The Wells of Hell (22 page)

We stopped for a few seconds. We
were out of sight of the road now, screened by birch and ash and brambles, and
all we could see was shadows around us and the pale gum-coloured sky above our
heads.

‘They must be way ahead,’ said Dan.
‘We would have heard them otherwise.’

But we were just about to set, off
again when we heard a sharp rattle of shots, and a scream of pain that would still
wake me out of sleep in years to come.

W
e ran slantwise down the hill,
kicking up leaves as we went, until we reached the bed of a damp overgrown
gulley. The trees and the evergreen bushes were so thick down here that it was
almost dark, and there was a musty smell of decaying vegetation and mould. We
were panting, and confused, but we didn’t stop to talk. Instead, we ran on
again, through the tangles of briar, and at last we came to a hollow, almost
completely surrounded by thickets, where Sheriff Wilkes and two of his deputies
were standing. They looked white-faced and frightened, and Sheriff Wilkes was
frantically trying to contact his cars through his pocket radio.

‘What’s happening? Is anybody hurt?’
I asked him.

He shook his radio. ‘Damn thing.
Must have busted when I fell over.’

One of the deputies, the long-nosed
one called Martino, said: ‘It got Huntley. We came down here and the goddamned
creature came out of the bushes and got ahold of his arm, dragged him back in
there. It happened so quick we
didn’t hardly see
it.
Fired a couple of shots, but that didn’t seem to do
nothing
.’

Carter tucked his radio back into
his pants pocket. His eyes were dark and displeased. ‘I told you I was going to
get that monster, and I will. Martino, go back to the car, call up
headquarters, and tell them I want grenades, and anti-tank rockets. They’ll
have to get them from Colonel Phelps, and he’ll probably want to know what
they’re for, but just tell ‘em to flannel. I don’t want the National Guard in
on this unless I’m forced to.’

‘Okay, sir,’ said Martino, and
sprinted off.

Dan said: ‘Did you see where the
creature went?’

Carter pointed a stubby finger
towards the densest part of the bushes. ‘Right in there. It got Huntley by the
arm. Snap, just like that. It’s so damned prickly in there we couldn’t even
follow.
Son-of-a-bitch.’

‘Did you see what size it was?’
asked Dan.

The sheriff nodded. He stretched his
arms wide, as if he was telling a fishing story. ‘Big.
Real
big.
One large claw, one smaller claw.
But the
large claw was five, six hundred pounds of lobster.’

‘How about the
head or the body?
Did you get a good look?’

‘No,’ said Carter. ‘It was all too
quick. Huntley was behind us, and all I saw was the claw and the top of the
head. It was kind of curved and boney, you know? Like a helmet, only
green-and-black and patchy.’

Dan looked at me. ‘It could be
either of them, couldn’t it?
Jimmy or Alison.
Or it
could even be this man Karlen.’

‘I don’t mind if it’s Jimmy or
Alison,’ I said. ‘At least I could try to talk to them.’

Carter Wilkes stared at me as if I’d
said something obscene.

‘‘Talk to them? What in hell do you
mean?’

‘Just what I say.
I was able to talk to Jimmy before.
I didn’t get too far, but then I didn’t know too much about what was going on.’

‘And now you do?’

‘I know more than I did before. I
think I know why they’ve changed into those crab creatures, and I think I might
be able to help them.’

Carter rested his hands on his hips,
and sighed.
‘If you don’t beat everything.
You think
you can go in there, right into those goddamned brambles and holly bushes, and
chew the fat with some homicidal lobster that just tore five people to shreds
in one morning?’

‘I can try, can’t I?’ I asked him.

‘I don’t even see why you want to,’
he grumbled.

Dan spoke for both of us. ‘Carter,’
he said, ‘Jimmy and Alison Bodine
were
a fine, gentle
couple, and what’s happened was not their fault. The way Mason and I understand
it, they’re being used by some kind of ancient intelligence that found a way to
preserve itself in the wells under their land, and that intelligence has now
decided it wants to break out.’

‘Intelligence?
What are you talking about,
intelligence’?’’

Dan smoothed his hand over his bald
head. ‘I’m not exactly sure. But people in these parts have told stories for
hundreds of years about beasts who live under the ground, and I’m convinced
that they’re substantially based in fact. You only have to make a simple
analysis of the water from the Bodine well to see that it’s completely unique,
and that those organisms in it are something extraordinary and special. It
wasn’t Jimmy’s fault that he drank the water, nor Alison’s. They didn’t know
the organisms were there, any more than I did, to begin with. They’re innocent
victims of whatever it is that’s down there under the ground. Just like
hostages, if you want it in police language. They’re behaving the way they do
because they’ve been taken over by a far stronger influence than us, and they
don’t have any choice in the matter.’

‘That’s why I’d rather talk than
shoot,’ I said quietly. ‘They deserve a chance.’

Carter grunted. ‘Don’t you think you
deserve a chance, too? They’ve already attacked you twice.

What do you think’s going to happen
when you go after that creature in the middle of those bushes? What do you
think it’s going to do? Shake your hand and call you Charlie?’

‘I’ll just have to wait and see,’ I
replied. ‘But if I don’t go in there, nobody else will.’

‘Too damned right,’ said the other
deputy, laconically.

Carter said: ‘I could forbid it, you
know. This is a police situation, and I could tell you to get the hell out and
stop interfering.’

‘But you won’t.’

‘No, I won’t. I liked Jimmy and
Alison too. And I guess if you believe there’s a chance of saving them, I’m
conscience bound to go along with it. Not duty bound, mind. But conscience
bound.

And that’s why I’m going to give you
just five minutes. You get me? Five minutes and no more, and after five minutes
we’re going to start lobbing tear gas in there, and then we’re going to start
shooting.’

I gave him a quick, nervous grin.
‘If that’s what you feel you have to do.’

‘It is. I don’t want
no
more families winding up butchered, just because we’re
exhibiting a little kindness to crabs.’

‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘I get you.’

I borrowed a pair of black leather
gloves from Carter’s deputy, and I wound Dan’s striped woollen scarf around my
ears and the lower part of my face. While I was tucking my pants into my socks,
deputy Martino came puffing back from the road to say that headquarters had
arranged for two cars to come out with reinforcements, rifles, and an anti-tank
gun. The anti-tank gun was apparently being closely and aggressively supervised
by a Sergeant Kominsky from the National Guard, but that didn’t worry Carter.
He could outshout any sergeant alive.

‘All right, Mason,’ said Carter,
checking his watch. ‘You have five minutes as of now.
Any
trouble, just yell.
Or scream, depending on how bad the trouble is.’

‘You can count on it,’ I said wryly.
I tried not to stop and think what I was actually going to do once I’d
penetrated the brambles. One moment of hesitation and anybody with sufficient
command of the English language to say ‘don’t go’ would have persuaded me to
stay on the side-lines and watch the crab creature being blown apart by
armour-piercing rockets.

Dan rested both his hands on my
shoulders. ‘Nobody’s forcing you,’ he said, quietly.

‘I know. Don’t remind me.’

‘All right, then. Good luck.’

Carter came up to me and handed me
his .38 Police Special. ‘You know how to use this thing?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘You’ve seen Starsky and Hutch?’

‘For my sins,
yes.’

Carter raised one beefy hand and
steadied it with the other, pointing his finger to represent the gun. ‘That’s
how you do it. Steady, aim, squeeze. Don’t panic, and make sure you shoot at
something that looks important, like its head or its eyes.’

I looked down at the gun in my hand
without much confidence. Somehow, shooting at things seemed to be the American
answer to every problem there was. Maybe that’s why I’d given up psychiatry.
All people really wanted to hear was that every problem, from impotence to
agoraphobia, could be solved by some kind of psychological shoot-out.

‘Five minutes, then,’ said Carter,
and turned away. I gave Dan a quick shrug and began to climb up the side of the
hollow towards the brambles and the holly bushes.

Going through those thickets was
like walking into a hedge of barbed wire. They ripped at my clothes and
lacerated my face, and they had a vicious trick of springing back at me as I
tried to push them aside. It seemed to take me whole minutes just to force my
way past one thick and prickly holly bush, but Carter and Dan were still in
sight, and they gave me the thumbs-up. I waved back, half-heartedly, and pushed
deeper into the bushes.

Once I’d penetrated the outer layers
of bramble and holly, the going was easier. My forehead was bleeding and one of
my gloves was badly ripped, but I was reasonably intact. I stuck the .38 in my
belt, because it was proving to be more of a nuisance than a help, and it
didn’t give me much in the way of psychological strength. If Carter was calling
for anti-tank guns, which could blow holes in reinforced steel, it didn’t seem
very likely that a police-issue peashooter could do much to protect me.

I checked my watch. I must have been
gone two minutes, maybe two minutes thirty seconds. I trod as quietly as I
could through the dry, curled up leaves, shielding my face from the holly with
my upraised arm, and every now and then I stopped to listen.

At first, there was only the
crackling of leaves, and the wind blowing with almost inaudible softness
through the woods. But then I heard something else.
A sound
like branches splintering, and a kind of sucking, tearing noise.
I
sniffed, and that distinctive odour of fish was on the air.

I pushed my way forward, until I
reached a screen of brambles and tangled creepers. I went down on hands and
knees, and crawled forward ten or twenty feet, hiding myself as deeply as I
could among the leaves. The sucking, slavering noise was much louder here, and
with infinite care I raised my head above the level of the undergrowth to see
what was going on.

The creature was there, only fifteen
feet away. I had never seen one in daylight before, and I was horrified. My
skin seemed to prickle and shrink with fear, and my most immediate urge was to
leap up from my hiding-place and run like hell.

It wasn’t really a crab, or a
lobster, at all. I think I could have accepted it if it was. But instead it was
a massive, hideous, bulky crustacean, with a body the size of a small gasoline
tanker. The shell on its back was domed and curved, and grotesquely mottled.
Out from under that shell protruded an insect-like head, with waving tendrils
and black glistening eyes on constantly-moving stalks. The eyes had grey,
wrinkled eyelids, which rolled on and off the eyeballs every few moments like
the foreskin of some hideous penis.

The major claw had developed
enormously, into a heavy, jagged and vicious-looking vice.

Beneath the body shell, there were
clusters of spiney legs, bristling with tough black hairs, and crusty
excrescences that appeared to be dried-up scabs. There was something else, too.
Out of the abdomen writhed dozens of squid-like tentacles, soft and pale and
squirming and it was these that were holding the ravaged corpse of deputy
Huntley while the crab-creature made its meal.

The sucking noise I had heard was
the sound of the creature devouring Huntley’s intestines, and bloody coils of
them were hanging from its beak-like jaw. The tearing had been the smaller
claw, ripping open his remains, separating his ribs, and probing inside for the
softest, choicest pieces.

Bile rose up in my throat, and for a
while there I thought I was going to have to puke. But I managed to keep it
down, even though I was chilled and sweating and shaky, the way I used to be
when I was car-sick in the back of my father’s Plymouth Cranbrook. I took a
deep breath, and pulled out Sheriff Wilkes’ •38. It might have been useless against
a creature as huge and vicious as this crab, but now I was right up close I
realized it was all I had.

I tried to call out: ‘Jimmy?
Alison?’ but my mouth was so dry I couldn’t manage it. I coughed, and tried
again. ‘Jimmy! Alison! Is that you?’

The ghastly creature stopped its
feeding and raised its bristly head. Blood dripped from its beak on to the
leaves. For a moment, there was utter silence, not even a bird twittering or a
leaf spinning from out of a tree.