The Worm King (5 page)

Chapter Eight

Park

S
he felt scared stiff just speaking to him. Shaking, but it seemed
her last chance. There came a momentary pause in the rain, a crackle of thunder
well off in the distance then the faintest hint of recognition from the old man
so it was now or never for the girl.

‘Please sir, do you know where a phone is? I
need to call my mother.’

Lord Brown had been dozing. Quite drunk as
usual, but this evening he awoke to find company: his backyard filling with
people. Fifty-seven and counting. Spread around the park everywhere. Swarming. Even
the rats were out looting. The busiest he’d seen it in years. Most were
gathering at the far end past the fountain where there were fewer trees and a
larger open space. Four more from the south-east: sixty-one.

Lord Brown had always been a firm believer
in trends, and this girl looked familiar. Why was she here again? She shouldn’t
stick around. If something started out bad it would likely end a great deal
worse and today wasn’t starting well. Only two and a half minutes past midnight,
according to his luminous Mickey Mouse watch, and he could see a plump, black
street rat creeping out a doorway over the road, dragging a sizable hunk of
bread. A man stood in the doorway with his arms around a woman, holding a torch
against her back. The torch moved slightly so the beam twisted away from the
hungry rodent who disappeared past their feet.

‘Mr Rat, you’re so fat.’

The girl looked surprised at this, but less
frightened. ‘I only looked away for a second then couldn’t find her. Mummy
might need me.’

‘We need a cat.’

‘I’ve already got a cat. Tinkles. She’s really
good at chasing balls of wool.’

He struggled to focus on her wet face in the
dim light. It never ceased to amaze him that a tiny oval of soft flesh could
emit such physical radiance. A living, breathing luminosity. Lord Brown smiled.
‘Does Tinkles wear a bell?’

She giggled. ‘No silly. It was the first
thing she did on the carpet when we got her home.’

‘Do you count?’

She thought for a moment. ‘Yes. I gave you a
whole dollar yesterday morning. Mummy said you’re probably a cereal killer and
I said I didn’t like breakfast either so maybe I’m one too, but she said most
likely not.’

Someone began shouting at the other end of
the park near the Edmund Barton statue: sixty-seven.

‘You smiled when I gave you the money, so I
knew you didn’t really have mad cows disease. Your sign was fibbing!’

Lord Brown held his hands up in mock surrender.
‘I’m cured. It’s true! I used your money to buy cow medicine.’ The girl looked
doubtful.

‘Where did you lose her?’

‘By the fountain. Our house is down that
road,’ she pointed vaguely to the eastern end of the park where the more
palatial homes tended to be. Lord Brown wondered if he’d ever urinated or slept
in her garden and suspected he might’ve.

‘Our chimney fell down and the lights
wouldn’t work so mummy said we had to come to the park. We couldn’t see walking
here and kept falling over on things in the road. I bumped into people twice,
I’m sure I did, it was really scary.’

‘It’s a scary night,’ he replied, wondering
why their chimney might’ve fallen. Over her shoulder he saw eight people by the
fountain, one sitting on the edge and another six standing with the faint
outline of perhaps two more on the far side of the structure out of his vision.
He allowed for one of these in the total: sixty-nine.

His hand groped the seat to his right until
he found the bottle, which had an unpleasantly empty feel to it. He raised it
to his lips, letting a scanty thimbleful of warm, malty goodness trickle down. Soothing
and caressing, then gone. Almost at the point where numbers didn’t matter and now
the magic elixir was all gone. Forever.
Seventy-one . . . click,
click . . .
 you could feel the numbers physically ticking
over. Counting was like a creamy ratchet being drawn across minute nerve endings
fizzling on the underside of his skull. They’d fizzle and fizzle until the
malty wave completely soaked the embers.

Speckled light flashed on the edge of his
vision for all the world like a grinning, evil face suddenly appearing and disappearing
rapidly over and over. He brushed a hand at his shoulder, trying to get the
thing away. Drinking dulled the face. So did clenching his eyes tightly, hunching
up and rocking back and forth; oh yes. Back again—oh God!—

‘Are you alright? Is the mad cows coming
back?’

Lord Brown’s eyes opened and head flinched
with enough force to flick small droplets as far as his knees. ‘Good as gold. I’ll
take you over there, have a look around. Don’t worry, we’ll track her down.’ He
slid the suitcase out from under the park bench, unzipped it and withdrew his
notebook which he slipped into a breast pocket. The suitcase was rezipped and
pushed back under the seat.

Another lot had drifted in from the road, joining
those at the fountain in the centre of the park. Solar lights spaced along the
walkway cast a dull glow through the rain but the surrounding buildings and
houses remained oddly dark.
Seventy-nine.

He remembered now when the power went off. All
the nearby houses and shops over the road had suddenly gone dark, and at
virtually the same time a bus broke down directly out in front of him. The reason
it stuck in his mind was the bus had just pulled out from the kerb and
travelled exactly one meter before its engine cut out. One meter! Cripes, he’d
laughed. Then he’d noticed several other cars stopped too. Eventually, the
people got off the bus.

Lord Brown had been working his way through
the penultimate bottle. He recalled watching the dismal, wet crowd as they disembarked.
How could they do that to themselves? Climb into that metal monster and be ferreted
away to some red-brick hell-hole. What’s civilization come to? He’d given the
people a cheery wave but it hadn’t seemed to perk them up at all. The chap who’d
been last to get off was also by far the angriest. When he’d stepped back onto
the pavement the jolt was sufficient to unclick his briefcase which opened to
spill a sheaf of papers onto the footpath. By the time he’d recovered the
drenched pages his pinstripe suit and pigtail were well and truly soaked. Before
walking away, Pinstripe shook a clenched fist at the side of the bus.

Lord Brown hadn’t been able to contain himself.
‘That’ll teach it!’ he’d yelled. After all, you had to see the funny side of
it. Man versus bus. Talk about laugh! ‘One nil!’ he’d cried gleefully.

Pinstripe threw a glance at Lord Brown that’d
been far from friendly. In fact it’d been enough to convince him to change
seats, moving thirty meters up the path to another park bench in case the man
came back. He’d tried to stay awake but by then was onto the final bottle, and
as this glugged to an end, found himself slipping into a mumbling, fitful
sleep.

No sign of Pinstripe now. He reached down
and took the girl’s hand just in case. ‘We’ll do a loop around the fountain then
head down the other end.’

‘Thank you.’ Her wet hand gripped his
tightly.

The people near the eucalyptus trees on the
western side kept moving and jostling and he wished they’d stop because it was
confusing.
Eighty-one.

As they approached the fountain a woman screamed.

‘Mummy!’ The girl released his hand and ran
towards her.

‘What were you doing with her, you bastard?’
the women yelled, clasping her arms around the girl. ‘I told you someone had
taken her!’ A policeman stood beside her. His blue uniform had a jagged rip
across the front and a white t-shirt glowed through the hole. The shirt was
unbelievably white. Lord Brown bent forward, staring intently at the officer’s
midriff.

The policeman took a step backwards.

‘He has mad cow disease,’ the girl informed
them. He suspected that wouldn’t help his case much.

The policeman looked hesitant. ‘Okaaaay. Your
daughter alright love?’

‘I don’t know?’ she wailed, drawing back
from the girl and scanning her up and down while still holding her arms
tightly. ‘He could’ve done anything! Are you alright darling?’

The girl nodded uncertainly. ‘I only asked him
where I could find a phone,’ her timid voice barely audible over the rain. Two men
who’d been sitting on the edge of the fountain got up and moved behind Lord
Brown, enclosing him.

The policeman shone a torch in his face. ‘I’ve
seen ’im here before,’ he said to no one in particular.

‘He’s always here,’ confirmed a woman in a
dressing gown and holding an umbrella. ‘Think he’s harmless.’

‘Where’s that doctor?’ implored the girl’s
mother, looking back over her shoulder. ‘Where the hell is that doctor!’

Lord Brown held up a hand to shield his eyes
from the beam. Car tires screeched nearby. Normally it wouldn’t raise an
eyebrow but tonight the sound was ominous, like a metallic shriek leaching out
of a wet, dying city. Light whipped between his fingers casting flashes of scowling
mouths and disbelieving frowns, and in one of those flashes, a glimmer of
recognition. Pinstripe? Lord Brown grimaced, which turned into a short, savage
twitch momentarily contorting the whole left side of his face.

The policeman took another step away and swung
his beam back onto the girl.

‘Are you alright darling?’ The woman
continued to inspect her daughter. ‘Why won’t she say anything!?’ She looked around
the small but growing crowd, pleading. Lord Brown began sidling away. A man
beside the policeman noticed the movement, and tapped the cops shoulder, pointing
at Lord Brown.

‘Wait there will ya,’ demanded the officer, spotlighting
the ground directly at Lord Brown’s feet. He turned his torch on the girl again.
‘You hurt love?’

‘No,’ she replied, squinting.

‘That man do anything?’

‘No.’

The cop shrugged. ‘Seems fine to me.’ A car tooted
in the distance. It was still beyond the park but nearer than the tire screech
a minute ago. ‘You hear that?’ Seconds later headlights appeared at the eastern
end. ‘Is that doctor over there?’

A fat man kneeling at the fountain wall glanced
around. ‘Yes. One minute, I will be.’ He continued to inspect a ladies foot
while she sat on the edge of the fountain. One of the men next to the doctor was
pointing his torch at Lord Brown, studying him closely . . . Pinstripe?

The doctor lumbered over. The policeman said,
‘There you are mate. Take a squiz at her will you.’ He waved dismissively at
the girl. ‘I’m gonna check that car.’ With that he turned and left. Case solved.

The fat man dropped to his haunches before
the girl. ‘How are you this evening madam?’ The other man with the torch, who still
could be Pinstripe, stood close behind.

‘Fine thank you.’

‘No sniffles or upsets you need to tell me
about?’ His droopy jowls wobbled when he spoke which made the girl smile.

‘No. I was helping someone with mad cow
disease but I don’t think I caught it.’ Pinstripe didn’t have a hat, so maybe
that wasn’t him after all.

The doctor asked, ‘have you been eating a
lot of hay, find yourself mooing sometimes, that sort of thing?’

The girl looked worried. ‘No. Well, not
really.’

‘Hmmmm. I think you’ll pull through.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yep. Cut right back on the hay though. What
you think?’ the doctor asked the man behind him.

‘Way less hay. I’ve pretty much cut it out
completely myself.’ The Hat lowered his torch and stepped forward to grasp Lord
Brown’s hand. ‘Good to see you old timer. I thought it was you! Keeping well?’

‘Splendid thank you.’

Not pinstripe, one of his students, John.
Eighty-seven.

Ninety-nine.
The
rain was mesmerizing. You could almost count the drops but there were zillions
of them; never-ending. The moisture poured down, churning through the atmosphere
at a rate determining the prosperity and health of everything on the planet. Absolutely
everything. Apart from the patter of wetness it remained quiet. Lord Brown let
his head drift back and eyes close, so the only sensation came from the fat
balls of water tap, tap tapping away. Was that another pause? It felt like
there’d been a momentary gap in the downpour earlier, when he first met the
girl . . . no, the flow was steady as a rock. A dripping, wet
ball of rock in space. He smiled and the
ting
of drops hitting his teeth
was refreshing.

‘Still with us?’ asked the Hat.

Lord Brown opened his eyes. The girl and her
mother had long gone. The huddled crowd were spread over the park like human
jam. One hundred and eleven.

‘Let’s see what they’re arguing about,’ suggested
the doctor. A stationwagon had parked up next to the footpath where just that
afternoon Lord Brown had earned $22.30. Its driver was talking to the policeman
and pointing energetically towards the east. The policeman shouted back at him,
pointing in varying directions using both hands. Four other men stood around
the pair, watching, with arms crossed.