GRAVEWORM

by Curran, Tim

  “Let’s get out of here,” he finally said after standing at the doorway to Lisa’s room for a few minutes. It was like the threshold between tidy and chaos, between this world and the next.

  “Sounds good,” Frank said. “This place is giving me the creeps and I honestly don’t know why.”

  And neither did Steve. Only that he felt it so deeply he was almost physically ill with it.

  58

  Wasting time, wasting time, wasting time. Couldn’t they see how they were wasting their time? Tara almost laughed at the idea of them watching her through the mirrored glass. She kept thinking about that movie with Sharon Stone where she crosses and uncrosses her legs without anything on under her skirt. Sorry, boys. I wore jeans. No show today. That made her giggle… but not outwardly, only in her head where sometimes there was a lot of giggling which was better than the other sound: the boogeyman’s voice scratching around inside her skull like rats in the walls of old houses.

  She stared at the glass.

  Detective-Sergeant Wilkes said he was going to get somebody to give her a lift back to her house. That’s what he said. Of course, his real reason was to leave her inside this tight little room, alone with her thoughts, maybe hoping some dark flowers of guilt would begin to bloom and she’d cry out, admitting it all, screaming at the top of her lungs—

  But that would not happen.

  She had things under control.

  Completely.

  The room didn’t bother her because she was not remotely claustrophobic. Even being buried in a box—don’t think that, you fucking idiot, don’t you dare think that—did not scare her. Let the boogeyman take her and try and bury her in a fucking box and she wouldn’t even scream. Not that she would let him get that far. But she would bait him. Use whatever was necessary to pull him in, get him in the trap so she could show him what it was like to suffer and, oh yes, oh yes indeedy, he was going to find out when he was trapped in her web and she had him right where she wanted him. Do you like it my fat, juicy fly? Do you feel terror and fear as I creep ever closer with my many legs and my sucking mouth puckers for your throat?

  Tara realized she was breathing hard.

  A bead of sweat rolled down her cheek.

  Don’t wipe it, they’ll see!

  Calm, remain calm, that was how you did this. Yet, the weird and distorted and thoroughly grotesque imagery of her as a spider creeping down her web to the trapped and squealing boogeyman… it had excited her. God, she felt hot all over. Her nipples were erect, pressing against the lacey material of her bra. There was a dampness where her thighs met and she had the craziest, most obscene impulse to unzip her pants and slide a finger into herself… no, two fingers. That’s exactly what she wanted, but she fought against the hot animal lust inside and concentrated on that mirror because she knew they were watching her.

  Get a good eyeful, you assholes.

  I know what I’m doing.

  I’ll get Lisa and then I’ll get the fucking beast who took her. There won’t be any courts or stays for him, I’ll teach that slimy crawling fucking worm to go dirtying up my life and putting his filthy fingers on my sister.

  Tara sat there, crossing her legs and uncrossing them, trying to control that pesky tic in the corner of her lips, bunching her left hand into a fist because it shook so badly. It had been shaking like that ever since she’d clutched Margaret’s cool blood-clotted hair with it and pulled the head free of the drying rack. It had touched something it did not like and refused to stop trembling.

  Let it shake.

  Each night the game.

  And each night closer.

  She felt strong, she felt mighty, she felt invincible. She felt like a warrior hopped up on bloodlust, a berserker tripping his brains out with death-lust. She was ready to spill blood, to bathe in its dark rivers and nobody had better try and stop her. The glory would be hers. The glory of the kill. And her left hand had better get used to it because Margaret’s head would not be the only one it would lift high.

  Oh, the smell, the stink.

  Yes, this damn room. She could really smell the god-awful stench of misery and guilt, fear and anxiety. These things bled from the walls in a sickly brown sap. She could feel it oozing over her, dripping on her, trying to worm its jellied way into her pores. Wilkes thought he would break her but she was flexible, rubbery, she could not break. But the smell… well, yes, it was disturbing and it made her feel dirty and sticky like there was dried blood on her skin, a membrane of it. Too bad she didn’t have cleaners, she would have cleaned the place up for them.

  They’d think you were crazy.

  Yes, Tara knew she had to sit there and be calm, relaxed, unconcerned… but her mind kept wandering in so many murky directions, creeping down so many twisting dark avenues. It was hard to control her thinking. It was hard to concentrate. That mirror. They were watching her, those fucking pricks. Funny. Windows. Mirrors. Reflections never looked completely real in them, kind of like Tara’s world which was slightly askew like that untidy world Alice had spied through the looking glass. It felt like that. Everything looked normal… yet it wasn’t, things were off-center somehow, gloomy, shadowy like there was a sheet of yellowing cellophane between her and reality.

  Wasn’t that weird?

  She needed to quit thinking like some crazy woman and concentrate on what was here and now. She wished she had her razor. She would cut her arms until they bled and that would make things clearer. It always did.

  C’mon, Wilkes! I don’t have all fucking day here!

  Soon enough, soon enough. She could still smell that awful stink in the room, but it was her own smell that was starting to bother her—it was sweating out of her pores, an awful fetor of death. Well-marbled slabs of raw meat, coiled greasy loops of gut, cool stiffening limbs, and heads… staring, glaze-eyed heads bearded in drying blood. Good God, the stink of it. It’s gagging. It was in her hair. On her fingertips. They would smell it when they came in. She knew they would because they were cops with cop’s noses, twitching pink hog noses with flaring porcine nostrils that could smell dirt and filth and rubbish and decay. Oh, but if they smell it on me I won’t let them get their dirty grubbing fingers on me I won’t let them I’ll scream I’ll claw their fucking eyes out they better not try and stop me because I won’t let them I WON’T FUCKING LET THEM GET IN-BETWEEN ME AND LISA I CAN’T BUT OH THAT FUCKING STINK OF GRAVEYARD DIRT AND COFFIN ROT I CAN SMELL IT I’LL KILL THEM I’LL SLITHER AWAY AND THEY WON’T GET ME THEY WON’T—

  The door opened and Wilkes stepped in. “Are you all right, Miss Coombes?”

  She wiped cool/hot sweat from her face. “Never better.”

  “I have a car here for you.”

  “It’s about time,” she said, refusing to look at him as he passed because his face looked like pale, moist mortician’s wax.

  59

  When Wilkes was done and Tara Coombes was gone, he found Bud Stapleton waiting for him in a little office that was vacant this time of evening. He was pretending to be reading a magazine, but the tough old cop was nervous like he had a belly filled with kittens. He could barely sit still.

  “What do you think?” he said, paging through his magazine.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Wilkes sat down on the opposite side of the desk and studied the dying rays of the evening. He had watched Tara while she was alone and all she did was stare at the glass and smile. And there had been something terribly wrong about that smile… yet, she seemed composed.

  “To tell you the truth,” Wilkes said to him. “I find it very hard to read that woman. Her eyes bother me, though. But that doesn’t mean anything.”

  Bud Stapleton nodded.

  “I don’t see at this juncture where we can do anything. She said her sister will be home in a few days or so and then we’ll have a chat with her. And if she says she hasn’t seen your wife, then this has all been a colossal dead end and you have yourself a very angry neighbor.”

  Bud g
runted.

  “You want my opinion? Stay the hell away from her.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Well, you better learn how,” Wilkes told him, uncharacteristically harsh. “That woman has had her fill of you and I’m pretty sure you’re no longer welcome on her property. If something’s going on, you could foul up an investigation. Stay away from her.”

  He grunted again.

  Wilkes softened a bit. “I’d say that’s it for now, Bud. All we can do is wait and cross our fingers and hope for the best. Maybe something will break.”

  Bud looked up at him with eyes that were worn and rheumy. “She’s dead, you know. She’s been dead since the first and I think I know it just as I think you know it.”

  Wilkes said nothing. It was true. When an elderly person disappears, a cop thinks the absolute worst. And he had been thinking that way ever since he got involved in this. Stapleton was a cop. You could not sugarcoat it to an old veteran like him.

  “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  “You wait and see,” Bud said, tossing aside his magazine. “I’m going to find out.”

  “Be careful with that,” Wilkes warned him. “Stay away from that woman. She doesn’t look like a good one to rile.”

  Bud stood up. “You do what you have to do and I’ll do what I have to do.”

  60

  Frank and Steve came up with a plan where they would take turns watching Tara’s house until she showed. Sort of a half-assed TV cop stakeout but it was all they could think of. When she showed, whoever was watching would call the other. It was workable.

  Steve was on duty, so Frank took the long way back to his apartment, driving down by Lyman Park as the last rays of the sun spiked through the tall elms and shadows twisted thickly through the picnic grounds. He saw a woman in the distance walking her dog, moving back toward town. There was a vacancy to the park that was oddly disturbing. In July it was bustling with people, music, stands selling root beer and ice cream, kids flocked out on the beach… now just absolutely desolate.

  He took the winding drive out to the beach for no other reason than he really had little else to do. He checked his cell. Nothing from Steve. The wind picked up as he neared the beach, leaves rustling and limbs bending.

  He parked by the beach house and walked down by the concrete breakwater and sat there, remembering everything yet nothing in particular. It was getting dark and he stared out over the strand at the water, lighting a cigarette with a cupped match and reminding himself he needed to quit.

  He thought about Steve.

  He thought about Tara.

  He’s screwing your girl, you know. The thought jumped into his head unbidden and he chuckled under his breath. No, not my girl. Not anymore. If she ever was in the first place. He’d been so bitter about it for so long that it amazed him now how easy it was to let go. But that was the nature of life, he supposed, it was easy to let something slide from your fingers that you’d never really held in the first place. All you had to do was admit it wasn’t yours.

  In the distance, he heard a dog bark, low and wolf-like.

  The wind brought a chill to his spine, his bare arms. He watched the water breaking into foam over the beach, depositing bits of driftwood and lakeweed.

  Behind him, a stick cracked.

  Pulling his eyes from the turbulent gray lake, he turned and saw a shape pass into the trees beyond the beach house. It was none of his business who it was, but he was somehow fixated with seeing them. His nerves were still a little funny after Tara’s house and someone being out here with him when he thought he was alone made his guts pull up tight.

  He walked over to the beach house.

  He saw the shadowy road winding back to the park. Tall, wind-rustling trees lined it to either side. He saw the shape moving through them, very near the water’s edge.

  It was Tara.

  He could tell by the way she moved.

  Knowing he should call Steve, he tossed his cigarette and jogged across the lot and into the grass, following her with his eyes and calling out, “Tara! Tara!” but she kept moving away from him. As he ran, the lake breeze blew in his face smelling of dank things and lake mud and congested weed. Tara moved through the trees, a drifting graveyard angel, the wind throwing her hair around in wild conflicting currents.

  He caught up with her and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Tara,” he said and she turned, face chalk-white and eyes black in the dying light. She felt impossibly bony beneath his fingertips, frail like a corn husk that would shatter into chaff.

  Through bared teeth, with a reedy whispering voice she said, “Get away. You’re not playing the game. Nobody invited you…”

  But he would not let her go. He tried to pull her back as she made to go and she fought from his grip with a twisting, serpentine sort of motion that made his heart skip a beat. Eyes gleaming like chrome, she coiled herself for attack—

  “Tara… wait a minute now…”

  —and leapt at him, hooked fingers going for his eyes, a froth of foam on her lips like she was rabid. He caught her wrists and turned his hip as she tried to knee him in the groin. She fought and shook, her wrists hot in his hands, her body moving with fluid almost boneless contortions. He threw her down and she looked up at him, hair in her face, ribbons of saliva hanging from her lips which were pulled back from even white teeth. She looked absolutely primeval.

  She hissed at him and jumped.

  Frank grabbed her wrists again as she came for his eyes and she fought frantically in his grip, head whipping from side to side, saliva and foam bubbling from her mouth, snot looping from her left nostril across her cheek, strands of hair stuck to her face. She was insane. Absolutely fucking insane.

  “Jesus, Tara, now wait, just wait a minute here—”

  But she didn’t wait. Her wrists were almost greasy in his fists and she pulled herself free, teeth coming at his face, gnashing, biting, trying for his throat. He had no choice: he pushed her off balance and slugged her in the face with a short stiff right. She let out a cry and folded up at his feet.

  Then she was up again and he was shouting at her, but she came on with renewed ferocity and he saw something silver flash in her fist like an arc of electricity. It slashed over his arm and jabbed into his side, scraping against his ribs… and then she turned and fled, fading into the shadows and he went to his knees, filled not only with horror but a rage at what she had just done. He pressed a hand to his ribs and it came away red with blood.

  She had stabbed him.

  She had actually stabbed him.

  He thought for a moment he saw her running through the trees but he couldn’t be sure. Only that he heard something echoing out over the lake: a distorted, hysterical laughter of triumph and hate.

  Feeling the blood spilling down his side, he stumbled off toward his truck, breathing in the cool night air.

  61

  Tara fell into the weeds at the border of the lake. They were thick and coveting, threaded with the webs of spiders. On her belly she moved through them, crawling, inching along. She crept through the grass, smelling the earth and the black darkness of the lake. When she reached the water and smelled its dankness filling her head, she dipped her face into it again and again until the heat drained away. She brushed leaves from her hair.

  She had no memory of attacking Frank Duvall.

  There was only the lake, the grass, the night.

  “I have to get back now,” she said. “It’ll be time to play the game soon.”

  On her belly, she crept through the weeds until she found the grass. Then she ran, first on all fours, then upright into the wind.

  62

  Steve was dozing off when Tara walked right past his car. By then, the moon was beginning to come up and her eyes glimmered like shiny new quarters as she crossed through the yard and went up the stairs and inside.

  Swallowing, Steve thumbed Frank’s number but there was no answer.

  C’mon, Frank!
We had an agreement!

  He forced himself to relax and waited there another five minutes, then ten. There were still no lights on in the house. He tried Frank’s number again and there still was no answer. Maybe he fell asleep. Maybe he was in the shower. Maybe he was taking a shit for that matter. Regardless, Steve wasn’t going to wait.

  “Fuck him,” he said under his breath and crossed over to the Coombes’ house.

  He rapped lightly on the door and then opened it. “Tara?” he called out into the mounting silence. “It’s me. It’s Steve.”

  The shadowy rooms were filled with hunching shapes and he thought he saw several move in his direction. Then a voice, her voice, drifting down the stairwell like floating lace: “I’m up here, Steve.”

  The sound of her voice was enough to make him take a faltering step back, his body leaning toward the door and the night and the safety beyond. He forced himself forward, each step heavy, something like a headache throbbing in his skull that was not a headache but something older, almost like a rhythmic tribal chant, telling him to get the hell out for Here There Be Monsters. It was flat, uncompromising survival instinct… crude, rude, even painful, but it had his best interests in mind.

  He grasped the banister.

  He made the second step before he began to get dizzy and reality seemed to be flying apart around him into hammering/exploding purple-black dots. It was then he knew that he wasn’t breathing, that his windpipe was shut down to a pinhole. He realized this just as he also realized that his body was fighting against him. It really did not want to climb those steps so he was pulling himself up by the stair rail, his heart so heavy it felt like a brick pounding in his chest.

  You wanted to see her, asshole, and now you’re going to.

  Up in the corridor, he saw light flickering and traced it to its source: Tara’s room. The door was partially closed and from the quality of the light spilling around its edge, he knew she had candles going in there. Candles usually meant one thing with Tara, but he did not dare let himself think that even though already his hormones were gearing up.