The Wells of Hell (25 page)

Awkwardly, Carter said: ‘So you
think there’s something down there? You think there’s some kind of monster down
in the Bodines’ well?’

‘The evidence suggests it. I admit
that the evidence is slight, and what there is of it is all circumstantial. But
yes, I’d say there’s something down there.’

‘So what if we drill down, and see if
we can find it?’

Dan shrugged. ‘I’d say that would be
a pretty dangerous thing to do.’

‘But what if we did?’ persisted
Carter. ‘What if we found it and killed it? Would that knock out all these
crab-creatures, too?’

‘I don’t know. I expect so. There’s
no evidence either way.’

Deputy Martino sniffed loudly, and
said: ‘It sounds to me like it’s worth a try. We’re not going to catch these
monsters this way, not chasing ‘em, not if the damned thing can drown us from
six hundred feet away.’

Carter glanced at both of us. ‘What
do you say? We should start the drilling straight away? I called the county
engineers in yesterday, and they should have the rig almost ready.’

‘I guess you should,’ said Dan. ‘But
we’ve seen what’s happened to people who get this beast-god’s back up. I think
the whole operation should be done with a whole lot of caution.’

‘Well, of course,’ said Carter. ‘You
think I’d drill down there like some half-assed sewage inspector?’

‘I think you should try to find
yourself a medium,’ said Dan.
‘Somebody who’s sensitive to
psychic impulses.
Then if there’s any psychic trouble brewing up, you’ll
have some chance of getting the hell out before anyone gets hurt.’

‘A medium?
You mean like a spiritualist?
Crystal balls, all that stuff?’

‘Exactly.’

Carter rubbed his chin. ‘Martino, do
we know any mediums? Any fortune-tellers, those
kind
of people?’

Martino thought for a while, and
then he said: ‘There’s old Mrs Thompson out at Boardman’s Bridge. That’s the
only one I can think of.’

I looked at Dan and raised an
eyebrow.
‘Seems like Boardman’s Bridge is a good spot for
psychics.
Remember Josiah Walters, in the Litchfield legend book?’

Dan looked thoughtful. ‘That’s
right. Well, she sounds as if she might be all right. Maybe we’ll go talk to
her first, Carter, and then join you up at the Bodines’ place. But I shouldn’t
start drilling until we arrive, if I were you. We don’t want any more
drownings, or butcherings. Whatever’s down in that well looks like it’s getting
pretty enthusiastic about showing its superiority over us land-locked mortals.’

Martino said unhappily: ‘Sheriff –
the crab’s coming back. Look down there, by the woods.’

We all turned at once and peered
down the rocky slope. We couldn’t see anything at first, but then we picked up
a jerky, irregular movement just under the shadow of the clump of trees where
the crab-creature had been hiding. Carter reached down for the anti-tank gun
where Hubert Rosner had dropped it, and quickly checked that it was loaded and
ready to fire.

‘If I were you, Carter, I’d unload
that thing and beat the retreat,’ murmured Dan, keeping his eyes on the
movement under the trees. ‘It seems like it went for Sergeant Rosner because he
was threatening it, and if you do the same you may wind up drowned, too.’

Carter licked his lips as if he
could do with a stiff drink. ‘Just one shot ought to do it. Just one shot to
the brain.’

‘If it’s completely under the
control of the beast-god under the ground then you could shoot it to pieces and
you still wouldn’t stop it,’ said Dan.

‘Dan’s right, Carter,’ I put- in.
‘Maybe this is one of those times when discretion is the better part of valour.
Let’s pick up poor old Hubert and get our asses out of here.’

Carter paused for a moment, the
anti-tank gun raised in his hands. Then he gave us a brief, grudging nod, and
we all gathered around Sergeant Rosner’s body, took an arm or a leg apiece, and
lifted him off the ground. He weighed about as much as a dead hippopotamus, and
he was still full of water, and I wasn’t at all sure that even the four of us
could make it through the woods and back to the road if we had to take him with
us. But I don’t think any of us wanted to leave him there. We’d seen what the
crab-creature had done to those people in the red Impala, and to Deputy
Huntley.

Martino glanced over his shoulder as
we left the brow of the ridge, and said: ‘It’s moving back this way. Maybe more
to the west, but it’s definitely moving back this way.’

‘It’s after the body,’ said Dan.
‘Either it needs to feed on flesh, or else it’s storing it up.’

‘Storing it up?’ asked Carter,
screwing his nose up in distaste. ‘What the hell’s it storing it up for?’

‘Could be that it’s scavenging for
its master, scouring the countryside for food to take back down to the well.
Think about it. If there is some kind of beast down there, some creature that’s
reviving itself after hundreds of years in suspended animation, what’s it going
to need?
Nutrition,
and plenty of it.’

Carter paused to change his grip on
Hubert Rosner’s ankle.

‘Nutrition,’ he repeated bitterly,
looking down at the dead sergeant.

As we lurched unsteadily down the
slope, I was sure I could hear someone calling my name. The thunder was
rumbling in the distance, and the wind was freshening up, and so it was hard to
tell.

But then I heard it again, much more
distinctly, and I suddenly realised who it was.

‘Hold on there,’ I said, stopping.
‘That’s Rheta.’

‘What’s Rheta?’ asked Dan.

‘Listen. She must have tried to
follow us here.’

Half-swallowed by the noise of the
wind and the trees, we heard ‘Mason!’ and then ‘…on’. It was unmistakeably
Rheta’s voice, and it was coming from the woods around the west of the ridge
from which we had just retreated.

Carter put down Hubert’s leg, and we
all followed suit and laid the poor dead National Guardsman on the ground.

‘If she’s over that way,’ said
Martino, ‘then she’s going to run straight into the crab-creature. It was
headed in that direction, and it looked like it was going real fast.’

‘Maybe it sensed her coming,’ said
Dan. ‘Maybe it heard her before we did.’

I didn’t say anything. I was up and
running. I shouted once: ‘Rheta!’ but I wanted to save my breath for scrambling
up and across the side of the ridge, and for reaching Rheta before that
goddamned crab-creature could. I heard Carter and Dan and the
deputies
start running behind me, and I just prayed that I
had the speed and the strength and that I was heading in the right direction.

It seemed to take for ever to get
back to the spine of the ridge again so that I could look along the valley
westwards. The sky was much darker now, and a peal of thunder banged over my
head like a car crash. I couldn’t see anything at first, but then I slowed to a
fast walk, and I made out Rheta’s blondish hair, and her pale-coloured coat.
She was descending the other side of the ridge, about two hundred feet away.
She was calling ‘Mason! Mason!’ and she couldn’t have been a more obvious or
attractive piece of crab-bait if she tried. Only sixty feet away from her,
camouflaged by the darkness and the bushes, I could see the black-and-green
mottled shell of the monster that had once been my friend, with its glistening
eyes and its terrible waving pincer, and I knew that I couldn’t warn her or
reach her in time.

C
arter Wilkes must have been closer
behind me than I’d realised. He was an officer of the law, so I guess he felt
it his duty to keep himself reasonably fit, although how he managed to run up
that slope with a forty-two inch belly and a zo-pound antitank gun, I shall
never know. I’m just glad that he did. I shouted: ‘Rheta! Rheta! This may! Run
this may!’ and at the same time Carter went down on to one knee, aimed the gun,
and fired.

Rheta turned. There was a swoosshh
and a flash, and a burst of orange fire on the edge of the crab-creature’s
shell. I thought
I
, saw pieces of green-and-black
carapace tumbling through the air, although I could have been wrong. I just
know that the creature stopped, and angrily waved its
claw,
and that gave me time enough to go sliding down the slope, shouting for Rheta
to run my way. I tripped, slipped, and skated through rocks and bushes, but I
reached her, and took her hand, and the next thing I knew we were panting back
up the ridge again.

I looked upwards. With their light
uniforms outlined against the inky and thunderous sky, Carter and Deputy
Martino were crouched with their pistols held in both hands, steadily aiming
towards the crab-creature behind us. I chanced a quick look over my shoulder.
It was coming after us, and after the momentary distraction of the anti-tank
rocket, it was coming fast. I could hear the ground tearing under its spidery
legs, and the clatter of its shell on the rocks.

Carter opened fire. Bullets whined
and pinged all around us, but the crab-creature didn’t
hesitate
a single step. Rheta gasped: ‘My God, oh my God, I can’t make it!’

Carter shouted: ‘Faster, Mason, for
Christ’s sake! It’s nearly on you! Faster!’

This time, I didn’t dare to look
round. I could sense how close it was. I could smell the foetid odour offish
with every gasp of air. I closed my eyes for a second and all I could hear was
our scrambling footsteps and our harsh struggling for breath.

Carter yelled: ‘Mason!’ but at the
same moment Rheta’s ankle gave way, and she dropped face-down on to the ground,
only ten feet away from the top of the ridge. There was another burst of
gunfire, but Carter knew that the crab-creature was too tough
for .38 ammunition,
and we could hear the bullets moan and
ricochet into the woods.

I pulled at Rheta’s arm and shouted
at her to get up. She tried, cried out in pain, and fell down again, and then
the creature’s icy breath blew against my face and I realised it had caught up
with us.

I turned, and the dark sky was
almost blotted out by the darker silhouette of claws and beak and antennae, and
the overwhelming shadow of that giant shell. I could see the pale squid-like
tentacles wriggling on the creature’s under-belly, and for the first time in my
life I felt a freezing, paralysing sensation which could only have been terror.
Real, naked, this-is-it terror.

‘Jimmy!’ I shrieked out. ‘Jimmy! For
God’s sake, no! Jimmy!’

The pincer opened. I could hear the
gristly muscles creaking. Beside me, Rheta could do nothing but whimper. The
crab-creature was right over us now, and even if I’d tried to roll away
sideways it would have caught me. It was right over us and it had a ferocious,
unstoppable greed for our lungs and our hearts and our stomachs.

‘Jimmy!’ I yelled out again. ‘Jimmy,
listen! Jimmy! Jimmy!’

There was a frozen pause. The
crab-creature’s eyelids rolled over its eyeballs, and then off them again. Its
antennae wavered in the breeze. It was so quiet now that I could hear the
slippery, sliding sound the squid-tentacles made as they writhed against each
other. Carter, only a few feet away, suppressed a cough.

Then, very slowly, step by step, the
crab-creature backed away from us. We stayed where we were, not moving, not
daring to do anything that might break the spell of what had happened, and we
watched as it gradually turned and made its way back down the slope again.
Rheta lifted her head at last, and stared across at me as if she couldn’t
believe that I was real. I raised my hand, cautioning her to stay quiet and
still.

The crab-creature was almost in the
shadows now. The first drops of rain began to spatter the ground. Carter said,
hoarsely: ‘Look. Look what’s happening.’

I strained my eyes to see down the
slope. The crab-creature was faltering, staggering. I’t stopped for a moment,
and it appeared to have a deep fit of shudders. Then suddenly it sagged to one
side, and keeled over on to its back. It was only then that we could see the
deep soggy wound in its belly, and the tortured way in which its jointed body
was struggling for breath and for survival. Carter’s last anti-tank shell must
have bounced off the ground and penetrated the creature from underneath. We
were lucky that he was such a lousy shot.

I said to Rheta: ‘Stay here. I have
to go take a look.’

She smiled briefly. ‘I don’t have
much choice. My ankle’s out.’

I walked cautiously back’dowh the
ridge, towards the overturned crab-creature. I stayed a respectful distance
away from it, but I was close enough to see that its wound was probably fatal.

The shell had entered the soft
off-white shell just below the tentacles, and had obviously travelled up inside
the body before exploding. The stench of burned rotten fish was almost too much
to bear; and there was another smell, too.
The smell of dead
human offals.

I turned away, sick. Behind me, the
rain pattered on the dying crab-creature’s shell. Carter was standing a little
way off with his hat in his hand. I said: ‘You needn’t pay your respects.
Whatever that was, it wasn’t Jimmy any more.’