Brian Keene: The Conqueror Worms

“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 hole 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…”