Swarm

Johnathan Sims adjusted the small stack of papers in front of him, narrowing his eyes at the neat writing on them. Another statement that stubbornly refuses to record onto his laptop.

He sighed, shifting into a comfortable position in his office chair, before reaching out to press a button on the tape recorder next to him, beginning another recording to add to the ever growing pile in the Archives.

“Statement of Miranda Osgrowth, regarding an old classmate and… bees,” he began, “Original statement given July 31st, 2004. Audio recording by Johnathan Sims, Head Archivist of The Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.”

Johnathan took another breath and began to read.

 

I’m sorry if I go off topic while giving your people my statement but I believe there are some parts of this story you may not get without context, so forgive me for talking too much about myself. I only want to tell my story and to clear my conscience, what happened was an accident and I never wanted things to have escalated as they did, but, well, I had plenty of time to remember and regret, I guess now would be the best time to say why.

Let me start from the beginning. I grew up on the edges of Warwick in a small house around the same people froms the same schools. Through it all, I had my three best friends; Casey Mathews, Dennis Brian, and Taylor Rogers. We did everything together, which meant more times than not we got into all kinds of mischief. You have to understand, we were not bad kids, we really were not. We got into trouble, sometimes with the law, but never anything more that would get us a warning or a talking to with our parents. We were not bad children.

I’ll admit, sometimes we took things a little too far, but nothing that couldn’t get sorted out quickly. We certainly were not bullies. Taylor loved to get into fights, but never with anyone who wouldn’t throw a punch back, I guess he never saw the fun in a victim who couldn't even defend themself. Dennis liked to pull pranks, the lame kind where you would put a thumbtack on someone's chair, that kind of stuff. Casey, well she was mostly the one with the crazy ideas, the ones that usually involve us getting caught trespassing or throwing eggs at someones house. She was the brains behind whatever chaos we decided to cause.

I was the talker who could get people to look away long enough for us to get out of whatever sticky mess Casey usually got us in. I have a gift of coming up with a lie on the spot, something that any adult usually believed the moment the words left my lips. It’s a talent that I was quite proud of, but one that I found the need for less and less as I got older.

It started with a kid in our class, Ramsey Michaels. They were quiet, shy, and generally kept to himself. I tried talking to them a couple of times, but they only really ever listened. I think out of all the times I ever spoke to them, she only ever really said two, maybe three whole sentences to me. The others left them alone as they were not interested in someone who couldn’t hold a conversation for long, but we never gave them any reason to want to harm us, until the accident.

It was on a day we were planning on hanging around Taylor’s house when Dennis showed up, annoyed and gripping his arm, complaining about being stung by a bee. He lived across from Ramsey’s place, see, and his bedroom faced their backyard, so he had a whole view of it from his window.

He told us that Ramsey’s father had brought home a beehive about a month ago, one of those big ones that look like the little homes on stilts. Ramsey’s father loved to garden and Dennis guessed that he got into keeping bees to help the flowers too. Same with Ramsey, although Dennis said he thought they might have been scared of the bees with the distance Ramsey kept from the hive every time he saw them in the yard. The only problem was now bees were flying into Dennis’s backyard and one ended up stinging him as he left to hang out with us earlier that day.

Casey’s face had slowly begun to light up as Dennis told this story and I had a feeling I knew what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth.

She suggested that we go check out the hive ourselves, to see these troublemaker bees. Dennis seemed weary, obviously not wanting to get stung again, but at Casey’s insistence, Dennis finally agreed, leading us back past his place towards Ramsey’s.

There was no car in the driveway, so we assumed that the coast was clear. We snuck around the house and into the garden where the hive was.

I’m no beekeeper and I know next to nothing about bees, but the beehive, surrounded by pretty purple and white flowers and plants, was a lovely sight to behold. It was tall, rising a couple of feet off of the ground, and made of a light colored wood, it had a large lid on top where the honey would be removed from. And it was loud with the sound of gentle buzzing as the bees inside it worked.

Dennis was reluctant to go near it, but Casey and Taylor cautiously approached, watching the bees fly in and out of the entrance on the side. Dennis asked for us to leave already but Taylor said he wanted to see what was inside. Dennis had started to argue but I convinced him to help us out. I read somewhere that bees fall asleep when there's smoke and he was the only one of us with a lighter.

We found some newspapers in a nearby bin and set them alight, approaching the beehive. Looking back at it, it’s a miracle any of us didn’t burn our hands off doing something as stupid as that. The newspaper burned quickly and produced little smoke, hell, I bet the bees barely even noticed it was there, that is, until Casey pushed off the hives lid, dropping the newspaper inside. I still don’t know if she did it on purpose, but regardless, the cloud of smoke coming from inside the hive, as well as the angry buzzing, said enough.

Casey had ran from the hive, leaving Taylor frozen nearby. I had begun to panic, realizing that not only we had accidentally set someone else's property on fire, but we now had an angry hive of bees that soon were going to be after the closest thing: us.

It’s a good thing we had Dennis with us. He always knew how to keep a cool head and had run over to the nearby hose the moment Casey had run from the beehive. I didn’t notice he had done this until he ran past me, towards the hive, hose in hand, and shoved the nozzle inside, spraying the whole hive.

The smoke soon began to lessen and Dennis didn’t let up until the hive began to overfill with water. The entrance to the hive was leaking with bits of hive and dead or drowning bees mixed in with it. We had stopped the fire, but killed the hive in the process.

I thought I would be able to relax but something had begun to grow into my gut, the kind of feeling where you know you had done something so so terribly wrong. My instincts told me to turn around, and that's when I saw them.

Ramsey was standing from their back door. Now, Ramsey wasn’t a very emotive person. Despite my words and skills with people, Ramsey Michaels was not an easy person even for me to read. Not now, though. Ramsey was glaring at us, a look of hatred and disgust and, surprisingly, grief on their face as they watched us commit our crime. It took me aback, but more so, I felt, for a moment, very afraid, not because we were caught, but because of that look they gave us, one full of such venom, I felt like a deer caught in headlights, stunned and unable to move. I almost didn’t even notice Dennis pulling on my arm, yelling at me to run.

None of us even said a word to them, we ran, and Ramsey didn’t even move, just watch us leave. We kept running until we got back to Taylor’s place, then we sat, waiting for the call of police sirens or screams from Taylor’s mom, but we heard nothing. We eventually all went home. I half expected my parents to call me to the living room, demanding to know what had happened at the Michael’s house, but they greeted me as they usually do when I came home, nothing about bees ever leaving their lips. I spent the whole night awake, nervously awaiting the next morning, thinking about the way Ramsey looked at us as we destroyed that hive.

I never found out how Ramsey’s father took to his beehive being destroyed. I asked Dennis what had happened after he got home and he said he saw Ramsey’s father outside, dragging the ruined hive out of the back yard. He didn’t go knocking on Dennis’s door, which could have meant Ramsey had not told their father what had happened, but we were all on edge for a few weeks afterwards.

It didn’t help that Ramsey was now constantly watching us. Almost everywhere we went, I saw them, staring at us for a bit some distance away. I wanted to talk to them, to apologize, but that look they gave me back at their house stayed in the back of my mind, so I remained silent.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed; At one point Taylor approached them, trying to get them to stop with threats, but something spooked him, causing him to run away from Ramsey before he was even at an arm's distance with them.

“I don’t think there's something right with them,” he had said. When we asked him to elaborate, he mumbled something about their skin, not even looking back at the still staring Ramsey. He avoided looking at her after that.

I felt awful about what had happened and thought, again, about going up to apologize. Maybe I should have, but I was too scared, scared Ramsey would tell on us, or worse. I didn’t know what this worse could have been, but the thought was there, and Taylor’s reaction when he tried to confront them was enough to keep me from working up the courage to talk to them.

This went on for a few weeks until the incident happened, the reason why I am here, writing this all down for you people.

It was just before school was going to end for the year. We were in class, algebra, I think, when the intercom above us turned on. The principle had announced that school was to close for the day, effective immediately, due to an infestation. All students must pack their bags and prepare to leave.

Turned out one of the science classrooms, one of the ones that was rarely used for anything but lab experiments, got a beehive in it and they didn’t want students to get stung. I thought it was odd, to close the whole school over a beehive, so that's what must have convinced Casey to want to go and check it out.

Taylor and Dennis didn’t want to go. I was having my doubts to, after what happened with Ramsey, but Casey insisted, saying we won’t even go close to the stupid thing this time, she just wanted to take a look. Taylor argued with her, but she eventually won, as Casey usually does, and so we went, sneaking up to the second story of our school where the labs were.

The lights were off in the hall, making the walk darker and more sinister than usual, despite being a clear day outside. There were some students who walked past us, all in a rush to leave for the early dismissal, and nobody stopped to ask where we were going. There was a buzzing noise, one much louder, much angrier than the peaceful noise of the beehive we had destroyed weeks earlier, that thrummed through the hall like an angry chorus.

We had made it to where it was loudest. There were no teachers present, odd for something that sounds so serious, but I seemed to have been the only one to notice, and if the others did too, they didn’t voice their concerns. Dennis was pale and Taylors hands trembled, but Casey seemed excited, peering through multiple classrooms until she found the right one. She froze, looking inside, then waved us over. Dennis and Taylor refused to move, but I did, slowly stepping up to the small glass window to peer inside.

The buzzing was unbearably loud, a constant drone that dug deep into my head until my thoughts were full of it. There was little I could look at through the window as part of it was covered in comb. Looking at it, I could see bees busy at work, building onto their new nest. The rest of the class was full of hive. It was everywhere, on the books, the chairs, in the sinks and on the floor. A sticky brown ooze dripped down from some of the overstuffed combs, causing puddles of honey to form on the floor. The air was thick with flying bees, making the already dark room even darker with their jutting bodies.

That wasn’t what scared me, though. What scared me was what was standing in the middle of the room. Their back was towards us, but I recognized Ramsey. Before I knew what was happening, I had my hand on the door handle and was pulling the door open.

It opened easier than I expected, sliding inwards towards the class with just enough room between the honeycombs that I could squeeze in. Casey followed me, despite Dennis and Taylor’s pleads, and we were inside, staring at Ramsey who had not turned to face us.

I covered my mouth, squinting at the unmoving Ramsey in front of us. How did they even get inside the classroom? Where were the teachers and why were they here, alone?

Against my better judgement, I called out for them, and what I saw next still appears in my nightmares, many many years later.

Ramsey had turned to face us and Casey screamed. I was too stunned to say anything, let alone move. Their face was gone, replaced by a honeycomb that molded into where their facial features used to be. Bees flew in and out of where their eyes should have been and their mouth was replaced by a gaping maw, a deep dark pit where the occasional bee would emerge. Honey oozed from each opening, dripping down onto their stained clothes. Small larvae occasionally poked through their now pocked skin, causing me to retch. They didn’t say anything, but how could they? What could they say with their mouth like that, those unseeing eyes nothing but bees and honey?

Casey had started to vomit right next to me and I was ready to join her myself, instead I forced myself to take a deep breath and swallow the feeling down, taking a step back as Ramsey began to approach us. They reached out a hand, stretching it at me and Casey, and the buzzing grew louder until it had become a howl. I knew if we even stayed in there for longer, those bugs were going to be on us, and I didn’t want to find out how many stings it was going to take before someone died from bees.

Dennis and Taylor were yelling at us. Casey wasn’t moving, no matter how much I yelled at her. I wanted to save her, I really did, and if I had acted sooner…

Ramsey had reached her, placed a hand on top of her shivering head, and that was the last I saw of them, of either of them. I turned and ran, pushing between the two hives, past Dennis and Taylor, and kept running. I didn’t stop until I got home, throwing myself into a shower, clothes and all, sobbing.

They never found either of them. The bees were gone the next day, by an exterminator or by Ramsey to wherever they went with Casey, I don’t know, and I didn’t care. There was a search for them, but they never found anything, no sign of either child. I never saw or heard from Ramsey again, although I spent the next few years of my life with trouble sleeping, my dreams still filled with that horrible buzzing and the gross images of hives and honeycomb. Their parents ended up moving away, a few years later.

Dennis and Taylor never asked me to tell them what I saw. We ended up drifting apart after high school. I haven’t spoken to them in years, but I’m sure they are doing well. I only wish I could say the same about Casey, wherever she is. All I want now is to sleep better at night.

 

“Statement ends,” Johnathan sighed, “Well, this certainly was a story, one with, unsurprisingly, little to back it up.”

“Tim did find a report on two missing teens under the names Casey Mathews and Ramsey Michaels on May 23rd, 1988. The disappearances happened in Warwick, lining up with Ms.Osgrowth’s story, however, when trying to get in contact with the families of both teens, the Mathews immediately hung up and both of Ramsey Michael’s parents have died, the father being the most recent as of a few months ago, unfortunately.”

Johnathan gave another sigh and scratched his head.

“Ms.Osgrowth had too also rejected a follow up, stating she only gave her statement to feel better about what had happened. Whether or not at all she does was not elaborated on and she ended up hanging up. All efforts to get into contact with Dennis Brian and Taylor Rodgers have also gone nowhere.”

“As such, I believe this story to be told by someone who had trouble coping with the loss of a friend and decided to blame it on a classmate. Ms.Osgrowth had already admitted that she was a good liar, and I would not be surprised if this whole story was some elaborate fabrication she came up with on the whim.”

“The bees attacking the students in this story were probably from more guilt relating to the destroyed beehive from the earlier half of this statement, as I doubt bees would have been capable of being able to take away a single person without a trace, let alone two. And since Ms. Osgrowth herself has stated her own remorse over the incident, it is safe to assume she made up the story to make herself feel better.”

“However, one interesting thing Tim was able to dig up related to these disappearances was from one of the teachers who had taught at the school, now retired. She did confirm that, in the week of the two students disappearing, there was a rather large infestation of bees in one of the upper levels of the school she worked at. She then proceeded to tell Tim about a new beekeeper who arrived in Warwick, some years after these events. With them came a rise in beehives appearing around the town, that only stopped once the keeper had left. When pressed for a name, the witness couldn’t give one, only that she was never really able to see their face when they rarely made a visit into town. A useless bit of information, but a rather interesting tale.”

“With no eyewitnesses that are willing to speak and no other leads, I will have to label this case as closed. Perhaps in the future if we get more willing witnesses, or the return of a mysterious beekeeper, we will have more to go off of, although I highly doubt it. Recording ends.”