The Way Of The Worm

by Ramsey Campbell

  “It wasn’t so simple.” Less defiantly Kathryn said “It isn’t now.”

  I might have asked what she meant if Philip hadn’t intervened, perhaps on her behalf. “Well, Dominic, I hope we’ve helped you plan.”

  “I think you may have.” Rather than try to grasp how, I said “Did you find out why the hotel had that name?”

  “After Bonchamp, I should think.”

  “Wouldn’t they have called it Le Bon Champ?”

  “I really couldn’t say. That’s somewhat outside my area of expertise.” With less of a hint of defensiveness he said “Perhaps you can find the information online. What’s the basis of your interest?”

  “I was there once on a school trip as a child.”

  “We understood the hotel was built more recently. We tend to avoid revisiting memories ourselves. They’re too liable to let one down.”

  “Not the hotel, the area.”

  “By definition that has changed as well. I shouldn’t expect anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Except the trees around the place. Did anyone explain what was wrong with them?”

  “We gathered they were trained to grow in that fashion as a feature.”

  “That’s a lie. I can tell you—”

  “There’s no call for you to speak to Philip like that, Dominic.”

  “I mean you were lied to. The trees were like that more than sixty years ago, and I suspect a great deal longer.”

  “Then I assume we misunderstood.” Philip scarcely paused before saying “Good luck with your research if you haven’t finished. We’ll put our heads together over meeting up and give you a tinkle in due course.”

  I could tell his enthusiasm had lessened since the start of the conversation. I thanked him and Kathryn and brought up the hotel’s website. It showed the photographs I’d already seen and reproduced a few favourable reviews—typical French hospitality, modern with a touch of Gallic charm, ideal base for touring the area. An extensive description of the hotel and its facilities didn’t refer to the name, let alone explain it. Perhaps Trask had given me an idea worth pursuing, and I found the website for the town of Bonchamp.

  The official photographs looked much as I remembered: narrow winding streets through which the bus had made its dogged way, open spaces too irregular to be called squares, small parks hemmed in by smaller shops, stone bridges arching over a stream scattered with waterfowl, churches that appeared to be contending for the longest name. I tried searching the site for Le Bon, but the couple of examples this produced were adjectival. In growing frustration I scrolled through the tourist reviews. Quaint, unspoilt, needs more parking spaces, authentic regional cuisine… I was close to leaving the site when a street name in a reviewer’s photograph caught my eye. Rue Gahariet, the sign said.

  Perhaps it wasn’t just the plaque that had snagged my attention. The crumbling letters on the rusty white rectangle were elaborated by graffiti, efflorescing in patterns so intricate that I had to overcome a compulsion to grasp them. The multicoloured tendrils might have been transforming the sign into an unknown or at any rate occult language. Above the plaque an irregular stone block much older than the surrounding bricks protruded from the wall. It bore a carved figure, presumably a man, though the face and hands had been chipped or scraped away so thoroughly that the patches of lichen that ended the arms, and the greyish blob that surmounted the neck, looked as though they were searching for shapes to take. For some reason the survival of the block reminded me how Christian Noble’s father had been afraid to destroy his son’s journal, instead concealing it as best he could.

  I zoomed in on the photograph and stared at it until I began to fancy that the filaments burgeoning from the letters of the sign were related to the threads composing the lichenous wads that had taken the place of a head and hands—that all of them were reaching for my mind. I banished the site from the screen and searched for Gahariet, which proved to be an old French name. Without expecting to find much if anything, I typed Gahariet Le Bon in the search box. It brought me a single reference, to a book on witchcraft by Montague Summers, a Catholic clergyman fascinated by the occult, a friend of Aleister Crowley. The book was older than me, and somebody had scanned the whole of it online. A click opened up the reference.

  Worse still than the infamous Tanchelin, if we are to judge by the malefactor’s fate, was his fellow heretic Gahariet Le Bon, native of the region that today bears the name Bonchamp. Unlike the errant Tanchelin, Le Bon chose to pollute with his vile beliefs the very soil which had borne and supported him. He caused an abomination to be raised in stone on a field close to his place of birth, a field, one chronicler maintains, where his unhappy mother delivered him into the world. There the deluded citizens would attend his foul sermons and practice acts of irreligious worship. Le Bon proclaimed himself a prophet of “the one true faith”, which he declared to be the fount of Christianity rather than an infernal parody thereof. Those of the townsfolk who yet embraced the one True God petitioned S. Norbert to intervene, and the Saint was instrumental in purging their countryside of the blight it had spawned. Le Bon was nailed to the door of his abhorrent chapel, together with the single written copy of the prophecies with which he sought to infect the world. The chapel was put to the torch while the wretch yet lived, and at the end of three days the edifice was pulverised by mighty hammers. The remains of both the building and its miserable instigator were buried deep in the field, which continues unnamed to this day. Unlike the sacred architecture which aspires to touch the glory of the Creator, Le Bon’s Satanic temple took the form of an obscene flower, spreading wide the topmost segment of its spire in order to communicate with the Stygian darkness to which God brought His light and His Word. The blasphemer was said to have drawn his abominable inspiration from a place of pagan worship which used to occupy the field, but since no remnant of this primitive shrine had survived into his lifetime, the vision was indisputably diabolical.

  The book had nothing more to say about Le Bon, but I felt it had told me enough. One point seemed clear: whatever presence had remained in the field near Bonchamp, most of its influence had been transferred elsewhere. While the hotel bore no resemblance to the destroyed church, Starview Tower was far too reminiscent of Summers’ description, however overstated that was. I was trying to decide how to use the information——just now it filled me with dismay bordering on dread—when my phone buzzed like a torpid insect on the desk. When I saw the caller’s name I could almost have thought my research had roused him. “Toby,” I said.

  “Dad, I thought you should know we’ll be having a sermon here this month.”

  “You think I ought to be there.”

  “I’m not sure.” Only just before I could ask why, he said “It won’t be Christopher on his own. It’s his whole family this time.”

  At once I felt fiercely purposeful. “You couldn’t keep me away,” I said, hoping this sounded like commitment to their church.

  6 - Tracing The Worm

  “They’re all on the next floor down, Mr Sheldrake.”

  While I’d done my best to be ready for whatever the day brought, this threw me. “Nobody’s down there, Joe. Just a lot of cars.”

  He gave me a grin unsettlingly reminiscent of an infant’s simper. “Not the basement. The floor next to the top.”

  “Does anybody have a name for what’s up there?”

  “That’s our chapel, Mr Sheldrake. Everyone knows that.”

  “I mean the architecture.”

  “Mr Adlington calls it the bloom.”

  “That’s Roy Adlington, the architect.”

  “He’s up there now. I hope I can be for the sermon.” As I thought of asking what he expected Joe said “You go to them. Don’t wait for me.”

  He activated the lifts as I made for them. My army of reflections strode to meet me as the door shut us in, and I tried to think they didn’t look remotely apprehensive. We kept up the pretence as the muffled voices of a crowd grew louder, an
d I was preparing to encounter some kind of congregation when the lift sailed past the sounds. As I lurched to jab the button for that floor again my selves swarmed in various directions like a massive mime of panic. The lift halted on the top floor with an unsteady shudder, and the doors crept open to reveal who was waiting for me.

  Despite the effects of several decades, all three still presented versions of the same face. Toph’s was fleshiest, while Tina’s had begun to sag around the chin. Her father’s was the thinnest and his lanky body too, as if he’d been reduced to his essence, most intensely in his eyes, which were practically black. Every face bore the same expression, looking secretly amused. As I hesitated on the threshold of the lift the Nobles gave me a simultaneous bow from the waist while they kept their faces aimed at me, a posture I tried and failed to think was designed to avoid showing how bald Christian Noble had grown, with just a cobweb of grey hairs across his whitish scalp. “Mr Sheldrake,” he said and even more enthusiastically “Dominic.”

  “Dominic,” Tina said in the same tone almost before he’d finished.

  “Dominic,” Toph supplied just as instantly, and I thought they were making my name sound less like a welcome than an element in a ritual. It seemed to hold me where I was, even when Christian Noble darted forward to prod the button between the lifts with a long thin finger. Far from slowing him down, age had increased his similarity to a snake. “Do venture forth, Dominic,” he said, “and we’ll have a word before we all go down.”

  I’d been alone with the three of them at Safe To Sleep, but I couldn’t help hoping that Toby and Claudine might be up here too, though not their little girl. As soon as I set foot in the lobby Noble released the button. “We’ll use your office, Christopher,” he said. “I expect our visitor wants to sit down.”

  Apart from their quick footsteps and my uneven tread, the top floor was so silent that I knew I was on my own. Toph led the way into his impersonal room, where the window was displaying a cloud like a misplaced spotless snowfield above the bay. As I took the chair that faced it across the desk Toph said “The first of us can have mine.”

  It seemed an oddly strained way to refer to his grandfather. Noble sat opposite me with a movement so effortlessly sinuous that I had to remind myself how old he was. He planted his hands on the desk, widening the digits until I wondered how it couldn’t pain him. Tina and her son stood on either side of him, leaning forward slightly as though poised to execute the Noble trait. “So, Dominic,” he said, “how long would you say it has been?”

  “Pretty well as long as your grandson’s been with us.”

  “I can see why you might put it that way.” He nodded, and the versions of his face that flanked him did. “And what do you suppose has brought us back together?” he said.

  “My son’s here, so I am.”

  “I believe he set out to convert you. I hope that hasn’t made you suspect him. He has your best interests at heart, Dominic.”

  “I think I know my son.”

  “You’ll get to know him better by belonging to our church.”

  I was growing too angry not to demand “That’s why you think I’ve joined, is it?”

  “No,” Tina said, though her father’s lips hadn’t stopped moving. “We’d say it was what some people call fate.”

  “You’ve been ours since we last met,” her father said.

  I didn’t want to know what he meant, and tried to quiet my fears by blurting “Why are you going to say my son joined?”

  “He was at university,” Toph said, “and thinking for himself.”

  “Who engaged him? Was it you, Christopher?”

  I was distracted by glimpsing his mother’s lips shift and her father’s too before Toph said “I was catching up with people I’d known at Safe To Sleep.”

  My rage almost didn’t let me speak. “Renewing your hold over them, you mean.”

  “No need to put it like that,” Tina said. “Say returning them to the path,”

  I had a grotesque notion that she wanted me to speak the words. Instead I retorted “What’s brought you and your father back to town?”

  “Ask rather what we’ve brought,” her father said. “The ancient word.”

  I couldn’t help feeling childishly facetious for asking “Which one is that?”

  “The primal truth. That’s what you’ll hear.”

  “The kind of thing I heard you saying at your other church, you mean.”

  Too late I saw I’d just admitted having eavesdropped. Three pairs of eyes fastened on me, and despite the shining cloud above the bay the room seemed to darken. “Which sermon did you hear?” Toph said.

  I wondered why he should speak, since it had been decades before he was born. With an effort I fixed my attention on the central figure of the triptych. “I heard you talking to Eric Wharton.”

  “You were hiding,” Toph said, “and we guess you weren’t alone.”

  “We won’t ask where,” his mother said. “We’ll just say there’s no reason to pretend any more.”

  I couldn’t judge if this angered me or made me nervous, but felt provoked to say “Then why is your son calling himself Le Bon?”

  “We all are. It’s who we always have been.”

  “The source of our truths,” her father said.

  “If you’re talking about Gahariet Le Bon,” I said in what felt like some kind of triumph, “I understood all his thoughts were burned with him.”

  “You disappoint us, Dominic. We’ve shown you memories don’t die just because the bodies do.” With a faint secretive grin identical to those beside him Christian Noble said “Do you still have my thoughts?”

  “Why, do you want to take them back again?”

  “Not at all. I built upon them long since. I was just about to mention that they came from the source you named.”

  “In that case I’d have expected them to be in French.”

  It was a feeble retort, but I could think of no other. “You might wonder if they helped bring you to us,” Christian Noble said.

  “I think I’d have known if they had.”

  “You place too much faith in language, Dominic. It’s just another veil over the truth,” he said and in a moment was on his feet, keeping his hands spread flat and wide on the desk, even once his arms were vertical. “All the same, it’s time we addressed our congregation.”

  I limped fast to the door and across the lobby as well. A lift opened to display the multitude of me, hemmed in on every side by variations on another face, which darted forward at my back. I kept the button depressed while the lift descended, and had a sense that I was surrounded by lurking mirth at my behaviour. A mass of voices rose towards me, and the door opened to let it flood in. “Make your way to your family, Dominic,” Christian Noble said.

  The lobby was teeming with people. The crowd parted like a biblical body of water as the Nobles headed for the nearest office. The leader of a local council greeted them by holding up an object, and then a member of parliament elevated an identical article, and the owner of a football team did. Their faces and many more in the crowd had appeared in the media, and I recognised the item each of them was flourishing—a copy of the reptilian figure I’d seen on Toph’s desk, the serpentine icon swallowing its tail. As I watched other dignitaries and celebrities make sure their icons were noticed, I heard a cry of “Grandad.”

  Macy wriggled through the crowd and grabbed my hand as her parents came to find me. “Dominic,” Claudine murmured, “we thought something had gone wrong. We were just about to phone.”

  “It’s important to you that I should be here, then.”

  “It’s important to you, dad.” As more of a reproof Toby said “Where were you?”

  “Conversing with our hosts. Christian and Christina and Christopher.”

  While Macy looked impressed, indeed wide-eyed, her parents weren’t so easily won over. “What did you say to them?” Toby was anxious to hear.

  “We’ve reached an understandi
ng. You needn’t be concerned any more than they are,” I said, only to be distracted by the sight of them. Each of them had reappeared in a doorway to beckon to the crowd.

  The doors led not to offices but to a single room furnished with hundreds of folding chairs. They resembled skeletons of the leather seats they faced, a trio at the far end of the room, beyond which the bank of cloud above the bay was growing visibly thinner. The Nobles were leaning forward to talk to people on the front row, and I took a seat near the back, though further from the exits than my instincts prompted, since I had to find space for my companions. As Toby and Claudine sat on either side of me while Macy perched next to her mother, the Nobles moved to face the congregation. They waited for stragglers to sit down, and I found I was grateful they weren’t watching me. Then Christian said “Is there anybody here without an effigy?”

  I felt singled out even before my nearby neighbours glanced at me. “What’s an effigy?” Macy whispered.

  “A little image like yours,” her mother said as low as someone speaking ma church.

  Macy jumped up, and I was dismayed to see her hugging an icon. “My grandad hasn’t got one.”

  “Here’s a present for you to give him,” Tina Noble said.

  When Toph stooped past the leather seats I realised that the blackness on the floor behind them was more solid than a shadow. Icons were nestling together like a brood that had just hatched or was about to hatch, and I couldn’t judge how numerous they were. As Toph picked one up, holding it like a proud father, Macy planted hers on her chair and ran to him at least as eagerly as she had ever run to me. “Take care while you’re bringing it to him,” Toph said.

  I supposed he was advising her not to drop it, and wondered if he was recalling the broken icon his family had left at Safe To Sleep. I couldn’t help wishing Jim were with me now, and Bobby too. I was distressed to see my granddaughter pacing carefully towards me, cradling the icon as though playing at motherhood. No doubt she was simply following Toph’s instructions, but her approach looked ritualistic. When she leaned forward to entrust the icon to my hands she might have been copying the Nobles’ snaky motion. “Take care of it, grandad,” she said.