Inside the Worm (17 page)

It couldn't continue, and Fliss knew it. She felt herself tiring. Dimly, she was aware that the Festival Field was emptying as townspeople scrambled over walls and fences or fought their way through gateways. Perhaps, she thought, some will escape if they flee, but the worm will have its revenge on Elsworth, and slake its thousand-year hunger with Elsworth's dead. She wished her parents would save themselves, but knew they were near for her sake. Her limbs felt leaden and she couldn't get her breath. She knew that soon she must fall.

It happened almost at once. The worm backed up and, as Fliss followed, her sandal came down on a stone. She stumbled and fell, and before she could roll or rise, she was pinned to the turf by a great taloned foot. She gritted her teeth and screwed up her eyes, awaiting the blast which would finish her.

It didn't come. Instead, the worm emitted a chilling screech and the foot was snatched back. Fliss rolled and looked up. There stood the beast, but as she watched, its image began to shimmer and warp like an object underwater. She screwed up her eyes and shook her head. It was changing, shrinking. The coils of smoke, the jets of flame, became wisps and tongues which flickered out and dispersed before her eyes. The scaly armour seemed to soften and hang in folds and wrinkles, and the creature's sinewy limbs disintegrated, becoming thin and pale as the talons in
which they ended curled and shrivelled like feathers in a flame. The screeching roar dwindled through cough, bark and groan till it resolved in the anguished cries of children.

A wave of nausea swept through Fliss and she closed her eyes. When she looked again the worm had gone. On the scorched and trampled grass lay a smashed thing – a contraption of wood and cloth and wire in the midst of which sprawled four ashen-faced children. A hand plucked at the sleeve of her dress. Fliss turned. The woman she'd saved gazed into her eyes. ‘What – what was it?' she croaked. ‘What happened?'

Fliss shook her head. She felt unutterably tired. ‘I don't know,' she murmured. ‘But whatever it was, I think it's over now.'

A WEEK WENT
by before life in Elsworth returned to something like normal. During that time, two explanations emerged for what had taken place on the Festival Field.

The vicar said that Elsworth had once more been threatened, and once more delivered.

The
Star
abandoned its earlier sensationalism and said that the townspeople had been the victims of a collective hallucination, and of mass hysteria.

The town's churchgoers tended to favour the vicar's version, while the police and most other people went along with the
Star.
No prosecutions followed the recent spate of vandalism. Nobody felt like delving any deeper into the matter for
fear of uncovering fresh mysteries. No. It was over and done with, whatever it was. Forget it. Life goes on.

Fliss could not forget it, and neither could Lisa, Ellie-May, Gary or Trot. They'd survived, but their horrific experience had left them feeling isolated – set apart somehow from the world of friends, family and everyday life. Saturday found them huddled in the greenhouse on the abandoned allotment. The spell of fine weather had broken down. Rain hissed and rattled on the grimy panes, there was no sign of Hughie Ackroyd, and they were glad of the warmth which came from the rusty stove.

They'd sat for some time in silence, letting a chill which had little to do with the weather thaw from their bones, when Lisa said, ‘I don't know how you can stand to be with us, Fliss, after what we did to you.'

Fliss shook her head. ‘It wasn't you, Lisa. It wasn't any of you. You were possessed – taken over by something. It started as soon as you were chosen to play the worm. It had waited a thousand years and it didn't rush. It took over your minds, little by little. Then it started changing your bodies, though you didn't know it. On Festival Day, behind that marquee, it extinguished you altogether and became itself once more –
the Elsworth Worm, bent on revenge. If others had been chosen, the same would have happened to them.'

‘I know.' Ellie-May shivered. ‘I could feel it. It was like – you know – you get an urge to do something you know's wrong, but the thought of it's so exciting you can't stop yourself. It was terrific and horrible, both at the same time.'

‘I felt like that,' nodded Trot. ‘I wanted to do the worst things I could think of, even though they were stupid and cruel. I just couldn't help it.'

‘I knew something was happening,' murmured Gary. ‘Deep down I knew, but I didn't want to admit it to myself. I was enjoying it all, you see. The power. People's fear. The destruction.'

‘What I want to know,' said Fliss, ‘is what it felt like when you actually became the worm. I mean, did you know you'd changed?'

Lisa shook her head. ‘There was this terrific excitement, that's all. You felt like you could do anything. Anything at all. Everybody was scared of you, see? It gave you power – a feeling of power.'

‘And hate,' put in Gary. ‘You hated everybody and everything. You just wanted to smash everything in sight.' He grinned ruefully, shaking his head. ‘You should've felt the hate we felt for
you, Fliss. You and your plastic sword. It was awesome.'

‘I felt it,' said Fliss.

‘But you came on,' said Lisa, ‘I wonder what would have happened if you hadn't?'

‘We'd have become murderers,' said Trot. ‘The four of us. We just wanted to destroy everyone and everything in Elsworth. We must've been totally crazy.'

Fliss shook her head. ‘I told you, Trot – it wasn't you.'

‘But if it hadn't been for you, Fliss, the worm would've won and we wouldn't exist as separate people – or as people at all, come to that.'

Fliss shook her head again. She smiled, her first smile in a long time.

‘It wasn't me either,' she said.

Robert Swindells left school at fifteen to work on a local newspaper. At seventeen, he joined the RAF for three years, then worked as a teacher. Now a full-time writer, he is the author of a number of bestselling children's titles for Random House. In 1994 he won the Carnegie Medal for
Stone Cold
(Hamish Hamilton), a teenage novel about a serial killer.
Ruby Tanya
won the Salford Children's Book Award 2005.

Also available by Robert Swindells, and published by Random House Children's Books:

Abomination

Blackout

Blitzed

In the Nick of Time

Nightmare Stairs

Room 13 and Inside the Worm

Shrapnel

The Shade of Hettie Daynes

Timesnatch

ROOM 13

Robert Swindells

The night before her school trip, Fliss has a terrible nightmare about a dark, sinister house – a house with a ghastly secret in room thirteen. Arriving in Whitby, she discovers that the hotel they will be staying in looks very like the house in the dream.

There is one important difference – there is no room thirteen.

Or is there? At the stroke of midnight, something strange happens to the linen cupboard on the dim landing. Something strange is happening to Ellie-May Sunderland too, and Fliss and her friends find themselves drawn into a desperate bid to save her.

‘A splendid spooky story'

The School Librarian

WINNER OF THE 1990 CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD

0 440 864658

CORGI YEARLING BOOKS

INSIDE THE WORM
AN RHCB DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 10015 6

Published in Great Britain by RHCB Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children's Books
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This ebook edition published 2012

Copyright © Robert Swindells, 1993
Illustrations copyright © Jon Riley, 1993

First Published in Great Britain

Doubleday 1993

The right of Robert Swindells to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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