by Nick Cutter
Kent didn’t seem to mind. His eyes darted, charting the course of those milling bugs.
Newton said: “We’ll come get you soon!”
Kent’s head swiveled. A mechanical motion, like a toy abandoned in the rain. Lightning creased the sky and seemed to penetrate his flesh, igniting his bones in skeletal relief. His lips split in a grin that sent gooseflesh up the nape of Max’s neck.
An earwig squirmed round the cup of Kent’s ear, tracked across his face, and hung like a squirming fat raindrop from the boy’s lower lip.
“Kent,” Max breathed, horror twining up his spine like a weed. “There’s a . . .”
Kent’s tongue snaked between his teeth, curled lovingly around the earwig, and drew it into his mouth. His eyes never left theirs.
22
WHEN EPHRAIM was eight, his mother took him to visit the mausoleum where his grandmother was kept. He remembered feeling slightly curious beforehand. Back then, Ephraim still held a healthy curiosity about death.
He remembered the thin acrid smell that had attended their entrance into the granite rostrum. The sterilized smell of death. It wasn’t the flyblown battlefield reek with its sweetness that was kissing cousin to a truly good smell—barbecued pork, maybe—a sensual similarity that made it all the more sickening. This was sanitized and tolerable. An ammoniac mothball smell overlying subtle decay.
Ephraim caught that same pungent smell as he’d crept down the cabin’s cellar steps. His heart made a giddy leap—what had died down here?
Ephraim had watched as Max and Newton guided Kent behind the cabin, wind snapping their clothes against their frames like flags flapping on a pole. A thin needle of regret had lanced through his heart. He’d argued with Max about abandoning Kent—and they never argued. Rage had pounded at Ephraim’s temples as his neck flushed with heat. No fists had been swung, but it’d been a fight all the same.
That bothered and confused him. Ephraim possessed a keen sense of fairness. He’d inherited that from his father; the only phrase he could ever recall him saying was: You pay what you owe. And his dad was paying now, in prison. Kent had earned his ills, hadn’t he? He needed to pay what he owed.
But where did that leave Ephraim now? In a cellar with Shelley Longpre—the last alignment he’d ever seek.
He pulled the doors shut, latching them from the inside. The wind and rain roared and bashed the cabin above. The swaybacked steps groaned under his feet. Long, straggly tendrils trailed lightly across Ephraim’s face: they felt like the dangling, unnaturally long limbs of a daddy longlegs spider.
He lit one of the candles he’d scavenged. It illuminated Shelley’s face—his skin seemed to radiate a light all its own, a greasy luminescence as if glowworms were stitched under it. Shadows, made misshapen and monstrous by the wavering candlelight, scurried along the cellar walls. The root systems of trees and plants dangled down from the roof.
Ephraim walked the perimeter. Empty, barren. A musty boat tarp was heaped in one corner. The heap seemed to expand and contract in the fitful light.
“Sit down, Eef.”
Shelley sat cross-legged on the dirt. With his long limbs folded, knees and elbows kinked, he looked vaguely insectile, like a potato bug curled into a protective ball, only its gray exoskeleton showing . . . or one of those cockroaches that would scuttle up the drains during island storms—the ones that hissed when you squashed them.
“Nah, I’m good.”
“You were right,” Shelley said. “About Kent. He deserved it. He brought it down on himself.”
Something unshackled in Ephraim’s chest. He didn’t hate Kent—it was a question of fairness, was all. You pay what you owe.
“Max will understand,” Shelley said softly. “Even Newton. Before long they’ll see how right you were.”
There was something oddly narcotic about Shelley’s monotone drawl. Ephraim felt sluggish and just a bit queasy—that happy-sick feeling he got in his belly after riding the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Montague Fair.
“Come,” Shelley patted the dirt. “Sit.”
It seemed less a request, more a subtle directive. Ephraim sat. Shelley’s body kicked off ambient warmth, moist and weirdly salty like the air wafting from the mouth of a volcanic sea cave. He slid one pale, whiplike arm over Ephraim’s shoulder—an oily, frictionless, hairless appendage slipping across, smooth and dense like a heavy rubber hose. His fingers thrummed on Ephraim’s bare flesh; Ephraim wanted to brush them away, their tacky warmth making him mildly revolted, but that narcotic sluggishness prevented him from doing so. Shelley’s arm constricted just a little—he was stronger than he looked—pulling Ephraim close.
“You’re in charge now, Eef. Isn’t that just awesome? That’s how it should’ve been all along, isn’t it?”
“I don’t . . . don’t really care about that.”
Shelley smiled—a knowing expression. “Sure you don’t.”
“I don’t. Sincerely.” Rage crept up Ephraim’s throat, burning like bile. “Shut your fucking mouth, Shel.”
Shelley’s smile persisted. The edgeless grin of a moron. His teeth were tiny—Ephraim had never noticed before. Like niblet corn. Bands of yellow crust rimmed each tooth. Did Shelley ever brush his teeth? Did something like Shelley even think about stuff like that?
Something like Shelley? Ephraim thought. Someone, I mean. Someone.
“Relax, Eef. I’m on your side.”
Where the hell were Max and Newt? Ephraim wished like hell they were here now; anything was better than being cooped up
(trapped?)
in this dank cellar with Shelley. Lightning flashed, igniting the slit where the cellar doors met in camera-flash incandescence. Thunder boomed with such force that it seemed to bulge the planks overhead, rattling Ephraim’s heart in its fragile cage of bone.
“Jesus, Eef . . .”
Shelley was staring at Ephraim—at his hands.
“What?”
Shelley’s arm slid off Ephraim’s shoulder. He leaned away, swallowing hard, his eyes riveted on Ephraim’s hands. His torn, bloody hands.
“What the hell are you looking at, Shel?”
“Nothing. It’s . . . no, it’s nothing.”
Ephraim’s arm shot out, snatching Shelley’s collar. Shelley issued a mewling noise of disgust, heels digging into the dirt as he propelled himself away. He knocked the candle over, snuffing it.
“Your fingernails!” he said—a blubbery, spittle-flecked shriek. “I think I saw something moving under your fingernails, Eef.”
Ephraim’s hand fell away from Shelley’s collar, his fingers knitting into a ball under his trembling chin. The darkness closed in, strangling, suffocating, squeezing the air from his lungs. The skin under his fingernails—skin he’d never even considered as a discrete part of his body—buzzed at a hellish new frequency.
“Wh-what did you see?”
“Something,” was all Shelley would say. “. . . something.”
Next fists were pounding on the cellar doors. “Eef! Open up, man!”
Ephraim tried to stand. He couldn’t. The strength had fled his body. He curled into a ball, knees drawn tight to his stomach.
“Eef!”
Shelley hesitated for a long moment before mounting the cellar stairs. Newt and Max came down, windblown and dripping wet. Ephraim’s heart swelled at the sight.
“You okay?” Max said.
Yes, Ephraim thought, shivering with cold anger. It’s nothing. Not a goddamn thing at all. Fuckin’ Shel. I’ll kill him.
“It was nothing, Eef,” Shel said, grinning greasily in the dark. “I was wrong, probably.”
Newt said, “Wrong about what?”
“Nothing!” Eef shouted—and in the next instant there came a ripping and rending crash as the big oak cracked almost directly above them. The splintering mash of wood as the tree crashed through the cabin roof. BOOM! The air inside the cellar seemed to condense and turn to cold lead in the boys’ lungs. The tree struck the floor with a
terrible impact and bounced once. The cellar roof splintered—shafts of cold light streamed through the shattered slats. Next it bulged down threateningly.
“Oh God,” Max said. “The Scoutmaster . . .”
Uncertainty flickered on the boys’ faces. As the rain and wind hit a momentary lull, they could hear Kent outside at the cellar doors.
“Please—please!” he begged, the words coming out in hysterical yelps. He scratched on the doors like a dog pleading to come inside on a cold night.
Ephraim caught Max’s eye, holding it. No words were spoken. Finally Ephraim bowed his head, blew at the hanging fringe of his hair, and tromped determinedly up the steps. The fear in his heart morphed into something else, at least temporarily—a breed of unflexing resolve. It seemed the best, perhaps only way to keep a lid on his terror.
He unlatched the door and threw it open. Rain arrowed through the entryway. Lightning lit the planes of Kent’s twitching, horrible face.
“Get in,” Ephraim said. “But you have to sit away from us. I’m sorry.”
Kent nodded pathetically and dragged himself to the corner with the boat tarp, pulling it over him. Max caught Ephraim looking at Kent’s wounds, then at his own split knuckles. It wasn’t hard to guess what he was thinking.
* * *
From the sworn testimony of Nathan Erikson, given before the Federal Investigatory Board in connection with the events occurring on Falstaff Island, Prince Edward Island:
Q: Let’s clarify for the record just what we’re talking about. You were working on a diet supplement?
A: It was to be a pill. That’s the grail, right? A pill you can pop before bed. A little white pill. That was the idea.
Q: And this pill would be made of . . . ?
A: Compressed dextrose. You know those candy hearts you get on Valentine’s Day? Same stuff. Basically it’s sugar pressed into a mold using pneumatic pressure.
Q: You mean a placebo?
A: Sugar pills are the classic test of the placebo effect—but no, these were fully loaded.
Q: Why a sugar pill, then?
A: Any delivery system would work—why not go with something sweet? Fact is, the mutagenic strain of the hydatid worm developed by Dr. Edgerton was incredibly hardy. They could have been packed into a dextrose pill and shot into space. If a creature with a humanlike digestive system were to find those pills floating out in space a thousand years later and swallow them, those worms would hatch and thrive. Nothing beats a worm in terms of survivability.
Q: So these worms were packed into a candy pill—
A: The eggs were. Freeze-dried, like the Sea Monkeys kids used to buy in the back pages of old G.I. Joe comics. The dormant-state eggs would become larvae and later full-stage hydatids.
Q: And the expectation was that people would be desperate enough to consume these pills to lose weight? That was what Dr. Edgerton and his silent partner–slash–bankroller pharmacy concern expected?
A: People are already desperate enough. You’ve never heard of the tapeworm diet? You’ve got people eating tainted beef to give themselves worms. It’s not nearly as uncommon as you’d think—it’s illegal in North America, sure, but Mexican diet clinics are doing a brisk business.
Q: What made your method a better option?
A: A beef tapeworm is a great diet aid . . . if it stays in your gut. Problem is, tapeworms are wanderers. They go on walkabout inside your body. They’ll swim out of your intestines—or needle through your intestinal wall—and encyst in your liver or brain or eyes or spinal cord. An encysted worm in your brain shows up the same as a tumor on a CAT scan. It can do the same level of damage, too. But the modified hydatid we were working on would be corralled in the host’s intestines. Like those electric fences cattle ranchers use to keep their cows in their fields. Dr. Edgerton was working on reconstructing the worm’s basic DNA sequence so that it would die as soon as it perforated the intestinal wall. It was a matter of weakening its natural immunities, making it more susceptible to white blood cell attack. White blood plasma would eat through Dr. Edgerton’s worms like acid. Anyway, that was the idea.
Q: And when a person reaches his target weight?
A: An oral antibiotic flushes out the worm colony in a matter of days. The two-pill solution, we’d bill it. One pill to give you worms, the other to flush them out.
Q: And in between?
A: You’d lose those troublesome pounds.
Q: But the worm you helped Dr. Edgerton develop didn’t act according to plan, did it?
A: I’d say that is somewhat of an understatement.
* * *
23
IN TIME, the wind died down. The storm blew out to the northern sea. Water dripped all around them; it seemed terribly loud, each drop producing a watery echo. The boys huddled, shivering and soaked, in the cellar—all except Kent, who sat in isolation under the tarp.
“We ought to check on the Scoutmaster,” Newton said.
Ephraim nodded. “Kent, you stay here.”
Kent’s face was wan and ghoulish above the burlap. It looked like the wooden face of Zoltar, that mechanical sideshow oracle at the Cavendish County Fair: 25 cents to know your future! Things were stuck in his braces, too . . . insect parts? Yes. Thoraxes and legs and antennae bristled from his mouth-metal. He was gnawing on the moldy tarp. Working the frayed edge like an old man gumming a carrot. A faraway look in his eyes—he could have been contemplating a lovely sunset.
“Okay,” he said. “I kinda like it down here, anyway.”
“You okay, K?” Newton asked, repulsion lying heavy in his gorge.
“Sure.” A death’s-head grin. “Never better.”
A collective unease enveloped the boys—even Shelley. How long had it been? Less than twelve hours. Half a day ago, Kent Jenks had been one of them. The biggest and strongest of them all. The boy everyone in North Point forecasted great things for. Now here he was, curled in a cellar, insects gummed in his teeth, gnawing mindlessly on a tarp. Reduced and squandered in some nasty, terrifying, unquantifiable way. Whatever was wrong with him, this sickness, it was rampaging. Barnstorming through his body, devouring him. Newton sensed this: that Kent was being eaten from the inside out, his flesh loosening by degrees, the meat flensed from his bones as his body shrunk inside his skin until . . . until what? This sickness cared nothing for Kent—for the man he could’ve become, for the bright future that seemed so assured. It was coring him out, ruining him in unfixable ways.
They left him down there. Ephraim shut the doors and jammed a stick between the handles so Kent couldn’t escape.
THE ISLAND was still in the passing of the storm.
As they’d heard from the cellar, the huge oak—one of only five or six truly big trees on Falstaff Island—had snapped, falling upon the cabin’s interlaced log walls. The spot where it had broken looked like the butt of a trick cigar: splinters of wood stuck out of the trunk at crazy angles, perfuming the air with sap.
They inhaled the peculiar scent of the earth after a storm while surveying the cabin. The roof was cleaved in half, sagging inward like a huge toothless mouth. The door hung off its shattered hinges. Ephraim hauled it open. His gaze fell to scrutinize his fingernails. He shot a look at Shelley—who caught his eyes and held them evenly.
“Careful as we go inside,” Ephraim said, sounding very much like Kent. “Cover your mouths like before.”
The roof had collapsed in a solid flap that resembled a wave set to break. The boys walked through a corridor of shadow created by the fallen roof and found Scoutmaster Tim in the splintered remains of the closet. The tree had snapped the two-by-fours and pancaked the closet’s plywood walls. The trunk had landed on his head and shoulders.
“Tim?” Newton said in a small, disbelieving voice. “Are you . . . ?”
The final word—okay?—died on his lips. Scoutmaster Tim was definitely not okay.
The finality of the situation assaulted Newton. It was in the way the tree trunk sat flush with
the floor. It was in the crushed eggshell of the Scoutmaster’s skull, which was visible—barely but hideously visible—beneath the bark. It was in the jagged purple lines that raced all over his flesh: the pressure had bulged and ruptured his vesicles. His skin looked like some gruesome jigsaw puzzle. It was in the sweet smell that rose off his body and the darker undernote of death: a somehow rusty smell, Newton thought, like the smell that came off a seized engine block at the dump. It was in the boot that had fallen off his foot—more like ejected off when the tree came crashing down, causing his legs to spike upward in one spastic motion, flinging his boot away. It was in the pale knob of his toe poking through the woolen sock. It was in the cricket that rested in the split V of his open shirt collar, which just then began to rub its legs together to produce a high humming song.
“He looks like the witch in The Wizard of Oz,” Shelley said. “The one the house landed on, not the one that melted.”
“Shut the fuck up, Shel,” Ephraim said hoarsely.
Newton’s heart was a wounded bird flapping inside his chest. He wanted to scream, but the sound was locked up under his lungs.
“What should we do?” he said. “Is he really . . . ?”
He found it impossible to say. Dead. The word itself was somehow unapproachable. He knelt and touched Scoutmaster Tim’s hand. The flesh was cold and dank like a rock in a fast-running river.
“It’s okay, Newt,” Ephraim said. “It must have been fast, you know? I don’t think he even felt it.”
Newton spoke with his head down. “You think so?”
Max sincerely hoped it was so. He felt sick. His Scoutmaster—the adult he’d known longer than anyone besides his own parents—had died in a closet. The one person with the best ideas for getting them off this island was gone, and he’d left five dumb, piss-scared kids behind.
“Should we bury him?” Ephraim said.
Before any of them had a chance to respond, Scoutmaster Tim’s stomach began to move.
At first it was barely visible; it seemed as if weak fingers were pawing at it from the inside. Max watched, his mouth unhinged. It was sickeningly mesmerizing.
