He saw what looked like droplets of venom drip from the teeth.
A grayish slime hung from the mouth in ropes.
That god-awful mouth was the most horrible thing he had ever seen in his life and within seconds, he knew, it would be on him, those teeth peeling his face right from the skull below.
So he did the only reasonable thing: he swung the broom. And it was no girly, limp-wristed, halfhearted attempt, but a double-handed swing that would have popped a ball right over the stadium fence.
Whack!
He put all his strength and weight behind it. He was almost sure it would take that fucking worm’s head right off, but that’s not what happened. The annelid primarily consisted of liquid and it took the blow like a water balloon might have—when the broom handle knocked its neck (for lack of a better word) aside, lacking bony structures, it merely squished, then burst with a gush of sewer-stinking fluid that sprayed against the faces of the cupboards.
And as Geno watched, the fore and aft segments merely closed the gap left by burst one.
It can’t die! Can’t you see that? You can’t beat it to death!
But damned if he wasn’t going to try. As the head came back around, he made it to his feet and swung the broom handle, knocking the worm back and away. The mouth peeled open, hissing at him, and he clearly felt the slime spray against his face like spit. Some of it got into his left eye and it burned. He blinked it away and swung at the worm, kept swinging. Knocking it hard this way and that, fluid spraying around the kitchen.
It was getting pissed.
Its segments were ballooning, the mucus oozing from them coming out in a brown, gushing foam. It coiled. It wormed. It bulged like a bicep.
But in the end it wasn’t as stupid as he had hoped for.
Gasping, nearing the end of his strength and clearly no closer to victory or even to driving it off, he swung the broom handle, trying to brain it, to smash its head to sauce… but the worm had secreted so much mucus by that point it was pointless: the broom handle glanced harmlessly off it. No matter how he hit it and at what angle, it simply glanced off the thing as if it was coated with cooking spray.
With his last valiant effort, the broom handle once again skated over the worm… and flew from his hands.
Shit… oh shit… oh fuck…
The lips peeled back, the teeth slid out and Geno felt piss run down his leg as the worm darted at him, teeth slashing. He ducked out of its way once, then twice… then he tried to seize it in his hands, but it was like trying to take hold of a canned ham thick with aspic jelly… his fingers just slid over its bloated, slimed segments, its bristles cutting into the palms of his hands.
He thought it would bite him, tear his face off, but it didn’t. The mouth closed and the bulblike head snapped forward like a fist, striking him in the chest and flattening him. The wind knocked out of him, he hit the floor, dazed and confused. It felt like his sternum had been split open like a dry sheaf of corn.
When he opened his eyes, the mouth was inches from his face.
The teeth were gleaming like scalpels.
A hot, toxic steam blew out of the worm’s throat, coating his face with a greasy, rancid mist that stank of the sunless, necrotic, polluted holes it had crawled up from.
Geno managed a weak scream.
Then out of the mouth came a yellow, stringy tangle of thrashing cords that must have been tongues. The ends were sharp like tent stakes and they jabbed right into him. They went into his throat, his lips, they impaled his tongue… right away, he was numb. The worm had paralyzed him, anesthetized him and he just sat there, back against the fridge, limbs limp, eyes glassy and rolling in their sockets.
I won’t feel it… at least I won’t feel it.
And that was the best he could hope for. The head arched back and went right at his left kneecap, the teeth sliding from the pushed-out, glossy-pink gums. They pierced his knee like ice picks, sinking in a good inch or more. He was aware of the impact of the mouth, the pressure of the teeth… but that was about it. When his kneecap came off in a bloody spray of tissue and ligament, he felt only the pulling and the snapping, but none of the pain. In fact, he didn’t even realize his knee was gone until he saw the beast spit it from its mouth in meaty, clotted mass.
It was as it went for his face that Ivy started to shriek.
Then she attacked it.
13
Kathleen stumbled into the house, slamming the door shut behind her.
Filthy from the muck, tears welling in her eyes, her entire body shaking, she dropped onto the carpet, hugging herself, absolutely manic with terror.
I saw it. Outside in the muck, I saw it. A snake. A giant snake. It must have gotten Pat. It must have killed him.
These were the words that kept rolling through her mind and she couldn’t seem to stop them. They came unwanted and unbidden, hammering home the very thing she feared most: being alone. Alone with some horrible serpent even then circling the house, looking for a way in.
She had to breathe.
She had to get control.
She couldn’t come apart like this.
She brushed tears from her cheeks, leaving dirty streaks of war paint on her face. Standing uneasily, swaying from side to side, she stumbled into the living room and grabbed the cordless and dialed 911 after two or three tries in which her fingers simply would not cooperate.
When the 911 operator answered, she let it out in one mad torrent: “My name… my name is Kathleen Mackenridge… I live at 2112 Pine Street in Camberly. The mud is flooding us… my husband was killed by a snake… a giant snake… it came out of the mud…”
The 911 operator, obviously used to hysterics, said quite calmly as she had been trained: “Ma’am, listen to me. I want you to relax. Emergency services have been activated and neighborhoods are being evacuated even as we speak. Stay indoors. The mud is not expected to rise much higher. In fact, it may—”
“DID YOU HEAR WHAT I JUST SAID?”
“Ma’am, I realize that—”
“YOU DON’T REALIZE SHIT!”
“Ma’am, please, you really have to—”
“LISTEN TO ME, GODDAMMIT!” Kathleen shouted. “MY NAME IS KATHLEEN MACKENRIDEGE AND I’M AT 2112 PINE STREET IN CAMBERLY! YOU GOT THAT? GOOD! MY HUSBAND IS MISSING! I THINK HE WAS KILLED BY A GIANT FUCKING SNAKE THAT CAME OUT OF THE FUCKING MUD! YOU GOT THAT? NOW WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?”
There was silence for a moment. A crackle of static. “Did you say ‘snake,’ ma’am?”
Kathleen realized at that moment she was very, very close to an absolute nervous breakdown. She was crying. She was dirty. She was getting black muck all over the goddamn carpeting. Her heart was trying to slam its way out of her chest and her scalp was trying to crawl right off her head. And this idiotic bitch was not listening. She was just not fucking listening. Kathleen had a mad, almost itching sort of desire to break out into laughter over the absurdity of the entire situation.
“Ma’am? Are you there?”
“YES, I’M STILL FUCKING HERE! I’M TRAPPED IN THIS FUCKING MUD! MY HUSBAND HAS DISAPPEARED! I THINK A SNAKE GOT HIM! WHERE IN THE MOTHERFUCK DID YOU THINK I WAS GOING TO GO?”
“Okay, ma’am. Now here’s what I want you to do,” the operator told her, addressing her like she was a melodramatic seven-year-old. “First, I want you to sit down and take a deep breath and then I—”
“FUUUUUUUCK YOOOOUUU!” Kathleen screeched, throwing the cordless as hard as she could at the brick fireplace hearth and nearly squealing with childish joy when it shattered into a dozen pieces of cheap, Asian plastic.