The Wells of Hell by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

dull, tough shine and that kind of curved, nut-like shape that
put you in mind of a helmet.
    ‘Dan,’ I said cautiously. ‘What do
you think it is?’
    He leaned forward and peered into
the tub. He stared at the ‘helmet’ for a while, and then he reached in and
lifted it out.
    ‘It’s light,’ he said. ‘It’s some
kind of shell, or bone. But look.’
    He held it up in front of the
flashlight beam and showed me. It was formed out of two halves, like the halves
of a clam or a mussel shell, and it was hinged down the centre by some scaley
but flexible material like celluloid. All down the hinge were black hairy
spines, short and bristly and sharp.
    ‘Is it real?’ I asked him.
    ‘Real? You mean , does it come from a real creature?’
    ‘I guess so, if you have to put it that
way.’
    Dan tapped it, and looked it over as
best he could in the dim light. Then he said: ‘It looks real. It looks like the
discarded carapace of some pretty big kind of armoured insect.’
    I didn’t know whether I wanted to
burst out laughing or run out of that house as fast as inhumanly impossible. I
looked at that scaley, bony piece of creature and I felt as if I was right in
the middle of one of those nightmares that doesn’t frighten you until you wake up and see how gloomy it is in your bedroom, and
hear those noises and whispers that shouldn’t be there, and see shapes that
can’t exist.
    ‘That’s an – an insect’?’ I asked
Dan. ‘That was actually part of something that walked around?’
    ‘It could be. It could be a clever
hoax. But I don’t think the kind of creature who could drown a boy in his
bedroom would have much of a sense of humour, do you?’
    I stared at the carapace in dread.
‘You mean that could be a lobster shell, a crab shell, something like that? Do
you know what you’re saying?’
    Dan laid the scales back in the tub.
They rolled over with an unpleasant clattering sound, backwards and forwards,
until they settled.
    ‘I don’t know what to say, to tell
you the truth,’ he said, unhappily. ‘It looks like the shell of a lobster, or
an insect, but the size is insane. I don’t think I understand any of this at
all.’
    I heard more dripping noises from
outside the bathroom. I felt nervous enough without standing around in that
house debating whether Oliver could have been attacked by some horrific insect.
I said: ‘Maybe let’s go call Carter. At least the police have a procedure for
dealing with weird things. I can’t solve a problem unless I can solder it, or
lag it, or tighten it up with a wrench.’
    Dan smoothed his hand over his bald
head. His eyes were uneasy. He said: ‘None of this makes any sense. Look at
that thing. It’s a carapace, or a clever copy of a
carapace, but the nightmarish size of it, Mason...’
    ‘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.’
    Tor 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?’
    He took another long look at the
carapace, and then nodded. ‘All right. But I want to
ask Carter to ,let me have some photographs of that
thing.’
    We left the bathroom and squelched
back out on to the landing. We paused there for a moment, and listened, but all
we could hear was the constant drip-dripping of water. Stepping carefully on
the wet carpet, we went back downstairs again, and into the living-room. There
was a telephone there, and I was hoping that the water hadn’t fused that out,
too. I picked it up and listened. It was crackling a little, but I had a tone.
    Carter Wilkes took a long time to
answer. When he did, he said tiredly, ‘Sheriff’s office, Carter Wilkes, hold
on,