George and Merrick made their way down a narrow, poorly lit staircase.
“This looks promising,” Merrick said.
“Nothing like a dank basement for quality finds,” George replied. Worming their way through an estate sale at a hundred-year-old house, George and Merrick hoped to find some treasures. The owners who built it lived there until it was inherited by their son and daughter. The siblings moved in to live rent-free, but their daughter had grown weary of house-sharing so wanted the house sold and a check written—or so the story went.
Grooved paths of bare wood ran between the rooms, the interior paint was chipped and rubbed away near any touch points. A century of human grunge built up on every surface, with streaks of cleaner areas where movers had bumped the walls as they set up for the estate sale. Every surface was tacky, and the funk of old people and sweaty feet permeated the air. The parents’ things had remained untouched in the attic and basement, the son promising for decades to one day sort and sell them.
The basement was lined with massive stone walls, a thick layer of dust and ash frosted any surface left undisturbed by the movers. Every box and container in every nook and cranny had been dragged upstairs by the estate sale workers. They cataloged, priced, and displayed it all for maximum appeal. Dust-free blank spaces could be seen where boxes and objects had waited for decades, only to finally be hauled upstairs for sale.
“They probably missed something. Check all the cabinets and drawers,” George said. The basement’s rabbit warren of rooms wound round and round in a tight formation of brick walls and low slung pipes. They could hear the creak of patrons walking around upstairs, and the low hum of their voices.
“Suckers. Anything good is on eBay or sold to collectors. Only the left-over tourist crap will be on the main floor,” Merrick observed. “Time to check the drawers.” She pulled all the drawers from a built-in cabinet next to a workbench. People often hid things on the back of drawers or inside the space behind them for safekeeping. “Nothing,” she said.
“Keep looking, they lived here forever, something must have fallen out of a drawer at some point.” The two pulled out every drawer they could find, looked inside and behind cabinets, tapped the surfaces in search of false bottoms, sides, and tops but came up empty.
“Well, if we found something every time, it wouldn’t be as much fun,” George said, as he put some drawers back in place.
“I guess.” Merrick turned to head back up the stairs. Suddenly, something hooked onto her ankle and she fell into the workbench. As she did, she felt it give a little. She looked down to see what tripped her and thought she saw thin ribbon disappear under the bench but found nothing when she looked closer.
“Did you just trip me?” She asked George who was nosing around behind the minivan-sized furnace.
“Trip you?” he said, raising his head, “I can’t even see you.”
Merrick stood back and shook the bench. It was solid. She leaned against it again and it gave ever so slightly. She couldn’t see it as much as feel it. “Hey, come here and sit on this bench with me.”
The two of them did a slight hop, sitting firmly on the workbench. Hearing a soft click, the bench lowered slowly by two inches revealing a gap in the wall running the length of the workbench. Inside the narrow space was a package carefully wrapped in wax paper and string. Merrick removed it. It looked like new except for the wax paper being as brittle as spun sugar, which crumbled away like tiny snowflakes as she held it.
“Guess I have to open them now,” Merrick said as she pulled on the string holding the letter together.
“You sure? These might be personal family-secret type things,” George cautioned.
“Oh, Mr. Adventure gets cold feet. Besides, how else will we know who they belong to?”
“I’d be willing to guess they belong to the parents.” George paused for sarcastic effect. “Just a feeling.”
“Don’t be a buzz-kill.” Merrick handed half the stack to George and they tried to make out the address and postmark, but it wasn’t written in English.
“Is that German? It’s something like German, right?” Merrick asked. “What’s the date on yours. Does it look like eighteen-oh-eight? Must be fake. The letters would be dust by now.”
“Unless this is parchment—that lasts forever. Some of those old papers didn’t age much, especially the ones made from linen or hemp.”
“Well now, check out the big brain on George.” Merrick mocked. “But it does look like eighteen-oh-eight?” They pulled their letters out, carefully unfolding them.
“More German—or whatever. Nice handwriting though,” George said.
“Get that App that translates writing into English,” Merrick said. George downloaded the program, scanned his phone over the letter and read aloud.
“My dearest Acorn, the New World is awash with ignorant peoples who know nothing of our world. Life is dangerous and death is all around. We can hunt unabated and unnoticed. The Church is little more than mud huts in remote outposts. The law easily corrupted. This land is ours for the taking. I dream of your arrival and will have you retrieved at the dock and safely brought to our home. You will enjoy the fine plantation estate I purchased, as well as the included slaves. They are Africans, strong, with knowledge of dark magic but as our property, are easily controlled as stock. My heart is undone until your arrival, and I long to feel your pulse with mine. All safety, comfort, and satisfaction on your journey my dearest love.”
“Wow, pretty romantic,” George said.
“And pretty racist,” Merrick sputtered. “Slaves? And what’s all this about the hunting? What are they hunting?”
“People.”
Merrick noted a steely gleam in George’s eyes she’d never seen before and a smile like he was about to stick a knife into someone.
“What the hell is up with you? You’re creeping me out. Let’s get out of here. Just leave the letters.”
As she started to leave, George grabbed the back of Merrick’s sweater and jerked her to the ground hard enough to stun her. As she lay near the bench the ribbon she’d seen earlier turned out to be a long thin worm that appeared from a tiny a hole under the bench. It slithered toward Merrick, coiled around her ankle, painlessly pierced her skin and entered a vein. In an instant, the worm disappeared into Merrick as she watched with groggy horror. The parasite quickly traveled up her leg to her heart, then her neck and finally to her brain where it burrowed in and unfurled delicate tentacles into every fold and sinus.
“Better now?” George asked.
“Much. Traveling as a worm is so cold and uncomfortable. Much better to be nestled inside a nice warm human.”
“Wonderful to see you looking back at me, my little Acorn,” George said. “What’s she like?”
“The vessel? She’s quite smart actually, and strong. She was actually able to resist me a bit, which is refreshing. She’s very well read and is in love with your vessel, by the way.”
“Mine didn’t put up a fight, and I am now burdened with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel Universe and X-Box cheat codes. But he seems otherwise fit. I notice you tricked her into finding the letters.”
“Your letters are so romantic, and I hadn’t read them for so long. I thought it would be a wonderful way to celebrate changing our vessels.”
“Hungry?”
“Famished.”
***
After the house sold, the worms married Merrick and George and bought them a new house where they could appear as a normal couple. They kept their vessels in top condition with healthy food, regular exercise and plenty of binging on Netflix. When they weren’t preening their vessels, the worms took them hunting.
The best hunting grounds were crowded with lots of strangers bumping into other strangers—bars, concerts, Black Friday sales. “George” and “Merrick” moved through the crush of bodies, laying their hands on people’s shoulders or backs to indicate they wanted to pass. They also chatted people up, offering to buy rounds of drinks and shaking every hand they could. All the while, the worms inside them hid just under the skin in their wrists and as they touched someone a hair-like needle painlessly deposited an egg in a fresh victim. The eggs immediately hatched into baby worms that wended their way to the victims’ brains in search of weaknesses: depression, drug abuse, bad marriages, PTSD, money troubles, health issues—anything that could be used as an excuse for why a person might kill him or herself. Although drug companies were blamed for it, the evil little worms were actually responsible for the opioid drug crisis. Any time the baby worms found a fertile mind they would move the victim down a path toward death by their own hand. But before they died, they would meet up with “George” and “Merrick.” Hotel rooms, parking lots, at the mall side-by-side pretending to enjoy a chair massage—anyplace the king and queen worms could discreetly siphon off a pint or two of fresh blood.
Centuries before it was a complicated process of exchanging letters and calling cards to set up the feedings or it required the purchase of hundreds of slaves, but now they simply had their herd sign up for Snapchat.
After a few months of feeding, the victim’s blood would get stale, and the baby worms would make them crash their cars, hang themselves, overdose on narcotics, or whatever method of death seemed appropriate to the person.
The worms went along as they had for centuries, but the queen worm, in mocking Merrick’s ability to resist, had gravely underestimated the situation. Because the worms had all the power they never stopped to consider that the knowledge they absorbed from their vessels went both ways. Merrick and George knew everything the worms did, including their weaknesses.
Merrick noticed that when her body was sleeping, so was her worm. With some effort, she managed to start sleepwalking. The purpose was twofold. First, her body would never get much sleep which would make it weaker. Second, she used the time walking around the house to infuse every bottle of shampoo, lotion, perfume, and soap with WD40. It was deadly toxic to the worms, and as they were exposed to it more and more, they grew weaker and weaker. They tried feeding on more blood to overcome the mystery illness, but continued to wane. The human vessels were fine, and as the worms shriveled they started losing control of their vessels.
The queen worm finally grew so weak she withdrew her tentacles from Merrick’s brain. Merrick immediately Snapchatted the herd of humans to the house, had them accost “George” and slather him in WD40. She did the same to herself. In a desperate effort to escape, George’s worm shot out of his toe toward the ceiling, landing in a light fixture where the heat from the light bulbs finished him off in a stinking sizzle. The queen worm snuck out through a skull fissure and tangled herself into Merrick’s hair. A quick shampoo of WD40-tainted Head and Shoulders cooked the queen worm into dust.
George observed himself, naked on the floor, shiny from his WD40 rubdown, surrounded by the herd of humans waiting for directions, “Boy, that WD40 fixes everything!” The baby worms inside the herd eventually withered from the same exposure.
Merrick and George stayed married and were happy, even having a baby. They named her Acorn.