GRAVEWORM Read Online Free Page B

way that lady saw heavy weather ahead.
    Sighing (something she did a lot of), Tara pulled into the driveway and killed the engine. Quiet. Hmm. That was promising. Lisa didn’t come running out with a list of petty grievances as she did most nights. Tara saw this as a good sign. When she’d taken the job at the Starlight evenings for extra money (God, teenagers were expensive), things went very good at first. But before long, neighbors were calling her at work and telling her things were getting a little wild at the old homestead. At first, Tara dismissed it. Lisa was having a few friends over and they were getting a little loud… so what? She was a pretty and popular girl, wasn’t she? Had lots of friends and all. It wasn’t until Tara started finding cigarette burns in the rug, roaches in the ashtray, and beer missing from the fridge that she came down on her sister.
    Good God, don’t you know this is hard for me too? Don’t you know that I threw away my life in Denver and took these shitty jobs just so you’d have an ordinary life and not have to move away from your school and friends? Jesus Christ, Lisa, work with me here! Help me out!
    All you ever do is yell at me!
    I do not! Just act your age!
    You don’t even like me! You criticize everything I do!
    I do not! Just act responsibly! Jesus, Lisa, I partied too when I was your age, but at least I was smart enough to empty the fucking ashtrays!
    But despite the warnings, groundings, yelling, and threats of bodily harm, the parties went on. And on.
    Finally, Tara had no choice: seventeen or not, Lisa was getting a babysitter. Somebody to watch over the house and Lisa while she was gone. She chose Margaret Stapleton from down the block. Good old Margaret. Sturdy, tough, and a born-again Christian to boot.
    Lisa barely tolerated her, but was nicely intimidated.
    Tara adored her.
    Margaret had raised three daughters and a son. Four good kids… well, maybe her oldest, Ronny, had sold some weed in high school, but he was now a lawyer, so who was complaining? Under Margaret’s eye, there were no parties. No excessive phone calls. No boys in the house. Margaret was a hard master, but she was exactly what Lisa needed.
    Tara! She’s a tyrant! She won’t even let us watch horror movies! She thinks there’s Satanic messages in my music! She’s Medieval!
    Heh, heh, heh, good old Margaret!
    Tara stepped out of the car and dragged herself into the house, still hoping for a night like no other.
    She would not be disappointed.
     
    6
    Lisa was being dragged through the grass.
    It was cool and damp. Leaves stuck to her and sticks scratched her arms. She blinked her eyes open, moaning beneath her gag, holding back the screams which had been bottled up for so long now. The more she struggled, the harder she breathed and given that her mouth was taped shut, the harder it was to breathe.
    She knew now more than ever that she had to find something to hold onto, some inner mantra, some warm sacred cow she could call her own, because if she didn’t, if she let her fear suck her into a whirlpool of blackest terror or let her brain go into oh-my-God meltdown mode, she was finished.
    She had to keep it together.
    Because there was more going on here than just being abducted by a couple psychos, much more and if she didn’t smooth out her mind she would spend her last hours suckling the dark milk of depravity.
    Because she had seen what happened to Margaret. Maybe she’d passed out somewhere during that atrocity, but she’d seen enough to know that these two grave-crawlers that had her were not ordinary in any sense of the term.
    Oh God, Margaret…
    As much as Lisa bitched about her, hated her, raged against the machine that was Margaret, she had in fact cared for the old lady. With Tara working all the damn time, Margaret had filled the void of emptiness and in her own grandmotherly way, she had become more than a watchdog or the neo-Nazi that Lisa claimed she was. Margaret was old