I’d overlooked how sitting upstairs would bring us closer to the tunnel roof. As we passed under the arch I felt as though the roof had closed over my skull. Intermittent blocks of light stretched away overhead into the dimness, and I wondered if more of them had gone out since my last trip through, and how this might change the meaning of the code they seemed to represent. My innards tightened like an aching fist as the bus gathered speed down the underground slope. I wasn’t only apprehensive about travelling under the riven I was concerned how my friends might respond. I seemed to sense a change in the enormous weight that rested on the tunnel, but neither of my companions spoke. In a minute we came in sight of the lowest point in the tunnel, and Bobby said “Is anyone else feeling that?”
Jim shook his head before complaining “What?”
“As if there’s something over us.”
“It’s called the Mersey, Bob. You haven’t been away that long.”
She leaned towards us from the other front seat, looking ready to punch him for old times’ sake. “Something alive,” she said, “or maybe not alive but like it.”
“You’ve lost me, and I’ve got to say I’m glad you have.”
“It’s making me feel like, like an insect in a web,” Bobby said and tried again. “As if something up there is waiting to be noticed.”
“Nothing like that at all. It’s just the tunnel. Maybe you’ve got a touch of claustrophobia.”
Jim seemed faintly offended, perhaps thinking only God could be described as waiting up above to be acknowledged. I found Bobby’s words unappealingly suggestive, and did my utmost not to experience anything like them. Jim glanced at me, presumably for a comment, but I gave my head a fierce terse shake. I’d begun to fancy that the presence might be crouched over the mouth of the tunnel, waiting to reach for us, too insubstantially and insidiously for Jim to notice. When at last we emerged beneath a sky that had congealed over the sun, I was barely able to restrain myself from glancing back.
Beyond the toll booths the bus followed the route I’d taken to the Nobles’ house, and I felt as if it might be retracing time as well. A road miles long wound between blocks of shops and houses as sinuously as a snake. Eventually we left it for a road leading to the junction where I’d turned towards the river. The skewed mossy headstones in front of the abandoned church, where we alighted from the bus, looked better fed than ever. They put me in mind of vegetation nourished by graves, and I had to grasp the edge of the bus shelter while I fended off memories eager to occupy my brain. “Not far now,” I told Bobby and Jim.
The street opposite the church led past groups of rudimentary anonymous dwellings clad with strips of whitish wood or plastic At the far end, which framed a blackened patch of sky, traffic passed along a road above the river. Haze appeared to have gathered on the road, and the outlines of several figures on the pavement at the junction wavered so unstably that I found it hard to count them. I was about to comment on the sight when the three of them moved away in a blurred confusion of limbs. “Did you see them waiting at the crossroads?” Bobby said as though she couldn’t quite control her voice.
“Of course we did,” Jim said. “Three of them having a gossip.”
Bobby didn’t speak again until we reached the junction. “So where are they now?”
“In a shop or in a house or down a side street,” Jim said, having peered both ways along the main road. “Were they the sort of thing you’re wanting me to see, you and Dom?”
“They’re the start of it,” Bobby said.
There was no sign of haze on the road. Perhaps we were too close to see it any longer, but the day didn’t feel hot enough to have produced it, unless petrol fumes had. Traffic lights let us troop across the road, though not before a bus driver ignored them. I was relieved to see warehouses and windmills across the river, where the threat of a storm had turned the sky not much less black than a space between stars. I took care with every shuffling footstep as I led the way down the steep pavement to the remains of the Noble house.
I sensed the place before it came in sight It felt like the source of the dark in the sky, unless they were related in some other fashion. I came to an unsteady halt on the corner of the street whose gardens sloped down to the promenade. “That’s where they died,” I said as if this could have been as final as it should.
The house was a dwarfish ruin. Charred lengths of timber poked out of heaps of rubble, haphazard clumps of bricks no longer identifiable as the walls they’d once formed. Flapping scraps of paper clung to the remains, burned too black to be worthy of salvaging, even if they’d been pages bearing occult thoughts rather than fragments of wallpaper. Shards of glass gleamed like ebony among shattered tiles from the roof. The spectacle reminded me of the streets that had surrounded the Trinity Church of the Spirit, which might have prefigured my recurring vision of the human prey that fled through a devastated city. As I ventured towards the ruin I saw that the side walls of the neighbouring houses were stained black, as though some infection had begun. I halted opposite the spot where the front door would have been, and Jim and Bobby moved to stand on either side of me. “What are we expected to do now?” Jim said.
“I wouldn’t do anything just yet,” Bobby said at once.
“Let’s try waiting,” I agreed and saw Jim thought we were being excessively cautious.
If we were under observation, I saw nobody in the surrounding houses. I could have fancied they’d been infected by desertion, if living so close to the Nobles hadn’t driven out their neighbours. The derelict site was growing darker, and I wasn’t sure this was just because blackness was crossing the river. A charred stench caught in my throat, and I felt as though the dark was invading my eyes if not my brain, gathering inside them. I’d begun to find it hard to breathe when Jim said “Come on then, show yourselves if you’re going to. Let’s have a good look.”
He sounded so conversational that at first I thought he was talking to Bobby or me. “No need for that, Jim,” Bobby told him.
“There’s some need for something,” Jim said hoarsely. “If we stand here much longer I’ll be losing my voice.”
I feared this might be true for all of us. I was about to suggest retreating across the road, not least because of the summons he’d just issued, when he stepped forward. “Where are you going?” I said louder than I’d intended.
“I want to see if they’ve left any evidence,” Jim said and paced alongside the ruin.
I thought he was trying to revert to rationality after his momentary lapse. I had to stay with him, and Bobby followed me. I hoped it was only a breeze that made the ruin seem to grow alert, scraps of blackened paper pricking up like ears, a mass of fused timber emitting a surreptitious creak. The house was so thoroughly devastated that I couldn’t even judge where any inner walls had been, and if anything significant had survived it must be buried under the rubble. A length of snaky tendrils caught my eye, and I was afraid it would reach for us until I recognised it for a bunch of exposed wires. Had some of the ash begun to creep towards us? As I swallowed in order to speak Jim said “What’s that down there?”
I joined him at the edge of the garden. The binoculars hadn’t shown me how entangled the flowers and bushes on the slope were, a mass that looked impenetrable. All the vegetation was crouching away from the site of the house, stretching out stalks in a gesture not unlike supplication. “Does it remind you of anything, Jim?” I said.
“Such as what?”
“The trees around the field in France we followed Christian Noble to.”
“Maybe, but I don’t mean that.” His voice had grown harsh with impatience or ash. “I meant the writing down there,” he said.
I had to lean out to identify what he was seeing. A crumpled piece of paper had lodged among the twigs of a bush near the foot of the slope. Despite its restlessness, I could see it bore words. “Let’s find out,” Jim said. As he made for the street I thought a wind must be at large in the ruins of the house—at least,
I hoped it had lifted the piece of debris from behind a clump of bricks. I didn’t glance at the dark wavering shape as I followed Jim, and I tried to quell an impression that the blackness left by the fire was capable of rising up to grow more solid, reconstituting a version of the house. No doubt this was a symptom of the influences the Nobles had planted in my head, but I was grateful when the three of us reached the street and turned away from the ruin.
By the time we set foot on the promenade my legs were aching, my rickety ankles in particular. A cyclist raced past with a whir of wheels, but otherwise the possibility of a storm seemed to have cleared the wide pavement and the narrow beach. Infrequent benches faced a waist-high railing and the view of three spindly windmills across the river, skeletal white vanes groping at the black sky as if to drag it down. Between the promenade and the steep gardens, trees rose from an elongated strip of lawn, and Jim picked up a fallen branch as he made for the bush that had trapped the crumpled paper. He was just able to snag the page, which he grabbed as a wind set it fluttering like an impaled insect on the branch. He glanced at his find as he let the branch drop, and looked ready to bin the piece of paper. “Well, that was a mistake,” he said.
Bobby glanced at it and then peered closer. “I don’t know, Jim.” It was a page from a local newspaper, reporting the destruction of the Nobles’ house. Bobby took it and unfolded it, and I saw that the edges were scorched. “Look again,” she urged.
It wasn’t merely scorched, it was charred around the edge. In fact the fire had discoloured it more than I’d seen at first, and some of the print resembled the marks of a brand. As Jim ducked towards it like a mime of patience, the page darkened further. I wasn’t sure whether this was because the sky had, even once the paper started crumbling in her hands. It disintegrated into fragments that fell on the grass like black snow. Bobby gazed at the spectacle as though it had left her without words, and then she said “Do you realise what that means?”
I wanted Jim to answer. “It was in the fire,” he said.
“But it couldn’t have been, could it?” I felt desperate to remind him. “It was published later.”
“Then obviously someone set it on fire afterwards.”
“I don’t think so, Jim,” Bobby said. “It feels as if time went wrong,”
“Time should be no more.” This sounded like agreement until Jim said “That’s what the Bible used to say about the apocalypse. It’s nothing like yet, though.”
He stepped off the grass before I could give him an argument. I saw he meant to keep an eye on the garden and the ruined house, but then he glanced over the railing. The sight beyond it took him across the promenade. “Dom, have a look at this.”
Bobby joined him at the railing before I did. Beyond it a drenched breakwater like a remnant of the ancient jetty extended into the river. An unstable shape leapt up from it—a wave—and I couldn’t help hoping he’d seen nothing as lively as that. The sinuous fringe of the river drew back from the sand in front of us, and eyes gleamed at us out of the water. A wave engulfed the hairless head and then retreated, exposing the gleeful face of the object that lay coiled on the beach. “Bob, you ought to recognise that too,” Jim said. “It’s like the thing Dom and I forgot at Safe To Sleep.”
“The Nobles all had them. They gave me one.” Bobby shivered, perhaps just with the unseasonable chill that had crept around us. “They used to stroke them like pets,” she said.
“We won’t be forgetting this one,” Jim said and made for a ramp near the breakwater.
I couldn’t tell whether the item on the beach was the icon I’d thrown in the river. “I don’t know if that’s advisable,” I said.
“You brought me here to see, Dom. That’s the first solid bit of evidence I’ve seen.”
I hoped nothing else of that kind we might encounter would prove to be as solid. I didn’t think Jim should be alone on the beach, and I followed him down the slippery stone ramp as Bobby did. Beyond the ramp wet sand closed around our shoes while the massive sandstone blocks of the sea wall towered above us. The river was empty of ships and as black as the sky, and sent waves outlined by dark foam towards us as we trooped abreast along the beach. Now I saw the icon was embedded in the sand and coated with it too, which made it look as though it was decaying into particles, not least the eyes that bulged above the grin stretched wide. A wave coursed over the icon and recoiled, which made the coiled shape appear to raise its watchful head. If Jim noticed the illusion—surely that was all it was—he ignored it, stooping to pick up the icon at once.
As he dug his fingers under the noose of a body I heard a commotion above the sea wall. It sounded as if an object had been dislodged from a garden overlooking the river, and as it slithered down to the promenade I could tell it was substantial. I didn’t know whether my friends had heard it, but I was wary of distracting Jim. Before I had a chance to speak he straightened up with a grunt of effort or distaste or both.
He was holding the icon. It looked unpleasantly moist, glistening like a snail just emerged from a shell, and I wondered if this was the cause of his disgust. I heard the object on the slope drop to the grass, a muted surreptitious noise that was succeeded by a confused scurrying. In a moment three heads peered over the railing above us—three faces, at any rate. When I glanced up they’d gone, and Jim was gasping “What the devil.”
He didn’t mean the watchers I’d glimpsed. Both he and Bobby had their backs to the sea wall and were staring at the icon. He was doing his best to keep hold of it as it sagged in his hands, drooping like a dead reptile. When he tried to take a firmer grasp the icon started to disintegrate as if it was composed of sand. Perhaps the actual figurine was still at the bottom of the river, in which case I had a fearful notion that whatever it represented was infesting its surroundings. Jim’s prize was collapsing in his hands, a spectacle that left me all but unaware of some activity receding along the promenade. He jerked his hands apart, and the remnants of the object landed on the beach, where they were indistinguishable from the sand. No doubt Jim’s gesture signified defeat, but it reminded me how Christian Noble had sown the field in France with fragments of his ancestor, a symbolic broadcast of his influence. I didn’t think Jim was recalling this as he stared at the sand and then at Bobby and me. “Good God,” he said in very little of a voice. I was about to offer any reassurance I could find when my breath faltered, and my heartbeat did. He was staring not at us but beyond us.
If his words hadn’t made his dismay plain, his eyes would have. I felt not just reluctant to turn but not much better than incapable of doing so. Bobby turned first, and pressed the back of a hand against her mouth so hard I thought it might draw blood. This seemed to intensify the dreadful ness of whatever waited at my back, but I couldn’t let my friends confront it without me. I shook from head to foot with the effort of overcoming my paralysis, and twisted around to look.
A shape was perched on the ramp beneath the black sky. The longest of its outstretched limbs almost spanned the ramp. They and the rest of a cluster of a dozen extravagantly unequal limbs ended in clumps of digits with some ambition to resemble hands. The profusion of limbs was surmounted by a gibbous mass of flesh that glimmered like a moon obscured by clouds. While the swollen roundish lump was largely featureless, it had more than one face.
I tried to be reminded of a totem pole in case this helped to keep the sight at a distance from my mind. Christian Noble’s face grinned from the bottom of the fleshy heap, tucked under Tina’s chin, while Toph’s face overlapped her brows and competed with his parents for elation. It was even harder to tell them apart now, especially once the faces began to crawl over one another like insects in a nest before merging into a single bloated exultant mask. The pairs of tumid lightless eyes split apart to swarm over the composite face, and I was appalled to realise that the Nobles were celebrating their state—their potential for mutation. Some of the eyes migrated onto swellings like enormous blisters on the gathering of flesh, and as faces for
med around the eyes the three heads craned towards us on contorted reptilian necks. Throughout the performance all the limbs had been shifting back and forth with an impatience that suggested some unimaginable hunger, and now the shape scuttled crabwise down to the beach.
I didn’t know how many of us made a noise. Certainly I made one that had no time to form a word. I stumbled backwards, almost tripping over my own senile feet. I thought I’d lost all sense of direction, because I found myself floundering through water. No, the tide appeared to be coming in, though when we’d reached the promenade it had been receding, it was already splashing against the sea wall a few hundred yards away, and falling back with a sluggishness that looked unnaturally reluctant, not quite like water. As I staggered clear of the waves that were narrowing the beach, Bobby grabbed Jim’s arm and mine. “Steps,” she urged.
A flight of them, strewn with sodden seaweed and slimy with lichen, led up from the narrowest section of the beach. We’d hardly started for them when the river set about pursuing us with waves that flung ripples across the sand to catch at our feet. I had a nightmare sense that the ripples were passing through the sand, which had begun to quiver underfoot. Bobby was first at the steps, and as she seized the handrail to haul herself upwards I made myself look back.
The trinity of faces had crowded together on the malformed head to watch us. Above a horrid confusion of features the eyes clustered like an insect’s. As they met mine, the creature scampered with appalling rapidity onto the beach, splaying all its limbs wide and rearing high onto the beach, splaying all its limbs wide and rearing high as they grew unequally scrawnier. I was afraid to draw my friends’ attention to the sight, and managed not to plead with Jim to hurry up, to give me space to follow him and Bobby on the steps. While I forced myself to wait I felt the beach shift under my feet, and sand crawling into my shoes to weigh them down. The moment Jim gained the third step, I clutched the chilly handrail and lurched after him.
The Way Of The Worm Page 23
