The glow¶
The glow is the first sign of the worm infection that spreads through Marblehead's congregation and, eventually, the task force: a staged condition running from vigor, muscle and regrown hair with a healthy sheen, to bloating and translucent skin.
| Type | Lore (infection / symptom) |
| Aliases | The blight; glow and bloating infection; the town sickness |
| Cause | The worm parasite in the communion wine |
| Treatment | Ivermectin |
| First appearance | Summer Service 01 |
Stages¶
Early: the glow. Drinkers of the wine gain vigor, muscle, hair regrowth and a youthful sheen. Before anyone knows the cause, the team notices it on Amos Shaw, who looks about 60 but has muscles bulging under his robes, a healthy glow to his skin and a light, bounding step, and on Jester. Dante puts it down to anabolic steroids. (Summer Service 01, Summer Service 03)
Advanced: bloating. Later the glow turns into a pallor, with skin that looks swollen, opalescent and almost translucent. The replacement preacher at the early service, who proves to be the mayor, has "more of it" than the others and looks bloated like a body left in water, though "like something you have done as a spa treatment." (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 04) At the Board of Selectmen meeting everyone has the glow, but the mayor, the chief of police and a couple of others are well advanced, with swollen, pale, almost translucent skin. The banker Horace Cromwell is the worst. He is tense and restless, like someone struggling not to vomit, says "I'm fine," and swallows twice in an odd way. (Summer Service 04)
Terminal: worm hosts. In the cases the team meets in the house on the island, the hosts are bloated, hairless and soft, and burst open into worms. See Arnold Weathers, Puddles and Worm bags. (Summer Service 05)
The task force¶
- Huell drinks his communion wine. He soon feels great, tells the others that the priest "slipped me some methamphetamine or something," and Andrew sees that he is visibly more muscular, with his clothes tighter, his hairline advanced and the same glow as the priest and Jester. (Summer Service 03) In later sessions he is "jacked," does not get sleepy, and heals back to full in about an hour. When he slices his own arm open in Summer Service 05, worms are visible in the wound and tunnel deeper once exposed to air, and his blood is a darker color than normal. (Summer Service 04, Summer Service 05)
- Dante's Kurt also has the glow at the selectmen's meeting, though he has only sipped the wine. (Summer Service 04)
- Reversal. After deworming in Summer Service 06, Huell begins to lose his "luster," gets a pounding headache, and his new hair starts falling out. Afterward he runs a fairly high fever from the dead worms in his body. (Summer Service 06)
Other observations¶
A bookstore clerk with the glow has a fishy, open-mouthed face and tracks the Biz with her head the whole time. (Summer Service 04) In kitchen experiments Kurt finds that straight vodka, heat and heavy salt kill the worms; Andre says they "don't like alcohol very much," although the worms survive in communion wine. (Summer Service 05)
What remains unknown¶
- Whether the worms themselves drive the bloating, and what is happening in Cromwell's throat. (Summer Service 04)
- Whether the church spreads the infection on purpose.