The Way of the Worm by Ramsey Campbell

Author:Ramsey Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Weird Horror, Lovecraft, Suspense, thriller, dark fantasy
Publisher: Flame Tree Publishing
Published: 2022-02-22T13:10:30+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Sentences

“Have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed? Please answer yes or no.”

“Yes,” the foreman of the jury said and looked restricted by the answer.

“What is your verdict in the case of Christian Le Bon?”

I suppose the answer came almost at once, but it felt as though the abyssal gaze of the Nobles had fastened upon time to hold it still. “Guilty,” the foreman said.

“In the case of Christina Le Bon, have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?”

The foreman seemed uncertain how to respond, and a nervous breath caught in my throat. Perhaps he was simply waiting to be told once more how to reply, because in a moment he said “Yes.”

“What is your verdict?”

Since the foreman had stood up he’d kept his eyes turned away from the Nobles, and they stayed on the judge as if the foreman thought the bewigged figure might accord him some protection. “Guilty,” he said.

Inigo Arnold thanked the jury for their time and focused his attention on the dock. While his eyes weren’t so dark and deep as the cluster that met his, they were just as unforthcoming with their thoughts. “Has either of the defendants anything to say before sentence is passed?” he said.

Christian Noble leaned forward at once, raising his face to the judge with no pretence of deference, and I had the unpleasant impression that a single body the family shared had thrust out its left-hand head. “I shall,” he said.

“Please stand.” Once Noble had risen to his feet, an action so lithe it looked effortless, the judge said “You may address the court, Mr Le Bon.”

Noble rested his hands on the rail of the dock with all the fingers spread wide, a negligent gesture that might have defined carelessness. I thought he resembled a priest in a pulpit, and deliberately too. As he parted his lips I glimpsed the flicker of a tongue – no, three of them, because his offspring had performed the same act. “We told you we weren’t guilty under any law that matters,” he said.

His contempt for the trial had been plain throughout his testimony and the cross-examination – above all, when he’d declared that the recording I’d made should be heard by the court and admitted as evidence, a suggestion to which Tina readily agreed. I did my best to think he was making the situation still worse for himself, because I was disturbed by how his daughter and their son kept mouthing his words in unison like a silent chorus. More than ever the family put me in mind of a single presence masked by three versions of a face, and I wished the judge would order Tina and Toph to stop their antics. Surely he must find them distracting, unless he was determined to ignore them. I could only hope they weren’t daunting him into silence. I hoped he was letting Noble express all his disdain for the proceedings so as to convict him of that as well.

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