Flies

“There came great swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh and into his servants' houses. Throughout all the land of Egypt, the land was ruined by the swarms of flies.”

—Exodus, Chapter 8, Verse 24; The Hebrew Bible

The first time Samuel noticed the flies, he was in his cellar, checking the water heater. The pilot had gone out, he thought. When he turned the lights on, down there, he was shocked by how many flies there were. Huge, heavy, buzzing black flies. Perhaps a hundred of them. All careening psychotically at the sudden appearance of light. He wavered as he meandered through the boxes and other stacked items. The flies bombarded him, bashing drunkenly into every surface. He was startled by how beefy and slow they seemed, like flying black jelly beans.

Something must have died, he thought. Somewhere in all this mess was a dead mouse or, worse, a rat, and a fly laid its eggs in the carrion. First maggots and then these massive flies. He might not be so grossed out, except that there were so many of them. His mind automatically filled with images of roadkill and the landmine-sized droppings of really big dogs, like the Great Dane Barney, who belonged to the Coggins family, next door.

After he got the water heater sorted, he drove to Lane's Hardware over on Lancaster Street. He bought two packs of ten-each fly ribbon tubes in bright red packaging. Bill Lane, owner and operator of Lane's Hardware, said he swore by them in his horse barn. “They have some kind of flymone smell. Drives flies crazy. They land and get stuck. No fuss. Just don't get stuck to them, yourself.”

Samuel knew that Bill meant pheromone, but he just smiled and thanked him. You kept men who had access to power tools and shovels on your good side.

He drove home and, following the too-fine print on the box, deployed several of the curling ribbons from the ceiling joists in the cellar. As he went back upstairs, he noticed that there seemed to be more than before. The air was full of them. The few windows were coated with them.

Later that afternoon, Samuel decided to sit outside. The spring had been cool and wet, but that day had warmed with a promise of summer to come. He positioned a folding lawn chair by his garden, where the sun beat relentlessly on the south side of the house. He set his cooler down, popped open a can of Budweiser, and read that day's paper. 

He realized that he had dozed off when the can of Bud smacked onto the brick walkway, spilling beer across his shoes.

The sun was low over the horizon, but keenly bright on his face. He stood to chase the spilled beer, turning to lean on the chair as he did. Something caught his eye, and he glanced up. 

He nearly screamed. He also nearly fell back as he craned his head up. The entire side of his house was covered in huge, fat black flies. They just seemed to be soaking in the sun, but the side of his house was nearly black with them.

When Samuel was a boy, he went hunting with his Grandpa Willis on weekends in the fall. The old man had a ramshackle cabin up near Foggy Ridge road, out in the wild parts of the county. He used plastic tarps to make a covered area outside the cabin, over a rotting picnic table. Mounted on long stakes, the blaze orange and bright blue tarps provided some shade and turned the world beneath them intolerably blue or orange.

One trip, it rained the whole weekend, and his grandpa laid the tarps out to dry on the last day before they left after the clouds cleared.

Samuel and his grandpa had both been horrified to see that millions of large, black flies coated the blue tarp. Grandpa shook it, wafted his arms, shouted, and stomped the ground. The flies refused to leave.

This reverie came flashing back to him when Samuel looked at the side of his house, coated with flies. He assumed that they landed on the house to warm themselves in the sun. When he moved back toward the house, intending to go inside, the flies exploded in a black cloud until all but a handful were gone.

He went in and hurriedly closed the door behind him. One or two fat flies trundled around or bombarded the lights in his kitchen. He resolved to get fly spray in the morning.

When he woke, Samuel came out of a dream in which he was lying on a forest floor, facing the sky, and dead leaves were blown across his body by a cool wind. It was at once peaceful and unsettling. He lay there in his bed for a moment, letting wakefulness flow into his mind. As he stared at the ceiling, he saw two large flies buzzing around the room. He sighed and sat up.

The room erupted. At first, he thought that maybe he was still dreaming. Uncountable black dots bounced off of every surface, bombarding Samuel, the walls, the windows, and the furniture. He took a breath to scream, and flies filled his mouth, nose, and clambered over his blinking, flinching eyes. Something heavy landed on his bare forearm. He strained through the humming madness of the clouds of black flies and saw a massive red-eyed fly the size of a mouse skittering toward his elbow. He spat and, clenching his mouth and eyes shut and waving his hands about his face, threw back the covers and managed to stand. 

Flies squished under his bare feet. By the time he made it to the door, he was slipping in a stinking gunk that caked up between his toes. 

He slid and fell twice, once smashing down against the door jamb. He heard himself making tiny grunting noises as he flailed. The flies wouldn't stop. They couldn't be deterred. They kept buzzing, kept smacking into him, kept crawling with their filthy feet across every bare section of his skin. They flew up his boxer shorts and his shirt sleeves. They hammered at his ears and eyes, they scrambled to get into his nose. 

Two feet from the back door, Samuel heard something that defied his ability to understand. None of this made sense, but some part of him knew that it was still part of the natural order. He had seen big flies as a kid. Horseflies could definitely cover a quarter. These hairy monsters, red eyes glaring as they swarmed, at least seemed mindless. The sound that vibrated behind him seemed to have an unholy sentience. 

A coarse whine rose from the direction of his living room. As it did, the swarm of feral insects calmed, and for the first time, Samuel exhaled, realizing that he hadn't taken a breath since before he could remember. The room turned black as the flies settled on every surface.

At first, he thought that there was a large predator of flies in there. A massive bullfrog or toad. He felt a real stab of joy at the idea. Big flies needed big fly eaters. The shadow cast by the thing lay across the floor. Samuel took a squelching step toward the room and stopped. Here and there, rogue flies jumped and zoomed nervously before settling again.

Samuel told his grandmother about the blue tarp and the millions of flies. She never smiled and never laughed. She was what his father called a hardcore zealot. Samuel didn't know what that meant, but he assumed that it must mean she didn't like jokes. The story of the flies broke her stern countenance, however. She smiled. Not a joyful or mirthful smile, though young Samuel wouldn't have known those words, he certainly understood the concept.

Grandma's smile was grim. The light of vengeance was in her glinting, deep brown eyes. “The Lord sent a million times a million flies against the Pharaoh,” she said. “They was biting flies. More than anyone could ever count. The sky was black with the wrath of God.” She pinched his arm. “Imagine that times a billion and you're gonna know that vengeance is the Lord's.”

Samuel absently brushed at his arm where the memory of Grandma's pinch resided. At least these weren't biting flies, he thought, though, as he thought it, his mind reeled back. The thing in the living room took back his whole attention. The early morning light barely penetrated the windows, obscured as they were with flies. Yet, the sun shone outside, and it sent enough light through the fly-speckled windows to cast a massive shadow on the carpet. It jerked and moved, jumping just beyond sight.

As Samuel watched, he felt his heart bang against the inside of his chest. Then, an unspeakably horrible thing appeared. 

A long, angular leg, iron-black, sprouting coarse hair at the joints, set its obscene claw on the carpet in view. Samuel knew what this was. He heard the whine of veined, transparent wings. The horror of realization leapt up from his darkest nightmares. The smell of it was like all the dead things he had ever scented. 

He gasped, and a cloud of flies excitedly left their many surfaces and buzzed triumphantly as their nightmare deity slowly stepped into view. Samuel tried to scream. He tried to understand what it was he was seeing. He felt his sanity teeter and begin to topple.

The thing was easily the size of a wheelbarrow. Smaller flies—far bigger than any Samuel had ever seen—coated and hopped on its segmented body and legs and red multifaceted eyes.

As he watched, the front legs frenetically scraped and cleaned those eyes, then rubbed together like a hungry man looking at a plate of food he cannot wait to eat. 

Samuel vomited, though he hadn't eaten anything and as the pale contents of his stomach hit the floor, he was horrified to see bits of black flies and tiny wriggling maggots in his sick. Flies leapt off walls and furniture, coating the puddle. Seeing this, he retched again, squealing as his sanity finally crashed. He turned, his last thought to escape, to get to fresh air, to run. He got to the door before a wicked buzzing screamed in his ears. He felt something hit his back. He fell into the back door. Clouds of flies swarmed around him. He tried to pull himself up, to get away.

He felt wetness on his back and wondered if he was bleeding from where the thing had hit him, but then he felt the searing, burning agony.

The thing on his back seemed to be speaking. It chittered with mad, starving glee. In the final moments of his life as flies of all sizes coated him, Samuel thought he knew what it was saying. 

Billy Coggins heard screaming and ... something else. Something like buzzing. He went to the fence between his house and Mr. Sam's house next door. His baseball landed near the man's bird bath, and Billy knew that Mr. Sam didn't mind if he came to get the occasional fly ball that went over the fence.

He walked to the gate, slid up the hasp, and went through. Flies buzzed him, and he swept his hand through the air around his head, dashing at them. It was going to be a bad year for flies, his mom told him.

He got his ball and then went to the back door to see if Mr. Sam was okay. He knocked, but it sounded muffled.

He called. No answer. Something heavy and rough banged and scraped on the other side of the door, and Billy stepped back, frightened. 

A very bad feeling filled him, then he turned to go. On a whim, he glanced back up at Mr. Sam's house.

At first, Billy thought it was black smoke pouring from the man's chimney, but as he gazed up into the morning blue sky, he understood what he was seeing.

Flies poured out of the throat of the chimney. Millions, maybe billions of them. Slowly, the clouds of buzzing flies turned that azure sky black.

Thinking of Flannery O'Connor and Arthur Machen.