Slither by John Halkin Page A

they came for, Matt.’
    ‘The food attracted them,’ Matt tried to bluff.
    ‘Put it that way if you like. Once they’d had a taste o’ you…’
    It wasn’t what Matt had meant, but he didn’t argue.
    ‘If you ask me, it was like watchin’ an army, the way they turned out. Battalion strength.’

6
    Matt said nothing to Helen about his trip down into the sewers, still less his encounter with the worms. Something about her manner warned him to keep quiet. Since he’d come out of hospital he’d had the feeling she was being ultra-cautious about how she behaved towards him, as though they’d stuck labels all over him –
Fragile: Handle With Care!
    As though the hospital psychiatrist had been talking to her.
    At times he wanted to shake her awake. ‘Helen, this is me, remember? Matt! Your old Matt! Matt and Helen –
you know
! The old firm!’ But it wouldn’t work, and the realization hurt him like a long-standing deep wound.
    ‘It’ll be better when we get down to the cottage,’ she had repeated several times during the past few days. ‘You’ll see. It’ll get your mind off them. I do understand, Matt. Honestly.’
    He’d secured the ice-box with wire before tucking it into the boot of his ten-year-old Morris. Helen had watched him, puzzled, but he’d offered no explanation. The last thing he wanted was for either Helen or Jenny to open the box accidentally and find the dead worms inside.
If
they were all dead.
    As they drove down he was aware Helen was glancing curiously at him from time to time, and it irritated him. He’d have to talk to her about the worms soon, he knew: describe his feelings while they were attacking him; why he’d returned to the sewers; the whole threat he was convinced in his guts was facing everyone, yet couldn’t prove.
    Ideally he could have talked while he was driving, keeping his eyes on the road to avoid looking at her; but with Jenny playing happily on the back seat it was impossible. He’d have to wait till they got to the cottage. She’d be in a better mood then, anyway. She always was, at the cottage.
    They’d stumbled across it whilst on holiday at Westportthree years earlier and she’d fallen in love with it right away. From a distance it was picturesque, snuggling cosily into the hillside. A closer view had revealed several slates missing, half the windows broken and the walls in need of re-pointing. Brambles tore at their legs in the large, overgrown garden. In the kitchen the single tap shuddered and swayed precariously at the end of a loose section of lead piping.
    ‘It’ll need a bit of work,’ she’d commented seriously.
    The money had been hers, left to her by her mother, but she’d insisted on the deeds being drawn up in their joint names. That’s how things had been between them at the time – so close they voiced each other’s thoughts; every absence a wound which only healed when they were together again.
    Maybe it was the cottage itself which killed it. Every holiday, almost every available week-end, they worked down there repairing the roof, replacing the guttering, painting the woodwork… She even coaxed a loan out of the bank manager to pay for the installation of a bathroom. A fisherman’s cottage it had been – born, lived and died there. That fired Helen’s imagination. ‘We’ll come and live here ourselves one day,’ she’d announced when they were dead beat after re-doing the kitchen. ‘We need roots.’
    Matt carried the first couple of suitcases into the cottage before taking the wired-up ice-box down to the larger of the two garden sheds where he’d fixed himself up a workbench and darkroom.
    ‘What’s in it?’ Jenny asked inquisitively.
    ‘Oh … specimens.’ He was deliberately vague, and not too sure himself what he intended to do with the worms. ‘Things I want to photograph. Maybe I’ll show you later on.’
    Through the open shed door he could see Helen was listening, but she said nothing. Why not?
    ‘Come