The Wells of Hell (27 page)

There were ten or twelve more pages.
I wished I had time to read them all, because they described how Josiah Walters
tried to defend himself against the Christian anger of his neighbours, and how
he was committed to the lunatic asylum. But it was what he said about Quithe or
Chulthe which was most important, and right now, with Carter waiting to drill
into the subsoil of Jimmy Bodine’s farm, there wasn’t time for historical
details.

I turned the page over. ‘Where’s the
sign?’ I asked Mrs Thompson. ‘He says here that he’s attached a sign.’

‘He did. I destroyed it.’

‘You destroyed it? Didn’t you have
any idea how important that sign could have been?’

‘Of course I did. I’m an extremely
sensitive clairvoyante.’

‘So what made you do it? That sign
could have been real important. It could have helped us lick the monster.’

Mrs Thompson set down her cup. Her
lips were firmly clenched together, in a straight, unhappy line.

‘Mrs Thompson?’ I asked her.

She looked up. ‘I didn’t want it in
the house,’ she said. ‘It was unsettling. As long as it was here, things used
to happen.’

‘What things?’ asked
Dan.

She lowered her eyes again. ‘If
you’re an analytical chemist, you’d probably call them psychic phenomena. But
they were worse than that. When I was alone in the house, I used to glimpse
people in other rooms. I used to hear voices. Not friendly, human voices, like
you hear when you’re holding a seance. But alien voices that talked among
themselves, and not to me. I was very frightened. I’m still frightened
sometimes. Whatever it was that Josiah Walters discovered
,
it seems to me that it was the epitome of all evil, and that it will never rest
until it has regained its kingdom again.’

Dan said gently: ‘Can you describe
the sign you destroyed?’

We waited in silence. The rain
dribbled down the roof of the gloomy conservatory, and thunder began to bumble
again from the hills of New York State. Mrs Thompson took a breath, and then
traced an invisible outline on the white-painted tabletop with the tip of her
finger.

‘You’ve probably seen the sign
before. In the old days, they used to call it the evil eye. It’s an eye, a
cyclopean eye, and even though it’s very simply drawn it seems to contain the
essence of all the cruelty and iniquity you can imagine. It is Chulthe’s
symbol, the symbol and sign of his own eye.’

She paused, and then she said: ‘The
sign had such terrible connotations in these parts that, over the years, its
meaning was quite erased from local memory. If you showed it to people now,
they wouldn’t have a clue what it was, although it might make some of them uneasy.
The strange thing was that one drawing of it appeared in one of those books
about ancient gods from outer space, you know the kind of thing I mean. The
author had taken the drawing to be a primitive representation of a spaceman.’

She smiled. ‘It wasn’t of course. It
was a rare and fragmentary drawing of Chulthe. But even though the author
didn’t know what it was, and nobody around here knew, either, the book sold so
badly in the local bookstore that they had to send it back to the publishers.
Folks were taking it off the shelf, flicking through it, and putting it
straight back again when they came across that eye.’

I cleared my throat. ‘Mrs Thompson,’
I said, ‘it’s pretty clear that you have something of
a
sensitivity
to Chulthe’s vibrations. I mean, if you saw these ghosts and
heard these voices...?’

She stared at me hard. ‘Yes,’ she
said. ‘I am. Is that any surprise, considering my heritage?’

‘No, ma’am.
But I was wondering if you’d agree
to put your sensitivity to some useful purpose.’

Mrs Thompson didn’t answer. All
three of us sat around the table in that dismal conservatory while the rain
rained and the afternoon began to darken into night. It was five to five. Not
long now, and Carter Wilkes was going to give the county engineers the go-ahead
to start drilling.

Mrs Thompson turned away. Dan said:
‘
You
know what we’re asking, don’t you?’ and she
nodded.

‘You want me to be your canary. You
want me to test the psychic atmosphere while your people dig down in search of
Chulthe.’

I said: ‘Canary’s kind of a strong
way of putting it, Mrs Thompson. When they took canaries down the mines, they
only considered it was time to leave when the canary keeled over and died.’

Mrs Thompson stared at me. Her eyes
were very deep and penetrating. ‘Don’t you think that would happen to me?’ she
demanded. ‘Don’t you think that Chulthe’s psychic power would destroy my mind?’

‘Well, I...’

‘Even now, you don’t know what
you’re up against, do you?’ she said. ‘You’re up against Satan, the supreme
being of complete evil. You’re up against Quithe, the Celtic god of the
terrible pit.

You’re up against a being so
powerful and so totally vicious that his memory has lasted for millions of
years. You’ve seen what’s happened already, while he’s stirring in his sleep.
Stirring in his sleep, Mr Perkins, that’s all. Just imagine what he’s going to
be like when he awakes.’

I felt embarrassed. I said: ‘I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean to ask you to do anything that dangerous.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Thompson, ‘I don’t
suppose you did. But if you disturb the great beast-god, then I’m afraid you’ll
be putting everyone at risk, not just yourselves.
Everyone
who helps you, or digs for you, or watches while you penetrate his
hiding-place.’

Dan sat back in his garden chair.
‘So you won’t do it?’ he asked her.

She gave a gentle smile. ‘I didn’t
say that. All I said was
,
I don’t think you appreciate
what you’re up against.’

‘We’ve seen the crab-creatures that
Chulthe sent out to find flesh for him, Mrs Thompson,’ I said, soberly. ‘They
weren’t exactly tame rabbits, if you know what I mean.’

‘I do.’

There was another difficult silence.
Then Dan said: ‘Okay then, we’d better get back to the drilling site. They were
due to start work a couple of minutes ago.’

Mrs Thompson said: ‘Give me five
minutes. I must brush my hair and put on my coat.’

‘You’ll come?’ I asked her.

She nodded. ‘I believe I have to. My
family’s been tied up with the legend of Chulthe for two hundred years. I
suppose one of us had to face up to the beast’s presence eventually. It’s just
my misfortune that it happened to be me.’

‘We’re not forcing you,’ said Dan.

She reached out and touched his
hand. ‘I know you’re not. But I have to when you think about it.

It’s been my destiny for years. If I
don’t accept it now, then I’ll probably spend the rest of my life quite
aimlessly, wondering if I should have tried to tackle the beast or not.’

Dan laid his hand over hers. ‘Thank
you,’ he told her, gently. While Mrs Thompson went to make
herself
ready, Dan and I sat in the conservatory and watched the rain. It was almost
dark now, and Dan went across to switch on a brass desk-lamp with a
shell-shaped shade. Our reflections sat out in the rainy garden, observing us
mournfully. I finished my cigarillo and stubbed it out.

A voice said: ‘Every hour is numbered.’

We both looked up. There was nobody
there. Dan frowned and said: ‘Was that Mrs Thompson?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, uneasily.
‘It didn’t sound like her.’

I scraped back my chair and stood
up. I heard another voice, softer, saying: ‘Yes, I remember those days.’

I licked my lips nervously. After
all, hadn’t Mrs Thompson just told us about strange people glimpsed in other
rooms, and alien voices that talked among themselves? I listened and listened,
hoping to catch the shuffle of a foot, a cough, just something that would have
betrayed the presence of somebody human and real.

‘The time seems close,’ someone
whispered, out in the cluttered hallway. I looked down there, to the sepia
window through which the last light of the day was filtering through to the
staircase, but there was nobody in sight. One of the coats hanging on the pegs
by the umbrella stand might have stirred, but I couldn’t be sure.

I turned back to Dan. ‘They know
we’re here,’ I said tensely. ‘Whatever these voices are, they know we’re here.’

‘They probably know why we’re here,
too,’ said Dan. ‘But they’re only psychic manifestations of Quithe. They’re not
real. So don’t let them bother you.’

As he said that, there was a
terrible crashing and smashing in the kitchen. We both ran through the
conservatory, turned left through the pantry, and scrambled through the kitchen
door to see plates flying off the dresser, pots and pans hurtling through the
air, and every loose spice jar and butter-dish and whisk and rolling-pin
rattling and shaking on their shelves until they fell on to the floor and
broke. The clamour was ear-splitting, and there was nothing we could do to stop
it.

Dishes shattered, cutlery jangled,
windows cracked, and water gushed out of the faucets and filled up the sink to
the brim.

Mrs Thompson appeared, white-faced,
at the opposite door. ‘It’s the beast!’ she said. ‘The beast is angry with me!’

She stood watching the destruction
in despair, until the last spoon clattered to the floor, and the last dish was
smashed against the wall.

‘He doesn’t want me to help you,’
she said. ‘He would rather tkill me first.’

She bent down to collect up the
fragments of a broken fruit-dish, but as she did so, I heard the soft moaning
of a draught under the door that led to the garden. A sad, persistent moan that
seemed to speak of sorrow and loneliness, of lives lost and agonies endured.
Mrs Thompson raised her eyes, and listened for a while. Then she gently put
down the pieces of china that she had been collecting up, and got to her feet.

‘I think it’s time we left this
house,’ she said, warily. ‘I’m beginning to feel that something terrible is
going to happen.’

‘You really believe that Chulthe
knows what you’re planning to do?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure of it. Remember
that this house has harboured his spirits and his signs for two centuries at
least, and he can probably sense what’s happening here quite clearly. Are you
ready to leave?’

‘Any time you like,’ I said, and I
didn’t do anything to disguise my enthusiasm. We went down the corridor towards
the front door, and Dan reached out to open it. But his hand touched nothing
but a blank wall. The front door had disappeared, and its place was a
straightforward wallpapered wall, with a faded daguerreotype on it.

Mrs Thompson reached for my wrist,
and held it uncomfortably tight.

‘It may be too late,’ she murmured,
under her breath. ‘If your friends have started drilling, and have broken
through to the tunnels, then it may be too late.’

‘Let’s try the back,’ Dan suggested,
and we retreated along the corridor and out into the conservatory again. The
minute we did so, the light failed all over the house, and we were plunged into
rainy, impenetrable darkness. We stood still for a moment, until our eyes began
to make out the vague shapes of the chairs and the plants, and then we held
hands and moved cautiously across the tiled floor to the French windows. ‘Can
you see anything?’ Mrs Thompson hissed, under her breath.

‘Nothing at all so far,’ I told her.

Dan said: ‘Quiet. If there’s
anything outside, I’d rather take it by surprise, instead of the other way
around.’

‘You mean a crab-creature?’ I asked
him.

He turned away. ‘Don’t ask me. It
looks like this Chulthe can conjure up almost anything he feels like.’

We went on tip-toes across the
conservatory floor. Mrs Thompson’s dry, long-fingernailed hand dug into my
wrist so tightly that it hurt, and I held on to the tail of Dan’s overcoat. Dan
led the way, and I could see just the palest glimmer of blue light shining from
his bald head like a crescent moon. Almost silently we reached the conservatory
doors, and peered out through the rain-beaded glass into the garden.

‘Still no sign of anything,’
whispered Dan. ‘Maybe we can get around the side of the house without any
trouble.’

He tried the door-handle. It
wouldn’t budge. He tried it again, tugging it harder, but it still wouldn’t
move. He turned to Mrs Thompson and hissed: ‘Have you locked this? Is there a
key?’

‘It shouldn’t be locked,’ Mrs
Thompson replied. ‘I only lock it at night, when I go to bed.’

I nudged Dan to one side. ‘Let me
try.
More of a plumber’s job, this.’
I took the
door-handle in both hands, and twisted it as hard as I could. It seemed to be
stuck rigid.

‘Mrs Thompson,’ I said, ‘it seems
like we might have to break a window.’

Mrs Thompson’s eyes looked wide and
frightened in the gloom. ‘Yes.
All right.
If you have to.’

I remembered having seen a cast-iron
doorstop down by the dog’s bowl, so I went down on hands and knees and started
to feel around for it. But it turned
out,
I wasn’t
going to need it. For just as I clumsily put my hand into the dog’s dried up
lunch, there was a deep rumbling sound like a New York subway train, and the
plant-pots rattled and shook in excitement. Three or four panes of glass in the
conservatory ceiling cracked and shattered, and came showering down on us. I
stood up in time to see, outside the conservatory, looming over us in hideous
and wrathful clouds, a shape that conjured up deep racial terrors that I didn’t
even know I had. It might have been the gaseous shadow of Quithe, or Chulthe,
the beast-god of Atlantis; it might have been the oldest and most evil
manifestation from beyond the stars. But to me it was one thing only, and I
stood there paralysed by the horrifying familiarity of it. It was huge beyond
description, shimmering and strange, changing from a weird electric blue to
dark crimsons and fiery yellows.