Brian Keene: The Conqueror Worms

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.

“What do you figure it is, then? What did this?” Carl asked.

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

“I don’t know.” Still kneeling, I reached out and touched the side of the hole. The odd slime clung to my fingers. Grimacing, I held my hand up and let the rain wash the milky substance off. I raised my fingers to my nose and was reminded of something I hadn’t thought of in years.

It smelled like sex. Youknow, that fishy almond odor that is always around in the bedroom afterward? That’s what this reminded me of. An otherwise sweet memory, dimmed with age and now twisted with this new significance. It’s the same smell youcan find drifting in the air on a rainy day after the worms have crawled out to claim the sidewalks. The same thing I’d smelled when I first discovered the worms on my carport.

Carl sniffed. “Something smells funny. Have you been eating sardines today?”

“It’s this stuff. Why don’t you try some? See what it tastes like.”

“No thanks. I think I’ll pass. What’s it feel like?”

“Snot, like a big old wad of mucous.”

Carl’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “I don’t reckon you’d better fool with it anymore. Might be some animal’s spunk for all we know.”

“But what kind of animal?”

Carl shrugged and started stacking the kindling back onto the pile. Then he wandered around the corner of the tool shed, informing me that he needed to take a piss.

Staying crouched over, I looked at the hole and remembered the robin and the thing I thought I saw. Had it eaten the bird or had I imagined it? I kept running over it in my mind. Maybe I was the one getting Alzheimer’s. You’re probably thinking that I’m obsessed with the disease, seeing as how I wondered if Carl had it too when he told me about what happened at his place. But I’m not obsessed. It didn’t run in my family, but when you’re my age, it scares you just the same. When your body goes, your memories are the only things that you have left. The only things you can truly call your own. Your memories are your life, and if you lose them—or worse yet, if you can’t trust them anymore—then I figure it’s time to lie down in a pine box and let them throw the dirt over you.

I thought about it some more and decided that I was pretty sure I saw the whole thing. And that scared me. Scared me even worse than the possibility that it was all a symptom of dementia. Because worms that big just didn’t exist. And they sure didn’t eat birds.

“We ought to be getting inside now,” I said, trying not to show the fear creeping over me.

“What’s that?” Carl hollered. He came back around the corner, shaking his limp, shriveled penis, and stuffed it back into his pants. The rain started to come down harder and thunder rolled out of the forest, obscuring what I’d said.

My knees popped as I rose to my feet. My joints were screaming, unused to the exertion I’d just put them through with the barrels. I cupped my hands over my mouth, shouting over the thunder and the drum of the raindrops pounding the leaves.

“I said that I think we should—”

Another blast of thunder boomed over the mountains, closer now. Hidden beneath it, I imagined I heard a muffled thump coming from inside the tool shed.

I hobbled over to Carl and said, “I reckon we should get inside. We’re gonna get pneumonia if we stay out here much longer.”

“I suppose you’re right. I’m soaked clean through to my skivvies.”

We slogged back to the house and got out of our wet clothes. I hung them up to dry, lent Carl some clean drawers and a pair of pants and a shirt, then fixed us each a cup of coffee. We sat in the living room, making small talk and letting the hot mugs warm our cold hands. Carl, still the master of stating the obvious, confirmed that it was indeed some weird weather we’d been having. The weather had always been one of his favorite topics, so I figured he was really in his element now.

He rubbed his arthritic knees and winced. “Boy, I hate being old.”

“Me too. You ever look at a photo of your younger self and wonder where he went to?”

“Shoot,” Carl snorted. “These days, I’m lucky if I can remember him at all.”

I rubbed my sore biceps. “Picking those barrels up wore me out. I don’t know what I’d have done if you weren’t here to help.”

Carl nodded. “I’m pretty tuckered out myself.”

“The coffee will wake you up. It’s strong stuff. You could strip paint with it.”

He glanced down at the coffee table, where my crossword puzzle book and a pencil were lying.

“Doing one of your crosswords, are you?”

“Yep. But I’m stuck. I don’t suppose you’d know a three-letter word for peccadillo?”

“Peccadillo—isn’t that the name of that young fella who wrote those Westerns? The ones with the pregnant gunslinger and the escaped slave and all that?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh. Well, then I’m stumped. Never much cared for those books either, to tell you the truth.”

He droned on while I wondered why God had seen fit to make Carl and myself the only survivors. I was dying for some good conversation, craving it almost as bad as the nicotine.

“So, have you heard from or seen anybody else?” I asked.

“Nope. No one. Punkin’ Center’s like a ghost town. I did hear an airplane about a week ago, though. Sounded like one of those little twin-engine jobs. I ran outside to have a look, but I couldn’t see anything by then, on account of the cloud cover. And one day, when the fog lifted for a bit, I spotted a helium balloon. I waved my arms and tried to get their attention, but it was a long way off. I don’t reckon they saw me.”