by Nick Cutter
Newton covered his mouth with his hand. He couldn’t imagine hacking into Eef in search of something he knew he’d never find—not after the turtle. Not ever, at all.
“I can’t do that, Eef.”
“Pussy.” Ephraim spat the word out like poison. “Max—your dad cuts people, right? You helped the Scoutmaster. You could do it.”
The best tactic was the one that stopped Ephraim from doing more damage to himself, Max figured. He’d tell him anything he wanted to hear.
“I can do it, Eef. But not here. We need a cleaner site. You could get infected.”
“I already am infected.”
“Yeah, but if I cut really deep and get it, we’ll still need to patch you up. There’s a medical kit back at camp.”
“I found some mushrooms, too,” said Newt. “They should make you throw up and . . . poop your pants. Maybe we can get it out without having to cut.”
Ephraim closed one eye as if he were squinting through a telescope. “Y’think?”
Max slipped Ephraim’s Swiss Army knife into his pocket. “We get you back to camp and try the mushrooms. If that doesn’t work, I’ll use the knife. Deal?”
Ephraim squeezed his eyes shut. Long, thick veins pulsed at his temples. My God, Max thought, they really do look like worms.
36
THEY RETURNED to camp to find Kent gone.
It had taken nearly three hours to half carry, half drag Ephraim back. His wounds kept tearing apart and bleeding. The rusty smell of blood clung to their clothes—could he infect them that way? Only if he was infected, which both Max and Newton couldn’t quite believe.
By the time they got back, ashy afternoon light was already hanging between the trees. They laid Ephraim on the picnic table by the cabin. Newton went round to check on Kent. The cellar doors were flung open.
“Kent?” Newton called down. “Kent!”
He inspected the doors. They didn’t look to have been busted open. Maybe the stick Ephraim jammed between the handles had snapped or rattled free in the wind? Which could mean that Kent had escaped. He could be out there in the woods.
And no sign of Shelley either—a fact that was not a concern because it was a relief not to have him around, yet deeply concerning, seeing as neither boy wanted to contemplate what Shelley might get up to out of sight.
“You see Shel?” Newton asked Max back at the picnic table.
Max shook his head. “You think something happened?”
“Something must’ve happened, right?”
Mercifully, Ephraim had passed out. Blood loss, shock. They left him temporarily, unease gripping their postures—the boys walked with a slight stoop, shoulders hunched against a phantom breeze—as they made their way down to the shore.
“What if Kent’s gone?” Newton said quietly.
“Gone where, Newt? What do you mean?”
In truth, Newton didn’t know. A shape sat in the dead center of his mind—only a notion, really. Its outline was nebulous but he could make out its heart: a dark and sinister silhouette within the larger blackness that winked and writhed and wanted to play.
“Do you think he might’ve tried to swim back?”
Max kicked a pebble. “He’d be crazy to try . . . that doesn’t mean I can’t picture him doing it.”
“Do you think he’d make it?”
If he’d actually done it, Max was sure Kent was dead by now. The water was freezing, the undertow deadly—plus he had a strong suspicion Kent might not be welcomed with open arms even if he’d managed to reach shore.
Max put Kent out of his mind for now. A merciless strain of expediency had settled over his thoughts. Ephraim needed help and was right here to receive it. Kent was gone and therefore beyond immediate help.
Max wondered how he and Newton had managed to stay sane these last few days. This thought arrowed out of the clear blue. They were still okay, seeing what they’d seen, where Ephraim and Kent and Scoutmaster Tim and maybe Shelley had cracked. He couldn’t say why that was, exactly . . . it wasn’t that he didn’t feel the same fear. Human beings couldn’t function in a state of perfect ongoing terror, could they? Their bodies would seize like a car with sugar in its gas tank, minds fusing shut as paralysis leeched into their bones. Constant, unending terror warped minds; brains thinned and went brittle and then snapped—that’s exactly how Max pictured it: a singing snap! like an icicle coming off a February eaves trough. It could happen to anyone. It’d happened to Eef, hadn’t it? But everyone’s built to different tolerances, and you didn’t know your breaking point until the instant you hit it.
How had Max kept that crushing fear at bay? He didn’t really know—maybe that was the trick? Maybe it was that he’d found a way to bleed it away in the quiet moments. Breathing deep, feeling it slipping from him in almost imperceptible degrees.
Maybe Newton had his own strategies—or maybe it wasn’t anything you could strategize. It came down to that flexibility of a person’s mind. An ability to withstand horrors and snap back, like a fresh elastic band. A flinty mind shattered. In this way, he was glad not to be an adult. A grown-up’s mind—even one belonging to a decent man like Scoutmaster Tim—lacked that elasticity. The world had been robbed of all its mysteries, and with those mysteries went the horror. Adults didn’t believe in old wives’ tales. You didn’t see adults stepping over sidewalk cracks out of the fear that they might somehow, some way, break their mothers’ backs. They didn’t wish on stars: not with the squinty-eyed fierceness of kids, anyway. You’ll never find an adult who believes that saying “Bloody Mary” three times in front of a mirror in a dark room will summon a dark, blood-hungry entity.
Adults were scared of different things: their jobs, their mortgages, whether they hung out with the “right people,” whether they would die unloved. These were pallid compared to the fears of a child—leering clowns under the bed and slimy monsters capering beyond the basement’s light and faceless sucking horrors from beyond the stars. There’s no 12-step or self-help group for dealing with those fears.
Or maybe there is: you just grow up.
And when you do, you surrender the nimbleness of mind required to believe in such things—but also to cope with them. And so when adults find themselves in a situation where that nimbleness is needed . . . well, they can’t summon it. So they fall to pieces: go insane, panic, suffer heart attacks and aneurysms brought on by fright. Why? They simply don’t believe it could be happening.
That’s what’s different about kids: they believe everything can happen, and fully expect it to.
Max knew he was at that age where disbelief began to set in. The erosion was constant. Santa Claus had gone first, then the monster in the closet. Soon he’d believe the way his folks did. Rationally.
But for now he still believed enough, and maybe that had kept him sane.
He was idly working all of this over in his mind when the screams started.
* * *
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: Please clarify something for the court, Dr. Erikson: So far as you were aware, you and Dr. Edgerton were working on a diet pill?
A: What do you mean?
Q: I’m asking specifically about the grant Dr. Edgerton received.
A: From the pharmaceutical concern, yes.
Q: And it was the only funding the Edgerton lab was receiving?
A: Yes.
Q: No.
A: Excuse me?
Q: No, it wasn’t the only funding the lab was receiving, Dr. Erikson.
A: I’m sorry, what . . .?
Q: Dr. Erikson, for someone who claimed to have a higher IQ than most everyone assembled at this hearing today, is it possible that you were unaware of the end goal of the very experiments you were administering?
A: Of course I know. I told you. A diet pill.
Q: Dr. Erikson, I’d like to show you
something.
[Dr. Erikson is handed a piece of paper]
Q: Can you tell me what that is?
A: It’s a bank statement.
Q: It’s Dr. Edgerton’s bank statement. For the account that administers the operating costs of his lab.
A: Yes, all right.
Q: Now if you scan down, you will see the deposits made by the pharmaceutical company.
A: They’re here, yes.
Q: Now can you see the other single deposit—the one made on January second?
A: Yes.
Q: Can you tell me how much that one is for?
A: Three million dollars.
Q: Exactly?
A: Three million, fifty thousand, five hundred dollars. And forty-two cents.
Q: Can you tell me who made the deposit?
A: Is this a spelling test now? T.N.O. Printz Mauritz.
Q: Do you know what that company does, Dr. Erikson?
A: I have no idea.
Q: They are a military research firm.
A: Okay.
Q: Three years ago, they were subjected to a grand jury investigation. The company was indicted on charges of industrial espionage and selling goods to foreign despots for the purposes of cementing various puppet regimes.
A: I don’t keep up on any of that.
Q: As a company, they do not have the cleanest of hands.
A: If you say so.
Q: Dr. Erikson, may I ask you this: If Dr. Edgerton is the genius you claim he is, why couldn’t he keep the worms where they belonged—in a subject’s intestinal tract?
A: As I said, even worms are complex organisms. Terribly complex.
Q: But—and please forgive my ignorance—isn’t it the baseline nature of most tapeworms to remain in the gut?
A: Generally so, yes.
Q: Dr. Erikson, I will cut to the chase: Were you aware that Dr. Edgerton was in fact receiving competing grants? One from a biopharmaceutical company and the other from a military research firm? One of those companies was anticipating a diet pill. The other, Dr. Erikson, was anticipating a biological weapon.
A: No.
Q: Would it shock you, Dr. Erikson, to discover that I have in my possession correspondence between Dr. Edgerton and the CEO of T.N.O. Printz Mauritz discussing this very thing?
A: That would shock me a great deal, sir.
Q: Do you see how such a creature could, in certain engagements, be an ideal method of warfare? Setting ethics and humanity aside, of course?
A: I . . . I suppose I do.
Q: It would be traceless. It would spread rapidly: An eyedropperful into a public reservoir would do it, yes?
A: Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.
Q: It could tear a country apart in short order, yes? Cause mass hysteria, destabilization, rampant infection, riots, fear, rage, secondary bloodshed in any order. It would defy both the letter and intent of the Geneva Convention—but it’s just a hypervirulent worm, yes? Nobody knows how it came to be. Mother Nature once again works her many strange wonders to behold, yes?
A: I had no idea. You have to believe me.
Q: Dr. Erikson, I am under no obligation to do any such thing. That particular question of belief is up to this court to decide.
* * *
37
SHELLEY WAITED until Max and Newton went down to the beach before climbing out of the cellar. The gauzy afternoon light stabbed his eyes like cocktail swords. The dark suited him now.
Last night, he’d lain in the cellar and dreamed of darkness slipping over the world. A forgiving dark: you could do things in that kind of blackness and get away with it. Nobody would ever see you. They would only feel you, and you could feel them.
Shelley found Ephraim lying on the picnic table. The sight was a pleasant one. It meant his game was progressing nicely. In fact, it appeared to have entered endgame stage.
Shelley swayed lightly on his feet with a dreamy look on his face. “Nobody loves me,” he warbled, “everybody haaaates me . . .”
He ran a finger down the gash on Ephraim’s face. When the boy didn’t stir, he pushed the tip of his finger into it. His nail broke the gummy glue of blood. His finger moved inside the wound. He pushed harder, grunting lightly. His fingertip went through Ephraim’s cheek into his mouth—for a thrilling instant he felt the smooth enamel of his teeth.
Ephraim’s eyelids cracked open. Shelley withdrew his finger. It came out with a gooey sound, like pulling your finger out of a pot of wallpaper paste.
“Shel? You don’t look so hot.”
Shelley supposed he didn’t. At some point last night, he’d crept out of the cellar to eat the long timothy grass growing around the cabin. Down on all fours like a cow at its cud. This morning, he’d chased a plump pigeon along the beach, screaming and frothing at the mouth. The foam falling from his lips was white, tinted with green from the grass; it looked like the spume that washed up at the North Point jetty.
He hadn’t caught the pigeon, but later he’d fallen asleep and dreamed that he had. In the dream, he’d torn its feathered head off—but not before eating the black jewels of its eyes as it struggled frantically in his hands—laughing and hissing as the bird’s head separated from its body. He’d awoken to find his belly swollen to match his dream. The skin was pocked with lumps that looked like fledgling anthills.
“You saw it, didn’t you?” Shelley asked dully. “The worm.”
Shelley noticed the yellowish tinge to Ephraim’s eyes. It was as if the oily madness in his brain had leeched into his corneas.
Ephraim’s upper lip quivered. His chin went dimply as a golf ball. “It’s still inside me, Shel.”
“Is that so?”
“Can’t you fuckin’ see, man? Can’t you see it?”
The pleading note in Ephraim’s voice was auditory honey sliding into Shelley’s ears. He furrowed his brow and stared intently at Ephraim—then he drew back suddenly. His head swept side to side, a sad and solemn gesture.
“I’m afraid so. It’s still there. Didn’t you do as I said?”
Ephraim’s mouth twisted into a furious snarl; it was quickly replaced by a scrawl of breathless panic. “I tried! I did exactly what you said. You got to get it out.”
“Why couldn’t you do that?” Twisting the knife in a person’s psyche was nearly as much fun as twisting it in living flesh, Shelley had found. “Is it because you’re weak, like everyone says?”
Ephraim wept silently, clutching at Shelley. “I can’t do it. It’s sneaky.” Leaning to one side, he spat a reeking sack of blood onto the grass. “Can’t . . . I can’t . . .”
Shelley’s expression remained placid—hesitant even—but a mad light capered behind his eyes.
“Want me to get it for you?”
“Do you have a knife?”
Shelley nodded. “Of course.” He had a Buck knife with a five-inch blade, an inch and a half longer than the Scouts’ official limit.
“Do you really see it, Shel? The worm?”
After a beat, Shelley said: “I saw it, Eef. It was in back of your eyes for a moment. A ripply thread behind the whites.”
Ephraim made the most wretched, delightful sound Shelley had ever heard.
“You’ve got to get it out of me. I can’t stand it.”
“Okay, Eef.” Shelley smiled, a happy camper. His teeth looked much bigger now with the gums peeling back. “But first, you have to say one thing.”
“What?”
“You have to say please.”
“Please.” Ephraim clutched at the hem of Shelley’s pants, squealing. “Please.”
Shelley stifled his giggles—they built in his stomach like effervescent soda bubbles, rising up his throat in a hysterical wave. He didn’t find any of this genuinely funny; not at all. Ephraim had offered him a rare gift. The rarest. It took so much to penetrate the senseless jelly that enrobed Shelley’s brain—took so much to make him feel. But now he was feeling so, so much—needles of light streamed across his vision, unearthly and
pure like a rift into Heaven.
He snapped the blade of his Buck knife into position. “I’ll do it, but only because we’re friends.”
A look of pitiful gratefulness came over Ephraim’s face. “Yes,” he breathed. “Get it out.”
Shelley’s eyes cut down to the beach. No sign of Newt or Max. He’d sharpened the knife the night before their trip. He was scrupulous about such matters. You could split a doll’s hair with the blade—split it into thirds.
He brought it down to Ephraim’s face. He circled the tip around his earlobe and up around the teacup handle of his ear. The skin broke easily, just the first layer of epidermis. Blood teared up along the cut.
“Did you see it there?” Ephraim asked.
Shelley said: “In your ear, yes. It poked out for a second. I saw it wriggling.”
Ephraim’s fingers whitened around the table’s edges. “Oh God. Please, Shel. I can’t stand to have it in me.”
“Mm-hmm,” Shelley said, casually flirting the blade around the basin of Ephraim’s ear. The steel tip brushed the microscopic hairs guarding his inner ear.
“Turn your head,” he said sternly. “I need to see down.”
Ephraim shifted onto his side. His eyes stared glassily at Shelley’s swollen belly. A few buttons had popped off Shelley’s shirt. Ephraim could see his lumped-up flesh through the vent. The inflamed anthills seemed to be twitching and breathing.
Shelley gripped Ephraim’s jaw with his free hand. How would it feel to sink the knife into Ephraim’s ear? Would he encounter resistance or would it be like stabbing a brick of cold butter? He pictured Ephraim staggering up with the knife hilt protruding from his ear, his smile beatific as he screamed: Did you get it? Did you? DID YOU?
Instead, he idly slid the knife up Ephraim’s head into his thick hairline. The flesh opened up as if by magic. A pair of red lips cut through the dark mane. Shelley thought of Moses parting the Red Sea. In the middle of the incision, he could see a vein-threaded rift of skull bone. Endorphins rushed through Shelley’s system, lighting his neurons up like a pinball machine.
Ephraim didn’t cry out. Instead he trembled with an outrush of powerful emotion and whispered: “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
