Worm

8

“Pat?”

Kathleen looked back toward the truck in the driveway. She saw the sluicing river of muck surrounding it, but nothing else.

“Pat?”

Maybe he’d stepped around the other side of the truck. It rose so high on its frame that she wouldn’t have seen him. It was silent out there save for the gelatinous sound of the pooling mud flowing and sloshing. She swallowed, trying to make sense of things.

She had her back turned to him.

She was going into the house to gather up baby Jesse and whatever else she could throw together in the precious few minutes it would take Pat to back the truck up to the porch. She grasped the doorknob, let herself in… and then she heard a sort of grunting sound like he’d been kicked in the stomach, followed by a splashing.

When she’d got back out there, Pat was just… gone.

Filled with an electric, nearly hysterical energy, Kathleen jogged down the steps and into the muck, nearly losing her footing in the slippery goo. It smelled even worse when she disturbed it, hot and gaseous.

“PAT?” she cried. “PAT? PAT!”

He was nowhere to been seen and she instantly switched into panic mode. The only possible explanation was that he had slipped, fell back and struck his head against the truck and gone under. There was only about three feet of the muck, but it was more than enough to hide a body. The stuff wasn’t like water… it was thick and stagnant like river mud. He might not have floated to the surface as easily as he might have in water.

Don’t freak out. Don’t waste time, but definitely don’t freak out. Do what you have to do calmly, quickly, and efficiently.

She heard the words in her head, but they were completely lost on her. She dropped into the fetid muck on her knees and felt it seep into her pants and begin to fill her boots. It was not cold, but unpleasantly warm like something living. Frantically, she dug around through the goo. If he had indeed hit his head, she would feel him in there. He had to be right next to the truck.

But he wasn’t.

As she dug around, practically flailing at the muck now, its polluted stench filling her head and nearly making her giddy, she shouted out, “OVER HERE! I NEED SOME HELP OVER HERE! PLEASE!”

Not ten minutes before, people had been clustered on porches and now there was no one. She dug around by the truck, reaching beneath it even, nearly breaking the steaming surface of the muck with her face.

Pat wasn’t there.

He just wasn’t.

On her hands and knees, she crawled through the filth around the other side of the truck, crying out and sobbing. She dug and pawed around in the muck and then she looked up at the truck itself. It was white, pearl white, but now there were bright red rivulets running down the passenger door like an immense amount of blood had splashed against it and was only now draining away.

Oh my God, oh my God.

Kathleen dug around, searching for something, anything, her voice not crying out now, but breaking in her throat and coming out as a disjointed and pathetic whimpering.

Wait.

She felt something.

She gripped it.

Pat’s arm?

It felt about as big around as his lower forearm, though oddly soft and almost squishy. She yanked it up out of the muck and it was not Pat. It looked… covered in the black, dripping material… almost like an eel. It twisted and writhed in her hand.

She dropped it with a cry.

Then something bumped into her hip.

Kathleen pulled herself to her feet with the aid of the truck, leaving muddy handprints down its length as she escaped around the other side. She felt something brush against her boot. She stumbled to the porch, slipping and falling in the muck more than once.

She pulled herself up the steps.

She heard a slopping sound behind her.

Don’t look back there. Whatever you do, do not look behind you because you’ll see it—

Oblivious to her own good advice, she turned and saw the arched length of something about the size of a python rise from the mud sea and then submerge again. Like a shark showing its dorsal, she knew that whatever it was, it was coming for her now. Just as it had come for Pat.