The Wells of Hell (14 page)

‘The – change – it – happened – so –
quick...’

‘Jimmy,’ I insisted, ‘I have to see
you if I’m going to help you. Whatever that water’s done to you, I have to
see.’

‘We – are – so – much – stronger...’

‘Stronger? What does being stronger
have to do with it?’

‘It – is – the – way – we – were –
always – meant – to – be...’

I lifted my flashlight again, and I
was sure that I could see something dark and shiny stirring in the bushes. I
peered forward, but it was difficult to make it out. I wiped rain from my eyes
and my hair, and leaned as close to the prickles as I could.

‘We - never - knew - until - now -
where - the - strength -really - lay -’ said Jimmy. ‘We - never - knew - how -
long - it - had - been - sleeping...’

‘Jimmy, I don’t know what you’re
talking about,’ I said impatiently. ‘I can’t do anything for you unless you
come out of there and show me what’s happened. It’s no big mystery. I saw
Oliver and the scales on his back and on his legs. I know what’s happened. I
just have to see how bad it is.’

‘You - don’t - understand - at - all
- you - could - never -understand - the greatness - of - the - ancient -
world...’

I coughed.
Nerves.
I said carefully: ‘Jimmy, I want you to do something for me. I know you’re in
those bushes, Jimmy, and I guess I know how you managed to get inside there
without hurting yourself, but I can’t get in there to see you, do you
understand that? Well, what I want you to do is put your arm out through the
bush, do you get me? I want you to put your arm out through the bush and show
me what your arm looks like. Do you think you could do me that one favour?’

The rain rattled on the holly leaves
and made me jerk back in fright. I took a deep lungful of air and steadied
myself, but I can tell you without a shadow of a lie that I was almost ready to
turn around and run out of that wood as fast as humanly or even inhumanly
possible.

‘You – don’t – understand -’ grated
Jimmy. ‘You – don’t understand – at all...’

‘Jimmy,’ I begged him. ‘I can’t stay
out here for ever, and before long Carter Wilkes is going to come looking for
you. If you don’t come out of your own free will, he’s going to flush you out
with guns. I mean that.

You’re both suspects in Oliver’s
death, and they’ll get you any way they have to. You can’t hide in a wood for
the rest of your life.’

Jimmy ignored me. In his blurry,
hideous voice, he said: ‘The - day - has - been - promised - for - thousands -
and -thousands - of- years - the day - has - been - promised.’

I was getting very wet and panicky
now. I said: ‘Jimmy, will you stop saying things like that and just listen to
me? I mean, will you just listen? I want you to come out of there, because if
you don’t they’ll kill you.’

There was a threshing noise inside
the holly bushes, and I stepped back anxiously. If there was going to be
anything worse than Jimmy ignoring my pleas to come out, it was going to be
Jimmy actually deciding I was right and showing himself. I could hear by his
harsh, awkward voice that there was something terribly wrong with him, and
there was something indescribably terrifying in the heavy, lurching sounds he
was making in the bushes. I took one pace backwards, two, three, and then stood
at a respectful distance waiting for my one-time friend to emerge. I didn’t
hear the creaking of gristle behind me, or the rustling of branches. I didn’t
even hear the scaly, spidery sound of feet on the leafy ground. I took one more
step back and then all hell grabbed me round the neck, the hard bony hell of a
huge claw. It was ridged and muscular and as long as a man’s forearm, and three
times as thick. It crushed into my throat and my shoulder and twisted me clear
off my feet, so powerfully and painfully that I didn’t even have time to yell
out. As my legs thrashed for the ground, I was convinced for a split-second
that my head was going to be torn off, and that I was a dead man.

I was flung from side to side,
choking and bruised, and the vice-like claw forced its way deeper and deeper
into my windpipe. I reached up with both hands, and tried to prise it away from
me, but even when I was gripping it tight and pulling it with all my strength,
it wouldn’t come loose, wouldn’t relent. I tried to drag air into my lungs, but
my throat was too constricted. The dark woods turned darker. I saw stars
exploding in front of me. I think I managed to grunt ‘Dan!’ just once, but in a
voice so faint that he couldn’t possibly have heard me.

8?

The claw hurled me against the rough
trunk of a fir tree, as if it was trying to beat me to death, and I felt the
sharp projection of what seemed to be another, smaller, claw, digging into my
back in search of my softer and more vulnerable organs.

There was a moment of utter pain, of
utter blackness, in which I was sure I was dead. I couldn’t say how long it
lasted. It was probably only a fraction of a second. But then there was a harsh
cry, and a smashing noise, and then the claw suddenly related from my neck, and
I took in a cold agonized breath of oxygen that was foetid with fish. There was
another thumping, smashing sound, and a shriek that scared me so much I rolled
free across the wet leaves and got myself clear. It was a shriek of coldblooded
insect rage and pain, a completely inhuman shriek, as if it came from a gristly
throat lined with black hairs.

It was so dark that I could scarcely
see. But I could make out Dan, his bald head shining in what little light there
was, and I could make out my largest pipe-wrench held over his head. He was
shouting: ‘Yaaahh! Yaaahh!’ in a voice that was supposed to be threatening but
which was almost falsetto with fear.

Behind him, in the shadows, I saw
something else.
Something bulky and heavy, with arms that
waved with the slow-motion of things that usually dwell beneath the sea.
The movement reminded me more than anything of the laboured pointless, painful
jerking of live lobsters in a supermarket tray. Only this creature was scores
of times larger, scores of times more powerful, and it moved away into the
woods with a shuffling scuttle and a rustle of leaves that betrayed something
the size and weight of a human being.

I felt dizzy and hurt, and I sat
down on the ground again, rubbing my bruised throat and gasping for air. Dan
came over and put down the pipe-wrench.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked me. ‘I
thought that damn thing was going to tear you to pieces.’

‘You weren’t the only one. Did you
get a good look at it?’

He shook his head. ‘All 1 saw was a
claw and a big boney head. I didn’t even see its face. I just lashed out with
the wrench and hoped it would let go.’

‘Thank Christ you did. It almost got
me.’

Dan strained his eyes through the
gloom to see how badly I was injured. ‘Can you feel any blood?’ he asked me. I
shook my head. ‘Okay, then,’ he said, ‘let’s get you back to the car. I don’t
fancy the idea of sticking around these woods longer than we have to.’

He helped me get to my feet. I felt
shocked and unsteady, but at least I could walk. I said: ‘Don’t forget the
pipe-wrench. Those things cost an arm and a leg.’

We stumbled out of the woods and
back across old man Pascoe’s yard. The rain lashed in our faces as we came out
of the shelter of the trees, and by the time we had walked around the house and
back to my wagon, we were both dripping. I climbed in behind the wheel and
slammed the door. ‘Are you sure you can.
drive
?’ asked
Dan. I rubbed my neck. ‘I’m fine. At least, I’m semi-fine. That thing didn’t do
much more than throttle me.’

‘Was it one of them?
Jimmy or Alison?’
I cleared my throat. ‘I think so.
Alison, probably.
I was talking to Jimmy when it happened.’

‘You were talking to Jimmy? Did you
see him?’

‘Not a thing. He was hiding right in
the thick of a whole mess of holly bushes. I couldn’t even get a glimpse.’

Dan wiped condensation from the
wagon’s window and stared out into the dark and the rain.

‘You know something,’ he said.
‘Hitting that creature was like hitting a pie-crust. When I swung the second
time, it crunched?

‘It sounds like you’ve injured it,’
I told him. ‘If I’d known it was Alison...’

I raised my hand to quiet him down.
‘If you’d known it was Alison you would have done the same thing. And besides,
from what I heard from Jimmy, they’re not even the same people any more.
They’re not the Jimmy and Alison that we know. They’re not dressed up in
fancy-dress costumes. It seems like their bodies have changed and their minds
have changed along with them. Jimmy wouldn’t answer any of the questions I
asked him, and he kept mumbling on about how I wouldn’t understand him or what
he was doing.’

Dan looked at me sagely. ‘It’s
possible they’re both suffering

.’.
o.h.-p
from severe psychological shock, isn’t it? If you or I went through a physical
change as drastic and hideous as the one that they’ve been through
– ?’

‘I don’t think that’s the problem,’
I said. ‘It seems to me like they’ve been through a fundamental change of basic
attitudes and interests. There was no hysteria, no illogicality. Whatever Jimmy
said, it was sane and sequential. The only difference was
,
it was all about the greatness of the ancient world, and the day that’s been
promised for thousands and thousands of years.’

Dan frowned.
‘The
greatness of the ancient world?
Whenever was Jimmy Bodine interested in
the greatness of the ancient world?’

‘That’s the whole point I’m making.
Jimmy Bodine was never interested in the greatness of the ancient world, nor in
predictions or promises or superstitions. He was simple, and straightforward,
and pragmatic. Whatever kind of a creature he’s changed into, he’s mentally
different as well as physically different. But it doesn’t seem to me like he’s
traumatised. Look at the way he kept me busy while Alison circled around in
back of me. He’s acting with cunning, and he’s acting with some kind of
purpose. Just don’t ask me what that purpose is, or what he thinks he’s trying
to achieve, because I don’t know.’

Shelley, on the back seat, began to
lick himself furiously. For a while we sat in the wagon in silence, and there
was only the sound of the rain and the rasping of Shelley’s tongue.

Eventually, Dan said: ‘So what are
we going to do?
Alert Carter?
They’re obviously
homicidal, whatever their purpose is.’

I nodded. ‘I think we’re going to
have to.’

I started up the engine, and
switched on the windshield wipers. But just as I was about to pull away, there
was a loud knocking noise at the back of the wagon, and I turned around in my
seat in surprise, thinking I must have caught my rear bumper on something.

To my horror, the whole of the rear
window of the wagon burst apart in a snowstorm of flying glass, and through the
back a giant black-and-green claw raked its way across the pipes and the tools
and the junk, clattering and banging at the metal sides of the car.

Dan yelled: ‘It’s them! Get the hell
out of here!’ I slammed my foot on the gas, and the rear wheels whinnied and
slid on the wet cinder driveway.

As the Country Squire gripped and
pulled away, the claw seized the rear drop-down door, and wrenched it clear off
its hinges, with a jarring, scraping sound that sent adrenalin charging through
my arteries. I drove the car wildly up the drive towards the road, praying to
whatever saints looked after the sea that the creatures couldn’t run too fast.
But as we bucked and bounced over the last hump I saw the dark, bulky
silhouette of the second one, and I saw another grotesque claw raised .to
strike us.

I couldn’t avoid the creature in
time. The tyres spat gravel and cinder as I tried to swerve, but the massive
claw smashed into the windshield, and we were both sprayed with jagged
fragments of glass. Dan cried out: ‘Jesus.
My face!’
But I was too worried about the creature’s claw, which snatched at the front
door pillar and tugged at it as we drove past.

My foot pressed the gas pedal down
to the floor, and the engine screamed. The claw could only hold on to the door
pillar for a moment, but it twisted it right out of shape, and my own side
window cracked and dropped out. The tip of the claw rattled against the side of
the wagon as we gave one last burst of power and made the road.

I swerved around on howling tyres,
steadied the wagon with pipes and wrenches dropping out of the ripped-open tail
in a clanging shower, and then I headed towards New Milford and Carter Wilkes’
office as fast as the rain and the wind and the smashed windshield would allow
me.

Dan said almost nothing on the way,
except: ‘I’m bleeding.
My damn face.
I’m bleeding.’

C
arter’s office was already in
pandemonium when we arrived. There were six or seven deputies’ cars parked
outside with their beacons flashing, and once we’d left my battered Country
Squire in the front lot of the hardware store across the street, and pushed our
way through the smeary glass swing doors into the lobby, we were greeted by
incessantly jangling telephones, policemen rushing around with concentrated
faces and clipboards, and the glaring floods of the local TV crew.