Infestation Read online

  And certainly not with my perceptions skewed by anger and stubbornness I was too obstinate to admit. Sitting here in the semi-dark, away from contentious conversation, I could admit it now, at least to myself.

  What was I so mad at? Tank wanted to know.

  It is said that anger derives from pain that derives from love, and I can testify to that. Not that I would. My pain I didn’t talk about. But it raised a fair question: did this pain keep me from thinking clearly? Could the explorations of my . . . non-teammates . . . actually have some tiny corner of validity I would be wise to consider?

  Lights. Orbs. Was there a connection I was refusing to see? Could there be—

  Oh. Now what was this?

  Andi had stopped conversing and was now . . . well, singing, it turned out. At first it sounded more like she was sleep-talking, but then an actual melody and words came together: “ . . . rise to sing her praise . . . lessons learned within these walls will guide us all our days . . .”

  My first thought was dementia. She was regressing back to her high school days, singing the dated and corny strains of an alma mater. I was about to ask her about it when—

  Thump! Thump! Someone knocked on the door. The door opened a crack and Roberto the orderly stuck his head in.

  “I believe she’s singing her alma mater,” I tried to explain.

  Apparently that wasn’t what had drawn his concern. He beckoned with his finger. I went to the door.

  Before I got there I could hear a familiar canine panting in the hall, and as I slipped through the door I came face to face with Brenda, Tank, and, on a leash, Abby the chocolate lab. Brenda and Tank were cringing a bit, rightly expecting a burst of anger and indignation from me.

  “We wanted to try something,” said Tank, calming Abby by stroking her ears.

  “It’s just a guess—a, a hypothesis,” said Brenda. “It would show us if there’s any connection between whatever Abby’s seeing and whatever’s got Andi.”

  I countered. “Based on two premises: one, that Abby is indeed seeing something, and two, that Andi is ‘gotten’ by something.”

  Brenda gave a little shrug. “Hey, even if we’re all wrong on this, she loves this dog and the dog loves her. You never know, Abby might do her some good.”

  Perhaps I was just tired of being angry; perhaps it was the superseding fact that they cared for Andi at least as much as I did. Also, they were willing explorers, risk-takers, which could only be admired. With a sigh, I opened the door and called inside, “Andi, there’s someone here to see you.”

  Brenda and Tank, smiling and affirmed, led Abby through the door. “Hey,” Brenda said sweetly, “look who’s here!”

  We could not have anticipated what happened. Clearly the hospital staff thought as we did: these were two devoted friends. Surely there would be recognition, a heart-to-heart connection, a healing.

  That was not the case.

  The way Andi’s face contorted in horror, the way she cowered and backed into a corner, one would think a predacious, drooling lion had entered the room.

  The way Abby bristled, bared her teeth, and tried to lunge, one would think Andi were an evil prowler to be mauled.

  Abby’s bark was more a roar—fierce, vicious, guttural—and it took both Brenda, on the leash, and Tank, on Abby’s harness, to hold her back. Andi’s scream was shriller than when she had screamed at Tank. She leapt up on the bed for refuge, her arms raised in front of her. By now Roberto the orderly was coming through the door, other patients were crying out, a red light was flashing, and an alarm was sounding.

  Brenda and Tank got Abby out of the room and down the hall, fighting and tugging all the way until Abby’s fierce commotion was shut out by the closing of the big security door.

  “It’s all right, everyone,” said the head nurse, hurrying up and down the hall. “It’s okay.”

  The alarm quit, the red light shut off. Fine with me; they only made things more frightening.

  The orderly and I went to either side of Andi’s bed to comfort her and ease her down. Despite having made such a commotion, she calmed rather quickly and we were able to place her in the chair. Another orderly brought restraints, but Roberto turned him away. Andi wouldn’t need them. Within a few minutes of quiet in the darkened room, Andi went back to singing her alma mater, and Roberto, with other patients to see to, left us alone.

  “Honor Ponce de Leon,” Andi sang. “Rise to sing her praise; Lessons learned within these walls will guide us all our days . . .”

  Ponce de Leon? What a dreadful name for a high school.

  “The spirit of discovery shall make us brave and bold; And we will harken back each day to Leon’s green and gold.”

  She was quiet, safe, and happy. Let her sing.

  I rested on my haunches in the corner below the window, letting my nerves settle down and weighing the fact that Brenda and Tank’s experiment, though producing near disastrous results, did produce results. Nevermind what “it” might be, Abby the dog was reacting to something, both on the beach and here in Andi’s room. Considering that part of Abby’s past experience with “it” involved her disappearing, then being found dead and eyeless in the waves, it was safe to assume she would lash out at the same menace should she encounter it again.

  But this time . . . in Andi? The same Andi who’d held her stiffened corpse on the ocean sand, wailing and mourning over her until Tank . . . well, revived her? The thought was positively dreadful, but reasonable.

  Andi had stopped singing. I looked up. She seemed enraptured by something, and—

  Tap tap tap tap. Scratch. She was tapping on the arm of the chair again. This time, looking for meaning in anything, I paid attention. Her finger moved again, the fingernail making little scratches, four of them, followed by a single, staccato tap. Next, five scratches. Then, four more staccato taps followed by one scratch.

  Good lord. A pattern? Well, this was Andi. It would be just like her.

  I groped in my jacket pocket for a pen, had no paper, used the corner of the bed sheet.

  Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, tap.

  Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.

  Tap tap tap tap scratch.

  I marked it down. I’d pay for the sheet if the hospital objected.

  Four scratches and a tap.

  Five scratches.

  “Andi,” I whispered, “Are you doing this, I mean, are you aware of this?”

  She only tapped again, this time, four taps and a scratch; four scratches and a tap. Five scratches.

  I wrote it on the bed sheets again. A pattern indeed!

  “Andi! Andi, is this you?”

  A golden light washed over her face. A passing vehicle? I looked out the window—

  My gasp was involuntary. I froze right there, eyes locked on the phenomenon on the other side of the glass.

  Two—I’ll use the word—orbs. Round glowing objects about the size of a soccer ball, hovering by no visible means just outside the window.

  Only my eyes moved—they, and my hands that were trembling. I blinked. I studied. I looked away and looked back again. I dared to turn my head and look at Andi—she was looking at them, still enraptured as if seeing angels. I looked again, and they were still there, hovering without a sound, wavering just a little as if stirred by a breeze. They were a metallic gold, glowing, and each had what appeared to be a camera lens glowing deep blue and—I will confess the sensation—watching us as if aware, as if they knew us.

  Four taps and a scratch. Four scratches and a tap. Five scratches. Now Andi was tapping and scratching rapidly; I would even say frantically. I followed along, reading my penned record on the bed sheets. The same, every time.

  The orbs stirred this way and that, rotating to keep their blue lenses focused on us. They could have been a pair of eyes. Maybe they were. At last, perhaps out of impatience, definitely out of curiosity, I faced them directly, defiantly.

  They rushed away like little UFOs, vanishing amid t
he lights of the city.

  Andi whimpered, a weak little sound.

  I dropped to my knee, eye to eye with her. “Andi. Is that you? Are you in there?”

  For a fleeting moment I saw Andi, the real Andi, in her face. She was frightened, pleading. Her chin dropped ever so slightly, rose, then dropped again.

  From somewhere inside, she was saying Yes.

  CHAPTER

  6

  The Nephew

  My mind churned and circled and processed repeatedly through the night. These orbs were popularly known as ethereal, nonmaterial globes of light, but what I saw through Andi’s window was definitely mechanical. Had someone constructed a real machine to mimic a myth? What an ideal piece of trickery that would be. Morning couldn’t come quickly enough.

  After a hurried breakfast, Brenda, Tank, and I ventured onto the beach, turned right, and headed for the home of the nearest neighbor, no more than fifty yards away.

  “You sure the nephew’s even gonna be awake this early?” Brenda asked.

  “I assure you, he will be,” I said, my nose resolutely pointed that direction. “We will see to that.”

  The “nephew” was the unnamed sluggard and drunkard Andi and I had interviewed the time we were here seeking answers to the fish and bird die-offs. His aunt Edna, the lady of the house, hadn’t seen anything strange other than the dead fish and birds, but her nephew claimed to have seen “orbs,” even to be closely scrutinized by one. At that time, I saw no need for such outlandish testimony; this morning I was chastised and awakened—and humbled, I might add, as I shared the previous night’s experience with Brenda and Tank over breakfast. We are not born omniscient, I told them, and we would be ill-advised to close our minds to new knowledge. Consequently, though I intended to accept their viewpoint only in increments as called for, the presence of these infernal contraptions and their obvious interest in Andi’s condition meant I would, with no ifs, ands, or buts, hear what this nephew had experienced.

  It was 8:30 a.m. when I knocked on the door on the beach side of the house, the same door where Aunt Edna and her nephew met with Andi and me the last time.

  Aunt Edna looked about the same, like an old but stately vessel cruising lazily through life. At the sight of Brenda and Tank she looked puzzled. When she recognized me, she started shaking. “Can I help you?”

  “Pardon, ma’am,” I said. “I take it you remember me?”

  “Where’s the red-haired girl?”

  “That’s what we came to see you about—or your nephew, if you please. Andi—the red-haired girl—is in the hospital with a strange ailment, and we thought your nephew might have some kind of information that could help her.”

  “What kind of ailment?”

  Brenda, Tank, and I looked at each other. Since this was my big idea, the question fell to me. “Some kind of . . . psychosis . . . possibly having to do with all those other things that were going on.”

  “What things?”

  “Uh . . . dead fish and birds?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And, uh . . . well, your nephew described certain . . . orbs of light, an unusual phenomenon we’ve—”

  Her answer was abrupt. “We wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “Well, may we talk with your nephew?”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “But he does live here, does he not?”

  “I think you need to go away.”

  “Tell us where he is!”

  “I said go away!”

  Abruptly, Tank stepped in front of me and said, “Ma’am . . . uh, it’s Aunt Edna, isn’t it?” His gentler, drawling manner seemed to ease her a bit. I backed away and let Tank have the conversation.

  “My name’s Bjorn—my friends call me Tank; guess that’s ’cause I’m so big—and this here is Brenda. She’s a . . . creative artist. And this man here is, uh . . .” He looked at me as if getting permission. “James. He’s a professor. And Aunt Edna, if you don’t mind my saying, you look like something’s wrong, like you need some help. Is there something we can do?”

  She looked him up and down and asked, “How are you at breaking down doors?”

  We stood outside the nephew’s bedroom door. It was locked, just as Aunt Edna had told us.

  “I don’t pay that much attention to his coming and going,” she told us, “and anything he does, well, it doesn’t surprise me much. But when he started talking strange and acting like I wasn’t even there, I started to worry.”

  “How do you mean, talking strange?” Tank asked.

  “Oh . . . just talking goofy things that didn’t make any sense, and talking to people who weren’t there. Talking to his flying saucers or whatever they are.”

  Bingo. Tank, Brenda, and I looked at each other.

  “And three days ago I heard him come home late at night like he usually does, and go into his room, only this time he locked the door and wouldn’t come out. I could hear him through the door, talking away, singing songs, just blabbering over and over about the same things, and I called to him but he never did answer me.” Then she added, staring at the door, “And then he got quiet, and I haven’t heard a sound out of him for two days.”

  I knew what we had to do. “Aunt Edna, did you mean what you said about breaking down the door?”

  She looked at all of us and then at the door. “I’d sure feel better knowing.”

  I nodded to Tank and advised her, “Better stand back.”

  Tank checked the door first, then decided to use his foot. It only took one violent kick.

  “Whoa!” I shouted, arms extended to block the opening before anyone could set foot inside.

  We all held back, huddling around the doorway, looking into the room. We just didn’t know what to make of it.

  The nephew wasn’t there. The room was, in a sense, as we expected, messy and cluttered. The single bed, unmade as far as we could tell, was up against the far wall. The shape of an old guitar leaned in the corner. What were probably clothes were tossed about the floor. There was a bowl-shaped object, probably a dog’s dish, on the floor and what appeared to be a dog’s leash hanging on a nail. There were posters on the walls, but posters of what, we couldn’t tell.

  What held us back, at a loss, had no ready explanation; it fit into no familiar category. Having no idea what it was, we feared it.

  The room was coated, covered, with a strange dust the color of dead leaves. The stuff lay like brown snow in soft, thick heaps on the floor, obscuring every object that lay beneath it. It lay an inch thick—in places two inches—upon every horizontal surface—the bed, the dresser, the cluttered desk. It clung like mold to the walls. It was as if the room had been bombed with a large sack of autumn brown flour.

  Bombed? Not a bad choice of word, for on further observation we could tell the material lay within a definite radius, having originated from a center like ash from a volcano.

  And at the center, which we surmised to be on the bed, was a pair of cargo shorts, the same shorts the nephew had been wearing when he last spoke with Andi and me.

  Aunt Edna began to wail, losing control to the point that, for her safety and ours, Tank gently removed her to the living room.

  Brenda pointed, and we both noted the footprints of pets in the thick dust. Some cats, we decided, plus a large dog. The animals had moved about the room in a desultory manner, but eventually made their way to the rear window, open just wide enough for them to escape.

  We closed the door and backed away.

  Aunt Edna was trembling and plainly fearful to speak of anything. She had no idea what had happened, could not explain the brown dust, had not seen anything unusual before this. Yes, the nephew had pets, two dogs and three cats, but that’s all she knew. Had she seen orbs such as her nephew described? “No!” she screamed, looking out the windows as if they might be out there.

  I borrowed a small food storage container from a cupboard, went to the bedroom, and, using a spoon, carefully took a sample of the
dust, sealing the plastic lid with a snap. I closed the door.

  Aunt Edna had retreated, sealed herself away in a corner of the couch, and said nothing further except, “Please go away. Don’t ask me any more questions.”

  She needed time. With the sample in my hands, I told her, “We’re going to find out what this stuff is, and then we’ll come back to check on you. Until then, please do not go anywhere near that room.”

  After we left, I started to shake, but I just kept walking.

  CHAPTER

  7

  A Fungus

  Dr. Mathis peered through the eyepiece of his microscope, clearly fascinated. “It’s a fungus of some sort. It’s dead, and that’s why it’s turned brown. I see . . . yes, over here there’s still an edge of green, probably its color while living.”

  He let each of us take a look. Through the microscope we saw myriads of brown, roundish clumps covered with hairlike bristles. They looked formidable, as if they could cling to you like a burr and poison you like an urchin, yet they were incredibly minuscule; thousands could fit in a thimble.

  “This could explain the madness,” Mathis mused aloud. “Andi’s MRI and brain scan indicated some kind of chemical imbalance such as we see in a person under the influence of cocaine, methamphetamine, or hallucinogens. Certain fungi have the same effect. You’ve no doubt heard of the ‘magic mushrooms’ that were popular in the sixties for their psychedelic effects?”

  Why was he looking at me? “So, uh, how did this hallucinogen escape detection?”

  He peered once again through the microscope. “I suppose they could be detected if the lab folks knew what they were looking for. But the hallucinogens piggyback on top of hormones such as estrogen and testosterone where they can’t be readily detected, then smuggle their payload to the neuro-receivers.” He looked up to make sure we were still following him. “It’s just like plugging a thumb drive into your computer. Once these things are plugged in, they can trigger all manner of hallucinations. Some Native Americans used fungi they found in caves to induce altered states of consciousness as part of their religious rituals. Drugs of this kind have always been a part of the . . . what would you call it? . . . higher consciousness movement—Eastern mysticism, contacting spirit guides, ascended masters . . .”