The Festering

by Guy N Smith

  ‘Oh, it’s you!’ He must have heard her arrival. He stood framed in the doorway, a tousled, pallid figure still wearing his grubby working shirt. He stared at her. ‘Christ Almighty, you look about how I feel!’

  There was something odd about him, she decided. His cheeks were hollowed, his eyes sunken, his face flushed in the porch light. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Nick?’

  ‘I’m okay.’ He closed the door behind her. ‘Just a bit off the hooks, as they say in the Midlands. Been overdoing it, I suppose. No good going to bed, because I wouldn’t be able to sleep.’

  Holly was studying him carefully, searching for a sign of one of those awful bloated … thank goodness, he seemed all right in that respect. Briefly she told him of the night’s happenings, and saw him pale still further.

  ‘There’s some sort of disease going about.’ He spoke in a hushed voice. ‘Like Aids, if you know what I mean. Only worse. It ain’t natural.’

  ‘You should have seen what came out of my bath taps.’ She closed her eyes briefly. ‘Thick brown sludge with bits of … something floating in it!’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that.’ He smiled weakly. ‘That’s what was left in the tank. A thought crossed my mind when I got home and I nearly gave you a ring. One thing I forgot to do was to clean out the two tanks in the loft. I’ll call round tomorrow evening and put that right.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She managed to smile back. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever got out of the bath so fast in my life before. Nick, I’m certain that all this trouble with the borehole, that vile smell, is related to what has happened.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He shook his head. ‘Water is water. You might get salmonella and other diseases, like they get cholera abroad, but nothing like those two fellers had. If you ask me, they’ve picked it up from somewhere else – maybe been doing something they hadn’t ought to be doing, if you get me. No, it won’t be anything to do with the well.’

  ‘I just hope you’re right.’ Her hand crept across and found his, and she caught her breath at her own daring. I must be crazy, she thought. I vamped him earlier, and now I’ve got the feeling again. She made a token effort to fight it off but it was growing stronger, a driving urge that had her leaning against him, her other hand resting on his thigh, moving stealthily along it, her slim fingers searching for something beneath the denim material; finding it, stroking it, feeling it respond. She glanced slyly up at his face; his eyes were closed and he was breathing quickly. Christ, she grinned to herself, here we go again – and I can’t wait. I’m like a bloody whore. If it wasn’t Nick it would be somebody else, I just can’t help myself!

  His zip was snagging, and he helped her to pull it down. She stroked his pulsing male flesh with one hand and tugged at his waistband with the other. Now it was sheer desperation on both sides to get their clothes off. She guided his rough fingers where she wanted them, helping him because his inexperience was more evident now. Eagerness on his part excited her, was building her up to fever pitch; pushing him down on to the sofa, she clambered astride him. Rarely in her life had she been totally uninhibited as she was now: brazen, flaunting herself, easing her body off his and commanding him to look at her, doing things for him to see which she had never shown any man before, not even her husband. Euphoric because his tired eyes stared in amazement and excitement, she cried her pleasure aloud, breathing crudities which had never passed her soft lips before. Then going back down on to him she rode him frenziedly until they were both spent.

  It was full daylight, and the rays of the early morning sun were slanting in through the window when Holly stirred. Her first awareness was of a slight headache, like the hangover a glass of whisky at a party gave her the following day. Squinting in the bright light, she was trying to remember. Then sat upright, aghast when everything came back to her. Nick, Fitzpatrick, Nick again. Oh, God, I must have dreamed it all. But she hadn’t, because their clothes were still strewn around the sofa. Ashamed, she hurriedly retrieved her scattered garments and dressed. Only then did she shake her companion with a hand that trembled uncontrollably.

  ‘Nick, wake up!’

  He stirred, muttered something, and she shook him again. This time his eyes flickered open. They were glazed, as if he had cataracts, and he seemed to have difficulty focusing. A groan escaped his lips. She felt his forehead: it was warm and sticky. He had a temperature, he was ill. Oh, my God!

  ‘What’s … the matter?’ He closed his eyes again.

  ‘Nick, it’s me, Holly. Are you ill?’

  This time he made an effort to move and reared up into a sitting position. Slowly his eyes cleared, ‘I’ll be okay.’ He looked around the room slowly. ‘Christ, my head’s thumping. There’s a bottle of paracetamols on the shelf somewhere.’

  By the time she had found them he had his trousers on. She was eyeing his bare torso fearfully, but there was no sign of any break in the flesh. She let out her pent-up breath. At least it isn’t … that! She crossed to the sink and filled a glass with water, but found herself shying away from it in case it was discoloured, with particles of filth floating in it. It wasn’t, it was clear. Nick popped the tablets into his mouth and swallowed them.

  ‘I’ll be all right in a minute or two.’ He leaned up against the units and dropped his gaze from hers, embarrassed, inhibited by the memories of last night.

  She almost apologized, but it might have made it worse. Holly could not understand what had come over her. She had always enjoyed sex, but not on that scale – promiscuity gone berserk, as if she was totally out of control, forced to go along with her body because she was caught up in a fierce current. It was frightening, more so when it was over because she did not know when it might happen again. Then the telephone rang, jarring them both.

  ‘I’d better let you get it.’ She stopped halfway across the room.

  ‘No.’ He sat down again. ‘Let it ring. It’ll be Bennion. I’m not going out today. In fact, I’m going to spend the day catching up on my sleep. But I’ll call round and clean those tanks for you this evening.’

  Her skin goose pimpled. Oh, no, I’ll be out, I don’t want it to happen again. ‘Thanks.’ She made for the door, ‘If by any chance I happen to be out, the key’ll be under that slate by the door.’

  She read disappointment in his expression and hurried up the drive to where her car was parked. Maybe it would be better if she was out when Nick arrived tonight. She did not trust herself any longer. It was as if suddenly something had power over her.

  The police were gone, the kitchen had been cleaned up. In fact, she could almost have convinced herself that last night had just been a nightmare. The water in the bath would prove it had been reality, but she hurried on past the closed bathroom door and went into the bedroom to change. She would ask Nick to let the water out tonight when he came. Which meant she had every intention of being here. She trembled, tried to tell herself that she could leave a note, but knew she wouldn’t.

  She was aware that she had a slight headache, too. Perhaps it had just started; or she might have had it since waking and been too preoccupied with everything else to notice it. Like Nick, she was short of sleep, but there was no way she was committing her body to the mercy of this place with its lurking evil whilst she slept.

  She made a phone call to Bill Kemp at the Environmental Health Department and arranged for him to come and test the water the following day. Not that it would be any good because undoubtedly it was contaminated; it would be company, though, for half an hour. And Mike might come home tomorrow.

  ‘I’ll be round towards midday, Mrs Mannion.’ Kemp sounded sleepy; perhaps he, too, had had a disturbed night, she thought. ‘Make sure you pump it to waste in the meantime, though, to clear anything that might still be in the well.’

  ‘All right.’ Her heart sank. That meant going down to the hollow where the borehole was and turning the stopcock. She would have to go up into the attic, lift the floatswitch out and stop the water coming into the
house. Waterless for another day, back to square one.

  It was a job that had to be done, Holly decided over a cup of coffee, and the longer she put it off the worse it would be. It reminded her of her childhood, when she was fully convinced that a monster lurked in the shrubbery at the bottom of her parents’ garden and she avoided that place at all costs. After weeks of shying away from the laurels and rhododendrons, one day she confided her fear to her parents. Her mother had taken her by the hand, literally dragged her down there and poked in the bushes just to prove to her daughter that there was no bogeyman lurking there. After that she had not been scared any more. The only difference now was that she had nobody to accompany her. She could wait until Nick Paton came this evening … No, she would go now, this very minute. Alone. Just as she had come back alone to Garth Cottage this morning.

  Bright sunlight, no sinister shadows; she stood on the patio, looking down at the rough concrete square with its steel cover propped up on a large stone to allow the long blue waste pipe to snake out of it. Immediately below that manhole cover was a shaft going down into the depths of the earth, far into the stinking bowels of the Garth soil. Holly shivered in spite of the heat. Go on, get it over with, she urged herself.

  She was trembling. Her legs didn’t want her to go and threatened to throw her down on to the skimming of sun-baked slurry. Then she would have crawled back to the house, demoralized; defeated. She made a supreme effort, conscious of the beating of her heart, the roaring in her ears. Her headache was becoming perceptibly worse. Go on, keep going.

  She made it to the top of the well, aware of the body odours which emanated from her. Shakily she knelt down, pulled the heavy metal to one side and dropped it to the ground. She stared at the top of that blue cylinder, saw the blackness that started a few inches down and jerked her eyes away. No, I’m not going to look. Just turn that stopcock and have done with it, she told herself.

  The wheel was stiff. Or else her trembling fingers were weak. She grunted, and used both hands. It still would not give. Blast those fellows for turning it so tight, she thought. Didn’t they realize that somebody else might have to release it?

  It started to move, but hardly had she completed a quarter of a turn than she heard the noise coming from deep down the narrow well shaft. At first she thought it was water beginning to move, being pumped up. But it was no liquid sound, rather a harsh rasping that was rising in pitch. A groan, one that embodied the ultimate in physical pain and mental anguish, conjured up in her tortured, frightened brain a vision of one who writhed and convulsed. She saw again Jim Fitzpatrick on the floor of the kitchen with his life’s blood jetting up to the ceiling, and how Tommy Eaton might have looked when his flesh burst and splattered vile pus on the wall.

  A hiss of foul, diseased breath forced its way up the well liner, fetid air that hit her like a poisoned cloud and sent her reeling back, stumbling, fleeing blindly. But it pursued her, the stench enveloping her, seeping down into her lungs so that she retched and vomited down herself.

  Dimly she was aware of water pumping somewhere with the force of a firefighter’s hose being played on a raging inferno, hissing its fury in the field beyond the shrubbery. And she had no doubt in her terrified mind that the water would be dark brown with revolting contamination as the deep shaft spewed up the evil that it had spawned.

  10

  Mike Mannion woke with a throbbing headache and winced as the hotel room spun for a few seconds, then slowed, steadied. He groaned, not just because his head was pounding and his temples seemed to vibrate, but because there was something positively awful lurking in the recesses of his mind, waiting to manifest itself. Afraid of it, he wished that it would go away before he could remember what it was, and felt a desire to pull the sheets up over his head; to hide. Then it filtered slowly into his waking brain and he clutched the bedclothes into a tight ball with either hand. God, what a bloody fool he had been!

  The meeting the day before and the deal on the book covers were temporarily pushed to one side. Last night superseded everything, and it was no good trying to pretend that it had not happened. Because it had.

  He lay there trembling, eyes tightly shut as his memory plagued him. He could have caught the six-thirty train and been back at Garth Cottage by eleven at the latest. Instead, he had succumbed to the oldest, most powerful urge of all. If only Bob Daniels or John Farmer, the paperback company’s art director, had invited him out to dinner none of this would have happened. But they had had prior engagements – the business was done as far as they were concerned. Mike had a cheque in his wallet, the contract signature money for the landscapes; everything was shaping up beyond his wildest dreams. And then he had to go and do a damned fool thing like that! Jesus, I must be insane!

  It was all because he found himself with time on his hands in the big city. Wasn’t there a saying that the devil found work for idle fingers? He had the opportunity to turn something which had been a fantasy for years into reality. The very thought had aroused him, fanning the flames of an erotic idea. A prostitute wasn’t like an affair, you didn’t get involved. You paid your money, had your fun, and that was that. Okay, there were risks, but it was exciting buying that packet of condoms from the dispensing machine in the toilets. Step one.

  Step two was more difficult. How did you go about finding a whore? It was dangerous; you got hauled up into court if you approached an innocent woman. How then? He browsed through some books on a street bookstall and found himself looking at the sex mags which were kept out of reach. Those were no good to him, just posed models, hardly worth the couple of quid they were priced at, expensive fantasies – he had his own for free. But he wanted more than that. Then his eyes alighted on a magazine which seemed to be intent on hiding itself behind the others. A plain cover, nothing provocative, just the title – Contacts. A little shiver of excitement touched his spine. Christ, it was eight quid! So it had to be the real thing.

  If Mike had not had that cheque in his pocket he might have thought twice about indulging in sordid erotic literature. But he bought it and quickened his pace back to his hotel room, where he scanned the pages with feverish excitement. Columns of offers, phone numbers. “Ring Cindy, I’m here to please.” “Gents, relax and have a good time with Sandra, satisfaction guaranteed.” His forefinger trembled as he got an outside line and started to dial. Hoping for a disconnected number, an engaged tone, he wanted to funk it now. Instead, he spoke to Joanna, husky-voiced but reluctant to chat. She gave him an address, said she would be free at nine and put the phone down. He took a cab.

  Joanna had to be forty-five. Her face was thick with make-up, and her pungent perfume caught the back of his throat. He handed over three ten-pound notes and followed her up the stairs. Hell, his earlier erection had deserted him, and he was trembling as he watched her strip off. He registered a passable body with a sunbed tan, and a bed with just a blanket spread out on it. She lay on it, waiting for him to finish undressing, and he detected an air of impatience about her, as if she was thinking, Time’s money, and I’ve got someone else scheduled for nine-thirty.

  He managed to revive his erection and rolled the rubber on. After that it was purely a case of thrusting away until it was all over. Joanna lay there impassively throughout, but smiled at him when he was done. That should have been the end of it; an expensive lesson, but nobody would be any the wiser. Except himself, haunted by shame and guilt in the aftermath of it.

  Suddenly he leaped out of bed, stood naked in front of the tall mirror and examined his lower regions with fervent haste. Scrutinizing the flesh, he was looking for he knew not what. Pinker than usual, perhaps, but nothing untoward. It was all in the mind. That was the trouble!

  He had checked out, paid his bill and phoned Holly. The first time there was no reply. Where the hell was she? Ten minutes later he got her, and thought how distracted she sounded. No, she insisted she was fine, there wasn’t anything the matter; she’d meet him at the station at two-twenty. It was as if she
knew, or guessed, what he had done, he thought. But that was crazy. All the same, it was going to be a difficult homecoming. He screwed up the contact magazine, thrust it deep into an overflowing street litter bin, glanced around in case anybody was watching, and almost ran to the station.

  ‘Jesus Christ alive!’ Mike stared aghast when Holly told him what had happened during his absence. ‘Why didn’t you phone me?’

  Because then you would have had to come straight home, she thought. ‘You couldn’t have done anything.’ She dropped her eyes, thought of Nick Paton and hoped her husband would not guess. ‘The police want a word with you sometime, but I imagine there’s no hurry. By the way, I called Mr Kemp. He came yesterday and took away another couple of samples. I had difficulty switching the waste pipe on to pump …’ Her voice tailed off.

  ‘Why bother?’ He was sullen. ‘We can’t stay here – that’s a certain fact.’

  ‘The excuse you’ve been looking for?’ Hell, I want away, too, she thought, but it’ll have to come from Mike.

  ‘Excuses be buggered!’ He was angry now. ‘Two deaths, and all we’ve got is foul water.’

  ‘We don’t know, do we? Yet. Kemp said he’d phone; he’ll try and get us an answer today. I rather think the authorities are as worried as we are. The police don’t seem to connect it with the well.’

  ‘There’s no reason why it should be the well.’ He wanted to reassure both of them. ‘Something those fellows picked up, entirely unconnected with this place. Just a coincidence that they were working here.’

  ‘You mean, like going with dirty women and catching something nasty?’ She tried to laugh but it sounded forced.

  ‘Don’t be bloody stupid!’ He almost shouted, and his features drained of their colour.

  ‘All right, all right, there’s no need to take it out on me!’She turned away, ‘I’m glad everything went well for you …’