The Call of Distant Shores by David Niall Wilson, Bob Eggleton Page B

drone, as though there were a million mosquitoes humming inside, or the wings of a host of wasps beating against the far side of the wall.   Jasper closed his eyes, caught his breath, and in that instant he saw them, clinging to one another, climbing and grasping and bobbing with black-gold-black striped stingers primed, dripping poison.
    Jasper opened his eyes with as start and pulled away from the wall.
    "Jesus Jumpin ' Jehosephat Christ," he whispered.   Each syllable of the words came out in a separate gasp.
    He stood wavering between continuing around the corner and turning to run and never look back, moving on to Virginia, or Maryland, starting over.   Then he thought of Bobby Lee.   He remembered long, lazy afternoons fishing, hard days on his daddy's farm, Bobby Lee at his side, working until they fell down in the dirt exhausted and then washed it all off with a garden hose to start over and do it again.   He couldn't leave Bobby Lee in there, even if Bobby Lee WANTED to be in there.
    "Wish I'd brought some Raid," he muttered, and turned the corner of the shed, moving stealthily toward the sliding door in front.
    A sickly, greenish glow seeped out through the doorway.   It reminded Jasper of the glow-sticks they sold at summer carnivals, or the glow-in-the-dark stars he'd hung on his ceiling as a boy.   The droning was louder now, and it covered a wide range of tones – deep and resonant to high-pitched and ear-splitting.   Jasper pulled a wad of tissue out of his pocket, hoped it wasn't too dirty, and wadded rolls of it in each ear, blocking as much of the sound as possible.
    He stared at the door, trying to think of a compelling enough reason to turn tail and run, but he couldn't shake the thought of Bobby Lee, and those crawling, touching, stinging bugs.
    "Ah, hell," he said softly.   Before he could change his mind, he stepped inside.
    If the air had been cold outside the shed, it was frigid within.   There were lights, but they were soft, and green, and buried in the corners near the rear of the building.   Jasper couldn't see a thing except the huge, vaguely defined silhouette of the giant wooden cockroach.   The greenish glow shimmered around the edges of it like the silver lining on a cloud gone rotten.   And that was another thing.   The stench was horrible.   Every breath had weight, as if he were breathing liquid, or some sort of thick gas, rather than air.
    The droning pounded in Jasper's head, and thinking became difficult.   Gritting his teeth, he skirted the side wall of the shed, pulling as far away from the statue on its wood pallet base without coming into contact with the wall to his left.   He didn't want a repeat encounter with the vibration.   As he moved through the thick, cloying shadows, he concentrated on an image of Bobby Lee's smiling face, and whenever that started to fade into the sound, and stink, or threatened to be rattled out of his head by his chattering teeth, he thought about those twins.
    It was the longest walk of Jasper's life.   He knew the length and breadth of the shed, he'd bought the damned thing in the garden department at Wal-Mart himself.   Sure, the walls were taller than they'd been, and it was a little harder to walk in this air than it had been last time he'd been inside, but it should have been a ten, twelve at the max, step journey from the front, to the back, and though he couldn't string two thoughts together in a line, he knew he should have reached the rear of that building.
    The sound and shadows closed in behind him then, and he saw that the glow was concentrated near the rear of the cockroach and down low.   He headed in that direction, sweeping his gaze to the right and left, looking for any sign of Bobby Lee, or the twins, or whatever the hell was making that fucking NOISE – but he saw nothing.   Nothing but that glow, and as he drew near to it, he felt a scream bubbling up through his chest that he only barely managed to bite off,