“You want to try a spoonful?” she asked.
Margaret, nodded, eyes flickering behind closed lids. Abby put the softening ice cream in her lap and dug down with the spoon, scraping off half. It was better to start with tiny bites. She extended the spoon to Margaret, who didn’t open her eyes. Maybe she’d fallen asleep, Abby thought, but then she saw her gullet heave; her forehead slide translucently over the bony ridges of her brow.
“Hurts?” Abby asked.
Margaret nodded, bloodless lips pinched tight, and Abby knew that look: she was going to puke. She stuck the spoon back in the ice cream and set the container on the bedside table while she looked for a wastebasket. There was one by the vanity, so she ran over, got it, and came back.
“Margaret?” she asked. “Can you roll over on your side a little? You can’t throw up on your back.”
The sound of the words “throw up” made Margaret wince again. Abby pulled down the covers and saw that Margaret’s chest was a bony plate beneath her Rockville Regatta T-shirt. Her shoulders were sticks lashed to other sticks. A puff of stale air wafted out, but Abby didn’t care. Margaret was in pain, squirming softly and slowly. The blankets looked too heavy for her, so Abby pulled them lower and then stopped.
Margaret’s stomach was swollen into a hard mound. Abby couldn’t believe how big it was, and for a second she thought Margaret was pregnant. But you didn’t get nine months pregnant after missing school for a couple of weeks. Margaret made a gasping noise and her bony claws scrabbled at her swollen belly, scratching and caressing the bulge.
“Are you okay?” Abby asked again.
Margaret opened her mouth to scream but out came a loud gurgle—a wet, sucking, gagging sound that made Abby’s stomach flex in sympathy. Margaret twisted, her spine bending backward into a C, head toward heels. Then she twisted the other way, doubled over, curling herself into a protective ball around her distended belly. The sheets slid off the bed and onto the floor.
“Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh!” she chanted.
Abby was scared that Margaret might bite off her tongue or go to the bathroom in her bed. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? The question ran on a loop inside her brain, but she didn’t have any answers.
The door flew open.
“What’d you do to her?” Riley bellowed. Peanut butter was smeared across his knuckles, and he left streaks of it around the doorknob. Abby could smell it all the way over by the bed. The scent seemed to send Margaret into a new seizure, and she clawed feebly at her frail throat, letting out a long moan.
“Guuuuuuuuuuhhhhh,” she said.
Beau, the Irish setter, came around Riley’s legs and stared into the room at Abby, at Margaret, and then trotted over to stand by the side of the bed, snuffling at the blankets.
“She’s sick,” Abby said. “I didn’t touch her.”
“I shouldn’t have let you in,” Riley said. But he wasn’t moving past the door, as if he was scared to get too close to his sister’s spasming, half-naked body, with her boxer shorts rucked up to show one mottled thigh.
“What do we do?” Abby asked.
“We’re going to be in so much trouble,” Riley said.
“We have to help her,” Abby said.
Riley shook his head. Then he snapped his fingers at the dog.
“Come on, Beau,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“We need to call an ambulance,” Abby said. “Does she have a doctor?”
Suddenly, Margaret stopped writhing. Her body lay completely still, stiff as a board, toes pointed down, knees locked, arms rigid at her sides, neck straining, tears leaking.
“She’s fine,” Riley said. “See? She’s okay. Is she okay?”
Abby had no clue.
“I really think we need to call somebody,” she said. “Or give her CPR or something.”
“She’s still breathing,” Riley said.
That’s when Beau took two steps back from the bed, locked his legs, and started to growl low in his throat. Margaret’s jaws flew open, exposing a deep black cavern that extended all the way down to her stomach, and she started to beg.
“Oh, gawd,” she moaned. “Make it stop, Abby, please make it stop. I want my mom . . . please make it stop . . . Mommmyyyy!!!”
The last word became a scream so loud that Abby felt it in the soles of her feet. So loud that Beau started to bark. It went on and on and on and just when Abby thought she couldn’t take another second, it became muffled, like something was clogging Margaret’s throat. Then the muffled noises started to sound wet and sticky, and Abby saw something pale and white squirming in the blackness of Margaret’s gullet, curling around her tonsils.
Abby leaned forward for a better look, and the thing inside moved. She jerked back, smacking into Riley, who’d crept closer to investigate. The thing kept coming, oozing up out of Margaret’s throat, rising to the surface. Tears were spilling down Margaret’s sallow cheeks and her throat and chest kept spasming; her bony hands scratched and clawed uselessly at the tight skin on her neck. But the thing kept slithering out.
It slid over the root of Margaret’s tongue, and then Margaret gave three explosive, throat-clearing coughs, each one pushing it out farther. It was sticky, gelatinous, and alive—a blind white worm, thick as a garden hose, and it was hauling itself out of Margaret’s stomach with single-minded intent.
“What. The. Fuck.” Riley said.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” Abby chanted softly, backing away from the bed.
The worm kept coming, hauling more and more of its slick body out of Margaret’s stomach, moving over her trembling lips and spilling onto her chin, where it stuck for a moment and sensed the air with its blunt, blind snout. Then it turned toward the Frusen Glädjé, forgotten on the bedside table, and dragged its long, rippling, white body another half inch toward the container, moving across Margaret’s cheek. Exhausted after its journey, it lay still for a moment. Margaret breathed fast through her nose, panicking, wanting to scream but unable to; the worm’s heavy body kept her vocal cords from moving.
That’s when Beau leapt onto the bed, barking furiously. With no regard for anything but his fury, he ran up Margaret’s body, stomping her swollen stomach with his paws, sending Abby grabbing for his collar as he barked and snapped in Margaret’s face. Abby thought he was trying to bite her, and she got one hand on the scruff of his neck.
“Beau!” she yelled. “No!”
But when she pulled back Beau’s head, he had the end of the worm clenched between his jaws. Margaret let out a muffled hiss of a scream as Beau yanked the worm out of her gullet. Abby pulled her hand away from his fur and the dog gave the worm a few hard chews right in Margaret’s face, but it was tough like jerky and his teeth couldn’t sever it. Now it was squirming back and forth, hauling more of its body out of Margaret’s throat as Beau gnawed a better hold and began pacing backward.
The worm looped over Beau’s muzzle, wrapping itself around his face. The dog growled low and deep, shaking his head from side to side, and the worm kept coming. Margaret gagged, trying to suck in enough air while Abby and Riley stood there, unable to do anything but watch.
Beau reached the end of the bed, with almost six feet of worm extended from Margaret’s mouth, slimed with saliva and dripping with stomach juices. Then he jumped off, the worm still clamped in his jaws, and Margaret moaned in alarm and pain. The dog landed on the hardwood floor and kept backing away. Abby and Riley stared in horror as the worm stretched to eight feet, then ten, then fifteen.
It finally snapped when Beau reached the door.
They found twenty-three pounds of tapeworm in Margaret’s stomach. The longest measured thirty-three feet. Her doctor had never suspected tapeworms to be the cause of her illness, so while Margaret had been screened for everything from leukemia to anorexia, they’d been missed. The creatures had been feedin
g off her for weeks, reproducing in her guts, which were now a seething nest of Taennia saginata.
Riley’s license was suspended, so Abby had driven them to the hospital. In the churn of parents, and doctors, and purgatives, and consultants, and nurses swirling through Margaret’s tenth-floor room, they sort of forgot about her in the corner. Which meant that Abby was still there, along with Mr. and Mrs. Middleton, Riley, and Margaret’s other three brothers, Hoyt, Ashley, and Saluda, when the doctor told them what had happened.
Margaret had eaten tapeworm eggs. A lot of them. It was a common weight loss scheme. Advertisements in the backs of magazines called them a “fast and natural solution to your slimming needs.” You sent the company a check or money order, and they would mail you a plastic canister of eggs. They looked like chalky powder. You mixed it with water to form a thick milkshake. Then you drank it down. You were supposed to drink one milkshake and give it time to work. If Margaret had drunk more than one, it could be dangerous. Even two could be life-threatening.
The doctors wanted to know how many she’d consumed. And where she had gotten the idea. Did she know how dangerous it was? Did she know she could have died? But they couldn’t ask Margaret anything because she’d been sedated the minute she arrived at the hospital. It was the only way to make her stop screaming.
But Abby knew.
Tonight She Comes
Abby drove home, rising and falling over the bridges, and locked herself in her bedroom. She pulled the daybook from the back of her closet, where she’d hidden it, and turned the pages. Everything was there. Passages from The Song of Solomon (“Like a lily among the thorns, So is my darling among the maidens. Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest . . .”). Father Morgan’s signature written in long columns, the forgery getting sharper with each line. Pictures slashed with red and black markers showing a nude figure on top of the bell tower, a girl with worms coming from her mouth, dogs surrounding another girl and tearing her to shreds.
She hunted through her desk, found the faculty directory, and dialed Father Morgan’s number. It rang ten times, eleven, twelve. Finally, a man answered.
“Father Morgan?” Abby said.
“Who is this?” the man asked.
“I’m one of his students,” Abby said. “I need to speak to him.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Please,” Abby said. “Tell him I’m Abby Rivers. Ask him if he’ll talk to me. Just ask him.”
A thunk as the phone was set down, followed by a long silence. Finally, someone picked up the receiver.
“Abby,” Father Morgan said, and he sounded very tired. “I’m no longer teaching at Albemarle, but I have the number for the chaplain who’s filling in for me.”
“Something’s wrong with Gretchen,” Abby said.
“That’s not something I can help you with,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t have any contact with students.”
“I have her daybook,” Abby raced ahead. “She practiced forging your name. I saw her giving those notes to Glee. She did it.”
There was a pause and then Father Morgan spoke, sounding even more exhausted.
“I’m sorry, Abby,” he said. “But I think it’s best if I just move on.”
“This has to stop!” Abby said. “She gave tapeworm eggs to Margaret, she got Wallace Stoney drunk, she forged those notes to Glee. All of it’s written down in her daybook. She’s been planning this for weeks, and unless you stop her she’s going to keep doing more things. Worse things.”
“Abby . . . ,” Father Morgan began.
“Please believe me,” Abby said. “You have to give it to someone. Major will think I made it up. But you could give it to someone in charge.”
“Hold on a minute,” Father Morgan said. “Don’t hang up.”
Abby heard fabric scraping as he pressed the receiver to his sweater and spoke to someone in the room. Their voices rose and then grew louder, talking over each other, but they were too muffled for Abby to make out what they were saying. When Father Morgan returned to the phone, his voice sounded stronger.
“This is all in Gretchen Lang’s daybook?” he asked. “You’re sure it’s hers?”
Abby nodded, and then realized she was on the phone.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“I need to look at it,” Father Morgan said. “And I think it should be with your parents. Is your mother home now?”
“She’s back in the morning,” Abby said.
“All right,” Father Morgan said. “First thing in the morning I’ll be at your house, and I’m bringing a friend. He’ll look at the book, and if it is what you say it is, then you’ll need to call in sick from school, and we’ll need to go to the police.”
“The police?” Abby said, and she couldn’t help feeling like she’d betrayed Gretchen. She had to remind herself that Gretchen was no longer her friend.
“These are serious crimes,” Father Morgan said. “There will be serious consequences.”
After they hung up, Abby couldn’t sleep. She turned on the TV, but Moonlighting felt loud and coarse and obvious, so she switched it off and put on No Jacket Required, letting Phil Collins’s soft, reassuring voice fill the room while she sat on her bed, the daybook at the other end. She was exhausted and relieved and scared, and her veins hummed with adrenaline, and then they ran empty and she pulled Geoffrey the Giraffe and Cabbage Head into her lap and laid her head against the wall and slept.
In her dream she wasn’t alone anymore. In her dream, nothing had happened that couldn’t be fixed. In her dream, everything was back to the way it was and she and Gretchen were driving out to Wadmalaw to go waterskiing with Margaret and Glee, and they had a case of Busch in the Bunny’s trunk, and George Michael was on the radio, and the wind was in their hair and nothing smelled like United Colors of Benetton and she looked over and smiled and Gretchen smiled back, but there was a roach on her face, sitting on one cheek, and when Gretchen opened her mouth she said, “Hi! I’m Mickey!” and Abby told her to stop doing that, and Gretchen did it again and again until Abby opened her eyes and her light was still on and her phone was ringing.
“Hi! I’m Mickey!” it chirped. “Hi! I’m Mickey!”
She looked at her digital clock: 11:06. Abby snatched the phone off the cradle and heard a great, roaring wall of black static.
“Abby?” Gretchen said over the long-distance lines.
“Gretchen!” Abby shouted. “I’m doing it. Tomorrow. I’m going to make it stop.”
The static cut out and the phone line was a vast gulf of darkness.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Gretchen said, her voice swimming up out of the void. “You shouldn’t have told.”
“This has to stop,” Abby said. “She’s hurting everyone!”
“You’d better lock up all your windows and close all your doors,” Gretchen echoed on the line. “She’s coming.”
The urgency in Gretchen’s staticky voice alarmed Abby but she shook her head.
“No one’s coming,” she said.
“You don’t understand . . . ,” Gretchen began.
“I’m sick and tired of people telling me what I don’t understand,” Abby yelled at the phone. “This is over! It’s ending!”
“It’s over,” Gretchen moaned down the phone line. “It’s too late.”
Abby’s bedroom door swung open to reveal Gretchen standing there holding a shopping bag and grinning.
“Hi, Abby-Normal,” she said.
“It’s too late, it’s too late, it’s too late,” sing-songed the voice on the phone.
“Is that little ghost still talking?” Gretchen asked.
She set her brown paper shopping bag next to the door, then she took the phone from Abby and hung it back on Mickey’s arm with a terminal, plastic clack. Instinctively, Abby slid off her bed and stood
up.
“I think it’s bad luck to talk to yourself, don’t you?” Gretchen asked.
Then she punched Abby in the stomach.
Abby had never been hit, and it took her by surprise. All the air whooshed out of her lungs, and she dropped to her hands and knees on the carpet. Gretchen kicked her in the stomach, digging the toe of her sneaker deep into Abby’s solar plexus. Abby whimpered. Gretchen kicked her again in the side. Abby’s body reflexively curled around itself.
Gretchen crouched down, grabbed a handful of Abby’s moussed hair, and yanked her head up.
“You’ve been begging for this for ages,” Gretchen said. “Okay, well, now you have my full and undivided attention. Do you like it? Does this feel good?”
Abby wept. Gretchen snaked her fingers tighter into Abby’s hair and twisted.
“Stay out of my way,” she said. “You’re finished.”
She gave Abby’s head a final, furious shake, then bounced it off the carpet and straightened up. She put the sole of her shoe against Abby’s cheek and ground it into the floor.
“Stay down,” she said. “Play dead. Good dog.”
Then she picked her daybook up off the bed and strolled out of Abby’s room, taking her shopping bag with her. There was the sound of opening and closing doors in the hall, then something fell over in the living room, and after a minute Abby heard the front door slam.
Abby leapt to her feet and ran to the front door and shot the deadbolt home. Then she ran into her bedroom, slammed her door, and moved her desk chair under the handle. She felt so sick, she wanted to laugh. From the photographs around her mirror, Gretchen grinned at her, braces shining, Gretchen laughed at her, Gretchen stuck out her tongue at her and Abby looked at the clock and the time said 11:11 and in eight hours Father Morgan would arrive and she didn’t have the daybook. She didn’t have anything. She couldn’t save Margaret, she couldn’t save Glee, she couldn’t stop Gretchen, she couldn’t save herself.
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