The previous spring, Dewey discovered that she was pregnant. It was unplanned; a surprise to us both. But that didn’t make it any easier when she miscarried near the end of the first trimester.
Only a few weeks before she lost the baby, a blind ex-carney and fortune-teller named Baxter had told me something bad was about to happen to a child of mine. I’d shrugged it off until I got Dewey’s hysterical call. It gave even a skeptic like me pause.
He’d also told me that I would soon end the life of a friend.
Unsettling. If I believed in such things.
So, in June, I visited the lady in Iowa where we talked it over. Discussed all the pros and cons, all the many obligations, responsibilities, the amount of time, money, and dedication that were necessary.
When we both felt certain, we gave it another try. Dewey’s the one who insisted that the smart thing to do in any business partnership is hash out the details of dissolution before starting. We did that, too, even though I secretly believed it trivialized the commitment-but I was also secretly relieved. Each had the right, we agreed, to end the partnership, but parental rights, and financial obligations, remained.
In September, we found out that she was pregnant again. So I’d been commuting when I could. Lately, I’d also been working my butt off so that I could get away and spend the holidays with her as promised.
Still chortling, though not nearly so hard, she reminded me of that promise now.
“But you can’t use this tattoo gambit as some lame excuse for not showing up for Christmas. You will be here a week from now? Sunday, the nineteenth.”
As I replied, “I’ve already got my flight booked,” I was also watching Rona Graves, the medical investigator. Watched, puzzled, as she rushed out onto Applebee’s porch, then trotted down the steps. She was in a hurry, but also in distress, judging from her jerky, uncertain movements.
Graves was searching for someone, head scanning, as Dewey told me, “Tomlinson’s welcome, too. But no dope smoking on my property. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m not sure Iowa’s ready for someone as weird as Scarecrow. It’s so freakin’ cold here tonight, they’d stick him in a padded cell if he went out wearing one of his sarongs, and no underwear.”
Scarecrow-a pet name for one of her favorite people. She still credits him for healing her after she’d been badly injured. A spiritual intervention. Another instinctual conviction beyond my understanding.
I was about to say something when I noticed that Graves was waving at me, calling, “Ford? Dr. Ford! Get in here quick. Hurry, please.”
Her turn to panic.
I told Dewey, “Hey, something’s come up. Gotta run. Call you later.”
Before I hit the terminate button, I heard her say quickly, “Make sure you do, Thoreau, because there’s somethin’ important we need to discuss. Guess who called me, who wants to visit-”
I told her, “I will. I will,” already walking fast toward the house.
8
Graves was waiting on the porch, holding the door open. She used her hand to urge me along. Beside her was a uniformed deputy, a huge guy. He shifted from one foot to another, hands on his gun belt, an indicator of stress.
So I hurried, ran up the steps, asking, “What’s wrong? Is it Melinda?” because that was the only possibility that entered my mind. Because I’d shown an interest, maybe Graves felt I deserved to be informed.
That vanished when the woman said in a rush, “You’re a biologist, you said. My God, I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. It’s just awful. So maybe you can figure out what’s happening, what’s going on inside.”
“Inside where? The house?”
“No. Him. Dr. Applebee. Maybe you can identify whatever it is that’s… Jesus, I can’t even describe it.”
The deputy said in a sheepish Southern voice, “Miz Graves, I’m sorry, but I can’t go back in there. I think I’ll be sick if I go back in that room. If it’s okay with you, I’d rather stay out here where the air’s fresh.”
Graves dismissed him with a nod of her head, still speaking to me. “Do you mind taking a look? You’re not going to like it. But it’s closer to your field than mine.”
I was thinking, What the hell’s going on? as I followed after her, Graves hurrying, taking long steps. “The body’s in the room where you broke through the door. We were getting ready to cart him out when one of the deputies noticed that… when we noticed those…”
In her hand she carried a couple of odor-reduction masks. They consisted of elastic ear loops connected to a gauze rectangle. She turned and shoved one toward me. “You’ll want this.”
I’ve seen some nasty things. Witnessed scenes so appalling that an attempt to communicate detail would reenergize the event and give the thing life again. Those images are best sealed away, never reviewed in memory or conversation. Invite the monster to return, you may end up living with the monster. It’s just my way of dealing with it.
What I saw in Applebee’s house ranks among the worst. I took one look and knew I’d never burden anyone with the details. Ever.
The two detectives who’d questioned me earlier would’ve agreed. They were in the yard just outside the broken French doors, each hunched over in the shadows, hands braced on thighs like exhausted runners. One was sucking in great gulps of air. The other was coughing into the bushes.
Beside me, talking through her mask, Graves said, “All the shitty stuff I’ve seen in this business, you’d think I’d be ready for anything. Do you have any ideas? What the hell are they? And how’d they get inside him?”
I said, “I’m not sure. Give me a second.”
Applebee’s corpse lay on a collapsible gurney in the middle of the room. He was naked. The body bag beneath him had yet to be zipped. I took a couple of steps closer to the gurney, moving as if I were approaching a ledge… or something that might strike out and bite. Not looking at her, I said to Graves, “Do you have rubber gloves my size?”
She said, “Jesus Christ, you’re not going to touch one of those things, are you?”
“Maybe. I think they’re harmless-to touch, anyway. I need a closer look.”
I held out my right hand, eyes fixed on the body, until I felt her place surgical gloves into my palm.
“I think I know what they are. I’ve seen something similar, anyway. It was in Africa.” I paused for a second. “What happened to the bandage on his ankle? It’s gone now.”
“I took it off during my preliminary examination.”
I was pulling on a glove. “Then that explains it.”
The bandage had been taped over a dime-sized hole in the dead man’s ankle. The wound was black, gangrenous looking. Protruding from the hole was the head of something that was alive, active.
I moved closer as I snapped on the second glove. Took a few more thoughtful seconds to confirm that what I was seeing appeared to be the scolex, or head, and the anterior segment of a long, white parasite. Its prostomium-the tip-was knobbed. Its ventral underbelly was flat. The dorsal was ridged and segmented.
A worm.
One of several parasitic worms-a dozen or more-sprouting from the man’s body. Their movement, in chorus, gave the corpse an appearance of macabre, auguring animation. It was one of those nasty scenes that memory etches with acid, which is why I narrowed my focus from the general to the specific.
Visually, the parasite exiting from the ankle was the least repellent, and so I concentrated on it.
The thing was pencil lead-sized in diameter. The section that had already breached the hole was more than a foot long. Another two feet still lay beneath an elevated mound of blistered skin. I watched for a while, noting details that would not be shared. The parasite writhed and undulated like a baby snake fighting its way out of an egg casing.
The observation was fitting. Applebee’s body was serving as an egg casing. He’d been a vessel; host to a feeding, breathing subcommunity of parasites.