His friends called him Willy, but as
William Beck didn’t have any friends the only person who called him by that
name was his wife. People who knew him didn’t call him Willy either, but they
did think he was prick. Even people who didn’t
know him had nothing good to say about him. “Oh him,” they would say after a
moment’s thought, “he’s that prick of a landscape gardener, isn’t he?”
***
William Beck was anything but unpredictable.
When he left school he proved all his teachers right by not amounting to
anything. It turned out that he was more interested in fingering Anita Corseaut
behind the bike sheds than getting an education.
Despite her rather elegant name and
her wealthy background, Anita Corseaut was a slag. She was known throughout the
school as ‘the bike’ and she would perform sexual favours for any boy who had
pubic hair. The boys at Newton College found her immensely attractive, but this
was due to the speed and regularity in which she cast off her panties rather
than her looks, which were non-existent, given that she spent each day with a
permanent frown on her pasty face.
She was going out with Beck’s
brother the first time Beck slipped his hand into her knickers behind the bike
sheds and something told her that he was the boy for her. It was love at first
feel and when everything was taken into consideration, they deserved each
other.
Soon after leaving school, Beck had
found work as a very bad landscape gardener and Anita found herself with child.
They were married in the splendidly grey surroundings of Newton Register
Office. Anita walked down the aisle wearing a tight pink top and a leather mini
skirt that showed the top of her suspenders and Beck, ever mindful of his
appearance, wore his overalls.
Anita’s father was a fairly
well-to-do wine merchant and Beck was misguided enough to believe the old man
would give him a job because he was married to his daughter. Alas, his dreams
of drinking alcohol for a living were shattered when Mr Corseaut told him that
he would rather trust a chimpanzee with his wine.
“It takes a refined palette and
years of discipline to select the correct wines,” his father-in-law told him.
Smoking forty Players Number 6 a day
since he was nine also proved to be a disadvantage. Any taste buds he may have
had were long since gone and washing down a glass of Chateau Latour with a beer chaser over dinner one night was all the
evidence Mr Corseaut needed to confirm that his son-in-law was a prick that had
not future in the wine trade.
He told his daughter that he was
cutting her out of the will until she either divorced William Beck or he died.
***
Beck soon drifted back into bad
landscape gardening when his dreams of sitting back and sponging off the old
man’s money all went up in smoke. He was a self-taught bad landscape gardener
who always felt proud of the shoddy work he rarely completed. He started his
business by advertising himself in the Parish magazine but his work in the local
area soon dried up once it was discovered how utterly useless he was at his
chosen profession. One look at his own garden, an unintentional recreation of
the Somme on July 2nd 1916, immediately told any prospective clients
to look elsewhere.
They called their son Sqantini (with
a silent q) and he grew up to be far more intelligent than his father ever was
or ever likely to be. By the age of seven Sqantini had a psychological age of
three and was therefore well equipped to beat his father at any game that
required some form of mental agility.
They lived in a Council house in
Yeaworth Close, and had been forcibly moved there after the residents of
Delbert Road in the nearby town of Beddington had all signed a petition to have
them evicted for antisocial behaviour. Yeaworth Close in Newton was a quiet
cul-de-sac where the nine families that lived there all got on with each other
and were courteous and thoughtful to each other’s needs.
The day the Becks moved into No. 2
Yeaworth Close they parked their Range Rover along with its trailer and Anita’s
grubby Mini Metro across everyone’s spaces in the shared parking lot. The next
day Beck fitted a sensor light onto his gate that shone directly into the
bedroom window of No. 7 whenever an insect flew by. When his neighbours
complained to him about his behaviour he just told them to fuck off.
Dave Johnson lived at No. 6 and was
looking out of his window one day when he saw something rather interesting.
William Beck was behaving oddly in his garden – running around and thrashing
his arms in the air and screaming like a baby. At first Dave didn’t know what
Beck was doing, but whatever it was it was scaring him half to death. And then
he saw it – he almost missed it – a tiny black and orange insect was circling
around Beck’s head. So that’s what was terrifying him, thought Dave.
“Hey, Kate,” he called to his wife,
“Come and look at this.”
Kate Johnson stepped over to the
window and looked out. “What’s he doing?”
“Can’t you see? He’s being chased by
a wasp. Beck the Bastard is afraid of wasps.”
“Good. I hope it stings him.”
“You know something – I’ve
just had a thought. If that wanker out there is afraid of just one wasp, how would you think he’d react
to hundreds of them?”
As luck would have it, Dave worked
at Insect World, where a whole host
of creepy-crawlies buzzed and fluttered and scuttled underneath its domed
structure – including wasps. Lots of wasps.
It was an easy task for him to drug
the wasps and transplant the nest to the side of Beck’s house in the middle of
the night and over the next few days he discovered a new found respect for the
humble wasp. He watched with increasing pleasure from his bedroom window as his
new friends swarmed around his terrified neighbour, stinging him repeatedly
until he was forced to lock himself and his family in the house, to wait
anxiously for the pest exterminators to arrive.
After the wasps’ nest was disposed
of Beck and his family went to stay with his father-in-law for a week, just to
be on the safe side. Mr Corseaut still thought he was a prick, but he allowed
him to stay as long as he promised never to return – ever. Beck promised, and
although he didn’t mean it, as things would turn out, it would be the last
promise he would ever keep to anyone.
Beck still despised his father-in-law
for not employing him – he thought he was snob and a closet homosexual because
he drank and appreciated wine. Real men, he though, drank beer and no amount of
education on the qualities of wine would ever convince him that it didn’t taste
of anything but vinegar.
When they arrived home a week later
Beck found a message on the answer-phone. It was from a man called Clifford
Stine, the managing director at the newly built Arnold Chemicals just outside
town. He was a well-spoken man with a voice that sounded like velvet. “Good
afternoon, Mr Beck,” purred the voice on the answering machine, “I’m told you
are a landscape gardener. If you would like some well-paid employment, please
give me a call.” He gave his number and asked Beck to call him back.
***
“Err,
is that Mr Stine?”
“I’ll
just get him, sir,” said the voice on the other end of the line.
There was a moment’s silence before,
“Stine. How can I help you?”
“Err, hello Mr Stine. This is
William Beck here. I’m just returning your call.”
“Ah yes, Mr Beck. I have a job for
you if you’re interested.”
Beck was interested.
“I
have quite a lot of waste ground at the back of my property,” continued Stine,
“and I’d like to have it cleared and then landscaped. Are you up for the job?”
“Err,
well yeah, I’m up for it. When do you want me to start?”
“Tomorrow
morning – at eleven. Is that all right with you?”
“Yeah.
Yeah. That’s fine by me.”
“I
live in the big house just outside town.”
“You
mean the mansion on the road to Arnold Chemicals?”
“That’s
the one. You can’t miss it.”
“No,
you can’t.”
“Well
then – I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr Beck. Don’t be late.”
“Yes
– err, I mean no. Thanks. Bye then.”
Beck
replaced the receiver onto its cradle. “Posh twat,” he muttered to himself.
“Who
was that?” Anita shouted from the kitchen.
“Bloke
called Clifford Stine – lives in the big mansion just outside town. Wants me to
a job for him.”
“That’s
nice.”
“Yeah.”
“Just
don’t fuck it up this time.”
***
Beck felt it only right and proper
to celebrate that night with ten pints of bitter, which then necessitated a
long lie in the following morning, causing him to be late arriving at Stine’s
house.
“I thought we agreed on eleven
o’clock, Mr Beck, said Stine. He didn’t look very happy.
Beck bowed his head. “I – err – got
caught in traffic. I’m sorry.”
“I sincerely hope that this is not
an indication of how things are going to progress, Mr Beck.”
“Err – no sir. No, definitely not.
Like I said – it was traffic.”
“Well, I’ll let it go this time, but
don’t let it happen again. People who do a good day’s work for me are well
rewarded and one of the things I expect them to be is punctual.”
Who
the fuck does he think he’s talking to, thought Beck,
as he said “Yes, Mr Stine. Sorry, Mr Stine.”
“Good. Now let me show you what I
want done.”
Clifford Stine pulled on a pair of
green wellington boots and led Beck around his vast estate. Although he didn’t
show it, Beck was seething with jealousy – why should this man have so much, he
thought, while he had so little? It never occurred to him that that this man
sometimes put in sixteen hours a day in a high pressure environment and had
worked for everything he owned. Neither did he care. Beck thought that life
owed him a favour and the sooner he got back into his father-in-law’s good
books, the more likely Anita would be included in the will when Mr Corseaut
eventually popped his clogs.
Stine led Beck through a wooden
gate, where, on the other side, there was a huge wasteland, overgrown with
every kind of weed imaginable.
“You’ll be well paid, Mr Beck,” said
Stine. “All you have to do is do the job properly.”
“How much of this do you want
cleared?”
“All of it.”
“Fuck me, that’s a big job.”
“How big?”
“About six months.”
“That’s no problem. Do you want the
job?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
"Good. My solicitor will
draw up a contract and you can start as soon as you’ve signed it.”
Beck looked surprised. “A contract?”
“It’s nothing really. It’ll just
detail your work times and so forth.”
“I – err – don’t normally – err –
work to contracts.”
“If you want to work for me, you’ll
sign the contract, Mr Beck. Please don’t think you’re being treated unfairly. I
ask all my employees to sign contracts – even the man who cleans the toilets.”
“How much are you paying?”
“Forty pounds an hour.”
“I’ll sign the contract.”
“Excellent. Please make sure you
read it carefully before signing it. I would like it to be an ironclad
agreement.”
“That’s no problem, Mr Stine.
Ironclad is my middle name.”
“Really?”
“No, not really.”
***
The contract arrived by post three
days later and Beck signed it as soon as he removed it from the manila
envelope.
“Aren’t you going to read it?” asked
Anita.
“Why? It’s just a standard contract.
Think of Nita, six months’ work at forty quid an hour! If I claim that I’ve
worked ten hours a day for six days a week that’s over two grand a week. Over
six months that’s – erm – well it’s a lot of money, that’s what it is!”
He started work two days after he
signed the contract. He worked barely three hours a day but claimed he’d worked
ten, and he spent his days in the field so there was no way his employer would
know what he was up to and at the end of the six months he’d just tell him that
he’d miscalculated the timescale and get the contract extended. It was
beautiful – life was at last giving him the break that he’d always wanted. At
the end of three months very little headway had been made on the wasteland but
he didn’t care – the pay cheques were arriving every week and that was all that
mattered.
A few days into the fourth month,
during one of his infrequent bouts of work, Beck was clearing a tangled mass of
brambles when he suddenly leapt back in alarm. He had uncovered something that
looked very nasty indeed. Underneath the brambles was the strangest looking
thing he had ever seen. It was about the size of a large dog and looked like a
pale orange slug. He could see the shapes of things moving slowly around under
its outer layer – but what startled him more was that it was covered in wasps.
Beck stared at it open-mouthed with
revulsion. He had never seen anything so repulsive – or terrifying. But then he
did something without thinking – something he never thought he was capable of
doing.
He kicked it.
The slug-like creature burst like a
balloon when his boot made contact with its rippling surface and parts of it
splattered over his clothes and skin. The wasps that had covered it swarmed
into the air and surrounded him – buzzing around his head. He started to scream
and he ran out of the wasteland, frantically brushing the insects away from his
face and crushing them under his feet. There seemed to be no escape – but just
as suddenly as they had swarmed around him they flew away and disappeared.
Beck ran all the way to his Range
Rover that was parked on the edge of Stine’s estate until he stopped, gasping
for air. He could feel himself trembling and hyperventilating with panic and
fear. It took him a few minutes to calm himself down enough to light a
cigarette and brush some of the remains of the creature from his clothes. Even
though the wasps hadn’t stung him at all he couldn’t stop his hands from
shaking.
He ground the butt of the cigarette
into the ground with the heel of his boot, climbed into his Range Rover and
started the engine.
***
“You’re home early,” said Anita.
“Yeah,” he said, giving his wife a
hug. “Where’s Sqantini?”
“Upstairs asleep. Why?”
“No reason. I’ll just go and check
on him.”
He raced up the stairs and picked up
his son. He gave him a kiss on the cheek and put him back down into his cot.”
“What’s happened?” asked Anita.
“Nothing.”
“What’s
happened?”
Beck told his wife everything that
had happened. “I’m going back there. I’m not,” he said finally
“For Christ’s sake, Willy – you’ve
got to get over this fear. I was reading my book of phobias this morning and I
found out that the fear of wasps is called hymenopteraphobia. It’s what you
have.
“I can’t have it if I can’t
pronounce it,” Beck said. “Now, just leave me alone!”
***
Two days later Beck’s doorbell
chimed. Beck opened the door to find Clifford Stine standing on his
doorstep.
“You weren’t at work yesterday or
today, Mr Beck. I was worried about you. Do you mind if I come in.”
Beck didn’t answer, but Stine
stepped in anyway.
“I’m sorry, Mr Stine, but I’m afraid
I can’t continue to work for you.”
“Really? And why not?”
“Family commitments.”
“What family commitments? I believe
you still have the same family commitments that you had when you began working
for me, Mr Beck. You didn’t have a problem working for me then – or stealing my
money from me.”
“Ste – wh – I – I don’t know what
you’re talking about? I haven’t stolen any money from you!”
“Come now, Mr Beck. Don’t play the
innocent with me. I’m a very powerful man. I have connections. I have a lot of
people who are loyal to me. Unlike you. Are you that naïve that you wouldn’t
think I would have an idle, untrustworthy oaf like you watched? Loyalty gets
rewards from me, Mr Beck. Disloyalty gets punished. I take it you found my
little pink beauty?”
“Y – your what?”
“The thing you so heartlessly kicked
in the woods – you know, the thing the wasps were so attracted to. Do you want
to know something interesting about those wasps?
“Not really.”
“Well, I’m going to tell you anyway.
They have no stings – they’re what’s called parasitic wasps. They normally lay
their eggs in the larvae of caterpillars so that when their young emerge they
are treated to a free meal. But the things is – I discovered that they are
particularly attracted to my little pink beauty.”
“Where – err – what is it?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,
Mr Beck. It’s a secret. Let’s just
say it’s an anomaly or an abomination or anything you like – as long as it
begins with the letter a. No, I’m
afraid if I told you,” chuckled Stine, “I’d have to have you killed.”
“But –,” began Beck.
“Be quiet for a moment, Mr Beck, and
let me speak. You see, there’s a certain employee of mine – a Mr Johnson – I
believe you know him – and he came to me with a little problem he was having.
He hadn’t been himself for a while and upon questioning him your name cropped
up.”
“But he works for that stupid
fucking Insect World.”
“I know. It’s a small world isn’t
it, Mr Beck, but I happen to own – what you succinctly called – that stupid
fucking Insect World. Like I said – I’m a very powerful man. Now after I’d
agreed to let him transplant a wasps nest from that stupid fucking Insect World
onto the side of your house, I felt that your punishment was not enough –
especially after all the lives you made a misery, both here and where you came
from – and so I thought I’d offer you a job. I was, of course, aware of your
inherent idleness and so as you only worked on average two and a half hours a
day it took you a little longer than anticipated to find my little pink
beauty.”
“You bastard.”
“Sticks and stones, Mr Beck, sticks
and stones. You do, however, have to prepare yourself for some significant
changes in your life, and also to the lives of anyone who has been unfortunate
enough to have been in close contact with you over the last two days.”
“W – what?”
“Oh yes – I almost forgot – two of
my extremely large associates will be called round to see you first thing
tomorrow morning. Please make sure you have all the money I paid to you ready
for them to collect.”
“B – but that’s my money.”
“I’m afraid not, Mr Beck. You really
should have read the contract carefully. I did tell you. It was stipulated very
clearly that if you withdrew your services at any time during the six months or
if the job was not finished by the time agreed, then all monies would be
repayable to me on demand.”
“You
can’t do this!”
“I already have, Mr Beck,” said
Stine, turning on his heels and heading for the door. “Wheels are in motion.
Remember – money owed to me according to the contract you signed first thing tomorrow morning. And please make sure you
have it ready – my associates are not the most patient of men.”
“Wait
– ,”
“Goodbye, Mr Beck.”
***
Clifford Stine’s two associates
arrived at eight o’clock the following morning. Beck saw them walking up the
path to his front door through a gap in the bedroom curtains. They were big,
fearsome looking men, and Beck did what he knew he would do – he panicked.
“Oh no no no no no!” he cried as he
heard the knock at the door. “What am I going to do?”
“Where the money?” asked Anita.
“What do you mean ‘Where’s the
money?’ It’s in the new washing machine. It’s in the new dishwasher. It’s in
the new tumble dryer. It’s in the new microwave. It’s in every new appliance
that you wanted!”
“For Christ Sake, listen to
yourself. Just calm down and pull yourself together.”
“But, wh – what are we going to do?”
“Look, I’ll speak to them. I’ll tell
them you’re out and to come back later. That’ll give us time to think – or move
– or something.”
“Oh God, I love you, Nita.”
“Yeah yeah – and you’re a fucking
wanker,” she said as she walked down the stairs.
The two men were smiling when she
opened the door. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“We’re here to speak to Mr Beck,”
said the taller of the two men.
“I’m afraid he’s not in at the
moment. Can you come back later? I’ll tell him you were here. Who should I say
called?”
The shorter of the two men leaned forward
and whispered into Anita’s ear, “We know he’s here. Just tell him that we’re
here to collect what rightfully belongs to Mr Stine and nobody will get hurt.”
“Look I told you – he’s not in. If
you want to come back la . . .”
Anita was able to finish her
sentence owing to a lack of consciousness.
The taller of the two men had
punched her squarely in the face and knocked her out with one blow. They
casually stepped over her crumpled body and began to walk up the stairs.
“I – is that you Nita?” Beck called
from the bedroom. “Have you got rid of them?”
Beck watched the door handle slowly
turning and, as the two men entered the room, he began to cry.
“Tell Mr Stine I’ll get the money
for him,” Beck sobbed, “I just haven’t got it at the moment. I need a little
more time. Please.”
“Mr Stine wants his money today.
Now,” said the shorter of the two men.
“B – but I haven’t g – got it. I n –
need more time.”
“That’s too bad,” said the tall one.
“For you.”
Beck was crouched in the corner of
the room, trembling with fear. “Don’t hurt me!” was the last thing he said
before he was kicked into unconsciousness.
Anita was the first to come round.
She was slumped against the open door. Her head was throbbing and she felt
dizzy but she managed to pick herself up and walk unsteadily up the stairs.
The first thing she did was check to
see if Sqantini was all right and to her relief he was. He was still sleeping
soundly in his cot.
Then she went into her bedroom.
Beck’s head was covered in blood.
His eyes were heavily bruised and he had a broken arm. At first she thought he
was dead, but when he moaned quietly in his unconscious state her fears were
dispelled. As she looked at him she had a strange feeling that, aside from the
blood and bruises, there was something not quite right about him – something
different. And as she started to lift him up onto the bed she noticed that his
hands were not flesh coloured any more. They appeared to be more pink than
usual and they had a semi-transparent look about them. It was like looking at an
X-ray.
“Willy,” she whispered, “I’m going
downstairs to phone the police.”
Beck grabbed her arm as she moved
away from the bed. “No – no police. They’ll – kill – me.”
“Who’ll kill you? Who were those
men? What have you got yourself involved in?”
“Too – many – questions – just –
don’t – do – it.”
Beck slipped back into
unconsciousness and Anita went downstairs and called the police.
***
DCI Barnaby Smith and DS George
Jones of the Buckinghamshire constabulary questioned Clifford Stine but they
found no evidence to connect him to William Beck, who had already been admitted
into Aylesbury General Hospital, where he his arm was set in plaster.
For three days the change in him
went unnoticed by the hospital staff until a keen-eyed nurse noticed something
odd about his arm and immediately moved him into a private room and called for
a doctor to examine him.
The doctor looked at Beck’s arm with
puzzlement. “Mr Beck,” he said, “have you been overseas lately – somewhere like
Africa or Indonesia, say?”
“No,” replied Beck. “Why?”
“Look I’m going to be upfront with
you – there appears to be a disease spreading through your arm and, to be
perfectly honest, I have no idea what it is. I’ve never seen anything like it
before.”
“What? What do you mean – disease?”
The doctor cut the cast from Beck’s
arm and showed him what he meant. Beck’s eyes widened with horror when he saw
that his right arm had turned a transparent pink. He could see his bones and
blood vessels clearly through the translucent skin.
“Jesus fucking Christ, what is it?”
“That’s just it, Mr Beck. Nobody
knows."
“Well fucking find someone who does,
you useless prick.”
For two days Beck lay in state of
delirium. Nothing made sense to him anymore. The doctors were useless and the
nurses just pacified and patronised him. He had begun to give up all hope until
one day the doctor who had examined and diagnosed him paid him a visit.
“Good news, Mr Beck,” said the
doctor. “We’ve located someone who knows something about your condition.
Apparently he’s an expert in his field.”
“About time. I was beginning to
think that everyone here was a moron. When can he see me?”
“He can see you now – he’s right
outside.”
“Well, what are you waiting for –
send him in, you idiot.”
The doctor smiled and opened the
door. “Good afternoon, Mr Beck,” said Clifford Stine.
Beck recoiled in horror when he saw
his nemesis enter the room.
“No! No! No! That’s him! He’s the
one that gave me this in the first place. Call the police now and have him
arrested!”
Clifford Stine calmly turned to
doctor and said, “I trust everything is fine with you and your family, Peter.”
“It is, Mr Stine. Thank you for
asking.”
“And the new car I sent round – how
is it?”
“It’s perfect, Mr Stine. Thank you.
And if there’s ever anything else you need from me, you know that you only have
to ask.”
“That’s very kind of you, Peter.”
“It’s my pleasure.”
“Now, before we move this piece of
shit, I think it would be wise to drug him, don’t you?”
“Of course, Mr Stine. I’ve already
prepared the solution.”
“Good man.”
***
Beck woke up in unfamiliar
surroundings. He was lying on a large table in what appeared to an unusually
ornate garden shed. All manner of tools were hanging from the walls and from
the corner of his eye he could see a lawnmower propped up against a
workbench. He tried to move his arms but found that he couldn’t and when
he looked down at them he was overcome with nausea – his arms were welded to
his body. No – that wasn’t right. They weren’t welded to his body – they were
part of it, fused together as one mass of gelatinous pink.
When the door to the shed opened and
Clifford Stine stepped in, Beck felt a wave of self-pity sweep over him and he
began to sob uncontrollably.
“What – have – you – done – to –
me?”
“What have I done to you? Oh, no
no, you’ve got it all wrong, Mr Beck. I
didn’t do this to you. You did this to yourself when you took the unwise
decision to kick my little pink beauty. You see, it was waiting for someone as
stupid and greedy as yourself to release it from its pain, to transfer its form
onto something else.”
“W – what are you talking about?”
“Come now, Mr Beck, it must be
plainly obvious to a person of your limited intelligence that it needed to be
released – because it, like you, was once human. You are now it – or very
nearly. A few more days and I’ll be able to have you transferred to the
wasteland with all the shit you failed to dispose of – it’s where you so
clearly belong.
“You really were a terrible
landscape gardener. Where did you learn how to landscape anyway? Vienna 1945?
Still it doesn’t matter – in your new form you’ll be part of that landscape.
All those hours you spent idling around when you should have been working. Did
you really think I was that stupid? Did you equate a surfeit of wealth to a
lack of intelligence?”
“Why,” sobbed Beck, “why have you
done this to me?”
“Why? Why? Why?” said Stine. “You
ask all these questions about why when it should be plainly obvious to you as
it is to me and your good neighbour Mr Johnson. I did it because you’re a
pariah. I did it because you’re the worst kind of human, preying on your fellow
man for no reason except to amuse yourself. I did it because I could do it. I did it because I liked doing it. Everything I do, I do
for a reason – so where does that leave you, Mr Beck?”
“You’re a fucking bastard!”
“That’s right, Mr Beck – let all
your anger and hate out while you still have a mouth.”
“Wh – what?”
“It’s a painful process – the final
phase of the change. Physically and
psychologically. You see, you will still retain your humanity in your new form.
You will experience separation and loss and loneliness, but never joy or
happiness or love because the sensation you will become most familiar with is
fear.”
Beck watched Clifford Stine turn
around and leave the shed. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t have the
words to express what he was feeling.
He never did.
But he did begin to scream.
While he still could.
***
Four days later two men dressed in
overalls and wearing gloves and masks entered the shed and slid a large wooden
board under the pink slug-like creature that had once been William Beck.
They lifted the board up, one at
each end, and carried it out to the wasteland where they dumped the creature it
contained beside a thick clump of thistles.
Dave Johnson was waiting for them
when they arrived and he watched silently as they left and only when they had
shut the gate did he step closer to the large pink slug-like creature and begin
to speak.
“This is what you get when you turn
good, honest people’s lives into a living hell, you miserable worthless piece
of shit.”
Beck could hear Johnson talking to
him, but in his new form he breathed through his skin and therefore had no need
for a mouth.
“I just thought I’d pop by to let
you know that your wife and sprog should be making the change right about now.
It’s ironic really, isn’t it – you need someone to come along and release you
from your private hell – but if you’d been lying here in your human form people
would be lining up to kick the shit out of you. Anyway, Mr Stine said it would
be therapeutic for me to deliver the bad news to you – but I can’t stand around
here chatting all day. I have work to do. Goodbye. Oh – and stay out of
trouble.”
Johnson walked quickly out of the
wasteland and there was silence for a few minutes. Beck welcomed the silence,
but it didn’t last long.
He heard the buzzing of wasps in the
distance and he knew instinctively that they were heading his way.
Then he remembered what Clifford
Stine had told him about them – and he also remembered when he first saw the
pink slug-like creature and the things that were moving slowly under its
transparent skin. He hadn’t known what they were at the time – but now he was
fully aware of what was going to happen next and terror gripped him like the
teeth of a vice.
The wasps swarmed all around him and
he could feel their tiny legs scuttling along his body.
And if he had possessed a mouth he
would have screamed as the first wasp began to lay its eggs under his skin.
***
Two weeks later, following a frantic
call from Mr Corseaut, DCI Smith and DS Jones arrived at 2 Yeaworth Close to
find the door wide open and the house empty. Mr Corseaut had told the
detectives that his daughter and grandson had been missing for more than a week
and despite numerous calls he had received no word from them at all – it was
if, he told them, they had vanished into thin air. He made no mention of his
worthless son-in-law.
The detectives looked around the
premises for any sign of life, but found no-one. DS Jones was in the kitchen
when he called out to DCI Smith, “I think you’d better come in here and take a
look at this, sir.”
DCI Smith bent down and peered at
the small clump of pink, gelatinous matter that was on the kitchen floor. He
couldn’t be sure but he could have sworn he saw it moving.
“Have you touched it, Jones?” he
asked.
“No, sir.”
“Well don’t. Bag it and we’ll get it
sent over to the lab for analysis.”
DCI Smith reassured Mr Corseaut that
they would do whatever was in their means to find his daughter and grandson,
before informing the uniformed constable who was at the premises when they
arrived to not let anyone enter the house – for whatever reason.
“I want this place sealed off.
No-one gets in. Do you understand? No-one,” he said finally, before he and
Jones climbed into their unmarked car and drove away with the evidence.
It took the lab two days to complete
the analysis of the pink substance that was found in the kitchen of 2 Yeaworth
Close.
Reggie Dwight, the technician who
had carried out the analysis took his findings directly to DCI Smith.
“What have you got for us, Reggie?”
asked the DCI.
“Well, it’s a strange one this –
I’ve never seen anything like it before. This stuff is comprised of a lot of
different chemical constituents as well as – wait for it – human DNA.”
“Whoa, that’s weird. Have you got
any idea what it is?”
“No, but it was the last we
discovered in its make-up that surprised us the most.”
“What is it?”
“Take a look for yourself,” said
Reggie, handing over his results.
DCI Smith looked at it in disbelief.
“Are you sure about this, Reggie? Are you absolutely one hundred percent sure?”
“One hundred and ten percent sure,
chief.”
DCI Smith picked up the telephone
and dialled zero. The switchboard operator answered, “Yes sir, how can I help
you?”
“I need to make an international
call immediately.” He gave the operator the number and waited to be connected.
After a series of buzzes and clicks
a faint voice appeared at the other end of the line. “Frontiere Dairy Products.
How may I help you?”
DCI Smith recognised the Kiwi accent
because of its infrequent use of vowels. “I need to speak to Sir Crispen
Fotherington-Smythe – and I need to speak to him right now!”
The cover of The Possum Book of Wasp Stories selected by Herbert Van Thong, from which book this chapter was taken.
