Page 6 of Gifted & Talented

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The transaction between Eilidh and her demonic parasite completed, the plane righted itself. Not gradually, as if the pilot had somehow regained control through his own volition. Instead, the lights simply stopped flickering, the turbulence fell instantly away, and the world—the portion of it that had nearly ended on a commercial flight from Vermont to San Francisco—suddenly stabilized, the woman with the rosary looking heavenward, awestruck, as if a wordless god had seen fit to answer her prayers. The baby’s cries began to fade away, slowing to a whine, then a series of hiccups. There was a collective intake of breath, a gripping of hands between passengers. The man who’d been weeping looked as if he had righted the plane himself, as a product of masculine resilience.

Eilidh Wren exhaled her own relief in private, quietly glancing at the image on the lock screen of her phone, still uselessly in airplane mode. Her father’s smiling face—no teeth, but that was his way—was a momentary balm, temporarily reassuring. He would not have to wait alone for her in a restaurant now. And she would tell all of this to her company-provided therapist—not the details, obviously, but the important bit, in which she had chosen life, which was not always a guarantee in the way you’d sort of hope it would be—and everything would be fine, and she would oversee some kind of social media campaign and do nothing really of consequence, but maybe the baby in 22A would grow up to cure cancer.

And wasn’t it kind of a gift, in its way, that Eilidh would never know?

Passengers had begun opening their window shades, emboldened now, hoping to see the universal gift of blue sky, searching for the evidence of their communal miracle. Thirstily, light slaked in from both sides of the plane, intoxicating, garish, bright.

Eilidh, meanwhile, braced herself. Alongside the benedictions of life lived its unavoidable horrors. Not a metaphor, or at least not solely one. Survival was only half the bargain, and she understood the way the others couldn’t that nothing came for free.

So Eilidh sat white-knuckled in her aisle seat, waiting for the jump scare. For the unavoidable drop. She closed her eyes. Her heart thudded in her chest, uncontrollable.

There. She could feel it—feel it before she could place it. Thud-thud in her chest, a wild ricochet.

And then, like clockwork, there it was.

At first it was a light—the kind you’re cautioned not to follow. The kind that leads to the end of a tunnel, to the ultimate swallowing up. The light pouring in from outside the plane grew gradually overwhelming, a heady jolt to their collective senses. Passenger by passenger, seat by seat, aisle by aisle, every occupant of the plane began to squint.

The light—was it sun?—was offensive, infernal, like staring into the grainy screen after The Exorcist on VHS. It was… bright, but not sunlight bright—the brightness of realizing the dark room had never been empty. The brightness of revelation that despite what you believed, you were never in there alone.

Eilidh looked into the window, blinking back corneal damage. The saturation of the brightness was white and somehow viscous—the shade of pus draining from an open wound. From the windows, the ensorceling blindness expanded, becoming increasingly offensive, insidious. Some people hastily slammed their window shades shut; her seatmate didn’t. To her right, Eilidh could sense the suggestion of movement, a ubiquity of thickness that now seemed to breathe. Each pane of light that remained open was crammed with the blurring, indecipherable presence of something solid. Something festering, fidgeting.

Alive.

“What’s that?” came a newly panicked voice some rows ahead of Eilidh. “Look outside, what are those?”

The horde, such as it was, became identifiable, visible suddenly as if to finally find the subject in a Magic Eye painting with your eyes half-closed. First the suggestion of an image, then the actual presence. Individual, first, then in groups. Each one taking shape like a pearl of water dropped perilously into an empty metal bowl.

Not quite a drip—more like sharp stabs of parental disapproval.

Tsk.

Tsk.

Tsk.

“Oh my god,” came the voice of a teenage girl. “Oh my god, Mom, are those bugs ?”

Disapproval became rage, became the heightening sense of violence. No longer a tsk, now a smack. Smack. How dare you? Smack. Look what horrors you’ve wrought! Smack. The smack of an open hand for now, but how much longer? How soon before it was a closed fist, a shattered glass bottle, the schlick of a disabled safety? Such was the growing sensation, the tremulent dread, the pulsating fear.

Faster and faster, smacksmacksmacksmack—

Tiny bodies thwapped against the windows of the plane like skyward stones, like countless writhing opals. Their bellies wriggled fleshily; like a billion exposed, swallowing throats. They crushed against the glass—so thick was the swarm that each one seemed to be suffocating, undulating with a mix of hunger for entry and desperation for release.

The woman with the rosary let out a shriek, shout-whispering prayers with her head over her beads.

“It’s a plague of locusts, ” gasped the weeping man to the mother of the baby.

Inside an eternity that must have been moments—Eilidh had counted eighty-eight pounding heartbeats; eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one—the purulent brightness had become disfigured by the presence of the plague, a different sort of darkness now enshrouding the unlucky plane. The hum of wings was unavoidable, deafening. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. One hundred.

Some bugs had been pulverized into the panes by the force of their own swarm, carcasses oozing thickly across the glass. A hundred and four. A hundred and five. Splintered wings and contorted hairline legs punctuated slathered softshell underbellies. A hundred and ten. A hundred eleven. Inside the plane, the dim sterility of emergency lighting flashed soullessly, a quiet signal for the end of days.

Abruptly, Eilidh lost count of her own pulse, succumbing to the wilds of arrhythmia. Her seatmate had finally closed the window, not that it mattered anymore. They could still hear the scratch and the crawl, the buzz of wings and the pelting of bodies, like the sound of the word infestation. The way the word pestilence felt on the tongue. Someday, assuming they survived this particular plague, it would hail and they would all say Huh, sounds like locusts, all of them now one step closer to knowing how it ends.

“Fuck,” Eilidh whispered to nobody.

The thing in her chest seemed to chuckle, licking its lips, sated for the time being. Promises, promises. In Eilidh’s head she heard Wagner, Beethoven, the beauty of notes played by hate. Darkness you could taste, a chord you’re meant to suffer. Like if a miracle were ugly, or fate could only sing a grisly song.