Inside the Worm (10 page)

SATURDAY MORNING, FLISS
left the house at eight forty-five. It was day one of the Festival, and walking home together Friday afternoon she and Vicky had arranged to meet in Butterfield's diner to drink Coke and watch the procession with which the Festival was to open. Somebody at school had suggested putting the worm in the procession but Gary had dismissed the idea. He said it would spoil the surprise.

Elsworth was a small town and Butterfield's was its only supermarket. The diner which was tacked on its side was a favourite meeting place for kids. As she turned on to the road which dropped down into town, Fliss was thinking about the bridesmaid dress. Dry and ironed, it bore an indistinct mark where the
edge of the stain had been, but this mark was so faint you'd have to know it was there before you'd see it. It certainly wasn't going to stop her wearing it for the play next weekend, so Gary Bazzard's dirty trick didn't matter any more. And, she told herself, since I've found a brand-new friend, Lisa Watmough doesn't matter either.

It was five past nine when Fliss reached Butterfield's, and Vicky was already there. She'd bagged a table by the window so they could watch the parade in luxury and pull faces at any boys who might go by. She had a can already, so Fliss got a Coke from the cabinet and paid at the counter before sliding in beside her.

‘Hi, Vicky. Been here long?'

Vicky shook her head. ‘Three, four minutes. Grant Cooper and Michael Tostevin just went by. They've gone to McDonald's.'

‘How d'you know?'

‘They mouthed it through the window. Probably hoped we'd join them.'

‘No chance.'

‘What'll we do after the procession?'

Fliss shrugged. ‘Whatever you like, as long as it doesn't involve Grant and Michael. I see enough of them at school.'

They lingered over their drinks, turning and giggling when a knot of older boys looked in the window.
One of them was tall and lean, with thick black hair and a cheeky grin, and Fliss wished he'd come in and whisk her away to somewhere romantic, but he only stretched his mouth with his forefingers till it looked like a letterbox and wiggled his tongue at them. As he was doing this, the Mayor's limousine came cruising by at the head of the procession and the boy moved away, looking abashed. The girls' vantage point turned out not to be so great after all, because their view was partly blocked as shoppers lined the pavement to watch the floats. As soon as the last float had passed, Fliss and Vicky slurped up the dregs of their Cokes and went outside.

They strolled through the town. The spectators were dispersing, leaving crisp packets and bits of torn streamer on the ground. When they came to where the Odeon used to be, there was just a gap with bits of smashed masonry and the marks of heavy tyres. They stood for a while gazing at the gap, and Fliss told Vicky about the demolition man and the fabric he'd given to Lisa and herself.

They walked on, through the shopping centre and into the square. The parish church – St Ceridwen's – overlooked the square, and as the girls approached they saw that somebody had stuck a colourful poster on the notice board. They stopped to read it.

it began. ‘What a thought,' groaned Fliss. ‘One Saturday morning's bad enough.'

‘Yes, but look,' cried Vicky. ‘It mentions our play.'

‘Where?'

The poster listed a whole lot of things which would happen during the coming week. Fliss's eyes slid down the list. There was the procession they'd just watched, with a prize for the best float; a Festival Queen, whom they'd glimpsed enthroned on the back of a lorry; a knockout quiz competition; a prize for the most original shop window display, and much else besides. At the foot of the list, in brilliant green, was this:

SATURDAY MAY 1ST. ON THE FESTIVAL FIELD. A THRILLING RE-ENACTMENT BY CHILDREN OF BOTTOMTOP MIDDLE SCHOOL OF SAINT CERIDWEN'S OWN STORY. SEE THE LEGENDARY CONFRONTATION BETWEEN THE DREADED ELSWORTH WORM AND THE FRAIL MAIDEN. SEE TERRIFIED VILLAGERS AND MARAUDING DANES. SEE CERIDWEN MARTYRED FOR HER FAITH. OUR TOWN HAS SEEN NOTHING LIKE THIS IN A THOUSAND YEARS.

‘Bit over the top, isn't it?' said Fliss. ‘People'll be expecting a Hollywood epic and all they'll get is us, trolling about like wallies in a bunch of home-made costumes.'

Vicky chuckled. ‘Doesn't matter, Fliss. They'll love it anyway. They always do when kids're performing. It's like the infants' nativity play where someone forgets her lines or bursts out crying or goes wandering offstage looking for Mummy. The teacher's going ape-shape thinking the whole thing's ruined, but it isn't, because the mums and dads think it's really cute. They've seen the play fifty times before anyway, and it's the things that go wrong that make it interesting.'

‘Hmm.' Fliss wasn't entirely convinced. ‘We're not infants, Vicky. You heard what Mr Hepworth said. The whole town'll be watching us. It's the last thing, you see – the climax of the Festival. It's a big responsibility and it scares me.'

They moved on, strolling in a great circle round the town centre till they found themselves outside Butterfield's once more.

‘Another Coke?' suggested Fliss.

Vicky shook her head. ‘I'd better go. We're off somewhere in the car this aft – some garden centre or something, and I'll have to get changed. What you gonna do – find that lad you fancied?'

‘Which lad?' Fliss looked indignant. ‘I don't fancy
anyone. I thought I'd walk round the supermarket – get a choc bar or something.'

Vicky grinned. ‘I'll believe you. Thousands wouldn't. You around tomorrow?'

Fliss shrugged. ‘Dunno. Depends what the wrinklies're up to. I'll give you a ring.'

Vicky departed and Fliss went into Butterfield's. It was hot and busy and she knew she'd spend half her time being jostled and the other half dodging trolleys, but then nothing's much fun by yourself and it was too early to go home. If she'd known what was about to happen among those crowded aisles, she'd have gone home anyway.

WHILE FLISS AND
Vicky were reading the poster outside St Ceridwen's, Gary and the others were arguing in Trot's garage, which had become a sort of headquarters for them. This was where they stowed the pieces of the worm, and where they usually met. It was a big garage with plenty of space to spare even when the Trotters' Astra was in it, as it was now.

‘I still say let's frighten some people,' insisted Gary. ‘We all know how great we felt after we did it to old Ackroyd.'

‘Yes,' said Lisa, ‘but that was at night, and in a quiet spot. Going downtown in broad daylight's another matter. We'd get arrested.'

‘It was you got in trouble for being out late,'
countered Trot. ‘So Saturday morning should be just the job, right?'

‘Yes,' put in Ellie-May, ‘but what about the police, Trot? Wouldn't we be disturbing the peace or something?'

‘Would we heck! Listen – Gary and me aren't stupid. We've got it all worked out. You know the other week, when the bookshop did that promo on kids' books?'

Ellie-May looked at him. ‘Yes – what about it?'

‘Well – they had guys dressed up, didn't they? There was a bogeyman, a puppy and an owl, all walking up and down the street in front of the shop. Did they get arrested?'

‘Well no, but they were advertising something, weren't they?'

‘Exactly!' Trot smiled. ‘And so are we. If anybody asks, we're advertising our play, right?'

Ellie-May shook her head. ‘I'm not sure, Trot. I don't know if we'd get away with it.'

‘'Course we would. And anyway, nobody's going to ask. Come on.'

Fliss was making her way towards the checkout with a three-pack of Snickers in her basket. The narrow aisle was thronged with trolley-pushing shoppers and their children. Just in front of Fliss, a kneeling youth was taking tins of peas from a trolley and stacking
them on a shelf. The trolley blocked off half of the gangway, creating a bottleneck into which impatient customers were funnelled, pushing and shoving one another in their eagerness to progress.

Fliss was being swept towards this bottleneck and wishing she'd gone home with Vicky, when she became aware of some sort of commotion between the checkout line and one of the exits. She couldn't see very well because the stacked goods on the shelves were higher than she was and because people were craning to see, but there seemed to be violent movement in the crowd over there and she could hear exclamations of anger or maybe surprise.

Seconds later, the forward momentum of the crowd she was in ceased. For a moment, Fliss and those about her stood absolutely still. Then somebody screamed and the surge went violently into reverse as those at the front recoiled from whatever it was they could see. Fliss back-pedalled desperately as a tidal wave of shoppers threatened to overwhelm her. To her left, an old lady cried out and toppled, clawing at a pyramid of cans in a useless bid to stay on her feet. The pyramid collapsed, pelting the woman with cans as she fell. Other shoppers, skidding and stumbling through scattered cans, abandoned their trolleys, which became rolling barriers against those who came after. A child fell and was snatched by its mother from the jaws of certain death.

Fliss turned and fought her way to the top of the aisle where she clung to a freezer-cabinet. Bodies cannoned into her, threatening to sweep her away, but she hung on, and as she clung there, limpet-like, she saw the worm. It was coming along the walkway between the tops of the aisles and the fixtures which lined the back wall of the store. It was moving quite rapidly for a thing its size, scattering shoppers as it came. It passed within a metre of her, heading for the last, wide aisle which would lead it back to the end of the checkout line. Fliss watched as it swung round the bend, dragging its iridescent green tail, and disappeared from view. Then she turned with a moan and threw up over a hill of turkey parts.

STAN MORRIS HAD
the biggest milk round in Elsworth. Seven days a week he was up at four-thirty and out delivering by five, and he'd work till ten at night, loading up his float for the next day. He followed this punishing routine the year round except for two weeks each January when he took Mrs Morris off to Florida. Renowned throughout the town for his addiction to hard work (some called him a workaholic), Stan would never win any prizes for the size of his imagination. In all of his forty-six years he had never seen a ghost or a UFO or a fairy and he never expected to, and he felt only scorn for those who claimed they had. So when a dragon crossed the road in front of the float at
five-fifteen that Sunday morning, it came as a bit of a shock. He braked hard, causing the stack of crates on the flatbed to hit the back of his cab, and sat staring at the gap in the fence through which the apparition had vanished.

Mebbe the wife's right, he told himself. P'raps I have been working too hard. When a man starts seeing things it's time to slow down a bit.

Stan recovered his composure after a few minutes and drove on, and by eight o'clock he'd convinced himself he'd seen nothing unusual. Not that morning, nor any other morning of his life. For Stan, the unusual was deeply suspect and probably didn't exist.

Trot closed the garage door as silently as possible and tiptoed into the house. It was still only six o'clock. As far as he could tell, nobody had stirred. He crept upstairs and into the room he shared with his eight-year-old brother. As he eased the door closed, Jonathan rolled over in his bed and mumbled, ‘Hnnn – where you been, David?'

‘Sssh!' Trot pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Mum and Dad are still sleeping, kiddo. It's early. I went to the bathroom, that's all.'

‘Hmmm. OK.' The child rolled over again, pulled the duvet up around his ears and went back to sleep. Trot sat down on his own bed and bent forward to unfasten the laces of his Nikes, grinning as he did so.