A moment later the air brought a clear swishing noise. The emanation was all too familiar. Inwardly, Elizabeth Carr crumbled. It was not her imagination! The buzzing sound was too plain, and she could now see a visible disturbance in the leaves piled along the cemetery fence. Her heart exploded. Elizabeth knew beyond hope that her alarm was not an invention of lingering hysteria. Killer cockroaches were still roaming Yarkie, and they were coming on again! For her!

Somewhere—and nearby!—a band of the creatures had hidden, had escaped the nest’s destruction! Peter Hubbard had been too sanguine! The insects in the jar that morning had been warnings! The admonition had been disregarded at their peril—her peril now!

Elizabeth forced herself to concentrate on the shifting perturbation in the leaves and the grass. She was right! The surfaces were in motion though there was no breeze!

Yes! The well-­known, disgusting brown shapes were emerging before her stricken eyes. She saw the weaving antennae and the brown-­black bodies by new thousands on their wire-­flexing feet, and the ugly mandibles reaching viciously, and the sawteeth mouths clicking in savage, seeking hunger, all as horribly as before!

Elizabeth stampeded to the Cannon house. She prayed the kitchen door would be open for sanctuary. The hideous roach pack was scrabbling after her with terrifying swiftness.

In her panic, Elizabeth tripped on the groove that most Yarkie homes chipped into the threshold stone to run rain off. The channel caught her toe and sent her stumbling so that she banged her head on the kitchen door. Dazed, she grabbed for the knob. If it did not turn, she was a goner. The roach mandibles would be at her feet in just moments.

Her heart plummeted as the door did not yield. Locked! Since when did Hildie lock her damnation doors? No time to think about that! With a muttered curse, Elizabeth saw the roach cadre making for her even faster. She might have just one more chance. She flew around to the buttery door. All Yarkie mansions had such a room or shed abutting the kitchen. In the old days, butter had been churned there; nowadays the space was used for potting plants, or as an extra pantry.

Elizabeth’s fist hit the buttery door open. As she swung it hard behind her, she saw it had caught and crushed a handful of the leading roaches. She took a moment to breathe. The acid taint in the air outside was unmistakeable and sinister. She knew it would not be long before the marauders found a way into the house and were after her again. The revolting insects could squeeze even their obscenely large bodies through the narrowest of cracks. Any slight opening, any window ajar, and they would be upon her. She remembered the lighthouse.