The Wells of Hell (21 page)

‘Did you hear from Newsom about the
post-mortem on Oliver Bodine?’ I asked him.

‘Not officially,’ put in Rheta. ‘He
didn’t want to speak officially until he’d run some virus tests in New York.
But off the record he knows about as much as we do, which is almost nothing.
He’s sure the water caused the metamorphosis, or rather the micro-organisms
did. But he doesn’t know how it happened, and he can’t understand the
life-cycle at all.’

‘So we’re back at square one,’ said
Dan, glumly. ‘All we can hope for now is some kind of miraculous discovery when
we drill down into the well itself.’

I took out a cigarillo and lit it
with my hands shielding my lighter against the breeze. I puffed a few times,
and then I said: ‘It looks like I’ve discovered more than you have, then.’

Rheta raised her eyes. ‘You went to
look for that book this morning, didn’t you?
The book of
legends?’

‘That’s right. It’s in the car. And
there’s a whole page about the wells of Washington, and why people wouldn’t
drink out of them, and that goes as far back as the eighteenth century, if not
further.’

The wrecking-truck revved up its
engine, and a blast of black diesel smoke stained the sky. With a rattle of
chains and a groaning of twisted metal, the red Impala was dragged protesting
out of the gulley and up on to the road. Its red-plastered windows gave it a hideous
and macabre appearance. We looked the other way as a large grey sheet of
plastic was thrown over the top of it and secured with ropes, and we didn’t
look back again until the truck had dragged it like the corpse of some
mutilated animal along the road and out of sight around the curve towards
Gaylordsville.

Sheriff Wilkes came over and stood
beside us for a while, his beefy hands resting on his hips.

There was a toothpick sticking out
from between his teeth which he chewed and shifted from one side of his mouth
to the other in a constant display of dental dexterity.

He was quiet for a long while,
looking down along the road where the Impala had at last disappeared. Then he
said: ‘I don’t suppose you guys have any helpful ideas.’

‘We may have,’ I told him. ‘We’re
not sure.’

‘New evidence?’ asked Carter,
interested.

‘No.
Very old
evidence.
But it could be good. We’re going to look it over right now.
We’ll tell you what we think when we see you this afternoon at the Bodine
house.’

‘Okay,’ said Carter. ‘I’d appreciate
it.’

At that moment, there was a squawk
from the radio in Carter’s car. He said: ‘Hold it, guys,’ and went over to pick
up his microphone. W.e weren’t standing too far away, so we easily overheard
the message. Carter gave us
an intent
and meaningful
look as the police radio operator spoke.

‘Headquarters to
sherijf and all units.
Highway Patrol helicopter on Route 7 approximately four miles north
Gaylordsville reports possible suspects crossing the highway and making into
the woods east.’

Sheriff Wilkes said gruffly: ‘Wilkes
here. We’re responding straight away.
Over.’
Then he
turned and yelled to the deputies around him: ‘The Highway Patrol
have
sighted the Bodines! Let’s get after ‘em!’

In a burst of car-door slamming and
whooping and warbling sirens, Carter and his deputies backed up their vehicles
and screeched out of Gaylordsville. I said to Dan: ‘Come on, let’s follow them.
We may have half a chance to help.’

‘Help who?’ asked Rheta, as we
clambered into the Volkswagen.
‘The Sheriff or the Bodines?’

‘Whoever needs it most,’ I said
tersely, but that was only because I didn’t even know myself.

The Volkswagen rattled into life,
and I swung the wheel around and drove us at top speed northwards, shifting the
manual gears like I was stirring my grandmother’s Christmas pudding.

On the straightaway past the town, I
just glimpsed the tail of Carter’s car as it sped on ahead of us, but that was
about as near as I got to catching up. However wonderful the German economic
miracle may be, there is no way you can overhaul a souped-up LTD in a battered
beige Beetle.

But still, I did my best. ‘That book
about Litchfield legends is on the back seat there,’ I told Dan. ‘I slipped an
envelope into the page about Washington and the well water.’

‘I’ve got it,’ said Dan, and for
Rheta’s benefit started to read it out loud. I kept my eyes on the road and my
foot jammed against the gas pedal and hoped that nothing nasty was going to
happen before we caught up with the police.

It was when he reached the piece
about Josiah Walters of Boardman’s Bridge that his voice faltered. ‘Ye
beast-gods have tentacles like unto squiddes & claws like unto lobsters,
& above all exude ye odttr like unto ye rottinge fishes.’

He sat up straight, his eyes wide.
‘That’s an exact description of Jim and Alison, the way they are now,’ he said,
in a hollow voice. ‘That’s exactly what they look like, and exactly what they
smell like. And when was this book written?’

He opened the title-page.
‘Seventeen eighty-four.
My God.’

I glanced back at him. ‘Fred Martin
didn’t believe it was true. But it must be. The description’s too close.
Whoever this Josiah Walters was, it sounds like he saw some of these creatures
for himself, and for real, and maybe a few of his neighbours did, too.’

Rheta whispered: ‘Could these
creatures really, truly have come from Atlantis?’

Dan, resting his elbows on the back
of my seat, said: ‘It’s not as cranky as it sound, Atlantis.

There’s plenty of solid evidence that
it really existed. It wasn’t a sixth continent in the middle of the Atlantic
ocean
, but it could have been a chain of islands and reefs
that ran down the eastern coast of America. Bermuda is probably one of the only
islands that survived when Atlantis sank, but there must have been hundreds of
others, and even if what this Adam Prescott says is only partly true, there
could well have been a race of amphibious creatures who lived around the
underwater mountains and reefs.’

‘What about the skeletons that
Currie found in Africa? And the people that what’s-his-name, that British
doctor, found in India? Where did they come from?’

Dan shrugged. ‘It’s impossible to
say without looking at the evidence more closely. But maybe, when Atlantis
collapsed, they could have swum eastwards and attempted the same kind of
infiltration into the water systems of Africa and India that they’ve achieved
here in Connecticut.’

He paused, and then he said: ‘I know
it all sounds nuts. But I heard from White Plains today that those organisms
are two million years old, and maybe older, and this legend seems to be the
only feasible explanation we’ve had so far. Look at the facts. The water does
contain ancient organisms, and the organisms do have the effect of changing
human and animal bone structure.

Then we’ve already seen two
proveable cases of thousands of gallons of water being poured into houses from
nowhere at all; and we’ve seen people killed, and torn apart: What’s more, if
you look through the simplest of anthropological textbooks, you’ll find that
there’s plenty of evidence to show that Atlantis, or something similar, really
existed. Now we have this book, with its legend. What other conclusion can we
possibly draw, except that it’s true?’

Rheta said: ‘I don’t know, Dan. It’s
too fantastic. It’s just too fantastic.’

Dan shook his head. ‘It’s only
fantastic if you ignore centuries and centuries of solid evidence. I studied
some of this stuff at college. Almost every nation in the world has some kind
of legend about giants and monsters who lived in the sea. The Mayans believed
in Quetzalcoatl, who came out of the sea and bore the earth on his shoulders,
and that could be a typical example of what we’re talking about. When they say
he came out of the sea and bore the earth on his shoulders, maybe they didn’t
mean that he picked up the world, like Atlas, but that he went underground.’

‘Maybe they did,’ I put in, ‘but
this is all supposition.’

‘Sure it’s supposition. But then
there’s the natives
of Ponape, in the Caroline Islands. They
worshipped a fish-god who was said to transmute his most adoring admirers into
amphibious men, with gills in their throats and tentacles emerging from the
sides of their chests.’

I peered through the fly-specked
windshield, but so far there was no sign of Carter Wilkes or his deputies up
ahead.

Dan said: ‘Whatever you think about
these legends, and I’m just as suspicious about them as anybody, this guy Adam
Prescott picked the best possible source. The Indians who lived on the eastern
seaboard of America had the closest natural contact with the ocean, and an
immense understanding of the sea’s supernatural powers. Look what Prescott says
here – how the Indian wise men went as far as warning the white people about
the beast-gods, even though the white people were fighting against them. That’s
how terrible those beast-gods were. White men may have been killing red men,
but there was something around which was greater and more terrible than any
human being could possibly have been.’

‘You’re making me shudder,’ said
Rheta.

Dan grunted. ‘I hope I am. I don’t
know too much about it, but if what this book here says is right, then Jimmy
and Alison have turned into direct descendants of the ancient beast-gods who
came from the stars.’

‘Dan,’ I protested, ‘this isn’t like
you. I thought you were going to give me a cold, hard scientific explanation
for all this, and put my mind at rest.’

Dan was silent for a moment or two,
and then he said: ‘I can only tell you what I know.

Anthropology isn’t my subject. But I
remember what I was taught at college about language, and stuff like that, and
all of this legend fits in. You see what it says here? “Ye beast-gods had been
said by ye Indianes to come from ye skies, ye muskun.” Well, muskun is the old
Indian word for the vault of heaven, the place where the elder gods lived,
along with all the ancient and terrible demons. Sometimes the gods managed to
persuade some human to summon them down to earth, and when they did, they
ravaged the land and the sea and they ate human flesh whenever they could get
it.

‘Did you ever read H. P. Lovecraft?
He used to write about “elder gods”, and the worst god of all was a beast who
lived in the sea called Cthulhu. According to my language teacher, Cthulhu was
a twisting around of the god’s real name, which was Quithe. That’s an ancient
Celtic word for pit, or chasm. The Indians called him something like
Ottauquechee, which means waters-of-the-pit.’

‘So what does all this wonderful
revival of college knowledge amount to?’ I asked him.

‘It amounts to a lot,’ insisted Dan.
‘It amounts to the fact that so many cultures knew about the beast-gods who
came out of the sea and made their way into the underground water-tables, so
many cultures have names for the creatures, and legends about where they came from,
and what they’re going to do, that there must be some truth in what this book
says, and in what our own deductions have led us to believe. It’s all bizarre,
and frightening, and crazy, but it’s all true, too.’

I wiped the steamed-up windshield
with my handkerchief. ‘Dan,’ I said, after a while, ‘I’ve agreed with you all
along the line. I think you’re a bright guy, and I agree with you now. What can
I say? I just wish it wasn’t happening, but it is.’

Rheta murmured: ‘Amen to that.’

We came around a long curve in the
road, through a hail of windblown leaves, and I jammed on the brakes. Carter’s
car was pulled across the road with its red light flashing. The deputies’ car
was further away, and it looked as if it had collided with a roadside tree.
Only one deputy was around, my ginger-haired friend from the conference room,
and he waved his arm and pointed towards the woods that bordered the highway.

‘They saw one of the creatures!’ he
yelled. ‘They went that way! Down by the stream!’

I climbed out of the car, and Dan
quickly pushed my seat forward and hunched his way out after me. ‘Those cars
are made for gnomes,’ he said, brushing down his sleeves. ‘What do we do now?

Go after them?’

‘Why not?’
I said. ‘We’re supposed to be the
experts. Rheta -I know you’re an expert, too, but you’d better stay here. Look
after the car. Make sure nobody steals it.’

The deputy called, as we crossed the
road and crunched through the dry leaves into the woods:

‘You make sure Sheriff Wilkes
don’t
shoot you down instead of the creature! You make sure
you holler out, now and again, so’s he knows it’s you!’

I gave him a wave, and then we
scrambled into the undergrowth, trying to make as little noise as we could.
Actually, amidst all those fall leaves, we must have sounded like we were
marching through bowls of wheat flakes. Dan asked: ‘Can you see them? I don’t
see them.’

‘I don’t see anything,’ I told him.