The House of Worms

by Harvey Click

  “Got anything on riddle number two yet?” she asked.

  “No, just a couple bad guesses.”

  “Keep them guessing,” she said. “I sure as hell don’t want two hundred and one creeps showing up at the door anytime soon.”

  Josh was a tall black man with long dreads and wiry muscles. Something in his skin smelled good, and Bitter didn’t think it was cologne. Whatever it was, she thought she might enjoy a closer sniff except for one problem that screwed up everything. There were many flaws in Grimes’ stupid fucking plan, but one of them was egregious. She keyed his number on her cell phone and got Johnny Burne again.

  “He’s busy,” Burne said. “Who’s calling?”

  She’d been getting that all night.

  “You know Goddamn well who’s calling,” she said. “Let me talk to Grimes.”

  “I told you, he’s busy.”

  “Just tell me one thing,” she said. “Is anybody else there, like a tall man with black hair?”

  “How would I know?” Burne said. “I’m just the house slave.” He hung up.

  Maybe Dexter was there or maybe he wasn’t. It all depended on whether the anagram stuck in his sun-visor had worked.

  “The psychological effect will compel him to call me,” Grimes had said. “Whenever someone solves a riddle, he subconsciously believes that he composed it himself, so when Dr. Radcliff solves the anagram he’ll obey its command and believe he’s following his own free will. Since it weaves my name with yours, the command will be irresistible. He is irresistibly attracted to you—no?”

  Like most of Grimes’ bright ideas, the anagram struck Bitter as three parts hokum and one part hogwash.

  “What if he doesn’t figure out Bitter Ember means Mary Ash?” she had asked.

  “He’ll understand on a subliminal level.”

  “This whole plan sounds kinda subliminal to me,” she said. “Maybe he won’t even see the message.”

  “He will. It will fall into his lap when the sun glares in his eyes on the way home.”

  “Maybe he won’t go home,” she said. “He’s been planning his research trip for a long time.”

  “He’ll go home,” Grimes said. “He’s been rehearsing his role in this drama for a much longer time.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means he knows how to take care of himself,” Grimes said. “Rehearse your own role until you can do the same.”

  She did, and here she was. A chilly breeze through the window made the tracking stone swing, but it was only breeze. Lizzie came down the stairs with her rifle slung over her back. She was about thirty and nice looking, bright red hair and big red freckles dotting white skin made whiter by a nickel in the joint.

  “It’s almost eleven,” she told Josh. “You been staring at that screen too long.”

  Josh got up and rubbed his eyes. “Someone’s getting warm on riddle number two,” he said. “They still have five or six words wrong, I don’t know.”

  He climbed the creaking steps, and Bitter wanted to follow his nice sweet smell upstairs so she wouldn’t have to keep thinking about the final flaw in Grimes’ plan.

  “Is Hayes still awake up there?” she asked.

  “Yeah, he got at least one eye open,” Lizzie said. She sat down and looked at the laptop screen. “Whole lotta hits out there, but I don’t think anyone’s solving anything,” she said. “See anything moving on that stone?”

  “Just breeze and imagination.”

  “Maybe you better shut the window.”

  “Then the fumes will kill us,” Bitter said. There was a kerosene heater blasting behind them because Darrel Kane hadn’t bothered to get the gas turned on. “This damn stone doesn’t work anyway, it’s just one of Grimes’ bullshit toys,” she said. “His whole fucking plan is bullshit.”

  “Better not be,” Lizzie said. “I ain’t getting paid enough to get my pretty ass shot full a holes. Maybe you just tired.”

  “I’m tired okay.”

  “Go to bed, I’m watching,” Lizzie said. “Nothing on the screen and nothing out the window.”

  “Wonder what that asshole Kane’s up to,” Bitter said. “He’s supposed to call in every twenty minutes, but he doesn’t.”

  “Why don’t you call him?”

  “I don’t want his phone ringing if he’s sneaking up on Ryver.”

  “Shit, all that phone’s gonna do is wake him up,” Lizzie said. “That dickhead don’t do nothing but eat, sleep, and piss. He ain’t sneaking up on Ryver unless Ryver’s sitting in McDonalds.”

  “He better not be sleeping.”

  “But you better,” Lizzie said. “I ain’t seen you crash since you got here. Least upstairs you don’t need to worry ‘bout ventilation, half them windows is broke.”

  “No wonder it’s a dump,” Bitter said. “Kane set it up.”

  “Something’s biting your butt, girl, and I don’t think it’s Darrel Kane,” Lizzie said. “Wanna talk?”

  “No.”

  Bitter kept staring at the stone. It reminded her of a metronome a hypnotist might use to put someone in a trance. So many things wrong with Grimes’ plan, she wondered why she’d let him talk her into it. But she knew why. Some things get started before you’re born. Breeze swung the metronome, and she heard Grimes’ silvery hypnotic syllables talking her into the biggest mistake of her life.

  “After you steal it, we’ll need to offer proof that you really have it,” he said. “I’ll give you the code to conjure Cypher, and when he hears you speak to him through the Horn he’ll know you’ve got the goods.”

  “You think I’m gonna talk to Cypher, you got your head up your hemorrhoids,” she said.

  “You’ve done business with many distasteful creatures in your time, and you will again,” Grimes said. “You’ll tell him you want one million dollars in gold, which is pocket change to the Lost Society. You’ll tell him to send a single agent to pick it up and tell him if he sends more they’ll all be killed.”

  “What makes you think Ryver will be the one agent?”

  “You’ll advertise the Horn on the Internet using a puzzle only skilled adepts will be able to solve,” Grimes said. “The encryption will filter out dilettantes and dabblers, and the few who crack it will be given a second puzzle. No one but Ryver will be able to solve the second puzzle, and that will give him the safe-house address.”

  “What makes you think that?” she asked, trying to sound skeptical but already getting suckered because every cell in her brain wanted to be suckered.

  “Because it’s based on names that only Ryver knows—the names of his victims,” Grimes said. “Letha and I have been sniffing his trail for a long time, and he’s left plenty of names bleeding behind him.”

  “The Society knows every name he knows.”

  “No,” Grimes said. “Ryver keeps his cards close to his chest. But to be sure, I wove the name Alejadro Abarca into the second puzzle.” He gave her a cruel smile. “I daresay you remember him?”

  “Yeah, and I remember how good your plan worked that time,” she said.

  “This plan will work,” he said. “This time you’ll have plenty of weapons and backup.”

  Plenty of backup, my ass, she thought. Four people, and one of them is a fat jerk-off. Darrel Kane was supposed to hire ten agents but showed up with more excuses than backup. Even the weapons he brought were rinky dink, a few Chinese SKS army surplus rifles with jury-rigged silencers and some boxes of old Russian ammo.

  The tracking stone rocked in the breeze, and her eyelids wanted to shut. It was only a few months ago when Grimes cooked up his plans, but it seemed like years. She had been a different person then, so fucking stupid.

  “Ryver will know it’s a trap when he sees your puzzles,” she had said. “He’ll bring others with him.”

  “He’ll know it’s a trap, but he won’t bring anyone with him,” Grimes said. “Ryver works alone.”

  Alone, alone, she thought.

&nbs
p; “You falling asleep over there, girl?” Lizzie asked.

  Bitter opened her eyes. “Just about.”

  “Someone just solved everything ‘cept the last five words of the second riddle. I think we got our man.”

  “I don’t think so,” Bitter said. “I think this whole plan sucks.” She shook herself awake and dialed Darrel Kane’s number. It rang a long time.

  “Son of a bitch is sleeping,” she said.

  “I told you so,” Lizzie said.

  Bitter shut off the phone but kept holding it and wondering what was wrong. She stared at the stone and wondered if it was pulling faintly toward Heathenhead. It didn’t seem to be.

  “Something’s wrong out there,” she said. “I’m gonna go see what it is.”

  “What is this, some kinda hunch?” Lizzie asked.

  “Just run upstairs and make sure everyone’s watching a window,” Bitter said. “I don’t think Ryver’s sitting around trying to solve any riddles.”

  She shoved her 9mm Smith & Wesson in her jeans and ran out the door to the rusty Jeep. Kane had bought it with Grimes’ money, and the best thing you could say about the Goddamn piece of junk was that it started. She ground the gears and roared out the driveway.

  Cold air shrieked through the canvas top. Good, it would keep her alert. She lost the pavement as she squealed off the back road onto the highway, trying to eat up the miles to Heathenhead in one huge gulp. Kane was supposed to find a closer safe-house, stupid chickenshit asshole. She kept cursing him because she knew she was even stupider.

  Stupid all my life, she thought. Stupid life.

  The chickenshit asshole had kept her waiting by the road with her duffle bags and the Talking Horn in front of Heathenhead the night before last. She could still smell the wet weeds and taste the hard lump in her throat that told her to return the Horn to its safe and sneak up to Dexter’s room and crawl in between the warm covers with him. She’d been halfway back to the house when Kane honked softly from the road, and then it was too late to go back. It was always too late.

  Stupid wasted life. She pushed the pedal to the floor, and the Jeep jerked and snorted like a pissed-off horse and slowed down. It didn’t like too much gas.

  She remembered the first time Dexter had brought her home and remembered the smell of the wine they drank in bed, and even then it was too late to turn back. She remembered making love to Dexter beneath the cliff-face that looked like her father’s face and reminded her that she’d been born for only one purpose and reminded her that it was too late to turn back because this game had started before she was born and the birth-image burning in her mind was branded deeper than Dexter’s face. It was always too late.

  She saw the road to Heathenhead and turned. So fucking stupid, too stupid to see the final flaw in Grimes’ stupid plan because all her life she’d been too full of hatred to imagine it was possible to love. The final flaw in Grimes’ equation was the fact that she had fallen in love with Dexter, but it was too late to think about him now.

  She killed her headlights, eased into the long driveway, and shut off the Jeep, but it kept kicking and farting out fumes as she got out. The moon was nearly full, but it wasn’t much help in this wilderness. She darted silently from tree to tree until the huge house emerged from darkness. Smell of squirrels and a deer nearby, burnt tire rubber in the distance. The front door hung open and a faint light glowed somewhere deep inside. She pulled the S&W from her jeans and glided like a swift shadow up the porch steps into the foyer.

  No sound, but she smelled a sour stink familiar as her own skin though she’d whiffed it only once before, and that was twelve years ago. She crept down dark hallways with her gun cocked, and another odor mixed with Ryver’s. It was the smell of fresh blood.

  She followed it to the parlor. Naomi lay in a red puddle beside her wheelchair, and the housekeeper sat in an armchair and watched her with the open eyes of death. Smell of urine and blood blending with Ryver’s sour stink, but it was fading and Bitter knew he was gone.

  She decocked her S&W and touched Naomi’s arm. Still warm, not dead very long. Her glasses were broken, and her rock-hard face looked like Dexter’s. Bitter cursed Ryver and Grimes and every ugly moment of her own stupid life. She would have been proud to call Naomi family, but it was too late to think about that now. It was always too late.

  She quickly examined the room and the bodies and noticed something protruding from Naomi’s fist. She knelt and sniffed Ryver’s sour stench.

  It was his long black fingernail. Don’t touch it. Don’t contaminate it.

  She found a clean plastic bag in the kitchen, collected the nail, said a quick quiet prayer for the two women, and ran to the Jeep. She kept trying to call Lizzie while it bucked down the road, but no one answered.

  She parked beside the road and approached the safe-house through a cornfield with the butt of her Chinese rifle tucked beneath her arm. She found Kane’s body riddled with bullet holes in the front yard. She hid behind a tree and saw something tied to the porch railing. It was Josh’s head dangling by its dreads.

  She pushed the door open with her rifle barrel and went inside. The rest of Josh lay at the top of the stairs, spilling blood down the steps. Lizzie and Hayes were upstairs in the front room by the window. His body lay face-down on the floor beside hers, and his dead hand had somehow reached inside her shirt and seemed to be groping her breast.

  So Ryver must have made them believe that fat Kane was a skinny one-eyed scarecrow in a cowboy hat, and while they were busy shooting him through the window with their silenced rifles the real scarecrow had crept up the stairs. Ryver knew all the tricks, knew how to paste his face like a target between someone else’s shoulders, and it was unforgivably stupid to imagine he could be stopped by Grimes’ half-assed plan.

  The Talking Horn was gone, but Bitter didn’t care about it right now. Naomi Radcliff, Miss Barkley, Josh Bell, Tom Hayes, and Lizzie Murphy were dead because of her stupidity. Even Darrel Kane deserved something better than this. She sat down on the floor and beat the sides of her head with her fists until she remembered the fingernail.

  She ran downstairs, opened the wire cage beneath the tracking stone, removed the scrap of skin, and carefully shook the blackened fingernail out of its plastic bag. The stone went crazy, flying in mad circles like a frightened canary before it calmed down and pulled hard to the west. Looked like Ryver had crossed the river.

  Bitter grabbed her few belongings, ran to the Jeep, and headed west to the bridge. There was no time for remorse, and it was too late to undo her mistakes. It was always too late.

  Chapter Ten

  Something about the name Mary Ash gave Joe Ryver the willies, and he wasn’t sure why. He kept thinking he’d heard it somewhere but couldn’t place it. All Darrel Kane could tell him was that she was an Indian working for someone named Michael Grimes, and the only woman Ryver had found in the safe-house had red hair and freckles so she probably wasn’t Mary Ash. He stopped in Kingston, called the Chicago headquarters on his cell phone, and got some punk because that’s all the Society amounted to anymore.

  “Where are you?” the punk wanted to know.

  “Never mind where I am, just open up your file box and look up the name Mary Ash.”

  “Have you been online today?” the punk asked.

  “Hell no. I don’t have time to be playing with some damn computer.”

  “Jesus Christ, maybe if you’d call in once in a while you’d know something,” the punk said. “Someone has advertised the Talking Horn on line, and we’re busy cracking the second clue while you’re out there jacking off somewhere. We think it’s in Detroit or Grand Rapids, but we’re not sure. Where are you right now?”

  “Never mind where I am, I asked you to find out who Mary Ash is.”

  “Look, if you want to keep your job you better tell me where you are,” the punk said.

  “And you better watch your tongue, kid, or you’ll find it stuffed so far up your ass your farts are
gonna learn how to talk. I’m asking you for the last time, who’s Mary Ash?”

  “Fuck Mary Ash. Cypher wants you to be working on this Talking Horn thing right now, and that’s all I know”

  “Then you don’t know much, sonny,” Ryver said. “I don’t need to be working on no Talking Horn thing ‘cause I got it right here in the back of my truck.”

  He cut off a hunk of plug and chewed it while the punk sputtered: “What are you talking about? Where are you?”

  “You just tell them Lost Loonies if they want this Horn they better get my final paycheck together,” Ryver said. “You tell ‘em I’m on my way to see Bessie in Cleveland and I want it all in one nice big bundle waiting for me when I get there. In the meantime find out who Mary Ash is and what brand of pussy spray she uses and who’s been sniffing that spray. And while you’re at it, find out who Michael Grimes is too.”

  “We’re way ahead of you,” the punk said. “We already know who Michael Grimes is, and there’s nothing about him you need to know.”

  Ryver hung up and headed west into the Catskills. He owned a piece of land up there where no one could find him, and he needed some rest. He’d been working too hard, but his working days were done. Retirement would be sweet with all those pretty pieces of land scattered all over the country and plenty of money in bank accounts in a dozen different names.

  He glanced in his rear-view mirror and wondered about the name Mary Ash. The little derringer scratch in his side hurt more than a serious wound used to, and a tooth shifted loose as he chewed his tobacco. Every day another part of his body felt old, but the final paycheck would end all that. The treatment had been wearing off for twelve years now, ever since a knife had slipped past his eye and taken out the nerve. The dead eye was a dark ball of death in his head because Bitter Ember’s knife had been made of Hermesium.

  Mary means bitter, he thought. Mary Ash—Bitter Ember.

  Christsake.

  The lid of his dead eye began to twitch. The last time he’d heard the name Bitter Ember was when he’d consulted a Mexican hechicera while hunting a wetback brujo hiding out in El Paso. The old witch hadn’t told him anything useful for the job, but she’d given him something else to chew on.