The Way Of The Worm
Ramsey Campbell
First published in the UK in October 2018
This epub is version 1.2, released August 2019
for Ice
(Incheol Shin)
and Gin—
(Jungjin Lee)
our family encircles the world…
“What is humanity except an invocation? Man and his history shall invoke the powers beyond all space and time…”
Revelations of Glaaki, volume 7,
Of the Symbols the Universe Shows
(Matterhorn Press, 1863?)
For months I would waken in the depths of the night to find myself back in the house where I’d spent my childhood. Sometimes I lay in the dark, smelling a stale redolence of age while I tried to hear what had robbed me of sleep. I might catch the sound of a car receding slowly as a hearse—police on the prowl if not a taxi searching for an address. There could be a murmur of voices, lowered as though out of respect and sinking into the dark, or shouts more feral than the dogs they roused, which carried on barking long after the culprits were gone. Often I would hear a night bird and wonder if its song was meant to celebrate the night or fend it off. In time even birds hushed or flew beyond earshot, leaving the house as quiet as an absence of breath. Now I couldn’t ignore how empty the bed felt, as extravagantly wide as it had seemed in my early childhood. But it wasn’t that bed, and I wasn’t in that house. The impression had been just a dream to which I’d clung so as to postpone the return of awareness, and the sour smell of age was all mine.
Sometimes I tried staying where I was. Even if I had no chance of recapturing the dream, perhaps exhaustion might lend me unconsciousness. This very seldom worked, since the empty space beside me felt as though it was gaping within me as well, in my guts and my mind. Before long it would send me out of the room, desperate for some activity that could distract me from my thoughts and from the implacable dark, which I fancied had dimmed all the lights in the house, unless my aching eyes had. Now and then I tried to read, but the words might as well have been in an unknown language, and lay lifeless on the pages of whichever book or magazine I picked up. Films didn’t reach me either, though perhaps one reason why they seemed not just remote but muffled was that I kept the volume down for fear of waking neighbours. Besides, every disc I chose reminded me of Lesley: either she’d loved it or detested it or we’d never seen it together, and the idea of watching one that she wouldn’t have wanted to see felt far worse than disloyal. Thoughts like these beset me if I tried listening to music, while the headphones made me feel even more enclosed in my skull. Once I sought company in an old photograph album, but I’d looked at just a double page of Lesley with our infant son before I had to shut the album tight and my eyes as well. I blinked them into focus when I’d finished rubbing them, and then I stumbled upstairs to get dressed. I was going for a walk or at any rate a limp, and trying not to feel driven out of the house.
As I lowered the latch of the gate with a shaky clatter I saw weeds among Lesley’s flowers beside the path. The unsympathetic light of a streetlamp lay on the flowerbeds, an amber glare that put me in mind of a halfway state, as if the house and its garden were arrested between a dead stop and receiving a green signal to come to life. No doubt they felt this way because I did, trapped in a limbo of the mind.
The suburb was steeped in the light. It stained the broad white housefronts and lent houses of red brick a smouldering glow. It tinted white flowers orange in the front gardens and darkened all the colours of spring. Some of the streetlamps lit trees from beneath, transforming new leaves into paralysed flames. Even the shadows were tinged with the colour. The dilution made my shadow look less present than it should as it shrank back to me at each lamp, venturing forward again once the lamp was behind us. The sight left me feeling there was nowhere I wanted to be and yet desperate to be somewhere else.
Apart from my dull dogged footsteps, the suburb was as silent as a dream. Fog must have gathered on the river miles away, where I heard the lowing of a ship. A howling ambulance sped along the main road, and as the sound dwindled towards inaudibility a pair of cats set about performing a variation on the theme. I was trying to stay amused by the coincidence, despite immediately yearning to share it, when a house ahead flared white. An intruder had triggered a security light under the roof.
The cats weren’t responsible. Their yodelling contest was well at my back.
It rose to a confrontation and faded to a prolonged parting snarl as I approached the house. By the time I reached the spiky metal gate the night was still again. Or did I glimpse movement behind a car parked at the side of the house? Surely a trespasser had peered out at me before crouching further back.
I used both hands to lift the latch, muffling the hint of a squeak, and eased the gate open. I couldn’t help welcoming the excuse to investigate—welcoming any distraction at all. I might almost have been representing the Tremendous Three, a thought that felt like wishing away too much of my life. As I took a step onto the drive the intruder darted out of hiding to scramble over the fence beside the house, but I couldn’t identify it until I heard the dismal screech of a fox beyond the fence. The mystery was solved, and no longer any respite from my thoughts. I stepped back to close the gate and saw a police car creeping along the road.
I didn’t immediately know how to react, and was afraid my hesitation looked suspicious. I made do with a vague wave as I shut the gate. I was continuing on my way, trying not to appear hasty or betray that I was trying, when the police car coasted to a halt beside me. “Are you lost, sir?” the driver said.
She and her colleague looked wiry enough to have trained in gyms, though perhaps their artificial tan came from the streetamps. They were no older than my son, but I sensed both thin scrubbed faces had sternness at the ready if it was required in lieu of age. “Not at all,” I said, though without risking a laugh. “I live round here.”
“That’s your house, is it, sir?”
“No, I’m up the road. Just being a good neighbour.”
She glanced at the house, where every window was dark. “Rather late to be visiting.”
“Not that kind of visit. I thought I heard somebody up to no good, but it was a fox. I expect you both heard it yourselves.”
Now that I’d involved her companion he ducked his head to meet my eyes. “Can you tell us who lives there, sir?”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know. As I say, I was passing and made a mistake.” My head felt brittle, unequal to containing my emotions, and I was hardly aware of turning homewards. “I’m sure you can’t think I’m a suspicious character,” I said, “so if you’ll excuse me I’ll be off.”
“Would you mind saying where you’re going, sir?”
“Home. I’ve had my walk.”
“That isn’t the way you were going before,” the driver said.
“Precisely. I’m going home now, having walked enough.” I was afraid that saying the wrong words or even too many neutral ones would let my feelings spill forth. “Look, my name’s Dominic Sheldrake,” I said. “I taught at the university until I retired. You can certainly check if you want to. Now I’m just a pensioner out for a stroll.”
“It’s rather late for one of those.”
Her voice was hinting at sympathy, and I tried to fight off the effects by thinking she sounded too much like a worker in a care home. “I needed it, that’s all,” I said before I could prevent myself. “I thought it might help.”
“Help with what, sir?” To confirm she meant it kindly she added “If you’d like to say.”
“No.” I was hoping terseness would head off any more words, but felt ashamed of my response. “Lost her,” I mumbled, but holding my voice do
wn didn’t do the same for my emotions. “Lost my wife.”
No doubt my indistinctness was why her colleague said “Did you say your wife is missing, Mr Sheldrake?”
“No, she’s gone.” In a final bid to rein my words in I said “Gone for good.”
I held back from saying I hoped so. I couldn’t have told them what I dreaded otherwise. After a brief respectful silence the driver said “Would you like us to take you home?”
While I supposed this was an act of kindness, perhaps it was a way of checking up on me as well. I felt too exhausted to argue, and only just managed to keep my thanks unemotional as I climbed into the back of the car. A combined smell of aftershave and air freshener caught in my throat like a sob. The car swung back and forth across the road, and I wondered if anyone had seen me carried off like a suspect if not a criminal. We were proceeding at the speed of a funeral procession when the driver found me in the mirror. “Have you any family, Mr Sheldrake?”
“Right here.” The car halted at once, requiring me to say “No, I mean turn right.” Once she had she gazed at my reflection, and I found as few words as I could. “A son.”
“Will he live with you?”
Was she enquiring or suggesting that he should? “He’s married,” I said, which apparently wasn’t enough of an answer. “No,” I should have said in the first place.
“He’s there when you need him, though.”
Since it was easiest to say yes, I did, and was able to remain silent except for directing her to turn left, not in so many words. I felt as if the amber glow of the streetlamps were more solid than light, slowing the car to a submarine pace. “Right,” I said at last, only to have to clarify that we’d reached my house.
“Please see someone if you need to, Mr Sheldrake,” the driver said, and I remembered Lesley’s exhortation when I’d tried to persuade her of the truth about Safe To Sleep. The police car stayed at my gate until I let myself into the house. When I switched on the light in the hall it felt as dim as the gaps between the streetlamps. I sent the police away with a wave, and wondered if they thought they’d done me any good. In a sense they had. I shut the front door and tramped upstairs through the stagnant light for another dogged attempt to sleep. If I couldn’t do that, and despite the dormant storm of my emotions—a cloudburst waiting for release—perhaps at least I could begin to think ahead. The driver had reminded me who I ought to see and what I should have done long since.
Recently
1 - Insufficient Words
“We could have spent all that time together.”
“Say what happened, mum,” Toby said like a youngster asking for a favourite tale.
“We said we’d see each other at the Shakespeare. They were putting on two weeks of plays, and that night it was Macbeth.”
“Only they were showing films as well as putting plays on.”
“Let me tell it, Dominic.” When Lesley squeezed my hand I couldn’t tell whether she meant to be gentle or was using all her strength. “So it was Macbeth?” she said and closed her eyes as if she might be dreaming of the memory. “And I thought your father would have wanted me to see the film, so that’s where I waited for him.”
“And meanwhile dad was waiting at the theatre because he thought that was where you’d be.”
I saw Lesley do her best to grip our son’s hand, possibly to hush him. “Mobile phones weren’t around then,” she said, “and anyway we couldn’t have afforded them. So we never met that evening. Sometimes I dream we did.”
This made me realise “I’ve had a dream like that myself.”
“I’m glad,” Lesley said and clasped my hand a shade more firmly. “I hope it means we’re there together.”
Returning the pressure left me all the more aware how frail her hand was. Her high forehead bore a life’s worth of lines, and her rounded face had grown thinner, while her generous lips appeared to feel their weight whenever she produced a smile. I couldn’t avoid seeing how her eyes were faded, both their colour and the light in them. Somehow the childhood dent in her small slightly upturned nose reminded me most vividly of how she used to be, and my answer came out fierce to hide my feelings. “We’re together now.”
“I know, Dominic. All three of us.”
I met our son’s eyes across the hospital bed and saw acceptance. This was hardly the place to revive our differences, and I sent him a silent nod. I had to fend off the notion that by holding Lesley’s hands we were keeping her from leaving us. However much the heart attack might have taken out of her, we’d been assured that she was stable after the operation. All at once she looked more concerned than I was trying not to look. “Macy hasn’t seen me like this, has she?”
“Just Claudine has, mum. We didn’t think they’d want young children in the ward.”
“Tell Macy I’m getting better, won’t you? And when I am, don’t you think it would be lovely if we all went away together?”
“I’m sure it would. Aren’t you, dad?”
Lesley gave my hand a determined squeeze. “When we’re certain you’re up to it, Lesley,” I said.
Her eyes turned away to find Toby. “Do you remember the first time we took you abroad?”
“Disney World? Of course I do. The best ghost train ever and a whole lot more. I told them about it at school for weeks.”
I wished I weren’t reminded of other tales he’d told there. Lesley gave my hand a tug so faint it was close to imperceptible. “We’ll forget what happened afterwards,” she said.
I felt as though I’d spent decades in forgetting it and ignoring much more. Perhaps Lesley sensed my resistance, because she turned her gaze on me. “Just in case I’m not doing as well as we think, will you both make me a promise?”
“Don’t say that kind of thing, Lesley. Don’t think it either. It won’t help you get better.”
“You’re saying you won’t promise,”
“No, I’m saying we know you’ll be fine, because the surgeon told us.”
Though her gaze didn’t falter, her lips did, and I could only capitulate. “You haven’t said what you want,”
“Just be there for each other.”
For a disoriented moment I imagined she was echoing the vow I’d shared with Jim and Bobby, but she couldn’t know we had. “Of course we will,” I said.
“You as well, mum.”
“After I’ve gone, I mean.”
“Like dad says, don’t say that. It’s like wishing yourself away, and you aren’t going anywhere.”
I wanted to believe he meant this as unambiguously as he should. I was striving to hide my thoughts when Lesley said “And please forget that old obsession of yours, Dominic.”
“I think he’s come to terms with it by now,” Toby said.
I searched for a response I could safely make. “You could put it that way.”
I was afraid Lesley might realise how devious this was—I could see Toby did—but she said “Just be the family we should have been.”
“Then that has to include you as well,” I said.
“It will if you promise.”
“Then of course I will.”
“And I do,” Toby said.
Lesley gave our hands a final squeeze before resting hers together on the sheet, and I tried not to be reminded of the occasion of another promise—the last time I’d spoken to my father. Lesley closed her eyes, and I thought she’d fallen into a doze until she murmured “You never wrote a book, Dominic.”
“Neither of us did. You should, and put in everything you used to tell your students.”
Did she hear this? Her smile was so faint and fleeting that it could have been the product of a dream. I sat back from crouching towards the bed, and pain flared the length of my spine, impaling my hipbones as well. It had for years whenever I couldn’t avoid sitting forward, and I could only walk it off. “I’m going to have to move,” I said through my teeth before I managed to relax my jaw. “Won’t be long.”
Lesley gave no sign of
having heard. “We’ll be here,” Toby said.
I supposed he had his wife in mind. I hobbled painfully into the corridor to find her reading Roberta Parkin’s book The Jargon of Concern. In it Bobby argued that the fashion for defining vulnerability often worsened the conditions and created too many of them. I couldn’t help recalling that Claudine had met my friend at Safe To Sleep when I’d sent Bobby to investigate, and her having Bobby’s book seemed indefinably ominous. “How is that, Claudine?” I said.
“She knows people.” As Claudine raised her small face her habitual look of deceptively languid alertness gave way to sympathy. “How’s Lesley?” she said.
“I think she may be sleeping. Go in by all means. I’ll be a few minutes.”
A passing male nurse gave her slim long-legged figure an appreciative glance and then another. She made me feel like a decrepit soft toy stuffed too full, not to mention leached of colour and supplied with spots to compensate. My lopsided hobbling took me to Men, where the water from the tap proved to be as hot as a notice warned, after which a ferocious hand dryer crumpled my skin. Moments later my hands grew as sweaty as the rest of me. The hospital felt oppressively concerned to fend off a winter chill, and I limped to the entrance in search of relief.
I had to go a good deal further for fresh air. An ambulance was reciting its movements as it backed towards the hospital, emitting a sharp smell of diesel. Patients with cigarettes clustered near a drain so that they could drop butts through the grid, while other smokers flourished metal substitutes. A prodigious pink-faced man in a frayed white bathrobe barely large enough for him stood eating curried chips with a plywood fork out of a plastic carton, a meal his partner—a dumpy morose woman in a pink track suit—had presumably brought him. As I moved away from the invasive smell the ambulance fell silent, isolating the voice of a woman with her back to me at one corner of the hospital.
Nobody was near her except a girl well short of teenage. Given the woman’s angular gestures and many of her words, I took her to be suffering from Tourette’s. I was about to retreat when the girl stared at me, and the woman swung around, revealing that she was on a phone. Her broad flattish face was highlighted with makeup, which emphasised her scowl. “What the fuck you looking at?” she demanded.
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