
“Let me see,” she said, focusing on what appeared to be some kind of glistening—almost metallic-looking—film over his right eye.
Looks like another trip to the vet, she thought, annoyed that this latest ailment hadn’t manifested until after his last visit to the veterinarian’s office.
Alfred suddenly sprang at her, forty pounds of French bulldog connecting with her midsection and knocking her backward into the room, where she tripped over her own feet and landed upon the corpse of her husband . . .
. . . who turned beneath her with a low, horrible moan and wrapped his arms around her.
Not a corpse at all.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Rich reached the bottom of the wooden steps and stepped onto the dirt floor, his flashlight beam playing over the cellar space.
“Find anything?” Sidney called from the kitchen upstairs.
“Give me a freakin’ minute, would you?” he asked, annoyed.
They were all still hungry, even after the Starbursts, and he told them that he thought he remembered seeing some canned goods down in the basement.
Sidney thought it was a great idea for him to look, so what choice did he have? If it had been Cody’s idea, he probably would have just told him to choke the last Starburst down or suffer.
But it had been Sidney who’d asked, and he would have gone out into the hurricane to pick her wild berries if she’d asked. Rich had secretly harbored a crush on Sidney for the last two years or so. He had never done anything about it, her being with Cody and all, but now . . .
“Anything?” Sidney called playfully to him again.
“Will you shut it?” he said as he walked across the unfinished cellar to where his parents had set up some shelving to store emergency items for times very much like this. The storm was still going pretty fast and furious outside, and he hadn’t a clue how long they might be holed up there, so he hoped that there was something on the shelves even remotely appetizing, or they were screwed.
Rich navigated the cramped space. The place had pretty much become storage for junk; stacks of old patio furniture, boat cleaning supplies, and boxes of beach toys were scattered about the room, placed upon wooden pallets to keep them up from the damp dirt floor.
The edge of his flashlight beam caught movement, and he shined it down to the floor to see the segmented body of a good-size centipede disappearing beneath a pile of garden tools. A shudder of revulsion went through his body as he reached the shelves.
“Bingo,” he said, finding that there were more cans on display than he expected. He shined the flashlight beam onto the cans to read the contents. There were lots of vegetables—peas and green beans making up the majority—but he doubted that was what Sidney had a hankering for.
And that had been the problem for years.
He’d wanted to talk to her about how he felt, but he was never quite sure how she would react. There were times when he thought he was getting a clear message and would psyche himself up to tell her his feelings, but then she’d say something about Cody and her relationship, and the wind would get totally taken out of his sails. That was just how it had been, and he’d pretty much given up on anything ever happening, until this afternoon in the marina parking lot when things suddenly changed.
“You’d better not be eating all the good stuff,” Sidney warned from the kitchen.
He ignored her, reaching for more cans and hoping for something other than vegetables. On the shelf below the veggies he found a can of SpaghettiOs with meatballs and felt as though he’d hit the lottery.
“Oh yes,” he said, taking the can, discovering that there were other delectable meals on the shelf as well—cans of cheese ravioli and corned beef hash. He tried to take them all into his arms while still holding the flashlight, which resulted in the SpaghettiOs falling to the ground.
“Shit,” he muttered, bending down carefully so as not to cause the other cans to tumble, and felt around for the wayward canned feast. His fingers touched it but also something else—something that tickled the flesh of his hand before the incredible sting of pain.
“Yarrrah!” Rich screamed, dropping all the cans as he pulled his hand away and held it up before the light. The skin had already started to redden and swell.
Something had bitten him.
The image of that centipede crawling beneath the tools filled his head, and he shuddered. Whatever it was that had bitten him, it hurt like hell.
“What’s going on down there?” Sidney called out.
“Nothing,” Rich said, feeling embarrassed. “I’m coming up with a feast fit for royalty.”
He shined his light around the fallen cans and saw that there was nothing in their immediate area. But as he squatted down to retrieve them, the dirt seemed to come alive.
“What the f . . . ,” he began, the beam of his flashlight still illuminating the ground.
There were bugs coming up out of the dirt. Not just one or two, but lots, hundreds, and it wasn’t even just one particular kind. He saw carpenter ants, centipedes, earwigs, and some kind of beetle that he wasn’t at all familiar with.
There were all coming up out of the damp earth of the cellar floor and crawling toward him.
Rich backed up, deciding to leave the cans, and felt a sudden pain beneath the collar of his shirt.
“Ahhh!” He slapped his hand to his neck and felt something crunch and squirt with the impact. Bringing his hand away from his neck, he shined the light on his fingers and saw the remains of a pretty large spider.
“That’s it,” he said, turning for the stairs. The beam of his light briefly touched the floor, where in ever
y inch of dirt crawled some kind of disgusting bug.
He didn’t understand what it was that he was seeing, telling himself that maybe the storm had something to do with it, the foul weather somehow stirring up the bugs that lived beneath his house. Before reaching the stairs, he glanced up to the ceiling and saw that it wasn’t just the floor that was crawling with life.
Spiders. There were spiders everywhere that the light of the flashlight touched, and they all seemed to be heading toward him.
Rich ran for the stairs. He could feel the bodies of the harder-shelled insects crunching beneath his sneakers as he ran across them, but that was nothing compared to the absolute horror that he experienced as he saw the spiders dropping down on their silken lines, some landing upon him and crawling up toward his face at incredible speeds.
Crying out, he flailed his arms crazily, slapping at his body, diving for the first step, and nearly smashing his face as he fell, sprawling across the ascending stairs.
“What’s going on?” Sidney asked, appearing in the doorway above. He had dropped the flashlight and had no intention of looking for it.
“Get out of the way,” he said, trying to keep the panic from his voice as he got his feet beneath him and sprinted up the steps.
“Rich, what is it?” she asked, obviously concerned. He gripped her by the shoulders and moved her out of the way as he slammed the cellar door closed.
Cody was smiling nervously by the granite island. “What?” he asked. “I thought you said you found food?”
He was about to tell Cody what he could do with the food when he felt movement just beneath his hairline, followed by sudden pain.
“Damn it!” he screamed, slapping at the back of his neck.
“What the hell is going on?” Sidney asked.
A spider the size of a quarter landed on the floor and started to crawl toward Rich’s sneakered foot. He stomped on it, grinding it into the tile floor.
“Gross,” Sidney said. “That was huge.”
“They’re all over the cellar,” he managed, his voice sounding raspy and out of breath.
“Spiders?” Cody asked.
“Everything!” Rich shouted.
He thought he felt more movement and reacted violently, tearing his shirt up and over his head and shaking it out.
“Are you all right?” Sidney asked.
He could see that she was smiling, trying not to laugh.
Cody didn’t have that willpower. “Dude, you should see yourself.”
“You should see what it’s like down there,” Rich said. “The place is infested.”
“Infested?” Sidney asked. “Did you ever have a bug problem before?”
Rich shook his head. “No, nothing like this.” He was starting to calm down a bit but still shook his shirt some more just in case.
Cody was really laughing now, and it was taking just about everything Rich had not to go over and smack him, but Sidney was laughing as well, even though she tried to hide it by covering her mouth with her hand.
“Yeah, laugh it up you two,” he said, angrily. “I’d like to see the two of you go down there and . . .”
Sidney was looking around him to the cellar door, and he turned to see that Snowy was pawing at something.
“What have you got, girl?” Sidney asked, going over to the dog to see.
The white shepherd had her nose close to the bottom of the cellar door and had started to whine, backing away with a growl.
“What is it, Snowy?”
There was suddenly a steady flow of insects coming from beneath the door.
“Shit,” Sidney exclaimed, reaching for her dog to pull her away. “Do you see this?”
“I told you,” Rich said, watching in horror as the multitude steadily increased, the floor now writhing with insect life.
Insect life that seemed to have a purpose, crawling across the kitchen floor toward where they stood.
* * *
“What the hell is this?” Sidney demanded. It was all so strange she was having a difficult time wrapping her brain around the moment.
She found herself walking around the flow of insects, pushing past Rich, who was busy stomping on the bugs as they advanced, and grabbing hold of the doorknob of the cellar door.
“What are you doing?” Cody asked from where he stood behind the kitchen island.
She needed to see in order to begin to understand the situation. It was one of her more bothersome traits. Even after she’d been summoned to the office and told that her father had been rushed to the hospital, that they suspected that he’d had a stroke, she really hadn’t believed a word. She’d needed to see him for herself. What if they were wrong? What if it had been nothing, and he would have been fine? She would have been upset all for naught.
It hadn’t been nothing, but what if?
Rich had stopped stomping bugs long enough to spin around just as she started to turn the knob.
“You don’t want to—” he called out just as she pulled the door open, wide enough to peer down into the darkness.
She needed to see if this was something.
Sidney’s cell phone was in her hand, and she hit the button to turn on the light feature, illuminating the stairs in a harsh white glow.
It was something.
The stairs were invisible, every inch covered in squirming, climbing, skittering bodies, a moving carpet of insect life flowing up from the cellar’s dirt floor.
Sidney barely had a moment to move herself from the opening as Rich’s shoulder plowed into the door, abruptly slamming it closed.
“Oh my God,” she managed as she stared into her friend’s frightened eyes.
“Yeah, oh my God,” he answered.
Cody was coming around the island now, an excited Snowy following him.
“No!” Sidney ordered, holding out her hand to them. “Keep her over there.” Cody instantly grabbed the dog by the collar, peering around the island to see.
The floor was covered in bodies of the living and the dead.
“What the hell?” Cody began, but Sidney was already directing.
“Find something to stick under that door,” she said, on the move, opening kitchen drawers.
Rich continued to stomp on the bugs that squirmed their way out from beneath the door, while Cody began to help Sidney with her search.
Snowy nudged her hand with a cold nose, and she took a moment to connect with the shepherd, making eye contact with her. “Good girl, Snowy,” Sidney said, raising her hand and making the gesture for the dog to sit and stay put. “That’s a good dog,” she praised.
“How about this?” Cody asked, holding up a green quilted place mat.
“That might do it,” Sidney said. “Are there any more?”
“Hey, guys, you want to step it up a little? It’s getting bad over here,” Rich cried out, and Sidney could hear the beginnings of hysteria in his voice, along with his heavy footfalls and the wet crunch of breaking bug bodies.
Cody approached with a handful of the place mats. “I found five of them,” he said.
Sidney grabbed them and moved toward the cellar door, Snowy beginning to follow.
“Keep her back, would you, Cody?” she said as she stared at the sight of bugs as they wriggled and squirmed for their freedom from the cellar and into kitchen. It seemed to take them a moment to get their bearings—to think of what they’d come up here for—then they made their way toward Rich, and her.
Weird didn’t even begin to describe it anymore.
Sidney knelt down, shoving the first of the place mats underneath the space between the door’s bottom and the floor. Some of the insects that managed to escape went right for her—a centipede at least eight inches long squirmed onto her hand, wrapping itself around her middle finger before finally making its way to the back of her hand, where it sank its pincers into her flesh.
“Ahhhh! Shit!” she cried out, shaking her hand savagely. She was tempted to take off, to leap back before any more of th
e bugs could bite her, but she knew that she had to get this done. The first of the cloth mats was in place, and she was starting on the next. She couldn’t grasp the number of insects that were coming under the door, never mind the fact that they were all together, hanging out as if they were somehow friends. A big insect block party. It didn’t work that way, she thought as a spider and cluster of ants went after her fingers.
Cody crushed the spider with his thumb, pressing its body into the floor with a disgusting sounding pop. He dropped down beside her with another of the place mats, starting to cram it beneath the door next to her last.
“My hero,” she said, and he just grunted, obviously as freaked out as she was by the situation.
“Guys, what the hell is going on?” Rich asked, his dance of bug death finally able to slow down some. He was looking at the soles of his sneakers with disgust.
Sidney got another of the mats shoved beneath the door, which pretty much closed up the opening.
“Are we good?” Cody asked, grimacing as he wiped his arms clean of straggler ants with the last remaining place mat.
“I think so,” she said, standing up, but keeping her eyes riveted to the row of green quilted cloth sticking out from the bottom of the door.
“This is just . . . ,” Rich said, and they looked over to see him staring down at the kitchen floor in front of the door, which was covered and smeared with the crushed bodies and guts of literally hundreds of dead insects. “This is just freaking disgusting. What’s happening?” he asked in all seriousness, without a trace of his usual jokey persona that was normally present.
Cody looked to Sidney as Rich did the same.
She realized that they were looking to her for answers.
“You’re asking me?” she said, eyes darting to the bottom of the door to make sure that the mats were still holding. They were. “I haven’t a clue.” The wind howled outside, the rain upon the windows sounding like the pattering of thousands of tiny feet. “Maybe it has something to do with the storm,” she offered.