She sighed, clasping Rose’s sweater around her.
I tried to soothe her. “Listen, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s okay.” She took a deep breath. “Three of them tried to rape me. They came into my room in the middle of the night, and when I woke up, they were leaning over me. They had my arms and legs pinned to the bed and all three of them were naked. I don’t remember their faces, but I can still hear their voices.” She paused. “Their voices are burned into my mind. One of them had a really hairy back and he had a tattoo of a snake. A king cobra. Isn’t it weird? I don’t remember what they looked like, but I remember that. I managed to get loose and I broke one of their noses and fractured the arm of another. But they had guns and mine was sitting in the corner of the room, out of reach. It might as well have been back in Baltimore. And I screamed for help. Simon and Kevin came to help me.”
“Simon?” Carl asked.
“Cornwell’s brother,” she reminded him. “They busted into the room, and the men shot Simon while Kevin got me away from them. There was nothing we could do. They shot him in the stomach, and the blood was pouring out. He put his hands over the wound, and the blood started bubbling between the cracks of his fingers.”
She shuddered with the memory.
“Simon told us to go on—that he’d hold them off. But then he was dead, just like that, and the men were jumping over his body. Kevin killed all three of them as they were chasing us. We found Salty and Cornwell, and made it to the chopper, but just barely. Salty shot one of the guards, and we took off.”
Carl asked, “While ya’ll were on Cass Mountain, you didn’t see anything like those worms outside?”
“Not at all,” Kevin said. “That’s why I thought maybe all the weirdness was just confined to the ocean. Obviously, it’s not.”
“We left the observatory,” Sarah continued. “We didn’t have much fuel, but Cornwell had been studying a tourist map during our stay. He figured we could land at some place called Bald Knob, if it was still above water, hole up in the Ranger tower, and figure out what to do next. But right before we reached Bald Knob, we crashed in your backyard instead.”
“Courtesy of crazy old Earl Harper,” I muttered. “May he rot in pieces.”
“Rose wouldn’t want you to speak ill of the dead,” Carl said, “but then again, she didn’t have no love for Earl, either.”
“Who was he, anyway?” Kevin asked.
“Earl?” I whistled through my false teeth, leaned back in the chair, and drained my coffee. “Earl was a local. What you’d call a good old boy, except that there wasn’t anything good about him. He lived over yonder in that shack his whole life, except for a brief stint in the Marines. He got kicked out about two months after boot camp. Never did find out for certain what he did, but I’ve heard he kept threatening suicide and that he even cut his wrists a few times; little, superficial cuts that didn’t amount to anything. Basically, he just wanted attention.
“Anyway, Carl and I had a friend named Hobie Crowley. Hobie smoked all his life and got lung cancer about ten years ago. He didn’t have much family, so he checked into the V.A. hospital over in Beckley. Died there, too, and now he’s buried up at Arlington. While he was in the hospital, Hobie met a fella who had served with Earl in the army, and Hobie told us about it when Carl and I went to visit. According to this guy, Earl’s unit got tired of his fake suicide attempts. He was disrupting things, and all of them were paying the price for his foolishness. Their master sergeant told them to handle it for themselves, so that’s what they decided to do. One night in the barracks, they all got a hold of Earl, dragged him into the showers and cut his wrists for real. He was back here soon after that, living with his parents until they died and staying on over there ever since.
“He lived off welfare mostly, just like half the rest of this state’s population. See, there’s just not much work in West Virginia, unless you can farm or fix cars. That’s what Earl did. He fixed junked cars and sold them for beer money, poached a deer or two or five to put grub on the table. He was your standard redneck hillbilly. Except that Earl was crazy, too.”
“If he was so crazy, how’d he live this long?” Kevin asked. “I’m surprised somebody didn’t try to help him, have him committed. Or else put him out of his misery for good.”
“Oh, folks have tried.”
“They did?” Kevin snorted. “Not hard enough, then.”
“Rose and I, and Carl, and most of the other folks in Punkin’ Center tried to help Earl at one time or another. But we gave up. It was like feeding a stray dog. You’re nice to him until he bites your hand, and then you don’t feed him anymore. The sheriff was out at Earl’s place off and on for the last ten years or so, straightening him out on one thing or another. The Secret Service even paid him a visit one time.”
Kevin sat up straight. “For what? Was he one of these militia nuts or something? The Sons of the Constitution? Did he post something threatening online?”
“No, nothing like that,” I chuckled, “though it wouldn’t have surprised me. I know that Earl thought Timothy McVeigh got a raw deal; thought he was a real patriot. And Earl wouldn’t have known how to use a computer if his life had depended on it.”
“Well what was the Secret Service checking him out for?”
“Monica Lewinsky, believe it or not.”
“Monica Lewinsky?” Sarah’s brow crinkled. “The girl that banged President Clinton in the Oval Office?”
“The same. During that whole big stink, when Ken Starr was investigating the White House and all of that, Earl became convinced that Bill Clinton was the Antichrist. Said he even had the Bible verses to prove it. Now mind you, before President Clinton, Earl swore up and down that it was Gorbachev. Remember that birthmark on top of Gorbachev’s head? Earl thought that wine stain hid the number of the beast.”
“Six-six-six,” Kevin whispered.
“Wasn’t there a movie about that?” Sarah asked. “The Omen?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Never much cared for those horror movies. I was big on John Wayne, and Laurel and Hardy. And a few of—”
Something splattered against the window with a wet thump and Sarah skittered away from the door. It was a wad of slime, clear and viscous. It clung to the glass like phlegm and slowly started to dribble down the pane.
All four of us stared at the slime, and then at each other. In the silence, we heard that now familiar hissing sound—the whistling of a worm, and somewhere close by, too. Kevin and I both ran to the window, but the fog concealed everything.
“Do you see any worms?” Kevin whispered.
“Nope.” My heart hammered in my chest. I turned to Sarah. “Did you see anything come up to the window?”
“No, there was nothing. Just the rain and the fog.”
“Then they can spit, apparently,” Kevin mused. “Maybe that slime is like acid or poison or something.”
I shook my head. “No, I’ve touched some it, had it on my fingers, and it didn’t do anything to me.”
“Sure smelled awful, though,” Carl added, making a face. “Stank to high heaven.”
“That it did,” I agreed. “Like fish and chlorine, put in a blender and mixed together.”
We listened for a while longer, but the noise didn’t repeat itself and there were no more spit attacks. I took Sarah’s place at the door and continued with my story.
“Anyway, Earl reckoned that Bill Clinton was the Antichrist, and before him, Gorbachev. He figured the birthmark on Gorbachev’s forehead was hiding a six-six-six. And before that, it was Henry Kissinger and Ronald Reagan. His troubles with the Secret Service started in the middle of the Clinton impeachment hearings. One night, Earl showed up drunk down at the VFW post in Lewisburg, claiming that if Clinton weren’t stopped, God would destroy America for its wickedness. That got him some applause from the hard-line Rush Limbaugh junkies that do their drinking in there, but not much else. So then Earl wrote an angry letter to Clinton and mailed it off to the White House. He even included his return address. I don’t know for sure what he said, but I guess he made some threats and I guess they took it seriously, because one sunny morning in April, two black SUVs came cruising through Renick, crossed over the Greenbrier River, and started up the mountain to Punkin’ Center. We all got on the horn with each other as they passed by, because everybody knew who they were. You can tell, if only by the official government plates on the back of the cars. They cruised up the dirt road out yonder and eight federal agents knocked on Earl’s door, paying him a less than friendly visit. I guess that eventually they decided he wasn’t a threat, because nothing else ever happened. For a while after that, Earl calmed down, but soon, he was back to normal. He started up again when Gore and Bush ended up in court over the election, and some folks called the Secret Service, but they must have determined he was harmless. Just a lot of hot air.”