As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  “Don’t you blow this for me.” Sloan tightened her grip on Audrey’s shoulder so hard the nails bit her skin. “Understand?” She gave Audrey a hard shake, let go, and turned to face the shadow alone. “Oh, my God. I am so your biggest fan. I know that everyone tells you that. But I so am, like, for real.”

  The shadow said nothing.

  Audrey strained to look behind them. The street seemed so far away.

  “I tried to get into the show,” Sloane prattled on. “But they wouldn’t let me. That guy at the door, what a douche . . . am I right? But who cares? Right? You’re here, and I can’t believe this . . .” As she talked, Sloane’s voice rose to a shrill squeal.

  And still the shadow said nothing.

  It moved closer, finally stepping into a sliver of light that sliced across its face. It was not the face of Blake Browning. It was the cartoon man. Only his eyes weren’t blue anymore. They were black, and they were bottomless.

  Audrey yanked on Sloane’s sleeve. But she didn’t notice. She just kept on answering questions Audrey couldn’t hear anyone asking. “Oh, Blake. This is a dream. It can’t be real. What’s that?” she asked. “Yes! YES! I’ll go anywhere, as long as it’s with you.”

  But the cartoon man’s mouth wasn’t moving. He hadn’t asked Sloane anything. He just kept on smiling that smile that was as wide as his giant balloon head. And as he moved closer, Audrey could see that he did have a body now, one with hands as big as his mouth. Hands that were reaching for her sister.

  Sloane drifted closer. Those big hands were almost touching her now.

  “Sloane! Sloane! What are you doing? Stop!”

  His mouth opened up wide enough to swallow Sloane’s head whole. The red lips slid back to show those awful square teeth that seemed to go on and on and on.

  Audrey tried to scream, but her throat closed tight. She tried to run, but one foot got caught behind the other, and she fell with a hard smack to the ground at her sister’s feet. She shut her eyes, squeezed the lids as tight as she could. She told herself that this was just a dream and that she should wake up. Wake up! WAKE UP!

  But when she opened her eyes, she saw Sloane. She saw the cartoon man. And she saw something else, another shadow rising behind them both. At first, Audrey thought it was a girl, but it couldn’t have been. She was growing. Growing like the shadows on the wall, but for real. And she kept getting taller, taller than could ever be possible.

  Then the girl shot out her arms. They were long, like snakes. They wrapped around the cartoon man’s head. Audrey heard a terrible wet ripping sound, like pulling bacon from a wrapper. And then the cartoon man’s head didn’t have a body anymore. And white foam was flying everywhere. And the only sounds left were Sloane’s screams mingling with her own.

  Twenty

  ALLENWOOD, NEW JERSEY

  Beth sat in the living room of Reed and Lisa Champlin. The room, like the exterior of the two-story faux-colonial and the acre of well-groomed lawn it occupied, was opulent but without the slightest hint of garishness. Allenwood was a short drive down the pike from Asbury Park’s crime-plagued streets, but like so many up-market neighbors, it might have been a world away.

  The Champlins sat across a low coffee table as wide and long and black as a coffin lid. Mrs. Champlin gripped her husband’s hand. “Would you like some tea, Ms. . . . ?”

  “Please, call me Beth. And no, thank you.” She had thought of using an alias but couldn’t really see the point. If the Champlins ever got it into their heads to make a follow-up call about the nice social worker who’d come to talk with them at the behest of Southwell Management, they’d find that no such person—no such company, for that matter—even existed.

  Beth had been able to fake her way into the Champlins’ home and their good graces with a cocktail of psychobabble, equal parts half-remembered tropes from Psych 101 and buzzwords culled from too many episodes of Dr. Phil. And the kind of patient ear that had made her such a popular bartender. “Has your daughter talked to you any more about what happened?”

  “Is this some kind of insurance thing?” Mr. Champlin all but demanded. “We’re not going to sue, if that’s what you people are worried about. Not that I don’t have half a mind to.”

  “This is just a courtesy call. Nothing said here will affect any future legal action you might decide to take against Southwell.” Beth perched on the edge of the couch. It had that just-broken-in stiffness to it. “We only want to make sure your daughter is safe.”

  “That’s . . . reassuring.”

  Beth nodded. She doubted that the Champlins were hurting for cash. But things like not needing money never seemed to keep people with bags of the stuff from reaching for more. “Rory’s Ghost Syndrome has a lot of young female fans, and sometimes they can get a bit, shall we say—”

  “Hysterical,” said Mr. Champlin. At which point, Mrs. Champlin let out a choked sob. He turned to his wife. “Well, it’s true.”

  Beth jumped in, derailing any potential fight between them. “I was going to say exuberant, but okay, hysterical is fair, too.” She turned to Mrs. Champlin. “At that age, I’m sure you felt the same about . . . who? Duran Duran?”

  “Oingo Boingo,” Mrs. Champlin half laughed, half blubbered. “I know it’s silly, but . . . the hair, you know.”

  “Of course,” Beth added soothingly. “In any case, the band and Southwell Management both know this about the fans. And they know they owe all their success to those same fans. And as a result, they feel it’s their responsibility to follow up on the more extreme displays. Just to be safe.”

  Of all the lines Beth had to spin out, she felt this one smelled the most of bullshit, and she only hoped the parents were too upset or angry to sniff it out. “I’m just here to follow up on things. Help out where I can.” She let her eyes land on Mrs. Champlin. “And that means listening to you, too. Things like this affect the whole family.”

  “I just don’t know where I went wrong.” Mrs. Champlin sighed, the tears abating as she reaching for the tissue box, tugging out what looked to be the last one.

  “We trusted a fifteen-year-old, hormone-crazy girl to behave herself. That’s what we did wrong.” Mr. Champlin got up from the couch and paced, wearing lines in the silk rug. “I mean, she goes poking around the back entrance of some shithole in the middle of crack city trying to sneak into that stupid show and then swears she sees that teenybopper get decapitated by some kind of giant squid.”

  “She never said it was a squid,” Mrs. Champlin interjected. “She never said what it was at all.”

  “Whatever. And then she goes screaming out into the street and gets nothing but a nice ride in a police cruiser for her trouble. You ask me, I bet somebody down there slipped her something. That’s why she was hallucinating. Some sleaze bucket probably dosed her with LSD or a roofie or mollies—that’s what those kids are doing now, right? Mollies? That’s what I think. I bet they were trying to knock her out so they could get her into some dirty bathroom stall and—”

  “Stop it! Just stop it!” Mrs. Champlin screamed, hands clamped tightly over her ears. “I don’t want to think about it anymore. Sloane is safe, and that’s all that counts. Jesus, Reed. Show a little compassion!”

  Mr. Champlin rested his palm on his wife’s hunched back. “I’m sorry, sweetness. I’m sorry. You’re right, of course.”

  Beth glanced at the wall clock, all too aware that every second that ticked away put them that much farther from the truth and that much closer to getting nabbed by the Division. “Would it be possible for me to talk with your daughter about what happened?”

  “You can try,” Mrs. Champlin offered, putting aside the soaked remains of her tissue. She’d tamped down the sobbing to little more than a sniffle, but her eyes were as red and puffy as a drunk on a three-day binge. “She’s changed. She’s not my little girl at all.”

  “Shhh . . . shhh . . .” Mr. Champlin sat down next to his wife and pulled her close to his chest. “It’s going to be okay
, Lisa. Ms. . . . Beth is here to help. Let her do her job.” He nodded toward a curved staircase that wound all the way up the atrium to a second-floor landing. “Go on. First door on the left. Knock first, but if she doesn’t answer—and don’t be surprised if she doesn’t—just go inside. Just go right in.”

  Beth got up and went to the stairs. Just as she mounted the first step, she could hear the faintest trace of Reed Champlin’s sobs joining those of his wife.

  • • •

  The door was closed, as she’d expected. She rapped softly, and although the girl didn’t answer, the door swung open at the first touch of Beth’s knuckles. “Hello?”

  “Hello . . .” came a soft croak from inside the dim bedroom.

  Beth peeked inside. Leaning up against the foot of an unmade canopy bed sat the girl she recognized from the photos in the living room. But she’d changed. The pin-straight black tresses had been hacked at, leaving a patchy, piebald scalp on one side and a tangle of uncombed locks on the other. Her eyes sank deep into black hollows, and their crystal blue had taken on the pallor of dull steel, all the promise in them gone.

  “Can I come in?”

  Sloane said nothing.

  As Beth made her way to the bed, her feet kicked against wadded-up bits of paper. The walls were bare, except for a few strips of posters still clinging to the tacks. “Hello. My name’s Beth.”

  “Beth . . .”

  “Yes. Beth.” She sat down gingerly on the bed and reached out a tentative hand, just brushing Sloane’s shoulder. The girl recoiled. Beth pulled back, resting both hands in her lap. “I’d like to talk to you for a bit if you don’t mind.”

  “Don’t mind . . .”

  “Your parents said that when you went to the nightclub, you saw something there.”

  “Saw something there . . .”

  Beth sighed. The girl was nothing but an echo chamber. This was the second person to survive whatever—or whoever—had attacked one of the creatures, and she was alive. But she was giving them nothing. “Sloane. I know this is difficult. Believe me. Nobody knows that like I do. But I need you to tell me what happened. I need you to help me.”

  “Help me . . .” Her words rang out like the plea of someone drowning in leagues of open ocean.

  “She’s been like that since we came back,” came a small voice from the doorway.

  Beth’s eyes snapped up. Standing there was a girl, ten years old, twelve maybe. “We?”

  “I was there, too.”

  “You were?” The police blotter had only mentioned Sloane. “You were there with your sister? At the nightclub?”

  The girl nodded. “I came back on the bus by myself. The driver took me back even though I didn’t have a ticket or any money. You won’t tell Daddy, will you?”

  Beth shook her head. “What’s your name?”

  “Audrey.”

  “Audrey. That’s a pretty name.”

  The girl snorted. “You can have it, then. I hate it.”

  Beth couldn’t help but smile. She hadn’t been fond of her own name growing up, either. “Audrey, did you see what happened? With your sister?”

  Again, she nodded. “But you won’t believe me.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Grown-ups don’t want to believe a lot of things. That’s their job, I think.”

  Beth smiled. “Yeah. Grown-ups can be the I don’t believe you police most of the time,” Beth admitted. “But not me. I’ll believe you, no matter what you tell me. You tell me you saw a giant fish wearing a hat with mirrors for teeth that carried red licorice in his pockets, and I’ll believe you.”

  “That’s stupid.” Audrey crossed her arms. “Fish don’t have pockets.”

  “I didn’t think so, either. But somebody told me about a big fish that walked on two legs and stared at her with dead black eyes. And then I changed my mind.” This was how it worked sometimes, with some children who hadn’t reached puberty. The illusions got warped. They didn’t have the same allure, only terror. And Audrey looked as if she was right on the cusp of womanhood but still residing in girl country. “I promise. I’ll believe anything you tell me.”

  Sloane twitched but kept gazing blankly into nothing.

  “Okay,” Audrey said, letting her arms fall to her sides. “But come into my room. My sister isn’t feeling well.”

  Beth obeyed and followed the girl across the hall. They sat down next to each other, Audrey’s twin bed sagging from their combined weight.

  “I don’t know what Sloane saw,” Audrey started. “She kept talking about that boy she’s in love with. The one from that stupid band.”

  Beth nodded, remembering the shredded posters on Sloane’s bedroom floor.

  “She thought that’s what it was in the alley. But that’s not what it was. It was this thing.”

  “Thing?”

  Audrey nodded. “It had a big clown face. I saw the same face on the side of a billboard when we got off the bus.” She twisted away from Beth, looking off through her window. “You don’t believe me.”

  “Sure I do.” The sign must have been stuck in Audrey’s mind. That’s what triggered the illusion. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “It sounds so stupid. It sounds nuts.”

  Beth shifted closer to the girl. She reached out and put her arm around Audrey’s skinny shoulders. “Look out that window. What do you see?”

  “A tree.”

  “What kind of tree?”

  “I don’t know. A big one.”

  “That’s an oak tree,” Beth said, not exactly positive that it was, in fact, an oak. It could have just as easily been an elm or a maple. She’d never paid all that close attention in biology class. “It’s a big old oak tree now, but one day, long ago, it was just a tiny nut that held its ground.”

  Audrey rolled her eyes. “That’s so corny . . . but . . .”

  “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

  Audrey nodded, kicking her feet freely against the side of the bed. “Yeah.”

  “So don’t be afraid if people call you nuts for speaking the truth.” What Beth held back was that nobody but her would ever believe this girl. And when Beth was gone, the words she’d offered would be cold comfort. “What happened next?”

  “Well. The clown man opened his mouth. It was so wide I couldn’t believe it. He was about to bite Sloane, but then a girl came out from behind me. She was so quiet I didn’t hear her at all.”

  “A girl? What did she look like?”

  Audrey paused, staring deep into her memory. “She looked like you. Except she had red hair. And she wasn’t wearing any clothes.”

  Naked. Just like Jack had said he’d seen her. “No clothes?”

  Audrey shook her head. “No clothes. At all. And her face was like a doll’s. Like a mask. Like she wasn’t really real. And . . .”

  “And what?”

  “You won’t believe me.”

  Beth clamped her jaw tight. This you won’t believe me jive was getting under her skin but good. “Just tell me the truth. It doesn’t matter what anybody believes if you just tell the truth. Okay, sweetie?”

  Audrey took a deep breath and blew it out in a trailing sigh. “She had long arms. Not like people arms. They were like octopus arms.”

  “Tentacles.”

  “Yeah, but not with the suction cups on them. Just long and thin and with rings, kind of like worms. And she reached them out and wrapped them around that clown’s head, and then—“ Audrey buried her head in her hands. She crumpled deep into a ball on the bed, and Beth knew this wasn’t about being believed anymore. The girl was scared.

  “And then what happened?”

  “She tore it off. The head. And she threw it. And it went rolling, and this white foam kept spilling from the neck of the clown man. It was so terrible. We ran. Sloane kept screaming that it was that stupid boy who’d been killed. That it was his head on the ground instead of the clown’s. She kept screaming it at the policemen when they put her in the car. E
ven when that stupid boy from that stupid band came out to show her that he was okay, she wouldn’t stop screaming.” Audrey slumped against Beth. “Now she doesn’t say anything.”

  “Can you remember anything else? Anything at all?”

  Audrey thought in silence. “There was this terrible smell. It made me want to gag. It was everywhere when the clown came after Sloane. It got in my throat, in my nose.”

  “Was it . . .” Beth started. “Kind of metallic? Like pennies?”

  Audrey looked up at Beth, tears glistening in both eyes. “Yes. How did you—”

  “I told you I’d believe you. Didn’t I?”

  Twenty-One

  ASBURY PARK, NEW JERSEY

  Beth knew they were in the right place the moment she spotted the giant cartoon face. Save Zillie graffiti had been sprayed beneath it in a ragged, trailing hand. The image’s faded paint only made it that much creepier, turning what had once been a jolly and mischievous youth into an imp with a satanic grin, a boogeyman if she’d ever seen one.

  The Stratus Theater’s awning was dark—no concert tonight, it seemed—but it was the building across the street, Castle Amusements, that they were most interested in.

  According to what they’d read, Castle Amusements had been the top recreation destination in Asbury Park’s heyday. One of the largest indoor amusement parks ever built. Generations of families from the tristate area spent their summers here, socking away photo albums full of golden memories. Hard times had befallen this sole survivor, however. The place had been shuttered for decades and slated for demolition despite efforts to preserve it.

  “It’s in there, isn’t it?”

  Blood barked, glowering at the structure.

  “He certainly thinks so,” Jack answered, scanning the empty street.

  “How do we get inside?”

  The front door was out. So were the rest of them. Every single one of the steel barricades had been welded shut long ago. Trying to force their way in wouldn’t work. Although the streets were nearly deserted, enough cars cruised past that someone was bound to notice them breaking into a building more famous for being abandoned than anything else these days.