GRAVEWORM (9 page)

Now for two years they had been in the same holding pattern.

When they were together, Tara devoted herself entirely to him, whether that was a relaxing conversation out on the patio or a meal she was whipping up for him or some especially wild sex in the bedroom. But those dates were sometimes weekly and very often only two or three times a month.

The rest of the time… Tara’s jobs, the house, and Lisa, Lisa, Lisa.

Steve liked Lisa and being an average snotty little teenage girl, she tolerated him, but was not exactly friendly. It was an act. Something teenage girls seemed to carry in their genes, apparently. Some annoying defensive mechanism perhaps. But now and again, Lisa would thaw and act almost like a normal human being. Steve knew if they lived under the same roof, though, that it would change.

Because he thought Lisa wanted to like him.

But her older sister was standing in the way.

Laying there, all of it rolling through his mind while he tried to sort out not only his life and Tara’s but what was going on with her now, he had to wonder if maybe she had reached the breaking point and he should be ready to catch her when she fell.

Yet, he felt it was more than that.

Something he could not understand or recognize was driving her.

No, he would not go over there. At least not tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Then he would find out what this was about, one way or another. With that, he let himself unwind and go to sleep. A sleep plagued by dreams in which Tara kept running from him, heading toward the brink of some nameless abyssal pit.

It was probably a good thing he didn’t go over to the Coombes’ house.

Because he wouldn’t have liked what he found.

But at the same time, by not going, he was not only betraying his love for Tara but betraying himself. By ignoring those deep-seated instincts that waged war within him, he was leaving Tara alone and vulnerable when she needed him most.

And something in him knew it.

18

2:11 AM

The clock was running…

When Tara had the hole dug deep in the clearing beside a dirt road well outside Bitter Lake, she carried her packages from the trunk of her little Dodge Stratus and dumped them in. The rug with the torso in it was a little more work, of course. As the crickets sang and night birds called in the starry sky above, she pulled it out and let it fall to the grass. It made a heavy, solid sort of plopping sound that made her skin go cold.

After that, she had to lean against the car and catch her breath. And not because of exertion.

2:17 AM

She steeled herself and gripped the rug by the knotted twine and dragged it over the ground to the hole and then, very unceremoniously, pushed it in. And it hurt. Not the strain of it all, of everything she had done this night, though her limbs were heavy and her back aching… no, this was a psychological pain that somehow manifested itself physically. Inside her chest, inside her pumping heart, she hurt. Hurt because here she was dumping the butchered remains of Margaret Stapleton into an unmarked grave in the woods. Margaret. Dear, sweet, old fashioned, no-nonsense, heart-big-as-the moon Margaret. Laying her to rest without so much as a prayer or a goodbye wish.

There was something almost criminal about that.

2:34 AM

Tara filled the grave in, patted it down, kicked leaves and sticks and loam over the spot so it would look undisturbed. Then she went back to the car, tossing the shovel in the trunk and wiping the black dirt of the grave from her hands. She stood there and smoked a cigarette, trying to feel something, but was only aware of that chill emptiness within.

We’re going to play a game, Tara.

A game.

That’s what this was. Like a college frat hazing. A secret society with secret rules.

“
I’m going to get you out of this, Lisa,” she said. “Somehow, some way, I’ll get you out.”

It was a good thought and one that filled her with a reassuring strength, but it was not enough to think such things. She must
believe
them. And in believing them, make them a reality. Somehow she had to get to Lisa, had to find her and set her free from this madman. Even if it meant sacrificing herself, even if it meant—

“
Shit.”

A car.

2:37 AM

The lights came sweeping up the road in the distance.

Panic jumped in Tara’s belly.

She dashed behind the cover of some trees and dove into the grass. The police. That’s what she was worried about. She had just buried a body and if they found her now, started asking all the wrong questions, she didn’t honestly think she could lie.

The car slowed. Tara’s belly was filled with light, feathery things.

Then the car sped up and was gone, navigating a turn in the distance. She listened to the sound of it vanishing and the night crept back, covering her, coveting her cheek to jowl and she felt at one with it. The sound of the breeze in the trees. The foraging nocturnal things. Even the leggy creature which moved across the back of her hand. She could smell the earth, black and rich and forever. She wanted to press her face into the leaves, to taste them.

The threat had passed.

2:39 AM

She crab-crawled to her car, and felt that emptiness inside her begin to fill with something else. Something primordial almost. Some instinctive thing that told her in no uncertain terms that it was capable of doing the job at hand.

Of finding Lisa.

And killing her kidnapper.

19

He had her now.

He had her the way he wanted her.

Right there on the dirt floor of the cellar. He had her spread-eagle, naked, and he was pushing himself into her and liking the cold feel of her flesh, how she did not move, how she accepted his mastery of her like something dry and dead that had no choice. Her dirty blouse was thrown up around her shoulders and he was licking her white throat, her shoulders, then biting them. Not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to bring pain. His hands were gripping the pale mounds of her ass as he thrust himself into her, biting her, nibbling her, showing her the pain and loving the fact that she still did not move. That her eyes were wide open, dark and glassy, staring sightlessly.

(that’s it, henry: it’s the only way to discipline a cunt good and proper they understand nothing less)

He pushed into her harder and harder. She smelled of dirt and oblong boxes, nighted and breathless places where there was only the scratch of the rat and the fleshy caress of the worm. Yes-yes-yes, she did not move and her skin was so cold and it was more than he could take, he couldn’t hold back his excitement any longer…

(harder, henry, HARDER)

(mother… oh… please)

Jesus.

He emptied himself into her and lay panting atop her, sweat dripping from his face and his tongue lolling from his mouth in the sweet aftermath of it all.

Finally she blinked, pressing her hips against his own. “I am so pretty, Henry. Such a pretty little thing.”

“
Yes,” Henry said. “Yes.”

“
Where is my friend? Where did you put my pretty friend?”

“
She’s in a safe place, Worm. You remember.”

“
Go get her and bring her here,” she said. “I want to play with her.”

“
I will. But you have to promise me you won’t do bad things to her. Not yet.”

“
I won’t, Henry. I like to do what you say.”

“
That’s a good girl.”

(because if she doesn’t, henry, she’ll need discipline)

“
Henry… when can I be buried in the box? I like to be buried in the box.”

“
Soon, Worm. Soon.”

“
Okay, Henry.”

With that, she closed her dark eyes and dreamed of entombment, of narrow boxes and rotting satin and crawling, feeding things far, far below.

20

Sometime later… the phone rang.

Tara opened her eyes and went into panic mode right away. She didn’t know where she was or what she was doing. She was sprawled on the floor before the front door and the house smelled like Pine-Sol and was gagging it was so strong. She’d been having a nightmare. Lisa. Margaret. Graves. Burying things. Evil moon-faced boogeymen calling on the phone. Then it came rushing back into her head and she felt the dirt on her fingers, her aching muscles, and knew the things she had done and the things she would yet do.

She did not scream.

She did not even cry.

She held it all deep down inside of her, nailing it shut in a box as black laughter echoed in her brain and wracked sobbing choked in her throat. But she shut it off. She shut it all off because there were things that had to be done and she had to put on the proper face in order to do them.

You are not who you were,
Tara told herself.
You are someone else that just looks like Tara Coombes and you have to remember that. You have to get Lisa back and it will mean doing terrible things, but you will do them. I will help you. But the world, the world must not suspect. You must look like Tara Coombes. Even if you’re somebody else.

Even if you’re somebody else.

The phone kept ringing.

Nobody would call this late. Nobody but a drooling, evil thing that kidnapped teenage girls, a night-haunter that was frightened of the rising sun as all such things were. It could not go back into its coffin yet, not until it filled its belly with the bitter brine of suffering, not until it leeched itself to Tara’s soft white throat one more time and drank its fill.

Tara walked into the kitchen and the smell of cleaners reamed her nose out and made her head spin. Her eyes watered. She reached out for the phone in the darkness, picturing the monster on the other end: a bloated, leggy spider whose web she was caught in. Cocooned with silk, the spider liked to unwrap her from time to time to sip from her throat, to suckle her last throbbing artery.

In her mind, she heard a crunching and squishing sound as a boot crushed the spider flat, reduced it to a mush. And she knew whose boot that was: her own.

Shutting everything down inside herself, she picked up the cordless. “Hello?”

“
Tara? Tara? Tara, is that you?”

“
Yes… who is this?” It wasn’t the boogeyman. She vaguely recognized the voice. An old man. A neighbor.

“
It’s Bud Stapleton, honey. I thought you were Lisa for a minute… you girls sound alike.”

He paused and she could hear the tension in his voice. Serious tension. Bud was
kind-hearted, but tough and old-school. An ex-cop who was damn proud of every one of the thirty-five years he’d put in on the Bitter Lake force, even if about ninety-percent of it was bullshit, as he liked to say. Now he was prattling. A guy who rarely said more than “yup” or “nope” on the phone.

This all passed through Tara’s mind at the same time the reason for his very late, or very early, phone call did: Margaret had not come home. Bud, according to Margaret, was given to drinking beers on the couch before the TV where he very often fell asleep. He must have woken and found that his wife had not returned from the Coombes’ house.

This was trouble.

This was an angle that Tara had not considered with all the rest of it coming from every conceivable direction and knocking her flat. Margaret. Margaret was missing. It would mean the police. An investigation. And if all that wasn’t trouble enough, the sort of trouble that put Lisa in worse jeopardy than she already was, Bud was no fool. He was an ex-cop. He knew how to find out things. Even if the police found out nothing, Bud would not give up so easily. He was always bitching about the young, modern force:
“Goddamn little boys with laptops playing cop, mouths barely off their mommies’ titties. Encounter sessions and support fucking groups. Tasers and pepper spray. Jesus! In the old days we took a man down with our bare hands like real cops. We got bloodied, we got bruised, but we got paid to do a fucking job and we did it. Me and Bobby Stemick, Frenchy Levesque, Jib Hanlon, Mike McKean… we were real cops. Not like now, not like now…”

Bud was old, but at heart was still a cop. Stubborn as all hell.

Tara did not need this new wrinkle.

Think!