Free The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) by Jeremy Bishop

candy that spilled out of Hansel and Gretel’s birthday piñata.
    My eyes snap open with a surge of adrenaline. The first thing I see is Jakob, Helena, and Malik standing over me. Reaching toward me. Hurting me. Then I look down, following their eyes. The top of my wet suit is missing, as is everything I wore beneath it. But the sight of my bare breasts doesn’t even faze me. I’ve already seen what’s below them.
    Malik, wearing rubber fishing gloves, has his hands wrapped around the waist of my wet suit and is forcibly removing it. I scream at the sight, but not because I think Malik is trying to harm me. In fact, he’s trying to save me. Either during my passage through the whale’s body or when I was coated in waste, or both, thousands of maggot-like parasites began gnawing their way through my wet suit. Had it not been the extra-thick variant designed for cold water, they might have reached my skin.
    They still might, which is why the crew is tearing away my clothes with wild abandon. I kick with my feet, aiding Malik’s efforts. Jakob lifts me from under the armpits and pulls. The wet suit rolls in on itself, concealing the parasites as it slips free. Malik gathers up the freed clothing, bunches it up, and tosses it overboard, which I presume is where the rest of my clothes went.
    Still, I feel no shame as I get my feet beneath me and start rubbing my hands over my body, inspecting every inch for a wound.
    “Nothing on your back,” Helena says.
    When I look at her, I notice that Jakob and Malik have both turned away. So I think nothing of it when I drop my panties and give my feminine parts a once-over.
    “Clear in the back,” Helena says. For a moment I’m surprised and a little shocked that she’s inspected my ass, but ultimately I appreciate it. That is, until she says, “Hold on.”
    “What!” I say.
    “On the side of your right calf.”
    I yank up my underwear and twist my leg to look. There’s a white spot surrounded by red, irritated skin on the side of my leg halfway between my knee and ankle. I fall to the deck, twisting my leg back for a closer look. Three-quarters of the inch-long parasite is still sticking out of my leg. My instinct is to reach down and yank the thing out, but I have no idea if these things are like worms. If it breaks on the way out, the half inside my body might grow to become a fully functional adult.
    I pinch my skin and try to squeeze it out like an oversize whitehead. But it doesn’t budge. Instead, it wiggles frantically back and forth, and I can feel its tiny jaws chewing at my flesh.
    “Keep it pinched,” Helena says as she crouches beside me.
    I do as she says, but then I see a knife in her hand.
    “Don’t cut it in half,” I say.
    I can’t see what she’s doing as she leans in close, but I feel the flat side of the blade touch my finger for a moment. “I’m going to get the whole thing.”
    I’m about to ask for some clarification, but then her arm whips to the side. For a moment, I feel nothing. Then a burning sting rises up through my leg, eliciting a pain-filled cry from my mouth. When she stands I see the chunk of leg flesh I’d pinched together between her fingers. The parasite, whole and living, had yet to pass through.
    As she stands with the chunk of meat in her hands, I see what she’s about to do and try to stop her, but my voice is stopped by an involuntary gasp from the pain.
    With a flick of her wrist, she tosses the sheet of skin—and the parasite sample we needed—overboard. I don’t bother mentioning it. It’s too late now.
    Suddenly, Willem is by my side, first aid kit in hand. Like Helena, he’s unfazed by my nakedness. He should be, after all. He’s seen me more naked than this three times before—after getting out of the hospital and before I started picking bar fights. Without a word, he sets to work on my leg, cleaning it and then attempting to wrap it in gauze. But he’s struggling. His hands are shaking.
    That’s when