The Winding Worm of Wind

A monster short story

First a series of tremors began to rumble around town. Not that they were unheard of in this part of the country, being close enough to the New Madrid Fault, but lately they got more frequent and more intense. Sometimes Rhonda felt them, and the weaker ones she heard about from her now-teenaged daughter Leslie, who had an earthquake-monitoring app on her phone. Rhonda knew it wasn't too likely, but the thought of a strong enough shake bringing down this house was enough to wake her up at uncomfortable hours.

As if that wasn't bad enough, now a severe storm was rolling in, and the meteorologists were predicting tornadoes.

Again, not unheard of, but in the years Rhonda had been living here with Dean, she'd never seen the weather this rough. The ten AM sky was a shroud of heavy clouds hammering the whole neighborhood with rain. Trees rocked back and forth in the wind. Rhonda sat with Leslie at the bay window in the living room, watching the clouds. School had been canceled—not that Rhonda would have let her child go anyway. Meanwhile Dean was at work, safer in his office at a TV studio than he was on the road trying to get home.

The wind howled like a hungry wolf. Rhonda just wanted to keep her family safe, but what was she compared to Mother Nature?

A long shudder ran through the house.

"Of all the possible times!" Rhonda cried out, grabbing Leslie around the shoulder.

She let everything settle for a minute before easing back.

Leslie had her eyes on her phone. "If that was an earthquake, my phone hasn't gotten the notification yet. Maybe the weather's affecting the signal."

Their phones both rang out with the same shrill tone of a weather alert: the tornado watch had been upgraded to a warning.

Rhonda got a call from Dean.

"Is everything all right?" Rhonda said, putting the call on speaker.

"Fine down here," Dean said. "But listen, I'm with Merle, and I'm looking at the radar, and what's headed in your direction." Merle being the Channel 12 weatherman. "You need to get to the basement right now."

"Say no more. We just saw the tornado warning." Rhonda shut the curtains and pulled her daughter from the window. "Come on, you heard your father. Downstairs, pronto."

"Can't I grab a Coke first?" Leslie said on the way.

Rhonda was willing to grant that, but then they both went straight downstairs and turned on the lights. Leslie positioned herself next to the bookcase holding all the boxes of vintage magazines Dean had inherited from his father, and texted her friends. Rhonda sat on the chest containing her childhood mementos of Leslie—the old drawings, crafts, photos, and such. "I guess now we just wait," she said. "We're as safe here as we're going to get."

Outside the windows at the ceiling, it might as well have been the dead of night.

Leslie glanced toward a corner. "Mom, look!" She pointed next to the Christmas and Halloween decorations, where there was now a rather large hole in the wall, about a foot in diameter.

"How long has that been there?" Leslie said.

Rhonda took a flashlight from the work bench and pointed it into the hole. "Oh my goodness…" A tunnel big enough for a cat to fit comfortably extended past the wall into the soil. It curved downward after only a few yards, so there was no telling how deep it really was. Or where it came from. Or how much it would cost to fix it. "What could have done this?" The only hint was a small pile of dust on the floor.

"It couldn't have burrowed in. Not a hole that big." Leslie rapped her knuckles on the wall. "It's solid concrete."

"But something made it." And the edges were almost unnaturally smooth and clean. "And it could still be here." Didn't she have enough to worry about?

"Still here?" Leslie moaned, drawing closer to her mother. "But where?"

"Now, let's not get carried away." Rhonda stood up, leaving the flashlight on the floor. "There's probably a perfectly logical explanation. Let's just wait. This storm will be over soon, and then we can go upstairs, and we can figure it out with your father when he gets home." Rhonda gave her daughter some comforting pats on the shoulder, while still looking for anything out of place…

The lights went out. Leslie screamed.

"It's all right!" Rhonda said. "It's all right. I've got the flashlight." But just as she was about to bend down to grab it, she realized there already was another light. Leslie saw it, too.

The glow came from under the stairs, from what at first looked like a pile of old fabric, or a tarpaulin, or some exposed insulation. But none of those things were supposed to move. This one stirred, and a head poked out of the bundle and looked toward Rhonda and Leslie with bright round eyes.

"Mom," Leslie said, clinging to her mother as tightly and ferociously as when she was a toddler, "what the hell is that?"

"I don't know, sweetie," Rhonda said. "I don't know. I don't know."

The more the head stretched out, the more the body unfurled. Whatever it was, it looked big enough to fill the hole. It looked sort of like a caterpillar, but with a huge cartoonish smile, and dozens of tiny legs, each with a little shoe. White feathers covered it from end to end, and bright red stripes wrapped around each segment.

It began to crawl toward them, over boxes, onto the wall.

Rhonda and Leslie darted to the side, trying to get around it. The worm drew its head off the wall, stretching it toward them. Leslie screamed, threw her Coke at it, missed. Its tail unraveled until it touched the opposite wall. Rhonda and Leslie were able to jump over it. But the whole thing was long enough to wrap halfway around the house.

The two of them reached the bottom of the stairs. Leslie scrambled up, but Rhonda grabbed her. "No! It's too dangerous up there!"

"Up there? You saw what that thing did to the wall! What's it gonna do to us?"

Rhonda didn't have an answer, and she had no time to come up with one. The worm's tail had begun approaching the stairs behind them. The colors at the tip shifted. Dots became circles, and the circles became eyes, soon joined by that clownish grin.

"Stay behind me, Leslie." Rhonda spread her arms out.

"Mom, no!" Her fingers curled into Rhonda's shirt.

"Stay back!" Rhonda yelled at the worm. "I'm not letting you hurt my daughter!"

"Who said anything about hurting you?" the worm said.

Leslie grabbed Rhonda's shoulders. "Mom… Did you hear that?"

Thunder roared outside, one peal on top of another, as the rain and wind surged.

"Did you hear that?" the worm said. "It's almost time for a twister."

"What do you want?" Rhonda yelled through the noise.

The worm lifted its head to her eye level. "What do I want? You see, I'm at a new stage in my life cycle. The last few years of my life I've been burrowing around, molting here, molting there. It's tough to get out of my shell, you have no idea. Have to really shake my ass." The worm began to vibrate, causing the entire house to tremble, and Rhonda's teeth to ache.

"You're the cause of those earthquakes!" Leslie said.

"Oh please. Half of them, at best." The worm rested some of its feet on the wall, keeping its head upright and turned toward Rhonda. "But you see, I'm right on the cusp of adulthood, not unlike that sweet little girl of yours. To go any further, I need to make my way to the sky. That's why I called that storm—so I could hitch a ride on a tornado."

"You called the storm?" Rhonda said. Hardly any choice but to take the worm's word for it. "Just what in the hell are you?"

"What do I look like?" The worm batted its eyes.

"Like…" Rhonda felt compelled to answer honestly. "Like a giant cartoon worm. A creepy one. Something surreal, like from the 1970's. And you're covered with feathers."

It turned to Leslie. "And to you?"

Rhonda could feel her trembling.

"Y-Y-You have feathers," Leslie said. "But you're not a cartoon. More l-like an alien. With a skull face. And these big claws on your mouth like a spider." Leslie pulled her eyes away with a whimper. "Ugh, I can't even look. It's disgusting."

"That's what you're seeing?" Rhonda said.

"Careful, you'll hurt my feelings," the worm said. "But isn't perception interesting? Even I've never looked in a mirror before. Can't wait to finally see my adult form. I haven't seen one since I hatched thousands of years ago." It leaned its head in closer. Leslie's nails dug into Rhonda's shoulder. Why was she seeing something so completely different? "But yes, I called a tornado. And one will be here shortly to pick me up."

"Here?" Rhonda said. "On this house?"

"It happens to be where I wound up, but yes. Do you have a problem with that?"

"It's our home! We'll have nothing left! Our lives will be in danger!"

"You said you weren't gonna hurt us!" Leslie shrieked.

"I'm not!" the worm said. "And neither will the tornado! You'll both be fine down here. I just need to get up to the sky as soon as possible, that's all. As long as I'm here, I might as well take the opportunity."

"No!" Rhonda stamped her foot on the ground. "Go someplace else! You can't take this away from us!"

The worm chuckled. "What, you'd rather I go to the house next door? I'm sure the Osmans will be grateful. Or maybe across the street? I'll tell Mr. Crane you sent me. Or I could sit in the middle of the street. The tornado could hit any of your houses, or maybe all of them." The worm lifted its head higher, higher, almost to the ceiling. "We're running out of time. I'm holding the tornado back just for you, but I can't keep it up much longer. Every moment I don't become one with the storm and form my pupa in the sky is greater and greater pain. I'd have to eat something to buy myself some time." It drew its head closer. "Don't think I'm above eating you. Or…" Its head moved to the side, toward Rhonda's shoulder, toward Leslie. "Maybe…"

"You touch one hair on her head and I will kill you," Rhonda said.

"With what?"

The worm swerved around, around, forcing Rhonda and Leslie to turn with it, trying to move and keep Leslie to Rhonda's back without stumbling over the steps. The two wound up back at the bottom of the stairs, back on the basement floor, surrounded by worm.

"I knew you'd see reason eventually," the worm said, then began to crawl up the stairs.

"Mom, what are we gonna do?" Leslie said.

"I—I don't know." Rhonda could call Dean, but of course he wouldn't know, so she'd just be wasting valuable time. She'd never seen anything like this creature before. Quite possibly no one had, not in all the recorded and unrecorded history of humankind. And she couldn't even be sure she was seeing what it really was. "You really don't see the clown face?"

"No."

"What does it sound like? To me it's like a bad comedian."

"More like…" Leslie shrank down a little. "Like something right out of hell, all full of fire and sludge."

The tail passed by, and the face formed on the end as it followed the rest of the worm upstairs. "You think I'm bad now? Wait'll I get out of my pupa and start eating and mating. You're gonna regret you left all those buildings and bridges and power plants everywhere."

Then it wasn't just Rhonda's house that was in danger. The whole human race was facing untold destruction.

Rhonda ran over and snatched up the flashlight. "Leslie, take this, go to the corner, don't move until I tell you!"

"All by myself?"

"Don't worry. If this works, you'll be just fine." Rhonda gave her daughter a kiss on the forehead, and a brief, but firm hug. If anything went wrong from here on out, this might be the last time they saw each other. "I love you, Leslie." She turned around. "Worm, I've had enough!" She dashed to the stairs, climbed up beside the worm's body. Leslie cried out for her, but Rhonda couldn't let the aching in her heart stop her from doing something, anything, to try and stop this monster.

The worm had eaten through the door, and was busy crawling through. She flung the door open, jerking some of the body aside with it, and followed that feathery tube into the living room, where the head faced the same bay window where she had watched the skies with Leslie. "Worm!"

It turned toward her. "Now what?"

"If I let you eat me, will you leave my house and my daughter alone?"

It gathered more of its body upstairs, curling it together in the living room. "You making an offer?"

"Will you leave them alone? Including after leaving your pupa?"

"Yeah, you look tasty enough. Why not?"

"All right then," Rhonda said. "You just have to catch me."

She broke off running, leading the worm down the hall, past the basement door, up the stairs. The thing was faster than she gave it credit for, but she still managed to stay ahead of it. First she led it into her bedroom, around her and Dean's bed. Just when the worm got close, she ran over the mattress and hopped over the body. It crawled underneath, circling one of the legs of the bed frame. On her way out she gave the door a solid slam on the worm's body, then resumed running.

The worm had managed to bring the rest of its body upstairs, and had already sent the other end down the hall, where Rhonda had been planning to go. But all she needed to do was buy time. Seemed reasonable to assume that as long as it was chasing her, it couldn't call the tornado. It especially couldn't bother Leslie. If Rhonda kept going long enough, the storm would pass with no danger to this street.

So she still ran down the hall as she intended. The worm crinkled its body, but she managed to hop, skip, and jump over the loops, and make it to Leslie's bedroom. The worm's tail was lying on Leslie's bed. It formed a face, and lunged after Rhonda. She dodged, and grabbed Leslie's tennis racket, and swung it on the worm's head. As she swerved around it, she caught a glimpse of its reflection in Leslie's vanity mirror. With the dim light coming in through the window and exuding off the worm, it looked more like what Leslie had described, though somehow even beyond that, with hideous details Rhonda couldn't even begin to know how to describe.

More importantly, the worm seemed to make an effort not to look.

Rhonda ducked out the door, across the hall. The other head on the far end was closing in, and now the opposite head joined it. This was fine, though. Before, she'd just been trying to waste time, hoping the worm would wither and die without the tornado. But now Rhonda had an idea.

She led both of them across the hall, to the bathroom. The sink and the mirror were to her side. A little light came in through the window, but not enough for a clear reflection. But once the worm got in…

She turned toward the worm heads. The glow lit most of the room.

They both lifted themselves up, glaring straight at her. "Big mistake, lady," they said.

Thunder roared outside, and along with it came another roar, more like the turbines on a jumbo jet.

The tornado was here. It was coming down.

"Now I get a meal before my ride." The smiles split down the middle, and opened up and spread out as mandibles. "This is gonna taste good."

The roar outside descended closer. The house began to shake.

Rhonda ducked over to the sink.

The worm's heads turned, and it saw itself in the mirror.

The light in its body went out.

Rhonda shut her eyes, waiting for the final moment before her flesh began to tear, but it never came.

The roar died down, and drifted up and away, far from the house.

Both of the worm's heads had frozen completely. Its eyes stared off to nowhere. Even its mandibles and feet didn't budge.

Rhonda took a few steps to the side. Still the eyes didn't move. Neither did any other part of the worm. She looked toward the mirror…

…and the worm crumbled, collapsing into a pile of sand.

It had never seen its own reflection before. Now it never would again.

Rhonda sidled out of the bathroom and paced down the hall, across sand strewn all over the carpeting. It reminded her of when Leslie was a little girl and brought in a bucket full of sand from her sandbox, so she could play with it inside. Rhonda had managed to get that cleaned up. She and Dean would find a way to manage with this.

Thunder growled, but it sounded reasonably far away.

Rhonda checked in Leslie's room. Fortunately the worm had gotten out of there, so there was no sand. In particular, there was nothing left of the worm on top of Leslie's bed. To be safe, she pulled the sheets off, so she could burn them after the storm was over.

Leslie waited curled up in a fetal position in a corner of the basement with her phone and the flashlight. "Mom?"

"It's over," Rhonda said, wrapping her little girl in her arms. "It's gone."

"You beat that whole monster by yourself? But how?"

"To be honest, I'm not really sure, either." Rhonda gave Leslie a light squeeze. "I think it simply came to see itself for what it really was. And it couldn't stand that."

"I'm so sorry, Mom. I feel so useless. I couldn't do anything."

"Don't say that." She gave Leslie another kiss on the forehead. "You gave me something to fight for. That's all I really needed."

She felt Leslie sob a few times into her shirt. Leslie had never exactly been the bravest of children—Rhonda had always done a lot of worrying over her, and had probably passed some of that worry along—but if Leslie was anything like her mother, someday she'd find something she wanted to fight for just as much.

"So that's it?" Leslie said. "We're safe?"

"I think so," Rhonda said. "I hope so."

No tornado ever hit their house, or even their neighborhood, although an F2 did touch down a few miles away. There was no hint of that one being anything other than a natural phenomenon, beyond anyone or anything's control. The worm's remains were still piled up on the top floor, and there was still the hole in the basement, but Rhonda and Dean could fix those; a little money was nothing compared to their lives.

Occasionally there were still tremors. Leslie still got notifications about them from her app. In her head, Rhonda knew they were also more likely to be natural. They did live on the outskirts of the New Madrid Fault, after all.

But Rhonda always felt a touch of panic whenever one of those notifications came in. They had never really slowed down after the storm. The worm had said that once it emerged from its pupa, it would need to mate. At the time, Rhonda just worried about who would be hurt when it did.

But that would mean that there was a mate—still in the ground, still molting, still preparing for its chance to ride to the sky and take on a new, more disturbing form than anyone could imagine.

And even if there was only one, what would happen when it realized its mate was already dead?

This story also appears in the collection More Word Associations.