GRAVEWORM (6 page)

GUN CONTROL IS HITTING WHAT YOU AIM AT.

That’s what the bumper sticker on Costello’s rusty Ford F-150 said. Tara had always thought it to be the paradigm of deluded right wing conservatism, the type of thinking that remained firmly entrenched in brainwashed, archaic values as the world moved forever forward, grinding the old school firmly beneath its heel. Crazy thinking. But sometimes you needed crazy bastards to win the war. Or at least to wage the first battle.

The door.

She grasped the door knob by its tarnished brass handle, feeling a deadly weight in her head, sure that the bad man would be waiting out there.

Then the phone rang in the kitchen.

And kept ringing.

Ignore it and get out of here,
Tara thought.

But then she turned and ran into the kitchen, having to step through the blood and see the butchered remains of Margaret, her head filled with that wet, fleshy stink of raw meat. As she reached for the phone, she saw something she hadn’t before: the back door was ajar, a series of dirty footprints and scuff mark leading from it to the blood and remains.

She practically tore the cordless from the wall.

“
LISTEN TO ME, WHOEVER THIS IS!” she shouted into the receiver. “THERE’S BEEN A MURDER HERE AND I THINK MY SISTER HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? THIS IS NOT A FUCKING JOKE! CALL THE POLICE! THIS IS FOR REAL! CALL THE FUCKING POLICE—”

And through the thunder of her panicked voice, she heard a low, awful, evil voice speak to her from some dead and dark place:

“I’ve got your sister.”

Maybe there was something relevant she should have said. But when her lips parted, all she managed was, “What?
What the hell did you just say?”

“
You heard me,” that vile voice sang out. “I’ve got Lisa. I’ve got that little cunt tucked away high and dry.”

For a moment, Tara felt hopeless… bovine, stupid. But it didn’t last long. Something dirt-mean and horrendously pissed-off clawed right up from her core. “Listen to me, you sick little freak! If you’ve got her, then you better fucking let her go right now! Do you hear me? Because if you don’t, if you don’t—”

“Shut up!”

“
You shut up!”
Tara cried into the phone. “You shut that fucking pisshole you call a mouth or I’ll fucking tear your balls out through your fucking throat! Let her go! Goddamn you, let her go!”

“
SHUT UP!” the voice raged, all razors and sharp edges. “SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU GODDAMN WHORE YOU CUNT YOU DIRTY SICK FORNICATING BITCH! SHUT THE HELL UP BEFORE I SEND YOU HER FUCKING HEAD IN A HATBOX! DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THE FUCK I AM SAYING? I’LL KILL HER! I’LL SLICE HER UP! I’LL FUCKING CUT HER STOMACH OUT AND FUCK HER CORPSE! GET IT? GET IT?
DO YOU FUCKING GET IT, CUNT?”

Tara got it, all right.

The meaning was perfectly clear. Her skin went hot, then cold. Bursts of light like cool, dim neon flickered irregularly. Her guts felt like they wanted to crawl up the back of her throat. But she got it. She got it so good that there was a sharp pain in her chest and she almost passed right out then and there.

She glanced at the caller ID. NO INFORMATION, it read. So he was smart.

“
What do you want?” she sobbed. “God in heaven, what do you want?”

There was silence then. A drawn-out impossible silence that seemed to go on and on as if this creep, this fucking psycho had not really decided yet exactly
what
he wanted. She could hear him breathing fast and labored like he was excited. And that just seemed totally out of place because only living things breathed and he was a monster. Things like him lived in graveyards, in miasmic swamps, they skittered in black sewers. But they were not real. They were not human beings.

“What do I want?”

Tara controlled her own breathing. Locked her fear away. “Yes. What do you want?” She spoke calmly, patiently, her voice even. “What is it you want? I’ll do anything you ask, just please don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt my sister. You can have money, anything. You can even have me… but don’t hurt her. Please don’t hurt her.”

She could hear him smacking his lips with a moist, slopping sound. It made her physically ill. Like the sound of a stomach being pumped.

“I don’t want money.”

“No?”

“
No. And I sure as hell don’t want you.”

“Then what? Just tell me.”

“
We’re going to play a game, Tara. A special game I thought of. Only I know the rules and if you don’t do exactly what I tell you, you lose. And if you lose… if you don’t follow the rules… Lisa dies. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Tara had all she could do not to pass right out. She had to clench down hard with her teeth to keep from doing so. The throbbing pulse in her throat was like the beat of a drum. “Yes, yes.”

More breathing. “First off, I want you to do exactly what I tell you.”

“Yes, yes! Whatever you say!”

“Don’t patronize me, cunt.”

“
I’m sorry! I—”

“
Just shut up and listen. Because this is how it works.” He smacked his lips again and she shuttered. The sound of an oyster being tongued from its shell. “First off, don’t call the police. This is strictly between you and me and your sister. No cops. And no friends and no relatives either. Strictly hush-hush. You understand?”

Tara told him that she did.

“
And don’t even dream of fucking with me, all right? I’m watching you all the time. If the cops come over there or I see you at the police station, she dies. We don’t bargain, she dies. Is that nice and simple?”

“Yes.”

“
And before you get any ideas about getting the law and tracing this call… wise up. Got it?”

“
Of course. But my sister, Lisa—”

“Lives as long as you do what I say.”

Oh, dear God, what was this animal up to? What was his game? Was Lisa really safe or had he been beating her? Raping her? Torturing her? Or had he already done something much, much worse?

“You haven’t hurt her?”

“
No. Not yet.”

“And you won’t?”

He laughed then. Cold, bitter cackling, a disembodied sound like an echo in an empty house. “Just do what you’re told.”

“
Yes, yes. I will. Tell me.”

“
The first thing I want you to do is to clean that place up. Clean up the blood, get rid of the… the body. Bag it up and bury it somewhere no one will ever find it. Can you do that?”

Tara did not think she could. “Yes.”

“This is how the game starts.”

“
Lisa—”

“
Then get going. Your sister doesn’t have much time left.”

“
But—”

“
Tara. Don’t waste my time. Don’t waste Lisa’s.” His tone was ominous, even worse than before. “Tara, I’ve buried your sister alive.”

13

Henry Borden laid in the cellar where it was cool and dark.

He remembered other times in the cool darkness. He remembered the man standing over him, the man who had caught him laying with the dead. The man who was his father who just stood there with that dim, faraway look in his eyes, his face suddenly very old, very worn like something that had been used too much. Those eyes had been shocked, then they looked angry… no, not angry,
disgusted.
Sickened. The mind behind them turning in febrile circles now that it had been shown the unspeakable, the unnamable.

“
What in Christ’s name do you think you’re doing?”
the voice had said with a sharp, resounding impact like a knife stuck in a wall.
“You… you… you can’t do this… you can’t be doing this thing… it’s obscene, it’s awful… it’s… it’s… it’s FILTH!”

Trembling, naked, Henry just laid there, clutching the bloodless white corpse of the girl to him.

(she’s mine all mine you can’t take her from me)

(mine… MINE)

He wanted to say: “No, no… it’s not what you think…” Because that’s what people on TV did when discovered in a compromising position. But he did not say it because now that the truth was laid bare, he did not want to dirty it with lies because it was
exactly
what his father was thinking.

There had been a smooth swishing as his father’s belt escaped its loops. The snap of leather. Then the belt was coming down again and again, striping Henry with purple contusions. It did not stop until his father was sweating and moaning, tears washing down his red-hued face.

(I LOVE her can’t you see that I LOVE her)

His father left him.

Henry clutched the dead girl, whimpering.

Three days later his father would die. He would not speak of the shame his son brought upon him. Disgraced, humiliated, and revolted to his core, he would go to his grave silently, thankfully.

14

Tara screamed or moaned or simply gasped; she could not be sure later. Only that it felt like everything inside her had been drained out at once. Her knees hit the floor, a black rushing sound filling her head.
I’ve buried your sister alive.

She has air, Tara. As long as you cooperate. But when you don’t… when… you… don’t…

Hurry, Tara… the clock is running.

The line went dead.

And so did Tara.

15

Henry Borden sat in his house, in the dark. Something black and deadly slithering around in his belly. He pulled the voice-activated digital voice recorder from inside his coat and dropped it on the table. He found himself motionless. More so, frozen with inaction. There really was nothing more that needed doing… not yet, anyway… but still he felt he should be doing
something.

In the darkness, he thought it all over.

Although he pretty much figured that he had Tara Coombes by the short and curlies, there was always the chance she might turn on him. Panic and call the police. He wasn’t terribly worried about that, but hell, you just never knew with women.

(you just can’t trust them, henry, evil to the core, every one of them like snakes, just like snakes, turn your back on them and they’ll sink their venomous fangs right into your neck! they have that slit between their legs and it is the root of all worldly evil, they were thrown out of eden because of that slit, henry, because of what they liked to do with it)

His mother’s words. She might have done a lot of terrible things to him, but she never lied. You could give the queen bitch that much. She was honest.

Henry’s father used to say that the most dangerous thing in the world was the hole between a woman’s legs.

Henry hadn’t understood that at all when he was young, but later, yeah, later it made perfect sense. Particularly when the girls started to turn away from him.

Then he knew.

He knew all about girls.

He knew goddamn well what that hole did to them.

(it is the well spout of infamy, henry, from that gash will spring the flowers of evil eden was destroyed by eve because she couldn’t keep her legs closed)

In school, he had been shy and quiet. Never did a thing to draw attention to himself. No fooling around. No insulting teachers behind their backs or calling the other kids names. None of that. Maybe that’s why the boys picked on him and maybe that’s why the girls laughed at him or just plain ignored him.

The main reason for all of it was that he was withdrawn, thin and pale, and his old man just happened to be caretaker of Hillside Cemetery. That just left those kids cold (heh, heh). They called him “Dead Boy” and “Graveworm” and whispered behind his back about what a little creep he was.

When Henry graduated high school, he got out of town as quick as he could. He was accepted at Southwestern’s School of Mortuary Science, pulled an excellent GPA, and then, yes, then those bastards kicked him out right on his ass.

Just leave quietly, Mr. Borden. We’re not going to bring the police in on this… ah… matter. But I would suggest you seek therapy…

Bullshit. That’s what it was. They didn’t like him because he was a loner so they made up nasty little stories. They conspired against him because he was smarter and more efficient than they could ever be. So out he went. He didn’t even bother going home. He joined the Army, served in the first Iraq war in a very special capacity… then, well there was trouble there too. He was put in the psych ward for six months, then given a dishonorable discharge. While he was incarcerated, he learned his mother had just undergone her fourth (or was it fifth?) nervous breakdown and she was on so many medications that she was shitting herself half the time. Then the bad thing had happened. When he finally got home he got his old man’s caretaker job at Hillside. They offered it to him right away, knowing nothing of his past. The caretaker that had replaced his father—Siemens, heh, heh—was dying. Forty hard years on the booze had finally kicked his legs out from under him. The owners didn’t care who took the position as long as somebody did.