Read Online The Wells of Hell by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page A

took a
genius to figure out why.
    It was cold in the hallway when I
opened the front door. The log fire had long since died away, and there was
nothing in the hearth but a pile of grey ashes. I kept on my red baseball cap
and my sheepskin coat while I shovelled the ashes away, and stacked fresh logs
on the firedogs. I crumpled up a copy of the New Milford paper and put a match
to it. Shelley watched me from the sofa with an expression of haughty
impatience.
    Next, I went into the kitchen, which
looked out over the sloping back yard, and put on the kettle. I needed a cup of
coffee and a dose of Jack Daniel’s. I stood by the window staring out at the
grey and unwelcoming dawn, and thought about poor young Oliver Bodine and his
missing parents.
    Carter Wilkes had put out an alert
for Jimmy and Alison, and he had distributed their description to the
volunteers who were already searching for Paul Denton. He had also sent his
deputies around, knocking on doors and instructing people around the New
Milford and Washington Depot area not to drink their own well water. There was
going to.be radio and television bulletins, too,
although all that Carter had told the news services so far was that the danger
came from a possible sewerage leak. As for Oliver’s death and Jimmy and
Alison’s disappearance, he had played those completely straight. Oliver had
died ‘in a-domestic accident’, and Jimmy and Alison were being sought ‘in order
to aid police inquiries’.
    Carter had made no public mention of
the crustaceous growth on Oliver’s back and thighs, neither had he given the
Press any leads on Dan’s investigations of the mouse and the Bodine well water.
‘The last thing I want around here is a goddamned flying-saucer panic,’ he had
remarked.
    The coroner’s office,
who were going to perform a full-scale autopsy on young Oliver’s body,
were also keeping tight-lipped. The medical investigator there was a quiet,
grey-haired man called Jack Newsom, and he had always expressed a distaste for publicity and pyrotechnics.
    Lawrence Dunn felt the same way, and
that meant Oliver’s death would remain confidential until Sheriff Wilkes wanted
to make a full-scale announcement.
    It was just as well. It was going to
shake New Milford rigid, knowing that their drinking water might turn them
scaley as lobsters. It was as much as I could do to believe it myself, and I’d
stood right there and seen young Oliver’s body.
    The kettle boiled and I made myself
a jug of coffee. When it had brewed I took down a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from
the kitchen cupboard and poured a couple of fingers into the bottom of a mug.
Then I topped it up with coffee, gave it a stir, and went through into the
living-room to sit down beside Shelley and watch the log fire burn up. I felt
chilled and exhausted and just about ready to join Shelley in a long sleep.
    I was almost dozing off when the
telephone rang. I yawned, stretched my face, and got up to answer it. I said:
‘Who is it?’ and took a Hetty mouthful of coffee and whisky.
    ‘It’s Dan,’ said Dan. ‘I’m back at
the laboratory. I’ve been running some more tests on that water.’
    ‘Have you had any sleep yet?’
    ‘Who needs sleep? This is
important.’
    I yawned again. ‘Okay, it’s
important. What have you found out?’
    Dan said: ‘I ran some dating tests
on the water and the organisms in it. I got Rheta in to help me, and we must
have gone through twenty or thirty tests, just to make absolutely sure.’
    ‘So? What does that do?’
    ‘A dating test tells me the age of
the organic material in the water, and that gives me a pretty clear idea about
the depth from which it’s risen out of the ground. If, for instance, the
organic material is seven to eight thousand years old, then it probably
originates from the deciduous forest layer which you can find about twenty feet
under the surface. See what I mean?’
    ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘The older it is, the deeper down it originates. So