Here it is, your Halloween read!
Mosquito
The stairwell
that led to the attic was unnerving even of itself. To think that a victim to
be recovered was somewhere in that dark place aloft chilled the hustling EMT to
the bone.
The enormous
backpack he bore was not all that was weighing down the young first responder.
He was a Southern California kid; attics were things you only heard of in
movies and usually they were the thrillers. People only ever found ghouls and
goblins in the attic. It seemed ridiculous for these fears to be creeping into
a burly, EMT’s mind, but given the circumstances for bringing him here, Jay
found the goosebumps on his arms to be fitting.
An oscillating
fan was all that moved at the top of the stairs. A single, lone light from the
spinning device shone down upon the scene. On the floor lay the woman in her
night gown who had made the frantic call to their dispatcher. Her eyes were
wide open, her gaze unfocused, but across every inch of her face was the touch
of fear.
Jay fell to his
knees and immediately rushed into the procedures given for addressing a downed
victim. His own fears abated for the moment, he checked her pulse, he called
out to her. No response.
Jay’s partner
came to the top of the attic stairs and seeing his partner’s outstretched arms
begin their attempt to rejuvenate life into this woman, he called on his radio
for aid. The following ambulance was but moments away. He could already hear
the sirens.
The
unprecedented levels of heat and humidity in town made the confined space and
the horrible unrolling situation stifling and unbearable. The fan above did
nothing to help.
“Why would she come up here?” Jay’s partner wondered as he ran back down the
steps to bring the gurney bearers to the location. “She oughta have known that heat rises.”
As the partner
ran passed a variety of religious artifacts nailed to the walls of the house
that he failed to realize were skewed or upside down, strange shadows began to
move about the house.
Sweat rained
down from Jay upon the lifeless woman. The more compressions he did, singing, ‘Staying alive’ to keep in rhythm, the
more Jay began to realize that she was gone. The cracked screened iPhone that
lie a few feet away from her outstretched hand had brought them here, but in
vain. And yet, Jay did not give up. He stared at the cross that dangled on a
golden chain from this woman’s neck. It was tangled within her hair and the
more he stared down at her, he began to realize the burn marks upon her neck. They
looked to be in the shape of fingers. In the center of her forehead, Jay could
see what looked like a welt – like a growing, inflamed mosquito bite.
Jay was suddenly
re-galvanized with an intense desire to save this woman’s life. She had clearly
endured an ungodly collection of hells to have ran up here to this oven to find
salvation. He could not accept her
demise.
“Come on!” Jay
insisted. He was getting light headed from his efforts. He could not wait for
his partner to return to help carry this woman out of this pit.
The hum of the
fan above began to change. The sounds devolved more and more into that of a
buzz.
With steady,
heavy pulsations, Jay continued his locked armed attempts to restart this
woman’s heart. However, the song he sang to keep him in rhythm began to fade as
the buzzing increased. The sound was not that of any fly or insect that he had
ever heard in San Diego before. Looking up and around, in the soft light of the
fan, Jay could see no bugs immediately around. ‘Is there a hive up here?’ he looked back to the woman’s forehead
where the inflamed bite upon her brow lay.
Her eyes were still empty of life yet wide with fright. ‘Was she stung? Was that what scared her so
bad?’
No sooner had
the thought passed, a swooping buzz flounced by Jay’s ear. The sound was so
intense that he ducked to the side, half expecting a mosquito the size of a
hawk to be after him. Wide eyed himself, Jay looked all around. The buzz
continued, but it was in the far corner of the attic where light was void.
The adrenaline
pounding through Jay kept him vigilantly trying to revive the victim. “Where the
hell are you, Tim?!” Jay shouted.
No answer was
returned. The rest of the house below was heavy as if not merely empty, but
dead.
The horrible
buzzing in the corner grew louder and more powerful, as if feeding from his
fear. But Jay knew that he had to keep at the CPR until his partner returned.
Though they had
initially thought this woman to be on her own in this house, Jay’s heart and
his head were quickly deducing that they were not alone.
Again, the
wretched swooping ripped forward from the darkness. Once more he ducked,
assuming that this time he would see the swarm coming for him. But his wide
eyes saw nothing. What he felt, however, was far more disturbing. Through the
bulwark of his backpack, Jay swore he felt the sting of jagged fingernails
ripping across his skin.
With one more
look to the cross on the victim’s neck, Jay knew as if it had been shouted to
him by a sky full of angels that he had to get out.
And he was not
about to leave her soul in this trap.
In one herculean
transfer of his fear to strength, Jay swept the woman from the floor, carrying
her over his shoulders like a shepherd a lamb. With the effort of a hundred
men, Jay ran out from that place, trumping down the steps of the attic, through
the torn home and down a second flight of stairs. Every step felt like ripping
his legs out from a mire of mud and quick sand. The hellish buzzing chased him
from the attic, down the stairs and through the long haul to the front door.
A lion-like
shout pushed Jay out from that place, sending him diving across the porch to
the sun-dried lawn. The second his ribs struck the hard ground, with the woman
on his back, the buzzing halted.
Neither Jay nor
the rushing ambulance responders would know if it was the efforts of Jay in the
attic or the shock of the fall that filled the once motionless body of the
woman with life. The woman was too quickly taken away to the tune of screaming sirens
and a speeding ambulance to be questioned by Jay about anything.
Soaked through
with sweat and fear, Jay sat in silence as his partner asked him a litany of
questions, the least of which, being, “What
the hell happened?”
Seeing his
partner to be unresponsive, the EMT used his radio to call their dispatcher to
alert them that they were going to the hospital.
In the moment
that his partner turned away, Jay’s eyes looked to the eye-shaped window atop
the house where the attic glared down upon him. There was no face, no shadow,
no silhouette that could be seen, but Jay knew that whatever infested that
house was looking straight at him.
Crossing
himself, Jay kneeled before that accursed house. The poisoned energies inside
would not go home with him, but the memory of this night would remain with him
for the rest of his days.
Happy Halloween...sweet dreams.
Your humble author,
