GRAVEWORM Read online

  “Yes, Margaret.” Odd, but there was nothing associated with that name now but a vapid vacancy. Nothing more. “Margaret.”

  “Yeah, Margaret. She shouted at me. She wouldn’t stop, so I had to stop her. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure. She wouldn’t shut her mouth so you shut it for her.”

  Tara could sense that the boogeyman did not like this sudden calm indifference of hers. It took all the fun out of his sadistic games. Like one of those monsters in a movie that was only strong when you were afraid of it. When you weren’t… well, then it was just something soft and slimy that you could step on. Squash flat.

  Kind of like the boogeyman.

  “Yeah, she wouldn’t shut up, so I shut her up,” he said.

  There was more to it than that, but he didn’t say what it was. Almost like he was nervous to go into detail about it. But that was okay, because there were things Tara did not need to know about. Like how he led Lisa in, bound and gagged, like a dog. How Margaret had been first horrified, then angry at the degradation of Lisa and how she had grabbed that tenderizing mallet and dared Worm to go after her with the hatchet. And Worm had, of course. Margaret almost cold-cocked Worm with one good swing like she was trying to knock the game ball out of the field in the bottom of the ninth… but it did her in, that swing. She grasped her chest and went down to one knee and then Worm sprang on her like a cat, bringing that hatchet around like she was going to fell a tree. The hatchet sank into her throat and threw a pattern of blood against the wall and Margaret’s head nearly came off. Worm took it off the rest of the way, dancing around the room with it before impaling it on the drying rack in the sink.

  Lisa went right out cold at the sight of that.

  No matter, because the boogeyman already knew everything he needed to know. He’d gotten that on the car ride. Please, oh God, please… my sister will do anything, she’ll pay anything. You two live alone? Yes. No father? No brother? No fucking mother? No, no… nobody but us. Just us. Just the two of us. And when the boogeyman had heard that, he knew he had wormed his way into one sweet set-up.

  It would have done Tara no good to know the truth of that grisly business. For the poison inside her had already spread deep enough.

  “Tell me what to do,” Tara said.

  “You in a hurry, little girl?”

  “We both are. I want my sister. And you can’t afford to talk on the line this long.”

  The boogeyman’s breathing came real fast again after that. “Okay. Listen.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Lyman Park.”

  “By the lake.”

  “Yes. There’s a phone booth there—”

  “There’s two of them. One by the bandshell and one by the beach house.”

  “That’s right, Tara. At nine-thirty you’ll be at the one by the beach house. I’ll call you there. You’ll answer. And then I’ll tell you how this works.”

  “Okay.”

  “Remember, Tara. No cops. No nothing. This is our thing. Just between you and me.” Then he breathed hard into the phone a moment or two for effect. “Don’t give the game away.”

  Then he hung up and Tara did the same, something seething inside of her. And this was how she was drawn into the boogeyman’s web… or he into hers.

  31

  Tara waited for 9:30.

  That’s when the game would get going again.

  By this point, she was no longer naïve enough to entertain even for a moment that the boogeyman would just release Lisa and be done with it. No, that was absurd. He would make Tara do things, awful things. None of that really concerned her now and it was amazing what you could get used to when you no choice. But she wondered what he would want and how far she would go.

  Because that’s what this was all about.

  Control.

  He had it. He would use it.

  She had none. She would be used.

  And never had the idea of being so perfectly used or manipulated ever sounded so perfectly desirable. He was a monster with a monster’s cunning, evil mind. He would make her do unthinkable things before this was over, but it would bring her to Lisa in the end and that’s all she really cared about. Part of her had accepted this and did not care how bloody or barbaric the path ahead was. She was now a willing tool in the boogeyman’s hands.

  He would play her.

  He would use her.

  And in the process he would squeeze the humanity out of her drop by drop. But it would bring her closer to him. And closer to Lisa. And in the end, he would learn exactly who was playing whom.

  Tara stood up.

  She went to the back door and stepped out onto the patio.

  A dark night, the moon obscured by clouds.

  The chill autumn nights had silenced the crickets now and the buzzing night things. The only sound was the creaking of tree limbs, leaves blowing down streets and tumbling up walks. What lived inside her now drank in the cool air, was invigorated by it, excited by the game to come.

  For on a night like this, anything could happen.

  And it probably would.

  32

  It was time for bed.

  Henry had left them downstairs last night instead of locking them in their rooms like usual. Not a good idea. But sometimes he forgot things. Thank God Elise was there to remind him. He didn’t know what he would have done without her.

  He walked in the dining room and they shut up right away.

  It was part of the game, of course. They liked to chat their heads off until he showed up and then they’d go silent. They did this to annoy him and he knew it. He stood in the doorway, watching them.

  Watching his mother particularly.

  Mother Rose, keeper of family secrets and sharp-tongued matriarch, stared out at him with eyes as yellowed as her skin. Rheumy eyes, lusterless stones in a dry wash. But not unaware. She did not smile. She did not emote. Her face was stiff as leather, as featureless as white canvas waiting for a brush to paint life into it. Only those eyes, watching and watching, their gaze narrowing and sharpening until they had Henry and only Henry in full view, piercing him like a squirming insect on a pin.

  “Is there something you wanted to say?” he asked her.

  She did not speak.

  She probably figured there was no reason to speak because her eyes had already spoken volumes.

  Henry stared.

  She stared.

  They all stared.

  How long the game would go on he did not know. But he was patient and when he dealt with them you just had to be patient. For no one was as patient as the old who collected years like autumn lawns collected leaves.

  Mother Rose. A mummy draped in dusty linen cerements, sallow fingers spread over her withered breasts like the legs of a petrified spider. No love there, no joy, only time varnished and held immobile for the eons like insects in amber. Her hair was pulled back in a somber white bun, her face feathered with wrinkles and deep-hewn convolutions. Age had not made her wise or enduring, it had only shriveled her already stern face, drawing up the corners of her bloodless lips into a crooked scowl and splitting open an ancient scar upon her cheek. Her face was an October mask disinterred from a rotting attic trunk, blown free of cobwebs and dust, the only thing remotely alive about it were the eyes and they were corrupt with hatred and jealousy.

  Aunt Lily. Kind and long-suffering, but empty of all but the longing she dared not admit to. She was nothingness: a stick of furniture, a stain upon the wall. You barely noticed her when you passed and she was glad for this. All her long life she had been nothing but a wax dummy that others posed as they saw fit. She was a reflection of those around her, but had no true soul or solidity of her own. If you put a light upon her when she was alone she faded like a shadow in noon sunshine.

  Uncle Alden. The brother to Henry’s father. A bone sculpture knitted in graying skin, dry as parchment, discolored by the roll of time. A puc
kered, cadaverous thing with a mocking smile that mocked only itself. His eyes had once been bright and cutting, but time had softened them, melting them into a blue jelly that evaporated a bit more day by day. Hunched-over, spine-twisted, he was not a man of flesh and blood, but the skeletal remains of one, like the shell of a spider hanging in a dusty, unused corner.

  “Are we tired tonight?” Henry asked them, one and all. “Have we had a busy day pretending to be things we no longer are?”

  Uncle Alden offered him a waxen smile. “The kid’s got his dander up again. He’s going to wow us with his sure and steady hand. He’s a take charge kind of guy. Maybe if he distracts us enough, we might forget about the girl he’s got down in the cellar.”

  “Oh no,” Aunt Lily said. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  Alden chuckled. “You don’t? What do you want to talk about? Our sex life? You want me to tell everyone how we never fucked like normal people, Lily? How it had to be in the dark and you cried the whole time like I was doing something dirty to you? You think they want to hear about that? Or about the whores I had? The things I made them do? The marks I left on them?”

  “That’ll do,” Mother Rose said. “Certain topics are not acceptable with young ears present.”

  “Young ears?” Alden said. “Henry? Look at him! He was old and worn out the moment he was born. He was never a kid. He never ran and hopped and played ball and mixed it up with other kids. No, he played out in the graveyard and you, Rose, you encouraged it! The worse he got the more you pretended he was normal! Skulking home at dawn with that awful stink about him and grave dirt on his fingers! He was never nothing but a little fucking ghoul! Out there amongst the graves, laying with cold things, touching them and biting them and—”

  “You better shut the hell up,” Henry warned him.

  “Sure, kid, sure. I’ll shut up and if I don’t, why you’ll get your needle and thread and sew my mouth up the way you did your mother’s after—”

  “Shut up!”

  “Ha, ha, ha! Don’t like me mentioning that? How you couldn’t stand her fucking mouth on this side of the grave or on the other? Didn’t like the way she talked to you when you yanked her out of that box at Hillside, so you stitched those lips shut! There! I said it! Piss on you and your mother, kid!”

  “Fuck you!” Henry shouted in his face.

  “Fuck me? Go ahead, kid, fuck me! I’d like to see you try!” He kept laughing and laughing while Aunt Lily went silent and Mother Rose glared. “Fuck me like you fucked your mother! Well, they can say what they want about me, but I never fucked my mother! Not like you! But that was your idea… wasn’t it, Rose?”

  “I can’t hear this! I can’t!” Aunt Lily told them.

  The expression on Mother Rose’s face did not change. “Do we want to let skeletons from closets, Alden? Do we want to dirty the air with things better left unsaid? Because I could tell everyone about those whores of yours and not all of them were women!”

  Aunt Lily almost fell out of her chair and Henry, feeling sorry for her as he often did, went to her, stood behind her and put his hands over her ears so she did not hear all the perversions and obscene lies that were being tossed about.

  “I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done,” Uncle Alden said. “You, Rose! You’re the one who should be ashamed! Your son… look at him! Look at what he is! Why do you think he got kicked out of undertaker’s school? And what do you think made him join the army? You wanna field that one, boy?”

  Clutching Aunt Lily’s ears against it all, Henry said, “I wanted to serve my country. I wanted to kill people.”

  Alden burst out laughing. “Well, part of that’s true enough! And where did you serve? In the mortuary? Weren’t the live ones you wanted, boy. It was the dead ones!”

  “You better shut up.”

  Alden kept laughing. The sound of his laughter was like metal grinding on a wheel, throwing off sparks and hot steam. “He’s afraid I’ll tell all his dirty secrets. Like the baby. Do you want to talk about the baby, Henry?”

  But Henry did not.

  Hadn’t he suffered enough?

  When the baby had arrived, Elise and he home-birthed it and that wasn’t a good idea at all because Elise ruptured. She bled everywhere. The blood came out of her like she was a cask of the reddest wine, the darkest scarlet port, leaking and flooding until the bed was soaked and Elise fell into convulsions which ended with her staring at the ceiling with glazed, blank eyes.

  A life taken and a life given.

  When Henry held the slimy, blood-spattered baby—a girl—in his arms, he had hated it. He wanted to kill it. To throw it out the window or down the throat of a well. But he hadn’t. He had held it until it stopped crying. The baby girl wriggled in his arms, plump and white. “Worm,” he said. “I’ll call you Worm because that’s what you are.”

  But that was all a secret and Elise and he decided it was something never to be spoken of.

  “One of these days, Mister Henry Higgins,” Uncle Alden said, “your little secrets will come to an end. One of these days the police will come and see what you’ve been doing. Then they’ll take you away and put you in a padded room, you fucking graveworm—”

  “Enough,” Mother Rose said.

  Henry tried to shut him out. He reached in the bureau drawer and took out a brush. Silently, he brushed Aunt Lily’s long white hair and he could feel how it soothed her. Poor Aunt Lily. So tense. So knotted up. Just stiff as a board. Henry combed her hair lovingly, humming under his breath while Mother Rose and Uncle Alden argued incessantly. Aunt Lily’s scalp was desiccated, as dry as parched earth. Her hair was patchy, scraggly… there seemed barely enough of it to cover her piebald scalp and barely enough scalp to cover the skull beneath. Each stroke of the brush, though gentle, tore out bunches of hair by the roots like winter-dead grasses.

  Aunt Lily made a funny cooing sound.

  (she’s getting excited, henry, you know how she likes that)

  Henry smiled.

  He whispered something in her ear which was brown and curled like dried steerhide. Then he reached down and touched her where she liked to be touched. Together, they shuddered.

  (touch her, henry)

  (make her feel it)

  “There!” Uncle Alden said, pounding the table with his fist and kicking up dust that spun in the overhead lamp. “Do you see what he just did? Did you see that? That disgusting awful thing he just did?”

  Mother Rose made a raw cackling sound. “He’s trying to make Lily feel better.” More cackling, but whispering and hissing as it came through clenched teeth. “See… see… see how she likes that…”

  “I won’t have it!” Alden shouted. “Not with my wife!”

  “Henry!” Mother Rose said. “Put your uncle up in his room and lock that door! Shut him away! Shut him away! Shut him away, I say!”

  Henry set down the brush and went over to him. Silly dried-up old fool. He couldn’t hide. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t get away. He could only twist his gnarled old face into a sneer. “Get away from me, ghoul! Pervert! Get the fuck away from me—”

  But Henry clamped a hand over his mouth. With his other arm he scooped up Uncle Alden, the shivering bag of old bones. He was as light as if he were stuffed with straw. He squirmed a bit too much and a strip of skin peeled off his arm. Henry tore it free and let it drop to the floor.

  (that’s it, henry! shut him away! then you can touch us! touch us again and again! that’s it that’s a good boy doing what his mother says! always listen to your mother!)

  Aunt Lily was grinning now, a happy skull-faced grin. Mother Rose was chattering her teeth. Together, they were chanting: “Shut him away! Shut him away! Shut him away!”

  (HA HA HA HA HA HA HA)

  Henry carried his uncle up the stairs, pulling his hand from his mouth only once to steady himself on the stairs as that bundle of sticks tried to wriggle free. “You dirty stinking little shit!” Uncle Alden cried. “Slimy dirty fucking bo
dy-snatching motherfucking deviant! If they ever come, I’ll tell them! You hear me? I’ll tell them all about you! I’ll tell them what you did to us! I’ll tell them what’s buried in the cellar and what you keep upstairs! I’ll tell them what you dance with in the attic! I’LL TELL THEM WHAT YOU DID TO YOUR MOTHER’S CORPSE! I’LL—”

  Quickly, he clamped his hand back over the old man’s seamed mouth. Uncle Alden was old and his mind was going. He did not know what he was saying anymore.

  From the dining room, Mother Rose called: “Hurry back, Henry! Come down here and touch us the way we like to be touched!”

  Henry brought Uncle Alden to his room and dumped the old man on the bed. He didn’t listen to the nonsense that spewed from his mouth. It no longer interested him. What interested him, made his heart pound and his blood run hot, was waiting down in the dining room. He quickly shut the door and locked it with the skeleton key.

  (hurry hurry HURRY)

  And from the other side of the door, Alden’s voice came… sobbing, pathetic… worn thin as a thread by the long yellow years. “Please, Henry! Don’t lock me away in the dark! I’ll be a good, boy! I won’t tell! I won’t never tell what you do!”

  “Yes, you will,” Henry said.

  The voice, weaker now: “But I won’t! I swear I won’t! Just… let… me… watch…”

  But Henry was moving down the hallway, a hunger breaking open inside him like blood splashed against a sharp blade. “If you ever tell, you old fuck, I’ll put you back where I found you…”

  (AH-HA-HA-HA)

  From the dining room, he could hear Mother Rose and Aunt Lily—now liberated by Alden’s absence—discussing how they liked the feel of a man’s hands upon them, what a dark and sinful joy there was in it.

  (the face, henry, the face)

  When he got back down there, he pulled off Mother Rose’s face which was nothing but a leathery dead skin mask with scalp attached. Without it, she was a grinning, hollow-socketed mummy, jaws sprung open as if in a scream.

  Pulling the mask on, he said in his mother’s voice, “Now… where were we?”