The Wells of Hell by Graham Masterton Page B

stranger than five thousand gallons of water
in an upstairs bedroom, didn’t you?’
    ‘Did I?’
    I laid my hand on Carter’s broad,
flesh-padded shoulder. ‘I think that Dan’s suffering from shock, Carter. Maybe
it was just an illusion.’
    ‘Maybe what was just an illusion?’
    ‘This thing he thought he saw. This carapace.’. ‘I thought you said you saw it, too.’
    I smiled weakly. ‘We all make
mistakes, Carter. We’ve both had a difficult day.’
    Carter rested his hands on his bulky
hips and stared at us silently for almost half a minute. Then he said: ‘Okay.
I’ll let it go this time. But if there’s any suggestion that anybody’s concealing
any material evidence, then it’s going to be trouble time. You get me?’
    ‘Nobody’s concealing anything,
Carter,’ I assured him. ‘We’re just as anxious to find out what happened here
as you are.’
    ‘Okay. But remember what the penalty
for concealing material evidence is. It’s jail. Okay?’
    We all left the bathroom and crossed
the landing again. The deputy coroner, Lawrence Dunn, a thin, bespectacled,
grey faced man in a shiny tan suit, was coming up the stairs with his old brown
leather bag.
    ‘How are you doing, Larry?’ asked
Carter. ‘Are you ready for a second-floor drowning?’
    Lawrence Dunn sniffed, and blinked.
‘Whatever it is, Carter, I’m ready for it. Hi there, Dan. Hi there, Mason. I
gather you were the two unlucky finders. Poor young Oliver
Bodine, huh?’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Carter. ‘I’ve
just had Erroll put out an APB for Jimmy and Alison.’
    ‘They’re missing?’
    Carter led Lawrence to the drowned
boy’s bedroom. ‘They weren’t here when Mason and Dan arrived, and that was a
good hour ago by all accounts.’
    - 46
    Lawrence knelt down on the wet
carpet beside Oliver’s body, and opened up his bag. First of all he flashed a
penlight into the boy’s eyes, and then he checked for other vital signs –
pulse, respiration, reflexes. It was all a formality. There was no question
that Oliver was dead.
    ‘I’m going to have to take his body
temperature now,’ said Lawrence. ‘Would one of you people give me a hand just
to turn him over?’
    Sheriff Wilkes bent down, and
between them, Lawrence and he carefully turned Oliver on to his face. As the
boy rolled over, water ran out of the side of his mouth and out of his
nostrils. The sheriff stood up quickly and gave the coroner an unhappy kind of
a frown.
    ‘If there’s one thing that scares
people more than finding out that someone who was once alive is now dead, it’s
finding out that someone who was once dead is now alive,’ said Lawrence. He cut
open Oliver’s Six-Million-Dollar Man pyjamas at the back and rummaged in his
bag for his rectal thermometer. Sheriff Wilkes said: ‘Larry?’
    ‘Umh-humh? That damn thermometer’s here
someplace.’
    ‘Larry,’ ..repeated Sheriff Wilkes.
    ‘What’s the matter with the kid’s
back? Is that bruising, or what?’
    Lawrence Dunn adjusted his
spectacles and looked down at Oliver’s exposed back and buttocks.
    He squinted closer, and then he
touched the boy’s skin, very gently, with his fingertips. ‘Hand me a
flashlight,’ he said.
    Dan and I both stepped nearer as one
of the deputies gave Lawrence his light. Sheriff Wilkes said: ‘Don’t crowd him,
huh?’ but he pushed forward himself and bent down so
that he could see what Lawrence was doing.
    The deputy coroner pulled Oliver’s
pyjamas open even further, and what he revealed in the bright, theatrical light
of the torch made my stomach rise and tighten. One of the deputies whispered:
‘Jesus – what in hell’s name is that?’
    Around the small of Oliver’s back,
and around his buttocks and upper thighs, his skin had taken on a hard,
shell-like appearance. Each buttock, instead of being round and soft, was now a
plate of greeny-grey horn, and dark lumps were forming along the spine. Where
his thighs met his buttocks there was a gristly,