Mrs. Gable felt a chill. She had been a teacher for twenty years, and she knew the difference between a child seeking attention and a child in genuine distress. “Listen to me. If it gets worse, or if you feel dizzy, you come straight to me. Okay?”
The next day, the bullying escalated. Kyle had started a rumor that Toby had “brain worms” that were contagious. No one would sit near him in the cafeteria. Even the kids who used to be his friends looked away when he passed.
“Hey, Brain-Worm Toby! Don’t let them crawl out on my lunch!” Kyle yelled across the room.
Toby sat alone, picking at a bag of chips. A quiet boy named Sam sat down a few seats away. Sam was the kind of kid who stayed under the radar.
“Is it really moving?” Sam asked quietly.
Toby looked up, surprised. “Yeah. All the time.”
“My uncle is a vet,” Sam said. “He once found a moth in a dog’s ear. It took him forever to find it because it was hiding behind a fold. Maybe yours is hiding.”
It was the first time anyone had offered a logical explanation that didn’t involve Toby being “crazy.” It gave him a flicker of hope.
But that hope was short-lived. When he got home, Linda was waiting in the kitchen, her face a mask of fury. She had a printout of his grades and a message from the school office.
“Another call from Mrs. Gable,” Linda said, her voice dangerously low. “She says you’re ‘distressed’ and ‘disrupting the class’ with your head-shaking. She even suggested I take you to a specialist—again!”
“I can’t help it, Linda! It hurts!”
“Enough!” she screamed, slamming her hand on the table. “I am working myself to the bone to keep this house, and you are making me look like a negligent parent! The doctors said you are fine! Do you understand? FINE!”
She grabbed him by the arm and dragged him toward the bathroom. “Let’s see what you’ve done now.”
She forced his head under the light. The discharge was thicker now, almost black. Linda’s eyes widened for a second, but then her denial took over. “You’ve been putting something in there, haven’t you? To make it look infected? To get out of school?”
“No! I swear!”
“Liar!” she yelled. She reached into the hall closet and pulled out a heavy leather belt. “Maybe this will help you remember how to act like a normal human being.”
The next few minutes were a blur of pain and shame. Toby didn’t fight back; he just curled into a ball on the floor. Every strike of the belt seemed to vibrate through his skull, making the thing in his ear scream in a frequency only he could hear.
“Tomorrow, you go to school, you sit still, and you don’t say a word about your ear,” Linda panted, tossing the belt aside. “If I get one more call, you’ll be spending your nights in the basement.”
Toby lay on the floor long after she left. His back burned, but his ear… his ear felt like it was on fire. He crawled to his room and collapsed. In the silence of the night, the clicking changed. It became a rhythmic, wet sound, like something chewing.
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