GRAVEWORM (2 page)

The poor thing was practically in love with him already.

It was time.

“
Listen… why don’t you hop in?” he said. “I’ll give you a lift into town and you can help me from getting lost.”

“
Sure… I guess that would be okay.”

“
Great.”

(lovely little whore only too happy to climb in a stranger’s car that’s the kind of girl she is, henry, that’s the kind of girl they ALL are these days: whores and sluts and harlots)

She looked from him to the leaves in her hand, shrugged. “Botany class.”

“
Of course.”

(a boy can only trust his mother no one else)

When she got in, Henry checked the rearview to make sure no more cars were coming. They were quite alone. Satisfied, he tripped the door locks from his armrest and grinned at her, his dark eyes shining in his pale face.

Lisa stared at him. Her smile slipped into memory. “What… um… why did you lock the doors?”

Henry pulled a carving knife out from under the seat. It wasn’t all that long, but terribly sharp. His mother had carved Christmas hams with it, coaxed anatomical secrets from the seedy gizzards of chickens. Before Lisa could do much more than gasp, he had the knife against her throat.

(teach her a lesson, Henry, teach… her)

“
Oh… oh God… please,” she sobbed, whimpering and gasping, the tan fading from her young face.

Henry was still grinning that awful rubbery grin. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?”

2

It was getting darker early.

Autumn was here.

Margaret Stapleton was washing dishes in the Coombes’ home, wondering where in the heck Lisa was because she was due an hour ago. But wasn’t that like a teenager to get sidetracked with one silly adventure after another? Margaret could remember when she was young—and it took some doing being that she would never see seventy again. She had always left early enough, had high intentions of getting to school before the first bell or getting home on time. But it rarely worked out that way. How many times she was marked tardy she could not remember and how many times the school had called home and her mother had laid into her with a vengeance she preferred
not
to remember.

Kids were a funny lot.

Lisa was no different.

She’d been through a lot, but she seemed to have both feet planted solidly beneath her and her grades were good. Her only problem was that she
was
a teenager and like any teenager—even Margaret herself once upon a time, may God forgive her—she was easily led astray, easily led down the wrong path. What Pastor Reardon often called the “left-handed path” when he was in jovial spirits or the “path of Satan the Corruptor” when he was filled with brimstone and fire. Lisa was a good girl. Better than you could expect when her poor parents were only five years in the ground after the tragedy out on the highway. Yes, a good girl, a smart girl, filled with hope and promise as she flowered into womanhood, but, unfortunately, easily led astray. The crowd she ran with was fast and loose and if it hadn’t been for her older sister, and guardian, Tara, that crowd would have not only ran her down the wrong path but shoved her into a ditch to boot.

But that was where Margaret came in.

She’d raised enough children with a soft heart and a steady hand to smell trouble coming down the pike. And while Tara was off working, making ends meet, who was better to mind the store and keep watch over Lisa than Margaret Stapleton?

“
Nobody,” Margaret said, drying the last of the plates and stacking them in the cupboard with gnarled, arthritic hands that still had plenty muscle and slap in them.

On the wall, the clock kept ticking off the minutes.

In the kitchen, there was silence as she paused.

And in her heart there was… well, uneasiness. She could not realistically put a name to it or pretend to understand, but it was there, clutching like a cold fist, now and again spreading its fingers in her belly. Maybe it was just that Lisa was late from her nature walk—collecting leaves for 3
^rd
Hour Botany, she said when she’d left—and Margaret herself felt responsible. Because she knew that she
was
responsible. Lisa was under her care and now she was an hour late and that probably meant absolutely nothing, but inside, in the secret channels of Margaret’s heart, there was concern.

Where was that child?

She had one of those cellphone gizmos that Margaret openly despised, so why didn’t she call? That’s what those things were for. Margaret knew Lisa’s number was up on the pegboard, right next to Tara’s.

If you need anything at all, Margaret, you just call. My boss understands. Just call if you need me.

But Margaret did not want to call Tara. Doing that would be like an admission that she was too old for the job of babysitter, caretaker, and general watchdog. So very often these days Margaret felt age creeping up on her, laying its shadow against her soul, blighting things that had once flowered brightly. She fought against it with an iron will, determination, and a feisty stubbornness that was part and parcel of who she was. Age might be crippling her hands and stiffening her neck, threading her legs with blue veins and turning her bones brittle, but she’d be damned if it would take the resolution from her soul or the light from her eyes.

She was competent.

Resourceful.

And she was more than equal to the job at hand.

“
I’ll not bother Tara at work with this,” she said under her breath. “If it comes to it, I’ll call Lisa on that darn cellphone. But I won’t bother Tara.”

It was a plan of action.

Margaret waited another five long minutes, then picked up the phone and dialed Lisa’s cell. It rang. Rang again. Then rang some more. But there was no answer, nothing but some annoying voice encouraging her to leave a message which was something Margaret had no intention of doing. If there was one thing she despised more than cellphones—other than computers, that was—it was answering machines. The only thing more annoying than them was having a damn computer call you on the phone and tell you your order was in at Sears.

The clock on the wall said it was after 8:30 now.

Good Lord, girl, where have you gone to now? What sort of trouble and devilment are you up to? Your sister will have my neck for this if you get into mischief and if she does, be certain, little miss, that I will have yours.

She pressed her face up against the square of window above the sink.

So dark out there. Like night had been slit open and its black blood had run everywhere, drowning the yard in a silken darkness. Shadows melted into other shadows in a blurring river of opaque nonentity. She squinted and thought she saw a figure moving near the big maple back there, flitting about beneath its spreading branches. Right away she was imagining Lisa out there, making out with some boy. But the harder she looked, the more she was certain she had only seen mocking shadow.

You’re not sure of that at all, old woman,
she thought then.
Maybe the rest of you is going to hell, but there’s nothing wrong with your peepers.

Feeling a strange tightness in her chest, Margaret walked over to the table and pulled the curtains open at the window. It was bigger and would give her a better view. She pressed her face against the glass and looked out there. She was certain somebody was crouched down by the tree.

She thought she saw eyes shining in the moonlight.

But who would be out there? Who would be hiding out by the tree? Could have been one of the neighbor kids, she supposed. But her mind told her it could also be Lisa up to no good. Her gut instinct, however, was certain that it was not Lisa at all.

“
I’ll sort this out,” Margaret said.

She went over to the back door and clicked on the patio light.

Nothing.

She clicked it a few more times.

It was either burned out or something was playing havoc with the wiring. Ignoring a feeling of panic spreading out in her belly, she opened the screen door. It screeched like nails being pulled from a coffin. The night smelled green and warm, just a hint of chill in the air.

Her eyes were locked on that shape by the tree.

Slowly then, feeling she was making a great mistake, she started over there.

About that time, the crickets went silent.

The night tensed, holding its breath.

3

Darkness.

In the backyard, dappled in moonlight beneath the red maple, the naked girl peered from the shadows at the house before her. It was not large and rambling like the one she shared with her brother, it was trim and neat. Cute. Like a doll house, a lovely little doll house. She wondered if any dolls lived in it.

If there were, she would play with them.

She saw an old woman press her face up to the window. An ugly old woman with an ugly old face. The old woman was staring.

Now she moved to another window. She kept looking. The girl wondered if she saw her. Old people did not see well, yet this old lady seemed to be looking right at her.

Now she came outside.

The girl could smell her and it was a sour, old lady smell like wilted lilacs and mentholated rubs and skin creams. It was a smell of age and ruin, withering life fighting against the purity of death. Not a good smell. Not a vibrant smell or even a cold marble smell like the girl so enjoyed.

Bowing her head, the girl smelled herself.

She stank of rancid soil and dead leaves and shit.

She ran her hands over her dirty skin. Touching first her small pert breasts, the smooth mound of her belly, then letting her fingers slide down between her legs as she became excited by her own rich, filthy odor. As the old lady stood on the patio, staring into the night, the girl started to breathe hard, almost gasping, sliding her middle finger in and out of herself. Her mouth tasted hot and sweet, though her breath was fetid-smelling. She could feel her blood pulsing in her veins, her heart beginning to hammer.

She swung her head from side to side in a smooth, impassioned rhythm.

She slid her finger in and out faster and faster.

She watched the woman.

Felt the damp grass beneath her feet, the wet leaves.

It was intoxicating.

Now the old lady was coming, coming right in her direction, but with a slow and stiff gait as old people used because their muscles were atrophying and their bones were brittle.

“
Come, come, come,” the girl whispered beneath her hot breath. “Come closer and I’ll show you.”

The girl was supposed to cause a commotion to lure the old lady outside, but it hadn’t been necessary because the old woman was very curious, a very nosy old snit and she had come all on her own. And wasn’t that just perfect? Wasn’t that just sweet? Wasn’t that just delicious? She came right out the back door while in the front—

As the old lady meandered closer, a cool night wind brought the smell of things full-blooded and alive, the earthy smell of things dead. The girl was trembling with anticipation. The wind made her nipples stand taut. She let herself come, shuddering with the drunken release of it.

The old woman was closer.

The girl waited, teeth clenched, nostrils flaring.

A cloud passed over the face of the moon.

When the moonlight returned, the girl was gone.

4

Margaret was beginning to wonder what she was doing.

Beginning to wonder if there didn’t come a time when you had to accept your age and the limitations it forced upon you.

There was no reason for her to put herself through this nonsense simply to investigate a shadow that was probably nothing but a shadow at best and at worst, probably one of the neighborhood kids playing hide-and-go-seek. She could have called Bud. He was only a block away. Bud would come over with his flashlight. The big long-handled flashlight that he kept up in the cupboard next to the box that contained his old police badges and yellowed photographs of his days on the force. Bud would have liked to get that call, would have liked to come over and investigate because it would have made him feel young again, like a cop, not a retired old man with a bad back, weak knees, and poor circulation who had more than once fallen asleep before the TV with the heating pad cranked high and burned himself because the feeling in his limbs just wasn’t so good anymore.

Funny how life gets you,
she thought.
How it tricks you and fools you with youth and good health and then, when you’re not looking, the years pile up like apples under a tree. Next thing you know you’re old and gray and you realize you’ve been had. You can tell yourself amusing little self-deluding things like you’re only as old as you feel and life starts at sixty, but you know down deep it’s a load of crap. Soon enough you’re in a nursing home, pissing yourself and playing bingo and hoping your mind will last at least as long as your body while all those nurses call you “sweety” and “honey” like you’re a ten-year old in pigtails and braces, demeaning you, stripping away your self-respect and pride one layer at a time, having little birthday parties for you with cakes and balloons, all those sad-eyed, white-haired things gathered around you, drooling in their little cute party hats. That’s what a life hard-earned and well-spent will get you. Remember Great Aunt Eileen? She’d buried two husbands, lost a boy in World War I and another to the influenza outbreak of 1917, raised up three girls right and proper and in the end, she was in one of them homes wearing a little party hat with the rubber band strap digging into her pouchy sagging neck, her eyes old and sad and used-up. You remember that, Marge? You remember the party? Back around ’66 or ’67 when you were a bright-eyed thirtysomething without a care in God’s own world? You said to her, “Wow, Aunt Eileen, ninety-three today!” And she looked at you with something like pity. “Ain’t nothing wow about it, Margie. Ninety-three ain’t no fun. It’s hell on earth.” And now you’re heading in that direction and, damned, if Great Aunt Eileen wasn’t right.