GRAVEWORM Read Free Page B

last at least as long as your body while all those nurses call you “sweety” and “honey” like you’re a ten-year old in pigtails and braces, demeaning you, stripping away your self-respect and pride one layer at a time, having little birthday parties for you with cakes and balloons, all those sad-eyed, white-haired things gathered around you, drooling in their little cute party hats. That’s what a life hard-earned and well-spent will get you. Remember Great Aunt Eileen? She’d buried two husbands, lost a boy in World War I and another to the influenza outbreak of 1917, raised up three girls right and proper and in the end, she was in one of them homes wearing a little party hat with the rubber band strap digging into her pouchy sagging neck, her eyes old and sad and used-up. You remember that, Marge? You remember the party? Back around ’66 or ’67 when you were a bright-eyed thirtysomething without a care in God’s own world? You said to her, “Wow, Aunt Eileen, ninety-three today!” And she looked at you with something like pity. “Ain’t nothing wow about it, Margie. Ninety-three ain’t no fun. It’s hell on earth.” And now you’re heading in that direction and, damned, if Great Aunt Eileen wasn’t right.
    Margaret realized she’d been off in dreamland again and it was getting so she was doing it a lot.
    Get it together, old woman. Find Lisa. Sort this business out. You can’t call on Bud because he can’t accept his age anymore than you can. You call and he’ll come over, tromp around out there in the night and catch a chill that will become a chest cold next week, pneumonia the week after, and a plot out at Hillside week after that.
    No, she would handle this herself.
    It would only take a minute.
    She moved toward the tree, wind pushing leaves past her legs. The more she stared, the more she strained her eyes, the more her vision wanted to blur. Age. Goddamn age. You could pretend it wasn’t so, but pretending didn’t make it go away—
    She stepped in something.
    Something soft only a few feet from the tree.
    A raw stink of hot excrement rose from it.
    Not dog shit, no, dear Lord, this was human shit and there was no mistaking the revolting, sharp smell of it.
    This was wrong.
    This was all so wrong.
    That curious tightness in her chest was deeper now, sinking its roots, throbbing, insistent. Her heart was hammering. She was having trouble catching her breath.
    Ticker? Was that it?
    Out here? Now? Oh no, not that…
    Margaret knew she could go no farther. This was enough. If it was her heart then she needed to get inside and sort things out. Call Bud if necessary. Call Tara. Call somebody. She was about to turn on her heel and go back in when something moist and warm spattered in her face.
    That smell.
    Shit.
    Somebody had thrown shit in her face.
    The tightness in her chest erupted into full-fledged pain as her heart pounded frantically, hitched, pounded again, missed two or three beats with a dull, deep, bottoming-out sort of feeling that made her cry out and clutch her breast.
    She heard a sound like respiration.
    Above her, above…
    Someone was in the tree.
    She could see their eyes, unnaturally bright and shining.
    Margaret started toward the house, hearing whoever was in the tree jump down and land in the grass. She did not have to turn to know they had landed on all fours. Or that they were following her, scampering through the grass like an animal.
    Closer, closer.
    The raw stink of feces coming off them was violent, offensive.
    Margaret reached the patio. Her stiff fingers found the doorknob, yanked it open as a fear that was white-hot and electric thrummed through her. It was so sharp it felt like a knifeblade twisting in her stomach.
    She stumbled into the kitchen.
    Dear God, dear God in heaven…
    Lisa.
    That was Lisa.
    Right before her on the floor. Lisa was lying on the floor, wrists taped behind her back and ankles taped together, a length of rope connecting them. Hog-tied.