The Call of Distant Shores Page 8

  But as things settled into a rhythm, and he had some time to sit and watch them come and go, little things began to itch at him. Bobby Lee, for one thing. The man never slept. As far as Jasper could tell, Bobby Lee had not slept a wink since the first day he'd brought the damned cockroach to the stand. It didn't show. Bobby Lee was always smiling, always moving, working, and scheming. The shed out back had grown a foundation of concrete blocks that raised it a good four feet higher off the ground, for instance, and it had happened, seemingly, overnight. There was no sign that Bobby Lee had hired for the work done, or that anyone else had an idea how it might have happened, but the next morning Bobby Lee was as fresh as a daisy and ready for anything. So he said.

  Jasper had seen the difference the minute he pulled into his reserved spot at the front of the lot. There had already been three families in from Raleigh, waiting for the cockroach exhibit to open, parked in the lot. The shed, which should have been, as always, hidden by the structure of the produce stand itself, was clearly visible, rising into the sky to a height it should not have attained. Jasper had nearly run over a stand full of t-shirts staring at it.

  Ignoring the calls and questions of the customers, waiting on him to open, he ran around the corner to the shed. Bobby Lee stepped quickly through door, as if he'd been waiting for his partner to arrive, smiling broadly and waving at the new foundation with a flourish of one brawny arm.

  "Well, what do you think? I got to worryin' over hurricanes and the like, thought I might get 'er fixed into the ground a little more permanently."

  Jasper stared up at the ludicrously tall structure and frowned. His mind was framing all sorts of questions, most of them starting with the words "How in the HELL," but none of them would quite make the journey to his lips. He stepped forward toward the doorway, and reached around to where he knew the light switch was mounted on the wall, but before he could flick it, Bobby Lee grabbed him by the arm.

  "You might not want to do that," Bobby Lee said softly.

  The touch of Bobby Lee's hand on his arm was cold. Where their skin met felt like ice had been packed in under Jasper's skin. He heard the scuttling of what his mind conjured into a mound of thousands of crustaceous, squirming bodies. He stared into the shadowed interior of the shed, and more tiny glittering pinpoints of light than the stars in a cloudless summer's night sky winked back at him – then were gone. Something huge and hulking centered the shed, larger than the cockroach itself could possibly be, twelve, maybe fifteen feet in the air, instead of seven. The interior of that shed had a cold draft, and the scent of the place was dank and sweet with rot. Like the swamp.

  Jasper reeled back from the stench, yanking his arm free of Bobby Lee's grip. His partner was still smiling, but the smile was brittle, and for the first time Jasper looked deeper into his friend's eyes. They were bright, far too bright to be natural. His skin was sun-dried to the point of being leathery – or even papery. And the cold.

  "You mainlining ice, Bobby Lee?" Jasper whispered. "What the hell is wrong with you – and – with that place?"

  "Not a thing, Jasper," Bobby Lee said. His voice was as normal and pleasant as ever, but there was no mistaking the way he moved in front of the shed door. It was a sidewise sort of shuffle. Like a scuttling bug, or a man working his arms and legs via strings, like a puppet. Too fast, but sort of clumsy and "wrong."

  "You go back out front and send those folks in," Bobby Lee said softly. "We don't want to disappoint them."

  Jasper turned, remembering the customers gathered at the edge of the parking lot for the first time since he'd rounded the corner. He stepped back, started to say something, then turned and fled to the front – to his chair, and his beer, and the line of folks already stretching halfway around the parking lot, all of them wanting a glimpse of that damned giant cockroach.

  Jasper wondered if they felt it. He wondered if they smelled the stench, and heard the scuttling feet – the soft, chitinous voices that never stopped speaking or chirping or chanting or whatever-the-hell they were doing. Maybe he was just losing it. Bobby Lee had sure done him a good turn, letting him in on this deal, and one thing was certain. There was no shortage of cockroach suckers in the world. No sir.

  Jasper grabbed the roll of tickets and began doling them out, five dollars a pop, to bright, eager-faced kids and tolerant parents, young couples on long vacations and truckloads of rednecks in for a quick laugh. He only paid them half a mind, but one family caught his eye.

  They pulled up in a brand new SUV, the kind with a million features, DVD player in back and On Star up front. Mother, father, a boy of maybe thirteen in a black t-shirt with the center of his lower lip pierced and his hair spiked like a damned purple and green porcupine, and the girls. They were twin girls, probably eighteen or nineteen, tall and long-legged with matched honey colored hair and short skirts. Jasper couldn't have missed them if he tried, and despite his need to vend tickets to the next twenty people in line and price t-shirts for another fifteen visitors on their way out, he managed to keep an eye on them until they wound around the corner and out of site toward the shed.

  For the next half hour or so, Jasper was too busy to think about them, and that was a tribute to how hard he was working, because there was absolutely NOTHING Jasper loved better than a cute set of twins. He liked to watch TV LAND on cable so he could catch the old Doublemint Girls commercials. It wasn't until that family was winding their way back out, the boy selecting a truly disgusting plastic roach souvenir, and the mother laughingly holding one of the "I Survived the Great Dismal Swamp" t-shirts across her breasts and winking at her husband, that Jasper remembered them at all.

  It was later in the afternoon, and Jasper scanned the diminishing crowd quickly for the twins. They were nowhere to be seen, and he grew almost frantic, staring out over the thinning traffic in the small parking lot to see if he'd somehow missed their trek back to the SUV. There was no one visible inside the vehicle, and the rest of the family seemed oblivious. They laughed and joked a little - or the parents did. The boy jammed a pair of headphones onto his head, cranked the volume on some sort of expensive portable MP3 player, and zoned out. They walked away as a group, straight to the SUV, opened the doors, and got in.

  Jasper stepped away from his counter, holding up a hand to those waiting on him to give him a moment. He stepped to the corner of the stand, and glanced around at the shed. Bobby Lee was there, grinning and waving at him, but there was no sign of the girls. Jasper frowned. He turned to scan the SUV again, but its taillights were already disappearing out the feeder road toward 17.

  "What the hell?" he muttered. He turned back to the counter and went through the motions for the next twenty minutes or so, ushering the last of the crowds out and away. Jasper carefully counted out the days proceeds, which were phenomenal, and packed the bills away into the bank bag he'd taken to carrying in a lock box beneath the seat of his truck. When the shirt racks had been wheeled inside, and the tiny remnant of the day's fresh produce had been stored for the night, he locked up carefully.

  He stepped to the corner of the building, as he did every night, and called out to Bobby Lee.

  "You done for the night, Bobby?"

  "Just about," Bobby called back. His voice floated out from the interior of the shed, and for a moment, Jasper stared. There was no light on inside, and it was growing dark outside. The shadows inside had to be deeper still.

  Jasper shook his head and turned, walking deliberately to his truck. He had no intention of going home, but he had him a plan, and it involved Bobby Lee watching him leave the parking lot, so he drove on out the feeder road and turned right on 17 toward Elizabeth City. He figured it wouldn't take him more than five or six beers and a shot or two to be ready to come back.

  The hulking signs leading toward the world's largest cockroach loomed over the ditches and crossroads of Highway 17 as Jasper passed them, winding his way slowly back toward the stand, and the shed, and what lay within. He had no intention of turning
in the feeder road; that would be too obvious. Jasper had been running his produce stand for a lot of years, and he knew more than one way in, and out. He passed the main road and went about half a mile until a paved road bisected the highway. It bore the same name as a thousand North Carolina roads, Dead End, but he paid that no mind, other than to hope it was just a name, and would not prove prophetic.

  The road wound back in a long lines of trees that bordered fields lined with even rows of cotton. Jasper drove slowly and carefully, keeping his engine as quiet as possible. He turned left onto a dirt track and followed the rutted, poorly kept road deeper into the trees. The road grew progressively worse, and it wasn't long before he found a place to pull the truck in under the overhanging branches and off the road, and parked, popping the top on another beer as he stared off into the darkness across the cotton field.

  He could make out the imposing shadow of the impossibly tall shack from where he sat. The odd shape of the building reminded him of a giant outhouse, and he chuckled, downing the beer in quick gulps and reaching for another. Made sense, he reckoned, that a giant roach would end up in a giant outhouse. He wondered why he'd never noticed it before.

  When the second beer had been sucked dry, he got out, tossed the can in the back of his truck, and stood, getting his bearings. It was still a good quarter of a mile through the cotton to the shed, but as long as he was quiet, he was sure he could sneak up on the place. He could just make out Bobby Lee's truck beside the shed, and there was a dim glow seeping out along the roof line, and near the bottom of the building. Whatever it was Bobby Lee had going on in that place, it was going on now, and Jasper aimed to see it for himself. If Bobby Lee was holding out on him, partying with twins and such, Jasper aimed to be part of that, too. If it was something else ... he shivered deep inside.

  "Partners," he muttered to himself, "is partners."

  The moonlight was bright, bathing the back of the shed in cold, white illumination. Though it was unseasonably warm, the closer Jasper came to the back of the building, the colder it grew. By the time he broke free of the cotton and came out into the open and into the area Bobby Lee had raked clear that first day, his teeth were chattering, and he threw his nearly-empty beer can off behind him, curling his arms around his chest.

  "What the hell," he said to no one in particular.

  Moving quietly, he worked his way around the shed on the left side, hesitating as he drew near the corner. He was walking close to the shed, and where his arm brushed close to the corrugated metal wall, something rippled over his skin. There was a stench in the air, like rotted vegetation, or some sort of hot mud, but there was no heat. Jasper's heart danced like a bug on a magnifying glass, and for a moment, with the blood rushing to his head, he thought he'd pass out. Then he steadied himself, regretting instantly the contact with the building this required. The walls vibrated, and the vibration translated to sound in his head. The sound was a drone, as though there were a million mosquitoes humming inside, or the wings of a host of wasps beating against the far side of the wall. Jasper closed his eyes, caught his breath, and in that instant he saw them, clinging to one another, climbing and grasping and bobbing with black-gold-black striped stingers primed, dripping poison.

  Jasper opened his eyes with as start and pulled away from the wall.

  "Jesus Jumpin' Jehosephat Christ," he whispered. Each syllable of the words came out in a separate gasp.

  He stood wavering between continuing around the corner and turning to run and never look back, moving on to Virginia, or Maryland, starting over. Then he thought of Bobby Lee. He remembered long, lazy afternoons fishing, hard days on his daddy's farm, Bobby Lee at his side, working until they fell down in the dirt exhausted and then washed it all off with a garden hose to start over and do it again. He couldn't leave Bobby Lee in there, even if Bobby Lee WANTED to be in there.

  "Wish I'd brought some Raid," he muttered, and turned the corner of the shed, moving stealthily toward the sliding door in front.

  A sickly, greenish glow seeped out through the doorway. It reminded Jasper of the glow-sticks they sold at summer carnivals, or the glow-in-the-dark stars he'd hung on his ceiling as a boy. The droning was louder now, and it covered a wide range of tones – deep and resonant to high-pitched and ear-splitting. Jasper pulled a wad of tissue out of his pocket, hoped it wasn't too dirty, and wadded rolls of it in each ear, blocking as much of the sound as possible.

  He stared at the door, trying to think of a compelling enough reason to turn tail and run, but he couldn't shake the thought of Bobby Lee, and those crawling, touching, stinging bugs.

  "Ah, hell," he said softly. Before he could change his mind, he stepped inside.

  If the air had been cold outside the shed, it was frigid within. There were lights, but they were soft, and green, and buried in the corners near the rear of the building. Jasper couldn't see a thing except the huge, vaguely defined silhouette of the giant wooden cockroach. The greenish glow shimmered around the edges of it like the silver lining on a cloud gone rotten. And that was another thing. The stench was horrible. Every breath had weight, as if he were breathing liquid, or some sort of thick gas, rather than air.

  The droning pounded in Jasper's head, and thinking became difficult. Gritting his teeth, he skirted the side wall of the shed, pulling as far away from the statue on its wood pallet base without coming into contact with the wall to his left. He didn't want a repeat encounter with the vibration. As he moved through the thick, cloying shadows, he concentrated on an image of Bobby Lee's smiling face, and whenever that started to fade into the sound, and stink, or threatened to be rattled out of his head by his chattering teeth, he thought about those twins.

  It was the longest walk of Jasper's life. He knew the length and breadth of the shed, he'd bought the damned thing in the garden department at Wal-Mart himself. Sure, the walls were taller than they'd been, and it was a little harder to walk in this air than it had been last time he'd been inside, but it should have been a ten, twelve at the max, step journey from the front, to the back, and though he couldn't string two thoughts together in a line, he knew he should have reached the rear of that building.

  The sound and shadows closed in behind him then, and he saw that the glow was concentrated near the rear of the cockroach and down low. He headed in that direction, sweeping his gaze to the right and left, looking for any sign of Bobby Lee, or the twins, or whatever the hell was making that fucking NOISE – but he saw nothing. Nothing but that glow, and as he drew near to it, he felt a scream bubbling up through his chest that he only barely managed to bite off, clamping his lip tightly between his teeth and grinding. He tasted blood, but it didn't matter. Somehow he knew that the last thing he wanted in this place, at this moment, was to draw attention to himself.

  What he saw was a small pile of glowing orbs. They were roughly the shape of a baseball, and there were dozens of them, clinging in a wet, sticky mass and coated in slimy ichor. Among them tiny shapes squirmed and crawled, some flitting a few inches through the air but unable – quite – to break free of the mass, plopping wetly back into the others to crawl and tug at the sticky fluid, trying to break free once more. Jasper stared, mesmerized. It took a few moments to realize that the droning had increased in volume, and that it was moving.

  Breaking his gaze free of the crawling mass at his feet, Jasper glanced up sharply. He couldn't see anything, but he could hear it, and moments later, he could feel it as well. The air was whirling, driving the image of a whirlwind like a spike into his brain. He still saw nothing, but his mind formed the image that he couldn't bring into focus, and he knew they were there. He didn't know if they were mosquitoes, or wasps, hornets, or something – else. It didn't matter. They were circling, faster and faster, but they were not coming closer. Something else was.

  He saw Bobby Lee's shadowed form stepping from the shadows, moving slowly and deliberately, as he himself had been moving since stepping into the place, only different. Jasper wanted to
turn, run, and be done with it, but he stood his ground. Licking his dry lips, he tried to speak, but the words came out in a rasping whisper.

  "Bobby?" he whispered. "Bobby, what..."

  Then Bobby was close enough to be seen in the dim, green glow of the orbs, or eggs, or whatever the hell they were, Jasper nearly fell. His knees, solid and strong a moment before had taken on the consistency of jelly, and the only thing that kept him from losing a perfectly good six-pack of beer was the thought of those – things – crawling among the scraps and bits and drinking his beer as they fought free ... and joined the swarm overhead.

  Bobby was awash in tiny bodies. It was impossible to tell what they were, what color, what size, there were too many. They coated him like a second skin, moving and chittering, squirming and lifting tiny antennae and proboscises to search and test, looking for – what?

  "Ja...sper" Bobby Lee croaked. He couldn't speak clearly. When he opened his mouth, they swarmed in and out, only vacating that space slowly, crawling out between his tightly pressed lips, one after another, and crawling back up over his ears to join the rest.

  Jasper wanted to vomit, but he held it. Bobby Lee's eyes were clear and bright. Maybe too bright, but there was no alarm in them. No panic. The insects, roaches, wasps, whatever they were shimmered over him in waves, but he stood, staring calmly into Jasper's wondering gaze.

  "Wha..." Jasper stopped. He didn't want to ask a question. He knew Bobby Lee would answer, but he didn't want to witness the filling and emptying of his friend's mouth a second time if he could help it. Instead of speaking, he shrugged, backing away a step.

  Bobby Lee nodded toward the huge wooden cockroach, and stepped forward, laying a hand across the bottom segment of one huge mandible. Jasper stepped back another step, but something in Bobby Lee's expression held him steady.