by Brian Lumley
Her throbbing scream of horror and disbelief brought her husband in at the run through the open kitchen door a few seconds later. There was his wife, crouched defensively in a corner, fending off a hideously wobbly something with her bleeding, oddly dissolved and pulpy hands.
David’s father did not stop to ponder what or why, fortunately he was a man of action. Having seen at a glance the destructive properties of Planny’s weird acid make-up, he jumped forward, snatching the patterned cloth from the table as he went. Flinging the tablecloth over the bobbing, roughly globular thing on the floor, he hoisted it bodily into the air. Fortunately for the professor, Planny had lost much of his bulk in moisture-seepage during his journey from the pool, but even so the creature was heavy. Three quick steps took the scientist to the kitchen’s great, old-fashioned all-night fire. Already feeling the acid’s sting through the thin linen, he kicked open the heavy iron fire-door and bundled his wobbly, madly pulsating armful — table-cloth and all — straight in atop the glowing coals, slamming the door shut on it. Behind him his wife screamed out something ridiculous and fainted, and almost immediately — even though he had put his slippered foot against it — the door burst open and an awfully wounded Planny leapt forth in a hissing cloud of poisonous steam. Slimy and dripping, shrunken and mephitic, the creature wobbled drunkenly, dementedly about the floor; only to be bundled up again in the space of a few seconds, this time in the scientist’s sacrificed dressing gown, and hurled once more to the fire. And this time, so as to be absolutely sure, David’s father put his hands to the hot iron door, holding it firmly shut. He threw all his weight into the job, staying his ground until his fingers and palms, already blistered through contact with Planny’s singular juices, blackened and cracked. Only then, and when the pressures from within ceased, did he snatch his steaming, monstrously damaged hands away …
It was only in some kind of blurred daze that Professor Lees managed to set the wheels of action in motion from that time onwards. Once the immediate panic had subsided a sort of shocked lethargy crept over him; but in spite of this he cleaned up his unconscious wife’s bubbly hands as best he could, and his own — though that proved so painful he almost fainted himself — and then, somehow, he phoned for the doctor and the police.
Then, after a further minute or so, still dazed but remembering something of the strange things his wife had screamed before she fainted, David’s father went upstairs to look for his son. When he found the boy’s room empty he became once more galvanized into frantic activity. He began rushing about the house calling David’s name before remembering his son’s odd habit of the last month or so — how he would get up early in the morning and go off down to the pool before school.
As he left the house a police car was just pulling up on the drive outside. He shouted out to the two constables, telling them they would find his wife in the house … would they look after her? Then, despite the fact that they called out after him for an explanation, he hurried off towards the copse.
At first the policemen were appalled by the loathsome stench issuing undiluted from the house; then, fighting back their nausea, they went in and began doing what they could to improve Mrs. Lees’ lot. The doctor arrived only a moment later. He could see instantly what was wrong — there had been some sort of accident with acid. Relieved at the arrival of this sure-handed professional, the bewildered policemen followed the scientist’s tracks to the pool.
There they found him sitting at the pool-side with his head in his tattily bandaged hands. He had seen the slide on the stone in the pool; and, in a dazed sort of fashion, he had noted the peculiar, flattened track in the grass between the house and the copse. And then, being clever, totalling up these fragile facts, he had finally arrived at the impossible solution …
It all hinged, of course, on those mad things his wife had screamed before fainting. Now, thinking back on those things, David’s father could see the connections. He remembered now that there had been a slide missing from his set. He recalled the way in which David had declared the flatworm — the planarian worm — on a certain slide to be alive.
Quite suddenly he took one hand from his face and shoved it into his mouth right up to the bandaged knuckles. Just for a moment his eyes opened up very wide; and then he let both his hands fall and turned his face up to the patient policemen.
“God … God … God-oh-God!” he said then. “My wife! She said … she said …”
“Yes, sir—” one of the officers prompted him, “what did she say?”
Aimlessly the professor got to his feet. “She said that — that it was sitting at the breakfast table — sitting there in David’s chair — and she said it called her Mummy!”