GRAVEWORM Read online

  Good God, nothing was making sense.

  She wondered if it ever would again.

  1:46 AM

  She breathed in and out very slowly, trying to keep her world from spinning out of control any worse than it already was.

  She saw Steve’s face in her mind and where once it had brought great joy, it now brought sorrow and pain. “I know I love you, Steve. I know you’d help me. You’d do anything for me and for Lisa. But I can’t take the chance of involving you. Of involving the police, the FBI. No one can do what has to be done now but me.”

  Knowing this, she pressed her face into her hands and then screamed as loud as she could.

  Hurry, Tara… the clock is running.

  17

  Steve tried to sleep after he talked to Tara, but it just wouldn’t come.

  He laid there, balled-up with tension, still hearing Tara’s voice. There was a strange undercurrent there he did not recognize and could not put a name to. He knew her plate was full with two jobs and trying to raise her kid sister. It was a lot for anyone. She was worn thin only she didn’t see it or wouldn’t see it and if you told her to slow down, she got pissed-off and Steve had been on the receiving end of that more than once.

  Maybe it was like she said.

  Maybe she was just tired, a little frazzled.

  Steve did not know. It made perfect sense, yet something about it simply did not wash and try as he might he could not leave it alone. The moon shined in the window. He listened to leaves blow up the sidewalk and wondered, wondered. There was something there. Something in her voice. And the after-effect of talking to her was like being amped-up on about two pots of very black, very strong coffee.

  It’s almost two in the morning, dummy. You shouldn’t have called her so late.

  No, he shouldn’t have. But he’d had the oddest sense of… disaster all night. He could not understand it or identify it. It was just there. Nagging at him.

  “It’s like she said,” he told himself again. “She’s tired. That’s all.”

  But it just didn’t sit right with him.

  He had been dating Tara going on two years now and in that time, besides falling in love and wanting very badly to marry her, he had learned to recognize her moods. He could sense them instinctively. That’s the way it got with couples, he knew. And that instinct was screaming in his head, telling him something was terribly wrong. On the phone she had sounded alternately depressed and edgy, drained and then almost giddy. Like her mind was so overloaded she was jumping emotional tracks pretty much at random. Not just moody peaks and valleys, but mountaintops and subterranean fissures. There had been something in her voice, something that alarmed him and he just could not get past it.

  You’re just thinking that because you’ve had a bad feeling all night. You’re slanting the evidence to support you paranoia.

  Yet… he didn’t honestly think so.

  Several times now, he had gotten dressed and made it to the door before he pulled back and went inside. And once he had made it all the way out to his car. Her voice had not only unsettled him, but confused him. Something was telling him he needed to go to her and something else was telling him that would be a very bad idea.

  She said she was tired.

  She wanted to be alone.

  They were not living together and Tara had firmly refused to discuss offers in that direction. But even though they were not under the same roof, their souls and minds along with their hearts had grown very close and they shared similar rhythms. They each understood when the other was needed and when the other needed to be given space. And Steve was getting vibes that told him to get over there without hesitation and others that told him to respect her privacy.

  What to do? What to do?

  His reasoning brain told him quite firmly to give her space, that if she asked him not to come over than he should do as she wished. But his emotional brain was sensing trouble and it demanded action.

  God, he loved her and she pissed him off to no end.

  Sometimes he wasn’t sure what he expected of her. Or of himself for that matter. But he guessed that he wanted her to relax, to quit making her life into such a fucking complex drama. He knew she had a lot going and Lisa wasn’t helping that much, but it was time to let down her hair and her defenses. He knew she cared about him, yet she refused to discuss marriage. The way he saw it, two people loved each other, they got married and lived together and that would set things right because two was always better than one, right? If they got married, she could quit fretting about her bills and quit one of her jobs or both for that matter. Steve was an accountant. A CPA. He made very good money. He wasn’t rich, but he was half-owner of an accounting firm and he pulled a very respectable salary that was, by Bitter Lake standards, pretty damn good.

  But she didn’t want to get married.

  She was haunted by the specter of her parent’s death and had taken the whole world upon her shoulders. She would provide. She would run the house. She would raise her sister. Because she really could do it all, just ask her, and if that transformed her into a moody, stressed-out bitch sometimes then people would just have to realize that it was their fault and not hers.

  But that was Tara.

  Once she got something in her head, you could not bend or sway her. She would juggle it all and get it done even if it meant physical and mental collapse.

  I do love you, Steve. You know I do. But the marriage thing will have to wait. Lisa’s at a very sensitive and emotional stage in her life. Her mom and dad died. She’s still dealing with it even if she won’t admit to it. The scars run deep. I think us getting married would make her think she’s secondary in my life and I can’t allow that. I can’t put more on her than she already has. And if that means sacrificing my happiness, then you better believe I’ll do it. And I’ll do it without a second thought.

  Tara.

  Jesus.

  She didn’t broke interference even if that interference was along the lines of a good old helping hand. She allowed Margaret Stapleton to come over and mind the store while she was working evenings, but even that concession had been hard-fought. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Lisa was drinking and smoking dope, on the fast track to go careening over the edge, Tara would never had even considered something like that.

  She’s my sister.

  She’s blood.

  My family and my problems and I’ll handle it.

  Obsessed? Fixated? Monomaniacal even? You bet. That was Tara. She was driven and if you got in her way she’d run you right over. The death of their parents had cut a wound in the fabric of the family and she would suture it up and stop the bleeding even if she had to use her own sanity as a clotting agent and her own body as a bandage.

  But how much could she take on before she broke her back from the weight and strained herself to the point of physical and mental collapse? Sometimes she got so frenzied, she was an emotional wreck. She seemed to see the person in the mirror not as an individual or a creature with its own needs but as a convenience, a tool needed to do a job and she’d keep at it until that tool lost its edge. And if that happened? What then? She had no real family to depend on, just an aunt and uncle in Milwaukee, a few cousins in Indiana. No support system. No friends. Didn’t have time for them. She barely had time for him.

  And if she crashed?

  What then?

  At least, if they were married, he could shoulder some of it and he had a sister here that would help. He could keep Tara on her feet before she wore those feet to nubs and fell face-first and couldn’t get up again.

  But what about now? Right now?

  There was pain or desperation in her voice and he had clearly heard it.

  Yet, she did not want him to come over and was that because she really didn’t or because being Tara, endlessly proud and self-reliant Tara, that she could not admit to her need of anyone or anything? Experience told him that when this girl said no, it meant no. Don’t bother trying to second-gu
ess her or hold her hand or protect her, let her come to the conclusion that she needed someone. If it was her idea, she wasn’t above admitting that she, like everyone else, could only do so much.

  “That woman, that woman,” Steve said under his breath.

  Don’t try and figure her.

  Just accept her.

  He knew that once she got rolling on something, she was positively neurotic in her devotion to the cause. Like her sister, for instance. But that also applied to just about everything. When he first met her at a business lunch with the Teamsters local, he had thought her very pretty, very sexy with her long brown hair and big blue eyes. She was long-limbed and capable, her eyes so intense sometimes you just had to look away so her gaze didn’t drill a hole right through you.

  Steve had been interested.

  But more than a little intimidated.

  He’d heard through the grapevine that she was seeing another guy, Frank Duvall, a guy nearly twenty years her senior who was a building contractor. Steve figured that was that. He knew not to try and steal women away from other men. That was a good way to get your ass kicked or your tires slit. So he had left it alone.

  But Tara hadn’t.

  Over the next five or six weeks, she had pursued him relentlessly. Called him. Invited him to dinner. Sent him cards. Showed up at the office. She was smitten and nothing was going to stand in her way. That’s how they had hooked-up and how Frank Duvall had been kicked to the curb. Frank still glared at Steve, but he was adult enough not to take it beyond that. Something Steve was grateful for because Frank, though middle-aged with a paunch, was rugged from a life of hard work outdoors and he had a set of guns on him like a weight-lifter.

  Now for two years they had been in the same holding pattern.

  When they were together, Tara devoted herself entirely to him, whether that was a relaxing conversation out on the patio or a meal she was whipping up for him or some especially wild sex in the bedroom. But those dates were sometimes weekly and very often only two or three times a month.

  The rest of the time… Tara’s jobs, the house, and Lisa, Lisa, Lisa.

  Steve liked Lisa and being an average snotty little teenage girl, she tolerated him, but was not exactly friendly. It was an act. Something teenage girls seemed to carry in their genes, apparently. Some annoying defensive mechanism perhaps. But now and again, Lisa would thaw and act almost like a normal human being. Steve knew if they lived under the same roof, though, that it would change.

  Because he thought Lisa wanted to like him.

  But her older sister was standing in the way.

  Laying there, all of it rolling through his mind while he tried to sort out not only his life and Tara’s but what was going on with her now, he had to wonder if maybe she had reached the breaking point and he should be ready to catch her when she fell.

  Yet, he felt it was more than that.

  Something he could not understand or recognize was driving her.

  No, he would not go over there. At least not tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Then he would find out what this was about, one way or another. With that, he let himself unwind and go to sleep. A sleep plagued by dreams in which Tara kept running from him, heading toward the brink of some nameless abyssal pit.

  It was probably a good thing he didn’t go over to the Coombes’ house.

  Because he wouldn’t have liked what he found.

  But at the same time, by not going, he was not only betraying his love for Tara but betraying himself. By ignoring those deep-seated instincts that waged war within him, he was leaving Tara alone and vulnerable when she needed him most.

  And something in him knew it.

  18

  2:11 AM

  The clock was running…

  When Tara had the hole dug deep in the clearing beside a dirt road well outside Bitter Lake, she carried her packages from the trunk of her little Dodge Stratus and dumped them in. The rug with the torso in it was a little more work, of course. As the crickets sang and night birds called in the starry sky above, she pulled it out and let it fall to the grass. It made a heavy, solid sort of plopping sound that made her skin go cold.

  After that, she had to lean against the car and catch her breath. And not because of exertion.

  2:17 AM

  She steeled herself and gripped the rug by the knotted twine and dragged it over the ground to the hole and then, very unceremoniously, pushed it in. And it hurt. Not the strain of it all, of everything she had done this night, though her limbs were heavy and her back aching… no, this was a psychological pain that somehow manifested itself physically. Inside her chest, inside her pumping heart, she hurt. Hurt because here she was dumping the butchered remains of Margaret Stapleton into an unmarked grave in the woods. Margaret. Dear, sweet, old fashioned, no-nonsense, heart-big-as-the moon Margaret. Laying her to rest without so much as a prayer or a goodbye wish.

  There was something almost criminal about that.

  2:34 AM

  Tara filled the grave in, patted it down, kicked leaves and sticks and loam over the spot so it would look undisturbed. Then she went back to the car, tossing the shovel in the trunk and wiping the black dirt of the grave from her hands. She stood there and smoked a cigarette, trying to feel something, but was only aware of that chill emptiness within.

  We’re going to play a game, Tara.

  A game.

  That’s what this was. Like a college frat hazing. A secret society with secret rules.

  “I’m going to get you out of this, Lisa,” she said. “Somehow, some way, I’ll get you out.”

  It was a good thought and one that filled her with a reassuring strength, but it was not enough to think such things. She must believe them. And in believing them, make them a reality. Somehow she had to get to Lisa, had to find her and set her free from this madman. Even if it meant sacrificing herself, even if it meant—

  “Shit.”

  A car.

  2:37 AM

  The lights came sweeping up the road in the distance.

  Panic jumped in Tara’s belly.

  She dashed behind the cover of some trees and dove into the grass. The police. That’s what she was worried about. She had just buried a body and if they found her now, started asking all the wrong questions, she didn’t honestly think she could lie.

  The car came up the dirt road.

  Its lights flashed over her hiding spot.

  They found her Stratus.

  The car slowed. Tara’s belly was filled with light, feathery things.

  Then the car sped up and was gone, navigating a turn in the distance. She listened to the sound of it vanishing and the night crept back, covering her, coveting her cheek to jowl and she felt at one with it. The sound of the breeze in the trees. The foraging nocturnal things. Even the leggy creature which moved across the back of her hand. She could smell the earth, black and rich and forever. She wanted to press her face into the leaves, to taste them.

  The threat had passed.

  2:39 AM

  She crab-crawled to her car, and felt that emptiness inside her begin to fill with something else. Something primordial almost. Some instinctive thing that told her in no uncertain terms that it was capable of doing the job at hand.

  Of finding Lisa.

  And killing her kidnapper.

  19

  He had her now.

  He had her the way he wanted her.

  Right there on the dirt floor of the cellar. He had her spread-eagle, naked, and he was pushing himself into her and liking the cold feel of her flesh, how she did not move, how she accepted his mastery of her like something dry and dead that had no choice. Her dirty blouse was thrown up around her shoulders and he was licking her white throat, her shoulders, then biting them. Not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to bring pain. His hands were gripping the pale mounds of her ass as he thrust himself into her, biting her, nibbling her, showing her the pain and loving the fact that she still did not move. That her eyes
were wide open, dark and glassy, staring sightlessly.

  (that’s it, henry: it’s the only way to discipline a cunt good and proper they understand nothing less)

  He pushed into her harder and harder. She smelled of dirt and oblong boxes, nighted and breathless places where there was only the scratch of the rat and the fleshy caress of the worm. Yes-yes-yes, she did not move and her skin was so cold and it was more than he could take, he couldn’t hold back his excitement any longer…

  (harder, henry, HARDER)

  (mother… oh… please)

  Jesus.

  He emptied himself into her and lay panting atop her, sweat dripping from his face and his tongue lolling from his mouth in the sweet aftermath of it all.

  Finally she blinked, pressing her hips against his own. “I am so pretty, Henry. Such a pretty little thing.”

  “Yes,” Henry said. “Yes.”

  “Where is my friend? Where did you put my pretty friend?”

  “She’s in a safe place, Worm. You remember.”

  “Go get her and bring her here,” she said. “I want to play with her.”

  “I will. But you have to promise me you won’t do bad things to her. Not yet.”

  “I won’t, Henry. I like to do what you say.”

  “That’s a good girl.”

  (because if she doesn’t, henry, she’ll need discipline)

  “Henry… when can I be buried in the box? I like to be buried in the box.”

  “Soon, Worm. Soon.”

  “Okay, Henry.”

  With that, she closed her dark eyes and dreamed of entombment, of narrow boxes and rotting satin and crawling, feeding things far, far below.