Beneath Raven's Wing by Vonnie Winslow Crist

Author:Vonnie Winslow Crist
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fae Corps Publishing
Published: 2021-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Deathwatch

Jed Tupper was reading the latest issue of The Jefferson Bugle when he first heard the clicking sounds.

“Do you hear that?” he asked his aunt.

“It's beetles.” Great-Aunt Abby didn't look up from the granny afghan she was crocheting.

“Beetles! Where?” Jed shivered. The idea of insects creeping around the cabin while he was sleeping gave him goose-flesh.

“They're probably in the rafters. Maybe in the logs themselves,” replied his aunt, still not looking up.

“We should call an exterminator,” suggested Jed. Tonight! he added silently, even though he knew that was out of the question. Every business in Jefferson closed at five in the afternoon on weekdays.

“Won't do no good,” said Aunt Abby peering over her wire-rimmed glasses at him. “It's deathwatch beetles. They're predicting someone's passing. No bug-killer can eliminate a foretelling.”

“I don't think insects are sentient, much less able to tell who's going to die,” said Jed as he folded The Bugle. He laid the paper on the table beside the armchair he was sitting in. “I'm going to look up this 'deathwatch beetle' online. See what's what.”

His aunt smiled. She shook her head, then returned to crocheting without comment.

Spending the summer break from college at his aunt's place had seemed a nice gesture when his parents had proposed it.

“Someone needs to keep an eye on her while we're away,” his mom had explained. His dad, busy mapping out their three-month RV trip around the United States had said nothing. “I can't leave Aunt Abby for that long without someone looking in on her.”

“Maybe neighbors could check to see if she's okay,” he'd suggested. “Or church members.” Jed knew his aunt attended Sunday services every week they were held, even in the winter.

“That's not the same as blood.” His mother had put both hands on her hips. She'd looked him in the eye. “We rarely ask you to do anything for us. This time, we're asking for your help.”

Jed had shrugged his shoulders. He'd studied the floor for a moment. Then, he'd muttered, “Sure, I'll go live with Aunt Abby until the fall semester.”

Which was how he found himself at the kitchen table of a century-old cabin. A cabin located miles from a one-horse town. With a sigh, he typed in deathwatch beetle on his computer trying to ignore the pair of noisy ravens cackling from under the porch eaves.

“Dang,” he said under his breath when, according to multiple scientific publications, Deathwatch Beetles or Xestobium rufovillosum did exist in the eastern United States. Worse than the fact that they existed, was the descriptions of how they infested the heartwood of large hardwood beams. They started out as tiny eggs. Their second stage was spent as larvae gnawing away for years at wood. The pupa stage lasted less than a month. Finally, they spent three weeks as an adult making the clicking noise and breeding.

“Did you know only the adult beetles make that sound?” Jed called to his aunt.

“Of course,” she answered. “Because how are a bunch of yellowish-white wood maggots going to make a clicking noise? It's got to be the hard-headed adults banging around in the logs.

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