The Uninvited Page 4

  1

  After Kacey dropped off the Hockers, and with her palms sweating just a little, she turned off her car’s lights and pulled into the first empty car port, of the first deserted-looking retirement center home she came upon, instead of leaving the park like she told the officers she would. Switching off the engine she sat, nervously, listening to her breath and heartbeat, while watching for police. She removed a knotted and bunched-up bandanna and flashlight from her glove box, but continued to sit a few moments longer as she tried to build up the needed resolve to do what she was planning to do. She’d never done anything like this before, for all the grief she’d caused Fisher since moving into town four months ago. This was the first time she’d ever made it into a full-on restricted, cordoned-off area. Today, luck had been with her, and she hoped it’d remain so.

  Kacey cautiously exited her car. She looked to her surroundings, wind tossing her hair about her face.

  This was totally creepy.

  Unnerving. Like a fake movie set.

  She was caught in in-between time. A non-person in a non-Time event. The light and balmy breezes tossed about the Palm and Pepper trees, Bougainvillea, Heliconia, and other landscaping, and in the distance through the humid early morning haze, the thin, towering pines she thought looked so cool down here... but in each of the humble, silent residences she looked to, where she’d ordinarily never have given a thought as to whether or not these buildings were inhabited by sleeping or not-so-sleeping residents at this time of morning, she knew—knew—they were empty. Every one of them. Just like the deserted streets. Cars were parked in all the driveways and car ports; lawns were covered with the variety of knick-knacks seniors adorned upon them, some gently and casually spinning or rocking or clacking away; various flags, U.S., Florida, or otherwise, lightly fluttered and occasionally snapped in the breeze. But otherwise everything... everything was utterly quiet... still... in a hard to define way. It was like she was viewing a setting she wasn’t meant to see. Her car, she realized, now fit in with every other prop on this set, and she wondered how the Hockers were doing... felt... upon returning home. Farther to the east she saw the glorious red slivers of a rising sun just beginning to poke its way up and between the strata of low-lying, deserting, storm clouds.

  This had been quite a different place yesterday.

  She inhaled the gentle, damp, floral breeze, and listened to the soothing sounds of lazy wind chimes, rustling palms, and awakening birdlife—when a stronger gust briefly kicked up, upsetting the wind chimes and palm trees. She had better hop to it before sun—or prying eyes—ratted her out.

  Shuddering, Kacey hurried her way to the screened-in patio of her intended break in, where she undid her bandanna. Using the large handkerchief as a glove, she opened the screen door and entered the patio, thinking, funny... this is where some of those very same murderers had also walked just hours ago. Her next thoughts, however, were how sad it was that all those people had been murdered after having spent their entire lives building their nest eggs so they could find a decent, comfortable place to live out the twilight of their existences. What brings on something like this? From where had this nasty little contingent of killers come? And why, why, and why?

  Kacey hastened through the unlocked patio door, sliding it shut behind her. Her initial nervous scan told her everything appeared normal enough, but as she switched on her mini flashlight, she glanced down to the floor and saw the ants. Tons of ants. Thousands. She again hurried across the dining area, keeping her light trained on them. They were goll-dang everywhere.

  As Kacey sidestepped their legions, she allowed her flashlight to linger on them a little longer in muted fascination, but continued on to the rear of the manufactured home, toward the bedroom. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to see this, but knew if she was going to do it right... she had to. No one else had this story yet, and she needed it to get her foot in the door. To survive. There was no way she could get turned away now, not with this story. She was it. First one in. No doubt when she left the park, she’d see the line of media setting up outside, but, for now, she was it and had to act quickly.

  Kacey hurried down the short expanse of hallway toward the bedroom door. This was where the rubber met the road... where the deed was done. Bandanna in hand, she grabbed the doorknob, twisted it open, and braced herself as she entered the crime scene.

  Upon first inspection, it looked just like any other standard bedroom—right down to the rumpled sheets and comforter, kitschy paintings, and plastic plants... until you saw the dark spatter sprayed across every wall, the headboard, furniture—ceiling. You could tell the whole story of a crime scene from the blood that CSI TV show forensics expert character, Grissom, had once said.

  Now, wasn’t that sad?

  Any so-called knowledge she had of this stuff came from television. Some reporter she’d be. But, Lord in heaven, it was everywhere. The curtains... light fixtures... the carpet. And there were areas on the carpet where there were even heavier concentrations of blood that looked as if actual butchery had taken place...

  And the smell.

  Kacey looked behind her. Wrinkling her face, she raised a hand to her mouth and nose and gagged—spatter marks were also on the back of the door, smeared all over the doorknob. She was glad the lights weren’t on—or that the sun wasn’t yet fully up. There was the definite smell of death in here. Angry, pissed off, death.

  Angry?

  Kacey carefully directed her mini-light around the room, trying to stem her gag reflex. When the beam touched a dark stain, she quickly moved it away.

  Man, maybe they were all right and she wouldn’t make a good reporter. In this business, if she couldn’t stand the sight of a little blood what good was she?

  Kacey got hold of herself, exhaled, then slowly re-directed her light back over the stains. Good God, there were running trails of the stuff all over the place. Then, remembering how the ceiling had also been tainted, she uttered a short yelp and jigged about underneath it, until she saw she hadn’t been under anything—dripping or not.

  Continuing her examination of the room she found herself besieged with probable images of the attack, like a movie played out in her head: a couple, asleep in bed... killer (a woman) wanders in, broken bedpost in hand—and crack-crack! But, for some bizarro reason, that’s not quite good enough for our assailant, oh, no—she has to do serious, egregious damage to their corpses before moving on to her next kill, and—

  Kacey shut off the images.

  Too much... too, too much. Maybe she was better suited to Sunday supplements and fluff reports. How did cops and coroners do it? No wonder they were so tough and cynical. If you had to deal with shit like this on any kind of a recurring basis it was bound to harden a soul.

  As Kacey continued exploring the room she found other things she was sure most other bedrooms also didn’t have: broken furniture, damaged bed frames, and shattered lamps.

  And all these damned ants!

  It was quite clear there had been a nasty struggle, here, death, then dismemberment, and she wondered in what order.

  Kneeling bedside, Kacey shined her light under the bed, then between the bed and nightstand. Of course, maybe the broken lamp had just been from a spastic arm shot out during a dream—but it most certainly tended to look more like it had been from surprise at being accosted by his or her murderer. Like the line from that Bladerunner movie; Brion James’s character had said, while attacking Harrison Ford’s character on an noirish, future-LA street: “Wake up! Time to die....”

  What a way to go. Good night, Gracie.

  What could have caused these people to go berserk and wander into this place and start killing? Was it a random killing spree or premeditated? What could the people of this community have possibly done to have justified their total—brutal—annihilation?

  Kacey got back to her feet, and, unsure if it had been all she’d just been through or that she’d perhaps just moved a little too fast, but felt instantl
y dizzy. She tried regaining her balance, but it was hard to stand. Kacey closed her eyes, and shot a hand out to the wall beside her, which, unknown to her, landed directly onto a drying spatter stain. She stayed that way for a long moment—when she also felt a hot blast of wind permeate the room—no, that couldn’t be, all the windows were shut... it wasn’t quite a wind... it was... the sound of wind, and it was...

  (inside her head?)

  ... a dry, sucking, and aching bluster that raked its nails across the blackboard of her mind...

  Kacey shot open her eyes and looked about her, her entire body electrified.

  Someone was in the room with her!

  But she was alone. There was no one, nothing else here... except for the ants.

  Kacey spit. Out from her mouth and from between her teeth came (what appeared to be) grains of sand...

  2

  Chin gas... chin... gasss...

  The words rang through attorney Harold Gordon like diarrhea through a dog. Harry stood in the middle of a darkened bedroom, squinting, hand to his head. Confused.

  Chin gas? What the hell was chin gas?

  But before he could try out an answer, a barrage of thundering horses surrounded him, and a shadow of a man, not on horseback, lurched at him. Harry had no time to sidestep the attack, and took it full in the gut.

  Chin... gaaas...

  More invisible horses thundered around him, and he found it hard to stand, like he stood at the epicenter of an earthquake, but in the darkness saw—nothing. Harry turned, and found his assailant behind him, kneeling on top of his bed and vigorously digging at something in the

  (sand)

  sheets. Sand sprayed up all around him from the shadow’s frantic digging with a toy shovel that positively glowed a sky blue. Harry felt the grains hit his face. He spit out sand that’d gotten caught in his mouth. Harry moved closer, but still couldn’t make out for what the figure was digging so furiously. He could just make out the wide scoop of a shovel, it was surely plastic, he figured, a bright sky-blue plastic, as it was rhythmically and quickly shoved into the sand, then whipped up and into the air over the figure’s hunched and heaving shoulders. “Coco” was inscribed on the handle. Harry continued to be hit by sand, honking and spitting the stuff out of his mouth and nose. He was able to sidestep the onslaught until the shadowy sand-box digger shifted position, and again redirected his efforts at Harry, who also, for some perplexing reason, took extreme note of how the sand sprayed the walls and ceiling of the bedroom. There was something odd about it that utterly fascinated him.

  Why was a sand box in his bedroom? In his bed?

  Harry came up to the shadowy individual and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me, sir, but what are you doing?”

  The man jerked to a rigid, taunt, stop. Harry couldn’t take his eyes off the now-confirmed, plastic, sky-blue shovel, which the man held upright like a paused weapon. He could see it shaking. A particularly large scoop of sand had been flicked out of the shovel when he stopped him, and had fallen to Harry’s feet.

  “What?” the highly agitated figure asked. “Look what you’ve done!”

  “I do apologize, but for what are you digging?”

  “I’m digging for ants, is that okay with you? Good-fucking-Lord. Nasty fucking fire ants. You know bout them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then get the fuck away from me, so I can finish the goddammed job.”

  Harry took a closer look at where the man was digging.

  “May I help?”

  The man slowly lowered his shovel. Narrowed his gaze.

  “Sure... be my guest,” he said, and thrust the sky-blue shovel toward him. When Harry took the shovel, he had an instant’s flash of a bright blue sky against a dun-colored landscape. So brilliant was the sky that it almost blinded him. The man slipped off the bed to the other side away from Harry. Stood watching.

  Harry climbed up onto the bed, and, plastic shovel in hand, knelt before the sand mound in the sand box. Something just didn’t feel right about this... about the sand. And the shovel felt kind of... heavy...

  “Why is this shovel so heavy?” Harry asked, holding it out toward the guy, who continued to impatiently eyeball him.

  “What, you a fucking pansy or sumthin?” The man made a grab for it, but Harry yanked it back before he could.

  “No.”

  “Then either help me, or get the fuck out of my way!” The man’s words blasted through Harry like a sirocco.

  Harry looked back to the mound. He couldn’t make out what the shape was in the sand before him, but saw the dark, gaping hole already dug there. Tiny grains of sand were already starting to slide back down the steep, sloping, sides. And as he looked down into it, Harry saw movement, in fact, lots of movement, roiling within it...

  “Hurry it up, asshole—they’re starting to regroup!” the man shouted from the sidelines, anxiously peering over the edge of the bed and nervously shifting position.

  Harry thrust the shovel into the hole, felt it hit something hard—hardpan, in a sand box?—and twisted it around before pulling it back out and flipping the sand, and, hopefully, ants, behind him.

  “That’s better, fuckhead! Keep going, that’s good! That’s reeeal good!”

  Harry again thrust the shovel into the dark, damp hole, again twisted it, and again withdrew it, dumping the sand-ant mixture out behind him. He soon got into a rhythm, shoveling faster and faster—but the ant’s numbers multiplied instead of diminished.

  “Good! Keep going,” the man continued to coach. “Don’t stop! Move it! Move it!”

  But the ant’s numbers continued to multiply, and Harry felt a definite anxiety with their continued multiplication. They began to spread outward, toward his knees, and he began to widen his area of excavation.

  Then he was bitten, and jumped.

  “Don’t stop, goddamn you, don’t you goddamn fucking stop!” the bum shouted, eyes wide and mouth spitting froth. Veins popped in his beet-red neck and head.

  But it was hard to keep shoveling as more ants crawled onto his knees and legs, gnawed at him, stung him. They were only little ants, for crying out loud, tiny, little ravenous bastards, but they were goddamned tearing him a new one.

  Harry began swatting at them with the little blue shovel, when he noticed something else poured out of the deep hole before him. And it smelled. Like rotting...

  “Get the fuck outta my way, asshole!” the bum yelled, and grabbed the shovel, roughly shouldering Harry off the bed and sending him crashing onto his shoulder. Harry felt a snap, crackle, pop, and tumbled along the floor, smacking up hard against a wall. He hit with his chin, then, as the rest of his body slammed into the wall—was the push that forceful?—he let out a loud load of flatulence that smelled just like what reeked from that hole.

  Chin gas?

  Harry pushed himself away from the wall just as the bum again began digging away, the sound of the shovel crisp and quick. Ticht! over the shoulder, Ticht! over the shoulder, Ticht! over the shoulder. Sand sprayed him furiously, and every time Harry went to get up, more sand flew into the air and landed in his face, hair, mouth, and nose.

  “Goddammit, would you stop, already!” he shouted, but another clump landed in his face, and he’d just begun to inhale, so tiny grains of pulverized quartzite, feldspar, mica, and silica, along with ants, were sucked up into his sinuses. This sent him into a painful coughing and sneezing spat, but Harry, eyes watering, still managed to force himself to his feet, hands flailing and periodically bouncing off the wall from ill-conceived attempts at balance.

  “Goddammit, what the hell are you doing?” Harry shouted, wobbling unsteadily on his feet and taking another clump smack-dab to the chest. Remembering the ants, he quickly brushed it off him.

  “There!” the bum said, and, like a kid proud of his work, backed off the sand box to stand beside Harry, shovel in hand. “All done! It wasn’t all that bad, now was it?” he asked, forcing the shovel back into Har
ry’s hand. “Later, asshole!”

  The man leapt off the sand box/bed and disappeared into the darkened recesses of the room.

  Harry looked to the sand box, at the hole they’d dug, and saw that something still wasn’t right about it. Sure, the hole was larger, and there were no longer any ants crawling out of it... but why the hell was there still something wrong with it? He leaned in and saw a piece of what looked like cloth sticking up out of the sand. He tugged at it, it yielded, and he grudgingly yanked it out of the sand until he had about a foot of it exposed. It looked like part of a shirt. A shirt tail. Harry dug his fingers around the base of the shirt tail, tugging at it, trying to shake it free, and exposed more of the shirt panel. Though afraid of what he might find, he couldn’t stop, and frantically continued pulling and digging away. In no time he excavated a body, a body with a huge gaping hole in its chest. Out of the hole roared the sound of an ocean. He also smelled briny air exiting the wound.

  “No!” Harry screamed, and spun around to find the bum standing directly behind him, another shovel in hand. Only it wasn’t a shovel, but the business end of a jagged and broken wine bottle. Harry felt the slash across his chest and was thrown back onto the body he’d just unearthed. But it was gone.

  He now was the body in the sand box, partially covered with sand, a gaping hole in his chest.

  “God-fucking-dammit,” the bum cursed, “if you want sumthin done right, you gotta do it your goddamn self!”

  Before Harry knew it, the bum had jumped back up onto the sand box, straddling his now partially buried body, and continued digging out that large gaping hole in Harry’s chest, out of which continued to scramble all manner of hungry little fire ants, to the sound and smell of a roaring ocean...

  3

  Harry Gordon awoke in a frenzy, wildly kicking and flailing arms and legs. He tried to push off that bum and wipe away the fire ants that hungrily crawled all over his body—and still came pouring out of his chest. He opened his eyes to find them all over the bed sheets and ceiling, and leapt out of bed, screaming. Bedside, he jumped about like a freaked-out junkie, when he realized...