The Way Of The Worm

by Ramsey Campbell

  “It’s not just his religion, if you insist on calling it that. It’s what he and his family did to my son.”

  As I gazed across the courtroom at Toby, finding no hint of a response, the lawyer said “What did your late wife think of the treatment they gave him?”

  “She was taken in by them like nearly everybody else.”

  “Whereas you’re convinced you alone can see the truth.”

  “I said nearly everybody. For a start—”

  “Of course, your lifelong friend Roberta Parkin. I suggest to you that you sent her the recording of the defendants because you weren’t quite as sure of its significance as you led her to believe. You used her to publish what you wanted to be the case because you knew better than to publish it yourself.”

  “That absolutely isn’t true. If I thought anything I thought her name would attach more credibility.”

  “So you admit it lacked credibility.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.” I found that during her interrogation I’d slumped into a posture that suggested the questions or their dogged mundanity had settled on me like a burden. I straightened up fiercely enough to shoot pain through my spine, and remembered barely in time not to touch the Bible, gripping the rail of the witness box for support instead. “I sent it to her because she’d reach a wider audience than me,” I said.

  “Perhaps you can explain why she simply wrote about it rather than posting the recording online.”

  “Because she’s a journalist, I should think. Did you ask her? If not, why are you expecting me to know?” I imagined I glimpsed doubt on the lawyer’s face, and it drove me to continue. “Haven’t the police examined the recording and made sure it wasn’t tampered with?”

  I fancied I could feel the united gaze of the Nobles taking hold of my skull like three digits of a claw, rendering my mind as cold and empty as a space between worlds. I thought it was trying to quiet me, which made me so determined to speak that I scarcely grasped my own words. “You won’t intimidate me,” I told the Nobles. “You didn’t when you rang up in the night to boast about your secrets, and you aren’t succeeding now.”

  There was silence that felt penned in by the bright room full of darkened eyes, and then Regina Dane said “No further questions, your honour.”

  I was hoping Raymond Garland would question me about the nocturnal call when Inigo Arnold spoke. “Mr Sheldrake, please leave the court at once and say nothing further, or I shall hold you in contempt.”

  I had the impression I already was, by everyone in the courtroom. The jury looked no more persuaded by my outburst than the smugly indifferent pair in the dock and their son behind them. As I climbed down from the witness box—my legs felt as if they might prove unequal to the job—I saw the Nobles set about mouthing words in unison. I was afraid that they were murmuring the formula I’d learned at the Church of the Eternal Three—that they meant to send me somewhere else, leaving my body to demonstrate to the court how incapable I was. I fought to keep hold of the moment while I limped towards the aisle, and then I saw that the syllables they were shaping were too numerous for the mantra. Either they were preparing words or communicating in some unnatural fashion. I made for the exit as fast as I could but felt I was struggling through a medium composed of the censure of everyone I had to pass. I’d reached the door, which an usher held open in a last small remnant of respect, when Christian Noble spoke. “Enough play-acting,” he announced. “Time for the truth.”

  13 - Sentences

  “Have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed? Please answer yes or no.”

  “Yes.” the foreman of the jury said and looked restricted by the answer.

  “What is your verdict in the case of Christian Le Bon?”

  I suppose the answer came almost at once, but it felt as though the abyssal gaze of the Nobles had fastened upon time to hold it still. “Guilty,” the foreman said.

  “In the case of Christina Le Bon, have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?”

  The foreman seemed uncertain how to respond, and a nervous breath caught in my throat. Perhaps he was simply waiting to be told once more how to reply, since in a moment he said “Yes.”

  “What is your verdict?”

  Since the foreman had stood up he’d kept his eyes turned away from the Nobles, and they stayed on the judge as if the foreman thought the bewigged figure might accord him some protection. “Guilty,” he said.

  Inigo Arnold thanked the jury for their time and focused his attention on the dock. While his eyes weren’t so dark and deep as the cluster that met his, they were just as unforthcoming with their thoughts. “Has either of the defendants anything to say before sentence is passed?” he said.

  Christian Noble leaned forward at once, raising his face to the judge with no pretence of deference, and I had the unpleasant impression that a single body the family shared had thrust out its left-hand head. “I shall,” he said.

  “Please stand.” Once Noble had risen to his feet, an action so lithe it looked effortless, the judge said “You may address the court, Mr Le Bon.”

  Noble rested his hands on the rail of the dock with all the fingers spread wide, a negligent gesture that might have defined carelessness. I thought he resembled a priest in a pulpit, and deliberately too. As he parted his lips I glimpsed the flicker of a tongue—no, three of them, because his offspring had performed the same act. “We told you we weren’t guilty under any law that matters,” he said.

  His contempt for the trial had been plain throughout his testimony and the cross-examination—above all, when he’d declared that the recording I’d made should be heard by the court and admitted as evidence, a suggestion to which Tina readily agreed. I did my best to think he was making the situation still worse for himself, because I was disturbed by how his daughter and their son kept mouthing his words in unison like a silent chorus. More than ever the family put me in mind of a single presence masked by three versions of a face, and I wished the judge would order Tina and Toph to stop their antics. Surely he must find them distracting, unless he was determined to ignore them. I could only hope they weren’t daunting him into silence. I hoped he was letting Noble express all his disdain for the proceedings so as to convict him of that as well.

  “The world must return to the ancient laws,” Noble was proclaiming. “For a period that is less than a moment of the universe, man has invented his own. His world is an insignificant speck that would attract little notice, but now he has presumed to probe the universe with all the means at his disposal. His collective mind is at large in space, set free by the computer. Nobody may rouse the attention of the universe without acknowledging its laws, and soon the oldest will regain their hold upon the world. This court and all within it are of no consequence to them, but the matter upon which we have stood trial is our way of preparing for their revival, our tribute to them.”

  I thought his final comment was a bid to reclaim significance for himself and his family. More than ever I had a sense of a sermon, most of which might have been translating Gahariet Le Bon. With a precise reversal of his earlier sinuous movement Noble took his seat again. While the judge hadn’t looked away from the dock, I couldn’t make out his reaction, even once he spoke. “Do you wish to say anything, Ms Le Bon?”

  Tina rose exactly as her father had “Please,” she said.

  “Pray do.”

  “Just to repeat what I said before, all my relationships are purely my choice. Nobody can make me do anything I don’t want to do. I was a virgin until it was legal even in this country for me not to be, and I’ve only ever known one man.”

  I glanced at Bobby as Carole and Jim did, but her face was no more communicative than the judge’s. I was hoping to hear some outrage in the court at Tina’s statement, possibly even distrust of her claim that she’d been of age, but the only sound was her voice. Might it be exerting some of the hypnotic power the Nobles had employed at Safe To Sleep and at their c
hurches? I did my utmost to resist everything she said. “My relationship isn’t contrary to our principles,” she was saying. “We believe it is protected by our church.”

  I wanted to protest that the church was a device the Nobles had constructed for their own purposes, not a religion at all. I’d been not much less than appalled when she and her father were allowed to take the name of the Eternal Three as the basis of a vow to tell the truth. In a moment she resumed her seat, reversing her previous motion just as her father had, and the judge was adjusting his wig as a preamble to speaking when Toph said “Can I say something too?”

  “That isn’t how it’s done.” The judge clasped his hands and slid them apart on the desk before saying “I’m prepared to allow it in the special circumstances.”

  I should have liked to know what he thought those were. As Toph repeated the movement his parents had performed, I willed him to earn them longer sentences and provoke one for himself, although would prison contain their powers or rouse them? I thought the judge might have directed Toph to the witness box, but he left the youngest Noble where he was. “Without these two I wouldn’t be here,” Toph said. “Will anybody dare to say they want that? You’ll see I had to be bom. I had to even before they were. Deny us and you deny your future. The faithful shall be one, and the unenlightened in their own way too.”

  Inigo Arnold watched him regain his seat with that motion I could easily have fancied was turning time backwards. For some seconds the judge didn’t move or speak, and I couldn’t tell whether the silence was expectant or apprehensive, not even my own. “There is a question that ought to have been asked,” he said.

  This sounded like a proposal to rescind time or at least to call back some of those involved in the trial. It left me unprepared to hear him say “Has the act that led to these proceedings been repeated since Christopher was conceived?”

  “No.”

  The response disconcerted me as much as the question. At least two voices gave it, and I was virtually certain one more had. “There was no need,” that voice said.

  Inigo Arnold regarded Toph, and I thought he was about to warn him not to speak unless invited. Instead the judge returned his attention to the dock. “I can see no reason to delay sentencing,” he said.

  I saw Jim was surprised by the speed of the proceedings, and I could tell I wasn’t alone in holding my breath until Inigo Arnold continued. “In a recent case which may be found comparable,” he said, “the sentence handed down to the accused was ten years each.”

  Would Christian be dead in a decade? Until now I hadn’t confronted the issue of his future. If he died in prison, how much would that aggravate his malevolence? I should have realised death mightn’t curb his powers any more than imprisonment could. I was starting to feel I’d trapped myself at least as thoroughly as him when Inigo Arnold said “I believe the public interest would expect the same in this case.”

  Jim gave a nod that I took for approval, and Bobby reached for Carole’s hand. I felt as if I was clenching my lungs as well as my fists while I waited for the judge to speak. “Christian Le Bon, I hereby sentence you to ten years in jail,” he said.

  Quite a few people let out their breath. It sounded like a concerted gasp, and I might well have been involved. As I hoped I hadn’t drawn attention to myself, the judge went on. “Given your standing in the community and in particular your years,” he said, “I shall suspend the sentence, and I do not anticipate that it will be served.”

  Why wasn’t anyone expressing shock or outrage now? Even Jim went no further than shaking his head while Carole gripped her partner’s hand with both of hers. “I cannot see that any useful purpose would be achieved by varying the tariff,” the judge said. “Christina Le Bon, I sentence you to ten years also, hereby suspended. Once again, I do not expect any part of it to be served.”

  Bobby bowed her head while Jim turned his empty hands up as though he hoped some consolation might be placed in them. Throughout the sentencing the Nobles hadn’t stirred, and they were the last to rise when an usher directed everyone to stand. I saw Inigo Arnold rubbing his hands together as if to celebrate the end of the trial, or was he simply passing them over each other? I could have thought they were sketching a shape. I was distracted by a sense that others did as he turned to leave the courtroom.

  When the audience began to disperse I wondered what I missed hearing. Perhaps courtroom dramas had led me to expect a noisy exodus of reporters as soon as a case was done, but why were no journalists hurrying out to be first with the news? I could have imagined they’d all known or at any rate foreseen it. Spectators—members of the Church of the Eternal Three, no doubt—were offering the Nobles their congratulations, but Christian waved them away, adding an impatient smile. As their supporters backed away so deferentially that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see them perform more of an obeisance, the Nobles marched in step along the aisle towards us.

  Jim made to rise and then stayed seated. I didn’t know whether he meant to head off a confrontation or just to demonstrate he wasn’t threatened, but I followed his lead as Bobby and Carole did. The Nobles kept their multiple gaze on us all the way down the aisle, and I felt as if that darkness was not merely approaching but intensifying, closing in. As they came abreast of us, Tina focused on Bobby. “Roberta,” she said, “I just want you to know how disappointed I am.”

  Carole raised Bobby’s hand in hers like a double fist. “You’ve no reason to be.”

  Tina didn’t glance at her. “I always knew you were planning to give Safe To Sleep a bad press, but I tried to show you how wrong you were,” she told Bobby. “I wouldn’t have expected you to betray us, especially after all these years.”

  “I wasn’t getting at you,” Bobby said more defensively than I’d ever heard her speak. “You’ll have seen what I wrote.”

  “You betrayed us all. We’re one and nobody can separate us. We only tried to help you, to make you more equal to what’s on its way.”

  “And if anyone thinks otherwise,” Toph said, “they’ll live to see their mistake.”

  “Mr Sheldrake,” Christian said as if he’d only just noticed me, though his gaze gave no sign that he had. “You’re enjoying your latest achievement, I hope.”

  I became aware that we were surrounded by members of his church as expressionless as him. I reminded myself that we were in a courtroom that someone official might soon intervene on my and my friends’ behalf. “Have you further plans for us?” Christian Noble said.

  I did my best to hold my voice steady and neutral. “I’ll have to think.”

  “If only you would. I fear you are losing that ability. Another disappointment, I’m afraid. Do try to use your mind to the full until we meet again.” Not just to me he said “We know where you are. We always have.”

  Jim looked for an usher, but none were to be seen. “That sounds like a threat, Mr Noble,” he said.

  “Nothing like it, Mr Bailey. We’re simply making you aware of the nature of reality. That has always been our aim, and you won’t be able to avoid it much longer.”

  “You’re starting to live in our world.” Toph had the last word as the Nobles moved away, gliding in unison. “You will until you die,” he said. “And then so much more.”

  14 - Across the Water

  A TRAVESTY OF A TRIAL

  That was the title of an editorial in a national newspaper, but it was the only observation of its kind. Some newspapers reported the verdict without comment, and quite a few hardly reported it at all. Broadcasts of the news were resolutely neutral, and yet I seemed to sense respect for Christian Noble, for how he’d stood up in and to the court without seeking to conceal the truth. Every report mentioned his age, which I felt was being offered as an excuse if not to justify indulging his behaviour. Even the editorial cited it, although only to point out that it hadn’t brought him wisdom or robbed him of vigour. The writer saw it as no reason for hastening the legal process, given that Noble showed no signs of f
ailing health. The swiftness was just one of the irregularities. Letting their recorded talk be played in court simply showed how the Nobles scorned the law, and indeed their words on the recording did. Inigo Arnold’s verdict had been a parody of justice, and letting somebody who wasn’t even a defendant address the court before sentencing turned the trial into a farce. The case had been so thoroughly mishandled that it led one to suspect the motives of those responsible, the judiciary and the police and whoever else might have been involved. The editorial appeared in the first printing of the issue and online, where I read it. In later editions it was replaced by a piece about disunity in Europe and how countries were reverting to their individual languages as tokens of identity—RETURN TO BABEL. When I looked for it online again it had vanished, and by the end of the day the newspaper had seen a change of editor.

  The case and the sentence provoked much online hostility and criticism, all of it swamped by responses. Anyone who spoke against the Nobles might be accused of offences worse than theirs, or of trying to destroy a religion the times required, or of making far too much of Christian’s relationship with his daughter if not overlooking its positive qualities. Some of the multitude supporting the Nobles maintained that the Church of the Eternal Three sanctioned—indeed, sanctified—their union, and many of their champions called Toph its greatest vindication. No relationship deserved to be censured that had produced him.

  All this reminded me how Toph had said we were living in their world. At least, I hoped this was what he’d meant, and nothing worse. Even so, it left me desperate to search out online comments from opponents of the Nobles and their influence, who hadn’t yet been daunted into silence or shouted down by foes who appeared to think wholly in capitals. I was at my desk by Lesley’s empty one, where her computer screen resembled an emblem of eternal darkness, and reading yet another dispute about the case when someone rang the doorbell.