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

will you?’
    ‘Carter,’ I said quickly, ‘it’s me,
Mason Perkins.’
    ‘Oh, how are you doing, Mason? Can
you hold? I’m right in the middle of a briefing on the Demon boy.’
    ‘Carter, this is worse than the
Denton boy.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘I’m up at the Bodines’ place on
Route 109,’ I said. ‘There’s been an accident or something.
    Young Oliver Bodine’s been drowned.’
    ‘Drowned? Where?’
    ‘In the house. In his bedroom,
as a matter of fact.’
    ‘In his bedroom?’ asked Carter, with
hoarse incredulity. ‘Are you sure you didn’t stop by the Northville Liquor
Store on your way home? Are you quite sure” you’re sober there, Mason?’
    ‘Carter, it’s true. And there’s
something else, too. But you’ll have to come up and take a look for yourself.’
    Carter out his hand over the
receiver, and I could hear him talking in a muffled voice to some of his
deputies. Then he came back on the line again, and said:
    ‘Do you have Jimmy and Alison up
there with you, Mason? Are they okay?’
    ‘They’re missing. We’ve been here
for a good half-hour, and we haven’t seen any sign of them.’
    ‘Okay,’ said Carter. ‘I’m coming out
straight away. You just stay there and wait for me, and you make damn sure you
don’t touch anything.’
    He banged the phone down. I held my
own receiver in my hand for a moment, and Dan turned towards me and said:
‘Well?’
    ‘Carter’s coming right out. It
shouldn’t take him more than ten minutes. Not the way he drives.’
    ‘What did he say? ’
.
    I shrugged. ‘He thought I was drunk
at first. I’m beginning to wish I was.’
    ‘Did he say wait?’
    I nodded. ‘Let’s go do it outside,
shall we? This place is giving me the oojabs. I don’t fancy meeting up with one
of those giant-sized crustaceans, for starters. And I always did believe in
ghosts.’
    ‘You believe in ghosts?’ asked Dan,
interested, as we made our way cautiously across the wet hallway and out
through the kitchen.
    ‘Sure. Don’t you?’
    ‘I guess not. I never saw one. My
mother used to swear by ouija boards, but I never actually saw a ghost walking
about. Did you?’
    ‘I used to have an apartment on
Tenth Street, in the village,’ I said. ‘I was sure I could hear people
whispering in my bedroom in the night.’
    Dan opened the screen door, and we
stepped out into the frosty night air. ‘What did they say?’ he asked me.
    ‘I don’t know. I was always taught
it was impolite to listen to other people’s conversations. But seriously, it
went on for months. Later on, the janitor told me that two girls had been
murdered in that room by some schizo rapist.’
    We walked around the house to where
my station wagon was parked, with its sidelights on. I climbed into the
driver’s seat and Dan considerately got into the back, so that he wouldn’t
disturb Shelley. 1 started up the engine so that we could have some heat. ‘At
least a schizo rapist is a schizo rapist,’ remarked Dan. ‘But don’t ask me what
that shell-thing in the bath is, or where it came from.’
    ‘Something just occurred to me,’ I
said. ‘When I was out here this afternoon, talking to Jimmy, he mentioned that
he’d been having dreams about drowning.’
    ‘He did? Was that all he said?’
    I thought for a moment. Hadn’t Jimmy
said something about being underground, in a subterranean pool? ‘The thing that
always gets me is the feeling that the water is underneath tons and tons of
solid rock, so even if I did reach the surface, I couldn’t breathe.’
    I said: ‘He seemed to think he was
drowning under the ground. Maybe in a flooded mineshaft or
something like that.’
    ‘Under the ground? That doesn’t make too much sense.’
I nodded towards the Bodine house, dark and silent in the freezing night. ‘What
happened to young Oliver doesn’t majke too much sense, either. But it still
happened.’
    ‘It could have been some kind of
premonition, Jimmy’s dream,’