And if a stiff breeze were to begin whipping through the branches of such a tree . . .
Mick’s mind had computed all this in less than a second or two, but even while the frightened conclusion was laboring to be born his muscles had already reacted. He leaped to his feet, grasping Geri and Mrs. Sanders each by an arm, and hauled them to their feet, hoping to get them and Alma the hell out of there before . . .
But it was too late. This time the cracking sound was accompanied by a rustling of leaves as if a giant had encircled the tree trunk in his arms and was bringing the tree around like an axe to score a fatal blow against the house.
A deafening crash filled the air. Plaster sprayed the table with flakes and dust and an instant later the ceiling collapsed, sending splintered wood darting in all directions. Only by dint of his quick thinking had Mick saved the lives of Geri and her mother, for the trunk landed with a thud in the place where their chairs had been an instant before.
For a moment there was deadly silence. Then Alma burst into sobs.
Mick had been knocked off his feet by the impact, and his knees felt bruised where he’d fallen on them, but aside from that he didn’t seem the worse for having a tree fall on him. Alma was sobbing but it sounded like they were sobs of fright rather than of pain.
Mrs. Sanders lay on the floor, her body bridged but fortunately not touched by a bowed branch. She stared up at the night sky pouring in through what was left of the roof, and seemed indifferent to the tragedy which had befallen the house and which had nearly befallen her and her family. Her indifference, in fact, was frightening. She seemed to have disassociated herself entirely from the world. Geri kneeled over her, murmuring words of comfort. Her mother acknowledged them with a lifeless smile.
Mick looked over at them. “It’s all right,” Geri said. “Nobody’s hurt.”
Relieved, Mick took a deep draught of air into his lungs, dusted himself off, and picked his way through the debris, following the shattered tree trunk to its base outside the house. Yes, it had been just as he’d thought. The soft soil and strong winds had combined to loosen the grip of the roots in the earth until at last the ancient elm had given up the ghost and fallen.
At the foot of the tree, Mick could see silhouetted in the blue-black backdrop of the starry sky the root ball of the tree, an enormous knot of roots and soil measuring seven or eight feet in diameter. He cocked his ears and listened.
It was indistinct at first, then it became sharper and louder: a turbulent sound like laundry sloshing around in a washing machine, only much more ominous. He touched his hand to the tree trunk and felt it vibrating, as if something living was gnawing its way into the heart of the wood.
Cautiously he made his way down the trunk to the root ball for a look at what was causing that vibration.
The sight all but took his breath away.
“Geri? Could you come out here a second?” he said, struggling to maintain a calm voice.
Geri took Alma’s arm and led her to their mother, who’d slid out from under the branch and was now sitting on it, shaking violently, trembling fingers raking her hair and face. Alma had gotten hold of herself and offered what aid she could to a woman who seemed to be heading around the bend with mounting speed. “Stay with her, Alma,” Geri said.
But is wasn’t that easy to turn Mrs. Sanders over to Alma. The poor woman clutched Geri’s arm as if Geri were abandoning her to a pitful of fiends. Patiently, Geri pried her mother’s hand away, keeping up a line of comforting chatter. “I’m just going outside. I’ll be right back.”
At length Alma took over the ministrations and Geri slipped away, climbing over the legs of the table that jutted into the air like those of a dead horse frozen in an ice storm. It was quite dark outside except for a tinge of blush in the western sky where the sun’s last influence could be seen. Geri called Mick’s name and was answered by a quivering voice and noticed a shadow beside the root ball, which stood on its side like an immense coin lying on its side.
She joined Mick, who stood gaping at the root ball with eyes transfixed. She turned to see what had provoked the fascination.
Her knees almost gave out.
A scream rose unbidden to her throat. Anticipating this, Mick clapped his hand over her mouth. All they needed, after the collapse of the tree on their house, was this new threat, and they’d have to have Mrs. Sanders permanently committed to an insane asylum.
“Geri,” Mick pleaded, trying to hold the situation together, “listen to me. Is there any gasoline around?”
Geri breathed deeply several times before she could trust herself to answer without bursting into a hysterical shrieks. “In . . . in the storage room under the back porch.”
Mick put both hands on her shoulders. Through the darkness she could see and feel the comforting warmth of his solicitude, and she thanked the very stars above that she had him during this ordeal. Lord only knew what she’d have done without his quiet strength and engaging sense of humor. “Hey, are you all right?” he asked, drawing her to him.
She nodded bravely, then released him.
He moved fast picking his way through fragments of shattered limbs, lathing, and shingles to the back porch. In the long minute that he was gone, Geri forced herself to look upon the root ball of the old elm tree.
It was alive with crawling worms. They seethed like noodles in a cauldron, their hooded faces probing the sky, their pincer jaws snapping at the air in the hopes of capturing any morsel that might be unfortunate enough to alight on them.
Geri, nauseated to the bottom of her stomach, nevertheless couldn’t pull her eyes away, and even found herself drawn to the sight, lured by the seduction of horror the way people are attracted by the scenes of airplane accidents or mass-murder gravesites. She even managed a rather bizarre mental association as she wondered how many worms there were in this living mass of slimy flesh. If there were approximately two dozen worms in the box in the rowboat today—the box was about six inches high, four wide, arid three deep, or 7 cubic inches, how many would there be in a circular space 84 inches in diameter or so, when the worms were perhaps six inches deep? Let’s see, if she remembered her math correctly, C equals pi times the diameter. But C is the circumference, right? And what does that have to do with 24 worms in a space of 72 cubic inches?
“God, there must be tens of thousands of them,” Mick gasped, rescuing her from the necessity of further calculation.
He opened the can of gasoline and tilted it over the root ball. The worms reacted angrily to the chemical substances, doubling the rate at which they entwined with each other like some elaborate ballet choreographed by a maniac.
Mick reached into his pocket for the trusty lighter that had helped him out of more than one tricky situation today. In the orange flame-glow the turmoil redoubled as the worms fought with one another for a retreat from the abhorrent light. As Mick brought his hand closer the worms radiated away from it like a mass of rioters fleeing a teargas grenade dropped in their midst.
All at once, with a whoosh, the root ball exploded in a mushroom of flame. The heat threw Mick and Geri back a yard, then they grasped hands and watched mutely as the writhing mass seemed to melt before their eyes, filling the air with an acrid odor of roasting worm-flesh that exceeded rotting vegetables or putrefying flesh by a factor of thousands.
For a moment the flames started to travel up the fallen tree trunk toward the house, and Mick could have kicked himself for not having taken a precaution against this happening, but after crawling a foot or two, the orange flames retreated and shrank. “I don’t think the tree will catch. It’s too wet. Get ready to throw dirt into it to put out the flames.”
They kneeled on the earth and started to scratch up some topsoil to throw on the conflagration, but both of them jumped away simultaneously as they realized that just below the surface, armies of worms seethed, ready to take the place of those that had just perished.
Luckily the flames, after consuming the fleshy fuel o
f worms, encountered the dampness of the tree trunk itself and began to die out. After stomping on a little circle of fugitive fire that had spread out about a yard from the root ball, Mick watched in dumb fascination at another new phenomenon.
“What is it?” Geri asked, trying to read his face.
Mick looked down at the ground, and Geri sucked her breath in sharply. In the same spot where their scratching had revealed a virtual sea of worms, now there was nothing, nothing but muddy earth.
“Mick, why is this happening?” Geri whimpered.
“Something is making them go crazy, driving them out of the ground,” Mick said, as much to himself as to her. He stared at the ground as if it were a book to be read if the scholar could only penetrate the obscurity of the language. Mick felt very close to the secret, if only . . . if only . . .
Wait a minute. Something was trying to filter into his awareness. Something Roger had told them about his father’s experiments with worms. One experiment in particular, which had been the cause of the accident that left left Roger without the top half of a thumb. An experiment involving . . .
“ELECTRICITY!” Mick shouted.
Geri looked at him uncertainly. “But . . . there isn’t any.”
“Yes there is!” he said with mounting excitement. “The power lines that went down are still sending juice into the ground. Millions of watts and soaking wet mud to act as a conductor!”
They looked at the hole where they’d seen worms beyond reckoning moments before.
“As soon as the light hits them, they disappear,” Mick said.
He looked at the house, surveying the damage. The tree had fallen across the extension that Geri’s father had built to accommodate a new dining room. Though that extension was wrecked irreparably, the rest of the house was unharmed. It would provide the shelter they needed to get through the night if they could keep the flesh-lusting, darkness-seeking worms outside. Once they got through, Mick could drive at first light to the power company and get them to shut off the juice to Fly Creek till the downed line could be repaired.
“Where can I get some plywood to cover this hole before night?” he asked. “If I’m right, then the only thing keeping the worms back is the light.”
“We don’t have any,” Geri said despairingly.
“What about a lumber yard?”
“There’s nothing like that.” Mick pounded his fist into the palm of his hand, but then Geri remembered something. “There’s an abandoned building in the woods. There’s plenty of lumber there.”
“Where is it?” Mick asked excitedly, hope rising again.
“I’ll show you.”
She took him by the hand, but he planted his feet. “No, you stay here. Your mother looks like she’s about to crack. I’ll be back as soon as possible. Stay in the house. And don’t tell her about what we saw. And keep the candles burning.” He looked into the darkness. “Which way?”
Geri thrust her chin in the direction of the woods to the south. Mick began to trot that way. “But how can you carry it?” she shouted after him.
“I’ll think of something,” he replied with more optimism than knowledge.
CHAPTER
XIV
Geri tracked Mick into the woods until his silhouette blended with the black shadows of night. She heard the snapping of twigs and brush in the distance, then there was only the sound of Georgia nighttime, the honking of bullfrogs, the cheeping and chirping of toads, and the riot of innumerable crickets. Wondering if she’d ever see Mick again, she turned and marched back to the house.
The living room glowed with the flickering light of half a dozen candles, and several more had been posted in the undamaged part of the dining room. Alma was busy picking up the smaller fragments of roofing material that littered the floor and stuffing them in a big trash bag she’d slung over her shoulder like a field hand picking cotton. Through the entrance to the living room Geri could see her mother, sitting on her favorite chair in the living room, uncomprehending eyes fixed on the fireplace mantle, mouth frozen in a meaningless smile.
It was, for Geri, a more distressing situation than if her mother were completely hysterical. Hysteria was at least a normal response to a catastrophe. It said, My circuits are overloaded, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But this—this almost catatonic stare . . . it wasn’t healthy, it wasn’t good. It seemed to indicate that her mother had lost touch with everything, with her very emotions themselves. She was beyond laughing or crying. Geri felt a shiver. Her mother was in a dangerous state.
“Geri?” Mrs. Sanders reached out for her oldest daughter, gripping her hand almost savagely. “What’s happening?”
Her mother’s nails were like talons in Geri’s flesh. “The storm washed away the earth around the roots. That old tree just couldn’t hold itself up any more, that’s all.”
Mrs. Sanders’ eyes roved the room slowly, like a pair of mechanical searchlights whose batteries have lost their potency. “Where’s Mick?”
“He went to get some wood to cover up the hole temporarily for the night,” Geri explained.
Mrs. Sanders nodded her head slowly, automatically. With growing concern Geri looked upon her mother’s blank expression. Try a diversion, Geri said to herself, until the woman can grasp what has happened. “Mother?” she said gaily. “I met Mrs. Norton today. She wanted to know if her shawl was ready.”
Mrs. Sanders appeared to snap out of her trance for a moment. “It’s almost finished. I nearly forgot.”
Geri realized that knitting would be a good therapy for her mother. She reached behind her mother’s chair and got out her sewing basket and a shopping bag filled with red and green wool, knitting needles, and a handsome red shawl with a green floral design. Only a corner remained to be done.
“Good. You work on the shawl. It’ll steady your nerves while I get the candles ready and clean up a little,” said Geri. With more confidence, she left her mother and joined Alma in what was left of the dining room. Despite her youthful energy, Alma was fatigued by the work she’d done. Her eyes were glazed, her brow damp with sweat. Her shoulders were stooped beneath the weight of the trash bag filled with plaster and wood, and suddenly her knees buckled.
She dropped the sack and stood up, gasping. For a moment she leaned against the trunk of the tree, panting. Then she staggered in the direction of the main house.
“Where are you going?” Geri snapped.
“To take a shower,” Alma explained.
Geri sighed. “Okay. As long as you don’t go outside.”
Alma knew her sister intimately, and was able to hear an ominous chord vibrating faintly in the tremor of Geri’s voice. “What’s outside?”
Geri flashed a high-sign at Alma, gesturing with her head at their mother. The woman was just beginning to relax; set her off again and there was no telling what she would do. She was a rubber band twisted to its limits: she might snap, or she might untwist so violently she would twitch and bounce until she damaged herself dangerously.
Geri realized she’d panicked her sister unnecessarily. Trying to lighten the mood, she smiled playfully. “See if you have better luck than I did,” she said, motioning with her chin at the upstairs bathroom. “There was no water at all before.”
Alma took a fat candle on a plate and shuffled up the stairs. The dancing yellow flame flashed grotesque shadow patterns on the staircase wall, both fascinating and frightening the ascending girl. Wow! she said to herself, this trip should be taken with a headful of grass. It would be better than Walt Disney’s Fantasia, which she’d seen after she and her friends had gotten sky-high on some stuff from Colombia that was ten times stronger than the Panama junk she’d been smoking. Oh, wow!
Her own shadow followed her into the bathroom and frolicked around the walls and ceiling like a taunting devil. Alma set the candle on the sink and leaned over the tub. She tried the faucets and was greeted by some obscene belches and gurgles from the pipes, but not so much as a drip of water. She looke
d up at the shower head, cursed, and kicked the side of the tub. It made a resounding hollow thump, but the gesture did more to hurt her toe than to produce water.
“Damn!”
She decided to leave the faucets in their open position. That way, when the water did come back on, she’d hear it and know she wouldn’t have to wait till morning to clean the dust off her body and out of her hair.
She picked up the candle and went back downstairs.
The light was gone from the bathroom now, and the worms had nothing to inhibit them any more. They slithered through the open valves of the shower faucets, up the pipes, and into the shower head, pushed by the tremendous pressure of hundreds of thousands of their brethren below. They found the shower head holes and squirmed through, wriggling until their tails were clear. For a moment they dropped through space, a detestable experience. Then they struck the hard cool porcelain of the bathtub. Shaking off the stunning impact, they tried to crawl up the sides of the tub, lured by the odor of human flesh that pervaded the house. But the walls were too steep and they slipped and tumbled back onto the floor of the tub.
The platoon of worms that fell on top of them had better luck, for their plunges were cushioned by the worms that had already landed. Nor did they have as far to crawl to the top of the tub, because there was a half inch of worm-flesh beneath them.
The next wave of worms had even less distance to fall, and less to crawl.
With mounting excitement the worms in the tub writhed, the prospects of invasion enhancing with each layer of worms that coated the last one. It was as if the mass of individuals had but one mind, one will, and one purpose, like the countless cells of the brain that constitute an intelligence higher by far than the sum of its constituent parts.
The tub filled slowly with worms, but for the worms, it didn’t matter. What was time to them?
CHAPTER
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