by Ben Farthing
Don’t look in its mouths.
Vast fields of teeth, thin violet tongues flailing, stretching for Cessy, the vanguard of something in the distance that filled the horizon.
Cessy squeezed her eyes shut and jerked her head away.
The worm’s impossible mouth rushed away as the body moved on without her.
The worm’s body absorbed the flashlight’s light, returning Cessy to darkness.
She panicked, sprinted without her feet finding purchase. Her knee sparked pain with each step, her abdomen seeped blood. The worm slid over her face, through her eyes.
Cessy screamed wordless terror.
Mouths.
Multiple.
And now that she was aware, she noticed them.
Gashes in the worm’s body. Dull teeth sweeping over her legs.
Cessy ran, begging that Kate was right, that she was really moving.
She was disoriented, flipped around, but she ran.
Teeth closed on her foot but she kicked free. It took her shoe.
Noise in the dark. An angry voice welcoming his listeners, warning that what they had to discuss tonight would be infuriating. But not to worry, because the true citizens of Hamlin would make it right.
Lockler’s show had begun.
Cessy gambled that he’d be broadcasting from the same place as the Maple Table, near the entrance to the cavern. She pointed herself toward his voice as best she could, and pumped her arms and legs.
The worm’s indifferent movement shoved her over, turned her around, lifted and dropped her. But with each diversion she righted herself, faced Lockler’s voice, and made the motions of running.
She spilled free from the tangle, and for the first time, saw Lockler face to face.
49
Furious eyes stared through Cessy.
Lockler sat behind a news desk. He wore a sharp navy suit, white shirt, and red tie. His salt-and-pepper hair was perfectly parted. Beneath his raging eyes, thin lips in a smirk.
A partition behind his desk, a shield with stars and the word “Lockler” blazoned across it.
Outside the sourceless light of Locker’s set, the worm’s coils slithered. It formed a barrier around the set, and stretched along the ceiling and walls of the tunnel.
Cessy expected the worm to speak to her through Lockler, now that she’d shared its consciousness.
Lockler ranted about the good work in Hamlin being so close to complete, despite the vermin fighting so hard to ruin a good town.
The worm hadn’t even noticed Cessy.
Why should it? She was barely a cockroach compared to it. Not a threat. Any attention it paid her would be due to novelty. Cessy thought of the urges she’d sensed. It might also notice her from something like hunger.
She looked down the tunnel, which was wider at its entrance than she remembered, but tighter inside with the worm clinging to the ceiling and walls.
She looked back into the roiling cavern.
“Kate!” Cessy had followed Lockler’s voice to escape. She’d give her sister a clearer target. “I’m out. This way!”
Lockler ranted. Cessy shouted for Kate.
Minutes passed.
Cessy’s voice turned rough. Her throat hurt.
Jackson stumbled into the light. He held up Kate next to him, his hand hooked under her arm.
The last time Cessy had seen them side-by-side was at Kate’s senior prom. Before Kate had gained her extra twenty pounds, and before Jackson had lost his not-extra thirty pounds.
Now, a deathly underweight Jackson heaved Kate alongside him. His pant leg was in tatters. Molar-sized bruises from his thigh to his shin. Kate lifted her head, dropped it again. She spotted Cessy and somehow relaxed more.
“Found you,” Kate mumbled cheerily.
Cessy ran to help. She grabbed Kate under the opposite arm.
They hurried to the tunnel.
She looked at Jackson. The kid’s wild eyes said adrenaline was the only thing keeping him on his feet. He mumbled rapidly. It rose to audible. “Did you see?”
“I saw.” Cessy tried to sound reassuring. “What happened to Kate?”
They reached the tunnel.
Lockler yelled about vermin still hiding among us. He didn’t react to their leaving.
“She grabbed me,” Jackson panted. “I was stuck and she grabbed me and we ran. Then one of those green lights hit her. She screamed, and got real confused afterwards. I heard your voice and dragged her the rest of the way. It bit me.”
The tunnel condensed. The worm stretched over and around them. She could reach up and touch it.
Cessy thought she should thank Jackson for grabbing Kate, but it sounded like Kate would have already made her way out if she hadn’t stopped to help him. And she’d have never been back in Hamlin at all if it weren’t for him.
She’d lost any delusion that Jackson could be a useful distraction, but he could at least help her carry Kate to safety.
She joined him in keeping Kate on her feet. They pointed themselves in the direction Lockler faced, towards the tunnel they’d came from. It was only a few feet of space to cross, but the worm’s body slithered in their way.
“Straight through,” Cessy said. “Keep running even if it feels like you’re not.”
They ducked their heads and ran. Cessy’s gait was lopsided with her missing shoe. Jackson wobbled under Kate’s weight, giving Cessy jolting bursts of weight to carry. They smashed into the worm, felt its current shove them.
“Keep forward,” Cessy shouted.
They stumbled out of the worm’s coils. Their feet found purchase.
They raced away from the cavern.
The tunnel curved downward in its slow spiral.
Coils of worm grew less dense. Then a single section of its body looped another twenty feet along the tunnel wall. Then they were free.
Cessy’d never been so glad to be closed in by dirt.
Jackson stumbled, and Kate slipped. Cessy crouched to catch her. Her knee protested, but she managed to keep all three of them standing.
From around the bend came hundreds of voices, wailing and weeping. The same colicky infant cry from before was now joined by a woman’s mournful sobbing.
Jackson breathed shock. “Olivia.”
50
They hesitated in the tunnel.
Cessy shone her flashlight back up the way they’d came. The worm’s probing loop peeked around the bend, closer than it was before.
Lockler screamed from the up the tunnel. “Crush them under your boot. Pepper them with ratshot. Poison. Traps. And not any of these humane catch-and-release. I’m talking glue. Draw it out so they can see how badly they’ve hurt our town.”
From downhill, between them and the exit into daylight, the cries of the damned, punctuated by Jackson’s wife and unborn daughter.
“Easy.” Cessy lifted Kate, adjusting her grip. “You said it was fake, right?”
Jackson’s cheeks twitched. Wide eyes looked to Cessy in confusion. “That’s her, though.”
Cessy didn’t know how he could tell, over the chorus of cries, and over Lockler’s furious monologue. But Jackson’s escape from the worm’s clutches had been too traumatic. The stubborn man who’d ignored the infant’s cries half an hour ago was gone.
“It’s not her,” Cessy insisted.
Kate rolled her head up, opened her eyes. Looked around, saw Cessy for the first time again. Surprise and relief filled her expression. Maybe it was her cheekbones that made her so easy to trust. A little Mary Poppins in there.
Jackson moaned. “I can tell her I’m sorry.”
“Listen to me,” Cessy said. “I need your help to carry Kate out of here. Whatever you see down this tunnel, you can’t let go of Kate.”
Kate planted her feet, tried to stand. She fell back into their arms. “Olivia’s dead,” she said through cracked lips.
Jackson moaned. “But I can hear her.”
“It doesn’t have Olivia,” Kate’s v
oice was firmer than her stance. “It killed her.”
Jackson sagged. He sobbed, “I know.”
In response to Jackson’s acceptance, a new voice joined the wailing. Deep, male. Gordon Wilder.
Cessy looked behind them. The protruding loop of worm inched closer.
Lockler howled, “Drown them in the river!”
Cessy tugged them all downhill. “Let’s keep moving.”
Jackson looked at Kate. “And my dad?”
Kate scrunched her eyes shut. “I don’t know. Did it take him?”
“You were there,” Jackson said to Cessy.
Cessy remembered Gordon’s screams as the holes swarmed him. She didn’t know what it meant for the worm to take someone versus kill them, but she needed Jackson to get moving. “He was dead when I left. Let’s go.”
Jackson nodded.
Together, they stumbled down the tunnel, toward the wails.
51
The sobs grew louder as they neared the branch in the tunnel.
Cessy recognized voices. Gordon Wilder. Olivia Goodman Wilder. Sheriff Miller.
Their misery clawed at her, but it was an impersonal tragedy. She didn’t know them.
Valerie Watkins howled wordlessly.
That was Cessy’s fault. She had chance after chance to go back up and check on Valerie, to question her then tell her to cut town. But Cessy kept letting other things be more important.
She’d needed to find Kate, but hearing Valerie’s pained wails in these dark tunnels, she wondered if she could have saved Valerie and still found her sister.
Lockler’s voice grew louder, more furious. The dirt floor thrummed with the cadence of his accusations. “If we refuse to protect our home, then we’re not patriots. We’d be like the cowards who dodged the draft in the sixties.”
The wailing below competed for volume.
Cessy’s eardrums ached.
Jackson cried and sobbed, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Kate walked stronger with each step, but she kept her eyes squeezed shut. She loved Hamlin and her neighbors here more than Cessy ever had. How many of the hundreds of voices did Kate recognize? Her natural compassion for everyone around her, her conviction to protect against injustice, both shattered by failure proven by the hundreds of voices she’d failed to save?
They reached the fork.
To their left, the tunnel dropped in a dangerous descent. Cessy kept the flashlight pointed ahead, up the tunnel that led outside.
She dragged them forward.
Jackson cried Olivia’s name, but Kate yanked him forward, away from the voices. Cessy felt relief that Kate had regained enough strength to help her.
Gordon Wilder’s cries gained coherence. “Jackson! My boy. You can still save me. There’s still time.”
Jackson dropped Kate. She collapsed to her knees. Cessy knelt to catch her. She’d overestimated her recovery.
“It’s not real,” Cessy barked. “Get back here.”
Kate met Cessy’s gaze. She grimaced.
“Is that really him?” Cessy mouthed.
Kate hunched her shoulders. “I don’t know.”
Jackson shined his flashlight into the descending tunnel.
“Don’t look,” Kate hissed.
“Dad?”
“It’s not him,” Kate yelled.
A second voice joined Gordon’s. Sheriff Miller. “Do something! You swore an oath! Help me.”
Cessy knew then that Gordon really was appealing to his son for help. He hadn’t been killed in that kiln, he’d been taken. If this was all a trick to get them to turn around, it wouldn’t be Sheriff Miller appealing to Cessy. She hated that man.
Her flashlight dimmed.
Cessy ignored her hurt knee to stand up and lift Kate to her feet.
She’d been willing to use Jackson as a distraction if it meant helping Kate escape. What she was about to do felt even more cruel than that, but she couldn’t get Kate out of here without him.
“Your dad bargained with the worm,” Cessy said.
Kate gasped. “Don’t.”
“He told it to kill vermin like you.”
Jackson moaned. “He didn’t know-”
“He knew you were cooking meth. He knew the worm would come for your whole household.”
Kate elbowed Cessy, but she didn’t stop.
“Your dad knew Olivia would die,” Cessy lied. “He knew she was pregnant. He did it anyways.”
Jackson’s groan turned into a raging scream. “Rot down there, old man!”
The flashlight dimmed to nothing. Darkness hung heavy on Cessy’s shoulders.
Kate’s weight lifted in Cessy’s grasp. She looked up at Cessy with her mouth open in wounded betrayal. Any disdain visible on Kate’s kind face was a fraction of what she felt inside.
Jackson helped lift Kate. “Let’s go.”
They stumbled and ran through the pitch dark mine.
The wails faded behind them.
Olivia was dead, and her voice a trick. But those who’d been taken, Gordon, Sheriff Miller, screamed pleas for help. Cessy listened for Valerie’s voice to return, prayed not to hear it again.
A narrow column of sunlight appeared ahead.
They ran. Kate pumped her legs, kicking along like Cessy had done when drowning in the worm.
“Can you climb?” Cessy asked.
“I can try.”
She couldn’t, but after Cessy and Jackson climbed out onto the forested mountainside, they pulled Kate up.
Cessy’s body ached from the exertion. She rested her forehead against dry leaves, then picked herself up.
She shined her light back down into the mine.
A rushing curtain of blackness swallowed the light, not three feet down the pit.
52
They stumbled down the mountain, away from the pit and the mine and the worm.
Except, Cessy reminded herself, the worm had penetrated so many corners of Hamlin, it could be under them right now.
They reached the trail. Birdsong and rustling leaves were a gentle comfort after the wailing and raging within the mine. Cessy squinted against the daylight. After an hour--several hours?--in the mine, the bright colors of the forest seemed garish.
Cessy caught her breath. Jackson plopped down on dead leaves. He cried into his hands.
Kate leaned on a tree, chest heaving. “Why did you tell him that?” she hissed.
Cessy wanted to break down. “Do you know how many corpses I’ve seen in the past year? For the past two days, I’ve seen your face on every one of then. I would have chopped Jackson up into stir fry if it meant getting you out of that mine alive.”
“You did something worse. What if he could have helped his dad?”
Cessy wanted to hug Kate and celebrate that she was still alive. If she didn’t know her better than probably any other person in the world, she might convince herself that Kate was offering constructive feedback. But Cessy did know her sister, and Kate was livid. “It was a trick.”
“Probably. But you lied, and took away Jackson’s own decision.” Kate looked over at Jackson, who rubbed at his eyes and talked to himself
“You don’t know what Gordon told me” Cessy said. “Maybe I wasn’t lying.”
Kate cleared her throat and winced. “You tense your neck when you lie. Whenever you’d tell Mom and Dad you hadn’t been drinking, the veins in your neck looked like a bodybuilder’s.”
Cessy laughed, but despite the funny image of Kate’s insult, Kate was still dryly serious. “I’m not going to apologize for getting you out alive. And getting Jackson out, too. If he’d have gone to help his dad, he’d probably still be in there.”
Kate exhaled. “You just said you’d have fed him to Lockler.”
“But it didn’t come to that, did it? I got all three of us out.”
The rigidity in Kate’s expression broke. “It took you long enough.” Now she smirked with her sarcasm.
Cessy felt her own flood gates bre
ak. “Are you okay? How long were you in there? Why didn’t you leave? Have you talked to Mom and Dad?”
Kate reached over and held Cessy’s hand. “Every time I tried to leave, the worm came down and I got dragged around again. I tried walking toward Lockler and the Maple Table, but they were too quiet at first. They’ve been getting louder.”
“Are you okay?” Cessy asked again. She’d spent only a few minutes in the worm’s tangles, and sharing it’s urges had left a distaste in her that she feared she’d never get rid of.
“I don’t know. I felt more than I thought possible.”
The words didn’t make sense, but Cessy understood them.
“My head still feels... stretched. But maybe that’s the thirst.”
“We have to get you some water. We can ask the first house we come to.”
“You said you had some in your car.”
“We’re halfway out of the valley already. If we hike over the ridge, we can find a road and hitchhike to help.”
Kate pulled her hand away. “No.”
Her sharpness caught Jackson’s attention.
Already Cessy knew what Kate was going to say, was going to insist. Her heart sank. She hadn’t saved her sister just yet.
“There’s still people down there. We have to get everyone out of Hamlin.”
“Not our responsibility.”
“You felt its urges, don’t you realize what’s about to happen?”
“Yeah, I felt it,” Cessy said. “It barely acknowledges us. It was almost satisfied. What is it?”
“I’ve been forced into its mind a dozen times the past three days, and I’m still not sure. It’s big. The section of its body in Hamlin felt as small as the tip of a hair on my head. It’s hungry, or-”
“Not quite hunger. I felt that, too. Something like a whim.”
“It’s fed on Hamlin.”
Jackson said, “It must like its food angry. That’s why it made Lockler and the Maple Table.”
“So it could communicate with us,” said Cessy.
“They’re not mouthpieces,” Kate said. “It’s done this before, other places and times. They’re a lure. If an anglerfish could personalize its little bobbing light.”
