The Way Of The Worm

by Ramsey Campbell

  While I searched for a live feed from the local police force I came close to praying, but prayer wouldn’t have worked unless it could turn time back. All too soon I read Liverpool to Euston train in crash and a warning of delays on the road I was following. I dropped the phone on the seat and sent the car forward, barely slowing at bends, however sharp. At least no traffic was approaching in the opposite direction, but I was afraid to see why. Keeping the car out of the ditch occupied most of my mind, so that I wasn’t overwhelmed with dread until I came in sight of the train.

  A carriage blocked a level crossing, the nearside barrier of which lay splintered beside the line. Ambulances and police cars were parked on both sides of the road, throbbing with lights like heartbeats rendered visible. About a dozen spectators had gathered on a pedestrian bridge above the track. As I parked behind the nearest police vehicle, two attendants with a stretcher marched around the barrier at a pace too reminiscent of a funeral. The contents of the stretcher were covered with a sheet from head to foot. I was both desperate and terrified to learn who they were carrying, but by the time I came abreast of the ambulance they had shut the doors, and the driver was turning onto the road. I found I preferred to hope rather than know—surely I’d no reason to think what I feared—and told myself I oughtn’t to delay them. Instead I made for the bridge.

  I was halfway up the steps when I faltered, clutching at the clinically chilly handrail. The train had hit a car on the crossing and dragged it for hundreds of yards. The wreckage was partly upturned, propped against the driver’s cab like an improvised memorial. The car was as red as the stain on the smashed window of the buckled door. By squinting hard enough to send an ache into my eyes I managed to distinguish the registration number, the last three characters of which were TOT. I’d once told Jim that it sounded like the emblem of an infant version of our childhood gang. The wreck was his car.

  I might have been too appalled to move if I hadn’t thought of Bobby. As I groped for the phone I’d shoved in my pocket, a hefty bearded man wearing an ensemble that included shorts and muddy hiking boots said “He never had a chance.”

  Though I was almost too distressed to speak, this provoked me to demand “Did you see what happened?”

  “We saw it all,” the man’s companion said.

  She was attired and muscled much like him. Their vitality felt disrespectful to my friend, the opposite of Jim’s state. I scrambled up the steps onto the bridge. “What did you see?”

  “We only came up here to watch the trains,” the woman said as if she was defending the couple against an accusation I hadn’t meant to make. “The barriers were closed when he got to them but he didn’t even start to slow down.”

  “We think he was having some kind of a fit.”

  “You’d have thought he was fighting with someone. He took his hands right off the wheel.”

  “Fighting with himself,” the man said. “He was positively clawing at his face.”

  I had no doubts about the nature of the adversary they’d failed to see. My solitary pitiful hope was that the tragedy could mean Bobby had been left alone for now. I fumbled my phone out and brought up her number. I very much wanted her phone to start ringing within earshot, but heard only its simulated bell on mine. It continued to shrill while my chest grew painful with holding a breath. At last Bobby said “Dom, I told you not to phone.”

  She sounded as breathless as I felt, and far too distant. “Where are you?”

  I pleaded.

  “Not on the train.” Before I could respond she said “It crashed. I wasn’t hurt much. Some people were. I had to get off.”

  “Why couldn’t you have waited? I’m there now.”

  “It was there as well. It, the Nobles, them. It was dancing on the people who were injured worst. I think it was waiting for them to die, hoping they would.” She took a breath so as to add “I tried to stop it but people drove me away instead.”

  I hoped Bobby had left it behind, although what would this mean for victims of the crash? As I saw some of them being carried to the ambulances I said “So where are you exactly?”

  “Dom, I don’t want you to find me. That’s just more likely to attract it to us. Tell Jim that too.”

  This silenced me, and I hadn’t thought how much to say when Bobby said “Maybe it’s best if we all stay apart for a while. If it’s not we can all get back together.”

  “Bobby—”

  “And we’ll always, you remember our promise. Tell Jim I’ve always loved you both,” she said and was gone.

  I might have tried to call her back, but knew she wouldn’t answer. In desperation I asked the hikers “Did you see anyone leave the train?”

  “An old lady did,” the woman said.

  “She went off at quite a clip. Here’s hoping we’re as spry at her age.”

  “Which way?” I begged before the man had finished.

  Both of them stared, having apparently found me rude. “The way you came,” the woman said, pointing past my car. “Why, there she is.”

  I swung around, praying without words that Bobby had returned. At first I saw nobody at all in the empty landscape, not on the road or in the surrounding fields. I had to squint before I located a figure in the middle of a meadow, so distant that I couldn’t judge the gender or whether they were fleeing. “Is that who you mean?” I demanded.

  “We can’t see anybody else,” the man said, “can you?” Was a wind disturbing a patch of grass in a field beside the meadow? I couldn’t linger to be sure, I clattered down the steps two at a time as my ankles flared with pain, and limped to my car as fast as they would let me.

  By now traffic was arriving at the scene of the crash only to turn back, and I had to wait for altogether too many seconds before I could move my own car.

  I overtook traffic wherever it was safe to do so, and sometimes where it nearly wasn’t. I was growing increasingly concerned about the activity I’d glimpsed in the field by the meadow. At least the road I was following should take me to Bobby, however indirectly, but I wished the hedges wouldn’t block my view. Infrequent gaps framed placid views worthy of a photograph, but Bobby wasn’t to be seen. She was at least half a mile away when the road climbed a humped bridge, and I saw her.

  She’d reached a path across a field, and was nearly abreast of a copse, beyond which a bridge led across a river. This wasn’t all I saw, and I seemed to feel my innards wither. A shape had leapt out of the grass at her back and swarmed up a tree to crouch among the branches. Was Bobby determined to ignore it, or had it made too little noise for her to notice? “Bobby,” I yelled, and swerved off the bridge onto the verge before dashing across the road.

  Perhaps she hadn’t heard me either. Her progress looked as resolute as ever—the dogged flight of a tiny figure beneath an irrelevantly sunlit sky. I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted her name as loud as I could, but she didn’t turn. She was past the trees now, and I saw the shape run across the treetops as lightly as a spider and thrust objects towards her that I was all too sure were heads on necks. I was terrified to see it leap on her, and almost frozen by the prospect. I tried a last shout that left my throat raw, and when it had no visible effect I sprinted back to the car.

  The road grew more twisted, and the hedges cut my view off I had no idea where Bobby was when I heard a cry. Although the landscape rendered it microscopic, this seemed to concentrate its terror, and it was dismayingly brief. I trod on the accelerator and tore around the bends, hoping I wouldn’t encounter oncoming traffic. I hadn’t by the time the trees near the river came in sight. I could see nothing among them, but this brought me no reassurance. I drove across a bridge that spanned the river to park askew on a swampy verge before floundering out of the car.

  A shape was prancing with all its limbs on a body that lay face down in the river. It might have been performing a rite or expressing its glee if not both. As I scrambled down a grassy slope to the riverbank, the dancing monstrosity turned all its faces
to me. The eyes and mouths widened in a cluster of simultaneous grins that conveyed recognition and a promise I didn’t want to begin to imagine, and then it sprang across the river.

  In a moment it was lost among the tangled shadows of the trees. I had no idea when it vanished, and I hardly cared. I’d waded into the river to haul Bobby onto the bank. When I turned her face upwards her chin jutted up like a final gesture of defiance, and I saw her eyes were open. They weren’t seeing me, and resembled pools of stagnant water. I did what I could, leaning frantically on her chest to expel some of the river from her lungs. I was ashamed to reflect that my adolescent self might have welcomed even this opportunity to touch her breasts. When at last I ran out of breath I still hadn’t restored hers, and knew I never would. I closed her eyes and kissed her forehead, and then I phoned the emergency services, even though this was no longer an emergency. Once we were alone again I felt compelled to talk. “We did our best to look after one another, didn’t we,” I said and found I could no longer speak.

  22 - The Third Call

  The police arrived while the attendants were carrying Bobby’s shrouded body to the ambulance. The officer who joined me on the riverbank was a middle-aged heavy-set fellow with bristling reddish hair and eyebrows that resembled generous samples of the same. His broad ruddy face might have belonged to the sort of policeman who once gave rise to comic songs, but he scrutinised me so thoroughly I thought I’d been recognised. I had, though not in the way I’d suspected. “Weren’t you at the crash?” he said.

  “I was on the bridge.”

  “That’s where I saw you.” Confirming this appeared to turn him more official. “What are you doing here, sir?” he said.

  I hadn’t many words I could risk uttering. “She was my friend,” I tried saying. “Bobby Parkin.”

  With a hint of a tone I took for sympathy the policeman said “What can you tell me about her?”

  “She was a writer. Books and journalism. Online too. You may have heard of her,” I added, not unlike a challenge.

  “Was she involved in a court case recently?”

  “She was. The Le Bon incest case.” Out of loyalty I said “I was as well.”

  He paused long enough to let me wonder why. “What can you tell me about the situation, Mr…”

  “Sheldrake. Dominic Sheldrake.” This was easier to say than “She exposed them but too many people supported them. Maybe she shouldn’t have bothered.”

  This time his pause felt heavier. “This situation, Mr Sheldrake.”

  “She was,” I said with increasing difficulty, “drowned.”

  “Were you a witness?”

  “Not quite.” My mouth almost got in the way of admitting “I was too late.”

  “So you’ve no idea how it happened.”

  I’d managed to invent a version of events to present to the world. “I have to think she was so upset by the crash she wasn’t taking care. I ought to say she was on the train.”

  “Don’t you think that’s rather an extreme reaction? Nobody else ran away.”

  “She wasn’t responsible, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  I might have confessed my own responsibility if that could have helped, but I’d only antagonised him. “I’m asking you why you think your friend would have behaved liked that,” he said.

  Perhaps the incessantly unfurling patterns of the river had distracted me, since I answered without thinking. “Another friend of ours was involved in the crash.”

  The policeman’s scrutiny was growing keener. “Who was that, Mr Sheldrake?”

  “His name was Jim Bailey.” My mouth had turned unwieldy again, so that I had to make quite an effort to say “It was his car.”

  “His car that caused the crash.” When I nodded, though it felt like trying to dislodge the truth, the policeman said “And you were at the scene as well. Can you explain why you all were?”

  My answer felt unfair to Bobby, but how could I tell the truth? I almost wished my questioner knew as much about the Nobles as other members of the police force did. “She was upset before the crash,” I said.

  “Please go on.”

  “She’d been receiving threats online ever since she exposed Christian Noble and his family, and the way the court case went didn't help. There were threats to Jim and me as well. Bobby came to Liverpool to discuss what we could do. Jim used to be in the police and his sons still are, and he thought the threats wouldn’t lead to anything.” I was ashamed to feel so fluent in all this partial truth. “Bobby seemed happy with that,” I said, restraining a convulsion of my mouth. “But then she contacted us on her way home and obviously wasn’t, and we all arranged to meet at Crewe. Instead, well, you’ve seen.”

  “You say your other friend was with the police. What do you think could have caused an accident like that?”

  “I wasn’t there. I couldn’t say.” When the policeman’s gaze didn’t waver I said “Someone on the bridge told me they thought Jim was having a fit. I’d say that sounds like a stroke.”

  I was hoping this would divert the policeman to finding the other witnesses, but he said “Did the lady contact you on the phone you used to call us?”

  “She did, yes.”

  “Did she phone or text?”

  “She sent a text. She was a writer to the end.”

  I’d almost finished speaking when I realised how I’d trapped myself. “May I see?” the policeman said.

  I was unable to recall Bobby’s exact words, and was tempted to say I’d erased them by mistake or even by design. I had no chance to delete them unobserved by the policeman, and could only hand him the phone. “You need to unlock it, sir,” he said.

  I impressed it with my fingerprint, feeling even more suspected because of the entirely pointless delay, and passed it back to him. While he examined the images, the relentless liquid-blather of the river reminded me of its part in Bobby’s death. At last he said “What did she mean, it’s on the train?”

  “She was talking about her state of mind, do you suppose?” When he didn’t reject the suggestion I said “Her depression that was getting worse.”

  He gazed at the phone and then at me before returning it. “Have you some identification, Mr Sheldrake?”

  I displayed my driving licence on the screen for him to copy the details. Once he’d taken my phone number he said “We may be in touch with you again.”

  “Will you be after the hikers I spoke to on the bridge?”

  “We’ve already interviewed them and the other witnesses. You were the only one who made himself scarce.”

  “That’s because they told me they’d seen Bobby run. I wish to God I’d been quicker.”

  “Unless God meant you not to be.”

  Perhaps this was his notion of comfort; his face suggested as much. When I was unable to respond he climbed the grassy slope to the road and drove away. I couldn’t linger by the river, even if it had offered any sense of peace rather than a mindless babble that sounded far too gleeful. Although I’d dealt with the police, I still had tasks to finish.

  I took my time over driving home, not least because I felt dangerously distracted. It was dusk when I reached the house, and imminent darkness seemed to linger within even once I switched the lights on. The mobile phone numbers I’d stored on my phone were redundant now, and I found my old address book in my desk, where it was keeping company with my adolescent transcript of Christian Noble’s journal. I felt unheroic for starting with the call that might give me less trouble. I didn’t know who I would prefer to answer, and I hadn’t been able to prepare what to say by the time the bell was interrupted. “Dominic.”

  I didn’t want to revive our feeble inadvertent comedy routine.

  “Sheldrake,” I said.

  “Dominic. Dad isn’t here just now.” His pause let me imagine how his expression might have changed. “I thought he was meeting you and your friend,” Dominic Bailey said.

  “He did, and then we, then we parted.” I s
truggled not to hesitate too long before saying “Dominic, he’s been in a car crash.”

  “That doesn’t sound like him. Are you absolutely sure?”

  “They’re saying he had a stroke at the wheel.” I detested myself for being so verbally skilful and for delaying what I had to say. “Dominic, forgive me,” I said, “but I’m afraid it was fatal.”

  “What was?” Even more skeptically he said “A stroke?”

  “The accident it caused. He was hit by a train.”

  “I thought you said it was a car crash.”

  “The car was hit. Please believe me. I give you my word I’m not making this up.”

  “Dad said you never stopped telling stories.” Still without changing his tone Dominic said “Where is this meant to have happened?”

  “Near Crewe. We—”

  “That makes no sense. He was meeting you two in town.”

  “As I say, we met.” I felt desperate and close to incompetent with language. “Then Bobby called us from her train home,” I said. “We were worried about her and went to find her, but Jim went through a barrier and ended up on the line.”

  “How can you say all this? Were you there?”

  “I was, only too late. I swear what I’m telling you is true. You can check with the police.”

  “Just hold on.” This might have prefaced a further objection, but it brought a silence that I couldn’t understand until Dominic said “He isn’t answering his mobile.”

  “He won’t, Dominic. I’m dreadfully sorry.” With some notion of confirming the situation in his mind I said “Bobby’s gone as well.”

  “You’ll excuse me if I don’t care much about that.” As I sensed his disbelief was wavering, a mobile phone rang close to him. “Hello?” he said like a hope if not a prayer, and then “Who is this?”

  His voice moved away, but though I couldn’t make out his words I guessed who had called him—the police who had Jim’s phone. “Thank you,” he said eventually as if the phrase was drained of meaning, and came back to me, though not at once. “So you weren’t making it up.”