And Sweep Up The Wood

Fanmade cover

**And Sweep Up The Wood** is a bonus novella found at the end of Spelunking Through Hell, taking place in 1960 and focusing on Alice and Thomas.

*Content warnings for suicidal ideations and explicit consensual sex.*

## Plot

**Part One: In the Hand of the Forest**

It's 1960. Alice is back in Buckley after college and working as the children's librarian. She lives with her father Jonathan, who still treats her like a child. After hearing of multiple children disappearing in the Galway Woods, Alice decides to investigate. Jonathan catches her, but rather than forbid her outright he decides to accompany her.

They are swarmed by a nest of Apraxis wasps. Jonathan is killed, and Alice severely wounded. She drags his body to the road and collapses.

**Part Two: The Shade of the Tree**

A local trucker stops and takes Alice and Jonathan's body to the hospital. After receiving first aid and overnight observation, she sets about arranging her father's funeral. She notices lumps where the wasps had stung her, and finds a textbook entry about the wasps laying their eggs in their victim's bodies. Alice uses a knife to dig the egg sacs from her arm. Reeling from a loss of blood, she calls an ambulance for herself and claims she had an accident in the kitchen.

According to the research, Alice has three weeks to exterminate the Apraxis egg sacs currently festering in her father's corpse before they hatch. Research reveals the eggs are much more resilient than the hatchlings themselves, so Alice makes plans to greet them when they hatch, knowing it will likely be a suicide mission. She arranges her affairs so that the Covenant will be notified to clean out all evidence of cryptids from the house after her death.

**Part Three: Trade Today for Tomorrow**

On the night the wasps are due to hatch, Alice says her goodbyes to the mice before going to Thomas's place. She has seen him socially since returning to Buckley, but they keep a polite distance and she does not know about his crossroads bargain. As such, Thomas is surprised by her late night arrival. He invites her inside and Alice, knowing she's likely to die soon, kisses him. He returns the sentiment and the two make love, even as Alice refuses to tell him her plans. She falls asleep in his arms, and he keeps his promise to wake her so that she can go on her mysterious, suicidal mission. She leaves him her mother's engagement ring.

Alice goes to her father's grave. She shoots the wasps individually at first, but their numbers are too great and threaten to overtake her. Then several elder members of her clergy arrive and distract the wasps, sacrificing themselves so Alice can launch a grenade to take out the whole nest. Through excellent luck, she is able to kill the wasps, though she is horrifically stung in the process. She manages to drive back to Thomas's place and asks him to remove the egg sacs before she passes out.

## Characters

* Alice Healy
* Jonathan Healy
* Thomas Price
* Franklin Rogers
* Maisie Baker

**Mentioned**

* Alexander Healy
* Enid Healy
* Frances Healy
* Mary Dunlavy
* Juniper Campbell
* Naga
* Cynthia
* Jenny Sampson (Apraxis mimic)
* Clark, Alice's college boyfriend

## Field Guide

* Apraxis Wasp
* Aeslin Mice
* Fricken (heard but not seen)

**Mentioned**

* Melnorn
* Laicaln bees
* Alkabyiftiris slime
* Cockatrice (taxidermy)
* Werewolf
* Cuckoo
* Crossroads
* Crossroads Ghost
* Huldra
* Lamia
* Bogeyman (child's drawing)

## Locations

* Buckley Township, Michigan
	+ Healy house
	+ Old Parrish Place
	+ Galway Woods
	+ Hospital
	+ Library
	+ Graveyard

**Mentioned**

* Ann Arbor
* Grand Rapids
* Detroit

## Objects

* *Gray's Guide to Insects, Arachnids, and Exoskeletal Beings of the Cryptid World*

## Continuity

* Some of the holes in the Price-Healey family history are created here when Alice burns several caches of documents in what she thinks are her final actions before facing her death. The existence of Hannah for example.
* The wasp larvae that Thomas removed in a flashback scene in chapter seven of Spelunking Through Hell are implanted near the end of this story.