Seventeen
The rain came down like a dark gray weight trying to
drag the trees to the earth, roaring across the world in great waves of
wind and water. Caitlin stood stooped over the dissolving remains of
Jeremy Berman, clutching the cocoon to her gut and watching the crumbling
bones melt and soak into the ground.
The cocoon hadn't stirred. Nothing at all was
happening. She thought again of going to Rex Hogan for help. Before that
happened, she needed to take shelter against the storm and think about
what she would say, how she would try to explain.
The downpour tried to drown her. She choked and
slipped in the mud on the way back to the house. Blinded by the dusk and
the rain, she scratched and cut her arms and legs in the thickets. She
followed an old wood fence to the barn behind the house and entered
through a hole in the back wall.
The rancid odor of rotting hay caught in her throat.
With one last sustained effort, the cocoon tucked beneath one arm, she
climbed the ladder to the loft. She retreated to a dry spot against the
outer wall on hands and knees, pushing the cocoon before her, and curled
up into a ball with her arms covering her head.
The rain roared like an enraged animal. Lightning
stabbed and sucked the breath from her lungs. Thunder rattled the old
barn and vibrated the insides of her body. She cried out her fear and
pain and lay weeping until the storm passed overhead and subsided.
In time, it became a fading rumble in the distance.
She listened to the sound of water trickling through the holes in the
roof. A frog croaked from somewhere near outside. From further away, she
heard the hooting of an owl.
Her bizarre hunger became physical torture. The
thing in the cocoon had done it to her. Maybe it wanted her to die.
Maybe it wanted something else of her. Her mind raced at the speed of
light trying to imagine what it might be. She hugged the musky-smelling
object, wishing something would happen to alleviate the pain. She tore at
the fibrous outer covering of the cocoon to see what lay inside. The pain
of broken fingernails only deepened her misery.
The balance of the day and the night that followed
lasted forever. During the many quiet hours that passed, her energy began
to wane. She'd be dead by morning, she felt certain. Jeremy Berman had
been the more fortunate of them after all. It mattered not at all what
manner of creature would emerge from the cocoon, not if she died first.
The first gray light of dawn shown through cracks in
the wall when something nudged her leg. At first, she suspected she was
sharing the loft with a rat, but when the movement become more pronounced,
she glanced down and saw that whatever lived inside the cocoon was ready
to come out into the light of day.
She watched its birth unfold in the first bright rays
of sunlight seeping between the slats of the wall. She had no energy to
escape, and no fear of the thing that had already made death a thing to be
desired.
It was dark and furry. A ray of sunlight showed it
to be a giant orange and brown caterpillar almost three feet long. It had
black eyes like a fly. They flashed metallic in the sunlight, sparkling
in all colors of the rainbow.
It undulated like a caterpillar. It trilled as it
crawled to her, a sound that soothed Caitlin's jangled nerves. She made
not the slightest movement as it crawled up to her face and tickled the
side of her neck.
She whimpered in discomfort when it bit. She knew
about the artery in her neck, the one Leon severed in the deer and pigs he
slaughtered to fill the freezer. The caterpillar stabbed deep to reach
that particular artery, and it seemed peculiar that it would know exactly
where to go. But in the next instant, an even greater miracle occurred.
Anyone witnessing the feeding would have thought
Caitlin dying. She lay convulsing with her mouth agape and her eyes
glazed and staring sightlessly into the dark corners of the barn. On the
inside, she burned with fierce pleasure. The venom spreading through her
veins set every muscle in her body afire with a sensation akin to the most
intense self-induced orgasm she had ever experienced. She gave a sharp
scream into the quiet morning air. The sensation peaked at an unendurable
intensity, then settled down to mere inexhaustible pleasure.
Caitlin brought both arms up to embrace the creature
as it curled alongside her body to rest. The caterpillar had fed her.
Maybe it had fed a little bit itself as it adjusted to its new state of
existence in the world. Regardless, she couldn't imagine a better trade,
or a better friend to have in the nightmare that her world had become.
