The Conqueror Worms Page 4

  I read aloud, seeking the comfort of my own voice, but it sounded frail and hollow.

  “As the waters fall from the sea, and the flood decays and dries up, so man lies down and rises no more. The waters wear the stones—”

  Something crashed outside, and I bolted upright in the chair, yelping in surprise. I waited for it to repeat, but there was only the sound of the rain. Eventually, I stood up, the last words of the section flashing by my eyes as I shut the Bible.

  —the things which grow out of the dust of the earth and destroy the hope of man.

  When I looked out the kitchen window, all thoughts of the good book vanished from my mind. I yelled, shaking now not with fear, but with rage.

  The rain’s pace had slackened somewhat and visibility had returned. The woodpile, previously stacked in an orderly fashion next to the shed, had collapsed. Split logs were scattered throughout my swampy backyard. It had taken me a full day to stack it, and I’d nearly worn myself out doing so. Now, kindling spilled out from beneath the blue plastic tarp I used to keep the wood dry. The tarp flapped in the wind, threatening to blow away. The mist swirled.

  The firewood was already soaked. That didn’t bother me much. I couldn’t use the fireplace as long as it was raining anyway. I was more worried about the kerosene. I’d had two fifty-five gallon drums of the stuff also underneath the tarp, sitting on a concrete slab between the shed and the woodpile. I hadn’t been able to get them into the shed by myself, and there was nobody to help me move them. The tarp had seemed to be the next best thing. Now, one drum lay on its side in the mud, almost swallowed up by the fog, and the other one leaned at a precarious angle.

  From where I stood, I couldn’t make out the cause of the destruction. I assumed it was the wind. Even if the worm was real, it couldn’t have done this. Could it? It didn’t matter. I had to get out there and fix it. Winter was coming, and without the kerosene, I might as well prepare to face my maker or swallow a bullet like the disc jockey.

  I opened the hall closet, shrugged into my raincoat, and, with more difficulty than I like to admit, laced up my boots. My fingers were swollen from arthritis that morning, and it was all I could do to wrap them around the doorknob and turn it.

  Before I could walk out onto the carport, a sheet of rain blew in through the open door, pelting my face with cold, fat drops. The wind lashed at me. Careful not to slip, I stepped onto the front stoop, my foot hovering above the concrete.

  Then the carport moved.

  As my foot froze in a half step, it happened again.

  The concrete slab quivered just inches beneath my boot heel.

  Then I noticed the stench, an electric mixture of ozone, rotting fish, and mud. That earthy aroma hung thick in the air, congealing underneath the carport’s roof. It was the smell of a spring morning after a rain shower. The scent of earthworms on a wet sidewalk.

  The carport writhed again and then I understood. It was covered with worms, the concrete hidden beneath a writhing, coiling mass of elongated bodies. Small brown fishing worms and plump, reddish night crawlers. They came in various lengths, the largest as thick as a man’s thumb. It gave me a jolt, for sure. I imagined trying to bait a trout or a catfish line with one of those things, and shuddered. I damn near slammed the door.

  The worms were everywhere. Literally. The carport was attached to the side of the house, and the concrete slab was big enough for the truck and the Taurus, plus an old red picnic table with chipped paint that had seen better years. The Taurus was out in the yard, covered by a plastic sheet and buried to the bumpers in mud, but the table and my banged up truck looked like islands, lost amidst a churning sea of wriggling bodies. They lay three inches thick in places, twisting and sliding through one another. Groping, glistening, blinded, slithering…

  Worms.

  It was the rain, of course. The rain had driven them topside, just like it always did during a storm. Only this time, every earthworm in a two-mile radius seemed to have discovered that my carport was the only dry spot left in all of Pocahontas County.

  My breath fogged the air in front of me and my fingers were already growing cold. I stood there, half in and half out of the house. I couldn’t take my eyes off the worms. I probably would have stood there all day, gaping at the night crawlers with one foot hovering in the air, if I hadn’t heard the motor in the distance. The tortured sputter of a knocking rod announced Carl Seaton’s beat-to-shit, piss-yellow ’79 Dodge pickup long before it crested the hill and appeared at the end of the lane, emerging from a cloud of mist.

  He careened up the driveway, tires squelching in the sodden ground while the windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm. The truck slid to a stop. Carl’s homely, pasty face stared out of the rain-streaked windows.

  I stood there in the doorway, and my heart sang. Not only was there somebody else left, it just happened to be my best friend.

  The engine didn’t so much quit as choke to death. Blue smoke belched from the rusty tailpipe, vanishing into the damp air. Carl rolled down the driver’s side window and appraised the situation, staring at my carport in disgust. His nose was a red-veined bulb, and his eyes looked bloodshot.

  “Howdy, Teddy,” he shouted over the patter of the rain.

  “Morning, Carl.”

  “Boy, am I glad to see you! Figured you’d moved on by now. Gone to dryer parts with them National Guard boys.”

  “Nope, I’m still here. They wanted me to leave, but I told them I was staying.”

  “Me, too.” He nodded at the worms. “Looks like you’re fixing to do some fishing.”

  “Just tending to my herd. I’m getting too old to raise cattle. Thought maybe I’d give worms a try instead.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “it’s pretty odd.”

  He couldn’t take his eyes from the wriggling mass between us. “You think it has something to do with the weather?”

  “Reckon so. My theory is that the rain’s forcing them topside.”

  Carl had always had a gift for stating the obvious. In mid-July, when the temperature soared to ninety-nine degrees and the fields turned brown, Carl greeted customers to his combination post office and feed store with, “Boy, it sure is hot out there, ain’t it?”

  Now he said, “Boy, that sure is a lot of worms.”

  I cleared my throat and changed the subject to something more pressing. “Don’t suppose you’d have a dip on you now, would you, Carl? Or maybe some Mail Pouch or a cigarette or cigar?”

  His big moon face turned sympathetic. “I sure don’t, Teddy. You out of Skoal?”

  Like I said, Carl had a knack for summing things up.

  “Yep,” I answered. “Ran out a few weeks back. Got me a craving for some nicotine. I’d kill for a dip right now.”

  “I heard that. Wish I could help you out, Teddy. Been hankering for some caffeine myself. I run out of coffee a few days back.”

  “Well, come on in.” I held the screen door open. “I’ve still got plenty of coffee left. It’s the freeze-dried stuff, but you’re welcome to have some.”

  His face lit up at the news of hot coffee. He climbed out of the cab and splashed through the puddles towards the carport. Water dripped from his nose and chin. Then he skidded to a stop, looking at the worms.

  “I ain’t wading through that god-awful mess. Hang on a second.”

  He ran around to the back of the truck and opened the tailgate. Carl had a camper topper, so the bed itself was dry. He reached inside and pulled out a broom, holding it up like a triumphant deer hunter would hold his rifle.

  “I reckon this’ll work.”

  “Carl Seaton, the mighty worm slayer,” I quipped. “See that really long one over there, by the picnic table? Maybe you could mount it on your wall, right next to the black bear and twenty-four-point buck.”

  Ignoring my ribbing, he cleared a path toward the door. The sluggish worms were scooped more than they were swept. The straw bristles sp
eared some and squashed even more. Half worms, severed in the middle but still alive, squirmed and thrashed in his wake. By the time Carl reached my door, he was a bit paler than normal. But his face had a broad grin as he shook my hand. His palms were wet and cold.

  “By God, it’s good to see you, Teddy.” He shook water from his head. “I’ve been awful lonely. Thought maybe I was the last one left on the mountain.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.” I smiled. “It’s good to see you too.”

  And it was good to see him. Damn good. I’d figured Carl was dead or long gone with the National Guardsmen and the rest of Punkin’ Center.

  Carl shook a few squished worms off his galoshes. Already, they were closing ranks in his wake, crawling back over the path he’d cleared. He came inside, and I hung up his coat and rain hat, and set his galoshes by the kerosene heater to dry. Then, as I’ve done more and more in recent years, I slapped my forehead in frustration at my fading memory.

  “Damn it, I’d forget my own head if it weren’t attached. Carl, make yourself comfortable. I’ve got to go back outside.”

  “What’s wrong? You’ll catch a cold if you stay out there for very long.”

  “I need to check on something out back. My woodpile and my fuel barrels fell over.”

  “Shoot.” He stood back up and put on his boots. “I’ll give you a hand with the barrels. Besides, that ain’t nothing. My whole damned place disappeared into the ground this morning!”

  “What? I saw your house on my way home about a week ago. It looked all right to me then.”

  “I swear it’s true. And by the way, I saw you that day. I was sitting in the house, eating some beef jerky and listening to the rain, when I heard a motor outside. I ran to the window and saw youdrive past. That’s how I knew youwere alive. What were youdoing out, anyway?”

  “Trying to get to Renick—but it ain’t there no more.”

  “Flooded?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, you could say that. The church steeple and the top of Old Man Laudermilk’s silo are still above water, but that’s about it.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Any survivors?”

  “Not that I saw. I reckon the National Guard evacuated everybody before the waters got too high.”

  Carl shook his head sadly. “I hope so.”

  “Me too. So why didn’t youflag me down that day?”

  “I did,” Carl said, lacing up his boots. “But you must not have seen me on account of the rain and fog. I hollered as loud as I could. Thought I was going to pop a blood vessel. But I didn’t want to leave Macy and her pups alone for too long.”

  Macy was Carl’s beagle, a mangy old rabbit dog that I swear he loved more than any human being on earth.

  “That why you hadn’t come to see if I was around before now?”

  He nodded. “I figured you’d gone with the National Guard until I saw you in the truck. Then after that, I was gonna come check, but I didn’t want to leave her alone. Macy and her litter are all I have left. It’d be a shame to just abandon them like that. What if something had happened while I was gone?”

  I shrugged. “What could happen?”

  Carl’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t know, Teddy. But sometimes…sometimes I heard things at night. Outside, in the rain. Macy heard them as well, and it set her to growling and barking.”

  For some reason, the Bible verse ran through my head.

  The things which grow out of the dust of the earth and destroy the hope of man.

  “What kind of things?” I asked.

  “I don’t rightly know how to describe it. Like a sloshing sound, maybe.”

  “That’s just the rain.” I put my hand on the doorknob.

  Carl finished with his boots. “No sir, I don’t think it was. There was something else—a sort of whistling sound. Gave me the chills when I heard it.”

  I stared at him. I’d seen Alzheimer’s and dementia take some of my closest friends, but Carl didn’t seem to be suffering from it. Nor did he seem to have cracked from the strain yet. He seemed like his normal self.

  Plus, I’d heard something myself that very morning. Seen it, too.

  Something that looked like a dog-sized version of the worms wriggling on my carport.

  “All I can say,” he continued, “is that it weren’t natural.”

  “Well, I reckon you’d know. Come on and give me a hand, if you’re gonna.”

  We stepped out onto the carport again. As we waded through the worms and slogged through the swamp that had replaced my backyard, Carl told me what happened next.

  He hadn’t wanted to leave the house because Macy had just given birth and the puppies’ eyes weren’t even opened yet. He didn’t want to leave them alone, not even for the few minutes it would have taken to come find me. Carl had a heart like a big old marshmallow when it came to that mutt.

  Carl’s house, post office, and feed store were all part of one big, ramshackle building. By the end of the second week, the dirt cellar was flooded, and by Day Thirty, the foundations had begun to creak and groan. Still, he refused to leave, wanting to be there for his hound and her newborn litter.

  He’d woken up this morning at dawn; probably around the same time as what happened to the bird.

  “What got you up?” I asked as we walked across the muddy yard.

  “Macy was barking and howling enough to wake the dead,” Carl said. “Nothing would quiet her. And the puppies were all whining too.”

  “Well, what had them so stirred up?”

  “The house started shaking. I didn’t notice it at first, but the dogs did. They said on the Discovery Channel that animals know about earthquakes before they happen. I reckon this was something like that.”

  “An earthquake?”

  “Well, I reckon it must have been. Sure felt like one. Knocked the dishes from the cupboard, and my entertainment center fell over. Busted that big TV I bought down at the Wal-Mart last year.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said, and I was. Carl had loved that television almost as much as he’d loved his dog.

  He shrugged. “There wasn’t anything to watch anyway, what with the power being out and everything. I guess those satellites up yonder are still broadcasting signals and such, but there’s nobody left to watch the programs.”

  “So what did you do?” I prodded, trying to get him back on track. “You said the house sank into the ground?”

  Carl’s boot sank into the mud and he pulled it free with a squelching sound. “Everything kept shaking and rattling. I ran outside to start the truck. Figured I’d load the dogs and everything else I could carry into it and come find you. Not sure why. I was scared, you know? Wasn’t thinking clearly. Don’t know what I thought you could do to make things better, but you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Anyway, I’d just turned around to go back inside and get the dogs, and then…”

  His voice cracked.

  “Go ahead, Carl.”

  “Then the whole structure collapsed. It just sank into the ground. My house, the dogs, the store, the barn, the big old oak tree in the backyard that still had the tire swing dangling from it, even the lamppost. It all vanished in seconds, swallowed up by the ground. The dirt was so wet that there wasn’t even a cloud of dust or anything. It just all went down into the earth.”

  “Gone?” I was stunned.

  “Gone. The mud just swallowed it up. I reckon it was a sinkhole. Maybe the earthquake opened it up. Must have built my place right over one, and it’s been there all these years. Mike Rapp’s house down yonder is full of them, and I’m just a little ways up the hollow from him.”

  I considered the possibility. West Virginia was notorious for sinkholes, especially in the southeast portion, where we were. They dotted every hill and pasture in the county, and the mountains were riddled with limestone caverns, quarries, and old mines.

  “I heard Macy,” Carl whispered. “She was howling and whimpering down under the ground. The h
ole had collapsed in on itself. The walls had sealed it up. But I could still hear her, very faint, underneath the dirt. And then she was quiet. I started to dig with my hands, but the mud kept falling in. There wasn’t nothing else I could do, and I felt so…”

  His face crumbled, and he started to cry. Big tears rolled down his weathered, leathery face. His shoulders trembled and his breath hitched in his chest.

  “She’s dead, and there wasn’t anything I could do to help her.”

  I wanted to comfort him, but I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. Carl and I weren’t the type to hug each other. We weren’t in touch with our feminine sides and I dare say we weren’t metrosexuals. Men of our generation hadn’t been raised that way.

  I did the only thing I could. I put my hand on his shoulder.

  He dried his eyes.

  It was enough.

  We walked to the woodpile, and I thought about sinkholes and wondered if my place could be built over one.

  But what we found after sloshing to the woodpile was no sinkhole.

  It was something much worse.

  And it was just the beginning…

  CHAPTER THREE

  “My God,” Carl muttered. “That must have been one hell of a big groundhog.”

  I didn’t reply. Grunting, I strained to lift the kerosene drum upright again. Carl came out of his stupor long enough to help me. Getting old is no fun, plain and simple. Fifteen years ago, it would have taken us a minute to lift that drum, but now it took several minutes and lots of puffing and straining between the two of us.

  Exhausted, we both stared at the hole.

  “You know something?” I panted.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t think this was a groundhog at all.”

  “A fox?”

  “No. Look at it, Carl. It’s too big for a critter.”

  Something had dug a tunnel beneath the woodpile, as groundhogs and other burrowing animals are apt to do. But if an animal had made this, then it was at least the size of a large sheep.

  I knelt down in the rain, my knees sliding in the mud, and stared at the yawning cavity. There were no piles of dirt, as if something had burrowed up to the surface, and there weren’t any claw marks or scratches in the mud to indicate that the hole had been dug from above ground. There was just a dark, round hole, easily five feet in diameter. The walls of the fissure glistened with a pale, almost clear slime.