The Way Of The Worm

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by Ramsey Campbell


  Our rites have helped us prepare for a future of which our voyages beyond the world are scarcely even intimations. However, we have been forced to realise that the church has brought that future closer, as it was designed to do. Perhaps the future in the form of an imperfect revelation produced the church. We do not want the world to be consumed as we have foreseen, and we hope no other members of the church have shared the vision, since to foresee is to invite. We do not want that world for ourselves or our loved ones, some of whom may be outside the church, or even for the mass of humanity. Since we have rendered it so imminent, it is the duty of us all to undermine its certainty if not to achieve its cancellation. It would have brought us all together in a form we should not attempt to imagine, and so our solution must be to become unalterably separate.

  Every member of the church has learned our journeys back and forth through time belong to that person and nobody else, but the eager future would have united us in its chosen form. Our retreat must be as simultaneous as we can make it, but it will part us for ever. In this final rite we must never use the secret name, but only our sense of ourselves. Let each of us go back to embrace the memory we most profoundly are, and fix ourselves there for eternity. We can achieve this because we are the chosen. Let us do it now for the world.

  Toby Sheldrake

  Claudine Sheldrake

  Macy Sheldrake

  I’d imagined that nothing could appal me any further—that my emotions were used up—until I saw Macy’s name at the foot of the message. It was on the site of the Church of The ETernal Three, where I’d never previously noticed how closely the emphasised letters resembled headless crosses. How much of the authorship had my granddaughter meant to claim? I could only hope that, as a child might, she’d wanted to be included, and her parents had agreed as a last indulgence. As I interpreted the message, they were forever separated now, secure in their solitary memories—at least, I hoped as fervently as they must have that they were secure. I had no idea what memory my granddaughter might have found to keep her safe. If it involved me, I would never know.

  She hadn’t been by any means the only child in the lifeless gathering at Starview Tower. Among the adults I’d seen Inigo Arnold, not to mention Farr and Black, both generations of them. I wondered how the police had dealt with their presence, which hadn’t been mentioned in the media. I’d reported the situation at the tower once I was able to speak at all coherently. The police had interrogated me like a suspect, despite Toby’s text on my phone. No doubt the final online statement helped exonerate me, and once they let me go I heard no more from them.

  The multitude of deaths at Starview Tower had been replicated in chapels of the Church of the Eternal Three around the world. In every case the inquests found no trace of poisoning or violence. Anthropologists cited the ability to wish oneself dead that still existed in some cultures, and some commentators suggested that the members of the Church of the Eternal Three had reverted to a primal state. The phrase disturbed me, and I didn’t want to examine why I hoped it wasn’t so. It was enough to know my son and his family were dead.

  I was almost alone at the joint funeral, where Macy’s little coffin was flanked by a pair of caskets twice the size. The only other mourner was Claudine’s mother Judith, looking depleted no less physically than mentally as she clambered out of her car into a wheelchair. I refrained from observing that we were outnumbered by our dead. The sight of all the empty pews inside the crematorium plainly distressed her, and I felt compelled to say “All their friends must have died with their church.”

  “Even Macy’s?” she protested with a hint of her old vigour.

  “We’d have to think so, wouldn’t we? Her parents must have chosen all her playmates. I suppose it makes a kind of sense.”

  Judith stared red-eyed at me. “If you see any sense in this, please share it with me.”

  “I only meant they met at Safe To Sleep, so they’d be used to having friends with the same whatever you would call it.”

  “What would you call it, Dominic?”

  “Beliefs. Experiences.” When her stare maintained its force I gave in to saying “Upbringing.”

  “I brought Claudine up to know her own mind.” As if she was making an allowance Judith said “We ought to have done more to guide them away from those people.”

  It required some restraint on my part to say only “I tried.”

  “Could I have been more help?”

  I saw no point in worsening her feelings, especially since she would be left alone with them. “I think the Nobles had their minds long before anyone else noticed. We would always have been too late.”

  We left the eulogies to the secular celebrant, a tall solemn woman in generalised robes. Her pause for silent recollection was preceded by a tape of Macy singing We Three Kings of Orient Are, her contribution to the amalgamated play of many faiths her school had staged last year. I was unable to glance across the aisle at Judith, where she was hunched next to her compacted wheelchair. While grief made me avoid her eyes, I was also wondering how Christian Noble would have interpreted the theme of the carol—three mages who’d acknowledged the birth of a new seer, perhaps. At the end of the ceremony the curtains glided shut to the sound of a Richard Strauss fanfare, the opening motif of Toby’s and Claudine’s favourite film ever since their childhood. No doubt the ending of the film, an interstellar voyage that led to transformation, had meant more to them than I cared to discuss with Judith.

  Afterwards I asked if she would like to go for a drink, but felt relieved when she declined. I suspected that we’d said all we should say to each other. I saw her to her car, but she refused to be assisted into it. I drove home to a house that felt as empty as I did—as I thought the funeral had been. At least this let me believe that Toby and his family were safe elsewhere, which ought to be as reassuring as the emptiness of Starview Tower. I had yet to realise how that emptiness invited visitation, unless the tower itself did.

  I found out days later. A portable radio was keeping me company in the bathroom while I took a shower that felt like yet another meaningless ritual.

  I had the local news on, mostly to catch the newsreader’s offences against language: grevious, heinious, on behalf of she and her husband… They brought back Lesley’s weary resignation at the linguistic standards of the latest student intake. Sometimes she’d thought usage was reverting to a state before it had been shaped by rules. I was trying to recall when she’d said this—I wanted to fix all my memories of her—when a news item made me turn off the shower to listen. A group of activists calling themselves Hearts Released had moved dozens of homeless people into Starview Tower.

  “Mustn’t,” I protested so fiercely that it left coherence behind. By the time I’d finished showering I was resolved to intervene, and as soon as I was dressed I hurried to my car. Was the car park beneath the tower still accessible? The prospect of descending into the subterranean dimness, if indeed it wasn’t wholly dark down there, didn’t appeal to me, and I parked near the ferry terminal. As I made for Starview Tower I saw the glass doors had acquired notices apparently signifying possession. The swollen top floor loomed over me, and I could have fancied that its shadow felt like an omen if not a hint of its lingering power. It seemed to darken the lobby as I read the handwritten posters taped to the doors, H♥RTS RELE♥SED ARE HERE and PROPERTY RECL♥IMED BY H♥RTS RELE♥SED. I was trying to decide what the inverted symbol suggested to me when a woman strode across the lobby to scrutinise me through the glass. “Help?” she said.

  She might have been offering aid or asking if I needed it, unless she wanted to learn whether I represented some. She was a small but brawny person in dungarees and work boots, with a squarish face topped by a grey practically hairless scalp. Her bare arms swarmed with tattoos of hearts, and she was gripping her hipbones with splayed stubby fingers. I’d heard an interviewee on the radio who sounded much like her, and so I risked saying “Denny Muldoon?”

  “Me.” As I
wondered how monosyllabic she might prove to be Denny Muldoon said “On your own?”

  While she could have thought I was seeking accommodation, I suspected she was checking if I meant to lead a raid. I gestured around me at the pavement occupied only by shadow. “Here by myself, yes. May I come in?”

  “Let us know a bit about you. What’s brought you here?”

  “Concern. My concern for your people.” I wished I didn’t need almost to shout to be heard through the glass. “I know you have opponents, but I’m not one of them,” I said. “Please believe me when I say this isn’t a good place.”

  An expansively bearded man in a business outfit—striped suit, equally frayed white shirt and tie—emerged from a lift and strode over. “It’s good for us,” he said.

  “Don’t you know what happened up there?”

  “Certainly we do,” Denny Muldoon said. “Hundreds of people wished themselves dead. We feel for every one of them. It’s government policy that’s driving people to suicide, and we’re dedicated to saving them.”

  “Not by housing them where there was a mass suicide.” Desperation raised my voice still further. “How do you think that could affect their minds?”

  “We feel wanted,” the man said, “for a change.”

  “By this lady and her friends, I realise that, but I’m certain there are other empty properties around town that could be opened up.”

  “We’re wanted by the Hearts, but not just them. By this place.”

  Perhaps it was a shadow on the glass that made his and Denny Muldoon’s eyes look unnaturally blank. “Is that honestly all it makes you feel?” I said.

  “You sound like you hope there’s worse,” Denny Muldoon said. “Just who are you anyway?”

  “My name’s Sheldrake.” I was seeing Toby’s vacant body next to his departed family as I said “My son died here.”

  “Then we’re genuinely sorry, but surely that’s shown you how desperate people can get. Why wouldn’t you want to support them all you can?”

  “Desperation didn’t make him do it, not the kind you mean. He led the whole thing. Didn’t you read what he posted online?”

  Denny Muldoon let go of her right hip to plant the hand on the door while she squinted more closely at me. “Did you say Sheldrake?”

  “That’s my son’s name and his family’s, and—”

  “Not him. Didn’t you blow a whistle on the people who used to run the church here?”

  “I did, and so did—”

  “We know, your friend Roberta Parkin. The woman who said every squatter should be housed in jail.”

  “Bobby said a lot of things. Some of what she said about this church led to her death. Believe me, she was as tough as her writing, but it didn’t save her. That ought to show you how much power the church had, and I promise you that hasn’t gone away.”

  As I regretted having characterised this as a promise the man said “Hope you will.”

  “That’s Michael’s choice,” Denny Muldoon said of him, “and it’ll be everyone’s.”

  “I’m trying to help,” I protested. “I want to make sure nobody here ends up like my son.”

  “You can help by leaving us alone. All you’re doing is disturbing our peace.”

  “What kind of peace can you find in there?” I pleaded, though it came out as a yell.

  “Seeing all the stars at night,” bearded Michael said. “Up top they’re everywhere you look. Some of us haven’t seen that many ever in our lives or all the patterns they make.”

  As I searched for an objection it might be worth putting into words, Denny Muldoon said “Now we’ve got better things to do than listen to you any more, Mr Sheldrake. Hang about there all you like but you won’t be getting in. We’ve kept worse than you out in our time.”

  “You ought to be afraid what you’re keeping in,” I shouted, but they were already making for the lifts, and didn’t turn. Once they were out of sight I tried walking at the doors in case the mechanism might acknowledge me, but all my lurches didn’t even earn a twitch. When I retreated at last I felt as if the shadow of the tower kept hold of me longer than it should. I was anxious to speak to someone about the situation, but not while I was so close. I took refuge in my car and drove home.

  I listened to the radio and looked online before making the call, but there were no updates about Starview Tower. At least I had a direct number, and soon I was saying “Can I speak to Inspector Deacon? It’s Dominic Sheldrake.”

  I’d begun to wonder how unwelcome my call was when a brisk voice said “Deacon.”

  “You’ll remember me, won’t you? You interviewed me about Starview Tower.”

  “That case is closed, Mr Sheldrake. I take it you’ve no fresh evidence.”

  “Not evidence exactly, but it’s starting up again. You’ll know about the people who’ve moved in.”

  “We do, but I don’t know what you mean by starting up.”

  “I’m saying there shouldn’t be anyone in there. It’s affecting them how you’d expect.”

  “How would that be, Mr Sheldrake?”

  “Affecting their minds. They’re already susceptible, so how couldn’t it? It made your colleagues take their own lives, you remember.”

  “Their beliefs did that, but it’s not a matter for discussion.”

  “Forgive me for intruding, but I could tell you were upset about them. Do you really want people breaking in where they died? I’d say at the very least it’s disrespectful.”

  “Maybe bringing new life there is what it needs.” Before I could start to argue, though in a sense her words struck me as unnervingly accurate, she said “In any case it isn’t up to us to judge. The situation is being monitored, and it will be dealt with as appropriate.”

  “It wasn’t when I was there less than an hour ago.”

  Her voice rediscovered briskness. “What were you doing there?”

  “Seeing for myself. Seeing what they’re up to where my son died.” Perhaps this sounded like a bid for sympathy if not for special consideration, because she said only “What did you see?”

  “Denny Muldoon and one of the people she thinks she’s taking care of. And I saw how they’re both under the spell of that place. They absolutely refused to accept anything was wrong, and that shows how much is.”

  “Mr Sheldrake…” Inspector Deacon hardly needed to add “I think maybe you’re as much affected by the place as anyone.”

  “How can you say that? Have you been to see yourself?”

  “Not yet.” With too little of a pause to let me speak she said “I appreciate you’re still concerned because of your son. You may like to know the eviction process has been started.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you that.”

  “They ought to destroy the whole place. Not Denny Muldoon and her people, whoever wants to be responsible. There’ve been cases where crime sites have been demolished, haven’t there? Even the rubble was taken away so nobody could steal any souvenirs.”

  “I hope you aren’t planning anything like that, Mr Sheldrake.”

  “I want nothing to do with it.” I was belatedly nervous of reminding her how the Nobles’ house had been destroyed, since I might still be a suspect. “I’m saying the authorities should,” I said. “Is there any chance you could let me know when the eviction goes ahead?”

  “You should follow the media reports.” In case this was insufficiently pointed she said “I’d advise staying away from the scene. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to obstruct proceedings or risk arrest.”

  I could have taken this as an excuse to stay well clear, and for a while I did. Over the next few days the radio reported that supporters of Hearts Released were picketing Starview Tower, opposing a police cordon that prevented access. Calls about the situation overwhelmed the lunch time phone-in show, some encouraging the council to send bailiffs in, owners of nearby businesses complaining that their trade had suffered, local poli
ticians blaming homelessness on the government, even unofficial tenants of the tower, who said they hadn’t slept so well since they could remember and who hoped to have more dreams of the sort that were visiting them. They fell short of describing those, and I preferred not to imagine them. Just the same, I felt someone should enquire into the nature of these dreams, and almost rang the station to suggest a reporter should.

  I managed to restrain myself from any kind of intervention until the morning when the bathroom radio reported clashes between protestors and police outside Starview Tower. What might violence at the building summon or arouse? I felt compelled to see the worst, and hurried out as soon as I was dressed. I believed I was acting on my instincts, but some influence must have dulled them. Otherwise they might have given me at least a hint that I was heading for the end I’d foreseen ever since my childhood.

  25 - The Elevation

  I was about to use my car when I locked it and headed for the gate. The police knew the registration number from the night the Nobles’ house had been destroyed, and I didn’t want them to confront me before I reached Starview Tower, let alone cut me off. Perhaps that was unlikely, in which case some instinct that couldn’t make itself plain had attempted to delay me. At the gate I thought of taking Lesley’s car, but using it for subterfuge felt unworthy of her memory, close to betrayal. I’d already involved her enough in deceit and untruth. On the bus into town I refrained from checking my phone for the latest news, instead gazing out at a sky so colourlessly nondescript it resembled a denial of its own existence. If I’d driven, might I have been in time to do any kind of good? I suspect I would always have been too late, and worse.

 

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