“Well, I reckon it must have been. Sure felt like one. Knocked the dishes from the cupboard, and my entertainment center fell over. Busted that big TV I bought down at the Wal-Mart last year.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said, and I was. Carl had loved that television almost as much as he’d loved his dog.
He shrugged. “There wasn’t anything to watch anyway, what with the power being out and everything. I guess those satellites up yonder are still broadcasting signals and such, but there’s nobody left to watch the programs.”
“So what did you do?” I prodded, trying to get him back on track. “You said the house sank into the ground?”
Carl’s boot sank into the mud and he pulled it free with a squelching sound. “Everything kept shaking and rattling. I ran outside to start the truck. Figured I’d load the dogs and everything else I could carry into it and come find you. Not sure why. I was scared, you know? Wasn’t thinking clearly. Don’t know what I thought you could do to make things better, but you understand?”
I nodded.
“Anyway, I’d just turned around to go back inside and get the dogs, and then…”
His voice cracked.
“Go ahead, Carl.”
“Then the whole structure collapsed. It just sank into the ground. My house, the dogs, the store, the barn, the big old oak tree in the backyard that still had the tire swing dangling from it, even the lamppost. It all vanished in seconds, swallowed up by the ground. The dirt was so wet that there wasn’t even a cloud of dust or anything. It just all went down into the earth.”
“Gone?” I was stunned.
“Gone. The mud just swallowed it up. I reckon it was a sinkhole. Maybe the earthquake opened it up. Must have built my place right over one, and it’s been there all these years. Mike Rapp’s house down yonder is full of them, and I’m just a little ways up the hollow from him.”
I considered the possibility. West Virginia was notorious for sinkholes, especially in the southeast portion, where we were. They dotted every hill and pasture in the county, and the mountains were riddled with limestone caverns, quarries, and old mines.
“I heard Macy,” Carl whispered. “She was howling and whimpering down under the ground. The hole had collapsed in on itself. The walls had sealed it up. But I could still hear her, very faint, underneath the dirt. And then she was quiet. I started to dig with my hands, but the mud kept falling in. There wasn’t nothing else I could do, and I felt so…”
His face crumbled, and he started to cry. Big tears rolled down his weathered, leathery face. His shoulders trembled and his breath hitched in his chest.
“She’s dead, and there wasn’t anything I could do to help her.”
I wanted to comfort him, but I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. Carl and I weren’t the type to hug each other. We weren’t in touch with our feminine sides and I dare say we weren’t metrosexuals. Men of our generation hadn’t been raised that way.
I did the only thing I could. I put my hand on his shoulder.
He dried his eyes.
It was enough.
We walked to the woodpile, and I thought about sinkholes and wondered if my place could be built over one.
But what we found after sloshing to the woodpile was no sinkhole.
It was something much worse.
And it was just the beginning…
CHAPTER THREE
“My God,” Carl muttered. “That must have been one hell of a big groundhog.”
I didn’t reply. Grunting, I strained to lift the kerosene drum upright again. Carl came out of his stupor long enough to help me. Getting old is no fun, plain and simple. Fifteen years ago, it would have taken us a minute to lift that drum, but now it took several minutes and lots of puffing and straining between the two of us.
Exhausted, we both stared at the hole.
“You know something?” I panted.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t think this was a groundhog at all.”
“A fox?”
“No. Look at it, Carl. It’s too big for a critter.”
Something had dug a tunnel beneath the woodpile, as groundhogs and other burrowing animals are apt to do. But if an animal had made this, then it was at least the size of a large sheep.
I knelt down in the rain, my knees sliding in the mud, and stared at the yawning cavity. There were no piles of dirt, as if something had burrowed up to the surface, and there weren’t any claw marks or scratches in the mud to indicate that the hole had been dug from above ground. There was just a dark, round hole, easily five feet in diameter. The walls of the fissure glistened with a pale, almost clear slime.
“What do you figure it is, then? What did this?” Carl asked.
“I don’t know.” Still kneeling, I reached out and touched the side of the hole. The odd slime clung to my fingers. Grimacing, I held my hand up and let the rain wash the milky substance off. I raised my fingers to my nose and was reminded of something I hadn’t thought of in years.
It smelled like sex. Youknow, that fishy
Carl sniffed. “Something smells funny. Have you been eating sardines today?”
“It’s this stuff. Why don’t you try some? See what it tastes like.”
“No thanks. I think I’ll pass. What’s it feel like?”
“Snot, like a big old wad of mucous.”
Carl’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “I don’t reckon you’d better fool with it anymore. Might be some animal’s spunk for all we know.”
“But what kind of animal?”
Carl shrugged and started stacking the kindling back onto the pile. Then he wandered around the corner of the tool shed, informing me that he needed to take a piss.
Staying crouched over, I looked at the hole and remembered the robin and the thing I thought I saw. Had it eaten the bird or had I imagined it? I kept running over it in my mind. Maybe I was the one getting Alzheimer’s. You’re probably thinking that I’m obsessed with the disease, seeing as how I wondered if Carl had it too when he told me about what happened at his place. But I’m not obsessed. It didn’t run in my family, but when you’re my age, it scares you just the same. When your body goes, your memories are the only things that you have left. The only things you can truly call your own. Your memories are your life, and if you lose them—or worse yet, if you can’t trust them anymore—then I figure it’s time to lie down in a pine box and let them throw the dirt over you.
I thought about it some more and decided that I was pretty sure I saw the whole thing. And that scared me. Scared me even worse than the possibility that it was all a symptom of dementia. Because worms that big just didn’t exist. And they sure didn’t eat birds.
“We ought to be getting inside now,” I said, trying not to show the fear creeping over me.
“What’s that?” Carl hollered. He came back around the corner, shaking his limp, shriveled penis, and stuffed it back into his pants. The rain started to come down harder and thunder rolled out of the forest, obscuring what I’d said.
