Knife Fight and Other Struggles (15 page)

The worms had made his driveway into a tunnel of white. Every tree was enshrouded with them, and the silk extended through the branches overhead to make a thick ceiling. The bright afternoon seemed overcast in here, under their shadow. Looking back through the tunnel his truck had made, Robert thought he could almost see the clean sunlight on the road. But the shrouds distorted distance, and it was hard to tell for sure.

The truck itself was nearly as well-disguised. The silk draped across it from back to front, and the caterpillars moved across it in thick clusters.

Arm in front of him to ward off the caterpillars that dangled from threads every few feet, Robert walked around to the back of the pickup. The bag containing the canisters of insecticide were packed back near the cab, barely visible through the mess of worms and silk. Robert reached into it, his hand gathering more worms as he did so, and pulled out the bag.

Robert shut his eyes for a moment, then turned away from the road he imagined he could see and walked toward the next wall of worms.

They gathered on him as he moved. His hands always touched the webbing first, and were sometimes black with the worms up past the wrists. But there were enough worms for all of him. They burrowed into his hair, and he was certain he felt them under his collar, moving down his back, among the copse of thick hairs that grew on his shoulders. When he looked down, he saw them all over his jeans, clustering by the hundreds around his knees and thighs, the tops of his boots. He kept his mouth shut and snorted whenever he exhaled to blow away the ones on his lip.

But he didn’t brush them off. To do so would be to admit to the spiralling terror in his belly, and such an admission would paralyze him—or worse, send him crashing into the trees, running blind.

He was nearly blind now. The farther along the driveway he got, the more intricate the weave became. Every few feet he had to clear another shift of silk, and at times it was only the feeling of gravel under his feet that reassured him he was still on the driveway at all.

He stopped once, to bend over and breathe, shake the sweat from his hair. It was greenhouse-hot here, but the air seemed to hold little oxygen. Worms fell to the ground as he straightened and pushed forward.

He knew the campground was getting closer as the silk in front of him began to glow with the yellow of the afternoon sun. At first it was just a dim hue, like the sun through a thinning patch of cloud on an overcast day. As Robert went on, the light grew, making each sheet of silk more luminescent than the last. Finally, with scarcely more than a sheet to go, Robert saw the bright shapes of his campground through the glowing threads of silk.

He ran forward, nearly dropping the insecticide as he went, and burst from the wall of the nest, trailing silk like a bridal train. He shook off his hand, wiped the worms from his lips and opened his mouth to shout:

“Sharon!”

The campground was silent. The silk from the maple over his house now extended over all the trees. The canopy sloped down in places to touch the shrubs and saplings nearer the ground, in the clean parabolas of circus-tent roofs. There was a clearing in the trees maybe a hundred feet in diameter, which Robert used mostly as a cul-de-sac and parking lot for the day-trippers. The worms had left it a barren oasis of gravel and scrub grass.

“Sharon!” he shouted again. “You there? You all right?”

His cabin was nearly invisible under the silk, a peaked cube of shadow. No sound came from inside.

Almost absently, Robert peeled the silk from his shoulders and strode across the clearing to the far edge. He tried to imagine how Sharon must feel in there—cocooned inside his already-too-small cabin, choking on what must be stifling heat. The worms hadn’t bothered her the day before; she’d barely given them a second glance these past few weeks. But this. . . .

The cabin was too quiet. Christ, he thought, what’s happened to Sharon while I’ve been gone?

I need you here.

Robert started toward the cabin. If he’d made it up the driveway on his own, he surely wouldn’t have a problem making it through a few layers of silk into his cabin.

But the silk was tougher here. Robert had to use his jackknife to cut through it, and the sound of his passage was like ripping fabric. There were fewer worms on the curtains, but the task was no easier for that: in the worms’ place were row upon row of hard cocoons, brittle like plastic and some as large as Robert’s thumb.

He groped on, cutting and advancing, until he found his cabin—not by sight, but by touch. He had come through at a point in the middle of the south wall, underneath the kitchen window. His hand glided up to confirm the glass, the rough metal screen. But before he could withdraw, worms tumbled down onto his head, and he shook them away. Dim yellow light shone out from the kitchen, in the spaces where his hand had cleared the screen of caterpillars.

“Sharon!” His voice was weak, gasping.

She didn’t answer, but Robert thought he heard movement inside.

Robert inched along the dry timbers until he reached the stoop to his front door. The overhang kept the space of his vestibule clear of silk, so Robert didn’t have to do much more cutting. He stumbled up the stairs and grabbed the door handle.

“I’m here, Sharon,” he whispered. The door wasn’t locked—it wasn’t even closed properly—and Robert yanked it open. It banged against the wall with an oddly muffled crunch. “I’m—”

He couldn’t finish.

The walls, the floor, the ceiling of the living room were blanketed in them. They crawled over the floor lamp, tiny bodies making an uneven pattern of curling silhouettes on the shade. They blacked out the three oil paintings on the wall over the Coleman, and they utterly covered his leather recliner, like a new, writhing layer of upholstery. The sofa’s stuffing was laid bare, and more worms burrowed into it.

Robert began to tremble. His mouth opened, and he shut it again as quickly: the idea that the worms might get in
there
, too. . . .

Oh Jesus, oh God
. Robert felt himself unravelling.

Robert’s eyes widened, and the scream that should have come through his mouth forced its way instead through his nostrils. The canisters of insecticide fell to the floor, and Robert’s hands grasped at the lapels of his own shirt, and tore.

The shirt came away in a cascade of buttons. He threw it across the room. He yanked his belt undone next, and stripped off his jeans—they were filled with worms, as bad as the shirt, and when they hitched over his boots he nearly screamed again, fell into the worms at his feet. But somehow he managed to stay upright and, jeans at his ankles, kicked the boots free. Then he kicked clear of the jeans as well, and bent to pick up one of the insecticide canisters from the bag at his feet.

Robert dug his thumb into the nozzle and found the pin.
The Contents
were
Under Pressure
—that was only the first in the long list of fine-print warnings that ran down the side of the insecticide canister. When Robert pushed the pin in, the insecticide came out in a cool, spreading vapour that made Robert’s eyes sting. He coughed only once, and turned the spray onto the summer worms.

By degree, the cabin’s living room and kitchen filled with billowing, stinking white mist. It settled on the glass of the mirror on the bathroom door like a frost, hung in the air like a stratum of cigarette smoke at an all-night poker game. Robert coughed again, three times. His thumb was getting cold, and he felt the stinging spread to the quick under his nail. Snot dribbled from his nostrils, running fast over his thin, clamped lips. He kept up the pressure.

The spray got to the ceiling worms first, and they began to fall. Robert felt them land on his shoulders, in his hair, but he resisted the urge to scrape them away. He’d have to let go of the insecticide for that, and it was still heavy with product.

He moved forward into the living room, spraying as he went. His vision was beginning to blur, but he could hear well enough. And the sound that he heard was the pitter-pat of worms, falling all around him in a solidified rain. Robert wanted to laugh. If only he could open his mouth . . . He giggled through his nose instead, and thick strings of snot fell onto the backs of his forearms.

This was
his
land.
His
home.

My roots, Robert said to himself, and noted with satisfaction that the worms were coming down from the walls now too.

“Stop it.”

The voice was quiet, pained, and it was only after it came three times that Robert remembered Sharon.

He still had to struggle to make himself lift his thumb.

The voice came from the bedroom. Robert was dizzy from the fumes, and his ears had started to ring now as well, but he could tell that much.

“Stop.”

Robert had a hard time staying upright—
I should open a window, that would air the place out
. He coughed some more, tasted salt and copper in the mucous this time. The bedroom doorframe came up under his outstretched hand as the house lurched, and took his weight. He guided himself past it, into the cabin’s other room.

“Sharon.” The word came like a bark. It hurt in his chest, but he said it again.

“Sharon.”

He couldn’t see a thing in the bedroom. The light was out, and his eyes felt like they were going to burn out of his head.

Robert stumbled through something on the floor and stopped the spinning house again, this time grabbing the bedside lamp as it passed. He flicked it on with his insecticide thumb.

Sharon lay curled on the bed, underneath the comforter she’d brought with her. Robert blinked, tried to focus his eyes on her—it seemed as though she lay in a mist, thicker even than the vapours he’d sprayed in the living room. Christ. How much had he sprayed? Robert felt normalcy returning to him, and with it, a sickening realization of exactly what he’d done. The poison must be everywhere by now. The worms fell here too, landing on him, the comforter. On the mist over Sharon’s face, suspended. . . .

“Oh Sharon, honey.” He set the insecticide down on the night table. As he reached down to touch her, the realization chilled him:

Sharon was enshrouded in silk. As his fingers pushed through it, Sharon’s eyelids fluttered, and she shifted slightly under the comforter.

More deliberately this time, Robert set about pulling away the silk. Sharon blinked her eyes open, and as her lips parted, he stopped pulling.

“Bobby.” Her voice was gummy, and it had a sleepy drawl to it. “Stinks in here.”

Robert yanked the remainder of the threads clear. His vision started to double, but he could make out Sharon’s arm as it came up to him. It was so thin, he thought. In his doubling vision, it seemed to undulate, as though boneless. Silk wrapped it like the lace sleeve of a bridal gown.

“I’m glad you came back,” she said. “I was almost ready to go to sleep without you.”

“I’ll always come home,” said Robert. Her fingertips felt rough as they brushed the back of his neck, and her touch left a sting behind on his sensitized skin.

“You’re late, though.” Sharon’s eyes glittered, and Robert thought:
I’m an idiot with this woman; she makes me slow.

“I took Allan to the hospital,” he said. Sharon’s hand moved up through his hair, drew him down onto the bed. “I know you wanted me back soon. I’m sorry.”

“You should have come,” said Sharon. Her hand came over his scalp, leaving it cool where she passed. “Time for bed.”

“Honey—”

—
we have to get you out of here
, Robert would have said. But at that instant, her hand appeared over his forehead. Clutched in its fist were clumps of brown hair. They were bloody at their roots.

“Jesus!” Robert’s scream sounded high, distant in his own head.

He pulled back, but he wasn’t quick enough: Sharon’s other hand shot out and grabbed his left wrist. She smiled and her lips collapsed inward. As they parted he confirmed it: her mouth was a pink and black pit, toothless. She pushed his bloody hair inside.

Robert yanked at his wrist, but her fingers dug into the flesh there like a tightening noose. He felt his pulse quicken, even as his vision started to grey. The lump of hair and blood travelled down Sharon’s elongated throat like a rat through a python.