“I love you,” he squeaked. “Please don’t watch.”
His mother stared at him. “I love you!” she sobbed, and she threw her arms around him, squeezing him tight. Some of the tears escaped the membranes at the top of Evan’s cheeks and dripped down onto her head. She kissed him on the head and, with one last squeeze, ran shaking from the room. She slammed the door behind her, and Evan heard her drop down on the other side, shaking the door frame with her sobs.
Twelve
EVAN TRIED AGAIN to move his head, but it was still stuck to his chest. A few tears were trapped between the membrane and his skin, or what was once skin, and they tickled him. He flexed his cheeks to move them, but they wouldn’t go.
His organs twisted and heaved, sliding around his body and tearing the tissue as they slid. They had shifted slowly over the years, so that Evan was not sure where his liver, kidneys, or stomach were. His heart was near the center of his chest now, and his lungs . . . he had no idea where they were. He seemed to be breathing from his whole body at once.
He tried to scream in pain, but his mouth was nearly pulled shut, and nothing but a hum came out. He jumped like a suffocating fish, flopping on the bed, reaching his hands toward the cracked ceiling. But a force greater than Evan’s pulled them down again and wrapped them to his flopping body.
All at once, the membranes beneath his chin softened and his head popped back from his chest. He was staring at the ceiling, but the picture was distorted through the growing membranes. They covered all of his face and were thick over his eyes. As soon as they had let his head up, they reworked themselves and extended from his chin to meet the membranes that grew quickly up his neck. As they met, he was immobilized again, like a long, stiff Popsicle stick.
His hearing suddenly became much more acute. He heard his mother sobbing from behind the door so loudly that she might have been right next to him, sobbing into a megaphone next to his ear. He tried to cry out again, but his mouth was still too tightly shut. The rustle of his sheets as he tossed and twisted was as loud as the banging of hundred-foot sails in a storm.
He would have covered his ears, but his arms were pinned, and the sound seemed to come into everywhere at once, ringing his toes as much as his head.
Then all the membranes on his body tightened. They wrapped and squeezed, and Evan flopped and tugged, but it was useless. He was stuck, folded in a little, now more like a banana than a Popsicle, staring up blurrily at the light fixture that was now a gaping hole. He wondered if Foul was up there in the darkness, looking back at him, salivating. He tried to close his eyes to keep from looking up, but they wouldn’t close. The membranes squeezed even tighter, and his whole body gasped for air. He sucked with his nose, but nothing came in through the mask. His blurry eyes got blurrier, and then, for a second, it all went black.
He came to with a deep breath. Like the sound, the air seemed to come in from all over, as though his whole body was a lung. He struggled to move, and instead of pushing against membranes so tight it was useless, he flew up with his effort and fell right off the bed, landing on where his nose should have been. But instead of a nose, he felt a flatness, and instead of a throbbing pain from falling, he felt as if he had landed face-first on a cushion.
He moved his arms forward to push himself up, and they came easily. He pressed what should have been his hands against the floor. They were nubs without fingers, but when he pushed with them, they held his weight. He rolled back on his now- kneeless legs, until he was sitting upright, legs folded under him like rubber tubes.
He rolled curiously back and forth, but there was no pain at all, only a slight rubbing sensation. No pain at all!
He looked down at himself. His vision was clear now. Clearer than it had ever been. He had grown used to things being a little blurry. They had blurred a little more each year since he was too young to remember. But now, even in the dim light, he could see with perfect sharpness. It seemed much lighter in the room now. He saw shadows where he had never seen them before. Edges where there had been only shapes.
He saw his own arms, pink like the creature’s, covered in the yellowed membrane. But the membrane no longer held him. It moved and stretched, just like his skin had. He lifted his arms and made a circle with them. They were easy to lift and did just as he asked.
Evan sprang up, pushing easily off his new nub legs, his heart starting to sing. He could move again! He could see! His legs held him with no trouble. He kicked one out in front of him and then the other. They moved so well!
He could still hear his mother’s now-quieter crying from behind the door. What should he do? Should he call out to her, tell her he would be all right, that he was better now? Or should he leave her, not let her see him? Would seeing him frighten her more than his death?
“Mom!” he said finally, pressing his face against the door.
“Evan?”
He heard her standing, swallowing a last faint sniff. Evan was aware that his voice sounded different, more rough, and lower. He wondered if he would sometimes growl and sometimes hiss, just like the others.
“Yes, it’s me! Please don’t come in. It will be too horrible, I know it will. It was for me when I first saw one.” He heard the doorknob turn, just a little, as though she couldn’t think of what to do.
“Mom, I look awful. You’ll be disgusted. But I’m all right. I can move again! I’m up out of bed.” He heard her sob at this, but with relief.
“Oh, honey,” she sobbed. “I don’t care how you look. Of course I don’t care. You’re still my baby, no matter what you look like!”
Evan pushed his body against the door with all his strength. He was much stronger than he had been an hour ago, but he was not sure how strong.
“I care!” he cried. “I care!”
“Oh, honey, you can really move?” She sounded happy. And Evan was happy too. To be walking around and out of bed, no matter what he looked like.
“Mom, I have to go away for a while. I have to go with them.” As he said it, he heard the doorknob from the bathroom turning. Instinctively, fear rose inside him. He tried to keep it out of his voice. “I have to go away because I made a promise. And I have to learn how to live like this. I don’t think I can survive here.”
He heard her crying softly.
“Baby, just promise you’ll come back!” she cried.
“I will, Mom. I’ll come visit if I can. But I don’t know when that will be. It might be weeks, or years. You can’t wait around and worry about me.”
He heard the hissing of the worm’s nubs sliding across the floorboards toward him. It was much louder than it had been before. He turned slightly to look at it.
It was grinning, its fangs showing deep inside its wrinkled hole.
Evan pressed his new lips together, felt the wrinkled top rub across the wrinkled bottom. The unnatural roundness of them, like a smiley face looking surprised. And inside, deep inside, he could feel his strangely thin tongue press into his own fangs. He looked into the creature’s lidless, pale eyes.
“I love you, Mom. It’s just goodbye for now.” Evan turned all the way around and looked at the thing. “Okay!” he said to it. Why did it have to sneak up on him, crowd him, rush him from saying goodbye?
But as soon as he let go of the door, it opened, and his mother was standing there, her hair totally falling out of her bun now, covered in tears, staring down at the two hideous creatures.
She screamed.
The thing grabbed Evan’s body with both arms and started pulling.
“Mom, it’s me!” Evan cried. “Don’t be afraid!”
His mother rushed forward and threw her arms around him. Evan put his nubs around her as far as they would go. He came up only to her waist now.
The creature tugged, ripping him backward, out of his mother’s arms.
She fell forward onto her hands, struggled to push herself up.
“Mom!” Evan tried to wrench himself free, but the creature was too strong. He was hur
tling away from her, nubs just off the ground, helpless. “Mom!”
The creature’s nubs scraped against the wood. The air whooshed by Evan’s ears. The thing jerked Evan toward the bathroom. It pushed Evan inside. Then it dropped him, and before Evan could do anything, it slammed the door behind him with a bang.
The creature reached up and enveloped the doorknob with the end of its handless arm, turning the lock. “You must leave her behind now,” it rasped.
“I can hear her crying.” It was too loud. He wanted to cry too, but his eyes were as dry as paper. He didn’t seem to have any tears.
“Don’t worry, proem,” said the thing. “You will forget.”
“I won’t—”
“You have tried our patience, new one,” it interrupted. Its voice was even stranger, even more cold. It pushed up close to him, its sunken white eyes exactly on his level now.
“What do you mean?” asked Evan, looking around him. Was there any other way out? It was just a normal bathroom, with one tiny window, now boarded up. He’d never known how the worm got in—he hadn’t wanted to know.
His mother was still crying. She was trying to turn the doorknob. How could he make it stop?
“One child. In a whole long day.”
A chill like drops of ice water ran down Evan’s back. “It was all I could do,” he stammered, knowing it wasn’t. Knowing he had quit, and they must know it.
His mother banged on the door. “Evan! Evan!”
“You have disappointed us,” it said, almost a growl now. “We are your family. Your protection.” Its arm rested on Evan’s back. He felt a strange, rough coldness when the membranes touched.
“I did what you asked and I’m not doing what they asked,” Evan growled back, pressing forward, away from its nasty arm. “That should be enough for you.” He moved to the side, tried to squeeze around it, but it pushed him backward, toward the bathtub.
Its mouth pressed all together from all sides, into one tiny little point.
“How do you plan to get out of here?” Evan blurted, unable to contain the question.
“We go down the drain,” it said. It had pushed Evan all the way against the tub now.
“Evan!” cried his mother. She threw herself against the door. Bang. Bang. She was never going to give up. She loved him more than anyone else in the world. Maybe she was the only person who loved him.
But Evan couldn’t forget Foul’s threat. He had to go, or they were going to eat her! How could he protect her if he didn’t go? Whatever was waiting for him, it couldn’t be worse than what would happen if he didn’t. “Down the drain?” he asked. It came out as a whisper.
“You are not a human anymore,” it growled, bringing its nub down on the bathtub edge. “Stop thinking like they think.” It thrust one of its legs behind Evan’s and kicked upward, knocking Evan backward into the tub.
Evan folded up over his middle, but it didn’t hurt at all. It was like his insides were made of jelly now. He pushed against the tub, tried to get himself upright, but slipped and fell into a ball.
His mother was cranking the knob again. Now her voice was softer, but she was still saying his name.
“You first, new one.” The worm’s mouth opened again into a grin, and its nub reached out, pointing to the drain. “I am not leaving you here.”
“Stop calling me ‘new one’,” Evan whispered. He didn’t want his mom to hear this. “My name’s Evan. My mom knows my name. She cares about me and you don’t.” I’m so sorry, Mom, he thought. I have to go.
The creature closed its mouth again. It let out a long wheezing noise that seemed to come from all its pores. “My name is Olen,” it said. “You will get a name too, once you come home. Once the others know you can be trusted. You will not be a new one.” It sighed again. “But we don’t go by our human names. You must forget it.”
Evan gaped. He was sure his brand-new fangs were showing. It was the first time the creature had admitted that it had once been human. All this time, Evan had wondered if it was really true, if they had all been human at some point, just like him.
“Yes, we are like you. And you are like us,” it said.
The creature was still ugly. It—he?—was still cold and creepy and wished him ill. But now he had a name. Now Evan knew this thing had once been like him, although maybe very long ago. He started to calm down a little, to stare at the drain in the bathtub. The stopper was already out. Olen must have moved it when he’d come up. It was so small.
“What do I do?” he whispered. “Mom, I’m okay! I’ll come back, I promise!” he called to her.
“I love you,” she answered. She had stopped cranking the knob. He could hear her labored breathing, the quiet tap of her hand as she pressed it against the door.
“I love you, too,” he called.
Olen’s wrinkled hole-for-a-mouth pinched. “You put your legs together, and then you put your arms against your body,” he said, his voice edged with malice again. As he demonstrated, he seemed to melt all together into one tube, like he really was a giant worm. “Then you slide over the hole and travel down.” He shook a little, and his arms and legs popped out again.
“Where do I come out?” Evan asked. He thought it was a reasonable question, but the worm’s face wrinkled in anger.
“Enough questions! We should have been back home already!” Olen clambered over the side of the tub and wrapped an arm around Evan’s, pulling him up. “Can’t you grip the tub, new one? Did you get Higger slime for membrane?”
“What?” Evan felt the bottom of the tub with his leg stumps. His legs grated against the surface. They were gripping it somehow. He took a step, then another, until he was standing just above the drain, one nub on either side. He turned himself around to face Olen.
Olen nodded. Though he had no chin, his body bent a few inches below his mouth.
Evan laid his arms against his body, felt them sink into his side. He clamped his legs together, and they stuck and melded. He wanted to cry out, scared of being immobile again, but he choked it back. He tried to close his eyes, but he had no lids. They stayed open, staring at Olen’s ugly face. He slid backward and let himself begin to fall.
Thirteen
INSTINCTIVELY, HE PRESSED his now-soft body against the sides of the pipes, twisting and turning so he would slide. Down through the house and under the ground, he felt his location compared with the surface as he had once felt his feet when compared with his face.
He slowed as the pipe leveled under the surface and dropped him out into a larger pipe, legs first. His body expanded quickly, but with no pain. He slid into the sewage, aware that he should be screaming, disgusted, madly wiping the stuff off. But he realized he couldn’t smell it. Did he have any sense of smell at all? He rolled up until he was standing, never thinking about what to do or how to do it. He was able to stand up straight. The top of the pipe was nearly a foot above his new, short head.
Olen dropped out of the pipe a second later, landing squarely on his legs. He looked at Evan and smiled.
“Rough landing, new one?” he chortled.
“You smell like you’ve had a few,” said Evan. “And why can’t I smell anything now?”
“You hear very well, don’t you?” Olen asked. He slid by Evan and along the bottom of the pipe, oblivious to the liquid goop that rose up nearly to his middle.
Evan couldn’t argue with that, and he wouldn’t miss the smells down here. He shuffled after Olen, amazed at how easily he moved. The liquid seemed to fall off of him without making him wet. As they went he checked his bearings, trying to figure out what direction they were going in.
Olen must have seen him looking back. “Hoping to find your way home again?” he said with a mean laugh.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Evan answered, figuring there was no point in denying it. “My mother has seen me already, and I promised her I’d come back. There’s no law against it, is there?” Evan stared back at where they had come from. They had just rounded a cor
ner, and there were smaller pipes on either side just after it, each dropping a small waterfall of greenish liquid into the stream they were walking through. There had been no major forks, but still Evan felt hopelessly lost. The sewer was so strange and foreign.
“No law against it. We don’t have laws,” said Olen. “But you will not want to go up there if you can help it.”
Evan turned back to look at him. Their sunken white eyes met. Olen’s glowed a little.
“Was it hard for you to come up and see me?” Evan asked. It was the first time it had occurred to him that tormenting him might have been a chore for Olen.
“I did it for the clan,” he said. His voice was more growly than ever. “You are part of the clan now. You are a Wuftoom. Now you will hate being aboveground as much as I do.”
I love being aboveground, he thought. I love my mother. But he said nothing.
Olen turned and slid on, sloshing more than before.
For the first time, Evan realized that it was dark down here, so dark that as a human he would have stumbled and moved slowly, grasping at the walls. As it was, he saw the passage clearly, although the tint of everything was slightly green. Without thinking, he rushed after Olen, the liquid still sliding off him harmlessly.
Evan wondered if he could ever like being like this. At that moment he hoped he would. Life would be so much better if he could only like it and not want to go back. “So you like it now? Being a worm?” he asked.
Olen whirled around on him, churning the water. “I am not a worm!” he growled. Evan stepped backward, but Olen closed in. “We are Wuftoom! We are the strongest in the dark places. We are the smartest and the longest lived. Long after the rest have been destroyed and the trees have withered into ashes, we will still be here.”
Evan shrank back farther in the face of Olen’s wide-open mouth and sharp, pitiless fangs. “What about the bugs?” he stammered.
“They are numerous,” Olen spat. The spittle hit Evan’s cheek and slid down, but it rolled off him like the water.
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