Pit.

I looked up. ‘What’s that noise?’

‘I don’ hear any noise,’ Rayne said.

‘That noise like water drops?’

‘Look around,’ she said. ‘My collections are valuable.’

I did so and noticed a movement on the first turn of the spiral steps where the staircase rose into the gloom. A worm was crawling there. As I watched, another one fell from the upper floor. It wriggled to the edge of the step, tumbled over and dropped onto the step below. Pit. Another one fell. Pit, pit. The worms began descending the steps with a determination I could only attribute to one thing. They were dropping faster now, like the first giant drops of a rainstorm. Pitpitpitplopplopplopplopplop, in ones and twos, linked together. The austere steps began to disappear under their pink flesh.

Rayne yelled, ‘Worms? Where are they coming from? An infesta’ ion?’

‘It’s worse than that,’ I said.

‘I had t’ theatre cleaned this morning!’ She glanced from them to her patient.

I said, ‘It’s from the Shift. It’s called the Vermiform.’

‘Is i’ safe?’

‘No…’ I giggled. ‘It’s not safe.’

With a sound like flesh tearing, a curtain of worms appeared over the top of the spiral stair. It started to tatter as individuals fell from it. Large holes appeared, a rent, the curtain swung sideways and fell with a slap onto the steps then began to undulate as it slithered down them.

A flake of plaster fell off the wall, leaving a round hole. Something that looked like the end of a twined rope spewed out, then all of a sudden swelled to the thickness of an arm, and a mouth formed on the end. Under the plaster, flesh seemed to continue in all directions. The mouth bobbed closer to me, then back, as the mass undulated. It said, ‘Go to the door.’

‘Go to the door!’

A crack ran from the hole and raced splintering along the wall, then forced out another flake of plaster. A thin cord, rolled like a butterfly’s tongue, unspooled from the hole and hung, dangling, a mouth on a flesh tube. ‘Go to the door.’

It touched the floor and dissociated into long worms that went crawling out in all directions. More mouths started sprouting from the bases of beams, the corners of the room, ‘Go to the door! Go to the door!’

Rayne’s face was set with fear but she didn’t back off. She went to the grate and picked up the coal shovel. ‘Wha’ is i’?’

‘Don’t bother. Even if you hit it you can’t harm it. It’s a colony of worms and it’s sentient.’

The Doctor nodded sagely. ‘I’ll le’ you handle i’.’ She went to stand next to Cyan, still holding the shovel. As far as she was concerned, her most important task was to protect her patient.

The handle of the outside door turned. Rayne and I glanced at each other. The door burst open and the Vermiform woman flowed in. Ten arms appeared from all over her, waved at me, then sucked back into her. She was much larger than last time I saw her; her worms must have bred, and though her shape and features were pretty her skin was a padded, pulsating mass. Added to the pink tide toppling down the stairs and falling from the ceiling the Vermiform must be huge, and this time I could hear it. Its worms made a rasping noise as they stretched, contracted, slid, with invisibly small bristles. They seethed and pressed like maggots and gave off a stink like urine-ridden sawdust, like old piss.

Through the open door I saw that the statue of the university’s founder had gone. That was even more horrific-I couldn’t stand the thought of the statue wandering around out there. I stared at the empty plinth until I realised that must have been the place where the Vermiform Shifted through and it had crumbled the marble into rubble.

More worms were pouring through the plaster as if Rayne’s room was moving. They twitched out of the ceiling and wound down the wall. They knocked her models onto their sides, and swept them off the mantelpiece. From her shelves a stack of tiles on which pills were made fell and shattered. A flask smashed, spilling heavy mercury. Its curved shards rocked like giant fingernails. A jar tipped over and ovate white pills cascaded onto the floor.

Rayne flinched. ‘Hey! Stop destroying my house!’

The worm-woman created two more beautiful female heads on stalks from somewhere in its belly and raised them to the level of the first one. It moved them about in front of my face. I couldn’t choose which to focus on and I felt myself going cross-eyed.

‘Are you the same Vermiform as before?’ I asked it.

‘We are always the same.’

‘Well, you’ve grown.’

‘We were asked to find you, Comet, although we do not appreciate being a Messenger’s messenger. Cyan is in Osseous-for the moment. She is in deadly danger. She is trapped in the Gabbleratchet.’

The Vermiform paused, as if it expected me to know what the fuck it was talking about. Its surface covering the walls smoothed and stilled, lowering slightly as the worms packed closer together. It became denser and more solid, and the shapes of the furniture buried under it bulged out more clearly. I had the impression it was deeply afraid.

Rayne asked, ‘Gabbleratche’? Wha’s tha’?’

‘Why are you frightened?’ I added.

The layers of worms blistered as individuals stretched up indignantly. They looked like fibres fraying from a flesh-coloured tapestry. The necks bent and the heads swayed. Their lips moved simultaneously, and its voice chorused like thousands of people speaking at once: ‘The eternal hunt. It is travelling through Osseous at the moment. We must try to intercept it before it veers into another world carrying Cyan away for good. We cannot predict it. No one can pursue it. Time is of the essence.’ The worms around my feet reached up thin strands and spun around my legs.

I tried to wipe them off. ‘What do you mean, “we”? I can’t Shift. If I take an overdose the Emperor would feel it. He promised he would cut my link to the Circle and let me die.’

At the other end of the room the worm tentacles were picking Rayne’s clothes out of the wardrobe, filling them, and making them dance about. Rayne folded her arms. ‘Tell us more.’

This vexed the Vermiform. ‘Dunlin asked me to fetch Comet, not an old woman.’

‘An old woman! Do you know…! Dunlin?…Jant, why is i’ talking abou’ Dunlin? Does i’ mean t’ former King?’

‘Yes. He’s still alive, in the Shift.’

‘Jant! Wha’ have you done?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’ I addressed the Vermiform: ‘Did Dunlin see Cyan?’

‘Yes. He saw the Gabbleratchet snatch her. Dunlin was advising Membury, the Equinne’s leader, how to wage war against the Insects when the hunt appeared. We saw it cut a swathe through the Equinne troops. Those who survived have taken shelter in their barns.’

‘Can’t Dunlin command these eternal hunters?’

‘No. The Gabbleratchet is unfixed in time and space. It was ancient even before the Somatopolis achieved consciousness. We do not pretend to understand it. It never separates and nothing controls it. It eats what it rides down. Cyan mounted a horse when the hunt was still and it ran with her. Like the others it has abducted she will fly until she dies of starvation.’

‘Fly?’

‘Yes. Be careful the instant you arrive. We are easy prey. If it catches us, it will tear us apart.’ The Vermiform’s three heads on long necks danced about on the surface of the worm quilt like droplets of water on a hot stove. ‘We will take you through bodily, without causing a separation of mind and body. It will not strain the circle that suspends time for you, so none of your co-immortals will feel the effect of it labouring to keep you together.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t like the sound of this. So I won’t be a tourist in the Shift but actually there in the flesh? So this ‘Ratchet thing can eat me? No way, it’s too dangerous.’