Squirm

by Richard Curtis

  Before he could go further, Geri hissed. Someone was coming! He covered the bones and jumped off the truck. The moment his feet touched ground Geri shut the doors of the truck and prodded Mick around the truck’s side. Mick was confused for a second, then looked at the Grimes house and realized what Geri was doing. Grimes himself had just stepped out of the back door carrying a can of garbage. Looking at the truck, he noticed that its back doors were slightly ajar. He put the can down and ambled to the truck, muttering curses to himself about the goddam worms learning how to pry crates loose and open truck doors by themselves.

  With Mick and Geri a bare yard from him, crouched behind a rear tire, Grimes peered inside the truck, muttered a few more oaths, and slammed the doors shut, closing them securely with a sharp twist of the handle. Then he walked back to the garbage can, filling the air with his low opinion of worms, trucks, and life in general.

  Mick and Geri got to their feet. “Let’s tell Sheriff Reston,” Geri said.

  “Tell him what?” Mick said despairingly. Two encounters with that sonofabitch had been two more than Mick needed, thank you. Reston would probably accuse him of grave-robbing or some such, and keep his promise of throwing Mick in jail and tossing away the key. “If we only knew whose bones those are,” he mused. But he’d already formulated a plan, and as they drove down to Fly Creek Lagoon, Mick told Geri what it was.

  CHAPTER

  VIII

  They parked on the grass and walked about a hundred yards to the dock where Roger was kneeling, untying the painter that secured a wooden rowboat to a mooring cleat.

  Mick paused before they got there and reminded Geri what the strategy was. “Remember what I told you. I’ll need at least a half hour. Do anything you can to keep Roger out on the lake. We’ll meet back at the house.”

  Geri dug her fingernails into his arm. “Mick, you’ve got me scared.”

  “Welcome to the club,” Mick gulped.

  Roger waved a greeting and Mick reciprocated, looking around and inhaling the fresh salty tang mingled with a less pleasant odor of slimy mud and rotting fish. The lagoon itself was a quiet backwater covered with moss and other floating vegetation, but beyond it was the bay opening to the sea, a glorious sight. A column of pink clouds soared on the horizon, and in the near distance flocks of gulls shrieked and squabbled over the corpses of fish washed ashore in last night’s storm. It was that that had made Mick wrinkle up his nose.

  They climbed into the boat, which shimmied precariously as they distributed their fishing gear and their weight.

  Roger took the oars and pulled into the glass-smooth lagoon effortlessly, his biceps rippling as the boat sliced a green swath through the mossy surface.

  Roger raised his face to the sun. Geri removed her blouse, revealing a halter top on which two pairs of male eyes fixed admiringly. She rolled up the cuffs of her short jeans to give her thighs a chance to absorb some sun. For a moment Roger almost lost control of the boat.

  He finally maneuvered the little craft into a spoon-shaped area near a half-fallen tree, then set the oars inside the boat. Looking with some distaste at Mick, he found him peeling the price tag off his fishing reel. What this dude’s appeal to Geri was, Roger reflected, he’d never know.

  Roger reached down and handed Geri her rod, then pulled a sharp-bladed fishing knife from his pants pocket and cut the ends of the lines, attached lengths of transparent blue leader, then tied on hooks and sinkers while Mick, the compleat fisherman, applied suntan lotion and insect repellent to his exposed skin. He offered some to Geri and Roger, but they laughed—Geri amusedly, Roger disgustedly—and declined.

  Mick sniffed a deep draught of air into his lungs. “Nothing like fresh, salt air,” he said. Then he wrinkled his nose and gave in to the temptation to do his Groucho routine. Hunching his shoulders and tapping the ash off an imaginary cigar, Mick added, “And that’s nothing like fresh, salt air.”

  Geri laughed. Roger shook his head and shifted his weight uncomfortably, praying for some good fishing so he wouldn’t have to listen to this clown for the next few hours. Jesus, the guy couldn’t even open the blades of his brand-new multi-purpose camping knife and had to give it to Geri, who pried a blade open with her long nails. This New York City jerk would probably survive in the wilderness for about a half hour, Roger said to himself, adding that the temptation was strong to take him out there to prove it.

  “What’s that smell?” asked Mick.

  “Low tide,” Geri explained. “This water is too polluted to swim in.” She gazed into the brown, mossy water. “I don’t know how the fish stay alive.”

  Roger decided to prove that Mick wasn’t the only one who could make jokes. “Maybe they come from New York,” he said. Geri burst into laughter; it was one of the few funny things Roger had ever said. Mick, for some reason, found it less than hilarious.

  Mick reached for a cardboard box. It had a wire handle and reminded him of the kind of box you bring home from a Chinese take-out restaurant. Hell, nothing could have made him happier at this moment than to open it and find a mound of lobster Cantonese or egg foo yung. Having set himself up with these enchanting fantasies, his plunge to the depths of disgust was that much more devastating when he opened the lid and looked inside. The world seemed to sway before his eyes and he was certain he was going to puke.

  One worm, even in an egg cream, was nauseating enough. A box full of them, writhing like a nest of disturbed rattlesnakes, was more than any human should be asked to take, especially when that human had been thinking about lobster Cantonese and egg foo yung just a moment before. He shut the lid immediately, and though Mick’s face was ordinarily pale, it seemed to go six shades paler still.

  Trying to maintain his cool, he passed the box to Roger with a hearty laugh. “Hey, Roger, you’re a pro at this. I don’t want to waste time trying to get them on the hook.” Indeed, the notion of trying to drive a hook through that purple segmented body was enough to make Mick swear off fish to the end of his days.

  Roger took the box in hand with a cocky nod of the head, but then something strange happened. Roger turned pale. He turned pale and broke into a perspiration that did not, to Mick’s observation, have anything to do with the heat of the day. He fumbled with the lid of the box, and Mick noticed his hands were actually trembling. Roger peeked inside, his eyes widened, his lip curled, and he slammed the lid shut.

  “I can’t!” Roger whimpered. “I can’t! Oh God, they’re disgusting.”

  His two friends gaped at him as if he’d just turned into a zebra.

  “Roger, I don’t understand,” Mick said. “Don’t you handle worms all the time? I mean, a worm farm and all?”

  “I hate it,” Roger said through clenched teeth. “Dad always made me touch them. I can’t even stand to look at them.” He seemed to be on the verge of crying.

  Mick shook his head in disbelief, not knowing whether to laugh or cry himself.

  All at once Roger’s hand darted out and clutched Mick’s arm in a death grip. Roger’s eyes were glazed and bulged out of their sockets. His nostrils flared, and his lips slavered with spittle. “The worms are everywhere,” he shouted. “Millions and millions and millions of crawling, slimy, squirming, disgusting—”

  “ROGER!” Geri’s voice barked out across the lagoon, silencing a chorus of tree toads and crickets, and sending a flock of seagulls thundering into the sky, screaming abuse at the humans who had disturbed their feeding.

  At the sound of Geri’s command, Roger slumped and relaxed and appeared to return to normal. Whatever fantasy had taken possession of his imagination drained back into the hideous recesses of his tortured mind. He took a deep breath and even managed a nervous, apologetic laugh.

  Geri decided that if two strong males couldn’t stand the sight of worms, she’d have to show them there was at least one healthy human being in the boat. She picked up the box herself, opened the top, and removed one from the turbulent mass of plum-colored flesh that had quickened i
ts agitated writhing when the sunlight struck it directly. Removing one worm from a pack was easier said than done, for the two or three dozen creatures in the box had wrapped themselves into a knot that even Alexander’s sword might not have severed.

  The mass reacted to Geri’s patient untangling by writhing like a swarm of disturbed bees. Angry little fangs bared themselves, but the adept girl managed to avoid their probes. At the same time she remarked to herself that she’d never seen worms so angry and aggressive. It was very puzzling.

  She removed a specimen about four inches long, held it by the neck, and struggled with it as it tried to wrap its body and tail around her finger like some miniature python. When the barbed hook she held in her left hand penetrated its side, sliced up inside its entrails, and emerged out of its neck the creature gave a convulsion of frightening strength, causing Geri to toss the baited hook overboard instinctively to protect her fingers. An involuntary shiver rippled down her spine.

  Trying not to show her fear, she baited Roger’s hook as coolly as she could. Again, the worm she chose resisted her prying fingertips violently, and it was all she could do to avoid the two fangs which, tiny as they were, seemed capable of doing tremendous damage.

  A glance in Roger’s direction revealed a boy torn between shame and fear. He sat at the oars, head hung on his chest, rocking back and forth. But had she asked him to bait his own hook, she feared he would burst out all over again into fits of hysterics.

  Meanwhile, Mick had been so embarrassed by his display of faintheartedness that he’d plunged into the box and hauled out a worm—the smallest one he could find, admittedly, but it was still technically a worm—and was trying to maneuver it onto his hook. He held hook and worm at arm’s length, looking like some nearsighted grannie trying to thread a needle.

  Geri giggled and Mick looked over at her, disappointed with himself. This was a perfect opportunity to win points in his rivalry with Roger for Geri’s affection, but he was blowing it. Geri threw him an affectionate look that said, Clumsy and chicken-hearted as you are, I love you anyway.

  That wasn’t good enough for Mick and he determined to take the bull by the horns, or in this case the worm by the neck.

  Unfortunately, while he was looking at Geri, the worm took him by the finger instead. It took it in its two fangs and not only bit its soft flesh but burrowed the tip of his head under it in the same instant.

  Mick felt an excruciating pain as if someone had punctured his fingertip with a pencil and then inserted the pencil an inch deep. Mick howled with agony and jumped to his feet, almost capsizing the boat.

  He now did what he had not been able to do: took the worm by the neck just behind the head and pulled it firmly out of its burrow in his finger. The pain of taking it out was as searing as the pain of its entrance, but at least it was out. He threw it on the floor of the boat and stomped it. The heel of his shoe spliced the worm in half, crushing its head with a popping noise that squirted blood and pulpy guts over the bottom of the boat.

  The other half of the worm spasmed and flailed across the floor of the boat, heading towards Geri. All this happened in mere moments, but it seemed like hours. Geri picked her feet up and sat on the thwart like a kitchen maid who’s seen a mouse.

  Mick deliberately followed the tail of the worm across the bottom of the boat with his heel, remembering vividly that the tails of worms will regenerate a head. No thanks, he said to himself, bringing his heel down on the tail and putting all 175 of his pounds into the effort of slaying this thing which could not have weighed more than an ounce. Again it made a popping sound, its intestine exploding like a balloon.

  Mick collapsed on the thwart, panting and trembling, sucking on his bleeding finger.

  “Mick? Are you okay?” Geri was crying. “What happened?”

  “The little mother bit me. Jesus Christ.”

  Geri took his hand and examined it. “Are you sure it wasn’t the hook?”

  By comparison the hook would have been as tender as a kiss. “Geri, the thing bit right into my hand.” Recalling what she’d told him earlier, he added, “I guess I held the wrong end.”

  She examined the wound closely, shaking her head. No, a fish hook assuredly did not make that kind of wound. “They don’t usually bite hard enough to penetrate the skin. I never saw one bite like that.”

  “I did, once.” It was Roger speaking. His eyes were fixed blankly on the horizon, like some shell-shocked soldier after a battle. He spoke like one in a dream, in a coma. “When I was small, Dad would experiment with different ways of getting worms out of the ground. One day he tried electricity.”

  Mick and Geri leaned forward to hear Roger’s almost inaudible voice as he related the incident that had traumatized him almost twenty years ago. He recalled vividly the outbuilding his father had converted into an experimental station, the fishtank filled with soil, the electrical contacts with the alligator clips . . .

  “Did it work?” Mick asked.

  “Yeah. It got them out of the ground,” he said matter-of-factly. Then he held up his hand.

  Half of his thumb was missing.

  Mick and Geri stared at it, totally aghast.

  “He had to cut most of my thumb to get it off,” Roger said.

  Geri felt tears springing involuntarily into her eyes. She’d noticed Roger’s deformity years ago, of course, but had never had the termerity to ask him how it had happened. But of the many possibilities she had ruminated about, it had never occurred to her that it could have been—a worm. “Roger, I never knew . . .”

  Roger shrugged. “That’s okay. It ain’t no big deal.”

  The attention of all three focused on the box of worms. “Where did you get those from?” Geri asked, shuddering.

  “From the farm,” Roger replied.

  “Listen,” Mick said, pulling a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and wrapping it around his finger, “I want to get back and put something on this. Why don’t you drop me off on shore.”

  “We’ll all go,” said Geri.

  Mick threw her some eye signals, hoping Roger wouldn’t catch them. She and Mick had agreed that Mick would separate from them on some pretext or another, and the worm-bite was a perfect one—though he’d have preferred one a little more innocuous. In the excitement Geri had forgotten the scenario, but now she remembered as Mick said, “No, no, I want to catch a nap anyway. Let’s see if you two can land some fish for dinner.”

  Geri looked deeply distressed at being left alone with Roger. “Mick, I really don’t . . .”

  “Come on, Geri,” Mick assured her with a smile. “Roger will keep you company, won’t you, Rog?” Mick didn’t realize that that was exactly what was bothering Geri.

  Roger, thrilled to be rid of this intruder, rowed vigorously to the shore. Mick leaped out onto the muddy bank and trudged back to where they’d come from while Roger smartly turned the rowboat around and stroked it into the lagoon.

  CHAPTER

  IX

  Roger hauled the dripping oars into the boat and let it drift to a halt in the middle of the lagoon. They gazed at the shore, watching the figure of Mick recede into the woods. Then he was gone and they were completely alone. Just Geri and Roger—and a box of worms.

  “Might as well try right here,” Roger said, peering into the murky water. “One place is as good as another, I guess!”

  Geri didn’t agree. She’d rather, a million times more, be on dry land with Mick than in a boat in the middle of nowhere with this unstable young man. She prayed he’d keep to his fishing and give her no trouble.

  She picked up her rod and cast her line into a quiet patch of water a few yards astern of the rowboat. It made a plop as the sinker punctured the surface of the lagoon, then no sound was heard. She gazed at the point where her line cleaved the water, waiting for a tug, but she soon became aware of Roger’s eyes roving over her body. She concentrated harder, pretending nonchalantly that the boy’s hungry gaze did not exist.

  Finall
y she became terribly uncomfortable. “You want me to bait one up for you?” she asked. “Two lines are better than one.”

  “No thanks,” Roger said. “I’m fine.”

  They sat this way for several minutes, almost frozen into their postures like the subjects of a seascape. There was no breeze, not a ripple on the surface of the lagoon. Roger remained fixed on the bow thwart, oars in hand, looking at Geri; Geri remained fixed on the stern thwart, looking at the water. Nothing moved.

  Nothing but the worms.

  For, unknown to Geri and Roger, the lid of the box had come undone when Mick had jumped to his feet and rocked the boat. The worms, fearful of sunlight, had at first shrunk back into their seething tangle in the box, but a half dozen specimens, tortured by a hunger they had never known before, had ventured out of the box and slithered out, dropping to the floor of the boat. They probed the metal bottom angrily, seeking cool dirt and food, but all they could see, smell, and sense were the trunk-like objects that rested on the floor of the boat.

  Those were human feet.

  And they made for them. Slowly, but certainly, and, to the owners of those feet, invisibly.

  Suddenly this frozen portrait was shattered as Geri’s rod bowed downward, its tip quivering violently. “I got one!” she cried joyously, standing up. She handled it well, her arms straining to keep the line tight as she played the fish closer to the boat, reeling in line as it went slack. “Roger, Roger, it’s a big one!” she shouted.

  Roger whooped triumphantly and stood up behind her, trying to catch a glimpse of the fish as the shuddering line made irregular circles closer and closer to the boat. At last it was close enough to pull out. Steadying himself by placing one arm around Geri’s waist, he reached over the gunwale and yanked the line. A porgie splashed out of the depths, flapping angrily.