GRAVEWORM by Tim Curran Read Free Book Online

up!”
    “ You shut up!” Tara cried into the phone. “You shut that fucking pisshole you call a mouth or I’ll fucking tear your balls out through your fucking throat! Let her go! Goddamn you, let her go!”
    “ SHUT UP!” the voice raged, all razors and sharp edges. “SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU GODDAMN WHORE YOU CUNT YOU DIRTY SICK FORNICATING BITCH! SHUT THE HELL UP BEFORE I SEND YOU HER FUCKING HEAD IN A HATBOX! DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THE FUCK I AM SAYING? I’LL KILL HER! I’LL SLICE HER UP! I’LL FUCKING CUT HER STOMACH OUT AND FUCK HER CORPSE! GET IT? GET IT? DO YOU FUCKING GET IT, CUNT?”
    Tara got it, all right.
    The meaning was perfectly clear. Her skin went hot, then cold. Bursts of light like cool, dim neon flickered irregularly. Her guts felt like they wanted to crawl up the back of her throat. But she got it. She got it so good that there was a sharp pain in her chest and she almost passed right out then and there.
    She glanced at the caller ID. NO INFORMATION, it read. So he was smart.
    “ What do you want?” she sobbed. “God in heaven, what do you want?”
    There was silence then. A drawn-out impossible silence that seemed to go on and on as if this creep, this fucking psycho had not really decided yet exactly what he wanted. She could hear him breathing fast and labored like he was excited. And that just seemed totally out of place because only living things breathed and he was a monster. Things like him lived in graveyards, in miasmic swamps, they skittered in black sewers. But they were not real. They were not human beings.
    “What do I want?”
    Tara controlled her own breathing. Locked her fear away. “Yes. What do you want?” She spoke calmly, patiently, her voice even. “What is it you want? I’ll do anything you ask, just please don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt my sister. You can have money, anything. You can even have me… but don’t hurt her. Please don’t hurt her.”
    She could hear him smacking his lips with a moist, slopping sound. It made her physically ill. Like the sound of a stomach being pumped.
    “I don’t want money.”
    “No?”
    “ No. And I sure as hell don’t want you.”
    “Then what? Just tell me.”
    “ We’re going to play a game, Tara. A special game I thought of. Only I know the rules and if you don’t do exactly what I tell you, you lose. And if you lose… if you don’t follow the rules… Lisa dies. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
    Tara had all she could do not to pass right out. She had to clench down hard with her teeth to keep from doing so. The throbbing pulse in her throat was like the beat of a drum. “Yes, yes.”
    More breathing. “First off, I want you to do exactly what I tell you.”
    “Yes, yes! Whatever you say!”
    “Don’t patronize me, cunt.”
    “ I’m sorry! I—”
    “ Just shut up and listen. Because this is how it works.” He smacked his lips again and she shuttered. The sound of an oyster being tongued from its shell. “First off, don’t call the police. This is strictly between you and me and your sister. No cops. And no friends and no relatives either. Strictly hush-hush. You understand?”
    Tara told him that she did.
    “ And don’t even dream of fucking with me, all right? I’m watching you all the time. If the cops come over there or I see you at the police station, she dies. We don’t bargain, she dies. Is that nice and simple?”
    “Yes.”
    “ And before you get any ideas about getting the law and tracing this call… wise up. Got it?”
    “ Of course. But my sister, Lisa—”
    “Lives as long as you do what I say.”
    Oh, dear God, what was this animal up to? What was his game? Was Lisa really safe or had he been beating her? Raping her? Torturing her? Or had he already done something much, much worse?
    “You haven’t hurt her?”
    “ No. Not yet.”
    “And you won’t?”
    He laughed then. Cold, bitter cackling, a disembodied sound like an echo in an empty house. “Just do what you’re