Slither

by John Halkin

  A uniformed constable sitting in the porch of the house came forward to ask what they wanted, but Rodney Smith knew him and there were no problems. He pointed out the swimming pool. While Matt and Jacqui stared down into the water, his stocky, dour camera assistant, Pete, began to set up.

  ‘I can’t see any worms,’ Jacqui commented, walking along the edge. ‘What do they look like? Small snakes?’

  ‘Sometimes small, but they come in all sizes.’

  ‘About the length of your hand, these were,’ Rodney Smith said. ‘No telling if there’s any more in the water. The ones I saw were dead.’

  ‘Green?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Greenish.’ He went back to the constable, who nodded and indicated the shed. ‘Some of the dead ones are still here,’ he called over to them. ‘I imagined the police had taken them all away but it seems they haven’t. I’ll get them.’

  For a moment he disappeared into the shed, then came out bearing what looked like an old metal oven dish. In it lay several dead worms, stiff and straight, their greenish-purple colour lacking the sparkle of the larger variety. Jacqui picked one up gingerly.

  ‘Urgh! Like pricks with teeth!’

  They filmed her holding it and describing, straight to camera, how last night’s swimming party had ended in disaster when these sharp little incisors had found their prey. Matt had no idea whether Newsroom would use the item or not, but it would all come in useful for that documentary if ever he got permission to do it. He took a couple of close shots of her holding the jaws apart, then suggested she should crouch down by the side of the pool.

  ‘Wish we could see some live ones,’ she said.

  Rodney Smith sniggered. ‘Dangle your fingers in the water,’ he suggested nastily. ‘If there’s any of ’em left, they’ll soon show themselves.’

  ‘For Chrissake!’ Matt swore at him. That high-pitched, nasal voice was beginning to get on his nerves.

  ‘I was only saying if—’

  ‘Do it yourself!’ Matt told him roughly. ‘I’ll film them having a go at your hand, and gladly.’

  They were packing up to drive down to the hospital when Matt noticed the two children who had followed them into the grounds. He grinned at them. Encouraged, they crept forward; the constable was examining the sound man’s Nagra tape-recorder with absorbed interest and didn’t notice them. He was a hi-fi fanatic, it seemed.

  ‘You with TV, mister?’ the boy wanted to know.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We can show you live biters if you like.’

  ‘Biters?’

  ‘Them.’ The boy pointed to the metal tray. The girl stared at him speculatively, but without saying a word. ‘We call ’em biters.’

  ‘Good name,’ Matt approved. ‘D’you find a lot round these parts?’

  ‘If you know where to look.’

  The girl joined in, ‘If you pay the right price. You are with telly, aren’t you?’

  She drove a tough bargain, five pounds, but Matt was too eager to see the worms to argue for long. He called Jacqui over. She agreed, and took the two children in her car. On the way to the Council rubbish dump he stopped in front of a small cluster of three shops and bought some offal. ‘For the dog,’ he explained to the butcher.

  They parked just beyond the petrol station and followed the children along the path which led past the dump. Rodney Smith scoffed at the whole exercise and became irritated when a loop of rusting barbed wire sprang out of the undergrowth at him, catching his raincoat. The sound crew decided to stay in the car whilst Matt and Jacqui did the recce. Pete remained behind too to reload the camera.

  The girl, Annie, suddenly stopped and pointed. ‘Down in that ditch. There’s lots down there. Little ’uns.’

  They balanced precariously on the sloping grass sides of the ditch, staring down at the clear water. Bent grasses trailed in it; tiny insects busied themselves above the surface.

  ‘Nothing there,’ Rodney Smith declared nasally. ‘You kids having us on?’

  ‘That’s where we…’ she stopped, then giggled ‘… saw ’em last. Innit, Tim?’

  Tim confirmed her story. ‘Yeah, ’bout here.’

  Matt unwrapped the packet of offal, took a small piece and dropped it into the water. The others looked at him curiously. ‘Bait,’ he grunted, watching it intently. No sign of them yet. He selected another piece which he tore to crumb-size shreds before scattering it on the water a little farther upstream.

  ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days,’ murmured Jacqui; she’d once mentioned her father was a Baptist minister, four-square on the Bible. Then, breathlessly: ‘And here they come.’

  ‘Look at ’em! Look at ’em!’ Rodney Smith’s voice rose even higher in his excitement. ‘Did you ever see anything like that?’

  Matt went up the bank again and waved to Pete to bring the camera over. They wouldn’t be easy to film in this light. Too much reflection from the surface of the water, and their colouring almost merging with the bed of the stream. He tried from several angles and took some readings; it was vital he managed to get a couple of shots at least. Angus had told him about these small ones before, so had his press cuttings, but it was the first time Matt had seen them for himself. Were they a different species after all? Or, as Angus had often said, merely younger? And if so, why? He’d like to take a couple back with him as specimens. Perhaps that busy professor was back from his long holiday by now.

  Pete came up with the camera. Matt quickly explained the shot. ‘You operate,’ he said. ‘I’ll feed the buggers to attract them.’

  He tossed more offal into the water, a bigger piece this time, and several worms homed in on it hungrily.

  Jacqui was crouching in the long grass covering the steep bank of the ditch. ‘They’re ruthless,’ she was saying. ‘Quite ruthless and vicious.’ The sunlight caught an auburn streak in her dark brown hair tumbled about her bent head. Her checked shirt had parted from the top of her jeans, revealing an expanse of white skin and the knobbles of her spine.

  ‘Jacqui, be careful!’ he warned her, with a sudden premonition. ‘Don’t get too close.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  He could hear the faint whirr of the Arri BL’s motor as Peter filmed the worms. Just to encourage them he threw in more offal. To take a couple with him he’d need a container, he thought. He looked around. There must be something among all the rubbish. An old tin, perhaps.

  But the local journalist had the same idea. Before anyone could stop him, he blundered in front of Jacqui, fell to his knees right at the edge of the water and snatched at one of the worms with his bare hand. A gasp from the two kids who stood higher up the bank, watching. A curse from Pete at having his shot ruined.

  Yet the idiot had succeeded. Half-lying on the bank he held the worm up triumphantly, his fingers grasping it just below the head. His laugh was a high-pitched whinny, ‘Ha! Used to tickle trout when I was a boy. The hand hath not lost its ancient cunning!’ He dropped the worm into a rusting paint can he’d placed nearby.

  Jacqui lay sprawled on the grass. His sudden move had knocked her off balance; she was lucky not to have slipped down into the water. ‘You bloody fool,’ she told him, ‘charging about like that.’ She spoke quietly and intensely; her face drained of all its colour.

  He ignored her, intent on fishing out a second worm. Jacqui, still on her back and still furious, flexed her leg. It was patently obvious what she was about to do. One gentle nudge with her foot would be sufficient to topple Rodney Smith into the stream among the worms.

  Matt touched her arm. ‘No,’ he told her softly.

  She ganced at him and he witnessed the anger melting from her face. Her expression became mischievous; her eyes twinkled, exploring his.

  ‘Chuck some more meat in, will you?’ Rodney Smith called over his shoulder. ‘Bit nearer the edge.’

  ‘If you’d only get out of the bloody way – you’re ruining the shot!’ Pete snapped at him.
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br />   ‘Never mind.’ Matt tossed a handful of offal into the water. The worms were in turmoil in their eagerness to get at it. ‘Can you take him fishing the things out?’

  Pete widened his shot. Again the motor whirred as Rodney Smith bent over the narrow stream at the foot of the ditch. Then he grunted, a quick sharp grunt, and pulled back.

  ‘U-uh, u-uh,’ he moaned in a mixture of fear and pain.

  This time the worms had won. One had bitten deeply into the ball of flesh where his thumb joined his hand.

  ‘One all,’ came Jacqui’s voice calmly.

  9

  When he got home Matt found a note from Fran saying she was coming up to London to see him. Business was flourishing and she’d already received more orders than she could handle. It seemed everyone in the fashion world was fascinated by the luminous quality of the worm skins and their subtle changes of colour triggered off by variations in the light. But it was time, she suggested, they drew up a more formal agreement. She’d already had a word with a solicitor.

  Helen stiffened defensively when she saw who the note was from. She read it without comment, then handed it back to him. ‘You’d better meet her,’ she said drily.

  ‘Come with me?’ he coaxed her. ‘Darling, this could be the opening we’ve been waiting for. We’ll be able to afford things for the cottage, and take Jenny to France, and…’

  ‘You go by yourself,’ Helen told him wearily. ‘She’s your partner. Your … business associate.’

  ‘That’s all she is!’ he replied warmly.

  Helen looked at him, her eyes puckering into an expression of doubt. But she said nothing.

  They met at the solicitor’s office near Wigmore Street. He was her cousin, it seemed: a fair young man, very formally dressed, with blue eyes and a slightly turned-up nose. After a few preliminaries he read out a draft agreement he’d drawn up. Fran was a tough negotiator. She hammered away at every clause, not giving an inch of ground until forced to. Matt tried to control his rising irritation. Without his worms, he reminded her, she’d get nowhere. Then she’d smile her sudden acceptance of the point, her nose would wrinkle and the tip of her tongue would appear for a split second between her lips.

  In the end, when all the details were settled, she invited him to lunch in a nearby restaurant while the agreement was being typed. She’d already booked a table, she said.

  ‘Champagne? To celebrate?’ She turned over the pages of the wine-list. ‘Matt, our business is really taking off, do you realize that? And so far we’ve no competitors.’

  She began to tell him about some of the people she’d met from the top fashion houses. Then, when the sole meunière came and she tasted it, she launched into an enthusiastic account of how she always bought fish straight off the boat at Westport, how she prepared it, and the fish parties she sometimes gave.

  ‘I’m glad you like fish too.’ Her eyes seemed to be exploring his face. ‘My husband didn’t. But then he was a shit.’

  Matt refilled her glass, not knowing what to say.

  ‘I’ve a lot of faith in you, Matt. You really seem to understand about sewer worms.’ She reached out and touched his mutilated hand, then bit her lip with a quick frown and laughed. ‘If only we’d a better name for them.’

  ‘The kids called them “biters”.’

  ‘What kids?’

  He told her about it; she listened, interested.

  ‘You talk as though they’ve some kind of intelligence,’ she commented uneasily. ‘As though they could read our minds. That local journalist – you really think they planned to bite his hand, don’t you?’

  ‘I imagine…’ He hesitated. ‘You can surprise them once but not twice,’ he said at last. ‘Which makes them that much more difficult to hunt.’

  She shivered, and fingered the worm-skin belt she was wearing with her simple brown dress. ‘What if one day they take it into their heads to start skinning us?’

  He took her hand and moved his thumb gently across her palm. ‘It won’t happen,’ he tried to reassure her.

  At Television Hall later that afternoon he heard that Annie was missing. It seemed the police had been around to question the two children about the worms in the swimming pool; naturally they’d denied all knowledge, but next morning Annie had set out for school and never arrived there.

  ‘But kids are always running off somewhere,’ Jimmy remonstrated with him when he tried to discuss it. ‘ ’Specially when they think they’re in trouble. She’ll be picked up somewhere. Not our worry, thank God. We’ve enough on our plates.’

  He paused to light a second cigarette from the stub of his first, drawing the smoke deeply into his lungs. Killing himself, Matt thought. His fists were massive, for he’d been something of a boxer in his early days, but now even the short flight of stairs up to the bar left him breathless.

  ‘Our revered Acting Managing Director has agreed to see you.’

  Matt was startled. ‘When?’

  ‘Thought that’d please you!’ Jimmy’s chuckle broke up into a cough; his face flushed a deep red. ‘Today, at five. Don’t ask me what made him change his mind – your latest exploits, I shouldn’t wonder. I know you rang beforehand, but I’d have advised you differently if you’d said it was worms.’

  ‘Newsroom was interested,’ Matt defended himself.

  ‘Haven’t used the film though, have they?’

  ‘That big earthquake story knocked everything else off the screen.’

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘It’s the worms, Matt. And your reputation. If only you could forget those bloody worms.’ He rummaged among the papers on his desk and fished out a green form. ‘Here. Your annual report. No doubt you’d like to see it before I send it off.’

  Matt glanced over it quickly. The accident in the sewers … three months in hospital … not quite readjusted after his unfortunate…

  ‘Maybe you should’ve had more leave,’ Jimmy was apologizing even as he read it. ‘But you’d been passed as fit by the doctors, we were very short-handed, and… We acted for the best.’

  ‘Has the Managing Director seen it?’

  ‘Acting Managing Director,’ Jimmy corrected him. ‘No.’ He paused, fumbling for a third cigarette to cover his embarrassment. ‘Look, Matt, don’t take this the wrong way. These reports they’re routine, intended to help you… We think very highly of your work, you know that.’

  This conversation didn’t exactly leave him in the right mood to sell his great idea for a documentary to Aubrey Morgan, Controller of Programmes, Acting Managing Director, and Lord God Almighty in Television Hall. But it was the only chance he’d be given, so he’d have to make the best of it. He’d thought it over often enough, worked out one or two gimmicks to help it along… Such as suggesting Aubrey himself as presenter. Flattery wins empires.

  The carpeted, curving corridors of power were in a part of Television Hall he’d seldom penetrated before. The atmosphere was hushed, as in some private mortuary. Maybe this was how they disposed of unwanted staff, he speculated gloomily. Discreet, taped organ music, a noiseless exit through sliding doors, a quick moment of intense heat, and all would be over. That split second of fierce desire as the flames licked his body…

  Or as worms cut into it with sharp little teeth – was that to be his destiny?

  He’d be tumbled naked into an oval pit filled with sewer worms while all the Heads of Department looked on from the safety of an observation gallery, jotting down notes for their reports. Not quite readjusted… hardly up to the requirements of the job… could do better…

  ‘Mr Parker?’ A voice like icicles. ‘You can go in now.’

  The secretary was tall and slim, a fashion-plate. She crossed gracefully to the interconnecting door and held it open for him, smiling as he passed – but with her lips only; her eyes remained indifferent.

  ‘Ah, you’re Matt Parker! I’m so glad to meet you at last. Do come in!’

  The moment he saw him, Matt realized he’d met Aubrey Morgan before.
A young director he’d been in those days, straight out of university and sporting patched denim jackets, not the lemon-coloured jet-set sweater he was wearing now. They’d both been starting out at the same time, Matt as a camera assistant, shy and awkward, making more mistakes than most. He wondered whether he should mention it, but decided against.

  ‘I’d hoped we could manage a chat long before this.’ The expression on Aubrey’s face changed as he realized Matt’s hand was mutilated; he released it hurriedly. ‘But you’ve been on location and I’ve two jobs these days, my own plus the Managing Director’s. You heard about her little mishap? Oh, do sit down.’

  ‘The worms?’ Matt lowered himself into a mock-leather armchair.

  ‘In a chocolate box!’ Aubrey tutted. ‘Of course, the shop wasn’t responsible. The police checked on that. No one ever discovered who sent them. Now they tell me you want to do a documentary?’

  ‘Yes, I—’

  Aubrey stopped him. ‘You’ve certainly plenty of experience of worms. Even this week, I’m told. In fact, they’ve become quite a hobby with you, haven’t they?’

  Say it, man, thought Matt. Say it – obsession!

  ‘And I know exactly how you feel. Handled them myself, you know, when they attacked Mary. Had to pull them off her, squeeze the life out of them before they’d release her, feel their skulls crack between my fingers…’

  ‘You noticed their eyes?’

  ‘A sobering experience. I began having nightmares about them afterwards. For weeks. You too?’

  Matt nodded.

  ‘Not surprising. Come and look at this.’

  He took Matt across to a map displayed on the far wall of the office. On it were a couple of dozen tiny coloured pins.

  ‘The distribution of the worms, based on reports which have come in to us since you were attacked. Quite a number at first, though they’ve tailed off a bit. Mostly small ones – they’re the blue pins. The larger worms are red.’