by Curran, Tim
Down there, down below, down in the black, diseased, and reeking bowels of the city.
And it was there, she knew, that things mutated and took shape in the sunless, polluted, steaming channels and pipework. Oh yes. The very same things that were rising now and spilling into the streets and homes on bubbling rivers of black muck.
Knowing this, Eva decided the veins and arteries of the town were more like conduits that linked the dark underworld with the sunlit world of men. They were highways that led into every single house.
15
In the end, Marv O’Connor left Fern with the kids because there was no damn way he was letting her go out into the darkness with that goddamn reeking mud flowing in the streets. Fern weighed about 105 pounds soaking wet. He could just picture her getting washed away in the slop never to be seen again. No, this was a job for someone a little meatier and that was him. At 6’3” and 260 pounds, it was going to take some real mud to wash him away.
Besides, he was just as worried about Tessa Saldane as she was.
Help me…I’ve been attacked…
Those were the words Fern said Tessa used on the phone. Marv knew Tessa pretty damn well by that point. She wasn’t someone to call and say something like that unless there was a very real threat. She was far too old and far too proud for such theatrics.
But attacked…?
It was crazy.
It was no easy thing getting over to her house. Tessa lived at the very end of the block and that was a long, slow slog when the muck was up above your thighs. Marv was wearing his rubber chest waders or he would have been soaked to the skin with the filth which was not just mud and muck but sewage as well, judging by the vile stink of it.
After a good twenty minutes of chugging along, he finally got to Tessa’s.
He dragged himself up the porch and pounded at the door. His legs felt weak and weightless after pushing through the mud for so long.
“Tessa!” he called. “Tessa! It’s me, Marv O’Connor!”
There was no response. He threw the door open and charged in, calling her name and clicking on lights as he went. He got a bad feeling right away and wished he had brought something to defend himself with. Even a penknife. Anything. All he had was a flashlight.
It was the smell in the air that bothered him.
It wasn’t the gaseous, noisome stench of the black muck, but a smell that he was all too familiar with as a deer hunter: blood. The house was a ripe, reeking envelope of it. It smelled the way the gut shed up at hunting camp smelled in November…like a slaughterhouse. The stink of bowels and marrow, animal fat and oceans of draining blood.
But here…in Tessa’s house?
He moved faster until he reached the kitchen. Then he came to a dead halt as he reached for the light switch and clicked it on. The smell was so bad in there, so concentrated, that it brought his stomach up the back of his throat.
Then, in the light, he saw.
Tessa was dead. In fact, she was more than dead. She looked like she had been torn right open. She was laying in a pool of blood, more of it splattered against the counters and smeared on the cupboards and appliances.
Marv turned away.
When he turned back, something moved.
What the fuck?
It crawled out from beneath Tessa’s corpse, parting her hair like a comb…a worming, fleshy thing that seemed to be composed of ringlike segments, each of which seemed to be pulsating. It looked like some kind of millipede. More so, like some flesh-eating nightmare worm from a B-movie. It crawled free of Tessa, hitting the blood-puddled floor with a soft thud.
Then it raised its anterior end off the floor and showed him a perfectly oval cavity of a mouth with perfectly sharp teeth.
It hissed.
Marv took two shuffling steps backward, his hand blindly—and instinctively—reaching out for some kind of weapon, because he had no doubt this thing was a fucking killer. Maybe it was only two or three feet long, but it was thick around as his arm, muscular and evil with teeth made for shredding. His fingers fumbled across cutting boards and canisters of flour and salt.
The worm lowered its head/mouth back to the floor.
It began to vibrate. Then it began to move in his direction…slowly, slowly, but he had the oddest feeling that if it wanted to, it could fly right across the room at him with dizzying speed.
The butcher block. He yanked a carving knife free.
The worm came at him, not slowly now, but with amazing speed. He knew he could have dashed through the door, but the idea of turning his back on that monster was scary. He could just about imagine it climbing his spine and sinking its teeth into the back of his neck.
It leapt.
It was four feet away and Marv was brandishing a carving knife that could gut a pig, still it leapt…fearless, remorseless, almost manic with its need to attack. It made it to within a foot of him before he swung the blade and missed, his wrist knocking the worm to edge of the counter where it hung, the spiny protrusions jutting from its segments scratching to gain a hold.
Marv let out a cry and slashed at it with the knife.
He missed the head (if head it could be called) and slashed open a couple of its segments, that pissed out a vile, watery discharge that could not possibly be blood. The worm turned to fight. It struck at him and he slashed it again, laying it open. It made a weird trilling sound that might have been a cry of pain.
It knew then he was dangerous.
Like most predators, it was basically cowardly. Fattened and sluggish from feeding on Tessa, it wanted to kill, but it wanted an easy kill. So as he hacked at it again, it fled. It slithered over the counter with great speed and unstoppable power. It knocked aside dishes, overturned a flour canister, sliding behind the breadbox when he stabbed at it, jumping up and clinging to the underside of the cupboards when he brought the knife around.
It oozed copious amounts of foaming brown slime that left a dirty, greasy trail behind it. The fluid practically gushed from its segments.
Marv knew what it was trying to do.
The sink was full of black muck and that’s where it had come from and that’s where it was going now. It was retreating with a full belly. It did not want to fight; it wanted to hide.
It moved, it slinked, it slithered and wriggled.
He kept slashing at it, making damn sure it knew he meant business so it would not get any bright ideas in its little wormy brain and decide to counter-attack. He had to keep it on the defensive.
When it reached the sink, it turned and bared its teeth, hissing again.
The mouth darted at him, the segments elongating so its strike was fast and elastic.
Marv kept away from it, only slashing at it when it pulled back.
It tried to get into the left basin of the sink where the black goo was still bubbling and slopping. He slashed it, cutting it open. It tumbled into the right basin, twisting and writhing, its spines scraping over the shiny metal trying to get some kind of a grip and finding it nearly impossible.
Marv struck.
He brought the knife down and speared it just behind the head, slime and brown goo flooding the basin in a discharge of jelly. The worm hissed and flopped, but he had it and he knew it. But he wouldn’t have it long. He had it pinned to the sink, but he could feel its strength. It was flexing like a huge muscle, pulsing and straining, pouring out mucus, its body inflating and convulsing.
It would work itself loose and he knew it.
Kill it, kill this motherfucker!
“No, you don’t,” he said under his breath as its whipping tail tried to wrap around his wrist, its spines tearing open the back of his hand. He turned on the garbage disposal, the Insinkerator, and it began to whir and gurgle, a few bubbles of black goo coming up out of the drain cup.
The worm fought manically.
But Marv was determined.
He forced it into the drain, pushing it down with the knife until he heard the blades bite. The worm went sti
ff like a penis, throbbing and straining, then loose and limp and whipping. The Insinkerator blades chewed into it. He used his free hand to shove the bulk of the worm down into the drain.
More goo came bubbling up…but this was pink and meaty with foaming slime. The Insinkerator kept whirring.
Finally, Marv shut it off.
He stumbled away, refusing to look at the remains of Tessa and refusing to think about what had just happened.
16
Snarling like an animal, Ivy launched herself at the worm.
Geno saw her do it, but he was numb and helpless from worm toxins and the loss of blood. It was all like a dream to him. He was beyond the point where he even knew what day it was or where he was or how he had come to be there.
Ivy seized the worm with a murderous fury and tore it away from his knee. She gripped it right behind the head with both hands like it was a poisonous snake and right away, the worm began to writhe and squirm with muscular contortions and boneless gyrations. It was a powerful, sinuous creature that did not like to be grabbed. Its fanged mouth hissed, its head segment snapped from side to side, its body looped, but she held on with an impressive strength and determination.
“You fucking thing!” she shrieked at it. “You don’t come into my fucking kitchen with your filth and disease!”
The section she gripped seemed to sag and deflate.
The worm had a hydrostatic skeleton pressurized by fluid. The tighter she gripped it, the more the fluid was drained into other segments. But that hardly meant it was going to submit without a fight. Its body began to whip in her hands with violent contractions, the segments oozing out a thick, gelid mucus until she could barely hang on to it. They flattened. They elongated. They swelled with fluid.
It was like trying to hang on to a high-pressure hose.
Ivy did not give in.
Even though its bristles cut into her fingers like pins, she increased her hold, gripping different segments. The mucus made her hands slide from segment to segment as the muscles of the worm contracted and relaxed in fluidic waves.
Its tail flailed wildly, knocking things off the counter and she was thrown this way and that by it. Its body curled around her with a crushing embrace, its thorny bristles digging into her skin. Then its head slid free and Geno, through dimming eyes, saw its pulsating length coiling around his wife, the segments fattening with hydrostatic pressure until there was the clear sound of things bursting inside her, ligaments popping and bones dislocating.
A moaning sound in his throat, he reached out one flaccid hand in her direction.
But by then, the worm had already torn off her right arm like a chicken wing with a gristly, grinding noise.
17
Tony stumbled up the steps of Stephani Kutak’s house, breathing hard and reaching for the doorbell. Doorbell? You’re really going to ring the fucking doorbell? The absurdity of that nearly made him laugh, but there was nothing very funny about it or anything else. Still, he knew he had no right to barge in without announcing himself, so he rapped his knuckles on the door a few times before letting himself in.
“Steph?” he called out. “Stephani? It’s Tony from next door. Are you there?”
Maybe she was hiding.
Maybe she was freaked out.
She was an attractive woman who lived alone and it would only make sense that she might be a little on edge. The whole damn neighborhood was on edge and with good reason. Tony stood there, dripping muck onto the carpet, wondering how Charise was faring downtown and how she would take the news of Stevie’s death.
Stupid fucking dog. I never liked that dog…not much anyway.
But he wasn’t going to think about Stevie. He refused to go through it all again. His real worry was what had gotten Stevie. There were things in the muck and he had a nasty feeling that the worm that had gotten his dog was not one of a kind.
He stepped farther into the house.
In his fantasies, he’d been invited into this house again and again, but it had never once been like this.
“Steph?”
There was only silence…heavy, brooding, and thick with something very much like menace. There was every possibility, of course, that she had escaped when the mud started filling the streets. Yet, for some reason, he just didn’t believe that.
“Steph? Are you here?”
He nearly shouted it and his voice echoed throughout the house, bouncing down hallways and through empty rooms before coming back at him with the tonal quality of a scream. Maybe it wasn’t that bad except in his imagination, but there was a quality to it he didn’t like, one that was quite nearly hysterical.
He reached around on the wall until he found the light switch.
Better. The shadows were swept away. He crossed the living room and turned on the hallway light and that’s when he saw the slimy, muddy trail that led across the floor into the kitchen. Something in him sunk at the sight of it. It didn’t necessarily mean there was a worm in the house. Maybe Steph went out into the muck and tracked it back in herself. Maybe.
He stepped cautiously, very cautiously down the hallway with nothing to defend himself with but the softball bat. He was trying hard not to think about what had torn Stevie apart, how very deadly and relentless it was. How it punched holes in doors and turned wicker hampers to sawdust and drilled right through one silly, harmless dog who, in his last moments, had decided to be a dog and defend his turf and maybe, just maybe, had been defending something of a little more worth.
That goddamn mutt was trying to protect you and you know it. He died trying to kill that fucking worm because in the final analysis, you were his master and he would have done anything for you. That’s loyalty, my friend. Just try and find that in a human being.
Tony wiped his eyes. No more goddamn walks in the park. No more yipping. No more chewing up things. No more accidents. No more anything.
“Dammit, Stevie,” he said under his breath.
The situation was getting the better of him and he had the strongest desire to just sit down on the floor and cry. He fumbled in his shirt pocket for a cigarette, lit it with trembling fingers. Lookit me, Steph, I’m smoking in your house. What do you think of that, Little Miss Perfect? He felt almost guilty doing it, knowing how fastidious she was about everything. She kept her little house as perfect as she kept herself. She never invited anyone into it either. She never let any hands but her own touch those things she loved best. That was funny, too. Good-looking woman like that with no men (or women for that matter) in her life. She had a few female friends—Charise had been one of them—but that was it and to call them friends was kind of stretching it.
Acquaintances, Tony thought. She never had anything in her life but acquaintances.
Maybe she was afraid of sex, afraid of commitment, afraid of relationships in general…and maybe she loved herself so much that the idea of sharing herself with another made her jealous.
Tony pulled off his cigarette, staring at the muddy trail.
The floorboards upstairs creaked momentarily. Houses made noises sometimes, he knew. Nine times out of ten, it was nothing. He went over to the stairs.
“Steph?” he said, his voice echoing and dying.
He heard no more sounds and that’s why he knew he had to go up there, even though the fear rising in his gut warned him against such an idea.
Nobody could really blame you for leaving now. You tried and she’s not here. You really have no right to track this stinking mud all over her house, so go over to the O’Connors’, wait this out with Marv and Fern. Or visit Kathleen and Pat. Go see Geno. He was drinking beer on his porch not that long ago. Don’t just stand here, do something.
But he wasn’t going to go to the O’Connors’ or the Mackenridges’ or the Desjardins’.
He was going upstairs.
As he climbed them, he said, “Hey, Steph, it’s me Tony from next door. There’s some shit going on you have to know about so I’m coming up to tell you about it. If you’re
naked…well, that’s a chance I’m willing to take…”
He blabbered on and on, whistling past the graveyard, until he reached the landing above and then his mouth simply closed in midsentence. It closed like a trap. It was like a switch inside of him had been thrown. There was something in the air. Something ominous and nearly overwhelming.
The hallway was dark.
Very dark.
He had to feel along the wall for a light switch and he was almost certain that long before he found it, something would find him…some dark, twisted, elfin shape would come hobbling out of the darkness, reaching out for him with knobby fingers.
Click.
Light. That was better. There were no grinning horrors waiting in the shadows. In fact, there was nothing but an ordinary hallway. There were three doors. The first two were wide open. One was Steph’s bedroom—the garden of delight—and the other a guest room. He was interested in neither. He went over to the closed door. It was the bathroom. He knew that from his one visit two years before when Steph had thrown a birthday party for her sister.
“Steph?” he said, rapping on the door. “You in there?”
He knew somehow she was. It was like all the energies of the house were gathered in this one place, behind the closed door. The last thing he wanted to do was catch a peek of her on the toilet, but if she wasn’t aware he was in the house by now then it meant she was in trouble.
Tightening his grip on the bat, he opened the door and pushed it in.
In that brief moment of darkness while his fingers fumbled for the light switch, he heard a wet, sliding sort of sound he knew was not good. Then the light was on.
“Oh, shit, Steph,” he said, turning away.