The Way Of The Worm

by Ramsey Campbell

  Panic sent me stumbling into the hall to limp rapidly into the front room.

  A fierce sun glared into my eyes, because there was no longer any glass in the middle window of the bay. I staggered fast across the room until I saw the pane was intact. Only my fears and the blinding light had made it vanish. Had someone broken an upstairs window? I turned so quickly that my head spun faster, and then I caught sight of my car.

  I lost all my breath in uttering a word I very seldom used. I felt ridiculous for hoping the neighbours hadn’t heard, but mostly I felt hollowed out by rage. I stalked out of the house to see my windscreen had indeed been smashed. A large chunk of stone lay among fragments of glass on the passenger seat, and as I dashed to the gate I saw where it had come from—a broken stretch of kerb across the road, where a builder’s van had been parked on the pavement last week.

  I flung the gate wide, having scraped my fingers on the latch, and sprinted into the road. It was deserted except for a man and a woman strolling past a tree. Each of them was equipped with a spaniel at the end of a leash on a reel, and the dogs lingered to water the tree. “Excuse me,” I shouted and ran across the road.

  The couple didn’t turn until I’d repeated my plea twice and was almost within arm’s length, having dodged around the animals and their extended leads. The man’s face might have been drooping in emulation of his dog’s, and the woman’s was plump and pendulous, though none of this explained their downturned mouths. “Are you in a very tearing hurry, old boy?” the man said.

  Presumably he wasn’t decrying my age, since he looked it himself. “Don’t want get by,” I gasped with less breath than I needed for coherence. “You see?”

  “If you say so,” the woman said.

  My question had been too truncated to reach them, and I sucked in air that sounded like a dissatisfied sigh. “No, did,” I panted, “you see what, happened?”

  “What would that be, old chap?” her partner said.

  I tried to find the fewest words that would work. “Someone running.”

  With exaggerated patience the woman said “We saw you.”

  “Running away.” I struggled to suppress my frustration. “Up to no good.”

  “I’m sure there can’t be anyone like that round here.”

  Her reassurance fell a good deal short of me, not least because I was growing more frustrated with their answers and my abbreviated contributions. “Must have heard,” I protested.

  “We’re hearing you, old fellow.”

  “Heard them damage my car.” My verbal exertions turned my voice savage. “Just did.”

  “Then why are you wasting time with us?” the woman said as if I’d almost exhausted her indulgence. “You want the police.”

  “You’re telling me nobody came this way.”

  I meant this as a question, not an accusation, but their continued unresponsiveness left me suspicious enough to blurt “Do you know who I am?”

  “Not the foggiest, old chum.”

  “And it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference if we did.”

  I wasn’t persuaded, since I had to say “And you didn’t even hear my car being smashed up.”

  “I’m afraid,” the woman said, “we were raised to mind our own business.”

  I could easily have taken this as referring to my investigation of the Nobles, but the time I was wasting had caught up with me. I swung around to run in the opposite direction, almost tripping over an elongated lead. “Careful there, old pal,” the man said without friendliness. “Everyone’s property matters, not just yours.”

  I had no time for a retort, and no breath to spare. As I stumbled off at speed I snatched out my phone. Nobody was to be seen ahead, and I did my best to keep my pace up, but had to slow to an uneven trot while my finger found the emergency button on the screen. I floundered forward as a female voice asked which service I required. “Please,” I gasped, or at any rate heard myself say that instead of what I meant. “Police.”

  “I heard you, sir.”

  I’d been reduced to a rapid stagger by the time she asked the reason for my call, unless a different voice did. “Car broken into,” I said and was just able to add “Mine.”

  “Is the robbery in progress?”

  “Not Robby.” Even the incomplete word left me barely enough breath to add “Vanned lissom.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Fume innit.” As I blundered onwards close to helplessly I gathered enough sense and breath to wheeze “Fiver so.”

  “Where are you located?”

  I felt as if the question had collaborated with my fatigue to bring me to a halt. I’d reached a crossroads, from which I could see nobody at all. I would never catch up with the culprit now, and I concentrated on answering. “Drew,” I said before managing to collect more syllables, which my panting interrupted. “Druids tone road.”

  “And the postcode.” Once I’d supplied it she said “May I take your name?”

  “Dominic shelled rake.”

  Perhaps she paused only because I had, but her silence felt longer, not to mention suggestive. “Are you at home, Mr Sheldrake?”

  “Not at mow meant,” I said and tried to squeeze my syllables together. “Chasing hoover did it.”

  “You’ve identified who’s responsible.”

  How slyly was this aimed at me? “Didn’t see them. Lost them now.”

  “What is your address?” When I gave the house number she said “Is the damaged vehicle there?”

  “Right in front. Didn’t care.”

  “Someone will be there as soon as possible. Please don’t move the vehicle or touch the evidence till it has been examined. And for your future information,” she said with desiccated briskness, “your call wasn’t an emergency, Mr Sheldrake.”

  By now I suspected her responses had grown more personal than official, unless they combined both. Who else might she speak for? What future did she have in mind? “I’ll be home in a few minutes,” I took enough breath to declare. “Not the runner I once was.”

  I couldn’t help recalling the school sports day that had brought me Noble’s journal. I was starting to feel as though he and his family bounded my entire life. The operator read me a crime number with so many digits I might have been at the end of a queue beyond envisioning, and then I trudged home at a pretence of speed, hoping someone might have returned to the scene of the crime. The front garden was deserted except for my car, which gaped at me with its vacant windscreen, and beside it Lesley’s, a mute empty reminder. I was pitifully grateful that at least her car had been spared. I was in the front room, waiting for the police, when I wondered if and how the culprit had identified which vehicle to wreck.

  At first I stood up whenever I heard a car on the road, but an hour later I was staying in my chair. My mind kept returning to the sound that had alerted me to the damage, a memory that threatened to evoke the Nobles’ fate. As I fended off thoughts of them I seemed to recall watching the destruction of a stained-glass window that depicted a trinity of figures, not just entwined but merged, even their gleeful partly human heads. If this was a memory, it wasn’t mine, and I fought to lodge myself within my own brain. My efforts must have aggravated my exhaustion, because at some point I lost contact with my surroundings until I was roused by a muffled concussion of glass.

  The room was as dim as the inside of my eyelids. Apparently I’d been insensible for hours. I lurched to the window to look for the source of the sound, and saw glass fragments glinting in a patch of liquid near the car. I was fumbling for my phone as I hurried out of the house.

  Shards surrounded by a dark stain were scattered beside the left headlight, and when I stooped towards them, clutching at the mudguard, I smelled petrol. I dashed to the gate and onto the road, which was deserted. This time I wasn’t about to waste my energy on a search. Jabbing the virtual button brought me a voice that might have been the one I’d previously heard. “Police emergency,” I said at once.

  How al
ike did all the voices aim to sound? When another or the same one spoke I read my crime number from the screen. “I’ve seen no police yet and now there’s worse. Someone just tried to firebomb my house. You’ve got all my details. Dominic Sheldrake.”

  This time I waited at the gate. I was close to phoning once more when a white car appeared at the end of the road—a police car, though displaying no urgency. It stopped across the entrance to my drive and let out Farr and Black. “Is it always going to be you?” I couldn’t help demanding.

  “We know about your case,” Farr said.

  “I’m sure you aren’t alone.”

  “We’re the closest to it,” Black said. “Tell us what you called for, Mr Sheldrake.”

  “What I reported,” I felt I shouldn’t need to say, and gestured at the car.

  They took out their phones as they made for it, and I thought I saw three faces clustering behind the icons on the screens before my visitors switched on the flashlights. The beams roamed over the debris on the passenger seat as Black said “You called this in as an emergency.”

  “If someone had been quick enough they might have caught the culprit.”

  “Do you know who was responsible?”

  She’d straightened up to stare at me, and I could very well have felt accused. “Someone from the Church of the Eternal Three,” I said, “or a sympathiser.”

  “That’s quite an allegation,” Farr said and turned to show me how the night had gathered in his eyes. “You should be careful who you make it to.”

  “I’m making it to you. Who else is it likely to be?”

  “There’s no record of any member of the church committing violence.”

  “Just behaving as if they’re above the law.”

  Black’s eyes appeared to be living up to her name. “Why did you put in a second call?”

  “They weren’t satisfied with damaging my car. They tried to bomb it or me.

  “You’re saying the same person did.”

  “Or a member of the same mob,” I said and jerked my hands at the debris by the car. “What’s left is there.”

  She and her colleague aimed their lights at the fragments of glass, which gleamed as the stain on the concrete did. “Where is the damage you say it caused?” she said.

  “I didn’t say it had. It mustn’t have gone off.”

  Farr was the first to turn and confront me. “There isn’t nearly enough here for any bomb.”

  “Maybe when it didn’t work they carried off the evidence.”

  In a tone he might have used to a simpleton Farr said “I’m telling you there was no bomb.”

  “Of course there was. Look at all the petrol.”

  “That’s from your car.”

  “You mean they did that too.” I sank to my knees on the prickly concrete, where I forced myself into a painful crouch while I sent the beam from my phone under the car. The stain extended underneath, but not far, and I couldn’t tell if that patch was wetter. I used the nearest door handle to haul myself to my feet. “I’m not sure that’s it,” I said.

  “Mr Sheldrake,” Black said as if the name alone used up a good deal of her patience, “you’d be well advised not to make complaints without more evidence.”

  “What would you call the mess in my car if it isn’t evidence?”

  “Not of an emergency.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, as much to my thoughts as to the police. “How did all this glass end up by the car?”

  “That’s from the windscreen.”

  “I’ll swear it wasn’t there until I heard it and phoned you again.”

  “Something made it fall,” Farr said. “Use your imagination.”

  I almost expected him to say, as Christian Noble used to, that he knew I had one. Before I could respond Black said “You may be lucky if this goes no further.”

  “Who are you speaking for?”

  “I’m advising you that you could find yourself back in court for wasting police time.”

  I raised my voice for anyone nearby to hear. “You’re telling me it’s wasting your time to call about someone smashing up my car. And I still think there may have been a bomb.”

  “Neither of your calls was an emergency,” Black said. “In future you should wait till you have a reason.”

  “You mean I’ll have one.”

  Both of them gazed at me long enough to undermine my sense of time, and their silence was broken only by the insectoid whir of shutters while they photographed my car and the debris. I thought they meant to leave me without speaking until Farr said “You may expect another visitor, Mr Sheldrake.”

  “For fingerprints, you mean.”

  Only the night in their eyes answered, and I was afraid to enquire further. They turned their backs and drove away without sparing me another glance. Their entire visit felt like an omen, an interlude designed to leave me helpless while I awaited whatever it presaged. I retreated to the front room, where I called the insurance and the car repair firm, both of which were represented by answering machines. I tried watching a number of films—Kurosawa, Renoir, Haneke—all of which fell short of my besieged imagination. Eventually I made for bed.

  I did my utmost not to think of breaking glass, which was no doubt why I did. At first I thought my preoccupation had brought on a waking dream when I found myself gazing up at Starview Tower. The blank colourless sky conveyed no time of day, not even a hint of the season. The world felt as still as a stone memorial until the silence admitted a sound, a shrill but muted creak of glass that gave way to a slow protracted splintering. The windows of the buildings all around the tower were imploding from the ground floors upwards, caving in with a sluggishness that appeared to deny time. The structures were very gradually collapsing—more accurately, compacting themselves, growing denser as they turned progressively dwarfish. I had an inkling that the cause was as unnatural as the spectacle—that the buildings were infected by the onset of a future I would be more than unwise to imagine. Even the thought of its imminence made me feel its hunger. It put me in mind of a black hole composed of time, and I fled back to memories I knew were mine. The idea of broken glass refused to leave my brain, and I could only concentrate on the damage to my car, replaying the incident—the crash of glass, the minute I’d spent examining the window of the front room when I might have had a chance to see the culprit on the road—until the repetition shut my mind down, or weariness did.

  I wakened in daylight, which felt remote and irrelevant, little more than a pretence. I lingered at the bedroom window for some time before I was convinced the car hadn’t suffered any further damage while I was asleep. A mug of vicious coffee and a shower helped to rouse my mind, which was weighed down by yesterday’s events. I phoned the insurance company and then arranged for a repair, and wished I didn’t feel compelled to search online for the latest mob of comments I’d attracted. By now I’d checked so frequently that just the first two letters of my name brought up the whole of it in the search box. More comments about me had appeared overnight, and the first of them—supposedly posted by B. Leaf—made me feel as if I’d been punched in the stomach. So now Sheldrake’s claiming someone tried to bomb his house.

  I was on the edge of phoning to complain when I realised that the information needn’t have come from Farr or Black. Last night I’d made sure that anybody within earshot would hear why I’d called the police. Had a neighbour made the gibe at me? Should have burnt him up like the Le Bons, Good Ship Worship responded, and Faith Value added Him and his squeeze Parkin and chuck Bailey In as well. Last Daze wondered Anyone got there address without bothering to punctuate, and Altered Altar ended the discussion by declaring No need for any of that, people. Let their victims deal with them. We can call the three to do it. Message me if you want to help.

  The suggestion had been posted while I’d lain awake in bed. It left me fearful of secret machinations in the dark. What might the author of the post and anybody working with them have aroused? When a bell shrille
d like an alarm I was so distracted that I didn’t immediately grasp it wasn’t at the front door. As soon as I answered the phone Bobby said “Dom, have you seen?”

  “The stuff people have been saying about us? It’s just words. If they say it they won’t do it.”

  “They’ve found me, Dom.”

  At once I was as anxious as her voice. “Who has? What have they done?”

  “Nothing yet. So you haven’t seen.”

  I wished I didn’t have to learn “Seen what?”

  “Tina and her father and their son. They’re all together.” As I hoped the phrase meant no worse than it ought to Bobby said “They’re all one.”

  So it did mean what I’d feared. I could have done without any further details, particularly when a blurred shape passed across the computer screen. While the number of limbs put me in mind of a deformed insect, the head looked more human than it should, though nightmarishly misshapen. I twisted around almost swiftly enough to tip the chair over, but the room was deserted. “Dom,” Bobby said, “maybe we can cope.”

  Her voice seemed to trail off with lack of conviction. “How?” I said, glaring around the room.

  “We’ve seen things like that. You have especially. But Jim never has, and we don’t know what it may do to him.” As if she were investing all her trust in a childhood vow—a charm against terrors too threatening to name—Bobby said “The three of us need to meet and decide what to do.”

  19 - Those Who See

  The ceiling of The Crown was as spotlessly white as I’d once believed an unborn soul should be. The florid plaster decorations glinted brighter than my memory of them, so that I wondered if the heavenly gilt had been touched up. Though I hadn’t been in the pub for over thirty years, it felt as if the memory had regained life. I wouldn’t have suggested meeting there except for its nearness to the railway terminal. Across the road the cinema where I’d caught Jim and Bobby in the dark had been boarded up since I’d retired from lecturing, but it still revived thoughts of the crypt where hordes of mutated objects grew restless with unimaginable dreams. I tried to turn my mind elsewhere while I waited for my friends. A large glass of white wine kept me company as I faced the door, but I could have wished there weren’t so many shadows in the pub. Upper decks of buses passing along Lime Street interrupted the sunlight, and when I saw silhouettes of misshapen elongated heads creeping across the floor I had to reassure myself that they belonged to passengers on roofless vehicles, tourists on a tour. Whenever the door opened, shadows sprang in ahead of the newcomers, and it wasn’t only in the hope of seeing my friends that I was anxious to make out each face. When the door let in a multiple shadow I peered at the mass of bodies blurred and merged by the light behind them or by my worn-out eyes. I couldn’t breathe until the new arrivals separated, by which time they’d given me rather more than a look. No doubt they took me for a lonely oldster lingering over his solitary drink, a civilised version of the alcoholics slumped against the boards outside the abandoned cinema or else an early stage of their condition. I could have retorted with an account of my life, but did it actually represent much? My memories felt not just insignificant but potentially perilous, as if reliving them might lead me too far back, regressing through experiences that were never mine. Wherever they might ultimately lead, I could have fancied it was waiting for me in the future too. I strove not to think of the formula that the Church of the Eternal Three had lodged in my head, but I couldn’t avoid recalling how I’d seemed to hear people intoning the name when I’d last met Jim in the pub. I looked for distraction on my phone, where the absence of fresh comments about me and my friends felt oppressively ominous. One of my students from more than a decade ago had emailed a rumour that an uncut print of Orson Welles’ second film had been discovered in Brazil, and I imagined retrieving somebody’s experience of watching the complete Ambersons at the preview that had caused the studio to recut and reshoot and reduce the film. This was a past I could have borne resurrecting, and I was risking the wish, not that it seemed to lead anywhere, as the door opened to admit Jim.