GRAVEWORM Page 5

  Henry hadn’t understood that at all when he was young, but later, yeah, later it made perfect sense. Particularly when the girls started to turn away from him.

  Then he knew.

  He knew all about girls.

  He knew goddamn well what that hole did to them.

  (it is the well spout of infamy, henry, from that gash will spring the flowers of evil eden was destroyed by eve because she couldn’t keep her legs closed)

  In school, he had been shy and quiet. Never did a thing to draw attention to himself. No fooling around. No insulting teachers behind their backs or calling the other kids names. None of that. Maybe that’s why the boys picked on him and maybe that’s why the girls laughed at him or just plain ignored him.

  The main reason for all of it was that he was withdrawn, thin and pale, and his old man just happened to be caretaker of Hillside Cemetery. That just left those kids cold (heh, heh). They called him “Dead Boy” and “Graveworm” and whispered behind his back about what a little creep he was.

  When Henry graduated high school, he got out of town as quick as he could. He was accepted at Southwestern’s School of Mortuary Science, pulled an excellent GPA, and then, yes, then those bastards kicked him out right on his ass.

  Just leave quietly, Mr. Borden. We’re not going to bring the police in on this… ah… matter. But I would suggest you seek therapy…

  Bullshit. That’s what it was. They didn’t like him because he was a loner so they made up nasty little stories. They conspired against him because he was smarter and more efficient than they could ever be. So out he went. He didn’t even bother going home. He joined the Army, served in the first Iraq war in a very special capacity… then, well there was trouble there too. He was put in the psych ward for six months, then given a dishonorable discharge. While he was incarcerated, he learned his mother had just undergone her fourth (or was it fifth?) nervous breakdown and she was on so many medications that she was shitting herself half the time. Then the bad thing had happened. When he finally got home he got his old man’s caretaker job at Hillside. They offered it to him right away, knowing nothing of his past. The caretaker that had replaced his father—Siemens, heh, heh—was dying. Forty hard years on the booze had finally kicked his legs out from under him. The owners didn’t care who took the position as long as somebody did.

  Henry was the right man for the job.

  Fourteen years he put in. Then they put that prick Spears on as director. He was a real piece of work. He targeted Henry right off, always jumping his ass about something. Henry, I want those plastic Memorial Day flags off all the graves by Monday. And that grass is getting shaggy in the northeast corner. When are you planning on taking care of that? And get a mason out here to look at the stone wall in the back, it’s crumbling. And for godsake, the wrought-iron fence out front is rusting. Get on it, will you? Oh yeah, he was a real treat. Everything had been going good until that sonofabitch started stirring the pot. And then that little incident in the mausoleum. He fired Henry right on the spot, told him to get out or—

  I’ll see that you do time, you sick perverted sonofabitch! There are laws in this state, Borden! Laws to put animals like you away… laws against… against what I saw you doing! Get out! Do you hear me? Get out of here…

  —some such paranoid shit. And for what? For what? A bunch of nonsense that uppity peckerwood cooked up to get rid of his best employee.

  And that was what… four years ago now? Five? Six? If it hadn’t been for the life insurance policies and the endowment, well, there wouldn’t have been a crumb to eat. At least the house was paid off. That was something.

  And Tara Coombes would get him money if he wanted it… except, he didn’t really think it was money he wanted. He wanted something else. What that was he was not sure. But it would come to him. In time.

  (perverted sonofabitch)

  (don’t let them talk to you like that we’ll fix ‘em)

  He hadn’t chosen the Coombes out of hatred or revenge or even spite. He hadn’t even known them. Opportunity had simply presented itself in the form of Lisa walking up that road. He hadn’t consciously planned any of it. It all just suddenly took shape, fell into place the way things often do when they’re meant to be. A long time ago Henry had learned to stop fighting, to just accept things, to trust in the fact that Fate had his life all planned out whether he liked it or not. If it was predestined that he snatch Lisa Coombes, then so be it. Why feel guilty about something that was completely out of your hands? Part of him actually wanted to feel sorry for Tara Coombes and her kid sister—hell, he had a sister, he knew what that was like—but there was really nothing he could do about it. They had just been chosen by Fate to be on the receiving end of some particularly ugly shit. That’s all. Fate might have had something horrible planned for Henry tomorrow… a car accident, a fatal heart attack… but there was no point in raging against it. When it happened, it happened. You just had to accept it.

  Just like Lisa and Tara had to accept it.

  Henry was just a tool of Fate. Nothing more.

  They had to accept their lot.

  (just as you’ve had to accept your own, henry, hmm? people shitting on you, whipping you like a dog, squeezing the life out of you)

  He was thinking about the older one, Tara. She was a cunt and he knew it. Sometimes you could just tell. The way she talked, the words she used, the shrewish tone in her voice, the way she screamed at him until she’d realized that she was powerless and then she got real coy, sweet innocent little girl done wrong. Then she’d even offered him her slit the way cunts always do, thinking they had something remotely unique that every other cunt on the face of the planet didn’t have.

  Yes, Tara Coombes was a cunt.

  (yes, yes, oh yes)

  Henry had known a lot of them and they were always the same and in the end every one of them had turned on him, twisted the knife in his back, and played evil little head games. Well, that wouldn’t happen this time. Tara was the one who’d be on the business end of head games.

  Henry had plans for her.

  (mother knows best do what mother says)

  Big plans.

  When he was done with her, that uppity cunt would be just as crazy as his mother. Just as fucked-up and fancy-free.

  They would play the game together.

  One move at a time.

  And only he would know what the object of it was.

  “You wait, Tara,” he said under his breath. “You have no idea.”

  16

  12:15 AM

  There were worse things than blood.

  Worse things than cleaning up after a murder.

  Like having your sister kidnapped.

  Having your sister buried alive.

  Much worse things. This is what Tara told herself as she bagged up the remains of Margaret Stapleton. What Tara knew of that sort of thing came from novels and TV shows. She recalled seeing some mob movie where they cut up a body and then wrapped-up each piece in black plastic, taping each individual package up neatly like a Christmas present. And that’s what she was doing now. She’d locked all the doors and got out the Hefty bags, the twenty-five gallon lawn-size, and slit them up until she had some material to work with. At first, after that fucking monster had hung up on her, she’d dialed the police. Hung up, dialed again. Then slammed the phone down. If it were only that easy. But he was watching her and he told her so and she would have to play ball with that motherfucker if she ever wanted to see Lisa again.

  But a voice, that same voice kept telling her: Don’t do this… get the police. Don’t get any deeper into this web of fucking insanity. He’s manipulating you. Lisa might already be dead—

  But she wasn’t. Tara knew she wasn’t. She felt it deep in her core. Lisa was alive. But she was also buried in a box. And the knowledge of that, the most gruesome form of abduction she could possibly imagine, was like knives punching into her, slitting her, cutting her open and making her bleed, making all the
good and pure things run from her in rivers and leaving a blank emptiness inside that could only be filled when she saw her sister again, when she held Lisa in her arms and knew, dear God, that she was safe, safe, safe. And she would do anything, anything, to secure that moment. She didn’t care what it was.

  Kidnappers always say not to go to the police, Tara. They always claim to be watching the house. They always threaten to kill the kidnappee. It’s their power, their strength. They have you by the balls and they know it. It’s sadistic, but sadism is part of the sickness… toying with loved ones. You can’t trust a warped mind that thinks that way. You’ve seen those true crime shows… very often the kidnappers kill their victims anyway, regardless of what they say.

  “Fuck you,” Tara said to that voice, banishing it away into the cellar of her mind. Shutting it away there. It was the voice of reason, yes, the voice of common sense and logic speaking, only that voice didn’t have a kid sister who was living out a nightmare, was in dire peril balanced at the edge of some black, hungry pit with a sicko psycho fucked-up kidnapping freak ready to shove her off the edge.

  It was a battle of wills… her own and that reasonable voice in her head.

  But she won.

  She would do what she had to do to safeguard her sister.

  12:17 AM

  When she first entered the kitchen, that awful meaty, raw stink shoved up her nose and down her throat, she burst into tears and fell to her knees, vomiting until there was nothing but painful dry heaves. The second time she tried, the same. But the third time… knowing there just wasn’t time for any squeamish girly bullshit… she’d wrapped up Margaret’s legs. She wore yellow Playtex gloves, but even so the dead weight and greasy, chill feel of those limbs was repulsive. And when she’d packaged up the arms, one of them, maybe the left one, had slipped in her grasp and Margaret’s cold hand had brushed against her wrist. Dear God, the feel of that… like being caressed by meat.

  She gasped and fell away while that dead arm slapped the tile floor.

  There was blood in her mouth and she realized it was because she’d just bitten through her lower lip.

  Okay. Steady on.

  She looked at the clock. She had to hurry.

  “You can do this,” she whispered to herself. “You don’t have a choice.”

  12:19 AM

  Back at it.

  Dead weight. Yes, whoever had coined that term had handled cold cuts like this. Because each arm was heavy, each leg filled with lead pellets. It was no easy bit wrapping them up, taping those obscene black plastic packages shut. But she did it—somehow, some way—her guts doing a slow and slithering crawl up the back of her throat the whole time. Then came the head. Breathing so hard she thought she might hyperventilate, Tara reached out with a hand that shook so badly it was practically whipping back and forth at the end of her wrist. She clenched her teeth and made to grab it by the hair… but as soon as she touched it, she flinched.

  A human head.

  This was a human head.

  “Do it,” she said. “Just do it.”

  Her teeth clenched so tightly she thought her jaw might break. Lisa reached out and grasped Margaret’s head by the hair. Jesus. The feel of it. Like a fistful of snakes. Worse, much worse. Even through the latex glove, she could feel the clotted blood in those gray locks. She gripped the hair, bunched it in her hand, and pulled the head out of the sink. The drying rack came with it because the bad man had not gently set Margaret’s head in there, but brought it down with force, spearing it on the jagged uprights that were meant to hold heavy plates and serving dishes in place.

  The head was heavy.

  The face was gray-white, spattered with dried blood that almost looked black. The eyes were open, glazed and staring. Gore had run from the contorted mouth and was smeared over the chin.

  Letting out an involuntary, almost savage-sounding cry, Tara yanked on the head with one hand while she gripped the drying rack with the other, twisting it violently side to side and nearly vomiting again when she saw that puddle of sticky blood in the sink and heard the fleshy, moist sounds the drying rack uprights made as they were pulled from the stump of the neck.

  She nearly threw it aside with a twitch of revulsion.

  But she held on and dropped it in a Hefty bag and tied it shut.

  Then the torso.

  12:39 AM

  Tara got an old rug from the garage that was bound for the dump and spread it out. The torso was heavy. The only way to get it on the rug was to roll it. She shoved and it flipped over, making a sticky, smacking sound as it came away from the slick congealed blood gluing it to the floor. It rolled over with a splatting/thudding/slapping sound. She got it on the rug and something black and fetid-smelling evacuated from its ass. Shit. The stink filled the kitchen and Tara nearly blacked out as it filled her nostrils, gassy and revolting.

  Quickly, she rolled up the body and tied the rug tight with twine.

  Trying not to think or feel, everything inside her tangled in loose knots, she threw the gloves into the garbage. Then she backed her car into the garage and spread plastic over the floor of the trunk. It took her about twenty minutes to load everything.

  1:15 AM

  Buckets and hot water, mop and Pine-Sol.

  She scrubbed and mopped, her buckets filled with a dirty pink water that soon became darker, clots of blood floating on the surface. Sobbing, whimpering, she went about it with whatever strength she still had left. She washed and washed and washed. She went over everything at least four times in her cleaning frenzy. Then she got rid of the water and rinsed out the mops and buckets in the stationary tub downstairs. All of this went into the car, too, because there was no way in hell she could have any of it lying around after what she’d used it for.

  You know what you’ve just done, don’t you? You’ve not only concealed a crime, you’ve covered his tracks. You’ve removed the physical evidence that the cops could have used to nail that animal. The DNA, everything… gone.

  You’ve been manipulated.

  She refused to think about such things.

  Though the kitchen smelled like a sharp, ammonia-laced pine forest, there was still a ghastly under-stink of meat and body fluids. She lit candles. Burned incense. Smoked cigarette after cigarette.

  Then she went in the bathroom and cleaned herself up.

  She did not look at herself in the mirror and mainly because she was afraid of what might be looking back. Because Tara knew one thing. One thing that was incontrovertible: she was not the same person now. She would never be the same person again. You could not go through a nightmare like this and remain unchanged. She had been… defiled, desecrated. Like something good and pure and warm and very human in her had been torn out by the roots, handled by dirty fingers, soiled and violated and rolled in shit, then stuffed back inside her. And she was feeling it, feeling the foulness of what was inside her now… the rancid filth that she could never, ever wash clean.

  I’ll get Lisa back, she thought. I’ll get my sister back and God help that sick sonofabitch who put her through this, put me through this.

  He’ll suffer.

  The pain he will know.

  And right then and right there, Tara knew this wasn’t some frustrated knee-jerk reaction, some half-baked vengeance fantasy that would never, ever happen. It was the real thing. The man who had taken her sister was going to die. And his death would be ugly beyond belief.

  Knowing she was capable of something like that almost scared her.

  Almost.

  1:41 AM

  About the time she was ready to leave, the phone rang.

  The sound of it sheared right through Tara, piercing her heart like an icy needle. So soon. He was already calling back.

  She snatched the cordless up. Her voice was flat, emotionless: “Yes?”

  “Hey, lady,” the party on the other end said. “You still up?”

  For one crazy, reeling moment, Tara could not honestly remember who that voi
ce belonged to. Her mind was filled with fuzzy images, all of them disjointed and terribly out-of-focus. Then it came. Steve. Steve Crews. It’s Steve, you idiot. Your boyfriend. She swallowed down something like fear and said quite calmly, “Steve. I was just going to bed.”

  “Well, now there’s an idea.”

  She froze. She wasn’t at all sure how to answer that. Sexual innuendo. Play the game. “That sounds nice. But I’m too tired. Busy, busy day.”

  “Poor thing. When will I ever see you again?”

  “Not until the end of the week. Maybe Friday.”

  He laughed. “That long. I’ll perish.”

  “Keep your chin up.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then: “Tara… are you okay? You sound kind of funny. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. Fine. Really fine.” She sighed, trying to relax. “Bad day. Busy week. I’m okay.”

  “Maybe I’ll sneak over one of these nights and—”

  “No! You can’t do that!”

  “Whoa, lady! I’m just goofing around.”

  She was breathing too hard and he must have heard her. “I’m sorry, Steve. It’s just that I-I-I-I-I’m a little on edge.” Had she just done that? Had she really stuttered like that? All this time she thought that was always bullshit when people did that in books and movies. But the syllables just kept coming, rapid fire. “I’ll make it up to you. I just need some sleep.”

  “Okay, I understand.” But it was in his voice that he didn’t understand at all. “You sure you wouldn’t like me to come over? Kick back with you?”

  “No. It’s late. I need to sleep. So do you.”

  “All right, Tara. See you.”

  He hung up before she could say another thing and maybe that was for the best. Her mind was rushing in too many directions at the same time, thoughts tripping over themselves. The line of communication between her brain and her voice had been badly disarranged. She knew then she could not count on herself to say what she was thinking or think about what she saying.