The Way Of The Worm

by Ramsey Campbell

  “I won’t have to. I can photograph them here.”

  His phone was in his hand before I had a chance to speak. I might have objected but couldn’t see the use, assuming all Noble’s ideas were already rooted in his head. The repeated whir of the electronic shutter sounded like the operation of a lengthy series of traps. By the time he finished, my computer screen had turned as black as Lesley’s, as though he’d leached it of information too. “Thanks again, dad,” he said.

  This was less welcome than ever, and drove me to say “I take it you won’t be bidding goodbye to the church.”

  His hesitation offered me a moment of hope, but his answer bemused me. “I’m sorry for saying you’d got what you wanted.”

  “That’s certainly no reason to apologise. It’s true as far as it goes.”

  “Dad.” He backed up the sad syllable by adding “Now Christian and his family aren’t there, we’re in charge at Starview Tower.”

  My throat grew so dry it nearly stopped me asking “Who is?”

  “Claudine and me.”

  At least Macy wasn’t involved, then. Toby and his family hadn’t quite replaced the Noble trio. Nevertheless I would much rather not have had to ask “What are you doing there?”

  “Running the sessions. There’s a future we must see.” Even more evangelically he said “Now we can share this too.”

  He was flourishing his phone, which displayed the last entry in the journal—the infant Toph’s unfinished observation—but Toby had reminded me how my granddaughter had assisted at my initiation into the Church of the Eternal Three. “Not with Macy,” I pleaded.

  A pause suggested he was pondering how to respond. “Not till it’s time,” he said.

  “And when is that supposed to be?”

  “You ought to be past seeing it in those terms, dad. Try and think more of the worm.” As though its absence had just struck him he said “What have you done with your icon?”

  I felt too exhausted to tell him the truth. “I’m not using it any more.”

  “You’ve reached that stage. Well, good.” As I let him believe whatever he’d assumed he said “I wish we could bring you back to the church. We will if we can make the members understand you’ve done no real harm. Meanwhile at least the teachings are in your head.”

  I didn’t trust myself to answer. His grotesque positiveness seemed even more unnervingly inappropriate when he said “We’ll see you for Sunday lunch.” It felt like a parody of domesticity if not a desperate attempt to pretend everything was somehow normal. I watched him back his car out of the drive, and as I turned away he flashed his headlights as a farewell. A dim crouched shape swelled up in an unseasonable patch of gloom beside the stairs—the shadow of the vase on the hall table. The car swung backwards onto the road, still sending me its headlamp beams until Toby switched them off, and the dark malformed shape appeared to scurry upstairs on an entirely unreasonable number of limbs. Those would be the shadows of flowers in the vase, I thought, and immediately realised the vase had been empty for weeks. I started forward to call Toby, but he’d gone. I had to force myself to return to the house and search it, and even once I established I was alone I felt fearfully certain this was a pretence.

  17 - A Family Question

  I’m Toby Sheldrake. My wife and I are the leaders of the Church of the Eternal Three for Merseyside and the Midlands. My father is Dominic Sheldrake, and I want to tell you about him. He first met Christian Le Bon when he, my father, wasn’t even in his teens, and I believe my father has been influenced by him ever since. Christian shared some of his knowledge with the boys he taught at school, and my father was among them. When Christian paid a visit to Bonchamp in France, where Gahariet Le Bon raised the original church, my father and his friend James Bailey were with him. When Christian’s own father stole his son’s testimony and hid the book at the school, my father rescued it and made a copy for himself. Decades later Christian and his daughter set up Safe To Sleep, the first of their attempts to prepare the faithful for the changes the world will see. My father entered me there as a child and participated in the ritual himself. My wife’s and my involvement in Safe To Sleep led to our membership in the Church of the Eternal Three, which Christopher Le Bon encouraged us to join. My father took part in our rite, and now I believe he is among the chosen.

  I want everyone to understand that he was indoctrinated into Catholicism as a child. I’m told this religion is among the hardest to shake off, even when you think you have. Because of this my father has struggled to resist Christian Le Bon’s enlightenment throughout most of his life. His struggle often took the form of opposition, and made him try to catch Christian and his family out whenever he could. This must be why he recorded their conversation that led to the recent court case and ultimately to their death, though he didn’t bring the prosecution himself. He passed the information to a friend connected with the police (James Bailey) and their friend Roberta Parkin, who wrote about it online. I am absolutely certain that my father didn’t intend their death, which in any case is anything but final. I believe Christian’s influence over him is far greater than he can acknowledge yet, but the world should be as grateful to my father as I am. He is the reason I can post Christian’s entire journal online now. He has protected it all these years, and perhaps Christian knew he would and gave the custody his blessing. I believe it shows us how the future can reach back and consolidate itself. Without my father all these thoughts of Christian’s might be lost to us, and I hope that is how he will be remembered. However misguided my father may have been at times, I’m confident that he will come to see the truth he has brought to the world.

  I stared once again at my own teenage handwriting, hundreds of pages of which were online. I still hadn’t called Toby about it, not least because I wanted to speak to him face to face. By the time I’d seen what he’d done it would have been too late to suppress the journal, which people were bound to have copied by then. Now I saw that any number said they had. Toby’s action hadn’t saved me from the loathing I’d attracted, though some commentators had posted in my defence, and I saw just as much hatred for Bobby and now Jim. I couldn’t let myself be troubled by the notion that Christian Noble had influenced me more than I’d known; I was too anxious to establish how much he still influenced my son. Once I’d had enough of the vituperation on the screen I gazed out of the window, which showed me no trace of a shadow in the corner of the garden. I felt compelled to watch one grow as the sun edged behind the apple tree, but the shadow was plainly cast by branches, and looked very little like the one I’d previously seen there. I was peering at it hard enough to make my eyes sting when I realised I was going to be late for Claudine’s Sunday lunch.

  As I drove through the suburb, shadows of branches scurried over the car and groped through the windows. Afterimages made glimpses of them appear to follow me onto the main road. I felt as if they might be loitering just beyond the edge of my vision when I arrived at the house. I was parking between Toby’s car and Claudine’s, having felt pitifully heartened to see that my granddaughter was enough of a child to have numbered the stone flags for hopscotch, when she hauled the front door open. “Grandad,” she cried and ran to me. “We need you.”

  I was dismayed to feel reluctant to ask “What for?”

  “So we’re all together.”

  I would very much have liked to find her answer reassuring. She seized my hand in both of hers and ushered if not urged me into the house. Toby was heading for the dining-room with a bottle of Merlot while Claudine followed with a rack of lamb on a platter. “Here’s the man of the hour,” she said.

  “Only just if even that. Sorry if I’m late.”

  “No,” Claudine said with a faint but indulgent smile. “I’m saying you’re in everybody’s thoughts.”

  “Good ones, I hope.” When the smile pinched inwards I said “What are yours?”

  “I think Toby made your case. I’m not arguing with him.”

  The tabl
e was already laid, and we all sat down. Macy climbed onto her chair quite like a monkey—at least, not at all like a snake. Uncomfortably conscious of her, I searched for questions I could ask while she was there. “What do the rest of your church think?”

  “Some are starting to believe you were meant to be part of us,” Toby said.

  “Some are saying,” Claudine said, “you may always have been.”

  “Maybe that’s why you were born, grandad.”

  I didn’t know if I was more unnerved by the idea or by her having thought it. As Toby and Claudine loaded plates my son said “You mightn’t be too welcome there just yet, dad. Give them time and I think the rest of them may see the light.”

  “But you know you’re still welcome here,” Claudine said.

  “Thanks for standing by me.” To Toby I said “Thank you for defending me, but I wish you hadn’t published Noble’s thoughts.”

  “The world has to embrace the truth, dad. It’s time it came back.”

  “And nobody would have believed Toby about you otherwise, Dominic.”

  “Dad’s keeping you safe, grandad.” Macy looked up from cutting her portion of lamb into delicate segments. “Like the worm does,” she said.

  She’d roused a question I would have given a great deal not to have to ask. I couldn’t voice it in her hearing, and did my best to keep the conversation neutral, but every mouthful felt like a postponement of my unhappy preoccupations. We’d reached the dessert, a gooseberry turnover so tart I had to restrain my mouth from wincing visibly, when Macy said “Grandad, why don’t you come and live with us?”

  I swallowed a harsh half-chewed spoonful so fast that it threatened to turn my throat sour. “Whatever made you think of that, Macy?”

  “I think your house must be sad with only you in.”

  “Perhaps there isn’t only me.” This sounded inadvertently ominous, and I rushed to add “Perhaps grandma’s still with me.”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “I’ve seen nobody.” Macy’s eagerness disconcerted me, however sympathetic it was. “I mean she’s here,” I said, thumping my breast so hard it throbbed.

  Macy sucked her lower lip between her teeth as if I’d unintentionally conveyed pain, and Claudine said “Don’t hurt yourself, Dominic.”

  “I’m not that ramshackle yet.” Just as much for Macy’s benefit I tapped my forehead twice. “And she’s in here,” I said.

  “Then you could bring her with you, grandad.”

  “Honestly, I still like living in my own house, and you might get tired of seeing me so often.”

  “We wouldn’t, would we?” When her parents shook their heads Macy said “We want you to come back and follow the worm.”

  Her insistence was making me uneasy. “There isn’t room, Macy, I said.

  “There is. There’s a bedroom with nobody in.”

  “Nothing like enough room for all the things I want to keep. Besides, if anybody came to visit for a while you’d need that room.”

  “Then you could sleep in mine. You could come in my bed.”

  “Macy, you should never say that to a grown-up. In fact, you shouldn’t say it to anyone at your age or until you’re a lot older.” She’d prompted me to ask the question I was struggling not to utter, and I strove to tone it down. “You haven’t ever,” I said, “have you?”

  “Just you, grandad.”

  “You’re very kind, but don’t be upset, the answer’s a definite no. And you mustn’t let anything like that ever happen. Tell someone if it even seems it might. Tell me if you like.”

  Although I wasn’t looking at her parents, I sensed their gaze. “Grandad,” Macy said, sounding smaller than usual, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “We’ll speak about it later, Macy,” Claudine said. “Have you had all you want? Play in the garden, then, while the grownups talk.”

  “Will grandad be corning to live with us?”

  “We’ll talk about that too,” Toby said. “Do as your mother tells you.” Neither he nor Claudine spoke while Macy tramped out like a mime of dissatisfaction. Once we heard sandals slapping flagstones while her head bobbed up and down beyond the window, Claudine said “What exactly did you mean by all that, Dominic?”

  “Do I really need to put it into words?” In more than one way I very much hoped to have no reason. “I should think we’re all concerned these days,” I said.

  “There was no need to make so much of it. What’s on your mind?”

  “Don’t you think someone at your church might be tempted to follow the Nobles’ example?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t keep using that name, and I don’t know what you mean by tempted. We’ve always followed them.”

  “I’m talking about their relationship.”

  “They were special, Dominic.”

  Was she justifying Christian and his family or expressing admiration? “They haven’t set a trend,” I said.

  “We’ve no reason to think they have in that sense. What they did was for the church.”

  “How can it have been? If you’re going to defend it like that—”

  “They had to become one for us. The one that’s three and more than three. Maybe they had to die to become truly one for everyone.”

  However disturbing I found this, it seemed unrelated to my immediate fears, and I turned to my son. “Just what does taking over from the, from Christian and the rest of them entail?”

  “I told you, dad, guiding the voyages. Now we have his writings I’ll be reading from them and discussing them.”

  “We’re giving spiritual guidance,” Claudine said.

  Even if I couldn’t feign approval, perhaps I shouldn’t have betrayed skepticism. It provoked Claudine to say “Just what are you trying to find out, Dominic?”

  In a bid to trust what I was desperate to believe was true I said “I think I’ve had my answer.”

  “You mean you hope you have. What haven’t you been saying?”

  I made my words as neutral as I could. “How is Macy going to be involved?”

  “She likes helping people start their voyage,” Toby said. “You saw she did.”

  “That isn’t what Dominic means, is it, Dominic?”

  When she stared at me without blinking, Toby joined in. I glanced towards the window as Macy’s head appeared, but their gaze remained relentlessly unchanged. “She’ll never be involved the way Tina Noble was,” I said.

  “Are you asking us that, Dominic?”

  “I wish I didn’t have to, but can you understand why I am?”

  “We understand you.” Claudine’s blink wiped all expression from her eyes. “The answer is no,” she said, “but I’m glad you spoke up. I won’t have thoughts like that in my house.”

  “There’s no need for me to have them, is there, Toby?”

  “I should say not, and if there’s anything else you’re trying not to think—”

  “No,” Claudine said and shook the table with a slap to which her wedding ring added a clank. “I mean I won’t have anyone who thought them.”

  “Claude, don’t you think that’s going a bit—”

  “I don’t, no. Dominic, you’re no longer welcome here.”

  “Claude, he’s my father.”

  “Yes, a father who could suggest that sort of thing about his own son.”

  She hadn’t looked away from me, and her eyes might as well have been dead. “I’ll go,” I said and rose to my feet with a pretence of steadiness, gripping the back of the chair. “I don’t want to cause further trouble.”

  “Yes,” Claudine said, “you’ve made quite enough for yourself.”

  She remained seated while Toby followed me into the hall. “Why in the name of I don’t know what did you have to ask that?” he murmured fiercely enough to sprinkle my face.

  “I wish I hadn’t,” I muttered for him to take however he would.

  “I’ll talk to Claude after Macy’s in bed,” he told me lower still.

&
nbsp; Macy’s hopping faltered as he opened the front door. “Grandad, are you going?”

  “He has to,” Toby said. “Something’s taken him away.”

  Macy scampered to deliver a hug sufficiently fierce to be trying to arrest me. “Come earlier next week, grandad, and I’ll read you a story I wrote about stars.”

  As Toby opened his mouth Claudine marched into the hall. “Say goodbye quickly,” she called.

  “Goodbye quickly,” Macy said, but her grin turned uncertain when I didn’t echo her joke. She let go of me with some reluctance, and I retreated to my car. As I drove into the road she sent me a wave from the doorway of the house. Each of her parents was resting a hand on one of her shoulders, and I came close to praying that they could be as ordinary a family as they looked. Once they were out of sight I felt as though I no longer had a family, and afraid to wonder how much the Nobles were lingering in the world.

  18 - A Revenge

  I could still rescue Toby. I could halt the bus. As it reached the stretch of road where I was waiting I flashed the headlights. The bus began to lose speed, and I glanced in the mirror to confirm that the road behind me was clear. I was about to turn off the engine and flag the bus down when the cold gelatinous hand closed over my face. It found my eyes, and the substance of the fingers slithered into them, groping like masses of thin scrawny worms for my brain. At once I was blinded, but I felt the car jerk forward as I inadvertently tramped on the accelerator. Now I was additionally terrified that the windscreen would shatter into my face as soon as the car met an obstacle, and in a moment I heard glass smash.

  It wasn’t so close to me. As I tried to determine how distant it was I saw the Nobles sink into the fire they’d become, their faces united in crying an ancient name. I hadn’t heard their windows break just now, an insight that brought me back to myself, though only to confusion. I was slumped at my desk, resting my cheek on my forearm that lay the length of the computer keyboard. Presumably the burden had made the keys produce groups of symbols on the screen, which appeared to be displaying paragraphs in an unknown language. Pushing myself upright must have deleted them, because the screen turned as blank as a night without stars, but I was concerned to grasp the sequence of events. Had I been remembering my crash before I’d heard glass actually break? Once I managed to recall that the sound had seemed to come from the front of the house, I levered myself shakily off the chair as it pivoted back and forth.