GRAVEWORM

GRAVEWORM

Tim Curran

Prologue

Beneath the unhallowed light of a full, fat graveyard moon, the cadaverous man stepped lightly through the cemetery. In his slick black undertaker’s coat and high silken stovepipe hat, he was strictly Bela Lugosi-goth: his leering face a skull, his skin fish-belly white and glistening like Vaseline. The fingers that clutched anxiously at his sides were long, thin, delicate; almost spidery. The fingers of a surgeon. And his eyes—buried in that dead white sunless face—were pools of black, bubbling oil, dark mirrors that reflected lonely desperation and a frozen stark malignancy, silent and wormy like bones in a shroud.

In his left hand, he carried a shovel.

He carried it tightly.

He looked around the cemetery, breathing hard with passion. It was empty, stygian, bleak and somehow hollow like his own mind. A cool-edged September wind blew, stripping Autumn leaves from craggy trees and laying them down like a carpet over vault and grave alike.

Before him was a burial vault set into the side of a grassy, mounded hill. Moonlight reflected off the name chiseled into the stone above the wrought-iron door. The name was that of his family.

He stood there, letting the solitude fill him. He was as still as one of the weathered stone statues up on the hill. He breathed out slowly, gripping the shovel in his fists. It was heavy. Stout wood and drop-forged iron. The way they used to make them for diggers who knew that the opening and filling of a grave was an art form.

(now do it, do it)

Taking one last good look around, seeing in the dark like an owl, he began to dig. The shovel blade reverberated thickly over the marble faces of the clustering headstones as it bit into the cold black earth. It echoed off the wrought-iron gates of sepulchers and hill-tombs. All else was silence. He wondered then with ghoulish amusement if
they
could hear it. The interred. Those resting far below, cheek to jowl with the moist graveyard earth and the caress of the worm. How he envied them wound up tight in their shrouds and sunken in their silken depths.

(dig dig hurry)

He
licked his thin leathery lips and concentrated on his work, letting the blade of the shovel slice deep into the earth.

He kept digging.

Cutting deeper.

The farther he dug, the more excited he got until it was like some kind of hysterical religious fervor had taken possession of him. When he reached the box he was nearly out of his mind with it. Sweating and swearing, breaking catches on the casket with the blade of the shovel, he pawed away the loose earth until his fingers slipped easily around the lip of the lid.

(get me out of here)

With a horrible and wizened grin upon his lips, he began to cackle with deranged laughter. It was like shards of mangled iron scratching in blackness.

(hu-rry)

His throat a desert, a coiled evil in his belly, his heart pounding, he pulled the lid open and looked within. Beneath the glare of the rising full moon, his eyes winked like bits of glass as he looked down at the withered scarecrow in the box. In his head and only in his head, he could hear its obscene laughter.

“
I’m here,” he said.

(it’s about time)

He reached down into the box, feeling grave clothes like rotted canvas, papery flesh and pitted, jutting bones. He stroked the matted, straw-dry hair with his fingertips, pressing his quivering lips to the grinning toothy deathmask leering up at him.

(that’s a good boy, that’s a good boy)

Then, sighing like the leaves in the trees, he climbed into the box atop the shriveled remains, listening to a cooing sound in his head. “Mother,” he said.

Part One:

Walk With Me In The Graveyard

1

She was a pretty girl and Henry Borden watched her very closely.

The way a guy with a net might watch a butterfly he was planning on adding to his collection. He watched her long tanned legs pound up the side of that dusty county road, watched her blonde hair brush her bare shoulders.

A girl alone like that.

He knew there was going to be trouble.

He kept his eyes on her, taking it all in and drinking it down. It stuck in his belly, hot and uneasy. A trickle of sweat ran down his brow. He put the girl at sixteen, seventeen years of age. Young… sweet… alone. What was a pretty girl like her doing out here in the middle of nowhere? It didn’t make sense, but maybe it made all the sense in the world. Fate had a way of arranging things sometimes.

Henry looked around.

Nothing. Nobody.

He swallowed. Where was her big burly boyfriend? Where were her friends? There wasn’t anything out here but a lot of nothing: meandering fields of yellow grass, dark stretches of forest, a few abandoned farms. And the cemetery, of course. A girl like that just wasn’t using her head. Out here by herself, some crazy freak could have snatched her, raped her.
Killed her.
And who would have known? Really, who would have known? A guy could get her into his car and then—

Maybe you should just drive past,
he told himself.
Just keep going.

But the car was slowing and he wasn’t even conscious of easing off the accelerator. Girl like that should be more careful. Something bad happened to her it would be her own fault. Henry’s heart began to pound and sweat beaded his brow and his fingers began to shake on the wheel. He pressed his lips tight as flowers in a book, knowing this was how trouble always began.

But I’m lost,
a voice in his head said.
Maybe she could help me.

Even though that was a lie, it relaxed him slightly the way his brain invented things when the need arose. Sure, this girl could help him. She looked nice. Of course, you had to be careful and all, because you never knew about girls these days. Some of them looked sweet, but down deep they were mean pigs. And maybe that was it. Maybe she was out here looking for someone to rob.

That’s the way these girls are, Henry. Hot, fast, and loose,
he could hear his mother saying in her cawing monotone.
They’re like spiders inviting you into their webs so they can suck you dry. And if now and again a boot crushes them, so much the better. Leggy, crawling things, they put themselves in these situations and if something bad happens then it’s their own fault.

“
Stop it,” Henry said under his hot breath.

He made to pass by her, but at the last moment he pulled his big black Lincoln up behind her. The girl looked back at him. Concerned, but not terribly so.

Henry wiped the sweat from his face and stepped out, roadmap in hand. “Hi there,” he said and dear God, listen to how casual and reassuring his voice was. “I wonder if you could help me. I think I got myself lost.”

The girl didn’t move at first.

This is how it went. They either bolted or they stepped into the snare.

Stupid girls.

She stared at him with eyes the color of sapphires. They were bright, filled with vitality. Beautiful eyes. Henry could see something hidden back in them… hesitancy, caution. Like maybe she’d gotten a good smell of him and didn’t like it. But finally her lips curled into a smile, revealing perfect white teeth. A model should have had those teeth.

“
Sure,” she said, clutching a handful of leaves for some reason. “Where you going?”

She came up close and Henry could smell the fresh, soapy scent that came off her, sweetened slightly by a vague musk of perspiration. Her blouse swished over her soft skin. A furnace heat billowed from her in waves.

Warm. Hot-blooded. Henry didn’t like that so much.

“
Uh… I’m trying to get here,” he told her, stabbing a finger on the map. “Bitter Lake. It’s got to be around here somewhere.”

“
It sure is. Next left. You must’ve gotten off the main highway somehow.”

“
Must have.” Henry shook his head, brushed a stray wisp of dark hair from his brow. “Isn’t that just the way it goes sometimes? I guess I’ve never been much with maps, but this is even an all-time low for me.”

The girl smiled thinly. “Oh well, we all get lost.”

“
Few as often as me, I’m afraid. Anyway, you’ve been a big help.”

“
No problem.”

He began to fold up his map, doing it very precisely with his long thin fingers. The girl hadn’t started away yet. He knew she wouldn’t until one of them had terminated the conversation completely. She felt clumsy, awkward. She was a nice Midwestern girl, as pure and vital as fields of Indiana wheat. Stranger or not, she simply couldn’t bring herself to be rude.

“
Listen,” he said, “while you’re here, could you tell me where I might find the Mission Point Clinic?”

“
Oh sure. Just take that next left and keep going,” she said, sketching it out in the air with her finger. “You’ll come to Elm, which passes for a main street hereabouts. Just follow it right out of town until you hit Shore. Shore goes right around the lake. About a half mile out you’ll find the clinic. Can’t miss it.”

Henry smiled. “Says you.”

She laughed. “You’ll find it, all right.”

“
I hope so. I’m told I’m a better physician than a navigator.”

A moment before she looked anxious to go. Now she was in no hurry. “Oh, you’re a doctor?”

“
Yes. They’re pretty short-handed at the clinic—”

“
Tell me about it.”

“—
so I’m here to save the day. Anyway, my name’s John. John Shears. You?”

“
Lisa Coombes.”

“
Lisa?” He gave her an odd look, not quite a smile and not quite a frown. “That’s a nice name.”

“
Oh.” She shrugged. “Are you a G.P.?”

Henry stared at her. He didn’t know why he was doing this or where he hoped to go with it. But sometimes that’s the way it was. Like he was a passenger and someone else was doing the driving. It was simply out of his hands and, like it or not, he was just going to have to wait. Wait and see.

“
Yes, general practitioner. Finest medical specialty in the world, my father used to say.”

(see? see how easy it is, henry? see how she falls into your trap? she’s been asking for this and now she’ll get it, god yes, she’ll get what she was asking for)

“
He was a doctor, too?”

“
Oh yes.”

Henry listened then as his voice spoke plainly and honestly about the practice of medicine. He felt like he was in another room, eavesdropping. The girl ate it up, of course. It was so fucking easy there seemed to be little sport involved. People trusted doctors. Sure, they sued ‘em and bitched about ‘em, but down deep they were very much in awe of them. It was like medical practitioners were godlike, an elite race somehow closer to the almighty than the rest of humanity. A physician, in general, was above reproach.

Lisa sighed. “You know, I’ve been taking a lot of chemistry and biology in school. I was thinking… you know… that maybe when I graduated this year…”

“
Med school?”

“
Yeah, I guess. It’s stupid.”

“
Not at all. Maybe I can help you. It isn’t easy to get into med school, but if you were recommended by an alumni… well, trust me, it makes a difference.”