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.
But then what? Where would I take it? I couldn’t get to Sacramento to a pawn shop. I couldn’t exactly march into the town bank either, drop the buckle on the counter and demand to be paid for it. And it wasn’t like Fat Ernst wouldn’t know who had taken it. He’d hunt me and the buckle down and probably kill me without thinking twice about it. I didn’t have much of a choice.
“I’ve got it,” I called out. If I gave it to Fat Ernst, at least I had the possibility of getting a little cash out of it.
“You do? Oh, thank Christ. Give it here. Hurry!”
“It’s in my arm …” Bert started to cry and snot ran across his lips, leaving clear, glistening tracks in the mud on his face.
“Not yet. I want to make a deal first,” I said, trying to keep my voice strong, and unclipped the buckle from the belt and jeans.
“What kind of fucking deal? Just bring it over here and we’ll talk.”
“I want a bigger share. Five hundred bucks. That’s fair. If this thing’s worth fifteen, twenty grand, then you can pay me five hundred easy. If you don’t think that’s fair, then I’ll just toss it back into the grave, and you can fight those fucking worms for it,” I said, tossing the wet jeans back into the mud. I realized that might have been the longest speech I had ever made to Fat Ernst.
“Don’t you fucking dare. You stinking goddamn … All right. Fuck. All right. You got it. Five hundred. You got it. I swear. Just bring the buckle here.”
I edged around the grave, staying on the outside of the canopy. The last thing I needed to do was to fall back into that quicksand nightmare. As I reached the stone slab, Bert started shrieking, clawing madly at the white plaster, “It’s in my fucking arm! It’s inside!”
Junior grabbed Bert’s cast.
Fat Ernst sidled past Junior and Bert, hand out. “Okay, boy, you made your point. Five hundred. I won’t forget, I promise. Just give it to me.”
I handed it over. Fat Ernst smiled, jerking the buckle out of my hand and slipping it inside his shirt.
Junior said, “I can’t see shit, Bert. You sure it went in there?”
Fat Ernst drew himself up, saying, “Gentlemen, I’m going to clean up and then I’ll head to Sacramento first thing in the morning.” He nodded and added, “You fellas did a good job here.”
Junior gently wiped Bert’s face with the tail of his shirt. “Come on, Bert, let’s go home. Get you some more tranquilizers.” Then he wiped some of the blood away from his own mouth.
We splashed back through the long shadows thrown by the headlights, abandoning the pump, the sledgehammer, the shovels, and the lantern. The rain was still coming down hard, but it felt good as the water slowly washed away the mud and grit on my skin. Fat Ernst didn’t say anything else, just plopped into his Cadillac and took off immediately, roaring away through the walnut orchards. Junior helped Bert into the truck and paused long enough to reel the extension cord back in. Then they too were gone, leaving me alone in the darkness and rain.
But I didn’t mind walking home. Like I said, the rain felt good on my skin. Clean, somehow. And as I walked, I had plenty of time to think about Misty.
And those goddamn worms.
CHAPTER 22
When I got home, Grandma was asleep in her chair, her snoring softly echoing the white noise and static on-screen. I was glad. I didn’t want to have to explain all the mud and blood again. I’d been spending too much time with dead things lately. So I stripped out of my filthy clothes in the backyard and just sat on the steps for a while, letting the falling rain wash the rest of the mud away. After a while, I quietly crept inside and took another long, hot shower. Grandma was going to wonder why the gas bill was so high this month.
After the shower, I grabbed the W and X volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica that Grandpa had bought years ago. One winter he decided to work his way through all of the volumes. I carried the encyclopedia back to my room and turned to the section on WORMS.
It wasn’t much help. There wasn’t a lot of information that fit what I knew about the worms I’d seen. But what did I know about them, really? They ate meat, both alive and dead … So, let’s see, call ’em carnivores. And from what I could tell, they lived in water, both salt water and freshwater. It seemed like they burrowed into the body, eating it from the inside. But other than that, I wasn’t really sure. Whateverthey were, they sure as hell weren’t night crawlers. The only halfway useful thing I did find was something called a “Pompeii worm.” Those things lived in scalding water at the mouths of hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor and could withstand temperatures up to 176 degrees Fahrenheit. That would explain how the eggs or pieces or anything else could survive being cooked inside the hamburgers, if that’s what killed Heck.