The Wells of Hell

by Graham Masterton

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.