Jeff Jacobson - Wormfood

Nobody said anything. Fat Ernst lowered the lantern down into the hole and Junior grabbed it, held it over the open part of the coffin. Bert stood at the head and I stepped closer, joining Junior along the side of the casket. Junior tilted the lantern sideways to get light into the ruptured coffin. “Huh,” he said. “I guess these things leak.”

The coffin was full of black water.

“Who gives a fuck,” Fat Ernst hissed down at us, on his knees at the edge of the dike. His hands kept fluttering around, as if he were a puppeteer and could control us by manipulating the strings. It didn’t work though; nobody in the grave moved. “Holy fuck, just reach in there and grab it!”

“I ain’t sticking my hand in there.” I thought this was one of the most intelligent things Junior had ever said.

Fat Ernst nearly had a fit. “If I woulda known that I hired a bunch of pussies …” He gritted his teeth. “Just reach in there and grab it!” he shouted, high and shrill, with one pudgy finger stabbing violently toward the coffin. “Hey, boy!” The stabbing finger found me. “You. You reach in there and grab it. Do it, and … and I’ll double your share.”

Well, there was no way I was going to stick my hand in there, not for any amount. Before I could say anything, Bert shrugged, said, “No big deal,” and reached into the black water, holding his cast away from the coffin. His eyes rolled back and crossed as he felt around inside the flooded coffin.

“Good job there, Bert. Glad at least one of you has a set of balls,” Fat Ernst shouted happily. “Keep going, boy, you’ll know it when you find it.”

Bert pulled his hand out of the coffin and we all tensed. But he merely inspected a glob of fatty tissue curled in his palm. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, sniffed it, decided it wasn’t important, and flung it away. Then, without hesitation, he plunged his arm back in there, concentration etched into his face.

“Find anything?” Junior asked.

Bert shook his head. “Old Earl didn’t make it in here in one piece, did he?” he called up at Fat Ernst.

“No, no, he didn’t,” Fat Ernst said. “Thanks to you knuckleheads, he ended up in the ditch.” He chuckled. “He wasn’t exactly in the best of shape when they fished him out.”

I couldn’t help myself and asked, “What’s it feel like, Bert?”

He thought hard for a moment, the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, like a pink, blind animal that’s cautiously testing the wind before venturing out of its burrow. “Gooshy,” he said finally. He pulled his arm out one more time, but this time he was clutching a black cowboy boot full of water. He tipped the boot up, pouring the water into the mud around our feet. “He’s … he’s all mixed up.”

“You just keep going there, Bert. It’s in there. I know it,” Fat Ernst said.

Bert jammed his arm back into the water, felt around for a minute, then reached in deeper, until he was practically bent over double, water up to his shoulder. He grunted, trying to push his arm farther. His eyes narrowed. “I think I got it!” Bert dragged a dripping pair of jeans and a thick leather belt out of the coffin. Sure enough, that gold and diamond belt buckle was clutched in his left hand.

But it was the worms that caught my attention.

Two of them, both as plump as Fat Ernst’s cigars, hung off of his left forearm, twisting and undulating, slowly chewing into the soft flesh up near the elbow. I don’t think Bert actually felt the wormson his skin until he saw them, but when he finally did see them, he freaked. He shrieked and scrambled backward, kicking away from the coffin, and dropped the jeans and the buckle into the mud. Junior went after him, trying to help.

“Get the fucking buckle!” Fat Ernst screamed.

While Junior was busy pinning Bert’s left arm in the mud and grabbing at the worms, I scuttled over and managed to grab the buckle, a heavy goddamn thing, before Bert’s kicking legs drove it even deeper into the muck.

“Oh, thank Christ!” Fat Ernst breathed. “Give it to me.” He reached out toward me, leaning closer.

“Little fuckers!” Junior hissed through clenched teeth, a squirming worm between his fingers. He flicked it into the mud and stomped on it. Bert yanked the undulating second worm out of his left arm and wiped it on his cast.

“Give it to me!” Fat Ernst was really reaching now, still on his knees but leaning way over the edge, stretching his arm out to me. I turned to him, an automatic response, and lifted the buckle toward his hand.

A sound caught my attention, a sort of deep, groaning sound that seemed to come from far away.

Bert suddenly screamed, slapping at his cast. I turned and saw that the worm had squirmed its way between the flesh and the plaster, at the inside of his elbow. He whipped his arm out, catching Junior right in the nose. Junior went to his knees, fresh blood pouring from his nostrils. Bert clawed at his cast, whimpering at first, then flat-out screaming when the groaning, sucking sound got louder and louder. I turned, got a quick flash of the bulging mud wall, and suddenly understood.

I whirled around and scrambled onto the coffin as the whole west side of the grave collapsed, snuffing the light out, Fat Ernst riding the crumbling wall of mud on his knees all the way down. Junior yanked Bert out of the way as a tidal wave of water exploded into the grave and I found myself clawing and kicking at the mud attacking me, fightingmy way to the east wall. The water swirled and surged up underneath me, lifting me toward the canopy. I kicked out even harder, thrashing and fighting the quicksand muck. Somehow, I managed to find the edge and pull myself out of the rushing, boiling water.

I rolled down the other side of the dike and got twisted around. In the darkness, I wasn’t sure where I was at first, whether the grave was behind me or in front of me. I’d been too close to that lantern for too long and, as a result, couldn’t see much of anything for a few minutes. The lantern had been at the bottom of the grave and was long gone. There was just rain, mud, and water. I felt something, looked down, and could just make out a few tired glints from the buckle still clutched in my right hand.

By then my eyes were starting to get used to the darkness, and I could see the canopy and the surging, swirling water where the open grave had been. I heard someone coughing on the other side of the canopy. “Holy Jesus,” Fat Ernst coughed weakly. He gagged again, spitting into the water. I saw his shadow wearily climb onto a faint gray shape in the night—the slab.

Everything was getting clearer; my night vision was kicking back in. I saw Junior’s back as he crawled out of the water and onto the slab. He rolled around on his stomach and peered back into the water. “Bert!” he called out.

I heard vomiting off to my right. Junior scrambled over to that end of the slab and reached out, grabbing Bert by his hair. Fat Ernst suddenly sat up and shouted, “Who’s got the buckle? Oh, sweet Jesus, one of you fucks please tell me you’ve got it.” Junior pulled Bert onto the slab, pounding on his brother’s back. Bert kept vomiting and I wondered how he’d managed to swallow that much mud.

“Oh fuck, oh fuckohfuck.” Fat Ernst started weeping. “Please, please tell me somebody got it.”

Bert suddenly twitched, kicking his long legs out in the mud. “I … I think that thing just crawled up under my cast,” he said in a quiet voice.

I looked down at the buckle clenched in my right fist. The diamonds managed to catch whatever light had filtered through the thick clouds and rain and glittered seductively in my hand. I suddenly realized that I could just run. Keep the buckle for myself. Just turn and run like hell and disappear into the darkness.