John Halkin: Squelch

His left hand was useless, but with his right he managed to hold the pocket open so that he could at least see what was going on. Despite the fact that he was damp with sweat a cold shiver ran through his whole body as he realised he was looking at another of the bright green caterpillars. Its tail was undulating gently as if in sensual delight as its powerful jaws worked into his flesh.

He gazed down at it, paralysed with horror at what was happening to him. Ever since he had once seen living tapeworms on TV he’d had nightmares about terrifying creatures burrowing through his intestines. He wanted to scream out Stop it! Stop it! but somehow couldn’t; he could imagine the other kids laughing at him, jeering, calling him chicken, finger-lickin’ chicken.

Biting his lip in an effort to keep his self-control, Kit slapped his hand firmly over the spot where the caterpillar was at work, aiming to squeeze it to extinction through the fabric of his jeans and carry on squeezing until it was no more than a mess of juice and pulp.

Before he could get a grip on it, another charge of savage pain shot through him, travelling up the full length of his leg which began jerking convulsively, beyond his control. He fell sprawling, unable to hold back his screams of agony any longer.

Two of them now.

Three.

Jesus, how many caterpillars were there?

Rolling over in a desperate attempt to escape, to crush them, anything , he found himself slipping into a deep hollow beneath the giant tentacle-root of one of the older trees. As he slithered into it they attacked again, gnawing into fresh areas of his flesh. Into his stomach… through his navel…

‘No… please… NO!’ he sobbed and yelled as they gorged themselves on him. ‘Oh Mummy, stop them! Mummy! ’

He was no longer twelve. He was a baby once more, reaching out to be comforted, to be petted and told everything was all right, that there was nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all, nothing but…

Oh Jesus, that cassette box was lying open on the ground, level with his eyes. The king caterpillar was coming towards him, looping its back as it moved, ripples spreading down its long furry body, its eyes fixed on his.

Incoherently he yelled at it to leave him alone, what harm had he ever done to it? Why him?

He tried to retreat farther into that hollow among the tree-roots, that womb in the earth which enclosed him lovingly. The caterpillar came nearer. He felt a slight prickling as its precise little legs touched his cheek. Then –

‘Mummy? Oh Mummy…’

The staff at the University of Lingford Research Institute were completely foxed by the accident. No one felt totally convinced that the cat was responsible, least of all Dr Sophie Greenberg whose research project it was. Dark-haired and slim, she had a touch of Lady Macbeth about her pale, intense face, and ambition to match. If this project succeeded, it might well mean a Nobel prize. Now months of work were down the drain.

Returning after lunch with her colleagues — they always used the top floor canteen as there was nowhere close enough to the Institute to make it worthwhile going out — she found the place a shambles.

Apparatus lay smashed on the floor, including an expensive microscope which was her personal property. Glass everywhere. Nitric acid eating into the parquet blocks. One caterpillar ‘cage’ knocked down, scattering soil and debris. Its plastic cover dangled from the high bench, suspended from the tubes and cables which had helped control atmosphere and temperature in the experiment.

Her cry of dismay brought Adrian running.

‘What the hell happened?’ he demanded, staring at the mess.

‘You tell me!’ she countered grimly. ‘Someone got in here, obviously. But why cause this damage? And none of us heard anything!’

‘I thought I heard something but took it to be a radio. You’ve noticed the door to the back stairs is open?’

She nodded. A clear trail of soil crumbs led over to it. ‘Whoever they are, they’re still here,’ she said, picking up the long window-pole. ‘Come on.’

On their way down the concrete steps they became aware of odd noises coming from the boiler room at the bottom: an unusual high-pitched screaming sound followed by a series of bumps. Sophie felt Adrian’s hand on her arm.

‘Should I go first?’ he whispered.

‘Don’t be daft!’

Gripping the window-pole firmly, she rushed down the remaining steps and into the boiler room, determined to catch red-handed the person who had destroyed her lab and all her work into the bargain. Baggy, the lab cat, shot past her legs and hurled itself against the steel bars over the open window, bouncing back off them like a rubber toy, rolling over and over, then scrambling to its feet again, emitting a sequence of pathetic screams as it dashed hysterically between the boilers.

‘Oh, my God!’ Sophie exclaimed in distress. ‘Oh, the poor thing!’

‘Here she comes!’ Adrian announced, squatting down like a wicket-keeper, ready to grab the cat as it passed. ‘Hell!’

It dodged between his legs. Once again it threw itself at the steel bars. Once again it bounced back. This time — hitting the floor — it lay still, though whether dead or merely stunned Sophie could not yet tell. Around its neck was a long, bright green caterpillar. She recognised it immediately as coming from the destroyed ‘cage’.

‘Don’t touch it!’ she snapped, grabbing Adrian’s arm as he bent low for a closer look. ‘Unless you fancy a week’s sick leave.’

A couple of their colleagues trooped in from the other labs. ‘Anything wrong? That was an awful row! Poor old Baggy have a fit, or what?’

The cat was dead, its skull cracked by the impact with the bars. It had definitely caused the damage in the lab, there could be no question about that, though it remained a mystery how it had managed to topple the ‘cage’ down from the bench. Those glass tanks were heavy.

The security men did a thorough check of the building but drew a blank. No one had passed through the entrance hall which had electrically-controlled doors which only the man on duty could open. All other doors were locked and bolted in accordance with normal procedure for a high-risk laboratory of this type. Every window was barred; no sign anyone had tampered with them.

In Sophie’s lab itself they conducted a perfunctory search for footprints, but so many of the staff had trampled through there during the excitement, it would have been a hopeless task even if there had been anything to find. The paw-marks on the benches were evidence enough as to what must have happened.

‘Then I suppose we’d better start clearing up,’ Sophie commented wearily when it was all over. She had already hunted down some of the escaped caterpillars, though six were still missing. ‘Thank God it wasn’t worse. Must be grateful for that.’

In the village some eight miles away from the Research Institute, Kit’s absence was not noticed for several hours. His mother came home from work expecting to find the kettle on but the house was empty. No eggs even, though she’d asked him to go to the farm for them. They were at least fresh from the farm which was more than she could say for Jackson’s in the village. Supermarket rejects he sold, she could swear. Oh, it was too bad of Kit not to get them. She’d put the money out; it was there under the vase still. He hadn’t eaten his dinner either. Those two bacon sandwiches hadn’t been touched.

She ate them herself with a cup of tea, glad to get the weight off her legs after standing all day plucking factory chickens. The line never stopped. It was as if they couldn’t wait to get deep-frozen, and by the end of the shift she knew exactly what they felt like.