Slither

by John Halkin

  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 upris
ing. 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.

  13

  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.