Read Online Creeptych by John Everson - Free Book Online Page A

reached Jess, who waited impatiently at the water’s edge.
    “There’s a dead guy back there!” Jess announced.
    Moments later they had all gathered around the skull. Billy reached down and gently pushed sand away from the area that the skull had come from, and soon had uncovered the bleached vertebrae of the neck, followed by the shoulders, collarbone and ribs. Then abruptly, he stopped.
    “This guy hasn’t been dead that long,” he said, making a face.
    “He’s nothing but bones,” Jess argued.
    “Maybe up-top, but not down here.” Billy grimaced and wiped something dark, cool and sticky off the back of his hand on the sand.
    And then they all made faces as the smell reached them, a stench of rotting meat mixed with the sour of bad fish.
    “Jesus,” Mark said, stepping back.
    As Billy stood up they could all see that just below the first couple of exposed ribs, a blackened gory mess yawned under the sand.
    “But…what took all of the skin off his head?” Casey asked.
    “Not just skin,” Billy answered. His voice sounded grim. “Something took hair, muscle, eyes, fat… without leaving a trace.”
    “Fucking gross,” Mark said. Two hands grabbed his arm and squeezed. Jess.
    “My foot  was on him,” she said. Her voice sounded close to breaking.
    Billy slapped a bug on his neck absently. “Well, at least you only touched the clean part.”
    Casey echoed Billy, hitting her thigh with her palm. The air around them seemed to hum.
    “So much for no bugs,” Mark said. He swatted at a tiny fly or gnat that circled his face.
    “Um,” Casey said. “I think we should go.”
    Billy turned to look at her, and then his gaze followed her arm, which pointed to a cloud of insects at the edge of the trees. They glittered like a violet constellation in the bright sun. Black and shimmering purple, the horde of tiny insects expanded from the forest in a cloud that grew broader by the second. The co-eds all began to slap at tiny bites as the buzz grew around them, and the air suddenly was alive with tiny beating wings.
    “I think we should go now!” Casey screamed, and ran straight through the cloud towards the path of broken branches they had forged. The others followed close on her heels.
    They ran through the jungle, the high-pitched hum of hunger all around them. The cloud followed. “Ouch,” Jess cried, swatting at the things that bit her neck and back.
    “Keep moving,” Mark yelled, and pulled her by the hand. “In here,” he said, and led them all to the abandoned metal hut. He yanked open the door and they piled past him, collapsing on the floor as he slammed the door.
    From outside, the sound of a thousand flies hummed. From inside, the sound of gasping breath and stifled crying filled the silence. Nobody spoke.
    Mark ran a hand across his neck and came back with the remains of three smashed insects. “What are they?” he asked.
    Billy looked closer, noting the black underbellies and purple slashes of color across their backs. They were the size of mosquitoes, but thicker. The missing link between a gnat and a housefly. He could just make out the iridescent bulging eyes that were reminiscent of a billion inhabitors of garbage cans and other sources of decay. The procreators of maggots. The death cleaners.
    “Some kind of fly,” Billy said finally. “Never seen one like it before though.”
    “I thought you knew this island,” Casey accused.
    “Yeah, I did,” he said. “Things change.”
    The one window to the outside remained obscured by a cloud of buzzing insects. They covered the glass, landing for a few seconds, crawling across it in jerky, fast steps and then rising in the air again to loop and soar, looking for something to still their hunger. The air vibrated with a muffled but constant, nearby hum.
    “This is insane,” Casey complained. “We can’t just sit in here.” But she didn’t make a move to leave; she hunched down, back to a wall, arms hugging her shins.
    Mark stood up