Slither (13 page)
It also took his mind off things. Later on, flushed with success at the response, they went over to call on the neighbour co-ordinating it all and sat talking to her for a long time, sipping weak, milky coffee. Her husband had been killed in the Navy during the Korean war, she explained, and she’d brought up their son singlehanded. He was now at Cambridge, studying nuclear physics; a wistful smile tinged with pride crossed her lined, alert face when she mentioned it. Her eyes were a soft, dreamy blue. She showed them photographs of the dead husband and the village in Cornwall where they’d first met. Then Helen began talking about Westport and how they planned one day to go and live there when the right moment came.
At home, as they prepared for bed, Helen brought up the subject again.
‘I’m fed up with London, Matt. Pushing through crowds wherever you go. The time and energy you waste trying to get from one place to another. The noise. And Westport would be much better for Jenny too, somewhere she could feel really at home and grow roots. Why don’t we?’
‘Money.’ He still hadn’t told her.
‘Things work out somehow.’ She came around the end of the bed towards him, wearing a flimsy nightdress which was practically
transparent. ‘Matt, let’s think about it, shall we?’
She pulled her arms around his neck and pulled his head down to kiss him. It was the wrong moment to tell her he’d lost his job, he’d broken all the rules by going off in search of worms in the company’s time, he’d taken Fran with him…
Suddenly he visualized the freckles across the bridge of Fran’s nose and the characteristic twist of her full lips. He felt guilty and vulnerable. Trying to blot her out of his mind, he held Helen tightly to him, his hand wandering over her back as they kissed, reaching her bare flesh beneath the short nightdress.
They lost their balance and fell on the bed still clutching each other, laughing at their own awkwardness but keeping their voices down for fear of waking Jenny. Then Helen raised her arms above her head and he lifted the nightdress, peeling it off her. And everything was the way it used to be, long sensuous caressing, a rejoicing in each other’s bodies, a sharing of desires and satisfactions, together. Not till much later, when Helen had slipped out to the bathroom, did Matt think again of Fran smiling at him, her eyes troubled.
At breakfast Helen was in a hurry. She let her hand rest on his for a moment, searching for something in his face before she kissed him. He smiled and said he’d see her that evening; he didn’t expect to be away. As the door slammed behind her he was very much aware that he’d still told her nothing.
Jenny sat dreaming with a half-eaten plate of cereal in front of her.
‘Hey, wake up!’ he teased her. ‘We must get you to school. Finish your breakfast.’
Obediently she took another spoonful, then said, ‘Daddy, I’ve just been thinking. Next time you go into the sewers to get worms, can I come with you?’
He was startled. ‘Why?’
‘I like them. I like their colours.’
‘So do a lot of people,’ he replied drily. ‘Hurry up now.’
He dropped her off at the school gate, kissed her goodbye, then drove on to a Do-It-Yourself shop where he bought a length of wide-mesh metal gauze. ‘For a garden sieve,’ he explained.
The man shrugged, uninterested. ‘Just as cheap to buy one ready made.’
Back home he went down to the shed and dug out the butterfly-net someone had once given Jenny. He cut away the net and fitted a scoop of gauze in its place, threading wire through the edges to keep them together. How effective it would be he could only guess, but he put it in the car with a couple of ice-boxes and his usual gear.
Angus was expecting him at eleven o’clock, so he had still plenty of time before he must set out. Enough time to ring Fran. He sat on the stairs in the hall, looking at the phone, unable to make up his mind. It was a matter of business, he argued with himself; he needed to tell her the supply of skins was about to dry up and…
No, that wasn’t strictly true; it applied only to the sewer. There were still ditches, rivers, the Electricity Board’s pond. And if he kept the smaller worms, bred them up?
She’d be expecting a call, though. He picked up the receiver and started dialling the number. Halfway through, he stopped. Oh Christ, after last night… the whole thing with Helen had changed… only a shit could behave… But he’d started something with Fran he couldn’t easily drop. Didn’t really want to drop.
Upstairs he changed into his oldest clothes, ready for the sewers. ‘You are a shit,’ he told his image in the mirror. His reddish beard was still short but now it covered most of the scars. ‘A shit without a job.’
He went down to ring her – but left the house without doing so.
The following week, as Angus Hume stood watching the extermination squad at work in the sewers, he felt no regret that the worms were finally being flushed out and destroyed. Sure, he’d liked Matt well enough and the money for the skins had been useful, but it would be a relief not having to be constantly on his guard as he went about his daily work.
The squad, eight men dressed in heavy oilskins and gumboots,
were emptying the traps they’d set the day before.
‘Good juicy meat in them things!’ the man in charge had explained cheerfully. He was a small, chirpy Cockney named Len Foster who set about his work with a minimum of fuss. ‘Soon get rid o’ your worms for you! ’Ere, ever tell your friends you got worms?’ Laugh.
Each trap, when opened, was found to be tightly packed with worms, mostly dead. It was easy to see what had happened. The first victim had been tempted in by the poisoned meat; it had died, and then itself become bait to attract more and more into the trap – all intent, as usual, on consuming their dead brother. As though they couldn’t tolerate the thought of any morsel of their own flesh falling into alien hands. It was a rum habit, and this time the exterminators had turned it against them.
A few feet away, a short, wheezy man was stooping to retrieve another trap from the effluent when four worms appeared from farther along the tunnel and homed in on him. He’d have been safe enough, Angus reckoned, if he hadn’t panicked; but he saw them coming and splashed about trying to climb out to safety. The slimy stonework was treacherous. His foot slipped and he lost his balance.
His shrieks echoed through the tunnels, setting nerves on edge. ‘
Not me! Not me! Please!
’
Unerringly, the worms made directly for the one exposed area of flesh – his face. They fastened on his ear, his nose, and the chubby meat of his chin.
Within seconds two of his mates had reached him, killed the predator worms and fished him out on to the side, but he was already unconscious and bleeding profusely. They carried him up to the office and applied first-aid dressings while Angus phoned for an ambulance.
Perhaps it was this incident which stimulated the worm population of the sewers into mass resistance. By the middle of the afternoon, hundreds of them filled the effluent, raising their heads to inspect the humans lined up along the sides of the tunnels, out-staring them with their hard little eyes.
‘I want every man out!’ Len Foster ordered briskly. ‘But
move carefully now. Don’t go and slip into the shit.’
Cautiously, they filed out, and Angus was glad enough to go with them.
‘What now?’ he asked. ‘Seems they’ve won this skirmish.’
‘Wait ’n’ see,’ Len Foster answered, making for the phone.
When the men returned to the tunnels about an hour later the worms had still not dispersed. They seemed to be standing guard, or patrolling up and down, determined not to allow any more traps to be set. Len Foster’s shouted commands bounced around the vaulted brickwork till the sounds were suddenly muffled by the roar of the half-dozen flame-throwers they’d brought down with them.
Angus watched them from the junction of three tunnels as the men walked slowly away from him, spraying the effluent with fire. The biggest of the worms was no more than two feet long, nothing like the giants Matt had described, but they shrivelled away to nothing as the flame licked them. The sickly smell of their scorched flesh mingled with the arid gases from the sewage.
‘You’ll set the whole o’ bloody London on fire, you idiots!’ Angus yelled after them, but they took no notice. He pulled on his breathing gear.
Some worms were diving beneath the surface in an attempt to escape the intense heat; some, perhaps, succeeded in escaping though most died. Angus felt no compassion for them, yet the sight of them burning triggered off deep loathing and disgust at this method of killing. Maybe it aroused in him an uneasy memory of the time he’d used a flame-thrower himself in a Kikuyu village during the Mau Mau uprising. It wasn’t a death he’d wish on anyone.
But it cleared the tunnels, no doubt about that. Len Foster came back the following week to inspect them, and there wasn’t a worm to be seen.
‘Means nothing,’ he announced with an air of authority. ‘Plenty o’ hidden corners in these sewers where they could be breeding a new generation. But this habit o’ theirs, eating their own dead – that’s where the answer lies! Think I know what to do.’
During the next few days the extermination squad released
several hundred rats and mice into the sewers. Each one, Len Foster explained, carried a minute sachet of cyanide – enough to kill the worm that ate it and any others that joined in the feast.
‘These mice and rats can run into corners we can’t reach,’ he went on. ‘Even if they accidentally kill themselves licking the sachets, they’re still food for the worms. We’re lucky they’re not fussy about carrion, unlike snakes. I see you don’t believe me, Angus – but two weeks from tonight, I doubt if there’ll be a single worm left anywhere in Greater London.’
At that stage, no one realized how wrong he was.
‘Come on, you know you can’t stay there!’ Charlie looked up to see the constable staring down at him, not unkindly. ‘Move along now.’
Young enough to be me own grandson, Charlie thought as he sat up on the bench and slowly began to fold the newspapers he’d used to keep warm. P’raps he
is
me grandson, who can tell? What’s the point in havin’ children if they only turn out to be coppers? Much better not bother.
‘Seen you around, haven’t I?’ the young constable said. ‘Could get yourself a bed for the night, you know where to go.’
‘Can’t stand them places,’ Charlie mumbled. ‘An’ it’s a free country, ain’t it? ’Cept in them places.’
He shuffled off, glancing back every so often to check if the policeman was still standing there. The bench hadn’t been a good idea. Might have known he’d be moved. Best find that spot he’d discovered the other night.
It was in a section of the park normally kept locked after dark, but they had been cutting down a couple of big old trees, excavating the rooots, and had removed a section of railing to get at them.
‘Could be me grandson,’ Charlie muttered to himself as he scrambled through the gap and trudged over the loose soil in the direction of the pond. ‘Bet I’ve got a grandson by now. Bound to. Tellin’ his ol’ grandad to move on!’
In the rockery near the edge of the pond the ground dipped comfortably in a hollow where he lay down in his tattered
overcoat and arranged the old newspapers around him. Should have come here in the first place, he thought; no one would tell him to move on here. Like home.
He still had something left in that bottle in his pocket. Before going to sleep he took another long swig.
When he awoke it was still dark. Something was slithering over his face and he tried to brush it off. ‘Quit foolin’!’ he protested. ‘Quit muckin’ me around!’
Whatever it was – and it felt heavy, like a hand at the end of a thin, supple arm – it passed over his eyes … his mouth … explored his throat… down through the open neck of his shirt, next to his skin…
He could see it now as well: a green, glowing tail waving in front of his eyes. ‘It’s the drink,’ he told himself, lying stiff with fear, not daring to move. ‘Must be the drink. Can’t be real, not like that.’
A caressing movement on his ribs – that felt real enough. Then another across his boots and ankles, penetrating up his trouser leg. As it bit into his calf he jerked at the sudden agony. ‘
No, gerroff!
’ he cried, rolling over and trying to fight back. ‘
Gerroff!
’
It chewed at his flesh. Under his shirt the other worm joined in, tearing at the loose skin. And a third worm caught his lower lip between its teeth. There was a rustling sound as more squirmed over the ground towards him. Shimmers of green approached in the faint light.
The scream welled up inside him, trying to break out, but the only sound he could produce was a long, shuddering moan of anguish as yet another worm gnawed through his cheek, its teeth scratching against his gums. He was sobbing with terror, panting and gasping for air, uncontrollably groaning as the intense pain racked his body and his mind gradually slipped its moorings.
No worms any longer. He was lying again on the Dunkirk sands, riddled with shrapnel, cursing his mates for leaving him behind, cursing the sergeant for getting himself shot, cursing …cursing…
Cursing.
Six weeks later they moved down to Westport.
Jenny was delighted. They found her a place in the local school; to get there she had to pass the little fishing harbour. She never stopped chattering about how wonderful it all was, so much nicer than her old school which had been a modern, neutral building with graffiti-scrawled walls and the motorway feeder running just beyond the playground.
Helen shared her enthusiasm. She went eagerly about the business of converting the holiday cottage into a permanent home, humming to herself as she worked, even smiling whenever she caught Matt’s eye. More than once she declared this was the best move she could possibly have made. It was her idea they should start going to the parish church on Sunday mornings to help get them accepted as part of the community.
The worms caused a problem at first.
When Matt brought the first boxes of them down to Westport and tipped them all into the large tank he’d installed, he was surprised at how sluggish they were. He’d never seen them behave quite like this in nature. But then he was only too aware that he understood nothing about their feeding habits and nothing about keeping them in captivity. The whole operation was a gamble.
One day he was late with their food, delayed at the shop by Fran with her constant questions about why he was avoiding her – her searching eyes, her worried look, biting her lip as usual. When he got home he found the worms had made their own feeding arrangements.
He realized cannibalism was not unknown in the animal kingdom. Even hens sometimes eat their own eggs. The larger feed on the smaller – that’s normal, but the worms had to do it
differently. They’d picked on the oldest and biggest to be sacrificed as food for the rest.
‘I suppose there’s some horrible logic in it,’ Matt expounded to Fran when he told her about it the next day. He was still so shaken that he had to get it off his chest, and Hclen refused to listen to anything about his worms. ‘My theory is they’ve a collective will for survival. The group decided which one was to go and I don’t imagine there was any resistance even. He accepted his fate, willingly. It’s gruesome.’
‘We lost a good skin,’ she commented critically. She fingered the tattered remains he’d brought to show her. The small teeth had bitten into it in a dozen different places. ‘We mustn’t let that happen again.’
Matt was touched to the quick at her hardness. ‘Fran, I know what you must be feeling…’ he began awkwardly. ‘It’s my fault things have—’
She put her fingers over his lips to stop him. ‘I’m over it, Matt,’ she assured him. ‘Honestly. I don’t blame you for anything.’
Selfconsciously they switched the subject back to the worms. She was experimenting with mounting their skeletons on wire. Suitably framed, they might make an additional novelty for the shop. For some time he watched her dextrously arranging the vertebrae.
Outside, the wind was gusty and they could hear the halyards slapping against the masts of the yachts in the harbour.
‘I think I’ll split up the colony according to size,’ he decided before he left. ‘Reduce the risks. It’ll mean getting more tanks.’
‘Do that,’ she approved without looking up.
That morning the post had brought his compensation from Television Hall. ‘Compensation for what?’ he’d demanded when he’d first heard the details of their plan for getting rid of him. It was explained that the disciplinary inquiry had been dropped. In view of his unfortunate experience in the sewers, his contract was to be terminated on medical grounds.
There’d be a handsome hand-out to help him settle in his new life, Jimmy had informed him with the air of a man taking credit where credit was due. Later, in the corridor, Bill Roberts straightened out a few points, emphasizing that he had the
union to thank. Then came the farewell handshake from Aubrey Morgan, Acting Managing Director, who’d made it quite plain that all decisions come from the top.
The Acting top.
Goodbye. Good luck. Next please.
The money paid for the timber he needed to construct a long shelf down one side of the shed. The new tanks were spaced out evenly along it, with strip lights immediately above each one.
He bred their food in the smaller of the two sheds. At the start he’d fed them on butchers’ scraps, but soon discovered that their skins lost their sheen if they were deprived of living meat. This meant ensuring a steady supply of mice, gerbils and rabbits.
To simplify the feeding process and avoid having his remaining fingers snapped off, he devised a set of boxes to fit over the tanks. The bottom section of each consisted of a sliding panel. He’d only to pull this out, and the live food dropped down to the worms below.
Breeding the worms themselves was a different matter. He watched them day after day, but they showed no interest in reproduction, no sign of young. The only way to replenish his stock was to go out hunting; even catching small ones was useful, as they could be fed up to the right size in a matter of weeks.
‘I imagine they’re waiting for spring,’ said Fran one day when they were discussing it. ‘That’s when most animals breed in this country, isn’t it? Who can we ask?’
He’d written twice more to Professor Jones at the University, but with no reply. He also wrote to Tegwyn Aneurin Rhys. He explained defensively to Fran that, though it was ridiculous to regard the worms as aliens from another planet, at least the man took them seriously and might have discovered something useful. About a fortnight later they received an invitation to go and visit him.
Tegwyn Aneurin Rhys lived in a large Victorian brick-built house known as the Old Rectory. It was set well back from the lane. The wide wooden gate at the entrance to the drive looked as though it hadn’t been shut for many decades. A couple of
greenhouses could be glimpsed beyond the thick trunk of the old oak tree which dominated the extensive but unkempt lawn.
On the gravel in front of the steps leading up to the porch an oldish Bentley was parked, and Matt drew up behind it. Before they could ring the bell the front door opened and an Alsatian bounded out to investigate, closely followed by a smallish man whose bald head was fringed with grey hair sticking out wildly on each side.
‘Heard you arrive,’ he said, ordering the dog to heel. ‘I’m Rhys.’
Matt introduced Fran and himself.
‘Glad to meet you. House is a mess, but come in. Not all that many people take these worms seriously. You’ve found that yourself, I imagine. A bad to-do you had with them in the sewers, wasn’t it? Sorry about that. Been lucky myself, though Barker here lost an ear as you can see.’
The Alsatian looked up at them with knowing eyes, then turned his head sideways to let them see where one ear was missing.
‘That’s what first put me on to the worms,’ Rhys continued, leading the way into a large downstairs room whose walls were heavy with books. ‘I’ll take you to the river afterwards, show you the scene of the crime. Barker saved himself of course. Bit the worm in half, and they haven’t bothered him since. Obviously word got around. Sit down, sit down.’ He waved to a lumpy sofa which still bore signs of having been a very elegant piece of furniture in its day. ‘Now tell me why you want to breed worms. To my mind we’ve enough already.’
Matt explained, with Fran filling in the commercial details. Rhys listened intently, his eyes bright and alert, darting across to Fran’s face every so often.
‘And that’s it,’ Matt concluded. ‘Can you help? Anything you happen to know…’
‘If anyone deserves to make money out of these creatures, I imagine you do,’ Rhys commented after a moment’s thought, gazing at the facial scars still visible under Matt’s beard. ‘It wouldn’t have occurred to me, but then I’ve always had enough money. You’ve broken your connection with television?’
‘I was thrown out. Contract terminated.’
‘You don’t surprise me. Anything they do… Can’t stand those television people. So smarmy. Think they know everything. In fact they know nothing. I wrote to them – you’ve seen the letter – but no reply. Even sent them some specimens, and not a word of thanks.’
‘In a chocolate box?’
‘Half a dozen small worms in a chocolate box personally addressed to the managing director, Mary Keating. Used to watch her children’s programmes. Excellent. Miles better than all the evening crap. Oh, I read in the paper afterwards she’d been a bit careless opening the box, had a fright, but you’d think she’d say thank you.’
‘She was quite seriously injured, wasn’t she?’ asked Fran, looking at Matt.
‘No, no!’ Rhys shook his head vigorously. ‘A couple of small bites, and whose fault was that? I warned her in the note to take care. Open with care, I said. But you can’t tell them anything.’
‘Too true,’ Matt agreed with feeling. ‘Though the truth is, I don’t think they found a note.’
Rhys stared at him with uncomprehending eyes. ‘Typical!’ he snorted. He stood up and leaned against the marble mantelpiece which bore an ornamental clock, several piles of books and journals, and assorted rocks. ‘Breeding. You want to know about breeding.’
‘Yes.’
‘Can’t help you, though. Nobody can. Reptiles either lay eggs or give birth to living young, same as we do. But which methods these worms use, that’s a mystery. They may be oviparous – lay eggs, you understand – or viviparous, but how can we tell? I’ve never met a female, have you?’
‘I … I wouldn’t know,’ Matt admitted, shamefaced. ‘How to tell, that is.’
‘If you’re planning to breed them, I suggest it would be worth your while finding out,’ Rhys observed drily. ‘Come with me.’
He led them through to the back of the house, to a room fitted up as a laboratory. Shelves of jars, containing worms, snakes and various organs all preserved in formaldehyde, lined
the walls. A freshly dissected worm lay spreadeagled on a piece of fibreboard.
‘Invited you here out of self-interest, you know,’ Rhys was telling them as they came into the room. ‘When you find a female I’d like to know about it. Now, if we look at this worm—’ he picked up a scalpel to use as a pointer ‘—you can see the cloaca here… And this – see? – is the penis. Or hemipenis, as it’s more properly called – or maybe less properly, but that’s what they call it anyway.’
‘Forked,’ Fran noticed, bending closely over it.
Rhys stood aside to let her study it. ‘You understand that they are not always forked in this type of reptile, but definitely in the case of sewer worms. And rattlesnakes, of course.’
‘Why hemipenis?’
‘They’ve two. Here’s the other one. And they use whichever is more convenient.’
Fran’s eyes twinkled as she looked up at Matt. ‘Jealous?’ she teased.
Rhys moved the microscope away from the bench to make room for a second board which he fetched across from another table. ‘I prepared this for you as well. It’s a slow-worm, quite different in every respect, but it’ll help you to recognize what to look for. This is a female. You see? But I’ve never come across a female sewer worm.’ He was quite emphatic. ‘One week I took two dozen out of the river, deliberately, and every single one was male.’
‘I tried to get in touch with Professor Jones—’ Matt began.
Rhys snorted again. ‘Jones is a nuts-and-bolts man. He’ll tell you all about how a reptile’s made, how it’s put together, but he doesn’t know them as
creatures.
I’m no herpetologist but I’ve thought it my duty to learn as much as I can in the last eighteen months. How do they fit in with the general scheme of life on this planet? That’s the important question. But then I’m one of those old-fashioned people, a natural philosopher. Not many of us about these days.’
He took them down to the far end of the garden to show them the spot on the river bank where Barker, the dog, had first come into contact with the worms. The air was hazy, softening the outlines of the bare branches; dead leaves, soggy
from the rain, still covered the grass. Fran took Matt’s hand and snuggled up against him, shivering. ‘Isn’t he a darling!’ she whispered. ‘Oh, I’m so glad we came.’
There were no worms in the river now, Rhys explained, because it was too cold for them. Being cold-blooded creatures, sensitive to the temperature of their surroundings, they would either hibernate or find a warmer spot. If Matt really wanted to fish some out, there was a tributary stream not more than a mile away which received waste water from a factory on its banks with the result that its temperature was a good two or three degrees higher.
They went there in Matt’s car, scrambling over waste ground and through barbed wire to reach the water’s edge. Using his home made sieve-cum-scoop, Matt netted four at his first attempt. Then another three, then five very small ones, then one almost as long as his arm.
‘Who says they’re not breeding?’ Matt grinned as they drove back to the Old Rectory.
‘Not me,’ Rhys assured him. ‘In my opinion they’re multiplying fast, they’re getting bigger, and in short they’re becoming a real menace. I’ve had reports of sightings in Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and northern Germany. But never a female. Now, explain that away.’
‘Let’s go back to your lab,’ Matt suggested. ‘Maybe we’ve got a mum among this lot.’
In the laboratory they took the larger worms one by one out of the strong metal box he now used as a portable container. Matt killed them himself, then watched as Fran examined them, with Rhys looking on to check and instruct. They were all male.
‘It’s weird,’ she said when they’d finished and the worms were safely locked away in the boot of the car. ‘Uncanny.’
‘Design, I think,’ Rhys commented seriously, for the first time openly mentioning his theory of extraterrestrial origin. ‘Unusual features – the colouring, varied sizes, rate of growth, the rapid increase in numbers, and no visible females. I’d like to show you some of the evidence. People think I’m a nut-case, but before you make up your minds – it’s dark outside now – I’d like to take you up to my observatory. I’ve only a small
telescope, and it’s not too clear a night either, but you should be able to see at least enough to make you wonder.’
They went up to the room he’d converted at the top of the house and took it in turns to stare at the planet Jupiter through his 6-inch telescope. It certainly made the possible existence of other worlds seem more real. Then he showed them reports of objects observed falling from the sky, drew diagrams, and ended by inviting them to look through the telescope once more. ‘Not from the solar system perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘But somewhere else?’