Read The Wells of Hell for Free Online Page A

that I saw how strange
this whole situation was. My flashlight was mirrored in the slowly-moving
surface, and I could see myself, hanging upside-down from the soles of my
shoes, drowned like a mariner in the blackness of an indoor pool.
    ‘Where’s the water coming from?’
asked Dan. ‘It looks like the walls are quite dry.’
    I shone the flashlight at each of
the doors. As far as I could make out the water was swirling out of the end
door on the right, which was slightly open. There was a noticeable pattern of
ripples, and I could hear a dripping, splattering noise from inside.
    ‘Maybe the tank cracked,’ I said,
splashing across the landing. The water was at least an inch deep, but my shoes
were so wet by now that I didn’t bother. That was the last time I was going to
spend thirty-one bucks on a pair of fashion shoes with a fancy gold chain
across the front. I’d rather be unfashionable in leather than fashionable in
cardboard.
    I reached the end door. It had a
small ceramic plaque on it with a painting of an antique car, and it said
‘Oliver’s Room’. I shone the flashlight on the plaque for Dan’s benefit, and he
read it and pulled a face.
    Carefully, shining the flashlight
ahead of me, I pushed open the bedroom door. Again, my own light was reflected
back at me out of the glittering darkness. The dripping noise was louder, and
there was another sound as well, a sound that made me stay still, right where I
was, and gave me a freezing, tightening feeling all around my scalp.
    It was the sound of somebody, or
something, gurgling.
    ‘Dan,’ I hissed. ‘Dan, there’s
someone in there.’
    ‘You’re kidding,’ he said. His face
was rigid with tension.
    ‘I can hear something. Listen, for
Christ’s sake. Can’t you hear that?’
    He listened. There was nothing,
except for the incessant dripping and splashing of water.
    <.O.P.-B ‘You must have imagined
it,’ he said, with a nervous smile that showed he didn’t believe for one moment
that I had.
    I took a breath, and pushed the door
wider. The room was alive with reflections and shadows. I shone the flashlight
across [ to the far wall, where the bed was, but there
was nobody lying ; there. I shone it along the skirting board, across to the
closet, and ; back to the bed again.
    ‘What did I tell you?’ said Dan. ‘It
was just the water.’
    I waded farther into the room. It
was still impossible to say where the water was actually coming from. The only
difference between this room and the landing outside was that, in this room,
the walls were wet almost up to the ceiling. The criss-cross patterned
wallpaper was damp and wrinkled, and there was a clear tide-mark right up by
the picture rail. Impossible as it; might have been, it looked as if the entire
room had been filled with water.
    Dan said: ‘Mason.’
    I turned. His face looked distinctly
odd. He pointed at the; floor behind me, and said again:
    ‘Mason. Look down there.’ [
    I shone the flashlight downwards.
The bed itself may have’ been empty, but I hadn’t looked under the bed. And in
the pale; oval beam of the flashlight, I could see something stirring there,
something white and strange. I bent down closer, my hand; shaking with nerves,
and tried to make out what it was. [
    ‘Jesus wept,’ said Dan. ‘It’s a
foot.’ j
    Together, splashing in the water, we
took hold of the foot and the leg that went with it and dragged it out from
under the bed. I dropped the flashlight once, but it still worked when I picked
it up, and I directed it downwards on to the face of a young boy ,: his cheeks pale and his lips blue, and his eyes staring
sightlessly’^ upwards. Dan pressed down on his chest, in a hopeless attempt to
see if there was any life left in him, but the boy’s mouth and; nose gushed
water, and it was plain that he was dead. I recognized him, of course, even
though I hadn’t seen him in a while. He was Oliver Bodine, Jimmy and Alison’s
son, and he* was drowned. |
    ‘We’d