Wolf Worm

Phelps returns to the shed with a basket of food and a flask of water for Sonia. He expresses regret for imprisoning her, especially since he could instead have ascribed her initial sighting to malarial delusion. But he refuses to release her until Halder returns. Before leaving, Phelps gives her a lantern. Using the improved light, Sonia deduces that animals must be entering the basement through a hidden burrow. She finds the opening behind a thick wooden plank and begins laboriously digging through the surrounding clay with an enamel pan to create an escape route.

The man on the table awakens and speaks to her. As they talk, Sonia recognizes his face from a sketch. She identifies him as Saul Gregor, the man Halder supposedly killed over a year ago.

When Sonia reveals what she knows about Saul and Louisa, Saul reveals that Halder has been lying to Saul, claiming that Louisa was also being held prisoner on the property. Saul has been imprisoned for over a year, a span of time Sonia finds biologically impossible. Saul describes how Halder has used him as a living, regenerating host for horrific experiments with screwworms and botflies.

As they speak, an infected rabbit enters through the burrow. Saul pleads with Sonia to keep it away from him, and says “No!” when it moves to offer itself to him. Sonia captures and drowns the rabbit. Saul explains that the botflies that feed on him have become “special” and now mature much faster than normal. Moreover, recently, the botflies have started bringing him their new hosts as food. Sonia is incredulous, but their conversation is cut short when Phelps returns unexpectedly.

Holding Saul at gunpoint, Phelps warns Sonia to get away, calling Saul demonic and “one of them” (230). Sonia protects Saul by standing between him and the gun. Phelps recounts having once shot a girl he caught eating his pigs and dumping her body in the woods. Roughly six months later, Phelps had encountered the exact same girl alive when the community cornered the so-called blood thieves, proving to him her supernatural nature. Saul confirms that he is not human, revealing that he healed completely from Halder’s two bullet wounds without any scars.

Sonia then notices that Phelps has a botfly larva—a wolf worm—burrowed into his scalp. The parasite is visibly compelling a panicked Phelps to move toward Saul. Resisting, Phelps cries out a prayer—“As you had mercy on Samson, have mercy on me” (237)—and raises the gun to shoot. Sonia hits Phelps on the back of the head with the enamel pan, causing Phelps to scream and pitch forward. He collapses across Saul, who immediately bites his neck and begins to feed. Sonia retrieves Phelps’s dropped gun from the shallow water.

After feeding on Phelps, Saul’s emaciated physique is visibly restored. Sonia uses rusted forceps to pull the nail from Saul’s right wrist; Saul then removes the nail from his left wrist himself and breaks the second manacle with his own strength. Once freed, Saul sits up, ripping the skin of his back and dislodging dozens of botfly warbles in the process. Sonia helps the severely injured but rapidly healing Saul up the stairs and out of the shed.

Outside, Halder confronts them with a gun. He reveals that Saul’s species reproduces like wasps—depositing their young inside a woman, with the offspring devouring the host from within. He suspects that females have ovipositors for this purpose. Sonia feigns siding with Halder, creating a momentary distraction that allows Saul to attack. Saul bites Halder’s wrist, and then kills him by tearing out his throat. For a second, Sonia panics that Saul will kill her next, since she is now the only one who knows about him. But just then, Rose appears with a shotgun, followed by Jackson.

In the Kents’ kitchen, the four survivors agree on a cover story for the authorities: A dangerous animal that Halder was keeping in the shed escaped and killed both him and Phelps. Because the Kents do not know that Saul is not human, he tells them he spent time in a Tennessee jail and only three months chained up in the shed to make his survival more believable. 

In the following weeks, Sonia helps Saul recover from his ordeal, which involves cutting away dead tissue from his back and removing the last of the botfly larvae as his body heals at a supernatural rate.

Soon after, Louisa, Halder’s estranged wife, returns to the house. She was summoned by the local healer, Ma Kersey. Unwilling to have their illustration work go to waste, Louisa and Sonia agree to find another entomologist who can take Halder’s notes and their completed plates, and produce a book. The resulting work will be credited to that doctor, with Louisa and Sonia named as illustrators on the frontispiece. The goal is to erase Halder’s legacy while preserving their years of artistic work.

Eleven months later, Halder’s book on parasitic insects has been published under another author’s name. Sonia and Louisa are credited for their illustrations. Halder is mentioned only in the author’s note. Sonia lives on in the house, where she and Louisa collaborate on new naturalist books. Saul and Louisa marry. Rose and Jackson move away to start a new life, but remain close with their friends. The shed has been demolished and is now a pond. The fast-growing wolf worms that infested Saul appear to have died out.

Despite finding a new, stable life, Sonia remains deeply traumatized. She suffers from nightmares and a persistent fear of both insects and the possibility that other non-human creatures like Saul live secretly among people. She concludes that survival means learning to live with her fears without being devoured by them.