The Way Of The Worm

by Ramsey Campbell

  Was this the passage I’d been trying to remember? I had no idea what I’d expected it to convey to me, if I’d ever known. Apart from implying the relationship Christian Noble would develop with his daughter, most of it struck me as obscure and unhelpful. Why had I felt compelled to seek it out now that the Nobles were no more? I would have liked to think the journal could be safely consigned to the past, represented by my adolescent handwriting and the mathematical tables printed on the backs of the exercise books as a bygone aid to schoolchildren, but I couldn’t believe the secrets of the journal had become irrelevant or even that the Nobles had. Whenever I thought of them I saw the writhing mass of flame and flesh and heard the triple voice cry out a name, and I feared the memory could summon whatever they’d become. Might anything Noble had written help me deal with this? That was my hope, but perhaps I’d mistaken the section of the journal that could. I was leafing through the second book, and feeling that I understood the text no better than I had while I’d transcribed it, when the doorbell emitted a single brusque trill.

  I thought Toby might be there, although I hoped for Jim. In either case I should have preferred them to call ahead, in which case the bell mightn’t have made me so tense. I was about to say as much when I opened the front door, only to find a uniformed couple blocking my way at less than an arm’s length—Farr and Black, the younger generation. “We meet again,” I said without taking time to think.

  “I’m afraid so, Mr Sheldrake,” the policewoman said. In an attempt to feel less menaced I said “Just to check, you’re DC Farr.” With no expression her colleague said “I am.”

  “So you were swapping names last time we had the pleasure. Little wonder I’m confused.”

  “Please do remind us,” Black said.

  “You gave each other’s names. You couldn’t have expected me to know you were. It isn’t as if either of you look like—”

  Just in time I saw it might be considerably less than advisable to bring up their parentage. “Like what, sir?” Farr said as tonelessly as ever. “Like your names. I didn’t think it needed saying.”

  “Is that some kind of racial comment?” Black barely enquired. “I don’t go in for those. My father used to but I don’t believe I ever did. That’s not to say I learned nothing from him that I’ve kept, or my mother for that matter.” I was aware of babbling in a way that showed my age if not my nervousness. “I hope that will be true for my son,” I felt compelled to add. “Anyway, you won’t be here to talk about him. You’d better come in.”

  As I lowered myself by degrees into my armchair they perched on the sofa, separated by a gap that would have accommodated a third visitor, and I was unhelpfully reminded of youngsters not quite comfortable in an adult situation. Farr broke the silence. “Is there something you ought to be telling us, Mr Sheldrake?”

  “About Christian Le Bon and his family,” Black said.

  “I said it all in court. It’s on the record.”

  “Since then.”

  “I know they died in a fire. I believe you think it was deliberately started.”

  “How would you know what we think?”

  “You as in the police. That’s what it said on the news.”

  “And why else would you say it was?”

  “Exactly.” When they stared at me I said “Exactly, why else.”

  I thought Black was reaching the limit of politeness as she said “We’re asking whether you were involved, Mr Sheldrake.”

  “Not at all. I won’t deny I think the world might be a better place without them.”

  Was I inspired by that convention of crime stories where characters demonstrate their innocence by admitting they disliked the victim? My honesty fell short of impressing the police. “You’ve been placed at the scene of the crime,” Farr said.

  “Placed.” I’d begun to feel snagged by words. “Placed by whom?”

  “Mr Sheldrake.” Black made my name into a caution before she said “Are you claiming you weren’t there?”

  “I didn’t say that, but I emphatically wasn’t responsible.” Their mute scrutiny drove me to add “I knew killing them was no solution.”

  A silence let this lie until Black said “Why is that?”

  “It’s what their church led me to believe.” Her unfathomable look provoked me to blurt “I think you may as well.”

  “Why would you, Mr Sheldrake?”

  I’d ventured too far to hold back “Don’t your parents?”

  Her lips moved, but it was Farr who demanded “What do you think you know about them?”

  “They were in the police and now they’re in that church.”

  “And your friend Mr Bailey stayed more Catholic than you, like his sons who are on the force.”

  Black’s glance convicted him of saying too much, but her gaze at me was more relentless. “Is there any more you want to say about our parents?”

  “Not if they leave me alone.”

  “You may be left alone if you can show you had no part in the crime. Please explain why you were there.”

  I saw the truth wouldn’t be enough, not least because I scarcely knew what it had been. “I was called,” I said.

  “By whom?”

  “They all sounded the same on the phone. They wanted me to know they knew where I live.”

  “Do you have the phone you took the call on?” Farr said.

  “Here it is, but they withheld the number.” Perhaps I wouldn’t have added “I expect the phone they used has gone the way they’ve gone.”

  As I wondered if this might sound too akin to triumph, Black held out a hand. “May we see?”

  I could only pass her the phone. As she brought up the call list my throat clenched, almost stopping my breath. I couldn’t remember when I’d last deleted entries. Black peered at the screen and showed it to her fellow officer, whose face stayed blank She handed me the phone, and I was trying not to look anxious to examine it when Farr said “Why did the call make you act like that?”

  “Like what?”

  I wouldn’t have asked that or sounded so defensive. “Driving all the way across the river at that time of night,” Farr said.

  “I wanted to see where the Nobles lived so they wouldn’t have an advantage.”

  I hoped honesty might win the police over, but Farr said “What else did you see?”

  The fiery mass of melting if not merging flesh writhed into sight in my mind, compelling me to admit “I saw them killed. I couldn’t have done anything to stop it. By the time I realised what was happening they were on fire.”

  “Did you see those responsible?”

  “I was all the way down on the promenade. I saw some men smash the windows and run off, but I couldn’t even tell you how many there were. I heard a man shout, but I wouldn’t be able to identify him.”

  “You can hardly say that in advance, Mr Sheldrake,” Black said. “What did he shout?”

  “That it was for the other victims the Nobles had abused, the fire was.”

  “His actual words.”

  “That’s for everybody you abused.”

  Surely this was close enough to be convincing. I hoped it might lead to an investigation of the Church of the Eternal Three, but Black said “Why didn’t you report all this to the police?”

  “Someone already had. I heard them and the fire service on the way when I went home.” When she made her dissatisfaction plain I admitted “I thought the police might think I was involved.”

  “But you say you stayed down by the pub.”

  “That’s what I—” I managed to pause, having realised her mistake. “I didn’t say that was where I was,” I said.

  She frowned as if she was trying to look older, but left Farr to tell me “You and your car were on the security camera.”

  “Then it must have shown you I never went anywhere near the house,”

  “That doesn’t prove you weren’t involved. Did you take any photographs?”

  “Good God, no,” I sa
id and thrust the phone at him. “Look for yourself.”

  “Many people would have. They could have been crucial as evidence.” He waved the phone away and said “All your behaviour suggests you may have been assisting the offenders.”

  “I didn’t do a thing to help them, whatever I thought of the Nobles.”

  “You might be assisting them now,” Black said and stood up as Farr did. “We may need to interview you further in due course.”

  I followed them into the hall, where Black halted, staring into the workroom. “Is that something you’re at work on, Mr Sheldrake?”

  She’d noticed the exercise books on my desk. “It’s something someone else wrote,” I said.

  I’d barely finished speaking when she strode into the workroom to examine the book I’d left open. Farr sauntered after her, and as I limped in pursuit she said “Did you make a child write this?”

  “Not quite.”

  “It’s certainly a child’s writing. Does it have to do with Mr Le Bon and his church? I thought you took the view that teaching children his beliefs was a form of abuse.”

  “When are you telling me I said that?”

  “In your testimony,” Farr said. “Do you wish to take it back?”

  Although I’d seen neither of them in court, I wasn’t going to ask how they knew what I’d said. “I stand by every word of it.”

  “So did your grandchild write this,” Black persisted, “or someone else?”

  “It was nobody but me. Just me, long before you were born.”

  She frowned as if the lines might help mature her face. “You shared these beliefs when you were a child”

  “Not even then. Back then I was something of a Catholic.”

  “You copied them, didn’t you?” Farr said. “Copied them down.”

  I was about to welcome the explanation when its significance overtook me. “How did you know that?”

  “No child could have thought all that up. You must have got it from somewhere else. It doesn’t read anything like a child.”

  I thought he’d said too much too glibly. Perhaps Black thought so as well, because she said “It’s our job to interpret the evidence.”

  “As it happens he’s right,” I said. “Who do you think wrote the original?”

  “Christian Le Bon?” I was sure this was simply posing as a question, and I might have said so if she hadn’t added “As I say, it’s evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “Of how”—she let me hear a pause—“concerned you’ve been with Mr Le Bon and his family for so much of your life.”

  When she straightened up from leafing through the books I thought she meant to impound them as evidence, but she left them on the desk. Once the police drove away I still felt observed, even when I shut myself in the house. I went back to my desk, but whatever I might have been seeing in Christian Noble’s journal continued to elude me. The blank computer screen loomed over my reading like an omen of hostility, until I gave in to temptation. I had to find out what people had said about Bobby and me since the last time I’d looked.

  Many of today’s posts were more rabid than ever. If that fucking dyke cunt Parkin hadnt writen about them Christian and his famly would still be here to lead the world, Feedbrain Freedbrain said. Her and Turdshit Sheldrake got them killed, REVELation 33 agreed. The bible has some true bits In, Will B. Changed contributed, like an eye for an eye. Other death threats or proposals were less veiled, not to say more savage, virtually reverting to primitivism. I wanted to believe that anyone who wrote such things wouldn’t put them into practice, even though their identities were hidden, and that nobody else might be prompted to act. I kept being distracted from the latest expressions of hatred, because a shadow in the corner of the garden was snagging the edge of my vision, a dark hunched shape that the branches of an apple tree lent unpleasantly numerous limbs. Whenever I glanced at it, the crouched form didn’t look nearly so detailed. I was trying to ignore it and be done with reading when the doorbell shrilled twice.

  This was so reminiscent of the old code of the Tremendous Three—its initials in Morse:—that I made for the door fast enough to leave all thoughts behind. I snatched the front door open to find Toby on the path. He gave me a long but uncommunicative look before saying “So you’ve got what you want at last, dad.”

  “You’ve left the church, you mean,” I said and dared to hope. “You and Macy and Claudine.”

  “I’m saying you’ve got rid of Christian and his family.”

  “You think they’ve gone,” I said with another sort of hope.

  “As much as anybody ever is, and they’ll have more control than most.” As I regretted having fancied he would give me any kind of reassurance he said “Say you weren’t involved.”

  “Only by letting the world know what they were.” I lingered over shutting the front door, which gave me time to decide to say “You may as well know I saw them done away with.”

  Toby halted outside the workroom. “How?”

  “I was near the house. I had nothing to do with the fire, and I didn’t see who had.”

  “What were you doing there, then?”

  The last word sounded far too much like suspicion, which provoked me to retort “Believe me or don’t, but I felt called there.”

  “I do believe you. The future can summon people like us.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to learn “People like who?”

  “Ones who’ve followed Christian’s path.” Before I could protest that I’d done nothing of the kind, Toby said “So what did you see?”

  “Men that I couldn’t identify setting fire to the house. And I saw the Nobles trapped in there, but I’d rather not remember if you don’t mind. I’ve told the police all I know.”

  I saw no point in mentioning Farr and Black. We were in the kitchen now, where Toby poured us both a glass of lemonade. He was heading for the front room when he glanced towards my desk. “Dad, is that the copy you made of Christian’s journal?”

  At once I felt worse than suspicious. “Don’t you know?”

  “They look like I remember. How did you get them back?”

  “I haven’t said that’s what they are.” I didn’t want to think he’d come for them, having been told they were here by my previous visitors. I couldn’t bring myself to ask, and so I said “I took them the last time I was at Safe To Sleep.”

  “When you took me home to your old house?”

  At least he didn’t know the truth, unless he was pretending. “No, after the place was abandoned. I wanted Jim to see what it was like.”

  “What else did you find?”

  “Whatever was living underneath. We got out just in time.”

  “That’s why they left it. They hadn’t realised what our explorations might bring back.” As I tried not to be dismayed by his nonchalance my son said “Anyway, good for you and him too if he saw.”

  “He explained it away.” I would have liked to stop short of wondering “Good how?”

  “Anything like that helps to prepare us. Can I take a look at the journal?”

  “At least this time you’re asking.” All the same, I was loath to say “Go on.”

  He sat at my desk at once, planting his glass on a faded piebald coaster. When he noticed the display on the computer he took and expelled a loud breath. “Dad, I’m sorry you’ve had to see all this.”

  I sat at Lesley’s desk and placed my glass on a coaster less dilapidated than mine. “Do you recognise anybody from your church?”

  “I wouldn’t, but even if any of them are I’m sure they won’t do anything. This will be how they’re expressing their grief.”

  “They won’t harm me and Bobby because they’re in the church, you mean. I didn’t know it had any commandments.”

  “Expand your mind beyond humanity, that might be one. No,” Toby said, “they won’t take revenge because they know our founders haven’t really left us.”

  With considerable reluctance I s
aid “Have you seen them?”

  “Not yet.” As he opened an exercise book he said “You might want to hope you don’t either.”

  Although I took this for advice and not a threat, it distressed me. While he turned pages I found myself gazing at Lesley’s computer screen, which was as blank as an uninscribed slab, a dead monitor beside an empty bed, a mind devoid of recollections. At least the Nobles hadn’t used her for revenge, and I’d even managed not to dream they had, a nightmare that I would have been afraid was capable of making itself real. I was concentrating on memories of Lesley that didn’t involve the Nobles when Toby closed the last book. “Thanks, dad.”

  “I don’t suppose there would have been much point in refusing.”

  “For looking after these, I mean.”

  I didn’t care to be thanked for that, especially by my son. “If that’s how you regard it. I don’t myself.”

  “Then what did you think you were doing? You’ve kept them in the world.”

  “I was trying to keep them away from people.” In a bid to convince myself they’d never had a hold on me I said “Just like Christian Noble’s father.”

  “They’re the only copy now. Christian’s must have been at the house.” Toby used the edges of his hands to arrange the books in a small neat stack. He couldn’t have handled an infant more gently, and I was disconcerted to realise he meant to show respect for them. “Can I have them?” he said.

  “I’d really rather you didn’t.”

  “Why would you need them any more?”

  He was so intent on them I could have thought he was speaking for them. “I’ve never needed them,” I retorted. “I know the world doesn’t, that’s all.”

  “We’ll have to disagree on that. You won’t mind if I make a copy, since you did.”

  I minded a good deal, and said “I don’t want you taking them away.”