Previous Chapter:

SINISTER

20.

“Next year will be my last.”

John Creedy knew pain. The hurt came like a fast-moving fire, a heat that swelled around his joints and roared into a blaze, fast and vicious. The Demerol syrup no longer extinguished the flames, only tamped them down to waiting embers.

“I sincerely hope that’s not true.”

He smiled at his friend and colleague, Edgar Thomas. Thank God for music teachers, he thought. They made good friends and the world would be so quiet without them.

“My condition is worsening.”

The house was two stories and Creedy’s favorite room had been the study. It was upstairs however, and stairs were a dangerous journey. A few years ago, he’d hired a moving crew to cart his desk, books and padded chairs into the spare bedroom. It wasn’t as roomy as his real study, but he’d grown comfortable with the small space.

“I see no other option.” Creedy adjusted his position in his chair. His black cane was propped against the edge of the arm. It had served him well and he dreaded the fast approaching day that he’d replace it with a walker, or worse.

“Saint Michael’s can make accommodations. You could have an assistant, for example.”

“It’s not the limited mobility that challenges me. I’ve learned to live with it and overcome it as best I can. It’s the inability to concentrate. I find myself day dreaming as much as my students do. I lose myself in reverie. My mind wanders off and replays some moment of my life over and over, a conversation, an event, anything really. Distraction comes far too easily.”

His friend, nodded. His expression was empathy, not pity. Creedy was glad about that.

“We all lose our train of thought from time to time,” he said. “Our concentration dulls as we get older, but that doesn’t mean we’re finished.”

“One more solid year of teaching is all that’s left in me,” he said. “Of that I’m certain. Then I’m ready for my golden years to begin. I doubt they will be very golden but nevertheless I’m going to embrace them before the boys view me as a crippled old fool.”

“We’ll see.”

“I do appreciate your company, my friend, but shouldn’t you get home to your wife?”

His friend nodded, but didn’t stand up.

“I wanted to ask you, what did you think of this year’s essays?”

“The final assignment?”

The music teacher nodded.

“It was the usual collection of poorly written answers,” he said. “The seniors get better at reciting bullshit every year.”

Their laughter sounded like the gloat of old men, he thought, scathing and cantankerous.

“Did Anthony Calvin write one?”

“He did,” he said. “It was pure shit.”

“What was his answer?”

“Oh, he knew what the correct answer was but the writing was far less than what he’s capable of. Is he one of boys that you worry about?”

“I worry about all of them.”

“But him more than others?”

“He was my only Independent Study pupil last term,” his friend said. “He’s very talented.”

“And smart.”

“And full of resentment.”

“Dangerous combination,” he said. “Perhaps he’ll remember.”

“I hope he does.” His friend nodded again and this time he stood up and extended his hand. “I hope they all do.”

Creedy leaned forward and shook.

“I’ll check in on you in a week or so, all right?”

“If I haven’t flown to the Bahamas with a pretty young thing I’ll be here.”

He watched his friend move toward the door, then stop before opening it.

“Do you think about it often?”

It was best, he’d always thought, not to think about it or, for that matter, to discuss it. But how could one fight the devil and think of anything else?

“I do,” he said. “It remains my biggest distraction.”

“For me, as well,” his friend said. “I think about it so often that some nights I can’t sleep.”

“Life goes on whether we sleep or not.”

His friend asked nothing more, only stepped into the hallway. Creedy remained in his chair. He listened to his friend’s car start, then withdraw from the driveway. Any other old widower would hate the sound of company departing, he thought. But his aide was a chatterbox. She’d be here soon, preparing a meal in the kitchen, talking the entire time. She rambled on and on, non-stop and never said a thing of consequence. Her banter annoyed him and the truth was that he appreciated solitude and quiet before her arrival. Then something fluttered in his peripheral vision and made him turn.

He scanned the crowded room. A white shawl his wife had knitted was draped on the chair where his friend had sat. He saw the red smudge sitting upon it. Its angular body, wings folded and at rest, positioned so as to face him. It stared at him, tiny eyes malevolent. Creedy’s mouth went dry and he leaned forward to reach for his cane. Another wasp dive bombed his hand as his gnarled fingers clutched for the crooked handle. Out of instinct, he pulled back.

“Dear God,” he said and very much wished that Edgar Thomas hadn’t left.

The rest of the wasps came in a swarm of red wings, dozens of them at first and then, moments later, hundreds. The path they flew, a wide circle around him, thickened. Thousands upon thousands, a horde of them, spun in their circle around his chair. The rest of them simply filled the room. They multiplied, it seemed, as they sliced through the air. They landed everywhere. His wife’s white shawl was a blanket of crawling insects. His books and desk were barely visible. The room went dark as they covered the windows, blocking the sunshine as they took over every centimeter of space in the room.

Yes, dear friend, I think about it. I think about it all the time.

Panic gripped him because he did not want to die like this. It was fleeting however, because the swarm of wasps made no sounds. So many tiny wings should have made a tremendous buzzing. Of course, he knew, there were no tiny wings. There were no wasps. There was only evil, this menace, turning his first-floor study into a cavernous darkness. In the final seconds of his life he realized that he’d always known, on some level, that it would come to this. He reached for the cane again, crushed several wasps as he grabbed it, and used it to stand, defiant. He breathed heavily and uttered, “Our Father, who art in heaven…”

They descended upon him in a cloud, blinding him. He felt their first bites on his upper lip and the edges of his nostrils. They bit into the thin skin below his eyes, piercing through to his eyes. He slapped at them, crushing their bodies with audible crunches. Others sank their stingers into his ears and cheeks. They attacked the hand that gripped the cane and then the other. He felt them enter his sleeves, crawling along his arms, stopping only to bite and inflict their small agony. They reached his underarms as others penetrated his shirt collar.

The pain, he thought, all of it had been nothing more than practice, a torturous hint at what the devil had in store for him. His old legs quivered. He winced and as the first cry of pain escaped him the wasps attacked his tongue with all their vengeance.

Next Chapter: