The Wells of Hell

by Graham Masterton

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.’