But the next day, Francis called her around noon to tell her that his stomach ache was gone. He seemed relieved, but Ada was not. She would have to be a fool not to see. Four days: a stomach ache that got worse and worse then vanished on the fifth day. And it was on the sixth that Jennifer had been truly gone. Ada’s voice must have sounded sad, because he asked her if something had happened. She told him no, but she couldn’t think what else to say.
She didn’t go to visit him. It wouldn’t make things any easier, she thought. Instead, after some delay, she called the number she had been given before she came back home. They arrived in an hour, a group of four who spoke quietly and politely, but whose words were uncompromising. They sat down in her living room, and she told them in detail what she thought. They knew from Francis that Jennifer had been sick for several days before her death, but Ada laid out each day for them. Then she told them what Francis had told her.
“Do you believe he is suffering from whatever killed Ms. Price?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, do you also believe you yourself are infected?”
“No. I don’t think it’s an infection.”
“What do you think it is, then?”
“...there was a worm.”
“Yes, that is what several witnesses at the scene said. However, do you believe it is possible that what you saw was not a worm?”
“What else do you think it was?”
“Well...I do not wish to upset you, Ms. Brooks. Do you feel that you are able to discuss some of the more upsetting aspects of the incident?”
“I am.”
“In that case, are you certain that what you saw were not in fact Ms. Price’s internal organs?”
“It was moving.”
“It was in the water. The motion of the water combined with the movement of the organs out of her body could have created the illusion that it was moving on its own.”
Ada narrowed her eyes.
“Did you find any intestines in the water?”
“No. Nor did we find any sign of an enormous worm.”
“A worm can move on its own. Intestines can’t.”
The woman she was speaking to folded her hands and leaned forward in her chair, looking at Ada intently.
“Do you believe Francis Taylor-Perez was somehow affected by this worm?”
“Yes.”
“Why would it affect him and not you?”
“He went into the water with her. He also had a cut on his hand, a deep one.”
“So you believe the worm...entered his body through this cut?”
Ada dug her fingernails into the tops of her thighs.
“I think I would have noticed that. No, the worm went deeper into the water. But parasites lay eggs.”
“So you think this was a parasite.”
“Yes.”
“And how do you think this parasite entered Jennifer Price’s body to begin with?”
“We went swimming in a pond six days before she died. She swallowed some of the water by accident. I didn’t.”
One of the men standing by the wall wrote something on the pad of paper he was holding.
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Brooks. We’ll be in contact with Mr. Taylor-Perez as well.”
“Do it today. Tomorrow is the sixth day.”
“We will visit him soon. Could you please confirm his address for us?”
Ada’s demeanor was chilly as she showed them out. It was not difficult to see they had not taken her very seriously. She told herself, though, that it did not matter so long as they did monitor Francis. Either she would be proven right, or she would no longer have a reason to be afraid.
Before they left, she said one more thing to the woman.
“There was another boy in the water when she died. You should check and see if he has a stomach ache too.”
As they drove away, she stood on the front porch and looked out at the street. The landscape of the town was level, so she could see nothing further than the houses across the road except for the water tower half a mile away. She knew that somewhere beyond that was Francis’s house, the opposite direction that the car had driven. And beyond that, a two hour drive away, was the edge of the forest.
When she went back into the house, it felt very empty. Her mother and father were at work, she knew, but there was no sign of Owen either. That is, until she passed the doorway to the kitchen and heard the sound of muffled sobbing inside.
She found him with his head buried in his arms, curled up into a ball. He was so small, even for his age, that he almost seemed to dissolve right into the corner behind him. She sat next to him and pet his hair. It was obvious he had been listening to her conversation with those people. She had nothing to say that could comfort him. Instead, she only said,
“I’ll answer your questions.”
This seemed to be enough. He quieted his sobs and in a wavering voice asked her,
“Was there a worm inside Jennifer?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“It was an accident. She was just unlucky, and met the wrong creature.”
“Did it hurt her?”
“For a little while. It hurt, and then it stopped.”
“Is that why they aren’t having a funeral? Because there’s nothing left of her?”
“Yes.”
“Did she...did she have to feel that? Becoming nothing?”
“No...no, I don’t think so. She was sick for six days before she died, but I think she was only really herself for four of those. By the fifth day, she could still talk and move on her own, but there was no pain anymore, even though it was still inside her. It must have stopped the pain, which means it was in charge. And she kept saying things that weren’t like her. It wasn’t really her that went into the lake.”
“How did it get inside her?”
“There was this pond, where we went swimming. You heard that part, I think. She fell and some of the water went down her throat. It must have been in there, just much smaller.”
“Could it have gotten inside you too?”
“I don’t think so. It’s in the water, and I never swallowed any of that. I didn’t go into the lake either. Besides, I don’t feel sick.”
“Can you save Francis?”
“...I don’t think so. It’s already the fifth day. I think he’s gone already.”
“Is a worm going to come out of him?”
“Probably.”
“How do you kill the worm?”
“We don’t know. We don’t know what it really is. They don’t even really believe it’s real. But I think we can learn about it if we go back to that pond. That’s where it came from, or at least there was one there at some point. If we learn what it is, then maybe we can figure out how to kill it. Then, if anyone else ever gets sick, we can kill the worm before it hurts them too much.”
“Will you go back to the pond?”
“...not on my own. But I think those people will be back, and then I can take them there.”
“And that will save people?”
“If they need saving.”
Francis did not pick up his phone again. She called that evening, late that night, and the next morning, but there was nothing. It was on that sixth day, late in the afternoon, that she received the call she had been expecting. The woman’s voice was still even, but there seemed to be a note of worry in it. She told her that they were getting no response from Francis, and he wouldn’t answer his door. Ada told her to wait there, then hung up without waiting for an answer and began walking towards Francis’s house. She met them there and wordlessly walked up the steps. He lived alone, so it was a small house with no porch, but there was enough space on the landing for a small flower pot. And Francis had never been very creative, so of course that’s where he’d hidden the key. She’d only been to the house once before, but Jennifer had let them in using that key, and revealed its spot.
They called out to him, but he didn’t answer. There was no sign of life inside, no sound to be heard. Ada checked the bathtub and sinks, anywhere with water, but he wasn’t there. Reconvening at the front door, she told the woman,
“We should go to the nearest lake. He could have there.”
“You think he’ll go towards a body of water?”
“Yes...Jennifer kept asking to go to the lake, even before she went on her own.”
As they walked outside and down to the sidewalk, the woman muttered, half to her colleague and half to herself,
“We should check swimming pools as well. I wonder if the chlorine makes a difference…”
The sentence brought a memory back to Ada’s mind, a conversation she had with Jennifer only a week before, though it felt like so much longer.
True fear entering her voice for the first time, she spoke quietly.
“I know where he is.”
“Where?”
The woman seemed somewhat incredulous, but also more inclined than before to trust Ada’s word. Besides, the look on Ada’s face was not that of someone behaving frivolously.
Taking an unsteady breath and clenching her teeth, Ada lifted her arm and pointed.
All eyes turned to look at the water tower.
Comments (0)
See all