05 – Davie

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The Caretaker tied a trash sack shut and threw it into a growing pile of sealed rubbish.

“Did you ever find out what it meant?” he said.

Daniela shook her head. Behind her, Chuck chuckled at a whisper from McQueen and the Caretaker sighed.

“Care to tell us what’s so funny, McQueen?”

“Nothing, sir. I just said seeing a skull could be a warning she’s going to die.”

“And why’s that funny?”

“I wasn’t the one laughing.”

The Caretaker eyed Chuck. “That’s true. You weren’t.”

Before he could interrogate him, a shriek from Daniela and Helen called him over. A swarm of flies erupted around them. Their bag had split.

Chill,” the Caretaker said, “they aren’t going to hurt you.”

He waved a hand and the swarm parted, buzzing out an open window. He then stuffed the remains of the split bag into another and swept the rubbish from the floor into a large mound. Then handed out snow shovels.

“I find these come in handy after you guys are done with lunch.”

He gave one to each child, but one refused to take it.

“What’s your name?” the Caretaker said.

The child’s feet shuffled. “Davie.”

“Are you refusing to clean your mess, Davie?”

Davie shook his head. “I can’t. There’s insects in the trash.”

“So?”

This time Chuck did laugh. “Davie here’s scared of bugs, ain’t he?”

Davie looked down at his shoes. The Caretaker squatted in front of him.

“You have an insect phobia, Davie?”

Davie nodded.

“Well, Davie, why don’t you get a fresh bin bag and start throwing all the food that can’t be eaten on the buffet table?”

Davie nodded again and lifted a bag from the cleaning cart. Daniela watched him take each of the plastic trays to unload their contents into it.

“Why are you afraid of insects?” she said.

“I just am.”

“I don’t think you were ever this scared before.”

“Yeah, well you never went through what I did.”

The others stopped working. The Caretaker frowned.

“Davie,” he said, “did something happen recently, like with your friends?”

“You won’t believe me. You’ll think I’m making it up.”

“I don’t think anything your friends have said tonight sounds even remotely plausible, but they’re still willing to share. Why not get it off your chest at least?”

Davie tipped another tray into the bag and closed his eyes.

Davie’s Story

Three days ago, I learned the hard way about inviting strangers into your home. It’s just me and mum most of the time. My dad’s always away in the Navy and Mum says she can’t work past five or I won’t have dinner, but I don’t see why not. I know how to cook ramen.

Last week, she posted an advert online for a lodger. The next day, some guy answered it. He had a job on one of the farms and needed a place to stay. Mum let him have the spare room in the attic.

The day after he moved in, she asked me to take some old clothes to the charity store. The man said he’d take them since he was heading past it on the way to work, but as soon as I gave them to him, he turned nasty.

“What are trying to do, poison me?” he said. “These clothes have been kept with moth balls!”

He dumped them at my feet and stormed out, and when he got back that night he didn’t say a word to me. No apology. Nothing. He just went to his room.

Later that night, I heard strange sounds coming from it and when I peeked in the keyhole, I nearly gave myself away gasping in shock. He was crawling across the floor on his belly, tearing chunks of old clothes apart with his teeth. He took entire shirts, rolled them into balls and stuffed them in his mouth. When he swallowed, I could see the bulge work its way down his throat.

Then a swarm of moths flew in and landed on his shoulders. As soon as they did, he shot his eyes to the door and crawled over. I didn’t wait to see what he’d do next. I hurried to the bathroom and locked myself in.

When I was in bed that night, I kept seeing moths flutter around the room. When they settled on the walls, the patterns of their wings looked just like eyes. I felt like I was being watched the whole time, so I bought a can of bug spray the next day.

That night, our lodger didn’t come down for dinner. Mum said he was probably exhausted from his farm work, and interrupted my googling to take his food up to his room. I was reading about people who suffered from Pica, a disorder that makes them eat non-food items, so when I laid the tray outside his door and heard a retching sound from inside, I felt a pang of sympathy for the man.

“Poor guy,” I thought to myself, “but that’s what you get for eating rags instead of real food.”

I peeked through the keyhole again, in time to see him throw up all over himself, but instead of cleaning it or heading to the bathroom he gathered it in his hands and did something I’ll never forget. He lathered the brown mush across his skin, smearing it in long sheets of slime. I nearly threw up at the sight and ran to my room to hide under my covers.

At some point, I must have fallen asleep, because a loud flutter woke me up. I peeled back the bedsheet expecting to find more moths, but this time there was only one.

There only had to be one.

The moth was the size of a man.

Its wings spread flat against the wall and their pattern held the same eyes as the small moths. But now, enlarged as they were, I recognized them. I’d seen those eyes close up from our lodger when he glared at me for handing him mothballed clothes.

I screamed and ran for the door but the moth was fast, covering the exit with a flick of its wings. I backed away to my bed, knocking into my bedside cabinet. A cold can rolled off onto my foot.

The bug spray.

The moth dropped from the door and lunged with a screech. Oh, god, it had the lodger’s face! I grabbed the bug spray and squeezed the nozzle, screaming back and as loud as the moth, emptying the entire load of the canister into that dripping mouth. Where the stream of gas hit it, the flesh of the moth dissolved, but that didn’t stop it wailing for as long as it could, either.

Mum burst in and demanded to know what the noise was about, then screamed herself as the moth reared up, wings smashing into walls and my bed and what was left of its now hollowed out body melting to the floor. I ran to her and squeezed her tight and she pulled me close and out the room. The moth’s legs thrashed and rose and with its wings, curled inwards.

Mum slammed the door shut and we left for my aunt’s house, and didn’t return until the town exterminator agreed to come back with us. When we got back the next day, all that was left of the moth was a gloopy puddle seeping into my carpet. Mum decided to use the money from our lodger to renovate my room. There was no way I sleeping in there with it covered in bits of dead insect.

I tried to tell her the lodger was the moth, but of course she didn’t believe me. He was gone, along with his clothes. Clearly, she said, he’d been scared away by the enormous insects.

I looked in his room while the carpet people refitted mine. If he had left, he’d taken our sheets with him. There was no trace he’d ever stayed. No bed linen, no possessions and certainly no clothes. There was, however, tucked in the darkest corner beneath his bed, a suitcase.

I took it to mum to show her he couldn’t have left without packing, yet when we opened it, we found no personal belongings inside. Instead there was several bundles of cash and no forwarding address. We took it as his rent and tried to get back to our lives.

While a fresh coat of paint was drying in my room, I slept one night in the attic. When the sun came up the next day, I screamed. Above the bed in the rafters, made of shredded cloth and hardened brown slime, was the biggest cocoon I’d ever seen.