GRAVEWORM Page 2

  You’re not sure of that at all, old woman, she thought then. Maybe the rest of you is going to hell, but there’s nothing wrong with your peepers.

  Feeling a strange tightness in her chest, Margaret walked over to the table and pulled the curtains open at the window. It was bigger and would give her a better view. She pressed her face against the glass and looked out there. She was certain somebody was crouched down by the tree.

  She thought she saw eyes shining in the moonlight.

  But who would be out there? Who would be hiding out by the tree? Could have been one of the neighbor kids, she supposed. But her mind told her it could also be Lisa up to no good. Her gut instinct, however, was certain that it was not Lisa at all.

  “I’ll sort this out,” Margaret said.

  She went over to the back door and clicked on the patio light.

  Nothing.

  She clicked it a few more times.

  It was either burned out or something was playing havoc with the wiring. Ignoring a feeling of panic spreading out in her belly, she opened the screen door. It screeched like nails being pulled from a coffin. The night smelled green and warm, just a hint of chill in the air.

  Her eyes were locked on that shape by the tree.

  Slowly then, feeling she was making a great mistake, she started over there.

  About that time, the crickets went silent.

  The night tensed, holding its breath.

  3

  Darkness.

  In the backyard, dappled in moonlight beneath the red maple, the naked girl peered from the shadows at the house before her. It was not large and rambling like the one she shared with her brother, it was trim and neat. Cute. Like a doll house, a lovely little doll house. She wondered if any dolls lived in it.

  If there were, she would play with them.

  She saw an old woman press her face up to the window. An ugly old woman with an ugly old face. The old woman was staring.

  Now she moved to another window. She kept looking. The girl wondered if she saw her. Old people did not see well, yet this old lady seemed to be looking right at her.

  Now she came outside.

  The girl could smell her and it was a sour, old lady smell like wilted lilacs and mentholated rubs and skin creams. It was a smell of age and ruin, withering life fighting against the purity of death. Not a good smell. Not a vibrant smell or even a cold marble smell like the girl so enjoyed.

  Bowing her head, the girl smelled herself.

  She stank of rancid soil and dead leaves and shit.

  She ran her hands over her dirty skin. Touching first her small pert breasts, the smooth mound of her belly, then letting her fingers slide down between her legs as she became excited by her own rich, filthy odor. As the old lady stood on the patio, staring into the night, the girl started to breathe hard, almost gasping, sliding her middle finger in and out of herself. Her mouth tasted hot and sweet, though her breath was fetid-smelling. She could feel her blood pulsing in her veins, her heart beginning to hammer.

  She swung her head from side to side in a smooth, impassioned rhythm.

  She slid her finger in and out faster and faster.

  She watched the woman.

  Felt the damp grass beneath her feet, the wet leaves.

  It was intoxicating.

  Now the old lady was coming, coming right in her direction, but with a slow and stiff gait as old people used because their muscles were atrophying and their bones were brittle.

  “Come, come, come,” the girl whispered beneath her hot breath. “Come closer and I’ll show you.”

  The girl was supposed to cause a commotion to lure the old lady outside, but it hadn’t been necessary because the old woman was very curious, a very nosy old snit and she had come all on her own. And wasn’t that just perfect? Wasn’t that just sweet? Wasn’t that just delicious? She came right out the back door while in the front—

  As the old lady meandered closer, a cool night wind brought the smell of things full-blooded and alive, the earthy smell of things dead. The girl was trembling with anticipation. The wind made her nipples stand taut. She let herself come, shuddering with the drunken release of it.

  The old woman was closer.

  The girl waited, teeth clenched, nostrils flaring.

  A cloud passed over the face of the moon.

  When the moonlight returned, the girl was gone.

  4

  Margaret was beginning to wonder what she was doing.

  Beginning to wonder if there didn’t come a time when you had to accept your age and the limitations it forced upon you.

  There was no reason for her to put herself through this nonsense simply to investigate a shadow that was probably nothing but a shadow at best and at worst, probably one of the neighborhood kids playing hide-and-go-seek. She could have called Bud. He was only a block away. Bud would come over with his flashlight. The big long-handled flashlight that he kept up in the cupboard next to the box that contained his old police badges and yellowed photographs of his days on the force. Bud would have liked to get that call, would have liked to come over and investigate because it would have made him feel young again, like a cop, not a retired old man with a bad back, weak knees, and poor circulation who had more than once fallen asleep before the TV with the heating pad cranked high and burned himself because the feeling in his limbs just wasn’t so good anymore.

  Funny how life gets you, she thought. How it tricks you and fools you with youth and good health and then, when you’re not looking, the years pile up like apples under a tree. Next thing you know you’re old and gray and you realize you’ve been had. You can tell yourself amusing little self-deluding things like you’re only as old as you feel and life starts at sixty, but you know down deep it’s a load of crap. Soon enough you’re in a nursing home, pissing yourself and playing bingo and hoping your mind will last at least as long as your body while all those nurses call you “sweety” and “honey” like you’re a ten-year old in pigtails and braces, demeaning you, stripping away your self-respect and pride one layer at a time, having little birthday parties for you with cakes and balloons, all those sad-eyed, white-haired things gathered around you, drooling in their little cute party hats. That’s what a life hard-earned and well-spent will get you. Remember Great Aunt Eileen? She’d buried two husbands, lost a boy in World War I and another to the influenza outbreak of 1917, raised up three girls right and proper and in the end, she was in one of them homes wearing a little party hat with the rubber band strap digging into her pouchy sagging neck, her eyes old and sad and used-up. You remember that, Marge? You remember the party? Back around ’66 or ’67 when you were a bright-eyed thirtysomething without a care in God’s own world? You said to her, “Wow, Aunt Eileen, ninety-three today!” And she looked at you with something like pity. “Ain’t nothing wow about it, Margie. Ninety-three ain’t no fun. It’s hell on earth.” And now you’re heading in that direction and, damned, if Great Aunt Eileen wasn’t right.

  Margaret realized she’d been off in dreamland again and it was getting so she was doing it a lot.

  Get it together, old woman. Find Lisa. Sort this business out. You can’t call on Bud because he can’t accept his age anymore than you can. You call and he’ll come over, tromp around out there in the night and catch a chill that will become a chest cold next week, pneumonia the week after, and a plot out at Hillside week after that.

  No, she would handle this herself.

  It would only take a minute.

  She moved toward the tree, wind pushing leaves past her legs. The more she stared, the more she strained her eyes, the more her vision wanted to blur. Age. Goddamn age. You could pretend it wasn’t so, but pretending didn’t make it go away—

  She stepped in something.

  Something soft only a few feet from the tree.

  A raw stink of hot excrement rose from it.

  Not dog shit, no, dear Lord, this was human shit and there was no mistaking the revolting, sharp smell o
f it.

  This was wrong.

  This was all so wrong.

  That curious tightness in her chest was deeper now, sinking its roots, throbbing, insistent. Her heart was hammering. She was having trouble catching her breath.

  Ticker? Was that it?

  Out here? Now? Oh no, not that…

  Margaret knew she could go no farther. This was enough. If it was her heart then she needed to get inside and sort things out. Call Bud if necessary. Call Tara. Call somebody. She was about to turn on her heel and go back in when something moist and warm spattered in her face.

  That smell.

  Shit.

  Somebody had thrown shit in her face.

  The tightness in her chest erupted into full-fledged pain as her heart pounded frantically, hitched, pounded again, missed two or three beats with a dull, deep, bottoming-out sort of feeling that made her cry out and clutch her breast.

  She heard a sound like respiration.

  Above her, above…

  Someone was in the tree.

  She could see their eyes, unnaturally bright and shining.

  Margaret started toward the house, hearing whoever was in the tree jump down and land in the grass. She did not have to turn to know they had landed on all fours. Or that they were following her, scampering through the grass like an animal.

  Closer, closer.

  The raw stink of feces coming off them was violent, offensive.

  Margaret reached the patio. Her stiff fingers found the doorknob, yanked it open as a fear that was white-hot and electric thrummed through her. It was so sharp it felt like a knifeblade twisting in her stomach.

  She stumbled into the kitchen.

  Dear God, dear God in heaven…

  Lisa.

  That was Lisa.

  Right before her on the floor. Lisa was lying on the floor, wrists taped behind her back and ankles taped together, a length of rope connecting them. Hog-tied. Her mouth was taped shut. She was dirty and her eyes were wide open, manic with a horror and shock that was quite near to full-fledged insanity.

  This is what Margaret saw.

  About the same time she saw the man standing there.

  He was wearing a black coat, tall and pale, his eyes very dark with a leering catatonic stare to them. He had something in his hand. A length of chain. A leash. And it was connected to the collar around Lisa’s throat.

  Margaret screamed.

  Screamed the way one does when faced with the most brutal, inhuman depravity that the mind can bear to look upon.

  Behind her, a scampering.

  The girl came in on all fours. A nauseating stench of shit and urine came off her. Squatting there, she rocked back and forth on her haunches. She was naked, her hair long and dark, matted with leaves and dirt. She looked to be no older than Lisa. In fact, quite a bit younger. Her skin was so positively bloodless it looked white, the ghastly pallor accentuated by black streaks over her thighs and chest and that round belly—

  Oh, not that, Lord, not that…

  Shit.

  She had painted herself up with her own shit.

  She squatted there, giggling, reveling in her own stink and repulsive nature. Her eyes were large with an unblinking deranged glare in them, the eyes of an animal as seen in headlights: shining and feral. She touched herself between her legs and her vulva was hairless, swollen and grotesquely red. A stream of piss struck the linoleum.

  “My name is Worm,” the girl said. “Isn’t that a pretty, pretty name? And aren’t I a pretty, pretty girl? Do you like me? Like how pretty, pretty, pretty I am?”

  Lisa squirmed on the floor.

  And the girl named Worm let out a bestial grunt.

  Margaret shook her head, lashing it from side to side.

  No, no, no! She would not allow this… this… this violation of all that was good and decent, this degradation, this defilement of all she knew and loved and honored. Fresh pains stabbed in her chest, going off like clusterbombs. Her vision blurred. Her left arm went limp and numb. Crying out, clenching her teeth, she reached out and pulled a tenderizing mallet from the block on the counter with her good hand.

  With a last fevered, raging breath, she brandished the mallet. “Well, come on then,” she gasped. “Come on, you vile little shit! Come and get yours!”

  The girl growled.

  The man laughed.

  And when that hideous girl jumped at her, Margaret swung the mallet with everything she had left.

  Which by that point, wasn’t much.

  5

  Tonight was going to be mellow wasn’t it?

  Just a laid-back, kick-off-your-shoes kind of night?

  No stress, no worry, no goddamned drama.

  Tara Coombes came tooling up the street in her little Stratus and she was hopeful, honestly hopeful.

  Hopeful that she wouldn’t waltz into some tragedy.

  Hopeful that tonight her only worry would be burning a frozen pizza.

  Of course, she hoped for that every night. After thirteen hours of work that really felt like a solid twenty-four, she had the right to some peace and quiet, didn’t she? Nine to five at the Teamster Hall typing and filing and fielding calls from disgruntled union members whose bosses (they claimed) were sadistic Nazis. Then a quick hour to throw herself together and off to the Starlight to hustle drinks for another four hours… something which had turned into five hours tonight. After that sort of grind, God knew she needed a break. Just a nice peaceful hour or two without any bickering or fighting or drama.

  Would that night of nights be tonight?

  Tara slowed the car, sighing, suddenly in no hurry to get home.

  She loved her kid sister more than most people loved their own children. And maybe that was because of the accident that had killed their parents, leaving her at twenty-three in charge of a teenager, and maybe she was just making up for lost time not being around as her kid sister grew up. Regardless, Lisa was her whole world. And she was, admittedly, quite a kid. Very smart. But also very cunning as teenage girls could be.

  Seventeen-year olds aren’t kids, she reminded herself.

  Maybe not, but that’s the way Tara thought of her. There was a difference of almost eleven years between them. Lisa had been a little accident on her mother’s part, long after she thought her child-rearing days were over. By the time Lisa was old enough to really appreciate having an older sister, Tara had moved out. First to Western to get her marketing degree, then off to Denver. To Lisa, Tara was just the older sister who stopped by on Christmas… not truly a sibling.

  Then their parents had found death on a cold stretch of highway. A pulp truck running without lights on a foggy night with a full load of logs had strayed over the white line. Its driver had a full load as well. And the ironic thing about it all was that not two months before, Tara had been home for a visit and her mom had sat her down and had what turned out to be the most serious chat of their lives.

  Tara, if anything were to happen to your dad and I—

  Oh, Mom, c’mon.

  No, Tara, really. If something were to happen to us I’d want you to take care of Lisa. I know I always call her My Little Accident and all that, but I worry about her. I worry about her ending up alone. It… it keeps me awake at night. I just need to know that she’ll be taken care of.

  Of course I’d take care of her.

  Don’t say that without thinking about it, honey. A child is a big responsibility. I want you to think very seriously about what I’m saying. If something ever were to happen, at her tender age, well… she’d need guidance.

  I think she’s stronger and tougher than you give her credit for.

  The tougher they act, the stronger they act… the more you have to worry. Things like that are just barriers teenagers put up to hide the insecurity and anxiety just beneath the skin.

  Now you’re an analyst.

  Every mother is.

  But she’s got it together, mom.

  You thought you did too, but th
ere were plenty of times you needed guidance, you needed sympathy, you needed somebody to steer you in the right direction and I’m not going to go into detail and embarrass us both, but there were plenty of times when your judgment left a little something to be considered. Enough said. And Lisa is no different. She needs someone to guide her. So if anything were to happen…

  If anything were to happen I would take care of her.

  Promise me.

  And Tara had, some weird nagging suspicion in the back of her head informing her that she had just entered into some kind of binding agreement, that she had just taken a blood oath.

  Two months later she came back for the funeral… and never left. Lisa needed someone and Tara wasn’t about to let her own sister be dumped off with relatives in Indiana or Milwaukee. This was how the six-figure a year job in Denver was traded in for typing and slinging drinks and how Tara was introduced to the wonderful world of parenthood. Oh, she could have dragged Lisa out to Denver, but that would mean disrupting her life and losing her friends and Lisa had lost enough by that point.

  And that had been five years ago.

  Since then, Tara had become some weird hybrid of mother, father, and sister to Lisa. And Lisa was a good kid, but she was also a teenager. Along with good grades came a contempt for authority, probably provoked by the death of Mom and Dad. Lisa dated the wrong guys. Hung around with the wrong posse. Experimented with drugs. Alcohol. Had even run away twice by last count. She was smart, very smart, but not terribly practical and far too rebellious for her own good.

  You were the same, though, Tara told herself. Lisa is a carbon copy of you and you damn well know it. You smoked your share of pot and went to beer parties and don’t forget losing your virginity in the backseat of Brad Holliman’s Camaro in the tenth grade… at the drive-in, no less. Mom knew. She always knew. That’s why she wanted your promise. Somehow, some way that lady saw heavy weather ahead.

  Sighing (something she did a lot of), Tara pulled into the driveway and killed the engine. Quiet. Hmm. That was promising. Lisa didn’t come running out with a list of petty grievances as she did most nights. Tara saw this as a good sign. When she’d taken the job at the Starlight evenings for extra money (God, teenagers were expensive), things went very good at first. But before long, neighbors were calling her at work and telling her things were getting a little wild at the old homestead. At first, Tara dismissed it. Lisa was having a few friends over and they were getting a little loud… so what? She was a pretty and popular girl, wasn’t she? Had lots of friends and all. It wasn’t until Tara started finding cigarette burns in the rug, roaches in the ashtray, and beer missing from the fridge that she came down on her sister.