GRAVEWORM

  GRAVEWORM

  Tim Curran

  Prologue

  Beneath the unhallowed light of a full, fat graveyard moon, the cadaverous man stepped lightly through the cemetery. In his slick black undertaker’s coat and high silken stovepipe hat, he was strictly Bela Lugosi-goth: his leering face a skull, his skin fish-belly white and glistening like Vaseline. The fingers that clutched anxiously at his sides were long, thin, delicate; almost spidery. The fingers of a surgeon. And his eyes—buried in that dead white sunless face—were pools of black, bubbling oil, dark mirrors that reflected lonely desperation and a frozen stark malignancy, silent and wormy like bones in a shroud.

  In his left hand, he carried a shovel.

  He carried it tightly.

  He looked around the cemetery, breathing hard with passion. It was empty, stygian, bleak and somehow hollow like his own mind. A cool-edged September wind blew, stripping Autumn leaves from craggy trees and laying them down like a carpet over vault and grave alike.

  Before him was a burial vault set into the side of a grassy, mounded hill. Moonlight reflected off the name chiseled into the stone above the wrought-iron door. The name was that of his family.

  He stood there, letting the solitude fill him. He was as still as one of the weathered stone statues up on the hill. He breathed out slowly, gripping the shovel in his fists. It was heavy. Stout wood and drop-forged iron. The way they used to make them for diggers who knew that the opening and filling of a grave was an art form.

  (now do it, do it)

  Taking one last good look around, seeing in the dark like an owl, he began to dig. The shovel blade reverberated thickly over the marble faces of the clustering headstones as it bit into the cold black earth. It echoed off the wrought-iron gates of sepulchers and hill-tombs. All else was silence. He wondered then with ghoulish amusement if they could hear it. The interred. Those resting far below, cheek to jowl with the moist graveyard earth and the caress of the worm. How he envied them wound up tight in their shrouds and sunken in their silken depths.

  (dig dig hurry)

  He licked his thin leathery lips and concentrated on his work, letting the blade of the shovel slice deep into the earth.

  He kept digging.

  Cutting deeper.

  The farther he dug, the more excited he got until it was like some kind of hysterical religious fervor had taken possession of him. When he reached the box he was nearly out of his mind with it. Sweating and swearing, breaking catches on the casket with the blade of the shovel, he pawed away the loose earth until his fingers slipped easily around the lip of the lid.

  (get me out of here)

  With a horrible and wizened grin upon his lips, he began to cackle with deranged laughter. It was like shards of mangled iron scratching in blackness.

  (hu-rry)

  His throat a desert, a coiled evil in his belly, his heart pounding, he pulled the lid open and looked within. Beneath the glare of the rising full moon, his eyes winked like bits of glass as he looked down at the withered scarecrow in the box. In his head and only in his head, he could hear its obscene laughter.

  “I’m here,” he said.

  (it’s about time)

  He reached down into the box, feeling grave clothes like rotted canvas, papery flesh and pitted, jutting bones. He stroked the matted, straw-dry hair with his fingertips, pressing his quivering lips to the grinning toothy deathmask leering up at him.

  (that’s a good boy, that’s a good boy)

  Then, sighing like the leaves in the trees, he climbed into the box atop the shriveled remains, listening to a cooing sound in his head. “Mother,” he said.

  Part One:

  Walk With Me In The Graveyard

  1

  She was a pretty girl and Henry Borden watched her very closely.

  The way a guy with a net might watch a butterfly he was planning on adding to his collection. He watched her long tanned legs pound up the side of that dusty county road, watched her blonde hair brush her bare shoulders.

  A girl alone like that.

  He knew there was going to be trouble.

  He kept his eyes on her, taking it all in and drinking it down. It stuck in his belly, hot and uneasy. A trickle of sweat ran down his brow. He put the girl at sixteen, seventeen years of age. Young… sweet… alone. What was a pretty girl like her doing out here in the middle of nowhere? It didn’t make sense, but maybe it made all the sense in the world. Fate had a way of arranging things sometimes.

  Henry looked around.

  Nothing. Nobody.

  He swallowed. Where was her big burly boyfriend? Where were her friends? There wasn’t anything out here but a lot of nothing: meandering fields of yellow grass, dark stretches of forest, a few abandoned farms. And the cemetery, of course. A girl like that just wasn’t using her head. Out here by herself, some crazy freak could have snatched her, raped her. Killed her. And who would have known? Really, who would have known? A guy could get her into his car and then—

  Maybe you should just drive past, he told himself. Just keep going.

  But the car was slowing and he wasn’t even conscious of easing off the accelerator. Girl like that should be more careful. Something bad happened to her it would be her own fault. Henry’s heart began to pound and sweat beaded his brow and his fingers began to shake on the wheel. He pressed his lips tight as flowers in a book, knowing this was how trouble always began.

  But I’m lost, a voice in his head said. Maybe she could help me.

  Even though that was a lie, it relaxed him slightly the way his brain invented things when the need arose. Sure, this girl could help him. She looked nice. Of course, you had to be careful and all, because you never knew about girls these days. Some of them looked sweet, but down deep they were mean pigs. And maybe that was it. Maybe she was out here looking for someone to rob.

  That’s the way these girls are, Henry. Hot, fast, and loose, he could hear his mother saying in her cawing monotone. They’re like spiders inviting you into their webs so they can suck you dry. And if now and again a boot crushes them, so much the better. Leggy, crawling things, they put themselves in these situations and if something bad happens then it’s their own fault.

  “Stop it,” Henry said under his hot breath.

  He made to pass by her, but at the last moment he pulled his big black Lincoln up behind her. The girl looked back at him. Concerned, but not terribly so.

  Henry wiped the sweat from his face and stepped out, roadmap in hand. “Hi there,” he said and dear God, listen to how casual and reassuring his voice was. “I wonder if you could help me. I think I got myself lost.”

  The girl didn’t move at first.

  This is how it went. They either bolted or they stepped into the snare.

  Stupid girls.

  She stared at him with eyes the color of sapphires. They were bright, filled with vitality. Beautiful eyes. Henry could see something hidden back in them… hesitancy, caution. Like maybe she’d gotten a good smell of him and didn’t like it. But finally her lips curled into a smile, revealing perfect white teeth. A model should have had those teeth.

  “Sure,” she said, clutching a handful of leaves for some reason. “Where you going?”

  She came up close and Henry could smell the fresh, soapy scent that came off her, sweetened slightly by a vague musk of perspiration. Her blouse swished over her soft skin. A furnace heat billowed from her in waves.

  Warm. Hot-blooded. Henry didn’t like that so much.

  “Uh… I’m trying to get here,” he told her, stabbing a finger on the map. “Bitter Lake. It’s got to be around here somewhere.”

  “It sure is. Next left. You must’ve gotten off the main highway somehow.”

  “Must have.” Henry shook his head, brushe
d a stray wisp of dark hair from his brow. “Isn’t that just the way it goes sometimes? I guess I’ve never been much with maps, but this is even an all-time low for me.”

  The girl smiled thinly. “Oh well, we all get lost.”

  “Few as often as me, I’m afraid. Anyway, you’ve been a big help.”

  “No problem.”

  He began to fold up his map, doing it very precisely with his long thin fingers. The girl hadn’t started away yet. He knew she wouldn’t until one of them had terminated the conversation completely. She felt clumsy, awkward. She was a nice Midwestern girl, as pure and vital as fields of Indiana wheat. Stranger or not, she simply couldn’t bring herself to be rude.

  “Listen,” he said, “while you’re here, could you tell me where I might find the Mission Point Clinic?”

  “Oh sure. Just take that next left and keep going,” she said, sketching it out in the air with her finger. “You’ll come to Elm, which passes for a main street hereabouts. Just follow it right out of town until you hit Shore. Shore goes right around the lake. About a half mile out you’ll find the clinic. Can’t miss it.”

  Henry smiled. “Says you.”

  She laughed. “You’ll find it, all right.”

  “I hope so. I’m told I’m a better physician than a navigator.”

  A moment before she looked anxious to go. Now she was in no hurry. “Oh, you’re a doctor?”

  “Yes. They’re pretty short-handed at the clinic—”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “—so I’m here to save the day. Anyway, my name’s John. John Shears. You?”

  “Lisa Coombes.”

  “Lisa?” He gave her an odd look, not quite a smile and not quite a frown. “That’s a nice name.”

  “Oh.” She shrugged. “Are you a G.P.?”

  Henry stared at her. He didn’t know why he was doing this or where he hoped to go with it. But sometimes that’s the way it was. Like he was a passenger and someone else was doing the driving. It was simply out of his hands and, like it or not, he was just going to have to wait. Wait and see.

  “Yes, general practitioner. Finest medical specialty in the world, my father used to say.”

  (see? see how easy it is, henry? see how she falls into your trap? she’s been asking for this and now she’ll get it, god yes, she’ll get what she was asking for)

  “He was a doctor, too?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Henry listened then as his voice spoke plainly and honestly about the practice of medicine. He felt like he was in another room, eavesdropping. The girl ate it up, of course. It was so fucking easy there seemed to be little sport involved. People trusted doctors. Sure, they sued ‘em and bitched about ‘em, but down deep they were very much in awe of them. It was like medical practitioners were godlike, an elite race somehow closer to the almighty than the rest of humanity. A physician, in general, was above reproach.

  Lisa sighed. “You know, I’ve been taking a lot of chemistry and biology in school. I was thinking… you know… that maybe when I graduated this year…”

  “Med school?”

  “Yeah, I guess. It’s stupid.”

  “Not at all. Maybe I can help you. It isn’t easy to get into med school, but if you were recommended by an alumni… well, trust me, it makes a difference.”

  The poor thing was practically in love with him already.

  It was time.

  “Listen… why don’t you hop in?” he said. “I’ll give you a lift into town and you can help me from getting lost.”

  “Sure… I guess that would be okay.”

  “Great.”

  (lovely little whore only too happy to climb in a stranger’s car that’s the kind of girl she is, henry, that’s the kind of girl they ALL are these days: whores and sluts and harlots)

  She looked from him to the leaves in her hand, shrugged. “Botany class.”

  “Of course.”

  (a boy can only trust his mother no one else)

  When she got in, Henry checked the rearview to make sure no more cars were coming. They were quite alone. Satisfied, he tripped the door locks from his armrest and grinned at her, his dark eyes shining in his pale face.

  Lisa stared at him. Her smile slipped into memory. “What… um… why did you lock the doors?”

  Henry pulled a carving knife out from under the seat. It wasn’t all that long, but terribly sharp. His mother had carved Christmas hams with it, coaxed anatomical secrets from the seedy gizzards of chickens. Before Lisa could do much more than gasp, he had the knife against her throat.

  (teach her a lesson, Henry, teach… her)

  “Oh… oh God… please,” she sobbed, whimpering and gasping, the tan fading from her young face.

  Henry was still grinning that awful rubbery grin. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?”

  2

  It was getting darker early.

  Autumn was here.

  Margaret Stapleton was washing dishes in the Coombes’ home, wondering where in the heck Lisa was because she was due an hour ago. But wasn’t that like a teenager to get sidetracked with one silly adventure after another? Margaret could remember when she was young—and it took some doing being that she would never see seventy again. She had always left early enough, had high intentions of getting to school before the first bell or getting home on time. But it rarely worked out that way. How many times she was marked tardy she could not remember and how many times the school had called home and her mother had laid into her with a vengeance she preferred not to remember.

  Kids were a funny lot.

  Lisa was no different.

  She’d been through a lot, but she seemed to have both feet planted solidly beneath her and her grades were good. Her only problem was that she was a teenager and like any teenager—even Margaret herself once upon a time, may God forgive her—she was easily led astray, easily led down the wrong path. What Pastor Reardon often called the “left-handed path” when he was in jovial spirits or the “path of Satan the Corruptor” when he was filled with brimstone and fire. Lisa was a good girl. Better than you could expect when her poor parents were only five years in the ground after the tragedy out on the highway. Yes, a good girl, a smart girl, filled with hope and promise as she flowered into womanhood, but, unfortunately, easily led astray. The crowd she ran with was fast and loose and if it hadn’t been for her older sister, and guardian, Tara, that crowd would have not only ran her down the wrong path but shoved her into a ditch to boot.

  But that was where Margaret came in.

  She’d raised enough children with a soft heart and a steady hand to smell trouble coming down the pike. And while Tara was off working, making ends meet, who was better to mind the store and keep watch over Lisa than Margaret Stapleton?

  “Nobody,” Margaret said, drying the last of the plates and stacking them in the cupboard with gnarled, arthritic hands that still had plenty muscle and slap in them.

  On the wall, the clock kept ticking off the minutes.

  In the kitchen, there was silence as she paused.

  And in her heart there was… well, uneasiness. She could not realistically put a name to it or pretend to understand, but it was there, clutching like a cold fist, now and again spreading its fingers in her belly. Maybe it was just that Lisa was late from her nature walk—collecting leaves for 3rd Hour Botany, she said when she’d left—and Margaret herself felt responsible. Because she knew that she was responsible. Lisa was under her care and now she was an hour late and that probably meant absolutely nothing, but inside, in the secret channels of Margaret’s heart, there was concern.

  Where was that child?

  She had one of those cellphone gizmos that Margaret openly despised, so why didn’t she call? That’s what those things were for. Margaret knew Lisa’s number was up on the pegboard, right next to Tara’s.

  If you need anything at all, Margaret, you just call. My boss understands. Just call if you need me.

&nbs
p; But Margaret did not want to call Tara. Doing that would be like an admission that she was too old for the job of babysitter, caretaker, and general watchdog. So very often these days Margaret felt age creeping up on her, laying its shadow against her soul, blighting things that had once flowered brightly. She fought against it with an iron will, determination, and a feisty stubbornness that was part and parcel of who she was. Age might be crippling her hands and stiffening her neck, threading her legs with blue veins and turning her bones brittle, but she’d be damned if it would take the resolution from her soul or the light from her eyes.

  She was competent.

  Resourceful.

  And she was more than equal to the job at hand.

  “I’ll not bother Tara at work with this,” she said under her breath. “If it comes to it, I’ll call Lisa on that darn cellphone. But I won’t bother Tara.”

  It was a plan of action.

  Margaret waited another five long minutes, then picked up the phone and dialed Lisa’s cell. It rang. Rang again. Then rang some more. But there was no answer, nothing but some annoying voice encouraging her to leave a message which was something Margaret had no intention of doing. If there was one thing she despised more than cellphones—other than computers, that was—it was answering machines. The only thing more annoying than them was having a damn computer call you on the phone and tell you your order was in at Sears.

  The clock on the wall said it was after 8:30 now.

  Good Lord, girl, where have you gone to now? What sort of trouble and devilment are you up to? Your sister will have my neck for this if you get into mischief and if she does, be certain, little miss, that I will have yours.

  She pressed her face up against the square of window above the sink.

  So dark out there. Like night had been slit open and its black blood had run everywhere, drowning the yard in a silken darkness. Shadows melted into other shadows in a blurring river of opaque nonentity. She squinted and thought she saw a figure moving near the big maple back there, flitting about beneath its spreading branches. Right away she was imagining Lisa out there, making out with some boy. But the harder she looked, the more she was certain she had only seen mocking shadow.