The Wells of Hell

by Graham Masterton

‘That’s right. When I took the lid off the jar he went crazy. When I put it back on again, he returned to his normal condition of utter indolence.’

I wasn’t in the mood for humour. There was something unnaturally creepy about finding the Bodine house empty. The windows were as dark as old men’s eyes, and the wind hummed in the telephone wires. Behind me, Dan coughed and shuffled his feet in the leaves.

‘Let’s go call Carter, huh?’ I repeated. ‘You know what happens when people have to fight giant lobsters in the movies. They send for the police, and the police send for the National Guard, and the National Guard drop atomic bombs on them. Well, let’s go do that.’ ‘For God’s sake don’t joke about it,’ Dan snapped. ‘There’s a boy dead in there.’ ‘I’m not joking,’ I insisted. ‘I’m just tense. I’d just rather be out of this place. Now, shall we go?’

‘Did he say wait?’ I nodded. ‘Let’s go do it outside, shall we? This place is giving me the oojabs. I don’t fancy meeting up with one of those giant-sized crustaceans, for starters. And I always did believe in ghosts.’

Oojabs

‘You believe in ghosts?’ asked Dan, interested, as we made our way cautiously across the wet hallway and out through the kitchen. ‘Sure. Don’t you?’ ‘I guess not. I never saw one. My mother used to swear by Ouija boards, but I never actually saw a ghost walking about. Did you?’ ‘I used to have an apartment on Tenth Street, in the village,’ I said. ‘I was sure I could hear people whispering in my bedroom in the night.’ Dan opened the screen door, and we stepped out into the frosty night air. ‘What did they say?’ he asked me. ‘I don’t know. I was always taught it was impolite to listen to other people’s conversations. But seriously, it went on for months. Later on, the janitor told me that two girls had been murdered in that room by some schizo rapist.’

bluestocking,’

Shelley grudgingly moved over for Rheta, and I started the Mercury’s engine and drove out of the Iron Kettle parking lot. I turned on the radio to fill in the silent moments. We glanced at each other from time to time, and smiled, but I think we were both aware how fragile this interlude was, and how little it would take to finish it before it had even really begun. On the radio, Nils Lofgren was singing ‘Slow Dancing’.

Dan said: ‘Have you heard the warnings about the well water around here? You haven’t been drinking it, have you?’ ‘No, sir,’ said Greg McAllister. ‘I’ve never drunk the well water in my whole life, not me nor my father in front of me, nor his father.’ ‘You haven’t? But why ever not?’ asked Dan. Greg, with his hands still firmly in his pockets, gave us a noncommittal shrug. ‘Maybe it was stupid,’ he told us, ‘but the belief in my family always was that the wells around here were cursed. My grandpa used to call them the Wells of Hell.’

From the hills over by Kent, there was a long rumble of thunder like a dinosaur with chronic gas.

‘Don’t drink thee water, ‘Drink thee wine, ‘Lest old Pontanpo’s curse ‘Be thine. ‘We sup us not ‘From Preston’s well, ‘And so we keep ’Our skin from shell.’

I was almost at the outskirts of the wood when I thought I heard something. It was a low, hoarse sound, like an animal grunting. A chilly spasm went down the back of my neck, and I froze, listening. I heard the sound again, and this time it was more distinct. It was low, thick and guttural. It was hardly human. But it had to belong to a human mind, because it twice uttered, with painful slurriness, the single word: ‘Mason. Maassssooonnnn.’ I stood there rigid. I was so shit-scared I didn’t know whether to run or to stay where I was. I couldn’t see anything or anybody through the darkness and the waving trees, but I thought I heard something. It might have been my imagination, fired up by fear, but it was too distinct, too plangent, too unusual. It was the sound of rain spattering onto a hard, hollow shell.

It was a shriek of cold-blooded 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 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.

‘Dan’s a cautious man,’ I told Jack. ‘When he’s good and ready to say what the organism is, then I guess he’ll tell me; and then I’ll tell you. But keep it under your hat until it’s certain, will you? If it’s wrong, and you print it, you’ll wind up with egg on your face and Carter Wilkes will have my guts for sock suspenders.’

Dan pulled a face. ‘Just at this moment I feel far from charming. Look at this cut.’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I reassured him. ‘It gives you élan. You look like Douglas Fairbanks Jr after a heavy swordfight, that’s all.’

I shook my head. ‘They’re still out there. Least, that’s where we left them. They’re not exactly what you’d call compos mentis.’

He paused again, and then said softly: ‘The truth is that Jimmy and Alison Bodine have undergone a pretty bizarre kind of change in their appearance. Don’t ask me why, or how, but I promise you it’s true. They’ve grown scaly, hard shells instead of skins, and from what Mason Perkins here says, they have pincers as well, like crabs or lobsters.’ There was a moment of silent disbelief. Then one of the policemen tittered. Somebody said: ‘Lobsters?’

Our New Milford vigilantes were too well-conditioned by the science-fiction movies of the ’50s to try taking an alien-looking monster alive. It was shoot first and try the John Williams music afterwards.

invidious

A Discours On Ye Legendes & Mythes Of Lichfielde In Connecticut, Includ’g Ye Onlie Detailled Account of Ye Witche Trialles At Kente. By Adam Prescott. Printed & Bound at Ye Signe Of Ye Unicorn, Danburye, 1784.

circumlocutory

‘What do you think of these legends?’ I asked Fred Martin, who had been sitting quietly watching me read. ‘Do you think there’s any truth in them?’ Fred Martin scratched his grey wiry hair. ‘You mean the Atlantis stories? I don’t think so. From what I’ve read in my books, all my books here, it seems like almost every country around the Atlantic Ocean has got itself some kind of legend or tradition about Atlantis, or some place like it, and about monsters and beasts that lived in the sea. But as for truth? I don’t think so. They’re good stories, sure. Good old scary legends. But that’s about the length and the breadth of it.’ ‘Supposing I told you I believed them.’ He shrugged. ‘You can believe them if you want. It’s a free country. And believers never did any of the old legends any harm; they helped keep them alive. So good luck to you.’ He stirred his coffee solemnly, and then he said: ‘All kinds of people used to believe Atlantis was real. I’ve got a book up there about the Mayans. They believed it. And the Druids, too. And the Ancient Greeks. They all had stories about giants and monsters who came out of the sea and ate folks for breakfast. You know something – there are still people in Cornwall, in England, who think the magic island of Lyonesse really existed, and that giants lived there. And sailors in Scotland still talk about Shony, who was a sort of a sea-creature who called out that he was drowning, and needed help, and whenever a fisherman went to help him, he d...

I gave him a wave, but he didn’t wave back. I guess people who don’t believe in myths and legends are always a little bit crabbier than the rest of us.

I shaded my eyes against the bright grey daylight. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like every window in the red Impala was painted red to match the colour scheme. Then it abruptly occurred to me that it couldn’t be paint. Nobody painted their windows. It must be blood. I turned to Carter and didn’t know what to ask him. Carter kept rubbing his chin with his hand as if he didn’t know what to say to me, either. ‘Is there somebody in there?’ I asked, at last. ‘As far as we can make out, a whole family. Father, mother, two little kids.’ ‘Carter – what’s happened?’ ‘I don’t know. We’re going to tow the whole vehicle straight in to headquarters. They’re all dead. Looks like something tore open the roof and went straight in there and tore ’em to pieces.’

The towing crew glanced at each other and raised their eyebrows. They must have seen some bad ones, but this was an abattoir on wheels.

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.

‘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.’

‘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 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.’

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.

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.

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 spiny 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.

‘Jimmy,’ I said loudly, ‘if you can still talk, then you’ve still got something human in you. You have to make an effort. You have to resist. If you go on believing you’re human, then maybe you’ll stand a chance. But if you don’t, then sure as eggs are scrambled they’ll kill you.’

The voice whispered: ‘I am everything and everyone. I am the servant of the god of times gone by and times yet to be. My name is everything and my face is everyone. I am preparing for the resurrection of the greatest of those who lived beyond the stars, in those ancient places of exile from which none could return unsummoned. You are right that the watery places were ours when we first returned to this earthly domain. We were forced to flee them when the deeps collapsed, and to seek refuge in the inlets and the rivers, and to leave our seed between the layers of the Earth itself.’

‘There is nothing to fear,’ whispered the voice. ‘The day will soon be here when the great god will rise out of the wells that have been his sleeping-place for so long, and when all men will bow down before him and offer themselves happily as sacrifices. The day will come when the god will once again sit inside the minds of all men, and fires will burn across this continent from shore to shore. The day of the great reckoning with the beast- gods is close. The day that was spoken of by men of learning in ancient times, by the disciples of Sa-to-ga and Ya-go-sath. It was those men who first recalled Quithe, my master, and founded the underwater continent of Atlantis, and there were centuries when the water people dominated the ocean, which is the greatest domain of this Earth. They were days of glory and sacrifice, and they shall return.’

The Jimmy who stood in front of me now was nothing more than a wavering illusion, a projection based on the memories in Jimmy’s mind of what he looked like in the mirror. He was back-to-front. His hair was parted on the wrong side. His tweed coat was buttoned on the wrong side. His face had that strange lopsidedness that other people’s mirror-images always seem to have. He was himself as he remembered himself, but not as I knew him.

I knew that this countryside up towards Kent was magical, in its own way, and had a long and mysterious heritage of witchery and strange communions with demons and devils in no human shape, and so I guess in some respects I was prepared to see almost anything. But I was damned if I could make out the crab creature.

She said: ‘Did you bring the mattress?’ ‘Mattress?’ I asked her. ‘What mattress?’ ‘The mattress you were supposed to bring. The mattress I was having re-covered.’ ‘We aren’t mattress men, ma’am,’ I told her. ‘You’re not?’ ‘No. I’m a plumber and my friend here’s an analytical chemist.’ She blinked at us. Then she repeated: ‘A plumber and an analytical chemist?’ I nodded. She thought for a moment, and then she said: ‘I don’t remember calling for a plumber and an analytical chemist. What’s to plumb? What’s to analyse?’

daguerreotypes

There was one great beast-god, whose name was Chulthe or Quithe, and he was summoned from the stars centuries ago, and set up his kingdom where men could not reach him, in the drowned mountain ranges of Atlantis.’

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.

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.

It hovered as if it was floating on the surface of our subconscious minds, a swimmer in the black ocean of our inherited fear. It had an eye that was the concentration of malice and ferocious intent, and long horns that seemed to wave in the thundery air, as if I was seeing the beast through the rippling heat of a night-watchman’s brazier.

It wasn’t real. It wasn’t actually there, in the beastly flesh. It was nothing more than a powerful and frightening psychic image that its actual, buried self had created to terrify us. But it was just what Josiah Walters had said it was. It was Satan. It was all the fears and sins of every religion embodied in one totally grotesque and horrible creature. It was the leering temptation that haunts you when you’re cruel or self-serving. It was the goat-like incarnation of lust and greed. It was the master of everything that crawled and crept and slithered.

When God drowned the world that had disobeyed Him, saving none but Noah, this devil had also survived. It was the devil of the oceans, of the strange pressurised deeps where hideous creatures lurk. It was the devil of drowned hopes and dreams, of the only natural medium on Earth in which man cannot survive. When I had slept and had nightmares of...

Thrush was a lean, laconic man, like a root vegetable that had been left to shrivel in the back of a cellar.

Dutton Thrush said: ‘Quithe? What’s this Quithe?’ I blew smoke. ‘It’s kind of a pet-name. It means something like “Terrible beast-god from the chasm”.’

foetid darkness,

miasma

I didn’t want to let Shelley go, but I guessed neither of us had much choice. I lifted him out from his rain-cape and set him down among the bats’ bones and the broken rocks, and he stood there in the lamplight with his tail stiff and his nose scenting the air, and I really didn’t want to lose him, not for anything.