Different Seasons(150)

“Why?” Vern asked.

“They can’t have a pool here,” Chris said. “It’d undercut their precious railroad line. That’s why they put that culvert in there to start with. They’ll shoot them some beavers and scare off the rest and then knock out their dam. Then this’ll go back to being a bog, like it probably was before.”

“I think that eats the meat,” Teddy said.

Chris shrugged. “Who cares about beavers? Not the Great Southern and Western Maine, that’s for sure.”

“You think it’s deep enough to swim in?” Vern asked, looking hungrily at the water.

“One way to find out,” Teddy said.

“Who goes first?” I asked.

“Me!” Chris said. He went running down the bank, kicking off his sneakers and untying his shirt from around his waist with a jerk. He pushed his pants and undershorts down with a single shove of his thumbs. He balanced, first on one leg and then on the other, to get his socks. Then he made a shallow dive. He came up shaking his head to get his wet hair out of his eyes. “It’s f**kin great!” he shouted.

“How deep?” Teddy called back. He had never learned to swim.

Chris stood up in the water and his shoulders broke the surface. I saw something on one of them—a blackish-grayish something. I decided it was a piece of mud and dismissed it. If I had looked more closely I could have saved myself a lot of nightmares later on. “Come on in, you chickens!”

He turned and thrashed off across the pool in a clumsy breast-stroke, turned over, and thrashed back. By then we were all getting undressed. Vern was in next, then me.

Hitting the water was fantastic—clean and cool. I swam across to Chris, loving the silky feel of having nothing on but water. I stood up and we grinned into each other’s faces.

“Boss!” We said it at exactly the same instant.

“Fuckin jerkoff,” he said, splashed water in my face, and swam off the other way.

We goofed off in the water for almost half an hour before we realized that the pond was full of bloodsuckers. We dived, swam under water, ducked each other. We never knew a thing. Then Vern swam into the shallower part, went under, and stood on his hands. When his legs broke water in a shaky but triumphant V, I saw that they were covered with blackish-gray lumps, just like the one I had seen on Chris’s shoulder. They were slugs—big ones.

Chris’s mouth dropped open, and I felt all the blood in my body go as cold as dry ice. Teddy screamed, his face going pale. Then all three of us were thrashing for the bank, going just as fast as we could. I know more about freshwater slugs now than I did then, but the fact that they are mostly harmless has done nothing to allay the almost insane horror of them I’ve had ever since that day in the beaver-pool. They carry a local anesthetic and an anti-coagulant in their alien saliva, which means that the host never feels a thing when they attach themselves. If you don’t happen to see them they’ll go on feeding until their swelled, loathsome bodies fall off you, sated, or until they actually burst.

We pulled ourselves up on the bank and Teddy went into a hysterical paroxysm as he looked down at himself. He was screaming as he picked the leeches off his naked body.

Vem broke the water and looked at us, puzzled. “What the hell’s wrong with h—”

“Leeches!” Teddy screamed, pulling two of them off his trembling thighs and throwing them just as far as he could. “Dirty mother-f*ckin bloodsuckers!” His voice broke shrilly on the last word.

“OhGodOhGodOhGod!” Vern cried. He paddled across the pool and stumbled out.

I was still cold; the heat of the day had been suspended. I kept telling myself to catch hold. Not to get screaming. Not to be a pu**y. I picked half a dozen off my arms and several more off my chest.

Chris turned his back to me. “Gordie? Are there any more? Take em off if there are, please, Gordie!” There were more, five or six, running down his back like grotesque black buttons. I pulled their soft, boneless bodies off him.

I brushed even more off my legs, then got Chris to do my back.

I was starting to relax a little—and that was when I looked down at myself and saw the granddaddy of them all clinging to my testicles, its body swelled to four times its normal size. Its blackish-gray skin had gone a bruised purplish-red. That was when I began to lose control. Not outside, at least not in any big way, but inside, where it counts.

I brushed its slick, glutinous body with the back of my hand. It held on. I tried to do it again and couldn’t bring myself to actually touch it. I turned to Chris, tried to speak, couldn’t. I pointed instead. His cheeks, already ashy, went whiter still.

“I can’t get it off,” I said through numb lips. “You ... can you ...”

But he backed away, shaking his head, his mouth twisted. “I can’t, Gordie,” he said, unable to take his eyes away. “I’m sorry but I can’t. No. Oh. No.” He turned away, bowed with one hand pressed to his midsection like the butler in a musical comedy, and was sick in a stand of juniper bushes.

You got to hold onto yourself, I thought, looking at the leech that hung off me like a crazy beard. Its body was still visibly swelling. You got to hold onto yourself and get him. Be tough. It’s the last one. The. Last. One.

I reached down again and picked it off and it burst between my fingers. My own blood ran across my palm and inner wrist in a warm flood. I began to cry.