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Show THE EXTERMINATOR-71 they collided with one another. On the floor, illuminated by the sun, were the curled up carcasses of box elder bugs. There must have been hundreds of them. And around the windows hundreds more, alive, crawling. One flew towards them suddenly, collided with the man's sleeve, clung. He shook it off expertly. "It's the tree," he said. "Bound to happen sometime." "They come every year. But this year it's different." "Yep." Their feet made a crunching sound as they walked across the bugs and he coughed a little as the dust swirled up around him. The upstairs was all one open space, nearly square, dusty wooden floors stretching the length and width of the house, unfinished pine walls, no furniture except for a pine four-poster, stained dark once so it would look like mahogany. The walls with no windows were lined with boxes and footlockers, steamer trunks, old valises. Some were open with clothes spilling out of them, frothy looking clothes, petticoats, frocks from an earlier age, a few old war medals. He stared at it all, ran his hand through his white hair, looked at her with his yellow eyes. "You're all alone here." A flicker swooped to the south window. She backed to the top of the stairs, her hand on the narrow bannister. With her other hand, she gestured towards the windows. "The bugs. They're driving me mad." "I'll take care of it," he said. "I may look old to you, but you'd be surprised." He did look old. But then, the only person she'd seen much of for a long time was Marta, and Marta was always going to be young, in the way of younger sisters, and she, Ellie, would always be a little older. But no one was as old as the great tree in her front yard, the tree that gave her shade in the summer |