The Wells of Hell (20 page)

‘In the story of
the beast-gods living down inside the wells, waiting for the chance to revive themselves?’

Fred Martin frowned. He picked up a
chewed-looking pencil and tapped it against the side of his spectacles. ‘Mr
Perkins,’ he said, ‘you have to understand that these stories are only stories.

Maybe they had some kind of roots in
fact, but that was probably hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago,
even. They’re just legends. Ta’les that folks used to make up to explain things
that looked unnatural. They didn’t know
nothing
about
science, so if they saw something scarey, they had to explain it by magic. I
don’t really see how there could be creatures living down wells, do you? Not if
we’re talking seriously.’

I picked up Legends of Litchjield
again. ‘Do you understand what it says here?’ I asked him. ‘It says that when
Atlantis collapsed, the beast-gods ensured the survival of their race by
infiltrating the natural water system of New England with their seed. I guess
in modern terms that could mean fertilized eggs, or spawn, or whatever
beast-gods used to reproduce themselves.’

Fred Martin coughed nervously. ‘I
suppose it could mean that, yes. But it doesn’t actually, say so, does it?’

‘It says “they had penetrated New
England and other partes with their laste Seed.” What other possible
interpretation is there?’

Fred Martin was silent for a moment.
He tapped his spectacles a couple of times with his pencil, and then he said:
‘I guess it could all be fiction. That’s an interpretation, isn’t it?’

‘Sure. But most legends have some
small grain of fact in them, don’t they?’

‘I guess so. I don’t really know
what you’re trying to say. If you believe in it, then like I said, you’re
welcome. You’re at liberty to do so. But I’ve lived in New Milford all my life,
and / don’t believe in it.’

I opened the book up again and
re-read what Adam Prescott had said about the beast-gods from Atlantis. Then I
said: ‘All right.
If I could just borrow this book for a
while -?’

‘Of course you can. Greg
McAllister’s given his permission, hasn’t he? You go right ahead.’

He stood up, as if he was quite
anxious for me to leave. ‘All I can say is, don’t credit everything you read in
them old books. I’ve read some pretty queer stories in some of my books,
stories that would turn your head round if you believed them. They weren’t set
down for believing, these legends. They were set down because they were
curious. So that’s just a word of warning.’

I got up from the cardboard-covered
chair. His office was so small that we were standing face to face with our
noses almost touching. I said respectfully: ‘I’ll remember what you said.’

I stepped out into the showroom and
made my way to the door. As I opened it, Fred Martin called: ‘Give my best to
Mr McAllister, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will.’

He gave me a quick, uncertain grin.
‘Thanks.’

I said: ‘Is there anything else?’

‘Well, no. No, that’s fine. Except
that – well, you don’t have any reason for believing that stuff, do you?
Nothing’s happened around here that maybe I should know?’

I paused. I didn’t really know what
to tell him. But then I said: ‘If there is, I’ll give you a call.

Okay?’

‘Okay,’ he agreed, but he sounded
unconvinced. He watched me through the glass of his showroom window as I walked
across to Rheta’s Volkswagen, climbed in, and started the engine. He was still
standing in his ideal colonial sitting-room as I backed noisily out of his
parking lot and signalled that I was turning right, towards New Milford. I gave
him a wave, but he didn’t wave back. I guess people who don’t believe in myths
and legends are always a little bit crabbier than the rest of us.

Mrs Wardell had a message for me
when I walked into the laboratory. Dan and Rheta had both gone out, in all
kinds of a desperate hurry, and lunch was regrettably but definitely cancelled.

Mrs Wardell’s upswept spectacles
looked even more upswept than usual, and she was agitated and fidgety. As I
tore open the message and read it, she bit at her crimson-painted lips and
crossed and uncrossed her legs, trying to resist the temptation to tell me what
had happened before I could read it for myself.

The note was in Rheta’s rounded,
feminine writing. It said: 124

‘Carter has called us out to
Gaylordsville. Come as soon as you can. Turn right off 7 towards South Kent,
then
take theirs/ turnoff past the first bridge. Love –
Rheta.’

Oh well, I thought. At least she
signed her urgent messages with love. I folded up the note, gave Mrs Wardell an
abstracted smile, and went back downstairs and out into the street. Shelley was
sitting up in the passenger seat of the Volkswagen waiting for me. I think he’d
gotten over the novelty of driving around in a Beetle, and was restless to get
back to the comfort of the Country Squire. He closed his eyes and flattened his
ears in pained disapproval as I slammed the car door shut and started the
rackety engine.

I got stuck behind a huge slow-moving
truck for most of the drive, and so I spent an impatient fifteen minutes
choking on diesel fumes and reading and re-reading the sign on the back of the
truck which read Konitz Donuts Taste Like Home. At last I reached
Gaylordsville, a small neat township with a quaint old post office and a
colonial-type firehouse, and I made a right around the curve that led towards
South Kent.

I couldn’t have missed Dan and Rheta
and Sheriff Wilkes if I’d tried. The roadway was blocked with two patrol cars,
an ambulance, and a wrecking truck, all with flashing beacons. Two officers
were holding back curious bystanders, while Carter and three of his deputies
and two medics were gathered by a red Impala which was resting at an angle in
the gulley at the side of the road.

Dan and Rheta were’Standing a little
way back, and both of them looked pale and strained. I parked the Volkswagen
and walked across.

‘What’s happened here?’ I asked
them.

Rheta remained tight-lipped, as if
she was trying to keep herself from crying or .vomiting or even bursting out
into hysterical laughter. But Dan nodded towards the red Impala and said
softly: ‘It’s happened again. Maybe it’s Jimmy and Alison. Maybe there’s
another one. Maybe there’s even more.’

‘Someone killed?’

Dan took a deep breath to steady
himself
. ‘Yes. Why not ask Carter. He knows the details.’

I said to Rheta: ‘How are you
feeling? Do you want to go back to the car, keep Shelley
company
?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll be all right. It was a shock, that’s all. Give me a
minute or two.’

‘Okay.’ I left them where they were
and approached the little group of policemen and medics. As I came closer, I
saw that the metal roof of the Impala was gaping apart, as if someone had
ripped it up with the point of a giant can-opener. One of the medics was
peering into the car through the driver’s window, and his expression was
distinctly unhappy.

‘Carter,’ I said, walking up to the
sheriff. ‘How are you going?’

Sheriff Wilkes looked at me
philosophically. ‘Hi, Mason.
About as good as possible,
considering the circumstances.’

I shaded my eyes against the bright
grey daylight. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like every window in the red
Impala was painted red to match the colour scheme. Then it abruptly occurred to
me that it couldn’t be paint. Nobody painted their windows. It must be blood.

I turned to Carter and didn’t know
what to ask him. Carter kept rubbing his chin with his hand as if he didn’t
know what to say to me, either.

‘Is there somebody in there?’ I
asked, at last.

‘As far as we can
make out, a whole family.
Father, mother, two little kids.’

‘Carter – what’s happened?’

‘I don’t know. We’re going to tow
the whole vehicle straight in to headquarters. They’re all dead. Looks like
something tore open the roof and went straight in there and tore ‘em to
pieces.’

‘Something?
Something like what}
What
can do that? What earthly thing can tear open the roof
of a car and kill everybody inside?’

Carter lowered his eyes. ‘I don’t
know, Mason.
Maybe a mechanical trencher.’

‘Or a crab creature?’

Carter shrugged uncomfortably. ‘You
saw the crab creatures for yourself. You said they were man-sized, right?
Whatever did this was four times the size of a man, and that’s being
conservative. // tore open the roof, you get me? It tore open the roof and
reached inside and just about tore everybody to pieces.’

He was deeply upset. In fact, he was
almost on the brink of tears. He took out his khaki handkerchief, opened it
out, and blew his nose like a bassoon.

It was then that the rear door of
the car swung open, and I glimpsed what was inside. I was horrified and
nauseated, but I couldn’t make my eyes turn away. Almost immediately, the medic
closed the door again, so that none of the bystanders could see what was going
on. But it was too late, I’d seen it, and I stood on that road as if the Lord
and all his angels had paralysed me for ever.

I had seen a woman’s head with curly
blonde hair hanging back over the front passenger seat, hanging back so far
that her eyes had been staring at me, upside-down, through the open door. I
hadn’t been able to see her body, thank God, but her head had been suspended by
nothing more than a flat blue gristly piece of torn-open neck. The back seats
had been splattered in blood and mucus, and I had seen livers and intestines,
in all the dark and gaudy colours of butchery, hanging from the seat-belt
straps. There was a stench of fresh blood and rotten fish, and I knew damn well
who had done this thing, just as Carter knew.

‘Children,’ said the sheriff, in a
muffled voice.
‘Two innocent little children, with all their
lives ahead of them.’

‘Any tracks?
Any
clues?’
I asked him.

‘Not so far. We’ve got the dogs out
again. I’ll catch those bastards, I warn you. I don’t care if they’re creatures
or people or what they are. I’ll catch them, and I’ll make damn sure they pay
for doing this.’

‘It looks like they’re bigger,
doesn’t it?’ I asked him. ‘Maybe they’ve been growing.’

He nodded. ‘I don’t know how, and
right now I’m not going to ask. The whole damn thing’s impossible, from the very
beginning, and so what I’m going to do is believe it, no matter how crazy it
gets, because if I don’t believe it then more innocent people like this are
going to get themselves ripped to pieces; and I tell you, Mason, I tell you
true, I’m not going to let this happen again.’

I laid my hand on his arm. ‘I know,
Carter. I know you’ll get them.’

He gave a deep sniff. ‘I will, don’t
you worry about it. We’re going drilling this afternoon, too, up at the Bodine
place, see what’s down the damn well. Do you want to come along?’

‘Dan’s already invited me.’

‘Well, you come along. You watch me
track those bastards down.’

‘Okay, sheriff.’

I went back to Dan and Rheta. They
saw the look on my face and they didn’t ask me any more questions about the
Impala and what was inside it. Behind me, the towing crew were attaching chains
to the wrecked car’s rear bumper, and one of them was saying: ‘We have to put
the car in neutral. Will anybody put it in neutral?’

One of the medics opened the front
door, quickly leaned in and adjusted the gearshift. He closed the door again
and stood there with his face white and sticky blood all over his hand. The
towing crew glanced at each other and raised their eyebrows. They must have
seen some bad ones, but this was an abattoir on wheels.

I said to Dan: ‘The crabs have grown
larger, much larger. They must have. It looks like one of them pulled open the
roof with a pincer and then reached inside.’

‘We know one thing,’ said Dan,
‘they’re indisputably carnivorous.’

Rheta looked away, but she said
quietly: ‘If they’re large enough to tear open a car, surely the police must
find them soon. They can’t have gotten very far away.’

‘I don’t know,’ I told her. ‘What’s
the speed of a crab, relative to the speed of a human being?’

‘Fast,’ remarked Dan. ‘A crab could
outrun a racehorse, and over a longer distance, too.’

We stood in the silence for a short
time,
I could almost feel the globe turning under my feet.

‘How are the tests going?’ I asked,
eventually. ‘Have you checked out the new water sample yet?’

Dan nodded. ‘I’ve made a preliminary
check. It’s full of the same species of organism. Without counting heads, it
looks like there’s more of them, too.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘How should I know? I don’t know
what any of this means. I can’t even believe that it’s real. We’ve completed
our tests on the mouse and all we know is that it drank the water from the
Bodine well and turned scaley. We still don’t know why, or how.’