by John Halkin
Fran seemed to read his thoughts. ‘Matt,’ she pleaded, ‘let’s get away from here. Please.’
‘Okay, but once we’re back in the thick of those trees, keep going and don’t stop whatever the reason. Make straight for the fence and through to the other side. I’ll be directly behind you. And use your stick if you have to.’
He slipped the ice-box strap over his shoulder and checked the knife in his belt. It was already so dark among the trees, it was no longer easy to pick out the right path, but Fran stumbled on ahead of him, forcing her way through the undergrowth with the help of her stick. Twigs sprang back at him after she’d pushed past them, catching him in the face as he ducked under the low branches.
What were they waiting for? Why weren’t they attacking? These thoughts throbbed away in his mind.
‘Urgh!’ Fran squealed suddenly. ‘Something’s…’
‘Go on!’ he ordered roughly, giving her a push. ‘For Chrissake don’t stop!’
‘Something in my hair,’ she retorted, in control of herself again. ‘No need to shove like that.’
‘Just keep moving.’
He switched on the hand-basher again. She was right – something small and dark was clinging to her hair. But it was round, not snake-like; and it wasn’t green.
When they came to the fence she scrambled through first. He pushed the ice-box after her, then dropped to his knees and crawled through himself. Standing up again, he paused to look back. A shimmer of green among the branches? Perhaps…?
He played the light slowly over the dark group of trees from which they’d just emerged. The wire mesh threw giant, diamond-shaped shadows against the thick foliage. Yes, something was shining there like long, thin cat’s eyes…
‘Matt!’ Fran urged him on.
Each carrying whatever they could, they lurched over the rough ground towards the farm track, not stopping till they reached it and could at last see the fierce crimson disc of the setting sun touching the horizon beyond the ploughed field. Then they looked at each other, relieved yet still afraid.
‘Get that thing out of my hair,’ she begged.
It was a bat, and her face broke into smiles when she saw it. ‘Oh, only a bat!’ She took it from him, then tossed it into the air and cried out with pleasure as it spread its wide wings. After worms, even an ordinary bat seemed attractive.
As she relaxed and looked up into his face, her full lips parted invitingly, her eyes tender. They kissed, and her fingers touched the back of his neck, moving slowly around to the scars on his face. ‘I don’t think I fully realized at first…’ she said. ‘Oh, Matt, what you must’ve gone through.’ They kissed again hungrily, her body pressing against him, her tongue urgently seeking his.
After a time she broke away. Her hair was in a mess, her face dirty and scratched. ‘Damn! Oh, damn!’ she repeated, upset. She bit her lip and stared up at him ruefully. ‘I wasn’t going to get involved with another man. Not ever.’
12
Jimmy was furious. ‘Worms again!’ he exploded, scattering cigarette ash over the papers on his desk. ‘Christ, I might have known it’d be worms! We had a job for you, hunted high and low, no one knew where you’d got to, no address, no phone number, nothing. You really landed us in the shit – and for what? Bloody worms!’
‘A yard long,’ Matt tried to tell him patiently. ‘I filmed them killing a dog, poor brute.’
‘Who authorized you?’
‘I was out looking for that lost girl.’
‘Who bloody authorized you to go filming more worms?’ Jimmy yelled at him, slamming his hefty fist down on the desk. ‘Wasting time, wasting film stock…’
Matt lost his temper. ‘Waste? We’ve got the only film in existence of worms that size, and you call it waste! What’s going on round here? Why are you trying to hush it up? Or are you all too stupid to see what’s happening? These worms are getting bigger month by month!’
‘So you say!’ Jimmy’s face was a flaming crimson. ‘And you’re the expert, aren’t you?’
‘By now – yes!’ In his turn Matt banged the desk top with his mutilated hand and sent the overflowing ashtray spinning across the floor. ‘I’ve never met anyone so blind, so block-headed. Come and see for yourself with your own eyes if you don’t believe me. I’ll show you—’
‘Matt, you’d better not talk to me in that tone,’ Jimmy warned him, suddenly quieter. Matt could almost sense him rumbling like a volcano before an eruption. ‘You’re in trouble, laddie, I can tell you that now.’
‘For what – showing initiative? You don’t like that, do you? Never did. Don’t think I can’t see through you, Jimmy. Anything likely to cause trouble, you avoid it – and to hell with the programmes.’
Even as he spoke Matt knew he’d made a false move. Somewhere beyond the open door sat Jimmy’s clerk, Marilyn, listening to the row, memorizing every juicy detail to repeat at length later in the canteen. Jimmy couldn’t afford to lose face.
‘Matt, this isn’t doing either of us any good.’ He spoke calmly, almost considerably, as he fumbled among the papers on his desk, searching for his cigarettes. ‘I suggest you go and have a cup of coffee, think things over, and then come back here in… maybe half an hour? Then we’ll have another chat about it.’
‘Okay, Jimmy.’ Matt felt tired. The whole argument seemed so petty. ‘We both need a breather.’
Jimmy was going to consult someone; that much was obvious. He was reaching for the phone even before Matt was out of the office. Marilyn smirked and looked away as he passed her; her massive boobs and flabby arms were sprawled across her typewriter like an uncontrolled jellyfish. He paused for a second, lost for words, then contented himself with popping a couple of paper-clips down her cleavage.
He rang Angus and fixed up to meet him in the Crown afterwards. Whatever happened at the next meeting, he’d be in no mood to go straight home and face Helen. In any case, Fran still wanted those fifty skins for her new order. Yesterday they’d come away with only two, though twice the ordinary size. He needed to arrange a fresh hunting session in the sewers.
His hand shook nervously as he put the phone down again. He loathed the whole set-up at Television Hall. If your face fitted, if you fell in with the current trend, you were okay; if not, you were merely tolerated. And nothing could be less trendy at that time than worms.
Ironically, he’d have been smothered with honours if he’d found Annie dead or mutilated. Missing children still made good footage. But as it turned out, when he’d driven to the police station with that piece of rag, the desk sergeant had looked at him sceptically.
‘Annie, sir? Ah, you must mean Annie Smith, the little girl who ran away from home? Picked up this afternoon at Paddington Station, she was. How she got that far she’s not saying. Oh, and … er, that bit o’ rag. We don’t want it, sir. If I were you, I’d put it back where you found it.’
Matt didn’t bother with a cup of coffee but mooched around the corridors reading the notice-boards until he judged it time to return to Jimmy’s office. The atmosphere was cool and formal. Jimmy stubbed out his cigarette. He sat behind his desk, his flushed face serious, almost sad. Bill Roberts was there too, as shop steward.
The decision was that he was to be suspended on full pay pending a formal investigation into his conduct. The charges were clear-cut and Jimmy reeled them off in a neutral voice, passionless: unauthorized absence from duty, borrowing equipment – the Bolex – for his own private use and damaging it into the bargain, sending his privately-shot film to the processing labs at the firm’s expense… On the form he’d used the project number of Jacqui’s programme, without permission, and it had been spotted. Naturally.
Out in the corridor again, Bill Roberts shook his head disapprovingly. ‘You’re in the shit, Matt, right up to the eyeballs. We’ll give you what help we can, but don’t build your hopes.’
But then, Matt realized, your face had to fit in the union too before they’d call out the troops.
&nb
sp; In the Crown the bulky landlord exchanged a few words with him as he drew Matt’s pint, then returned to a private conversation at the far end of the bar. Matt raised the glass to his lips and supped the top off his drink before going across to their usual corner table. Angus hadn’t arrived yet.
Yes, Bill Roberts was right, he thought; he was in the shit. Somehow he’d have to tell Helen her ‘temping’ was now likely to be their sole steady income apart from the bit extra he earned from the worm skins – and Angus took a cut on that.
Of course there were the other TV companies, other outlets. He could press ahead with his documentary, try to place it elsewhere. What was it someone said? Getting the sack’s either an unmitigated disaster or the great opportunity you’ve always waited for; it’s up to you which way you take it. Maybe that was right.
In his pocket he still had the letter he’d removed from the file in Aubrey Morgan’s office. It was good TV material, so why hadn’t they followed it up? The man was a nut-case perhaps, but then so was Columbus, so was Galileo. He took it out and read it again. The writer was a certain Tegwyn Aneurin Rhys whose address was in Hampshire. He’d seen the news film of Matt’s face being chewed up and thought viewers might be interested in his own experience of worms. They bred in the open sea, he explained, probably in the deeper reaches of the ocean, arriving along the British coastline in microscopic form but getting larger as they moved up-river in search of food.
But there must be some reason, he argued, why naturalists of earlier ages had never come across them; either they were new to these parts, or to this planet. He inclined to this latter view.
Consequently, he’d made a search of the literature relating to unexplained phenomena and discovered several corroborated accounts of small, dark objects falling through the atmosphere and into the sea in the South Atlantic. Three different ships’ logs had independently recorded such sightings on dates between twelve and twenty-four months ahead of the first reports of the worms.
To his mind, the worms were either themselves intelligent life forms from outer space – in which case we should do our best to communicate with them – or they were harbingers of even more sinister creatures waiting to move in and take over.
‘Here before me, I see!’ Angus stood by the table and threw down his hat on a chair. ‘Don’t you TV people ever do any work? Fill you up?’
Matt stood up. ‘My shout,’ he said, and handed Angus the letter. ‘Read that while I’m getting them.’
‘Worms, is it? Haven’t seen any the past few days.’
Matt fetched Angus a pint, with another half for himself. Angus reached for the glass and half emptied it before setting it down on the table again.
‘Ay,’ he sighed with relief, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Those sewers stink so bad, you begin to taste it. When there’s not much rain it’s always like this. I wash my hair every night but I can never get the smell out.’
‘What about the letter?’
‘Ay, well, you know me. I only believe what my eyes can see an’ what my hands can touch. Though he’s right about one thing. Up till a couple o’ years ago, no one had ever heard of ’em.’
‘I’m going to see him,’ Matt said briefly. He folded the letter and returned it to his pocket. ‘Even if he’s wrong, he’s studied them. He may know something.’
Angus leaned forward eagerly, his eyes gleaming. ‘You’ve succeeded then? You old bastard, Matt! You’ve talked ’em into making that documentary after all.’
Matt shook his head. He picked up the half pint, held it steady for a moment, then tipped it into his pint glass without spilling a drop. ‘They’ve sacked me.’
Angus stared at him, disbelieving. ‘They can’t do that!’ he protested. ‘You?’
Matt explained. At length.
From time to time Angus nodded. He fetched two more pints, asked no questions, listened thoughtfully and, when Matt had finished, said: ‘Sod ’em.’
‘That’s the way it is.’
‘What’s the union say?’
‘On their side.’
Angus began to get up again. ‘A couple o’ scotches, Matt, that’s what we need. Sod the buggers.’
‘No, thanks,’ Matt stopped him. ‘I have to face Helen, so I’d better not drink any more. It’d only make matters worse.’
‘Ay.’
But there’s a bright side,’ Matt began to tell him, changing the subject; he’d always hated confiding his troubles to anyone, preferring to keep them to himself. ‘We’ve had a big order for skins, and that’s the real reason I wanted to see you. When can we go down into the sewers? If I could have regular hunting sessions, maybe once or twice a week—’
Angus interrupted him. ‘Ay, but I haven’t told you my news, have I?’
Matt waited for him to go on.
‘I don’t rightly know how to say this, not tonight, not after what you’ve just told me.’ He was rubbing his chin thoughtfully, reluctant to speak. ‘Ay, but it’s this. We can hunt some tomorrow, an’ maybe the day after, but not much longer, Matt.’
‘What’s gone wrong?’
‘They’re taking steps to eradicate all the worms. Don’t ask me how. We just had this chitty round as from Monday next there’ll be a team coming into the sewers wipin’ ’em out.’
Matt felt like someone’d just kicked him in the guts with a hobnailed boot, then stamped on his face for good measure. No job, no skins…
‘Because o’ you, Matt,’ Angus said.
‘How?’
‘This inquiry was set up when the worms first attacked you, remember? No, you wouldn’t. But it’s true – they wanted to know how dangerous they were, what should be done about it, that sort o’ thing. And they’ve decided to clean the sewers up.’
‘Months later,’ Matt objected.
‘Ay, well that’s the way these things always go. Take their time. An’ I don’t mind saying, Matt, I agree with ’em. I work down there day in, day out. The worms’ve not caused me any bother yet, but it’s only a matter o’ time – we both know that.’
The two boys sat on the river bank beneath the bridge and checked through the old woman’s handbag. She’d been asking for it, Ken giggled. Wally agreed with him. At her age she belonged in hospital by rights. Or the loony bin. Not wandering through the subway with tottering little steps and that silly grin on her face.
They’d blocked her way, saying nothing, their hands thrust into the slit pockets of their mock leather battle-tops. She’d looked scared and tried to go round them, but they’d dodged in front of her again. No need to hit her, not this one. When Ken took the bag she was so eager to let it go, they almost dropped it.
Not until they had dashed on through the subway, leaving her standing there, had she summoned up enough courage to protest. ‘You teenagers!’ she’d screamed after them. ‘Young hooligans! I’ll tell the police!’
The handbag contained keys, a pension book, a couple of hankies, sweets, ten pounds in notes and some loose change. They split the money between them and threw the rest of the stuff into the river; it was no use to anyone.
‘Hey, look at this!’ called Ken. ‘A snake!’
Wally went over to him. It lay in the grass absolutely still. ‘Think it’s dead?’
‘Course it’s dead. It’s a grass snake, that’s what it is.’
‘That colour?’ It was a sort of purple, tinged with green, and shining brightly like slime. ‘I’ve never seen a grass snake that colour.’
‘You’ve never seen one at all!’ Ken scoffed at him. ‘Come on, admit you’ve never seen one.’
‘On the telly. What you doing?’
‘Gonna tickle it.’ He’d picked up a piece of stick from the litter under the bridge and poked at the worm, which was about a foot long. ‘Hey, it’s alive! Look, Wally, it’s alive!’
Wally felt suddenly sick as he realized what it was. ‘It’s a sewer worm,’ he whispered. ‘Like the ones that chewed up that cameraman’s face. Ken, let’s go.
’
‘You scared or something?’ Ken sneered, bending over the worm and teasing it with the stick. ‘Let’s put it in that old dame’s handbag, then let it out in the pub.’
In his concentration he got closer to it, his mouth open, his tongue lolling near his lips. The worm moved so quickly, Wally didn’t really see it happen. One moment Ken was trying to coax it to curl around the stick; the next it had shot up at him and seized his tongue between its teeth.
He rolled back, groaning. Wally grabbed the creature’s tail and tried to tug it clear, but that only made its worse for Ken who let out a high-pitched, choked shriek.
‘Bite it!’ Wally yelled desperately. ‘Bite it, there’s no other way!’
Ken seemed to understand, for his jaws closed. For a moment nothing seemed to happen, but then the worm convulsed once … twice … and went limp. Ken opened his mouth and released the almost severed head; his tongue dropped out with it.
He stared at it horrified, the colour drained from his face, the blood pouring from between his lips. And he fainted.
Matt planned to tell Helen the moment he arrived home, wanting to get it over with right away. But he found her busy with a petition some neighbours were organizing against the long-distance lorries which parked in the streets overnight, waking everyone up at four o’ clock in the morning with their revving engines and slamming doors. She invited him to help, so he put off the difficult explanations and spent the evening with her, going from house to house gathering signatures.
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.