GRAVEWORM Page 10

  (if you dig her up you can have her)

  Fingers trembling, clawing over the polished wood of the box, brushing away dirt, now popping the catches and opening the lid. And inside, laying there in the silken womblike depths… the girl in white burial lace, her red hair like fire, her jutting bosom full and heaving with desire. Her white slender fingers are folded over it. She barely breathes. But what breath comes is deep and passionate. As Henry hovers over her, watching, breathing in the subterranean reek of the graveyard, her eyes open and capture shining moonlight. She grins and shows him even white teeth.

  “Here, Henry,” she says. “Right here.”

  She pulls her hands away from her bosom and his own soil-dirty fingers tear open her gown until her breasts are free, until those marble-white globes are beneath his palms and he is working them.

  “Now, Henry, now…”

  She spreads her long legs and he enters her without hesitation. She gasps at the cold violation of his member, hooking her legs around him, rocking with him, forcing him in deeper and faster until they both cry out into the cemetery stillness as tree limbs creak high overhead and bats wing the darkness.

  “A baby,” she says to him, panting in the coffin. “We’re going to have a baby…”

  But that was memory. This is now: “You have to pay attention, Henry. It’s very important,” Elise said.

  Daydreaming again. Sometimes he wanted to do nothing else.

  “If the girl gets away,” Elise said, “there will be trouble. Trouble for all of us.”

  Henry rubbed his eyes. “She can’t get away.”

  “Worm’s down there.”

  “Worm wouldn’t let her go.”

  “You can’t trust Worm. She isn’t right. You know that.”

  (your whore is right, henry, you knew that crawling little maggot wasn’t right the first time you held her in your arms but are you really surprised? conceived in an open grave… )

  “Shut up,” he said.

  (… with your sister)

  “Is she baiting you again?” Elise asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Ignore her.”

  (you can’t ignore me, henry, you can’t you can’t)

  “Go away.”

  (but i won’t I WON’T)

  “Please…”

  (please, he says, silly little boy i’ll make you beg beg)

  Worm had never been right and God knew how he had tried to get her to be like other children. All the strict rules and punishments had only made her worse somehow. It was something innate in her. Something that was almost uncontrollable. She had her dolls and her imaginary friends and the fairy tale never-never land of her own mind, but no more. She liked to help him, she liked it very much. But sometimes Henry wondered if he shouldn’t lock her up in the attic like he used to. If she ever broke the rules and went outside, tried to play with other children or brought them back here… well, that would be serious trouble.

  And Henry did not want trouble.

  Not with the game beginning.

  (you thought she’d be right? a child conceived in a coffin? one suckled in tombs and reared in graveyards?)

  “Just be careful, Henry. Always be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “The girl down there. You have to be careful of her sister… what’s her name?”

  “Tara.”

  “Yes, Tara. You remember how she sounded on the phone? How you felt there was something beneath her voice, something dangerous? Be careful about that. She’s a woman like other women. She’s a predator. Don’t forget that.”

  (all lusting sinful harlots with spread legs all of them)

  “I won’t.”

  Elise didn’t speak for a moment, then she said. “I’m afraid you will, Henry. That’s what scares me. Remember that you have stolen Tara’s sister. Remember what she might be feeling. She loves her sister. You have threatened that. She will be dangerous.”

  “Yes.”

  “Think how you would feel if someone stole me.”

  Henry stared into her blank eyes. “Bad.”

  “And if they threatened to hurt me?”

  “I’d be very angry.”

  “Keep that in mind.”

  He laid there next to her and there was a silence that was golden and warm, starkly beautiful. He didn’t want to get up, but he knew he had to. He sighed and pulled himself from bed and threw on pants and a shirt. Today the game would really start and he was anxious to see how Tara would react. Just how far she could be pushed before she snapped entirely.

  (ha ha ha, we’ll break her an inch at a time, henry)

  (we’ll snap her bones in our fingers)

  Yes, yes, that’s how it would be. He could almost feel the gentle but insistent pressure he would employ to snap them delicately one after the other. By the time he was finished, there would be little left of Tara Coombes. Just a windy, hollow-sounding framework and nothing more. And then, if he chose, he could bring her here with her sister and start rebuilding her, fashioning her into something more useful.

  Whispering.

  Henry stood at the door, listening to them down there. Listening to them prattle on and on. That’s all they did through the long day until he shut them up in their rooms at night: talk and talk and talk. Maybe that’s what it was like to be old. Since you couldn’t do anything anymore you talked about others who were still doing, still active, living vicariously through them.

  “You forgot to put them in their rooms last night, Henry,” Elise reminded him.

  “Yeah… I was tired. I forgot.”

  “You better stop forgetting.”

  He nodded. “I better go down there. Who knows what they might be up to?”

  Elise laid there. Her eyes did not blink. “Don’t be too harsh, Henry. They’re old. Old people say things they don’t mean sometimes. Their minds are sometimes not right like yours and mine.”

  “I know. I better go see.”

  “All right. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  Shutting the door behind him, Henry moved down the corridor, and paused at the head of the stairs. They were whispering and muttering down there. Mostly about things they knew nothing of, as if age was the oil that finally loosened the creaking hinges of their tongues and let it all come running out of them.

  “Upstairs, upstairs in bed with Elise,” he heard Uncle Alden say in his dry baritone. “All day long laying up there in bed. Hell’s with that boy?”

  “He’s tired. Just let him be. I’m sure he’ll be down soon.” Aunt Lily.

  “Well, that’s all and fine, but I’m goddamn hungry. My stomach thinks my fucking throat has been slit. C’mon, boy, make with the grub! I’m not getting any younger here.”

  “Oh, such language! You know Rose does not approve!”

  And then Henry’s mother, the old bitch herself: “No, I do not approve of swearing. You know I don’t.” She paused and Henry could almost see her pursing her wrinkled old lips. “When the boy comes down, I’ll be speaking to him. Have no doubt of that. I don’t care for his way nor his manner. Enough is enough.”

  “And what the hell’s he got going in that cellar?” Uncle Alden wanted to know.

  Henry came down the stairs and soon as they heard him, the words evaporated on their tongues. No more whispering and blabbing, no more at all. That was good. They had learned the hard way that he didn’t put up with it. Oh, he’d had his fill as a boy, but he was not a boy now, he was a man. The man of the house and he was in charge. He didn’t like to have to point that out to them. That they were old and sick, practically invalids, and he was young and strong and could have sent them out into the cold anytime he so chose.

  “Well, it’s about time, Sleeping Beauty,” Uncle Alden said. His eyes had been a bright, almost glaring blue once but time had faded them to a dull cerulean… still, there was a bite to them and Henry felt it.

  “I’m doing the best I can,” Henry told him.

  “You hear that, Rose?
You hear what your boy is saying? He says he’s doing the best he can. I like that.”

  “He’ll say just about anything as long as you’ll listen,” Mother Rose said. “He’s always been that way. Too much his father’s boy. Just ignore him.”

  (shut up you old cunt)

  Henry listened to them, but did not hear. Uncle Alden was always spoiling for an argument and Mother Rose was always looking for a good scab to pick at so she could make the blood run. And Aunt Lily? She just nodded a lot, hmmm-ed at this and that, but said very little of import. She preferred to fade into the background like a dirty flower on dirtier wallpaper. Henry searched through the refrigerator and came out with the roast from last night, Tupperware containers of potatoes and carrots. That would do them.

  “Leftovers again,” Alden said.

  Henry ignored that, too. When they wanted to get off their dead asses and lend a hand, then he’d be only too happy to cook five-course meals. Until then, they got the slop the farmer served and that was that.

  “Who’s that girl you got down below?” Alden said.

  Aunt Lily gasped, knowing there was going to be trouble.

  Henry turned on him with the carving knife in his hand. It shook in his fist. “What girl is that, Uncle Alden? What girl are you speaking of?”

  Alden stared at him, his eyes flat and dead. “You know what girl I’m talking about, Mister Bigshot cock-of-the-walk. You know damn and darn well what girl I mean.”

  “Oh, please… both of you,” Aunt Lily said, cowering as she always did from confrontations of any kind. Especially when men were involved, men and their hot randy tempers. She could not abide it.

  “You been spying on me?” Henry wanted to know.

  “Who needs to spy, Mister Henry Higgins? Not like your being real sneaky, now is it?”

  Henry moved in closer with the knife, wanted that old prick to see just how sharp its edge was, how the blade caught the light and held it there. See what the old sonofabitch thought about that. But Alden did not flinch. Even withered and grotesquely misshapen by the years pressing down hard on him, he did not flinch. He was still one tough, stringy old bird.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Alden laughed and it was cruel laugh. “I know you got a girl down there. Now I wanna know why.”

  “Please,” said Aunt Lily. God, she was almost begging.

  Henry had the knife about six inches from Uncle Alden’s face now… one quick twist of the wrist and out came those faded blue eyes, slit free just as sweet as pimentos plucked from olives. “You better mind your own business.”

  “You hear that, Rose? Now he wants me to mind my own business.”

  Mother Rose tittered under her breath as if Henry was not a man but a silly little boy who always did silly little things. “Don’t pay attention to him. He was always one for his secrets. Always playing in the dark, hiding things. Talking to people who weren’t there. A strange little boy with a strange little mind. He thought I didn’t know what he did out to the cemetery. He thought I didn’t know about what he was doing out there, digging up things and laying in boxes with—”

  “Shut up!” Henry snarled. “You shut the fuck up, you dried up old witch!”

  “—oh yes, Mister Henry Borden, I knew your ways. I always knew your ways! It’s a mother’s job to know what her son is and what he isn’t! And I had you pegged from the first! From the first, I say! I knew what you were doing out there and what you were laying with! And don’t think I didn’t know what you and Elise were up to! Always scheming and plotting! What you two did in the dark! Dirty, groping hands and hot kissing mouths and licking tongues! I knew! I knew! Ha, ha, ha! Go ahead, Henry! Cut me with your knife! Cut me, I say! You’d be doing me a favor! Filthy, dirty thing! I should have taken care of you when you came out of the womb! That white skin and those black hungry eyes! It was a sign! It was a taint and I knew it! I should have strangled you with my own hands when you first looked up at me like a snake from a pit—”

  Henry’s hand shot out and he back-handed Mother Rose right across the face. And that shut her up, the old fucking shrew, fucking vulture always finding an infected wound to pick at. She went right over in her chair and hit the floor with a sickly thud. And down there, she didn’t dare move.

  But that didn’t stop her mouth. “Discipline is what you and Elise needed, a firm and sure hand. That would have straightened you two out. Discipline.”

  Yes, the old hag was always liking that, now wasn’t she?

  He could see her standing there with the strap in her birdclaw hands, snapping it, loving the sound as it echoed through the old house. Aunt Lily was there, too, watching, pretending to be offended by it all when she was secretly pleased and secretly excited by the strap lashing against young flesh.

  Elise was sobbing because Mother Rose had her wrists tied to a chair. She was bent over it, naked, and the strap came down, biting into her white skin and leaving a bright red stripe down her back.

  “Count with me, Henry,” Mother Rose said, impervious to Elise’s whimpering.

  “One,” Henry said, knowing he had to.

  “WHAT?” Mother Rose asked him. “WHAT DID YOU SAY? I COULDN’T HEAR YOU! LOUDER! LOUDER!”

  The strap came down again, cutting into Elise’s back and making a few scarlet drops of blood run.

  “TWO!” Henry cried out.

  “Oh, the poor child,” Aunt Lily said, dabbing at beads of sweat on her brow, her breath coming fast and almost orgasmic. “The poor, poor thing.”

  “SHUT UP!” Mother Rose commanded her. “SHUT UP OR YOU’LL BE NEXT! YOU’LL TASTE THE LASH!”

  Aunt Lily visibly shuddered at the idea as if it were something she had tasted before and hoped to taste of again.

  “WHORE! HARLOT! SLUT!” Mother Rose called out as she brought the strap down again. “LAYING WITH YOUR OWN BROTHER! OH, OF ALL THE VILE BLACK SINS!”

  “THREE!” Henry said, his voice cracking.

  “YES, THREE! THREE FOR THE BUTCHER AND THREE FOR THE BAKER AND THREE FOR HIS BROTHER, THE UNDERTAKER!” Mother Rose shouted out. “NOW, YOUNG MISS WHORE! NOW WE’LL SEE HOW IT FEELS ON YOUR FRONT, EH? LET’S SEE IF YOU LIKE THE LASH SUCKLING YOUR TITTIES AS MUCH AS YOU DO YOUR BROTHER!”

  Elise fought weakly, but Mother Rose soon had her tied with her wrists behind her. Tears streaked down Elise’s face. She was trying to say something but with her sobbing it was completely unintelligible. Mother Rose lashed her until her breasts were striped purple and blue.

  “HOW’S THAT, WHORE?”

  “FOUR!” Henry said.

  And Aunt Lily, breath gasping from her lungs, her face wet with a dew of sweat, had her hand between her legs, working herself into a frenzy.

  “Give her more!” she shrieked. “Give her more!”

  So Mother Rose did.

  Henry raged at the memory. He had a mad desire to unzip himself and piss all over the old hag.

  Uncle Alden laughed again. It sounded like the bark of a mad dog. “Oh, fine way to treat your mother, Mister Henry Higgins! Fine way for a man to act! You and your dirty secrets!”

  Henry brought the knife back. “You shut up or I’ll cut your fucking head off, you miserable piece of shit!”

  Aunt Lily did not speak now.

  On the floor, Mother Rose giggled.

  (the baby henry what did you name the baby)

  (tell us the baby’s name that was conceived in a grave)

  Uncle Alden just sat there, jaw sprung like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Cut my head off, he says! Well, I hear you’re pretty good at that! Wouldn’t be the first time, now would it?”

  Henry slapped him in the head and Uncle Alden went over, face-first. Still, mouth on the table, he continued to mumble. And on the floor, mother kept giggling and giggling in a shrill squeak like a naughty little girl who knew a terrible, terrible secret.

  Then they were both laughing.

  And Lily stared off into space.

  The laughter got so l
oud that Henry stabbed the carving knife into the table and fled from the room, their incessant childish giggling piercing his brain and echoing and scraping through his skull.

  He ran to the cellar door and stumbled down the stairs into the darkness.

  (oh you can’t escape you pathetic little worm)

  (you’ll never escape)

  (you’ll never get away from ME)

  The furnace room. It was so dark in there. So quiet. So ordered and still. He crawled behind the furnace into the little cramped alcove for the piping. With the furnace running and vents ticking and the cloying darkness enclosing him, yes, it was just like being in the womb again. So sweet and so comforting.

  Curling up, he hid from the world.

  28

  When Steve went up the stairs to her porch, he was really loving that Tara Coombes like crazy. All day long he’d been feeling funny about their conversation last night, but now that he was going to see her he was feeling a lot better. Because he loved her in a big, happy, mindless sort of way like the moon loved the sky and the grass loved the earth. He loved her like his bones and muscles loved the skin that covered them. His kind of love for her was almost goofy and puppy dog in its devotion. He loved her so much right then he wished he had roses to give her. He wished he’d written her a romantic poem. He wanted to swim in the deep blue of her eyes and race through her bloodstream like a corpuscle.

  Man, he loved that girl something fierce.

  And you could see it on his face… the giddy nervous grin of a kid going to visit his high school crush. He couldn’t have washed that grin off with acid, it was etched too damn deep.

  But then the door opened.

  And Tara was standing there.

  That smile drooped to a frown and the light was stolen from his eyes because, for a second there, he’d thought he had come to the wrong house. Standing there, peering through the partially opened door like a mole sensing ugly sunshine, was some lady who was tall and thin with a face that had been drained white of blood, two blue eyes that gleamed like wet chrome, and a crooked down-turned mouth that was surely not a frown but not a smile either.