GRAVEWORM by Tim Curran Page A

to deal with it. She would have to be smarter than them and cast no doubts at their feet.
    Yes, this was how it would have to work.
    Tara plotted it out in the darkness and took a fresh rag from the cupboard and began to scrub the counters.
    She did this for well over an hour.
     
    21
    “ Let’s see if your mood has improved any, Lisa.”
    Henry stalked silently, weaving his way amongst headstones and crumbling slabs to the older section of the burial grounds. He moved up weed-choked hills crested by morose, shadowy vaults and craggy trees. And beyond to an overgrown run of cedar-shrouded gravestones. Markers set flat into the earth. At one time, he knew, this had been sort of a Potter’s Field where the poor and destitute had been buried. It was wholly unused now.
    Except by him.
    He dropped his spade and went down on his knees at the fresh grave.
    He dug out handfuls of cool black earth with his bare hands.
    He pressed the earth to his face, reveling in the pure rich smell of it. He breathed its aroma in deep and his heart beat faster. He wanted to tear his clothes off and roll naked in it, feel it cover him, bury himself in it like he had in the old days. He dug naked beneath the eye of the moon, pawing his way feverishly down until his fingers scratched over the polished lid of a casket and then… and then—
    Not now.
    He couldn’t lose control now.
    The most important thing now was control. To think things out, to use his brain.
    (your brain’s no good)
    “ Shut up,” he whispered.
    (but i won’t shut up i’ll never shut up)
    “ I’m in control. I know what I’m doing.”
    (you’ll never have control, henry, you’re a deviant… a crawling slinking graverobbing ghoul a naughty little boy that masturbates in graveyards and deflowers corpses they’ll put you in a cage)
    (A CAGE)
    “ Quiet,” he told the voice in his head. “Someone might hear.”
    The sun would start coming up in a few hours and he had to be done by then. Sometimes that asshole Spears liked to come to the cemetery office bright and early and attend to his work and get out of there. Henry knew he had to be away by then.
    He gripped the spade and began to dig, piling the earth on the same sheet he had piled it on before so none would get in the grass where it would be hard to get out. The box was only down four feet, the soil still loose. He carefully shoveled out clods of dirt, squaring the grave off meticulously. It took him about twenty minutes. When he reached the coffin, he scraped the soil away from its stained, mildew-speckled surface.
    (she’ll trick you)
    (she’ll use her slit)
    He listened.
    It was quiet in there.
    He thought he would hear her struggling. She had only been down there four or five hours. There should have been enough air in the box and the soil was so loose that there would be more. He recalled that he had buried Worm for six hours once when she had been a bad girl.
    He gripped the edge of the lid, threw the clasp, and opened it.
    Lisa was still there.
    Her eyes were closed.
    “ Wake up,” he told her as a wind stirred the trees above and a few stray leaves drifted down into the grave.
    She did not move.
    He reached down and took hold of her. Her flesh was cool. Still, she did not move and Henry wondered if his timing had been off. That had happened one other time. The runaway he picked up outside of town, she had been down too long and—
    (the sweet luxury of that one)
    (flesh like marble as we pushed into her)
    (let’s push into this one, henry, let’s school her)
    Lisa jumped up from the coffin, a scream on her lips.
    She vaulted at Henry, scratching his face, beating at him with her fists, kicking and clawing. He put a forearm against her mouth to drive her back down and she bit him hard. They wrestled in the grave and she nearly got away, but then he got his hands around her white throat and squeezed her windpipe shut with his thumbs and she finally fell limp into the coffin.
    “ Bitch,” he gasped,