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insomniac-dot-ink · 4 years

Text

Garden Walk

Genre: supernatural horror

Words: 3.7k

Summary: a young woman sees a figure strolling the gardens making an odd sound.

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Content warning: slight blood and injury

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There’s something eating the bees.

You read about the bees disappearing all the time in the papers and on the news every few years in big investigative reports. Usually, it’s all the same alarm and studies about colony collapse and human pesticides and disease spreading rapidly through hives. I know all that and I’m sure it’s real and dangerous and one of the many ways we’re hurting the planet.

But this is different. I know it is, I feel it in my gut and under my skin and throughout my nerves with this itchy burn.

I like to go to the library on my days off. I work in a Bath and Body works shop so my hours are pretty random and my days off vary from week to week.

Still, I usually managed to make time once a week to hop downtown and go to the Fairfield Public library. I either walked when it was nice out or took the bus or Georgia used to drive me when we were together.

I went a lot more often that spring. I was in the process of getting over a nasty breakup and it was hard to be alone in my apartment. After you live with someone for so many years being alone in your own home can feel almost… like a punishment. You have to kill your own spiders in the corner and unclog your own drains and feed yourself old Mac and Cheese with no one to really care.

It was a difficult breakup to say the least and left this ache in my chest that I couldn’t get rid of, but managed to ignore most days. Distractions helped, so I went to the library.

Fairfield Public Library is this massive place that they renovated a couple years ago with new wings and a fresh paint job and better air conditioning. The bathrooms still had weak hand dryers and there was never enough chairs, but they did install some gorgeous immense windows in the central seating area. They’re ceiling-to-floor panels that let in gallons of sunshine that soak the floor and give the whole plan an almost enchanted feel. Some days I would just go in and walk beside them for long minutes with my hand trailing in the light.

The windows weren’t my favorite part of the library though. The inside still smelled a little dry and musty and they kept the temperature too cold for my liking. My favorite part of the library were the gardens outside.

There was a river that ran behind the library and a good acre of land spanning from the back of the building up to the edge of the water. In between the two was a complex public garden. Macy Dickson was one of the librarians and she would talk my ear off about how they used native Iowa plants and local plant fertilizer and set-up hummingbird feeders and plants that ladybugs liked.

I nodded along, but I wasn’t exactly an outdoors kind of person in the way Georgia had been. Most plants looked the same to me, and I was prone to stepping in poison ivy and itching for weeks and accidentally pissing off local Canadian geese and being chased.

These gardens were friendly though, easy. The bushes were low to the ground and the plots held sturdy herbs and a few flowers popping up depending on the time of year. A path wound in and out of red oak trees and honeysuckles and bird feeders until it made its way to a rock garden with stone benches facing it. I would take a deep breathe there, sit, and attempt to feel whatever it is you’re supposed to feel when you’re outside surrounded by tweeting birds and wildlife sounds. I was never very good at being calmed by ocean noises or wind in the trees or anything like that, but to be fair I was never really calmed by anything. I had nervous habits like washing my hands too much and picking at my skin and applying hand sanitizer every few hours like clockwork.

Maybe those were all the things Georgia couldn’t stand. I didn’t know.

Either way, sometimes that long walk out by the red trees and shrubbery did me good.

It was on a Wednesday in the middle of the week and the dreary weather had broken out into warm air and thin blue skies, I finally got to wear my strappy sandals again and walked all the way to the library. I was going through a reading period that my therapist might classify as “regression.”

One day I had been crying in the nonfiction aisle next to a true crime series and the next moment I found myself inching to the kids section. I crept into the bright wing as if in a sleep-walk and looked over the colorful covers of dragons and a boy and his dog and kids running from spooky shadows and little witches and I picked up a handful of kids chapter books.

I started reading all the books of my youth: Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie, Nancy Drew, and Hardy Boys.

I read through them like you shake an old friend’s hand and there was something comforting about the non-threatening stories and consuming words of my youth. Of course, being a grown woman who was almost thirty reading children’s books… didn’t make me feel great.

I dashed into the kids section of the library that Wednesday and picked out two stories: Ella Enchanted and the Princess Academy. There was something so sweet and feminine about the titles that had me swiping them up and carrying them off like a burglar in the night.

I visited the nonfiction section next and picked out a book called “The Knife Man” about historical surgeries and went on my way. I had been padding my check-outs with serious books so the librarians wouldn’t give me funny looks.

In all honesty, the librarians and patrons and everyone I passed probably didn’t care in the least. But I was a nervous person. And sometimes my brain played tricks on me and told me that everyone was staring or thinking thoughts about me and noticing everything I did.

I didn’t make eye contact with librarian as she checked-out my “princess” texts and I slipped outside to the gardens to read in private. I may not have found solace in nature per say, but I did find solace in being alone there. I wondered up the white gravel path past the daffodils and beds of sage.

I sighed into the sweet air and turned to go to my favorite bench with a chunk missing from one of the arms. And then I froze. There were three teens loitering at my bench and they were all on their phones and sometimes glancing up at me.

I clutched my books a little tighter and, as if attached to a string, turned fluidly away from my usual bench and walked up toward the river. I didn’t know where I was going, but I just didn’t want to seem like I was lost or put-off by the teens.

Teens were the worst. They always looked like they knew things and were always exchanging whispers and furtive glances- none of which helped my state of mind. I did feel silly, being scared away like that, but the river was full and glittering and it almost felt worth it.

It took me a second but I found a large stone to sit on and got out of one of my books. I told myself this was better and it was good to switch things up. The afternoon passed in slow honeyed hours as I ate up one book after the next in a way that finally let my nerves rest. I could get lost there, forever, in those other worlds.

I only stopped when I noticed that the sun had gotten low on the horizon and the shadows were winding and long, and I realized I was very hungry.

I dusted myself off, stretched my stiff legs and arms, and turned back toward the library and the gardens. That’s when I saw him.

“Him” is the wrong word, but so is every other word for it.

He stood on the path several feet away with the sun at his back. The path runs right beside the river and the area is usually empty since it’s at the very back of the garden and tends to accumulate trash like empty soda cans, lost plastic bags, and coffee cups and is not as pretty.

It was just me and the tall figure.

He was skinny, and gaunt and I squinted at him for a moment because he seemed even taller than my father who was 6’4. The figure wore a long jacket despite the nice weather and had a wide-brimmed hat that made his face disappear entirely. It was the type of hat you might see on farmers or adventures, beige and stiff and there was a loose string hanging beneath the chin. He had long, tangled brown hair that fell past his shoulders and hung lankly by his face in greasy clumps.

The fellow was slowly ambling forward, taking loud thunking steps down the path with these hulking dirty boots that were even larger than the rest of him. Something about him unnerved me deeply. He was too tall and he moved too slowly, too clunkily, as if he was gradually moving some great weight. I would even say he was limping, but there were no visible signs he was actually staggering or missing a beat. It was just off.

He wore gloves and I couldn’t see an inch of his skin.

My shoulders rose like the haunches of a cat as I realized he was moving closer and I quickly turned to leave. I heard it as I was striding back toward the building: whistling.

A noisy and bombastic whistling that drilled through me into my core and left a smear there. It was an un-melodic messy tune I couldn’t place. I picked up speed and nearly fell all the way back to the nearest parking lot and other people.

At the time I didn’t know why I thought “other people,” because the man was obviously just someone out on a stroll. But I thought it all the same.

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I was able to put the man out of my head for a good while. Our stores general manager position opened up and I was up for consideration, though I’m not sure I really wanted it. I was busy taking on extra hours and making sure my cashiers and floors people actually showed up for their shifts and lady’s in floral dresses didn’t make my workers regret showing up.

That sort of thing.

It must have been a month into proper spring when I finally returned. I got a day to myself and my apartment still didn’t feel welcoming or soft. It was always missing something and the ache was just as hungry as before.

I thought about her often. I wondered if Georgia was still making her famous quiche and bragging about her latest road trip she had planned but would probably never take and coloring her toenails a brilliant red color. I had hated the chemical smell of that nail polish during her weekly retouch, but now I missed it in a way you miss snowstorms in the lean months of summer. The hole in my chest gnawed at me and I entered the library and collected three titles: The Girl Who Swallowed the Moon, Julie of the Wolves, and a medical text detailing the history of malaria.

My eyes darted around to check that no one thought this was weird and then I slipped outside so I could breathe properly. I found my usual bench unoccupied and took a seat.

I ate the books up like a hot meal at your family’s house and was even smiling into the glaring sunlight when a whistling came. It was noisy and tuneless and entered my head space like a sharp thorn.

I jerked my head up and looked left and right to find a tall man with a long jacket and dirty lank brown hair standing in the gardens.

My mouth became very dry and the light was slanting in just the right way so that I could see his face this time. He was wearing these thick, black sunglasses and had a haggered look and very stiff expression.

The worst part about him beside the hellish whistling though was the faint color of his skin. I had seen it in medical texts. Ever since I was a little girl I had a fascination with illness and germs: I hated them, reviled them, detested stink and mess and the idea of tiny creatures that could wiggle inside me unnoticed and change my body in ways I couldn’t control.

But something drew me to stare at pictures of illness over and over again as if maybe looking alone could protect me. That if I read enough about smallpox and studied enough pictures of dengue fever that I could break their power over me.

I’m not sure if it ever worked, but I had one thought as I stared at the man and his yellowing frayed complexion: jaundice. It was the exact same off-yellow complexion that no healthy human being sports.

I scooted to the edge of my bench in order to get up and quickly hurry along, but the figure stopped in place. He was still out of reach and I had time to leave, but somehow I couldn’t tear my eyes away, in the same way I couldn’t look away from bubonic plague depictions.

He was standing by this wooden lattice work that held vines working their way toward the sun. He was humming his same terrible song and looking down.

I didn’t notice the bee until he put his hand out and the fat yellow creature was scooped into his palm. I didn’t usually notice the bees flying around with their complex paths and busy work that filled them with this determination to be on their way. I liked bees in that way, not just in the “helps the planet” way but how they always looked like they were on a mission.

Me and the man stood there and stared at the fuzzy yellow creature for what must have been a whole minute.

And then the man’s jaw dropped open and he crushed the tiny bee into his mouth and swallowed. I say “dropped” because his jaw shouldn’t have opened like that and it shouldn’t have closed like that either.

It was far too wide, his cheeks too concave, the skin too thin, and there was something crooked about the angle- as if the jaw wasn’t connected in a solid way. He had just gaped open his mouth into a black hole and ate the bee.

My heart squeezed painfully in my chest and eyes went huge. His head slowly tilted up as if to look at me and I didn’t stick around for him to really stare. I turned and fled down the path and as far away as I could possibly get.

I tried reporting it to library security and told the guard some man was eating things he shouldn’t outside, but the statements were dismissed and I could tell were not going to be followed up on it. I went home with that same eerie droning whistle playing in my head.

I had seen something eating the bees.

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I tried to be rational.

It took several days, but I eventually smoothed out the jitters and settled into a type of shame-faced guilt. I wished I could have talked the events through with Georgia, but we had agreed on a “no communication” policy for the first few months.

I decided it was just another case of my nervousness and over imagination messing things up. The man at the library was obviously a very sick person who needed help. He was eating bees from a garden after all and his skin was an unnatural yellow. I kept replaying in my head how a “proper” adult would have handled the situation: how I should have went over to gently talk to him or called some sort of hospital.

I gave myself a good talking-to and two weeks later I resolved to visit the library again. It was one of my favorite places and I figured if I saw him again I would try to reach out or get one of the staff to intervene.

It was a proper weekend for once and after I got my three books I went outside and my normal bench was taken by a family. I edged away, shuffling past the wild ginger and squirrels high in a tree and the disturbed rock garden and up the hill to the river.

The path by the river was empty and sunny until I reached the water itself. The figure was there. He was turned away, low to the ground, and facing the plants.

I gulped with great effort and any thought of trying to do the “right” thing went out of my head as I heard the horrible whistling tune once more. He was kneeling next to a Goatsbeard bush, Goatsbeard is a wide thick plant that holds several long white plumes of tiny flower heads.

His gloved hand was hovering over a resting bee on one of the white flowers.

It struck me at that instant that I knew what was about to happen and I really really didn’t want it to. The thought of his thing opening it’s gaping mouth and swallowing that bee was too much for me and prospect of watching it happen again was even worse.

I didn’t think. I just acted.

“Sir!” I used my voice even though it sounded too loud and too forceful in the still air and the quiet whistling still shivered through my spine. “You don’t have to do that. Sir!”

He ignored me and brought his face closer to the insect. My books dropped from my hands to the path. I was running, my hand out and heart pounding as he had scooped up the bee and I couldn’t stand it. It’s bright yellow body was stark against his brown glove and he held it in place as his lips started to part.

“Stop.” I must have stumbled because I lurched forward and fell toward him. I caught myself with the toe of my shoe, but my fingers brushed against his cheek. I’ll never forget the way his skin felt.

My fingers just barely touched the flesh. It was hard though, like cement or marble, there was no give and was cool to the touch. Most of all it was bumpy, bump after bump of puckered skin like running your hand over a warped building wall or a terrible pustule-ridden rash.

The sensation of the bumpy skin was just for moment before one of his enormous hands darted up with quick efficiency and took my wrist in a hard grip. I gasped and he stood up to his full impressive height and grinned.

It wasn’t a grin with his teeth and I still couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark black glasses, but that smile was all I needed to confirm the worst. “Mmph!” I yelped, but not very loudly. I was never very good at yelling, even when I was a child and found a dead raccoon in the backyard or needed to shout at my dad when to turn on the road.

It just yelped once and then stared in rapt terror as my stomach dropped and whole world compounded into that second.

My hand looked tiny in his and the whistling hadn’t stopped. I was close enough at that point that I belatedly realized there was no way he could have been using his mouth to make that noise.

His mouth opened ever so slightly and the sound erupted from inside him and it wasn’t whistling. His thin yellow lips peeled back to reveal rows of sharp teeth, but not blunt teeth or canines or incisors. They were all sharp white shards- like that of broken glass or pieces of bleached wood chips.

They were all slightly different sizes, thin and long and coming into narrow points that hurt just to look at. As he opened his jaw in that unhinged crooked way I heard the sound clearly: a buzzing coming from within him. An unmistakable, low buzz that you hear from TV static. And bees.

It seemed to surge from somewhere deep inside him like a nest of tangled angry sound flooding from his core. It had a frantic quality. Like it was trying to escape.

The waves of humming grew louder and louder as his mouth expanded and I barely registered as he brought my hand up. I broke out of my stupor at the sight of his needle teeth leering toward my skin and tried to pull back with all of my force. I furiously kicked him in the shin, but he didn’t so much as flinch and my toe stung from contact with that same unyielding hard flesh.

He held my wrist firm and his face drew closer and closer with those those same slow deliberate movements. The points of his teeth delicately dug into my fingertips, the ones that had touched him, and a bright spike of pain crashed over me. I think I finally managed to scream.

It was a sticky blur as I lost those fingertips. I do remember the blood running down his yellow chin and spilling down his neck in a steady trickle.

I fell to the ground in shock and my next memories were waking up in a hospital with bandages over the middle and pointer fingers of my right hand. The pad of each was gone.

I shook violently and called Georgia without hesitation. She came right away and drove me home in silence, not forcing me to talk or bring up the future police reports and descriptions I might have to give. We might even be friends again after that first week, I’m not sure.

The police investigated but found no man with that description by the library. The only evidence I had was that the librarians had records of less and less bees visiting their gardens recently.

But nothing more.

I think I’m moving out of Fairfield soon. I think I’ll move somewhere with less gardens and more cement and people everywhere and get a roommate and big dog and start renting my books from online.

There is something eating the bees.

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