GRAVEWORM

by Curran, Tim

  The beast.

  Yes, in all of them.

  She saw a young guy cleaning out the gutters of the Carrolls’ house down the way. Brenda Carroll was out sweeping leaves from her walk. Brenda was blonde and attractive. The guy working her gutters was watching her. And Tara knew that while he thought he was just checking out a good-looking woman, the beast inside was drooling and filling his brain with corrupt impulses. It wanted him to jump down there and rape her, beat her senseless and then rape her again.

  And old man Peters, who was notoriously fussy about his lawn, was looking at the King’s big oak spilling leaves into his yard. He pretended to be mildly miffed as he raked them up. But the beast within had other ideas. It wanted him to take his rake handle and sharpen it like a spike and run it through Perry King’s chest and thus address this territorial wrong and assert his dominance.

  And what about the guy in the pickup truck who had to slow down because Missy Jorgan’s twins were playing out in the street again? He smiled and waved them off, but the beast wanted him to jam that fucking accelerator to the floor and run the twins right over, to teach not only them the foolishness of straying from their own territory but to teach Missy that a mother had to keep her young close to the breast and out of harm’s way.

  The beast.

  The beast within.

  Tara knew her world-view had become noticeably pessimistic, but she saw what was behind those smug, neighborly faces same as she saw it in herself. Those people, of course, would not do those things the beast asked of them. They were able to control it. But not everybody had that operable system of checks and balances.

  The beast was in Tara, too.

  She knew it.

  She sensed its presence.

  She felt its hungers.

  It was getting closer to the surface as whatever she had been before was slapped into submission by one beast in particular who had stolen her sister. For it was not a man, it was a beast. And she knew that a beast could only be answered by another beast. The beast that had taken Lisa had taken something of great value to Tara and the punishment for that would not be petty, civilized laws, but her own claws and teeth.

  Atavism.

  Something in her was regressing to its primal nature because it had instinctively recognized another beast at work and knew that no civilized woman was up to what was going to come next. Tara had first felt that primordial other asserting itself last night when she hid from the car after burying Margaret’s remains.

  It had been strong within her.

  It had helped her lie to Steve.

  It had helped her lie to Bud Stapleton.

  And it would help her deal with the animal that had stolen her sister.

  Thoroughly unnerved by the way her mind was beginning to work, and almost oddly proud of its viciousness, Tara got in the shower and let the hot water stream over her as she sobbed and beat her fists against the tile wall. She was terrified of what she might be before this was over.

  Terrified that she would never be the same again.

  But it was a chance she had to take.

  To get Lisa back and right this wrong, she would unlock that cage within and free the drooling beast and in doing so, become something less than human. But that was the way it had to be.

  After her shower, she had a nice little breakfast of black coffee and cigarettes. It was while doing this that she realized she had made another mistake. It would be noon before long and she hadn’t even called into work or called the school. Summoning up the blankness within her, she took care of it. She was sorry she hadn’t called in, but she was very sick and would probably be gone the rest of the week. And Lisa? Well, Lisa was out of town for a time.

  Done.

  She had to keep things in perspective. Somehow. For it was all and fine to embrace the cunning, vengeful beast within… but she still lived in a supposedly ordered world where certain things were expected of her. She had to put on the proper face and use her modern mind to sort things out or questions would be asked and trouble would ensue.

  With that in mind, she called the Stapleton’s but there was no answer. She left a message for Bud saying that she hoped everything had worked out okay with Margaret and that she’d be in touch.

  Her voice did not even waver.

  Then she found another bucket in the basement and filled it with hot water and Pine-Sol and began cleaning the kitchen again, mopping and scrubbing. Maybe no one else could smell the death seeping from the floor, but she could. She didn’t know how many times she would have to clean everything but she figured she might have to keep doing it until the day she died.

  Eyes blank and face slack, she cleaned.

  And cleaned.

  And cleaned.

  23

  The police stopped by.

  Two detectives in plainclothes.

  When Tara opened the door, she knew they were cops. It wasn’t their eyes or even their manner, but something that simply exuded from them in rivers. Something very serious and regulated that masked a stark grimness just below as if these two had seen things you didn’t want to know about and had witnessed horrors their lips could never properly frame into words.

  Cops, all right.

  One old and rawboned; the other young and thick-necked.

  And right away Tara knew they were not from the Bitter Lake force, were not the little boys with laptops that Bud Stapleton always went on about. These were real cops. And judging from the steely looks in their eyes, they were not fools and she’d do well to remember that.

  “Tara Coombes?”

  “Yes?” A flutter of heartbeat in her chest.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” the older one said, pulling off his hat and holding it to his chest the way his mother probably always told him he had to in the presence of a lady. “I’m Detective-Sergeant Wilkes and this is Sergeant Fingerman. We’re with the State Patrol CID.” They flashed their badges and they looked real, all right. “We need to ask you a few questions concerning Margaret Stapleton.”

  Tara did not flinch. She did not even swallow.

  “Oh yes, of course. Come in.” She allowed a short dramatic pause, then: “This isn’t good news, is it? You coming here? Margaret is still missing.”

  “Yes, she is,” Wilkes said.

  “I tried calling Bud, her husband, about an hour or so. But there was no answer.”

  “And there won’t be,” Fingerman said.

  “Why is that?” Tara asked him.

  “Mr. Stapleton has been at the State Patrol Barracks most of the day.”

  Tara didn’t comment on that. Wasn’t somebody supposed to be missing forty-eight hours before they officially became a missing person? That was probably just TV crap. Then again, maybe it wasn’t. They were talking about the elderly wife of a retired cop. If anybody had the connections to get things rolling it was probably Bud Stapleton.

  “So Margaret did not come here yesterday?” Wilkes said.

  “No. She had no reason to. I have her keep an eye on my sister, but she’s down in Milwaukee. There was no reason for Margaret to come over.” Tara said these things, keeping her eyes fixed on Wilkes while she spoke. She was careful about stuttering, about facial tics, anything that would make her look uncomfortable with the questioning. “I’m certain I told Margaret not to come over yesterday. Like I said, there was absolutely no reason for her to.”

  “That’s what we gathered speaking with her husband.”

  Then Fingerman said, “But he still insists she came over. Was pretty sure of it.”

  Tara shook her head. “I can’t account for that.”

  “’Course, Margaret Stapleton is getting on in years,” Wilkes said. “Bud… her husband… told us that she does have a bit of trouble with her memory.”

  “Yes, he’s mentioned that. But, honestly, I haven’t seen it myself. Margaret’s always been the best.”

  “Sure.” Wilkes shrugged. “You have to realize this is purely routine. We don’t think she cam
e over here, either. It’s possible, I suppose, she might have been on her way here and… well, being on in years, she may have wandered off somewhere. Who can say?”

  “It’s terrible,” Tara said.

  “Yes, a real tragedy.”

  Tara was beginning to get a bad feeling about the interview. No, there was nothing overt, no good cop/bad cop TV bullshit, yet her intuition was telling her that while on the surface this was purely routine, beneath it was something else again. Wilkes seemed too… understanding, too willing to furnish reasons why Margaret had not come over yesterday. And Fingerman? Fingerman had not taken his eyes off Tara for a moment. It was like he was looking for something. But she could not ascertain whether he had found it or not.

  “Well, I appreciate you talking with us,” Wilkes said. “I know how busy you are. Bud told us all about that.”

  Ah. Meaning they knew all about the death of mom and dad, how Tara was trying to raise her kid sister alone. That could have explained some of it.

  They stood up and she walked them to the door.

  Fingerman had so much cologne on, he practically left a puddle. Tara thought she would swoon from the smell.

  In the doorway, he paused. “Your sister… Lisa, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “When will she be back?”

  Tara bit into her lip. She couldn’t help it. “Um… not before the weekend. But like I said… like I said she never even saw Margaret yesterday or did I. She never came over.”

  “Sure, but we might have to talk with her anyway,” Wilkes said. “Purely routine.”

  “Yeah, routine,” Fingerman said.

  Then they left, heading out to their car, muttering to each other about something. Purely routine, they said. That’s all it was.

  Tara, however, didn’t believe it for a minute.

  24

  “I got a funny feeling about this whole business.”

  Wilkes cringed when Fingerman said that because he knew it was coming. It had to be coming because Fingerman was just a kid. Sure, he’d pulled seven years on patrol before he made detective, but Wilkes himself had been at it since he got back from Vietnam in ’71 and Fingerman would never be anything but a green kid to him. Maybe he was good at playing this cop business, maybe he was dedicated and hadn’t yet been soured by the system, but he was still just a kid. And like a kid he had to bring up that funny feeling like kids wearing badges always did sooner or later.

  And things had been going so good.

  A half an hour after they left the Coombes’ house, they still hadn’t brought any of that up. Wilkes was going on about how pretty the colors were this year and how the warm days and cold nights really brightened Mother Nature’s pallet. He was driving around town in the state car, pointing out what a nice little place Bitter Lake was, how it’d be a good place for a guy to hang up his hat come retirement. How he heard they had some kind of fishing in the lake and what Fingerman thought about the Packers this year and how that ringer Shupmann had stolen fifty bucks from him when he’d bet him that the Brewers would sweep the Tigers at Miller Park last week.

  But the whole time, Fingerman wasn’t really listening. Just nodding and staring out his window like he was looking for something, probably thinking about how the whole business gave him a funny feeling.

  “I’m not liking this much,” he finally said. “The whole setup.”

  “Nice town, though,” Wilkes said. “Damn nice town.”

  “Sure. Nice.”

  “Yeah, good fishing, they say… smallmouth, pickerel, perch, sunnies. I could see myself retiring here, going down to the pier every morning and drowning some worms, not doing much else. I could summer here and then head down to my sister’s in El Paso before the snow flies. A guy could do a lot worse than to retire to a sleepy little place like this.”

  “Sure.”

  “I been thinking a lot about this, settling in a place like this. Wausau’s all right, but I’d like to hang up my spikes in this sort of town.”

  “Sure.”

  “I ever tell you, kid, about how we’d go fishing spring bass with wigglers down on the Black when I was young? Now, that was some kind of action. Spend all morning out there, casting wigglers, and come home with a full stringer. We’d take ‘em over to my Gramma LaRue’s house and filet ‘em in the fish shack out back that Grandpa Jack had used as a still house in the merry days of bootleg liquor. Yeah, we’d filet ‘em and Gramma LaRue would dip those filets in salt and eggs, roll ‘em in crackers. Pan fry ‘em. You put a side of fried taters on the plate and you had a meal, you know?”

  “I don’t like fish.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “Right now, I want to talk about something else.”

  “Figured that. Nothing better than fresh fish, son, pan-fried the Grammy LaRue way. Hell, makes my mouth water.”

  Fingerman sighed. “Mmm-hmm, I’ll bet. But right now I don’t want to hear about your glorious upbringing fishing the Black River or tipping over outhouses on Halloween. I don’t want to hear about how Uncle Ike laughed so hard at that Fourth of July picnic that he shit his pants or how you and Jimmy McCabe got drunk on Grandpa Jack’s chokecherry wine and spent all night in the pasture puking fire and ice. Right now, I want to talk about Margaret Stapleton and where she isn’t, which is with her husband.”

  Wilkes had to suppress a grin. The kid knew his stories, all right. “You want to tell me how all that gives you a funny feeling?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sort of a gut sense, eh? A feeling in your belly like I get when I swallow a dozen pickled eggs and wash ‘em down with a six of warm Pabst? Sure, I know the feeling, kid. It’s one of those cop things. A gut-feeling like Broderick Crawford used to get on Highway Patrol. I think Steve McGarrett used to get ‘em, too, when he was with Hawaii Five-O.”

  Fingerman looked at him now. “Hell are you talking about?”

  But Wilkes just shook his head, remembering that his partner was just a kid and had never in his life seen any decent TV. Just a lot of shitty reality shows which is what the network execs had come up with when they ran out of plots.

  “I’m saying I got a bad feeling,” Fingerman maintained.

  “I got ya.”

  Thing was, Wilkes had one too and had been really hoping it was just age. But he knew better. Margaret Stapleton was elderly and missing. The two didn’t go together like Martini and Rossi. He was still playing the Alzheimer’s card in his head, thinking maybe the old girl was suffering from dementia. That maybe she’d been on her way to the Coombes’ place, then remembered she wasn’t supposed to go there and wandered off. Maybe fell off the pier down at the lake or got lost in the woods or something, was still out there, shivering under a tree or getting her bones picked by crows. Could have happened. Or maybe it was like Bobby Creen of the Bitter Lake force had suggested, maybe the old girl had wandered off and ended up on Sunset Creek Road and fell in that old quarry up there. Damn thing had eaten more than one kid over the years and a couple deer hunters to boot. Sure, maybe. And maybe Margaret had been abducted by space aliens and was right now in a flying saucer on her way to Saturn’s moons, support hose down around her ankles while some green fellah from Altair-4 was sliding a well-oiled probe up her geriatric ass.

  Maybe, maybe, and maybe. Anything was possible, they said.

  Only Wilkes did not believe any of it, because that bad feeling of his persisted and he did not like what it was hinting at. Bitter Lake simply did not lose people the way Chicago or Milwaukee did. Wilkes knew that the last person (or persons) that had turned up missing in Bitter Lake were an elderly preacher named Keeves and his wife. That was fourteen years ago and still a big mystery. Since then… nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  Until now.

  Fingerman said, “Well? What do you think happened here?”

  Wilkes sighed. “Not sure, son. I’m still favoring the Alzheimer’s thing. Bud himself said how she was forgetting things. I
t happens. I remember when my Gramma LaRue lost it. It was a sad business, all right. Poor thing would get all dolled-up in her Sunday-go-to-church clothes and wait out on the sidewalk, pacing back and forth. Thought my Grandpa Jack was coming to pick her up for a date and he was thirty years in the ground by then. She’d stay out there for hours until one of us would bring her in. Then she’d sit there, staring out the window, eyes full of tears. About broke my heart.”

  Fingerman nodded. “I’m thinking about Tara Coombes.”

  Ah, the kid was moving from generalities to specifics now. “Thought you might be.”

  “She was lying about something. I’m sure of it. Don’t know why. I mean, it’s not like I think she killed the old lady or anything.”

  “Would be definitely against type.”

  “But you saw her… you saw how she looked. How her eyes got when I mentioned her sister…”

  “Like two pissholes in a snowbank?”

  “…that’s it.”

  “Okay. What do you plan on doing about it, son?”

  Fingerman thought about it a long time before he answered. “Maybe I’ll start checking a few things out. Tara Coombes. Her kid sister. Take it from there. I just can’t quite get away from Tara’s eyes. I can still see them.”

  Wilkes could too.

  Like the eyes of a Jack-o’-lantern burning in his head. Eyes once dark with sorrow and bright with profound truth. Eyes filled with secrets. Maybe all that had nothing to do with Margaret Stapleton, but they’d never really know until they did what cops did best: get their hands in the dirt and start digging. The disappearance of the old girl was a mystery, a grim secret this town was holding tight to its breast. And Wilkes had a feeling that when that particular secret saw the light of day, it was going to be brutal and ugly beyond belief.

  25

  Lisa was in a cellar.

  She was chained to a wall.

  Many hours ago she had given up screaming, given up crying, given up a lot of things. After she had been kidnapped, after she had seen a woman she’d known very well get murdered and dismembered, and after she had been buried alive and then resurrected… well, there wasn’t too much that could upset her.