Part 2

“We are calling it ‘environmental delirium’ because we can’t find any poison that we can identify,” the disheveled nurse said frantically to Ortho as she checked several patients at once on stretchers in the hallway of the Rookfall General. “People are coming in covered in bee stings with honey smeared all over their bodies, pupils blown wide open, higher than giraffe balls, screaming about the Mother of the Woods, and how she’s older than the hills.”

“People say all kinds of stuff when they are ripped out of their minds,” Ortho scoffed.

“You don’t understand,” the nurse stopped in her tracks and looked at Ortho for the first time since he had been there, “They are all saying the same thing. It’s like a sermon they are all preaching.”

The next day, Ortho returned to the clearing to take another look around. The honeycomb, the people at the hospital, and the… whatever he saw, must have all been related. Wilder Haines was kneeling in the middle of the spiraling hodgepodge of missing goods. Wilder Haines was a chronic oxy user, a widower, a lifelong troublemaker – just a standard template of every twenty- to thirty-something-year-old man from the Rookfall now. There was already more stolen junk added to the weird mosaic. A low vibration in the air settled in Ortho’s teeth, like the air itself was humming to him.

Wilder’s skin was pale as death, and his lips painfully cracked. When he stood, he was shirtless, and his ribs and spine looked like pronged rebar trying to break through his skin. His oversized jeans barely hung on to his thin frame.

“Sheriff.” Wilder had no more enthusiasm than if they were meeting at the general store in town.

“You’ve been a tough guy to find lately, Wilder.” Ortho didn’t remember resting his hand near his holster.

“Didn’t wanna be found till now.” Wilder’s smile revealed missing teeth and depthless madness.

“You mind clarifyin’ some things for me and lettin’ me know why half of the town’s knickknacks are decorating your little… whatever the hell this is?” Ortho took several cautious steps forward.

“They ain’t mine. They are all hers.” Wilder gestured randomly in every direction.

“There is no her, Wilder. The hospital is full of people saying the same crazy stuff. You got stung or you ate something bad, and there’s some poison everyone is coming in contact with…”

“She saved me,” Wilder snapped with insanity in his voice. “I came out here to die. I was ready to end my life in these woods, and she came to me and saved me from myself. Her name is Aristaeus. She is the Mother of the Wood. She showed me what this town could be, Ortho. She showed a vast, beautiful hive and a thriving colony grown from the ashes of this dead place. She needs us. She needs offerings. In return, we get to belong. Don’t you understand?”

“Wilder, this is in your head. Something is in the bees. In that honey you’ve got smeared all over you. It’s messing with you.” Ortho stopped moving toward him.

“Then why do you hear it too, Sheriff?” Wilder laughed hysterically.

The vibration in Ortho’s teeth shifted. The humming now seemed to come from all around him and inside his head all at the same time. The pulsing rhythm of it intensified into faint whispers in his mind. Not in words, but in something that seemed older than words. Something pulsed heavy through him, and it formed a single message that ripped its way out of his brain.

“COME.”

The branches in the woods started to shudder, and then she descended. She was shaped like a bee in a way that a storm is a cloud, with impossible to describe vastness and depth. Her body was symmetries and geometries of shells etched with patterns that seemed to move when you didn’t look right at them. Her wings, like veined and trembling stained glass windows, turned the air into a hazy percussion. Giant black eyes looked polished by the ancient patience of all time. The Mother of the Woods descended in the clearing like the earth had been waiting to accept her.

Ortho couldn’t move at all. Wilder had dropped to his knees and slammed his forehead into the dirt. “We brought you more, Mother,” he whispered as he cried.

The humming grew more intense. The haze around Ortho looked like the world was steaming and boiling over. He could feel more words being pushed into him. Something that felt like billions of worms crawling into his ears, eyes, and skin pressurized his body.

“FEED.”