Slither

by John Halkin

  Already the worms were speeding towards the meat in the net, their heads ducked beneath the surface. Angus pulled the net up, forcing them out of the effluent if they wanted to eat, which they did. Matt snapped off six quick exposures one after the other without pausing.

  They were beautiful, undulating slivers of constantly varying shades of green, glowing brightly, intensely, like dangerous angel worms. A much better name for them, Matt thought – angel worms. He changed the lens for a tighter shot.

  ‘Jus’ look at ’em, little buggers!’ Angus was saying, delighted. ‘Like hungry hyenas.’

  Four more worms – no, five! – shot through the water towards the bait, as though the first two had sent them an urgent summons. It had been the same pattern when they’d attacked him, Matt recalled, as if they had telepathic communication. It’d make them doubly dangerous. Doubly fascinating, too.

  He took more pictures, working his way steadily through the film. One with its mouth open, poised to bite. Another with its teeth clamped into the raw meat. One staring directly into the lens, its eyes hard and challenging. Relentless. It was a relief when, for a split second, the shutter cut them off from view.

  Angus was playing with them, holding the cord at arm’s length, moving the bait this way and that, sometimes above the water, sometimes sinking into it. ‘A great shame you’re not taking movies this time!’ he declared. ‘I could make ’em dance for you!’

  ‘Don’t underestimate them, Angus. Last time they made me dance. And never look in their eyes. Once they get their eyes fixed on you, you’ll be stepping down into that water, doing just what they want.’

  ‘Man, you’re exaggerating!’

  ‘Don’t you believe it.’ He took the last two exposures, then closed the camera and returned it to its case. ‘You can drop the cord and let them have the rest of the meat now.’

  They both watched, intrigued, as the worms gorged themselves on it as though they’d not eaten for weeks. Their skins glistened, one second green, the next purple, the patches of colour shifting and merging as they thrashed about in the water. The string bag was in shreds and two worms fought over the last morsel of meat. The others remained almost motionless, their heads upright as they waited to see what he’d do next.

  Matt hadn’t planned anything other than the photographs, but he was aware there was unsettled business between the worms and him. As he looked down at them he knew what he had to do.

  He tugged on the gauntlet gloves and took the second string net from the ice-box.

  ‘Let’s give them some more,’ he said, passing the cord to Angus. ‘Same routine. Keep the meat just above the surface.’

  Before Angus could reply Matt had lowered himself into the effluent. Immediately the worms began nudging against his legs.

  ‘Are you crazy, man?’ Angus cried.

  ‘Keep the meat on the surface,’ Matt snapped at him, irritated.

  ‘I’d never have come down here if I’d known this was what you had in mind,’ Angus protested, but he did as Matt asked.

  The worms didn’t bite. The rubber of his waders puzzled them. One by one they abandoned him in favour of the meat in the string net. He took a slow step towards them, carefully, then stopped suddenly to catch one in his gloved hand.

  It wriggled as he held it up. Grinning, he tightened his fingers, squeezing till he felt its head collapse under the pressure. Then he slung the body into the ice-box and turned to scoop up the next one. Contemptuously.

  Angus was staring at him, his eyes wide. ‘Are you mad?’ he was whispering. ‘Is it revenge you’re after?’

  Matt was too busy to reply. He squeezed the second worm to death, threw it into the box, and set to work on the third. Vaguely in the back of his mind he imagined he’d take them along to Television Hall, slam them down on someone’s desk and force them to take an interest. Failing that, a newspaper perhaps.

  As he killed the fourth – it had swum willingly into his hand – he became aware the others were still feeding on the meat in the string net. They made no joint attempt to defend themselves, which suggested their telepathy might not be all that strong after all.

  The fifth seemed to accept death indifferently, almost mockingly; perhaps it knew something hidden from him. Matt’s wild mood suddenly sagged; he felt uneasy.

  ‘Get out, man, get out quick!’ The panic in Angus’s voice was warning enough. ‘Take my hand!’

  Matt grabbed his arm and climbed back on to the walkway. Something glimmered at the far end of the tunnel, he couldn’t quite make out what. He swung one of the lamps around.

  The stream of effluent was thick with sewer worms, their heads raised above the surface, watching him as they assembled. More and more joined the rear of the throng and lined up with them.

  ‘Like an army!’ Angus said, his voice oddly hushed. ‘We’ve walked into an ambush.’

  Matt snapped down the lid of the ice-box; that was one thing he wasn’t going to leave behind, whatever happened. He slung the camera around his neck and grabbed the case of lenses. Angus gathered up one of the lamps, but they abandoned the other.

  ‘Now follow me, man, an’ keep close,’ Angus instructed urgently, speaking quietly as though the worms could overhear. ‘Careful how you put your feet. The sewers can be treacherous.’

  Matt followed him as he dodged through the low archway leading into the neighbouring tunnel. The torchlight beam showed sewer worms gathering there too. They were motionless, their heads raised, their eyes alert.

  ‘Ay, you can sit there,’ Angus muttered. ‘Time’s on your side, isn’t it? Or is it you’re not ready yet?’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’ Matt demanded. His words echoed through the tunnels, betraying his fear; once again he felt the walls moving in on him.

  Angus didn’t bother to answer. They went to a third tunnel, doubled back, then into a fourth. Fewer worms watched them now, but still enough to observe their movements. And report back?

  Even in the bubbling effluent at the foot of the steps they found a patrol waiting for them. As if posted there.

  But it wasn’t until they were safely in the Crown with two large scotches in front of them that Angus began to explain what he really thought.

  ‘I sensed ’em coming,’ he said soberly. ‘A change in the sound o’ the tunnels. If you’ve been down there as long as me, practically living down there some weeks, your ears get tuned in to every little noise. But it was you killin’ ’em brought ’em out. Why you had to do it, I don’t understand; everything was fine till then. It was you they came for, Matt.’

  ‘The food attracted them,’ Matt tried to bluff.

  ‘Put it that way if you like. Once they’d had a taste o’ you…’

  It wasn’t what Matt had meant, but he didn’t argue.

  ‘If you ask me, it was like watchin’ an army, the way they turned out. Battalion strength.’

  6

  Matt said nothing to Helen about his trip down into the sewers, still less his encounter with the worms. Something about her manner warned him to keep quiet. Since he’d come out of hospital he’d had the feeling she was being ultra-cautious about how she behaved towards him, as though they’d stuck labels all over him – Fragile: Handle With Care!

  As though the hospital psychiatrist had been talking to her.

  At times he wanted to shake her awake. ‘Helen, this is me, remember? Matt! Your old Matt! Matt and Helen – you know! The old firm!’ But it wouldn’t work, and the realization hurt him like a long-standing deep wound.

  ‘It’ll be better when we get down to the cottage,’ she had repeated several times during the past few days. ‘You’ll see. It’ll get your mind off them. I do understand, Matt. Honestly.’

  He’d secured the ice-box with wire before tucking it into the boot of his ten-year-old Morris. Helen had watched him, puzzled, but he’d offered no explanation. The last thing he wanted was for either Helen or Jenny to open the box accidentally and find the dead worms inside. If they
were all dead.

  As they drove down he was aware Helen was glancing curiously at him from time to time, and it irritated him. He’d have to talk to her about the worms soon, he knew: describe his feelings while they were attacking him; why he’d returned to the sewers; the whole threat he was convinced in his guts was facing everyone, yet couldn’t prove.

  Ideally he could have talked while he was driving, keeping his eyes on the road to avoid looking at her; but with Jenny playing happily on the back seat it was impossible. He’d have to wait till they got to the cottage. She’d be in a better mood then, anyway. She always was, at the cottage.

  They’d stumbled across it whilst on holiday at Westport three years earlier and she’d fallen in love with it right away. From a distance it was picturesque, snuggling cosily into the hillside. A closer view had revealed several slates missing, half the windows broken and the walls in need of re-pointing. Brambles tore at their legs in the large, overgrown garden. In the kitchen the single tap shuddered and swayed precariously at the end of a loose section of lead piping.

  ‘It’ll need a bit of work,’ she’d commented seriously.

  The money had been hers, left to her by her mother, but she’d insisted on the deeds being drawn up in their joint names. That’s how things had been between them at the time – so close they voiced each other’s thoughts; every absence a wound which only healed when they were together again.

  Maybe it was the cottage itself which killed it. Every holiday, almost every available week-end, they worked down there repairing the roof, replacing the guttering, painting the woodwork… She even coaxed a loan out of the bank manager to pay for the installation of a bathroom. A fisherman’s cottage it had been – born, lived and died there. That fired Helen’s imagination. ‘We’ll come and live here ourselves one day,’ she’d announced when they were dead beat after re-doing the kitchen. ‘We need roots.’

  Matt carried the first couple of suitcases into the cottage before taking the wired-up ice-box down to the larger of the two garden sheds where he’d fixed himself up a workbench and darkroom.

  ‘What’s in it?’ Jenny asked inquisitively.

  ‘Oh … specimens.’ He was deliberately vague, and not too sure himself what he intended to do with the worms. ‘Things I want to photograph. Maybe I’ll show you later on.’

  Through the open shed door he could see Helen was listening, but she said nothing. Why not?

  ‘Come on,’ he added, ‘let’s go and help Mummy to unpack. Then we’ll walk down to the harbour and look at the boats, just you and me.’

  It was one of their established rituals, that walk down to the old harbour on their first evening at Westport, yet this time Matt felt uneasy about leaving Helen alone. If she untwisted the wires to look in the box? As he’d put it down on the workbench he’d heard a scratching sound from somewhere. It needed only one of the worms to be still alive for…

  No, he told himself, that was ridiculous.

  Jenny ran slightly ahead of him through the uneven lane between the houses, making straight for the steep, cobbled street which led down to the sea. The handful of shops had mostly closed already – grocers, butchers, fishing-gear specialists – and there were very few holiday-makers about. Probably at this hour the Westport landladies were serving up their evening meals and the campers were tending their Calor-gas stoves.

  But the craft shop was still open, with its clusters of open sandals hanging like strings of Spanish onions outside. Usually Matt didn’t give it a glance, but this evening he stopped to look curiously at the handmade leather bags and snakeskin belts. An idea was forming slowly in his mind.

  ‘That bag’s crocodile skin!’ Jenny told him excitedly, cutting across his thoughts. ‘We learned about crocodiles at school. Some countries have special farms where they breed them for the skins.’

  ‘Aren’t they dangerous?’

  Inside the shop a girl was tidying up ready to close for the day. She was tall, with straight dark-brown hair drawn back and tied with a ribbon; typically she wore a peasant smock of dull yellow ochre with a brown sash. She looked up and smiled at him through the display of coloured scarves and raffia hats. Or was it at Jenny?

  ‘Not if you keep out of their way,’ Jenny was saying, as practical as her mother. ‘Let’s see the boats.’

  He let her pull him away from the shop window in the direction of the harbour. She chattered about all she intended to do that holiday, but he only half listened. Westport seemed so peaceful, it was almost unreal. The smell of the seaweed, swooping seagulls, fishing nets draped over the walls, the winking of the lighthouse on the horizon as the sky darkened, the murmur of the waves against the rocks… Slowly he felt the tensions inside him easing.

  Of course the sea had always held dangers – the lifeboat on the slipway was a reminder – but they were familiar because they’d always been there. They were older than man himself. The worms were a new threat.

  ‘Daddy?’ It was almost as though she could read his thoughts. ‘When the worms ate your fingers, did they eat the bones as well?’

  The question shocked him back to reality. ‘No, just the … just the meat.’

  Helen was bound to tamper with the ice-box. Suddenly he was convinced there must be at least one worm alive inside. Never underestimate them, that was the golden rule. He remembered how easily the last couple had seemed to die. Seemed to.

  He took Jenny’s hand and hurried her back up the cobbled street, through the lane with its tiny fishermen’s houses and quiet stream, till they got to the cottage. The shed door was closed. Through the open window he saw Helen cooking supper in the kitchen.

  Much to her surprise he kissed her on the cheek as she was trying to open a packet of bacon, and she flushed with pleasure at the gesture.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the living room,’ she told him above the sizzle of the frying sausages and the scream of the boiling kettle. ‘We could leave it till later and do the garden first. After all that time in hospital, you need fresh air.’

  She’d not been near the shed, that was obvious. Relieved, he started to lay the table. ‘I’ve a film to develop later this evening,’ he mentioned casually. He’d show her the pictures and raise the subject of the worms that way, he decided.

  ‘May I help you?’ Jenny asked eagerly.

  ‘Oh, you’ll be in bed long before I’m ready.’

  After their meal he helped Helen to tidy the cottage and put things away. It was almost eleven o’clock before he went out to the shed. She had gone up to the bedroom; from the garden he could see her shadow on the curtain.

  Not a sound came from the ice-box. He stood in front of it, listening. Maybe he’d been imagining things earlier; maybe not. He thought of Angus having to go down into those sewers every day, and some of the remarks he’d made.

  But first things first. He washed the bench down and cleaned the whole place thoroughly, then refilled the reservoir with fresh water. Helen would find nothing odd about him working this late at night. As a darkroom, the shed was only makeshift, not even completely lightproof in the daytime.

  He developed the film first, rinsed it, and hung it up to dry. Good clear pictures, most of them. Turning next to the ice-box, he began methodically to remove the strands of wire with his pliers. He collected them all up and threw them in the rubbish box before pulling on his gauntlet gloves and snapping open the clips which secured the lid.

  Then he stopped for a second or two, apprehensively. His stomach muscles cramped. He’d the odd impression that Angus was looking over his shoulder, a sardonic grin on his face.

  He raised the lid.

  The worms lay curled up at the bottom of the box, intertwining and overlapping each other like Laocoon’s serpents. They were motionless, a glorious splash of luminous colour against the dull white of the plastic, every imaginable shade of green and purple merging into each other.

  Still he hesitated, but at last he plunged his gauntleted hand in among them and grasped o
ne. Carefully he extracted it from the coils of the others, shaking it slightly to free it. Between his fingers it felt supple, almost alive. He placed it on the sheet of white blotting paper he’d spread out on the bench in front of him.

  Its jaws yawned open, then suddenly snapped shut again.

  Startled, Matt was about to bring a heavy file down on its head when he paused and poked it with the end instead. No further movement. He rolled the worm over. Still nothing.

  Laying a rule alongside it, he switched on his lamp and photographed it from several angles. In length it measured nineteen-and-a-half inches. The head was elongated, with long narrow jaws. He forced them apart and ran the tip of his gloved finger over the sharp teeth; surprisingly, a few felt loose. Between them were several decaying shreds of meat.

  Its skin was tough and scaly. He wondered if they sloughed it off, or if it renewed itself patchily, a bit at a time. Even in death its colours had a scintillating brilliance; he’d never seen anything like it before, except perhaps certain stones or a rare seashell.

  Opening the ice-box once again he took out a second worm and started to compare them. Were their skins identical or individual? He examined them methodically, inch by inch, and was so absorbed in the task, he didn’t hear the shed door open.

  ‘Oh no!’

  It was the note of fear in Helen’s voice that shocked him more than anything else. She was staring at the worms on the bench, her eyes bulging.

  ‘Matt, it’s not worms, is it?’ And you’ve brought them here?’ She clutched her dressing-gown about her and took a step back. Her hand shook. ‘How could you?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he tried to calm her.

  ‘All right?’ she screamed at him hysterically. ‘Matt, don’t you see it can’t be all right? We came down here to forget these things. They’re in the past.’