Wild Swans (12 page)

“A few weeks with her mouth wired shut will do her some good,” Cally joked as she inserted the inhaler in her sister’s mouth. “Now breathe good and deep now,
bay-bay.
It’s almost over.”

Ruby wanted to tell her sister that if she could breathe she damned well wouldn’t need that nasty tasting thing in her mouth in the first place. Cally pressed the inhaler, which delivered a metered dose of epinephrine to her sister’s lungs. Ruby gasped as the medicine made its way into her lungs, clearing out air passages. She coughed profusely.

“Again?” Cally asked after the coughing fit passed. Ruby gave her a slight nod and Cally inserted and pushed the inhaler again.

Air rushed into Ruby’s lungs. She gasped for breath, as if she had been deep sea diving and just cleared the water. She lifted her injured hand and saw that the horrible purple abrasions were beginning to fade.

“Thank you,” she whispered, shocked at how faint her voice was.

“As soon as the
moiselles
are gone, I’m sending Elly out to get Doc Spivey. Now, don’t you dare protest, Sister. You need better medical attention than what I can give after banging your head and now this.”

“This has been the worst day,” Ruby admitted, her voice as weak as she felt.

Cally walked over to the counter where Elly left cotton swabs and a large bottle of calamine lotion. She returned with the items and began treating Ruby’s burn spots.

“I did a terrible thing to you,” Ruby whispered. “You should have been a nurse, but you had to take care of me instead.” She uttered a hoarse sob. “You’re always taking care of me. And you shouldn’t. You never should have.”

“You’ve never heard me complain,” Cally replied as she dabbed the pink liquid onto her sister’s swollen arm. “And I never will. I chose to stay and take care of you and little Althie. Nobody put a gun to my head.”

“I might as well have,” Ruby whispered.

“Now quit making such a big
bahbin
. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself. Now stop.”

“
Oui,
” Ruby whispered.

“Are you done?” Cally asked. “Are you feeling better?”

“I am,” she responded.

“Good. Then let’s go upstairs and I’ll put you to bed.”

“No,” Ruby said, straightening, starting to feel like herself again. “I’m not going to lie down, not while those things are out there.”

“Alright,” Cally said, sounding suddenly tired. She plopped down in the chair beside her. “Suit yourself,
cher
.”

“It’s probably best that she doesn’t go to sleep,” Elly said. “Remember Ruby did fall.”

“Yeah,” Cally agreed. “Besides, I think it’d be safer if we stayed together in the kitchen.”

“Should we get Mrs. Ramsay then?” Elly asked.

“No, leave her be. I’m sure she’s already asleep by now. You know how she is, fussy one moment and asleep the next.”

Everyone fell silent. They listened as intently as if they were waiting out a hurricane. The window over the sink was solid black, punctuated by dull violet flashes. Cally dropped the venetian blind with a clatter and twitched the curtains closed.

“There’s no need to be looking at that,” Cally said as she did the same to the other windows in the kitchen.

“I’m inclined to agree,
cher
,” Elly replied.

“Care for something stronger?” Cally asked as she sat down and ran her fingers through her hair.

“Got any brandy?” Elly asked.

“We have some Amaretto,” Cally replied. “It’s in the pantry.”

“That’ll work,” Elly replied. “I need something to take the edge off my nerves.”

“Make mine a double,” Ruby replied as she scooted her chair up to the table.

“Not with a head injury you don’t,” Cally replied. She filled Ruby’s glass with sweet iced tea and handed it to her sister.

“What do you think we should do?” Elly asked.

“For the moment, nothing,” Ruby said studying the tea in the glass. “Are you sure I can’t have just a teaspoonful?”

“You can’t have any, Sister. Now quit asking.”

Ruby folded her arms on the table top and put her head on her uninjured wrist. For a moment, Ruby resembled a petulant teenager.

“What I want to know is how am I going to get home?” Elly asked. “I can’t go out there with that going on. And I’m not convinced that man of yours ain’t the cause of it. Queer things have been going on since he showed up, really queer things.”

“Hush, Elly, Mr. Lindt is a nice man and has nothing to do with this.” Cally replied. “If anyone is to blame it’s those army ammunition plants. Especially that one in Karnack, Texas. I hear they make atom bombs there, and there’s no telling what they’re pouring into Caddo Lake. For all we know there could be all sorts of things mutating in the waters around here thanks to that.”

“Whatever it is, it’s most definitely the devil’s work,” Elly said. “And I think you’re letting your loneliness for a man blind you, Cally. Even the devil can take on a pleasing form.”

“Oh please stop,” Ruby said.

“Yes, let’s have a drink,” Cally said. “I’ve got the coffee started. We’ll have café Amaretto here in a bit.”

“At this point I could use a straight shot,” Elly said. Cally poured her a small glass and helped herself to one as well.

“Maybe we should call the sheriff, once the phone is back on,” Cally said as she sat down beside her sister. “You know how the phones are here. The lines are up one minute and down the next.”

“But they’ve never made a noise like that before,” Elly said. “That was the most awful sound I’d ever heard.”

“And tell him what?” Ruby asked, ignoring Elly, “that we’re being attacked by a large horde of fireflies?” She snorted. “He’d think we lost our minds.”

“I’m scared, Ruby. I want to go home,” Elly whimpered.

“After this passes you can.”

“How long is that going to take?” Elly asked, her usually lovely face pale and drawn.

“I don’t know,” Ruby snapped. “But I promise as soon as it’s over you’ll be more than welcome to go.”

“That’s no way to act,” Cally chided, her voice so low Ruby barely heard it.

Chastised, Ruby said, “I’m sorry Elly, I truly am. It’s been an unnerving day to say the least.”

“That’s the understatement of the century.”

Elly nodded and finished her drink. Cally poured herself and Elly a cup of coffee with a shot of Amaretto. “
C’est bon
,” Cally said after tasting the coffee. “Now
, chere
, tell us again what happened at the church,” she said to Ruby.

Ruby offered them a nervous laugh. “I fell and hit my head that’s all.”

“That’s not all and you know it,” Cally snapped. “You’ve been hiding something all afternoon. And I for one am tired of it. So out with it. Now.”

“But—”

“—Out with it,” Elly agreed. “If you have some idea as to what’s going on we have a right to know, don’t we, Cally?”

Cally nodded.

Ruby studied her tea glass. “I don’t know if it was real or not,” she confessed after a lengthy pause. “I fell, I remember that much, but afterwards things got a little crazy, you know?”

“We know,” Cally and Elly said in unison.

“I was aggravated that Althea left church without saying a word. I went out to the car and my lipstick got tangled with the key chain.” Ruby bit her lower lip, concentrating. “At that point I can’t recall if I fell and hit the tire well or if I fell at the church steps. The only thing I remember for sure is that I started seeing buzzards. They were everywhere. Big ugly black turkey buzzards, you know the kind.”

Cally and Elly stared at each other.

“You don’t believe me, I can tell.”

“It’s not that we don’t believe you—” Cally began.

“It’s just that we’re having trouble understanding it,” Elly said.

“How do you think you’re going to feel when you go to town and tell everyone we’ve been held hostage by mutant fireflies?” Ruby shouted.

“Take it easy, Sister, we believe you,” Cally reiterated.

“Please,” Elly said, “tell us what happened.”

So Ruby did, at least as best as she could recall.

Nearly half an hour passed before anyone spoke again. Ruby looked at the window over the sink. The blinds didn’t do a good job of hiding what was going on outside, but she could see the millions of small black hard shelled bodies plastered against the window. The screen bulged inward and sagged against the heavy lead glass.
Mon Dieu
, she thought
. There’s so many of them. How can there possibly be so many? And what will we do if they manage to break the glass?

“When are they going to leave?” Elly asked for what seemed to be the thousandth time, her voice tense, and the tendons in her neck sticking out. “I want to go home. I left Danielle with the sitter and she loves
les petite moiselles
. You know how kids are. What if she goes out there thinking they’re harmless? What if she gets stung to death by those things? What if?”

“We’re not entirely sure that they’re not harmless. Maybe they’re just confused,” Cally said.

“How can you say that after seeing what they did to Ruby?”

“We have no proof that the bugs bit Ruby. That chimney is ancient and hasn’t been properly cleaned out since last winter. There’s no telling what’s up in that stack.”

“It was the fireflies,” Ruby said. “I’m sure of it.”

“But still—”

“You heard Ruby. They swarmed her and they stung her so badly she had an asthma attack. What if the same thing is happening at my house too? What if those things attack my little Danielle?” Elly burst into tears. “My little girl is my whole life. If she dies because of me—”

“Don’t borrow any trouble, Elly. We can’t pay back what we’ve got,” Cally said.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Ruby said, slapping at a stinging sensation on the back of her neck that promptly reached a startling burning crescendo. She looked at her hand and grasped.

A quarter sized drop of blood was smeared in the palm of her hand, mixed in with an eerie purple glowing chemical. Stunned, she sat and stared at it.
Blood,
she thought.
The little bastard actually drew blood
. She looked up at the ceiling as if by doing so she could determine the location of the stowaway. “Now how did they get in here?”

Cally cried out. “One of the little bastards stung my ear.” She stood abruptly, knocking the chair over in the process. Elly did the same seconds later.

“My God these things bite hard,” Cally exclaimed. Elly cried out as she slapped the insects away from her face and hair.

“How are they getting in?” Ruby shouted as the kitchen quickly became filled with lightning bugs.

“Who cares?” Cally shouted. “Let’s get out of here.”

“There’s nowhere to go,” Elly squealed. “We can’t go outside.”

“We can go up,” Ruby said grimly as she grabbed both women by their dress collars and hauled them into the hallway where more bugs were swarming. Ruby glanced around, realized that the damper on the fireplace had been forced open. She closed it for the second time, shutting off access for any more of the mutant fireflies. Grabbing the women by the arms she dragged them up the stairs and into her apartment. She slammed the door behind her. “Get some towels to stuff up underneath the door,” she said. Cally nodded and ran to get towels.

“I’m burning up,” Cally complained as she ran into the bathroom. “Whatever those things are they pack one heck of a bite.”

“That answers the question as to what really stung you, Ruby,” Elly commented.

“Don’t wash it off,” Ruby cautioned when she saw the marks on her sister’s arms. “That looks like you got off into some battery acid.”

“I wasn’t anywhere near a battery.”

“I know, but don’t put water on it; it makes the burning sensation much worse. Put some baking soda on it and see if it’ll stop the burning sensation.

“The only baking soda we have is down in the main kitchen.”

“Shit,” Ruby swore. “Well then get into the medicine cabinet and grab that extra bottle of calamine lotion. It took the burn out for me.”

“It looks like the bites effect people differently,” Elly was saying as she rolled up her sleeve and looked at what appeared to be mosquito bites on her arm.

“Are you hurting? Do you feel sick?”

“No,” Elly replied. She looked hard at Ruby. “You got stung again. How about you? Are you okay?”

“There must still be enough asthma medicine in my system to take care of it,” she replied. “I have another inhaler on the end table beside my bed, just in case I have an attack in the middle of the night.”

“You might want to get it, then,” Cally said.

Ruby nodded, but instead of going to the bedroom, she looked out the French windows bracketing the balcony.

Ruby rubbed her forehead, the headache she’d been fighting off since the incident at the church was making a comeback. She yearned to lie down but knew Cally would never allow that. Just then she wished that Cally had gotten the chance to call old Doc Spivey before all this madness started.

“Hey, I think they’re leaving,” Elly said, interrupting Ruby’s thoughts. “See?” She pointed at the window. “They’re heading back out toward the bayou.”

“My Lord would you look at that,” Cally said as she and Ruby walked over to the big French windows. The fireflies stopped their trek toward the bayou and condensed their swarm into a startlingly frightening looking humanoid figure. It pulsated, the black shape writhing with blinking purple and red lights. Then the lights stopped as if they were absorbed by the blackness.

“What is it?” Elly asked, crying now. “Oh God what is that thing?”

Ruby’s mouth went dry. Fear wrapped around her chest like a thin hot wire.

“I don’t know,” Cally whispered. “I swear to God I just don’t know.”

“We should call the sheriff,” Elly said. “We should call right now.”

“The phone’s dead, remember? Besides, what would they do?” Ruby snapped. “They’d just laugh at us silly women living all alone here on the outskirts of town. They’ll just think we have overactive imaginations and got spooked.”

“I am spooked,” Cally whispered. “That thing is looking at us. I’m sure of it.”