The Worm King (2 page)

Chapter Three

Lord Brown

O
nly the old man was drinking.

They sat on a park bench beneath the canopy
of an ancient Morton bay fig. Gentle spring sunlight tinkled through the
branches drenching the ground with whirling silver figures which dashed here
and there across the grass and asphalt.

‘Teach me Lord Brown, I need to learn.’

‘A great evil is coming Winston. Soon, you
will be entombed in darkness. Forever. You’ll die, horribly, then float in this
blackness; no God, nothing. A minute speck of thought, floating in inky . . . goo.’

‘Goo?’

‘That’s correct. It’ll be everywhere. But if
I could save you from that, you’d jump at it, right?’

Winston nodded.

Lord Brown patted his tattered suitcase. The
roller wheels were missing off one side. ‘In this case, I don’t have the
answers, or even the questions. I have the bits in the middle.’

That sounded confusing, rather than useful.

He passed the old man a bacon and egg
sandwich wrapped in cellophane. After a couple of bites, Lord Brown rewrapped
it and slipped the remainder into his grubby pocket.

Winston tried not to stare at the tangled
hair, dirty, broken nails and overcoat that hadn’t seen a wash since Noah
pulled up the plank. Once, they say, he was a distinguished scholar. An
associate professor of mathematics or statistics (or it could have been
languages) at the university and even made it in the newspapers with this new
theory on how to add and subtract numbers, or something along those lines
according to the Hat who’d met him on a pub crawl.

The Hat had been attracted by the promise of
cheap eternal salvation.

‘Well, sure it was cheap, but I’m not
completely convinced I got the full salvation,’ he’d told them later that night.
‘Still feel pretty fucked up.

‘But says he’s still on the maths department
payroll, and could do lectures, if he wanted. Sign off on stuff. Whatever. With
a title like that! Sweet!’

Lord Brown drank vast quantities of brown
ale. He also wore brown most days, except today because he had one red sock on.
Even the officers at Parramatta Station, where he spent the occasional night in
the drunk-tank, listed him as “Lord Brown—No Fixed Abode”. Most of his days
were spent in the park, a short stone’s throw from Winston’s house.

‘Last night,’ said the old man, ‘this Aborigine
bloke, in the bed next to me, woke up screaming.’

In the bed next to me!?

‘The Sallie Army hostel? You know, Fanshaw
St?’ Winston felt relieved. ‘Didn’t drink, smoke. Come in from way out the
other side of Alice, to visit some ancient brother-in-law. Started screaming round
midnight; no one could get him to stop. Really old fellow, you know, big eyes
like saucers. Took him away in the end.’

‘Sounds like his bits in the middle were
gone.’

Lord Brown gazed down at him. ‘Know that experience
do you?’

A warm flurry of wind scattered a handful of
dried leaves across the path. Winston recalled kids at school and how they used
to tease
him
, say he was all middle with stumpy arms and stumpy legs with
this big head on top.

Hey Stumpy! Snow White’s over here
looking f’the team, whataya doin?

‘My middle bits never quite matched up with
the rest,’ said Winston. ‘Anyway, if you had all the middles, wouldn’t that
automatically take you to the end?’

Lord Brown took a healthy gulp from his beer.
He held up the bottle and barely a swallow remained so that went down the hatch
too. ‘Oh yes indeed,’ he belched, then patted the suitcase. ‘I have to get back
to work soon, so sorry, I—’

‘Can I watch?’

‘Well, I don’t—’

‘I’ll get you more beer?’

‘Ahhhh. Barley juice!’ Lord Brown sat back. ‘Elixir
of the gods.’ He rechecked the bottle to ensure it was truly empty. ‘Hordeum
vulgae. They first domesticated barley in the foothills of the Zargos Mountains
in western Iran in 9,800BC. It’s called the Hilly Flanks hypothesis. People started
making beer with the barley pretty well straight away. Can’t be all bad, if
it’s lasted this long, can it?’

‘You’ve run out,’ observed Winston.

‘More beer would be splendid then.’

Lord Brown whistled, as people often do when
they make ready for a job they truly love.

First the soap chips: pine forest, especially
formulated for top-loading machines.

Next, a plastic shopping bag stuffed with
hats. Mainly berets, but also a couple of baseball caps, a straw boating
bloater and an old British army tin helmet. He selected a blue beret with a bar
of war service ribbons pinned on its front.

Finally a bundle of cardboard signs. Most appeared
to be shoebox lids with the edges flattened out and the whole lot tied
crossways with hemp string.

‘The double overhand reverse squirrel-gripper;
there’s a knot to remember young Winston, if you’re in a bind,’ he muttered, struggling
with the complicated tangle.

Eventually he held up the first sign.

The End
is Nigh—Please Give!
The neat handwriting stretched
the full length of the cardboard. ‘Always a crowd favorite, but not for today.’
He put it to one side and picked up the next.

Give Me
Your Money!

‘Usually tops with the drunk crowd, late
Friday and Saturday nights. They respond well to simple commands. The bother is,
I’ll usually get a few people who throw the same line back at me.’ He touched a
nearly-healed scab on his forehead and put the sign down.

I Know
God. Pay here
.
Big white letters on a black background. It must’ve taken ages to color
it all in, with what looked like tight little squiggles of fine, black pen.

‘I’ve been trying this one out in Cathedral
Square on Sundays and outside the Synagogue Saturdays. Increased the strike
ratio eleven percent.’ However, he put that sign aside too, uncovering one with
typed writing on a page that’d been sellotaped to the shoebox lid.

Please
Help, Raising Equity Capital To Fund A Leveraged Buyout Of This Company
.

‘This little beauty goes well outside any
business. Department stores, lawyers, banks, you name it. Made a motzer outside
the stock exchange a few months back. Got so much, they came out, and asked me
about paperwork and, you know, would’ve been turned into a conglomerate by the
end of the day. Probably would’ve had to hire someone, just to manage it all.’
He shook his head and brushed something from his shoulder.

It was still there, so he brushed it away again.

‘Nope. This little gem’s up today.’ He held
the last sign, cradling it like an old family photo.

Insane! Please
Help
was scribbled wildly in red crayon.

And why wouldn’t you whistle with a job like
that? The walk to work was only eight paces down a grassy slope to the
footpath. Take a seat, slip a few soap chips under your tongue and put out your
sign. Position your beret in the appropriate spot, drop in a handful of seed
change then watch the money roll in.

‘Mummy?’

‘Yes dear?’

‘That man’s got green stuff coming out his
mouth.’

‘What? Oh Christ, don’t look. What? No, you
can’t give him any . . . alright but don’t let go my hand.’

The only person game enough to stop for any
length of time was an elderly nun because nuns are by law obliged to stop for
nutjobs. Winston had been reliably told that this was written into the Nun’s
Charter so he wasn’t surprised to see her halt.

‘Do you need assistance, my friend?’

Lord Brown’s head, which had been lolling
loosely on one shoulder, bounced upright. ‘Hello sister. Yes, assistance would
be marvelous, thanks.’

‘Oh. Do you need . . . food?’

‘No, more than I need.’ He smiled through bubbles
of green foam and patted his pocket. ‘Just after money today. So I can buy more
beer.’

‘Beer?’

‘That’s correct. Newcastle brown ale. Rather
fond of it. I’m earning my brown wings. Do you have your brown wings sister?’

‘I suppose the downside,’ conceded the Lord now
back under his fig tree, ‘is that you don’t usually get to have, you know,
physical relationships. Not in the traditional sense anyway. But twenty-two
dollars thirty in less than half an hour!’

The old man scrawled madly in a spiral-bound
notebook which looked three-quarters full then turned to the back and ticked several
of boxes in a carefully ruled table. ‘Yes, definite correlation, definite!’ He sighed
contentedly then put the book and pen back in the suitcase.

‘I’m on a smoko break now. This is probably
the best time to catch me if you, you know, urgently need something done . . . ’

‘Right.’ Winston fumbled in his pocket for
the form.

He didn’t check it until reaching the train
station. The neat handwriting said, “Work Experience Attended, Faculty of Anthropology,
Lord Brown.”

Nice.

Chapter Four

Three Sisters

I
t was dead on sunset and the hangover Winston had nursed all day was
fading when he arrived at the Three Sisters scenic lookout. A depressing
drizzle cascaded from the grey sky and it was dim enough to see the floodlights
which had already magically switched themselves on, holding the trio of rock
pinnacles in a ghostly, wet glow. The visitor centre and shop were closed with
just a couple of cars and one truck sulking in the damp, misty car park.

He wished he’d brought an umbrella.

The truck had a satellite dish perched on
its roof and
Channel Six News
painted on the side so it certainly looked
like the right place.

A gaggle of raincoated people, most with brollies,
stood near the back of the truck. One of the figures tapped another on the
shoulder and they all turned, watching him approach.

A girl broke away from the pack, taking a
few steps towards him. ‘Winston?’

‘Yes.’ They shook hands.

In the pale light he could make out a worried
face and pointy nose covered by a cute splay of freckles. Her raincoat hood was
pushed back and hair, red as ketchup, was all pony-tailed to the rear except
for one angry lick plastered across her forehead.

She wasn’t much taller than him.

A set of headphones straddled the top of her
head but she had them twisted sideways slightly, so as to cover only one ear. Her
left hand clenched an umbrella while the right gripped a sound pole with a fluffy
knob-end. The pole was attached to a cable that disappeared beneath the damp folds
of her raincoat.

‘I’m Astrid. You’re late. And wet.’

‘I’m sorry, I had to stop and speak with the . . . with
the Lord,’ stuttered Winston, caught off guard. A quick, nervous laugh to try
and joke it off didn’t help one bit.

She looked him up and down. Mostly down.

For an instant he considered adding, ‘I had
to buy him a six-pack,’ but fortunately kept his yap shut.

‘Dick’s in the truck getting ready. I’ll take
you in and introduce you in a minute. You can dry off then too.’

‘Swell.’

‘I’m the producer, and also filling in on sound
today. What we’d like you to do is . . . ’ she fumbled in her
back pocket then drew out a square of paper.

‘ . . . Read this. Dick
will ask you what the outlook for Katoomba is tomorrow, and you just say, “might
get to seventeen, and raining all day”. He’ll introduce you as a local.’

‘But I live in Emu Plains?’

‘That’s not far. And you’re here now, right?
It’s local enough.’ She handed him the card, which had “
seventeen, Raining, ALL Day
” typed on one side. He turned it
over. The other side was blank.

‘Dick’ll do the weather update then go to the
guests. First up is the man that runs the visitor centre back there.’ Astrid
looked around and shook her head. ‘Must’ve gone to the loo again. Then the girl
guides, then you.’

‘I bought a form that’s supposed to be
signed for the university. Who does that?’

‘I can. Later. Better just check on Dick.’
She opened a door at the back of the truck and stepped inside, taking care that
her fluffy knob was well under cover before passing the brolly back to Winston.

If it hadn’t been for the rain, and the lack
of light, the view would’ve been superb. On the other side of the lookout
barriers the cliff plunged vertically into darkness. The floodlit pinnacles shone
through the gloom, barely visible although he could just make out scrubby vegetation
clinging desperately to the side of the rock. Even a vine dangling from one
particularly sharp outcrop.

The sort of place Tarzan would go, if he ever
ran out of shit to do in the Congo.

The truck door reopened and Astrid’s head
reappeared. ‘Could you pop in for a minute?’

Dick Snow sat in front of a bank of screens at
the far end of a crowded, narrow interior that smelt of cigar smoke and hairspray.
He mumbled loudly to himself while angrily thrusting a sheaf of pages towards a
mirror dangling from a loop of wire hooked around some complicated-looking dial.

Winston had seen him on telly many times but
never realized how big his hair actually was. The sandy locks were sculptured
into a hairy, space helmet-type arrangement. The muscles on his tanned face
converged into a massively oversized jaw which curved down seamlessly into a crisp
white shirt and navy blue sports jacket.

Astrid gave Winston a towel then bustled
past, up a little step and stopped beside Dick to lean forward and speak softly
in his ear.

‘What’s that? Christian? Great, all we need!’
His deep whisper resonated in the confined space; Astrid looked up, embarrassed.
‘Winston! Thanks for joining us. Astrid tells me you want to do the weather
today?’ The weatherman laughed.

‘Yes, that’s right, I’m—’

‘She given you the lines?’

‘Yep. Sounds straight forward. I—’

‘Well, good, good, that’s excellent. You’re
not going to try and slip in a prayer are you?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘No, all I meant before was—’

‘Exactly. Well, we’re doing the sunset
weather update from different locations in the Blue Mountains this week. Mudgee
next week for two days then back to Sydney. We’ve done here before and the
backdrop’s usually damn good. Damn good. But tonight won’t see so much. Not
with this shit-awful rain. Who’d of thought it huh?’

Winston stammered, ‘I thought you—’

‘Yes, of course. No, just stick to the
script and you’ll be right. Speaking of which, better get back to it myself.’ He
returned to the mirror. The meeting had concluded.

Astrid ushered him out.

The light rain gradually intensified into a
steady downpour. At least he’d managed to hang onto Astrid’s umbrella. The panadol
he’d popped before leaving home was losing its punch and the headache making a
late, pounding charge. Thankfully the rolling nausea had backed off. Still, he
was a hell of a long way from remounting the beerhorse.

Near the front end of the truck a man in his
fifties jiggled nervously under a tatty black umbrella.

Three girls in matching olive raincoats stood
beneath a single, large golf umbrella. Two were twins, identical blonde
ringlets poking cheekily out the side of their hoods. One twin nudged the other
and both looked at Winston, giggling. The third girl was taller and darker with
a nose as wide and flat as a runway. Winston guessed she might be a Māori.

A Channel Six man was fixing a spotlight to a
metal pole. A cable ran from the pole back to the truck. A second man fiddled
with a camera on a tripod. A large sheet of clear plastic covered the camera
and his head but his back and arse were getting a solid drenching.

The spotlight clicked on, throwing a stark, white
oblong across the edge of the lookout area. Astrid reappeared with another
umbrella but minus her fluffy pole, and walked into the centre of the light. She
looked directly at the camera then back over her shoulder at the pinnacles. A
small shuffle to the left, another glance behind, a fraction more to the left and
the position appeared to be just right.

‘Mr Malisovich, could you go here please.’ She
pointed down at her feet then stepped aside when he came over and took the spot.
‘You girls, go on the other side here, and Winston, you go at the front, down there.’

He was well used to being ordered down the
front for photos. In every school photo, until his final year, they’d always made
him sit cross-legged at the front holding the class name-board. In his last
year Winston demanded he be allowed to stand in the back row where he was, of
course, completely invisible.

They took positions, and waited.

Winston chanced a glance over his shoulder:
the man with the tatty umbrella was jiggling nervously, the twins were reading the
piece of paper one of them held and the Māori girl gripped the golf
umbrella with one hand and picked her nose with the other.

Astrid surveyed the scene.

‘Don’t do that please dear,’ she said to the
Māori.

Winston was concerned about where the
excavations would be flicked or smeared, given the girl stood only a half-step
behind him. He risked another peek. ‘Your forehead’ll cave in if you push your
hand any further up there,’ he muttered out the corner of his mouth.

The girl immediately withdrew the digit. He’d
noticed several of her raincoat badges were sewn on at odd angles.

‘You’re a wanker mate,’ she said.

Winston wondered what’d happened to the Girl
Guide world of
dib dib dib,
cake raffles and helping old ladies across streets.
These days they’d obviously pistol-whip the old sheila and whack her on the
campfire.

Astrid glared at Winston.

‘I think I need to go again,’ moaned Mr Malisovich.
He received a free glare too.

‘We’re just about to kick off. Think you could
hold on a couple of minutes?’ Malisovich nodded but didn’t look overly happy
about it.

The truck door swung open and Dick’s tanned jaw
filled most of the frame. ‘We a go?’ he called to Astrid.

She spoke quietly into a microphone on her
lapel and then cocked her head, listening. ‘Sixty seconds!’

Dick strode from the truck holding an
umbrella emblazoned with the Channel Six logo. He came to a halt a meter in
front of Winston then turned to face the camera. His right hand held a single page
which he began reading to himself in a low voice whilst every few seconds
looking up at the camera.

Astrid stood to the side of Dick with her
fluffy pole, which Winston hadn’t even seen her retrieve. She seemed to be
everywhere at once. Finally, she got the pole high enough so it was out of shot
but Winston felt for her, stretching on tiptoes and teetering at the edge of
balance with her raincoat stretched tight while attempting with a spare elbow
to nudge the microphone back on square. A job for an octopus, not a petite
redhead with distractingly pert jugs.

Winston refocused on the lens and concentrated
on breathing in and out. They were ready for action . . . 

Dick Snow was a professional. The man rolled
through his lines like a Colombian powderhound at an arse-sniffing party.

Winston waited for his turn to come around, wishing
he were somewhere else—anywhere—and trying not to dwell on his headache. Something
thwacked
the back of his coat and the Māori sniggered. Dick swung an
arm up mid-sentence and pointed back at the rock pinnacles, almost karate chopping
Winston in the process.

‘So if you want to try one of the best meat
pies in the universe and catch a spectacular view at the same time, then the
place to come is the Three Sisters visitor centre and visit my old friend Sonny
Malisovich. Maybe not tonight though, right Sonny?’ Dick laughed, pointing up at
the dirty night. ‘Everyone loves a good Aussie pie though don’t they? What
about our girl guides, how’re you going?’

The twins froze.

Slow seconds passed. Winston turned to see
the twins staring blankly and open-mouthed at Dick. Someone poked him sharply
in the back, then again.

‘Seventeen and wet all day,’ he blurted, looking
around in confusion.

The Māori laughed. ‘Stupid cunt,’ she whispered.

‘That’s right, we’re in for a damp one
tomorrow,’ Dick smoothly continued. ‘By the weekend, the front should’ve moved
southeast towards New Zealand and we can all get outside again. For those of
you in the northern half of New South Wales, a low pressure system is moving—’

Zzzzzzzick!
The
streetlight next to the truck disappeared. ‘We’ve lost the link,’ called the
cameraman from under his plastic sheet.

‘—Your way,’ droned Dick, continuing
unperturbed. ‘This will bring more unsettled—’

‘Still nothing,’ said the cameraman with a
touch more urgency.

Astrid tapped her earphone. ‘Nothing here either.’

‘—Weather for the rest of the week.’ Dick’s
jaw finally clanked to a halt. He touched his ear and shook his head.

‘They’re out too,’ said the cameraman.

The second operator, who’d set up the spotlight
bolted back to the truck, wrenched the door open and stopped dead. The interior
was pitch dark.

‘No, I mean the floodlights are out. On the
rock.’

Winston looked over his shoulder, seeing
only an inky void where the Sisters used to be. The carpark had disappeared too,
with the streetlights all off. Nobody seemed sure what to do and apart from the
cold glare of the spotlight, the night suddenly became black as a grave.

‘Must be a power grid thing,’ said the number
one cameraman, shortly after emerging from the truck with two torches.

‘Which means . . . ?’
asked Dick.

‘The power isn’t really working.’

‘We pay you for that, do we?’

The cameraman looked down sheepishly and
kicked at the asphalt, catching the edge of his shoe and nearly tripping over. He
glanced up at Astrid and Winston but avoided Dick’s steely gaze. ‘Sat phones are
out and I can’t get through on the mobile either. Anyone else’s phone working?’