The Worms - When Does the Slithering Terror Start?

[kooshmeister]

Yeah, yeah, I know. I need to finish Slime. All in good time.



When my ex sent me his copy of Slimer, he also sent me a number of other horror paperbacks, including this one, The Worms by Al Sarrantonio. It's an odd, goofy, slightly meandering story that I read through in one night; it's that slim of a book.

Anyway, the story begins in 1693 in the Colonial town of Province. Young Peter Brind wakes in the middle of the night and sees his grandmother, the matriarch of the family, leaving the house. Curious about where Granny is going, Peter follows her. She goes into a clearing in the woods and starts mucking with some kind of medallion doohicky, when your standard torch-wielding angry mob shows up and surrounds Granny-- who I keep picturing as being Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies. Seriously. Even though we later learn her name is Felicity Brind, she's only referred to as "Granny," even by the angry mob. Very informal in those days, were the Colonials.

They're led by the town's magistrates, Corman and Breker, and Granny confidently knows why they're here. They're come to accuse her of witchcraft. This throws the mob off a little; they weren't quite expecting her to know their intentions apparently.

What's more, she knows why they're accusing her; not because she actually is a witch, but because the Brinds are wealthy landowners, and the townspeople want their property. The magistrates have just cooked up the witchcraft accusation as an excuse to seize the Brind land. Corman denies this. Granny flusters him by accusing him of boinking someone named Goodwife Ward behind the church pulpit, which severely pisses Corman off.

Anyway, it comes out that apparently Granny is a witch, of a sort. She and her family appear to be what would be considered Wiccans by many, although this is never outright stated. There's just vague allusions to the Brinds worshiping nature and a "Horned God," who although not outright evil, is of course taken to be Satan by the Puritanical villagers. Anyway, Granny proves quite the badass old lady, as she accepts the title of witch, and then uses the medallion thing to summon up a bunch of gigantic earthworms! Which immediately makes the cover a liar, since it shows worms that are only slightly outsized; certainly not the six-foot behemoths being described here.

Now you might think this would be when the worms start snacking on the mob as part of Granny's vengeance for this small-minded bigots wanting to burn her and her family and steal their land. Alas, the townspeople manage to corral the huge invertebrates and arrest Granny. As they're taking her away, she notices Peter in the bushes and drops the medallion for him to retrieve. When he gets it, one of the magistrates sees him and tries to grab him, but he escapes. Corman and his pals immediately take Peter's presence at the scene as proof that he was involved, and the townsfolk all agree he should be burned, too. What great folks!

Peter runs home. His family has already woken up, and they seem to know what's afoot. Having shackled Granny, Corman, Breker and their foaming mob are on the march for the Brind house, and Peter is told to make a break for it. He slips out the back just as the mob arrives, and the entire rest of the Brind family is arrested.

As for the giant worms, Corman has the town blacksmiths build a huge metal coffin to seal them inside, and they put them in it without incident. They then bury them. Corman declares the very earth underneath which the worms are entombed to be declared Satanic, and no one from Province is to ever set foot on it again on pain of death. Man, this guy is pretty severe.

Later, Peter, cleverly disguised in a cloak, sneaks into town and sees his entire family get burned at the stake, after having apparently been tortured. He also hears Corman declare that if he, Peter, is found, he too is to be tortured and burned as a witch. Sneaking back out of town, Peter vows revenge...

But Peter's revenge will have to wait a few centuries, because we flash-forward to a generic present day. No date is given, but the novel is from 1988 so I'll go with the 80's as a timeframe for the remainder of the story's setting. Anyway, we meet Bucky McMannus, who works as a technician at the Corchoran Waste Site, a toxic waste dump outside of Province. He hears a scream and goes to investigate, finding the body of a young boy lying face down on the ground. The kid is writhing around and moaning in pain. When Bucky turns him over, he's horrified to discover that the boy is faceless...!

[kooshmeister]

Elsewhere, Felicity Cramer is returning to her hometown of Procince with boyfriend Paul. They drive to see her parents, who she hates, making me wonder why she's coming to see them. As they pull up to the house in their Toyota, they immediately realize something is amiss. They see an ambulance leaving and the lights are on; apparently Felicity's parents always go to bed at ten o'clock, no ifs, ands or buts. They go inside to find Felicity's parents (who apparently aren't important enough for names) with Bucky McMannus and a policeman with big sideburns.

It seems the faceless boy Bucky found was Felicity's younger brother, Jeremy. Oh no! Bucky and the policeman are a bit cagey about exactly about what exactly is wrong with Jeremy, and find it difficult to tell her that the kid ain't go no face. However, he's alive, at least. Felicity then asks the important question: why aren't her mother and father on their way to the hospital with their son? They don't answer. She asks if they even care that Jeremy is injured. They don't answer. Jerks.

Furious, Felicity storms out of the house, and drags Paul with her, and they drive to the hospital. A guard at the front entrance turns them away because visiting hours are over. Felicity's desperate pleas that her brother was brought in fall on deaf ears. Man, is everyone in modern day Province as much of a dick as they were in the 1600's? They park the Toyota, get out, and sneak inside because fuck the guard, she's seeing her brother. Once they're actually in the hospital, they aren't accosted until actually reaching Jeremy's room, so apparently the security consisted entirely of that one guy.

Anyway, they come in and find Jeremy covered entirely by a sheet. Felicity freaks out, thinking he's dead, but then the body moves beneath it, and she's relieved. Jeremy is alive! Yes, but in what condition? A doctor comes in and although at first he's angry they sneaked in, he lets them stay because Jeremy is Felicity's brother. Finally, a nice person.

Anyway they pull the sheet back to discover that the extent of Jeremy's "injuries," if you can call it that, has progressed a lot since Bucky found him a few pages ago. Apparently, he wasn't faceless, but his face was covered in some kind of white colored flesh, which has now spread to cover the boy's entire body. It's vaguely translucent, and they can make out Jeremy's features beneath it, although they're ill-defined. It's almost like he's in a cocoon or something.

The poor doctor is completely at a loss to explain it and has no idea what to do for the kid. His solution is to basically leave Jeremy alone and hope whatever-it-is reverses itself. Wow. Great doctors in Province...

Ultimately, the doctor urges them to leave, and as they're heading for the elevator, they hear a loud noise from Jeremy's room. They see another doctor and a nurse rushing in, and although Felicity insists they should go back, Paul just says "You heard what the doctor said," and so they get on the elevator and depart. Wow. One halfassed reminder about what the doctor said and suddenly Felicity's concern for her brother vanishes in a big puff of smoke.

Elsewhere, back at the waste site, Bucky has got a gun and decided to go hunting for whatever it was that attacked Jeremy. He is unaware that the kid hasn't exactly been injured, per se, and seems to think that he had his face ripped off or something. Anyway, he figures if he finds and kills the animal, then Mr. Corchoran, the waste site's owner and namesake, will give him a huge promotion!

Suddenly, he gets a massive pain in his lower leg, and shines his flashlight down to discover a big red lance-like spike has been jabbed clean through it. He tries to wrench free and can't. It's attached to something, but he dropped his flashlight, so he can't see what it is. The whatever-it-is slithers off, dragging Bucky behind itself by the leg. He shoots at it with his gun, and finally, the spike is pulled out. Dragging his wounded leg, he staggers off, but then collapses, and in the darkness hears something moving beside his head... Uh-oh...

[erebus]

Sounds a good book. My chances of finding this are about the same as me finding Jeremey ( Grrrr ) Clarkson humourous.

[kooshmeister]

Gonna be a short post, as I have a stomach ache, but figured I'd at least get to the first actual juicy part (the attack on Bucky at the waste site notwithstanding).

A frantic call that gets cut off mid-sentence has Felicity and Paul returning to the hospital, to discover the doctors - including the one nice one! No! - are all writhing around on the floor, covered in the same pulsating, translucent globby cocoon-like flesh Jeremy had been. One of the bigass worms from the 1600's era prologue is wriggling around, using its beg red stinger to jab random hospital employees, patients and other people. Each time a person gets jabbed, they collapse and begin undergoing the same kind of changes Jeremy had.

And as Felicity and Paul watch, horrified, they realize the afflicted people are turning into the giant worms! This can only mean Jeremy is the gigantic worm! Appropriately horrified, the two barely escaped getting jabbed and escape the hospital. So, yeah, not even halfway in, and that's the first big plot twist. The giant earthworms from hell (or the pagan equivalent thereof) sting their victims, causing them to turn into more giant earthworms! They're were-worms!

Still to come: we get acquainted with Mr. Corchoran and the plague of were-worms begins to spread throughout Province, and the evil mastermind behind it all is the unlikeliest of people...

[kooshmeister]

Bucky McMannus is having a bad night. He awakens to find himself freed from whatever it was that dragged him off and short one leg, lying in the dark inside of a cave at the edge of the waste dump. He sees the booth he sits in outside and attempts to crawl towards it, then sees the gigantic worm which attacked him. He thinks it looks like a big grubworm with a stinger. Hearing a noise, he thinks it's a colleague of his named Phil Reiss, but it only turns out to be another worm. As he gropes in the dark, he finds something and thinks to use it as a weapon, but it's just an empty shoe. Bummer. He grabs his own severed leg and flails at nothing in particular with it in the dark, then manages to escape from the cave.

Outside, Bucky encounters twelve worms, bigger than the ones from inside the cave, just sitting there staring at him, and mewling, "as if in heat." Suddenly a feeling of numbness overcomes him. Looking down at himself in the moonlight, he watches what seems to be a white, pulpy mass of flesh oozing up his legs, fusing them together. He's turning into a worm! He tries to scream, but soon has transformed to such an extent that he has no human throat to scream with...

Meanwhile, Felicity and Paul go to see the Cramers' elderly neighbor Bill Gable, who is a little uncertain about what to make of their story. Although he is initially skeptical, he ultimately believes them entirely on the basis that they have no reason to tell him such a wild story if it isn't true. It turns out that the reason Felicity and Paul are here is because the entire neighborhood appears to be deserted! Bill tries the phone, but gets no reception, so they decide to drive into town in Bill's pickup truck to see if they can find anyone.

Province is eerily deserted and empty. Felicity then suggests visiting the dump, as that was where Jeremy was found, and she reasons it's the epicenter of all the weirdness. On the drive over, they notice that although morning is coming, the sky is taking on a peculiar purplish color. At the dump, they encounter Mr. Corchoran, a very overweight businessman who owns the place and is there because a cop called him about a disturbance, but upon arriving, he couldn't find the officer in question. He was about to head home when they drove up. He's a cantankerous asshole who refuses to believe anything they say and insists on doing the opposite of anything that is advised of him.

He insists there's nothing wrong with the dump, and tries to kick them out, when a worm attacks them. Its stinger nicks Corchoran's leg and knocks him down. It has somebody's foot impaled on the tip. It drools yellow goo and then makes a second attempt, but Corchoran manages to scramble away. More worms begin to appear, and Bill gets a shotgun from his truck. He kills two of the creatures with it, and they retreat. Telling Felicity to stay put with Corchoran, Bill gives Paul his gun and makes a flaming torch, and they follow the worms into the cave Bucky woke up in earlier. They discover it's artificial, dug by human beings.

Hearing a noise above them, they shine the torchlight on the ceiling and discover hundreds of the gigantic worms, some still partially human and mutating before their eyes. A couple of worms attack them, and Paul tries to shoot them, but the gun is empty. He and Bill beat a hasty retreat. Outside, Bill inquires if any of the toxic waste is flammable, wanting to use it to blow up the cave and the worms with it. To protect themselves from the potentially dangerous fumes, they get some gas masks from Bucky's booth. They don them and pour the flammable chemicals around the cave entrance, but notice the worms aren't attacking them or otherwise attempting to prevent them. Bill opines that perhaps they're not very smart.

Suddenly, Corchoran decides to vamoose, and steals Bill's truck. This despite the fact his Cadillac has the keys in it. Meanwhile, the worms begin pouring from the cave en masse, and our heroes realize they have to act quickly. Felicity goes for the Cadillac while Bill and Paul use a lighter to ignite the chemicals. They pile into Corchoran's car and speed off as the entire place blows up... only for the engine to die! The gas tank is empty! Fortunately, being inside the car protects them from the flames, and they wait out the inferno...

[kooshmeister]

The fire begins to die down, much to Paul's confusion, and, through the smoke, they can see the giant worms slithering around, apparently unhurt. Well, so much for that plan. Abandoning the Cadillac, they head off down the road away from the dump, and Bill comments on the stillness, saying it seems as if Province is waiting for something to happen. Above them, the sky is still that weird purple color.

Meanwhile, Corchoran is speeding down the road when he gets a shiver up his spine. Panicking, he thinks one of the worms is in the truck with him, and whilst attempting to remove the imaginary creature he winds up crashing Bill's truck. Oops. Deciding to find and steal a car, he sets his sights on an abandoned Buick when a worm waylays him and knocks him to the ground.

By the time our heroes have returned to town, night has fallen, and once again they remark on how utterly deserted everything is. Bill comments that it's like "one of those monster movies they started making around the time I was your age." I assume he means The Blob, which has someone remark on a deserted bar. However the plot of the nameless film Bill describes sounds a lot more like The Last Man on Earth. Paul sensibly points out that they're not in a movie (no, you're in a poorly written horror novel!) and asks what they ought to do.

Bill recommends resuming their search, since he doesn't believe everyone in Province got wormified. However they find only empty houses and businesses, and none of the phones work. They decide they need to arm themselves, and head to Finnegan's Hardware which Bill says keeps a good stock of firearms. It's locked. Paul asks how they get inside and by way of reply, Felicity uses her flashlight to smash the display window. Automatically, a burglar alarm goes off. Entering, Bill shuts it off, although Felicity asks if they ought to leave it one - any survivors may come in response to the sound. Or police or someone. Paul replies that the noise might attract the worms, and so for now, they leave the alarm switched off.

They find and smash open a gun case and Bill gets two shotguns, one for himself and one for Paul (it seems they lost their original one back at the dump). Felicity demands a gun, too, and after thinking it over, the men agree and she loads up. Bill jokingly gives her a hammer and tells her to break the next window with that and not her flashlight.

He then says she had a good idea about the alarm and using it to attract other people, and decides to reactivate it. The question of whether it'll also attract the worms arises but apparently the trio feel that with their shotguns, they're covered; the worms at the dump sure died real good from having buckshot pumped into them, after all. So Bill turns the alarm back on, but the noise is so annoying he quickly turns it off again, then runs across the street to Morgan's Jewelers and throws the hammer he'd offered Felicity through the window. Its alarm goes off, and won't be as loud to them all the way across the street inside Finnegan's, so he returns and the three hunker down and wait.

They watch in shifts. While Felicity is asleep, Paul and Bill discuss her parents and what jerks they are. Bill explains that the Brinds, the mother's side of the family, are even worse. Hmm. The Brinds, you say? Now there's a name we haven't heard in a good long while!

Simply by way of conversation, Bill, who is a former librarian and interested in American history, particularly in and around Province, tells Paul that the Cramers and the Brinds are both very old families in Province, and that the Brinds in particular trace their origins back to the early Colonial days. He gives Paul (and us) a condensed version of the book's prologue, and the witch trials at which all of the Brinds except Peter were burned at the stake.

He says Peter escaped, and, after growing up, got married and returned to Province. By the time he returned, witch trials were outlawed, but the people were still superstitious and still thought Peter was a witch. He used this to gain power over the town and became very wealthy and influential. However, Bill suspects it was more than just mere superstition; that maybe Peter Brind really did take after his grandmother. After all, remember Granny's medallion which she dropped when she was arrested and Peter retrieved? Dun-dun!

The night passes without incident and the jewelry store alarm brings no survivors...

[kooshmeister]

The next morning our heroes awake to discover firstly that once again, the sky is colored purple, and secondly, the worms are herding a bunch of people, including the postmaster and the town clerk, through the streets, destination unknown. The captured people appear to be in a trance or hypnotized somehow. Now deciding that attracting attention is the last thing they wany, they head to the jewelry store across the street and turn off the alarm. Bad move. The worms hear the alarm cut off and come to investigate.

Bill blasts the lead creature with a shotgun in an "explosion of white matter" and yells for Felicity and Paul to run upstairs. Unfortunately, it seems that there isn't a second floor to Morgan's Jewelers to escape to! Paul saves their bacon by discovering a door concealed behind a metal cabinet, and Bill realizes the owners were illegally blocking an emergency fire exit! The fiends! The door is locked, but Bill solves that problem with his shotgun. Kablam! One lock taken care of!

The exit lets them out into an alley, where some worms are waiting to ambush them. Running back inside, they're confronted by two more inside the store. Now they have to fight their way out! After lots of exploding worm innards and shotgun blasts, the way is clear, and the trio run out. They decide to follow the ones who were herding the captured humans. Catching up to them, Felicity and Paul quickly kill two of them. A third attacks Bill, but misses, and he shoots it. A fourth and fifth get blasted by Felicity and Paul, and so on until the last remaining worm beats feet (or whatever) and escapes.

They find that the humans they rescued are just standing there like zombies. Bill picks up a little girl and after inspecting her, decides she and the others must be in shock (calling to mind the kid at the beginning of Them!). They get the total of six people inside a house. Apart from one woman who won't stop crying and one guy who keeps repeating "We can't hide!" over and over, the survivors are eerily quiet.

Felicity asks what, if anything, they can do for them. The most Bill can suggest is "snapping them out of it." Before they can figure out how to put this brilliant plan into action, worm reinforcements enter through the back of the house. Before they can do anything, the intruders sting all of the people except the little girl. They all begin transforming into more giant worms. Grabbing the girl, Felicity, Paul and Bill escape. Well, that rescue accomplished a fuckload of nothing...

They try and hide in the bathroom and shut the door, but there's a worm in the shower. In killing it, Bill uses up the last of his ammo. There's a small window, and Bill climbs through it. On the lawn outside, Bill collapses and has problems breathing, whilst back inside, the worm he shot isn't as dead as it seemed, attacking Felicity and the girl, barely missing them with its stinger. Paul bashes the thing senseless with the lid from the toilet tank, then grabs the girl and hands her out the window to Bill, who's recovered, and then he and Felicity escape out the window, too, and the four set off at a cautious trot, and after raiding some empty houses for supplies and weapons, fighting and killing a few of the creatures here and there (this section of the book is really repetitive), decide to simply get as far away from the worms as they can. Good plan.

Nest stop, the sheriff's office!

[pulphack]

I'm enjoying this like I do all your posts, but there's only one thing that bothers me - I have a sneaking suspicion that you might be making some of the books you review more interesting than they really are...

[kooshmeister]

Really? Huh. I was afraid I made them seem boring. The Worms is very boring to me, anyway...

[kooshmeister]

Curses! I've fallen behind again! And I left the dang book at my sister's house! Oh, cruel fate...!

Oh well. In the meantime, I do have Slime with me. Maybe I can freakin' finish that. Or do a more in-depth recap of The Clone. Or both.

[kooshmeister]

...and right after I posted that, I went out into my living room and found a huge (relatively speaking) earthworm on the carpet. What are the odds, huh?

[kooshmeister]

For the time being I guess we can consign this to the "never gonna finish" pile, just like Slime. I can't find my copy of the book. Sorry, guys.