Slither (8 page)

Adrea’s fingers found the source of the sharp pain on her abdomen, something long and thin clinging to her. She couldn’t visualize what it was, but nor could she remove it. Pulling at it felt like cutting into her flesh with razors. ‘Must keep calm,’ she told herself. ‘Must keep calm.’

Ignoring the others, she moved steadily through the water to the steps at the corner of the pool and climbed out. As she turned she caught sight of Tina standing waist-deep at the shallow end, sobbing as she stared down at something hanging from her breast. It looked like a snake.

‘Get out of the water!’ she yelled to her again. ‘Tina, get out of the water!’

Suddenly she knew what they were: she’d read about them in the paper – sewer worms! The one on her abdomen seemed to be chewing its way into her. Fighting her rising panic, she grasped it with both hands, squeezing and twisting, irrationally convinced she could wrench its head off. She was acting blindly, racked by the excruciating pain, panting, her cheeks wet with tears. The worm was tough and resilient; she couldn’t make it let her go. Then suddenly it began a series of jerks in quick, unpredictable spasms.

She could taste the blood on her lips where her own teeth had bitten into them. Shifting her grip she twisted again, twisted and pulled. The jerking continued, till the worm gave one last undulating shudder and then slackened. It became limp between her fingers. She flung it from her, far across the grass among the dark trees.

Her hands were sticky with blood flowing from the wound in her belly. Her breath came in uneasy sobs. And there on her leg, steadfastly hanging on to the flesh of her inner thigh, was the other worm. Oh God, she hadn’t the strength…

‘Help!’ Vincent was whimpering from the pool. ‘Help me! Please!’

Even under the low green lighting the dark blood was visible,
like clouds in the water. Vincent was by the edge, pathetically holding out a podgy hand to be pulled out. Gail – it must have been Gail – was floating face-down, with only her meagre white buttocks on the surface. Someone else, probably Gordon, was still thrashing about at the far end, but weakening.

‘Help me!’ Vincent sobbed. ‘Oh, help me, please!’

Why she did it, she’d never know. Streaming with blood, the worm on her thigh still gnawing into her, she crawled painfully to the side of the pool, grasped Vincent’s hand, and pulled him out. He collapsed on the grass, lying there naked and white, heaving with sobs.

But she couldn’t see a single worm on him anywhere.

8

Matt heard about it next day while lunching in the pub with the rest of the crew.

Over the weeks since he’d been recalled from Westport he’d worked non-stop on one uninspiring programme after another. This one, at a Middlehampton brake-cable factory, was a survey of the state of British industry – the usual fare.

Not that he hadn’t tried to sell his idea for a documentary on sewer worms, but they weren’t interested. Fobbed him off with unconvincing excuses. Humoured him, in fact. Yes, they’d allowed him to view – after worried expressions of concern – the newsreel of his own face being eaten. He’d watched it with cold curiosity, unmoved; though that night he’d woken up screaming, bathed in sweat, having relived the whole experience in his worst nightmare to date. Luckily he’d been alone in the house; Helen had still been at Westport with Jenny.

During those same weeks he’d assembled a growing file of press cuttings, magazine articles and photographs. Whenever work permitted he’d contacted Angus and arranged to go into the sewers again – at first to take more pictures, but later to hunt for skins.

Fran was having a great success selling worm-skin belts to a top fashion designer for his autumn collection. Matching handbags, too. Matt had met her a couple of times in London to discuss business details, and she’d agreed that Angus should be offered a cut to keep him happy.

‘Sewer worms, that’s what they were! First anyone’s seen in this district, but there’s no doubt about it.’

Matt’s ears picked out the words across the general chatter of the pub – a high-pitched, smug voice, slightly nasal. Sharply he looked around to identify who was speaking.

The man was standing at the bar. He wore a shabby raincoat
and heavy glasses which enlarged his bulging eyes. ‘Naked, too!’ he was saying, shaking his head with disapproval. The tip of his tongue passed over his thin lips. ‘Serves ’em right if you ask me.’

The landlord nodded. ‘Dead?’ He spoke the word as though he and death shared a special understanding. Maybe they did. On the walls were photographs and trophies from the Western Desert; his bearing was military, shoulders back, hair short.

‘Two of ’em. The others are in hospital.’

Matt emptied his glass and went over to join them. The worms have claimed their first dead, he was thinking; but it had been touch and go that he hadn’t ended up in the cemetery himself. A couple of weeks earlier he’d tried to make an appointment to see Aubrey Morgan, Controller of Programmes, now Acting Managing Director. ‘Too busy at the moment,’ Jimmy had reported back to him several days later. ‘And as for your documentary, he says nobody has been killed yet, so the worms can’t be as dangerous as you claim. Sorry, Matt. He’s right, you know.’

The landlord held his glass at eye-level, slightly tilted, as he poured the Guinness. Matt turned to the man in the raincoat.

‘Heard you mention sewer worms,’ he said affably. ‘I could tell you a bit about them.’

The man’s eyes flickered up to his face, betraying the usual expression of curiosity about his scars. Matt smiled, unembarrassed. He used those scars shamelessly whenever he wanted to get someone talking. Especially about worms. It worked this time too without a hitch; it always did.

Rodney Smith, the man said his name was. Deputy editor of the local paper. He questioned Matt for a minute or two about his experiences in the London sewers before telling of the ‘tragedy at The Cedars’ as he called it.

His contact at the police station – he phrased it to sound both conspiratorial and highly important – had tipped him off that someone passing The Cedars late at night had heard screams and dialled 999. What they’d found there was beyond description. A mixed nude bathing party in the private swimming pool… such goings on! Then, those worms!

He’d followed up the story through his contact at the hospital
who told him of two young women brought in with unusual wounds on their bodies; also a middle-aged man, unhurt but in a state of deep shock.

His contact at the mortuary had filled in more details. A woman, very thin, probably drowned, but with bites all over her, like a ferret had been at her. The dead man was in a worse state. His genitals had been eaten away. Only a few shreds of skin remained.

‘Couldn’t have done it without my contacts,’ Rodney Smith stated contentedly as he sipped the large whisky Matt had bought him. ‘Then, I always did have good contacts. Half the battle in my business.’

Matt made a quick excuse and slipped away to rejoin the rest of the crew. He told them what had happened, keeping his eyes on Jacqui Turner, their director. She was still in her twenties, a slip of a girl, but eager to make her way in television and tough enough to do it. This was the kind of opportunity she shouldn’t turn down; one spectacular scoop like this and there’d be no trouble about renewing her contract – they’d be only too eager. Pete, his camera assistant, brought her another Guinness. She shook back the dark, wavy hair from her face as she drank, her eyes fixed on Matt.

‘We’re ahead of schedule. We can fit it in easily,’ he argued.

‘Shouldn’t we ask permission, or something?’

‘I’ll clear it with them. Have to ring them anyway about the rushes. If you agree.’

He went to the phone in the passageway at the rear of the pub, waited impatiently for the exchange to answer, then put in his daily reverse-charge call to Jimmy Case. It took some time to get through. Jimmy’s voice boomed at him through the crackles saying the rushes looked fine, no problems, up to his usual high standard, and asked how things were going. Matt said he’d no problems either and asked for the call to be transferred to Newsroom.

‘A local scandal that’s just blown up,’ he explained. ‘A late-night swimming party, all starkers, two of them dead and three in hospital. My director wants to know, can Newsroom do with any pictures?’

‘Sounds you’re a bit late on the scene for pictures,’ Jimmy
bawled down the line with a bellowing laugh. ‘But I’ll get you transferred.’

Deliberately he hadn’t mentioned the worms because he knew just how they’d react. Jimmy, anyway. ‘It’s a bloody obsession with that man,’ he’d once said. ‘Everywhere he goes he sees worms. Must be bloody Freudian.’

Newsroom answered. No, Al Wilson was out at lunch. What was that? Worms? Two dead? Well, no promises, mind, but as they were on the spot… At first she seemed more interested in the sex angle, but then she said: ‘Worms? But who put them in the swimming pool?’

‘Who puts them anywhere?’ he replied. ‘Get there by themselves, don’t they?’ But as he went back to the table he began to realize she might have a point, something he hadn’t thought of before.

Rodney Smith, still in his shabby raincoat, led the procession of cars in his own battered, snub-nosed Morris Eight. The Cedars turned out to be a medium-sized house set in its own grounds which were cut off from public gaze by a high wall. The gates were open and they drove straight in. Two children, about the same age as Jenny, stood on the grass verge watching them pass. Twins, Matt thought. At one time he and Helen had dreamed of having twins. Just twins. No other children. Then Jenny was born and they forgot about it.

A uniformed constable sitting in the porch of the house came forward to ask what they wanted, but Rodney Smith knew him and there were no problems. He pointed out the swimming pool. While Matt and Jacqui stared down into the water, his stocky, dour camera assistant, Pete, began to set up.

‘I can’t see any worms,’ Jacqui commented, walking along the edge. ‘What do they look like? Small snakes?’

‘Sometimes small, but they come in all sizes.’

‘About the length of your hand, these were,’ Rodney Smith said. ‘No telling if there’s any more in the water. The ones I saw were dead.’

‘Green?’ Matt asked.

‘Green
ish
.’ He went back to the constable, who nodded and indicated the shed. ‘Some of the dead ones are still here,’ he called over to them. ‘I imagined the police had taken them all
away but it seems they haven’t. I’ll get them.’

For a moment he disappeared into the shed, then came out bearing what looked like an old metal oven dish. In it lay several dead worms, stiff and straight, their greenish-purple colour lacking the sparkle of the larger variety. Jacqui picked one up gingerly.

‘Urgh! Like pricks with teeth!’

They filmed her holding it and describing, straight to camera, how last night’s swimming party had ended in disaster when these sharp little incisors had found their prey. Matt had no idea whether Newsroom would use the item or not, but it would all come in useful for that documentary if ever he got permission to do it. He took a couple of close shots of her holding the jaws apart, then suggested she should crouch down by the side of the pool.

‘Wish we could see some live ones,’ she said.

Rodney Smith sniggered. ‘Dangle your fingers in the water,’ he suggested nastily. ‘If there’s any of ’em left, they’ll soon show themselves.’

‘For Chrissake!’ Matt swore at him. That high-pitched, nasal voice was beginning to get on his nerves.

‘I was only saying if—’

‘Do it yourself!’ Matt told him roughly. ‘I’ll film them having a go at your hand, and gladly.’

They were packing up to drive down to the hospital when Matt noticed the two children who had followed them into the grounds. He grinned at them. Encouraged, they crept forward; the constable was examining the sound man’s Nagra tape-recorder with absorbed interest and didn’t notice them. He was a hi-fi fanatic, it seemed.

‘You with TV, mister?’ the boy wanted to know.

‘Yes.’

‘We can show you live biters if you like.’

‘Biters?’

‘Them.’ The boy pointed to the metal tray. The girl stared at him speculatively, but without saying a word. ‘We call ’em biters.’

‘Good name,’ Matt approved. ‘D’you find a lot round these parts?’

‘If you know where to look.’

The girl joined in, ‘If you pay the right price. You
are
with telly, aren’t you?’

She drove a tough bargain, five pounds, but Matt was too eager to see the worms to argue for long. He called Jacqui over. She agreed, and took the two children in her car. On the way to the Council rubbish dump he stopped in front of a small cluster of three shops and bought some offal. ‘For the dog,’ he explained to the butcher.

They parked just beyond the petrol station and followed the children along the path which led past the dump. Rodney Smith scoffed at the whole exercise and became irritated when a loop of rusting barbed wire sprang out of the undergrowth at him, catching his raincoat. The sound crew decided to stay in the car whilst Matt and Jacqui did the recce. Pete remained behind too to reload the camera.

The girl, Annie, suddenly stopped and pointed. ‘Down in that ditch. There’s lots down there. Little ’uns.’

They balanced precariously on the sloping grass sides of the ditch, staring down at the clear water. Bent grasses trailed in it; tiny insects busied themselves above the surface.

‘Nothing there,’ Rodney Smith declared nasally. ‘You kids having us on?’

‘That’s where we…’ she stopped, then giggled ‘… saw ’em last. Innit, Tim?’

Tim confirmed her story. ‘Yeah, ’bout here.’

Matt unwrapped the packet of offal, took a small piece and dropped it into the water. The others looked at him curiously. ‘Bait,’ he grunted, watching it intently. No sign of them yet. He selected another piece which he tore to crumb-size shreds before scattering it on the water a little farther upstream.

‘Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days,’ murmured Jacqui; she’d once mentioned her father was a Baptist minister, four-square on the Bible. Then, breathlessly: ‘And here they come.’

‘Look at ’em! Look at ’em!’ Rodney Smith’s voice rose even higher in his excitement. ‘Did you ever see anything like that?’

Matt went up the bank again and waved to Pete to bring the
camera over. They wouldn’t be easy to film in this light. Too much reflection from the surface of the water, and their colouring almost merging with the bed of the stream. He tried from several angles and took some readings; it was vital he managed to get a couple of shots at least. Angus had told him about these small ones before, so had his press cuttings, but it was the first time Matt had seen them for himself. Were they a different species after all? Or, as Angus had often said, merely younger? And if so, why? He’d like to take a couple back with him as specimens. Perhaps that busy professor was back from his long holiday by now.

Pete came up with the camera. Matt quickly explained the shot. ‘You operate,’ he said. ‘I’ll feed the buggers to attract them.’

He tossed more offal into the water, a bigger piece this time, and several worms homed in on it hungrily.

Jacqui was crouching in the long grass covering the steep bank of the ditch. ‘They’re ruthless,’ she was saying. ‘Quite ruthless and vicious.’ The sunlight caught an auburn streak in her dark brown hair tumbled about her bent head. Her checked shirt had parted from the top of her jeans, revealing an expanse of white skin and the knobbles of her spine.

‘Jacqui, be careful!’ he warned her, with a sudden premonition. ‘Don’t get too close.’

‘I’m all right.’

He could hear the faint whirr of the Arri BL’s motor as Peter filmed the worms. Just to encourage them he threw in more offal. To take a couple with him he’d need a container, he thought. He looked around. There must be something among all the rubbish. An old tin, perhaps.

But the local journalist had the same idea. Before anyone could stop him, he blundered in front of Jacqui, fell to his knees right at the edge of the water and snatched at one of the worms with his bare hand. A gasp from the two kids who stood higher up the bank, watching. A curse from Pete at having his shot ruined.

Yet the idiot had succeeded. Half-lying on the bank he held the worm up triumphantly, his fingers grasping it just below the head. His laugh was a high-pitched whinny, ‘Ha! Used to
tickle trout when I was a boy. The hand hath not lost its ancient cunning!’ He dropped the worm into a rusting paint can he’d placed nearby.