Leech attack

The leech attack is the most visceral and psychologically damaging ordeal of the four boys' journey along the GS&WM Railroad tracks, a sudden violation of the body that strips away the adventure's remaining bravado and leaves Gordon Lachance with a trauma that resurfaces years later. What begins as a moment of pure, cleansing relief—a swim in a beaver-dammed pool—turns into a horror that reduces each boy to screaming, crying, and vomiting, and that permanently stains the memory of the trip.

Discovery of the Beaver Pond

Around nine-thirty on the second morning, Teddy Duchamp and Chris Chambers spotted water ahead and shouted to Vern Tessio and Gordon. The source was a large-bore culvert running under the railroad embankment, its right end sealed by a beaver dam of sticks, branches, leaves, twigs, and dried mud. Behind the dam lay a clear, shining pool that brilliantly mirrored the sunlight, with beaver houses—wooden igloos—humped up out of the water. A small creek trickled into the far end, and the bordering trees had been gnawed clean bone-white to a height of almost three feet. Chris noted that the railroad would eventually clear the dam out because the pool could undercut the line, but for the moment the water was irresistible. Vern asked if it was deep enough to swim in, and Teddy immediately proposed finding out. Chris ran down the bank, kicked off his sneakers, untied his shirt, pushed down his pants and undershorts in one shove, balanced on each leg to get his socks off, and made a shallow dive. He came up shaking his head, shouting that it was great. Teddy, who had never learned to swim, asked how deep it was. Chris stood up with his shoulders breaking the surface; Gordon noticed a blackish-grayish something on one of Chris's shoulders but dismissed it as mud—a failure of attention that would cost him many nightmares. Vern went in next, then Gordon. Hitting the water was fantastic, clean and cool. Gordon swam across to Chris, and they grinned at each other, both saying "Boss!" at the same instant. They goofed off for almost half an hour, diving, swimming underwater, ducking each other, never suspecting anything was wrong.

The Horror Emerges

Vern swam into the shallower part, went under, and stood on his hands. When his legs broke water in a shaky but triumphant V, they were covered with blackish-gray lumps—the same kind Gordon had glimpsed on Chris's shoulder. They were leeches, big ones. Chris's mouth dropped open, and Gordon felt all the blood in his body go as cold as dry ice. Teddy screamed, his face going pale. All three of them thrashed for the bank as fast as they could. The leeches carry a local anesthetic and an anti-coagulant in their alien saliva, so the host never feels them attach; if unseen, they feed until their swelled bodies fall off sated or burst. Teddy went into a hysterical paroxysm as he looked down at himself, screaming while he picked leeches off his naked body. Vern broke the water, puzzled, and when Teddy screamed "Leeches! Dirty mother-fuckin bloodsuckers!" Vern cried "OhGodOhGodOhGod!" and paddled across the pool to stumble out. Gordon, fighting to keep control, picked half a dozen off his arms and several more off his chest. Chris turned his back and asked Gordon to remove the ones he couldn't see—five or six running down his back like grotesque black buttons. Gordon pulled their soft, boneless bodies off, then brushed more off his own legs and had Chris do his back. Just as he began to relax, he looked down and saw the granddaddy of them all clinging to his testicles, its body swelled to four times normal size, its blackish-gray skin gone a bruised purplish-red. That was when he began to lose control—not outwardly, but inside, where it counts.

The Breaking Point

Gordon brushed the leech's slick, glutinous body with the back of his hand; it held on. He tried again but could not bring himself to actually touch it. He turned to Chris, unable to speak, and pointed. Chris's cheeks, already ashy, went whiter still. Gordon said through numb lips that he could not get it off and asked Chris to do it. But Chris backed away, shaking his head, his mouth twisted, saying he was sorry but he could not. He turned away, bowed with one hand pressed to his midsection, and was sick in a stand of juniper bushes. Gordon was alone with the leech that hung off him like a crazy beard, its body still visibly swelling. He told himself he had to hold on, had to get it, that it was the last one. He reached down, picked it off, and it burst between his fingers. His own blood ran across his palm and inner wrist in a warm flood. He began to cry. Still crying, he walked back to his clothes and put them on. He could not seem to turn off the waterworks, and then the shakes set in, making it worse. Vern ran up to him, still naked, twirling like an insane dancer, asking over and over if the leeches were off him. Gordon nodded that they were and just kept on crying—it seemed that crying was going to be his new career. He tucked his shirt in, buttoned it all the way to the neck, put on his socks and sneakers. Little by little the tears slowed, then stopped. Chris walked over, wiping his mouth with a handful of elm leaves, his eyes wide and mute and apologetic. When they were all dressed, they stood looking at each other for a moment, then climbed the railroad embankment. Gordon looked back once at the burst leech lying on top of the tromped-down bushes where they had danced and screamed and groaned them off. It looked deflated, but still ominous.

Aftermath and Lingering Trauma

The leech attack did not end at the pond. A short distance further down the tracks, waves of whiteness suddenly began to come over Gordon's sight and he fell down. He must have fallen hard, but landing on the crossties felt like plunging into a warm feather bed. Someone turned him over; their faces were disembodied balloons looking down from miles up. He heard fragments of their worried words—"... him?" "... be all ..." "... if you think the sun ..." "Gordie, are you ..."—and then he must have said something that did not make sense, because they began to look really worried. Teddy said they better take him back. Then the whiteness came over everything again. When it cleared, Chris was squatting next to him, asking if he could hear. Gordon sat up; a swarm of black dots exploded in front of his eyes and then went away. He stood up, took a drink from Chris's canteen, and when Vern asked why he fainted, he made a joke about looking at Vern's face. But the real answer was the leeches. "It was ... bad there for a minute. Thinking about those suckers," he said, and they all nodded soberly. Fourteen years later, when Gordon made his first trip to New York after selling his first novel, he rode the Staten Island Ferry and looked down at scores of used condoms floating on the mild swells. He had a moment of almost total recall—for one second he was literally in the past, pausing halfway up that embankment and looking back at the burst leech: dead, deflated, but still ominous. His editor saw something in his face and said, "Not very pretty, are they?" Gordon only shook his head, wanting to say that the only reason anyone writes stories is so they can understand the past and get ready for some future mortality. But what he actually said was, "I was thinking of something else, that's all." The most important things are the hardest things to say.