Brood XIX (9 page)

She had been so sure, so convinced that Emma
was here.

The cicadas...why else would they have led her
to this house? To this very bedroom?

She hauled herself up onto the edge of the
bed and pulled the covers off of the child. Her size was
incongruous with Vanessa's memory. This child had to be at least
four or five inches taller than the Emma that lived in her memory,
the chubbiness in the arms and legs completely absent.

With a moan, she swept the child's hair away
from her face.

She had to know for sure.

The little girl stirred and furrowed her
brow. And then she opened her eyes. The most beautiful shade of
blue she had ever seen. They were the same eyes that stared back at
her from the mirror every day. Her eyes.

Emma's eyes.

"Emma!" Vanessa sobbed. She drew her daughter
to her chest and held her as tightly as she could. She inhaled
Emma's scent, savored the sensation of her daughter's cheek against
her own, reveled in the texture of her dyed hair.

"Mommy?" Emma whispered.

"I'm right here, baby. I'm going to get you
out of here. Take you home."

Emma's whole body shook and she started to
cry. Her lips parted and Vanessa noticed that Emma only had four
front teeth in both her upper and lower jaws. Only gums behind,
where the teeth had yet to grow in.

"I'm so sorry I let you out of my sight."
Vanessa adjusted her grip so she could lift Emma out of the bed. "I
promise...I will never let it happen again. Ever."

"Mommy!" Emma screamed.

The cicadas erupted in song, so loud in the
confines that even the air appeared to tremble.

A shadow fell over Vanessa from behind. She
saw the expression of horror on Emma's face, the terror reflected
in her eyes.

Clinging to her daughter, she threw herself
to the side.

A knife flashed through her peripheral vision
and embedded itself in the mattress. It was trailed by a thin,
feminine arm.

Emma screamed directly into her ear.

Vanessa rolled over to shield her daughter
with her body. She glanced up at her assailant from the corner of
her eye.

Sandra Matthews towered over her, only it
wasn't the Sandra she remembered. This woman's hair had gone
prematurely gray and was tangled and unkempt. Her eyes were wild,
her teeth bared. She held the knife above her shoulder, the muscles
and tendons showing through her emaciated arm.

The cicada song ceased, leaving an oppressive
silence that made the air feel somehow heavier.

"Let go of my Chelsea right now," Sandra
snarled. "Get your hands off my daughter!"

She took a step closer and raised the
knife.

Vanessa turned her face away, looked directly
into Emma's eyes, and cringed in anticipation of the searing pain
to come.

* * *

Trey thundered down the stairs into the
basement when the screaming started. There was just enough
illumination from the seams around the windows to limn the cicadas
on the walls. They seethed as though the plaster had begun to boil.
He had never seen so many insects in one place, let alone inside of
a house. Pistol at arm's length, elbows slightly flexed to absorb
the kick, he reached the bottom of the staircase and veered toward
the source of the light.

The cicadas started to sing. The sound was
physically painful.

He walked in his shooting stance, finger
tightened on the trigger, prepared to fire at the first hint of
movement.

The entire hallway was black with bugs. The
walls. The ceiling. The partially open door at the end.

And then the sound suddenly died.

He heard a growl that could have been words
from slightly to his left as he slipped past the door. It looked
like a child's bedroom, only there was an eyebolt in the center of
the torn carpet attached to a length of chain. He followed it with
his eyes to where it terminated in a manacle bound around a tiny,
pale ankle. Vanessa covered the child with her body.

Another woman reared up over his sister with
a knife in her hand.

"Drop the knife!" he shouted.

The woman looked over at him with a twisted
expression of rage and anguish.

"Drop it now or I'll shoot!"

She turned back toward his sister, who had
seized the opportunity to drag the child to the furthest reaches of
the iron tether. Vanessa still had her back to the woman, who
screamed and strode after her.

The cicadas erupted from the walls, as though
the entire room were imploding. They flew directly at the woman,
hitting her, swarming around her. She wailed and lunged
forward.

Trey lined up his weapon through the swirling
insects and took his shot.

Blood spattered the far wall, climbing it in
arcs and dots.

The woman spun and was launched backward
against the wall at the foot of the bed. She slumped down, chin
hanging to her chest. The entire left half of her shirt near her
shoulder was crimson.

Trey could barely see her through the swarm,
which slowly dissolved. The cicadas flew straight at him. He ducked
his head against the barrage as they funneled past him down the
hallway.

When he reached his sister, only a blue cloud
of gun smoke hung in the air.

All of the cicadas were gone.

Vanessa rolled over and looked up at him, her
eyes filled with tears.

Trey kissed her on the forehead, smiled down
at his niece, and began working on the lock of the manacle.

Vanessa stood at her kitchen window, staring
out into the darkness. She wrapped her arms around her chest to
combat a sudden chill. Emma was upstairs in her own bed, with her
own belongings, right where she was supposed to be. Buddy hadn't
left her side for a second. She had spent the past two nights in
the hospital, where specialists of all kinds had evaluated her
health, both physical and emotional. There would be hard times
ahead, they assured her. The nightmares had already begun to
torment her, and she was terrified of walking from one room to the
next, let alone setting foot outside. She broke into tears without
warning and often screamed for no reason, but whatever it took,
Vanessa would be there for her. She would never let Emma out of her
sight again.

Sandra Matthews was in the hospital as well,
only under constant guard until she was stable enough to be
transferred to the county jail, pending her trial. At first,
Vanessa had wanted to be there, to hear the rationale behind
stealing her daughter and killing her husband. She had wanted to
know what kind of monster waited until her own daughter died,
stomped on her until she was broken to pieces, and then dumped her
in the swamp. But a part of Vanessa already knew the answers. She
had lost her daughter once, and would have done anything to get her
back. Hearing the words from Sandra's mouth would change nothing.
The two of them were more alike than Vanessa cared to admit. Even
to herself. As long as she had Emma back, she was content to let
Sandra rot in a dismal prison or asylum with only the thoughts of
her dead husband and child to haunt her. Vanessa knew that was
punishment enough.

The time had come to look forward, not
back.

For the first time in two years, a seemingly
infinite future stretched out before her. It was a future without
her husband, but she would see him again soon enough. For now, she
was excited to explore the possibilities with the daughter she
thought she had lost forever.

She could hear Trey's muffled voice through
the floor above her. He continued to read to Emma, even though she
was already fast asleep. He couldn't bring himself to leave her
either. He had born the guilt of her abduction as much as Vanessa
had. While he wasn't ready to forgive himself yet, it appeared as
though the process had at least begun.

He still hadn't asked her how she tracked
Emma to the Matthews's house, nor had they discussed the cicadas.
Vanessa suspected that he understood that there were some things
better left unexamined. Whatever had caused them to swarm as they
had to guide her to Emma, she was grateful and chose not to
question it. Call it divine intervention or a miracle of nature. It
didn't matter. Everything had worked out perfectly in the end. And
she would draw immeasurable delight from making up for the two
years they had lost.

The cicadas sang from the trees in the back
yard. Soon enough they would be gone. The females would all be
laden with eggs that would one day become larvae squirming around
in the dirt, feeding on roots and whatever else might end up buried
deep enough in the earth, biding their time for another thirteen
years until they were again free to molt and live the lives they
had dreamed of, if only for a single, glorious month.

And Vanessa would welcome them back when they
did. In the meantime, she would honor the gift they had bestowed
upon her by living with the same passion and intensity.

In her mind's eye, she envisioned her perfect
moment, the one held close to her heart, and allowed herself a
wistful smile.

Emma knelt in the mud in her filthy dress
while Buddy raced around her. Her small hands formed mud into the
shape of a bear that she imbued with the life that would one day
save her own. Emma's features slowly metamorphosed into those of a
girl with a slender face and short blonde hair, a girl Vanessa had
only seen in photographs after the fact. The girl looked back at
Vanessa and smiled the distant smile of a child who had never had
the opportunity to truly live, the smile of a little girl who had
never been properly mourned.

BONUS MATERIAL

The Generosity of
Strangers

A Short Story

"I'm going to kill myself."

That was how it began. Five simple words
arising from the empty static.

Jared didn't know what he had expected when
he rolled over and snatched the phone from the cradle, but that
string of words was the furthest thing from it.

What in the world time was it anyway?

Groaning beneath the weight of his disrupted
slumber, Jared rolled to his right and squinted to bring the red
numbers of the digital clock into focus across the room.

3:16 a.m.

Silence hummed into his left ear.

"I think you must have the wrong number," was
all he could think to say.

"No," a man's voice said. There was nothing
familiar about it. "There's no one else I can talk to."

"Look...it's quarter after three and I've got
class in the morn---"

"Would you rather I hang up?"

Silence.

"No," Jared sighed, rubbing his palm into his
eye. He rolled onto his back and stared up into the ceiling. He
hated this old room. It was, after all, the same dormitory his
grandfather had lived in fifty years prior. The walls were made of
cinder block painted a chipping white, and the plumbing ran along
the ceiling directly above his bed. Every time someone flushed one
of the communal toilets down the hall, water pinged through the
pipes, rattling them in their brackets against the ceiling. "I
guess not."

Breathing from the distant end of the
line.

"Do I know you?" Jared asked.

"I doubt it."

"Then why did you call me?"

"I dialed your number at random."

Jared rubbed the crusted sleep from the
corner of his eye.

"I can't talk to any of my friends," the
voice continued. "Not that I really have any."

"Is that why you want to kill yourself?"

A dry chuckle.

"If only it were that simple."

"Do you go to school here?"

"Yes."

Jared rolled over onto his stomach and rested
his chin on his elbows, staring through the parted curtains into
the courtyard outside. The dumpster lid was already covered with a
solid three inches of snow. Flakes fluttered against the windowpane
like so many moths drawn to a flame. His roommate Matt snored from
the bed across the small room. He was going to have to move the
phone to Matt's side in the morning.

"What could possibly be so bad?" Jared asked,
transfixed by the swirling snow tapping against the pane. "I
mean...what happened that you think killing yourself is the only
option?"

"I can't say."

"Then how am I supposed to talk you out of
it?"

"Do you think that's why I called you?"

"Isn't it?"

Silence.

Jared envied Matt... sound asleep, dampening
his pillow with slobber, while he was stuck on the phone with an
Abnormal Psychology test in five hours. His graduate thesis was due
in less than a month, and he hadn't the slightest clue what he was
going to base it on. The prospect of not graduating---of never
leaving this damned dorm room---summoned the same kind of thoughts
this stranger was sharing with him now.

He needed to formulate his thesis.

"I just wanted to talk."

"Then what do you want to talk about?"

Jared couldn't get a good feel for the person
on the other end of the phone. At first he had thought it might
have been a prank, but he wasn't sure now. The voice sounded
serious enough, but from everything he'd learned about suicide,
when the individual reached out for help, they usually turned to
someone close...a friend...family...someone who could read into more
subtle signals.

Since he didn't even know this person, did
this suddenly make him responsible, or could he simply hang up the
phone and absolve himself of any guilt whatsoever?

"I'm going to lose my scholarship," the voice
said.

"For sure?"

"My parents are going to kill me," he
chuckled humorlessly. "I'm the first from my family to go to
college."

"Then don't you think they'd understand?"

"My father's working a second job down at the
mill to pay for what the grants won't cover."