The Festering

by Guy N Smith

  It was what he termed ‘butterfly’ painting: dodging from one part of the canvas to another, touching up where it was not necessary and regretting it afterwards. Of course, it was all due to that well outside – how could anybody work after that! And overall it was Holly’s fault, he decided. It was she who had insisted on moving out to the country, taking on a whole host of unnecessary problems which were costing them a fortune. If they had remained where they were, life would have been a doddle and they would have had ample spare money. Now most of his advance would go on a stinking deep hole that had caused four deaths already. And might be responsible for more!

  It was certainly the borehole that had brought about this terror. In the beginning he had scoffed at the suggestion, now he knew. He hoped the plumber wouldn’t be able to fix it – that would let them off the hook. No water, no payment, Bennion had said. All right, they had water – but there was a hole which was the equivalent of a mine shaft in the garden, and you didn’t pay for botch-ups like that. No way. Getting it filled in might cost a hundred or two, but with Bennion dead nobody was going to press too hard for the money. They’d tidy it up, put Garth Cottage on the market and, who knew, they might even make a small profit! And he was determined their next house was going to be situated in some nice little suburb with all mod cons, water out of the tap provided by the water authority.

  Suddenly he was aware of the smell, that now familiar penetrating odour which got you before you realized it. He jerked his head away but there was no escaping the stench. It was thick and strong, a combination of what might waft up out of an open septic tank and a well-rotted compost heap where the odd dead animal had been thrown in for good measure. He turned away and spat on the floor in an attempt to cleanse his mouth. Jesus!

  His revulsion turned to fear. For was not the foul stench a forerunner of that invisible force that brought death and disease? He backed away, meaning to go through into the house to check that all the windows were closed, but he had barely taken two paces before the pain hit him. Gut-wrenching agony bent him double, making him clutch at his stomach, then snatch his fingers away with a cry of pain and fear. It was as though some sharp instrument was penetrating his abdominal flesh, trying to disembowel him. He fell to his knees and tugged up his shirt to look – and that was the moment he almost fainted.

  No, it could not be true! His navel appeared to have swollen to the size of a tennis ball, a fat red object with a stinking slippery surface where the pus had oozed out of the straining head. Thick matter gave off a nauseating smell, and it had already dripped on to his jeans, leaving a yellowish stain where the denim had absorbed it. And his navel – or was it an ulcer of gigantic proportions? – was swelling even as he watched in horrified revulsion, and might burst at any second!

  His instinct was to grip it, squeeze the poison out, but he dared not touch it. It was hot – he could feel the feverish heat that came from it. Oh, my God, I have to see a doctor!

  Fighting for logic, he resisted the urge to dash into the kitchen and confront Holly with it. No, she was diseased herself, he realized. That thing on her arse was one of these very same sores! We’re both going to die! Please, God, save us!

  He needed to see Doctor Williamson. The phone was in the kitchen, but so was Holly. A dilemma. He knelt and tried not to look down upon his cancerous stomach; making his decision, he hauled himself back up on to his feet. The car was parked behind the house. If he could still drive, five minutes’ motoring would bring him to the surgery at Canon Pine. He went outside, checking that there was nobody about. The plumber was lying down peering into the well; Mike walked swiftly, kept to the browned grass until he reached the car, then he slid in behind the wheel, taking care not to rub himself against it. He pressed the starter and the engine fired; the gears grated once, and then he was moving forward.

  Even in his terror he recalled that accident with the Land Rover and the cement mixer, and checked that the lane was clear of traffic before he pulled out into it. His vision was blurred, so he eased his foot off the throttle and ensured that he kept well to the left, scuffing the verge in places.

  His thoughts were as erratic as his driving. That prostitute, what was her name? He couldn’t remember, but he saw her now as clearly as he had on that night. A naked bitch, just wanting his money. Hell, if he could be with her again, he’d have his money’s worth, no doubt about that! Arousal and anger, a strange combination, transcended the gnawing pain in his navel. There was damp on his trousers again; he found it exciting.

  He slowed down when he came to the thirty mph sign, unable to read it but knowing what it was. This was where the straggling village of Canon Pine began. Now where the hell was the doctor’s house? He knew it was along here somewhere, a stone-built place with an extension to the west wing. He slowed to a halt, and sat there undecided; maybe it would be easier to find it on foot. Except that this sore festering on his navel was weeping fast now, spewing its pus all down him. Then he heard somebody coming, heard the fast tip-tap of feet before a figure emerged out of the fog that shrouded his vision. A girl! His pulses raced and the agony in his stomach began to recede as more powerful feelings dominated him. A woman, anyway. She was no chicken, attractive and … he caught his breath as the shock of recognition sent a wave of dizziness over him. He fought it off, groped for the door handle and depressed it. Jesus Christ almighty, this was becoming crazier by the second! The back of his neck goose pimpled. Here, in Canon Pine – it was unbelievable! For the approaching woman was none other than the whore he had visited in London. And, as if to dispel any doubt he might have had, he could even recall her name now – Joanna!

  He slid out of the car and let the door swing shut. She was almost level with him now, walking purposefully along the pavement, her long hair swinging from side to side. Mike’s eyes narrowed lustfully as he saw through the flimsy cotton dress, remembering every detail of her passable figure: the artificial tan, the way her nipples stood firm and hard. He was breathing fast. He had not forgotten their last meeting, and his anger was aroused as well as his desire for her body again. This time, sweetheart, he vowed, we’re really going to screw!

  ‘Hi, there!’ His voice sounded distant, scarcely recognizable as his own. In fact, he wondered if she had heard him, but as she turned into the drive immediately opposite, she stopped. There was an expression of puzzlement on her attractive features as she scrutinized him.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice certainly sounded different, but it was indeed Joanna. He did not doubt that, ‘I don’t think I know you, do I?’

  He moved round the car, almost tripping over the kerb as he hauled himself up on to the pavement. Only a couple of yards separated them now. ‘You know me, all right,’ he leered, wondering why she was carrying those white overalls neatly folded over her arm. Visiting some client, perhaps, whose perverse delight was playing kinky games, and tonight she was going to dress up as a nurse for him. ‘You remember me, don’t you?’

  She was looking at him with narrowed eyes, her brow furrowed. ‘Yes, perhaps I do,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you … Mr Mannion?’

  His own name hit him with force, a shock that sent his brain reeling. He had never told that whore his name, and even if he had he would have used a pseudonym. Christ! It was frightening, here in his own locality.

  ‘That’s right.’ He moved a step closer. ‘Though how you know that is beyond me.’

  ‘I do have a good memory.’ Her tone was haughty now. ‘And I like to remember all my —’

  ‘Clients?’

  ‘If you like. I call them “patients”.’

  So it was a kinky game, and tonight her role was that of a nurse. But Mike had no time for that sort of play. He was aware of his arousal, the way it dominated him to the exclusion of everything else. ‘Come on,’ he said in a whisper, ‘hop in and we’ll take a ride somewhere.’

  ‘How dare you!’

  ‘Come off it!’ He was close to her now and his fingers flexed. ‘You took me for a ri
de last time. Now it’s my turn. Literally. Jump in.’

  She turned and was about to run, but he moved faster than he thought he was capable of, grabbing her arm. She struggled; he tightened his grip. ‘I paid you a lot of money the last time. Now you’re going to earn it, Joanna!’

  ‘Let go of me. My name isn’t Joanna. I’m going to call the police!’

  Instinctively his hand closed over her mouth just as she started to scream. He pulled her to him and felt her body squash against his protruding swollen navel – a moment of agony followed by a deluge of something warm and sticky between their pressed bodies. His lips pursued hers, crushing them as she screamed into his mouth, his fingers tearing at her clothing. Pushing her back through the gateway, he sent them both sprawling on to the gravel but he scarcely noticed the sharp stones. A crazed stag at the rutting stand, he saw Joanna struggling beneath him and that fog closing in as though to hide the obscenity. Damn this bitch of a whore, she was going to earn that thirty quid he had given her the other night!

  Doctor Williamson was tired. Any other time he would have taken a nap in the living room, content in the knowledge that he would waken instantly if the telephone rang. But this evening he was troubled, the peace of mind which he habitually enjoyed destroyed by the knowledge of what old Josh Owen had told him. Anybody else, any other time, the doctor would have dismissed it as the wanderings of a dying man in the final stages of senile dementia. But not Josh; the farmer had been alert, was not given to romancing, and the story had a ring of truth to it, even though it was a legend handed down through several generations.

  Improbable, nay impossible – unless you had looked upon the festered body of Jim Fitzpatrick! He had seen the way those terrible ulcers pulsed and ate the dead flesh like carnivorous bloated leeches. That made him believe, and he wondered how it was all going to end.

  Williamson picked up the phone and dialled. He heard it ringing at the other end, and counted. A dozen rings, and he could safely assume that there would be no reply. But this time he hung on, and on the fifteenth distant burr-burr a man’s voice answered, slightly irritated at being disturbed from whatever he had been doing. ‘Professor Shaw speaking.’

  ‘Don, this is Gerald Williamson.’

  ‘Why, Gerald! Long time, no see. How are you?’

  Small talk, chat between old university colleagues, a roundabout way of leading up to the purpose of an unexpected call.

  ‘Don, I want to ask a big favour, strictly off the record,’ the doctor was almost humble, for the man he spoke to was an eminent professor who had studied contagious fatal diseases ever since his Cambridge days. Aloof, short-tempered, even as an undergraduate, Shaw never tolerated time-wasters. And this business sounded ridiculous, fanciful, like a far-fetched plot from a science fiction pulp of the thirties, when hack authors could get away with it because medical science was still in its infancy. ‘Do you know of any disease, plague, which could devour a corpse and still live on in the gravesoil for several centuries and then become contagious again?’ Williamson held his breath, anticipating either ridicule or an angry outburst.

  There was only silence; if he had not heard the intake of breath he might have assumed that the professor had replaced the receiver in disgust. It was some seconds before Shaw spoke, and when he did his voice was grave. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I believe it might have happened. Here. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and want to trace it. The police are being reticent about it – doubtless tests are being carried out and in due course the truth will emerge. But, for the sake of the people who live in this area, I need to be sure. Now!’

  ‘Gerald, if it was anybody else but you I’d slam the phone down right now. What I’m going to tell you, you won’t find in any medical book that has ever been written. In fact, I’ve never heard it mentioned, and I certainly wouldn’t for fear of ridicule. But I have read many of the records compiled from the fourteenth century onwards, a lot of them documents handwritten by men whose wisdom was far ahead of their times. Plagues like the bubonic were commonplace and there were a lot of others brought in by foreign seamen, diseases which are unheard of today. And it is one of those that I read about once, on a scroll of parchment, barely legible, scrawled by an apothecary who himself feared that he had this plague and wished to warn others. He called it the Festering Death, and according to him only fire would destroy it. The bodies had to be cremated until, in his words “the sores sizzled and screamed in agony, festers that would live on if they were not burned alive”. But I have no evidence to substantiate these writings; I can only tell you what I read. This fellow went on to describe the symptoms, listing them as “festering sores on the body that ate the flesh until death came as a blessed relief, and even then the cancers went on devouring the remaining flesh. The victim underwent hallucinations, agony, became violent in his affliction and suffered from abnormal sexual desires.” In those days they put it down to possession by an evil spirit, of course, and in many cases the sufferer was put to death as a result. I cannot for the life of me understand why this terrible plague didn’t sweep across Britain. Perhaps it was confined to scattered communities, and the populations were wiped out and forgotten. I don’t know. But this chap added as a postscript to his paper that whilst fire destroys the disease completely it will live on in a grave because of the damp earth. It thrives on moisture and needs water to live!’

  My God! Williamson gripped the receiver with intensity as he recalled the borehole at Garth Cottage, that deep well, and remembered again Josh Owen’s account of how this afflicted traveller was buried ‘as deep as a well’. It had to be that, there was no other explanation, logical or illogical. The Garth well had been the site of the grave of the unknown man who had returned with the Festering Death centuries ago, and the plague had lived on at the bottom of the shaft. And now the Mannions had released it from its incarceration!

  ‘Thank you.’ He sounded exhausted when he spoke again. ‘You don’t realize how grateful I am to you, my friend. Now, I must hurry. I’ll report back to you when I have something which may substantiate the writings of a long-dead apothecary.’

  Williamson moved fast in spite of his bulk. He called upstairs to his wife that he had to go out, and any calls were to be relayed to Doctor Bell. Then he hurried to Garth Cottage to warn the Mannions, fearful it might be too late. He remembered the notes Doctor Bell had left about their boils.

  He eased the Range Rover down the drive, the laurel branches swishing against its bodywork and slowed habitually on the sharp bend that terminated in the entrance to the main street of Canon Pine. The doctor was ageing, tired, but his reactions were swift as he stood on the brake pedal so that the heavy-duty tyres crunched and slid on loose gravel, and somehow stopped within a foot or so of the couple who lay directly in his path.

  A curse escaped his lips, then a premonition brought a pang of fear that flipped his heart. A courting couple, doubtless, who had succumbed to the urge to have intercourse and had chosen his drive because it was screened from the street. He still hoped that it might just be that, until the man eased up off the woman, and he saw that obscene nakedness, the stomach bleeding and oozing sluggish pus from the gaping wound left by the burst, festering ulcer. His face was vaguely familiar through the contortions as he crouched and stood at bay like a cornered beast of the wild.

  The doctor’s eyes flicked to the woman, who lay on her back, her scratched and gouged flesh visible through the tattered remains of a summer dress, her head lolling at an unnatural angle so that he was unable to see her features. But when he saw the spotless white receptionist’s overall lying, still folded, by her side, he knew.

  Merciful God, he was too late, after all! Mannion was a victim of the ancient Festering Death – and he had come here in his hour of agony and murdered Susan Willis, the doctor’s part-time secretary and receptionist!

  17

  Holly panicked, blindly. Suddenly all cohesion had left her. She only knew that Mike was missing, that that
thing had come up out of the well again. It was responsible for his disappearance – had it snatched him, taken him back down to those foul dark depths? Anything was possible. She almost screamed, but it was Nick’s presence that choked back the rising screech of hysteria.

  ‘Come on.’ He seemed to have difficulty speaking, and lisped badly. ‘Let’s go and look for him. I’ll search outside, you check the house.’

  That made sense; with an effort she pulled herself together. She nodded, and made for the stairs. Of course, Mike could be upstairs, in the bathroom, in the bedroom, anywhere. There was no point in having hysterics until it was confirmed that he really was not anywhere to be found.

  For a few seconds she was nearly composed again, but halfway up the narrow flight of stairs the pain hit her. It was as though the base of her spine was burning and a fire was consuming her body, scorching into it. Some thick warm fluid was flowing, saturating her pants. She clapped a hand behind her, and felt it squelch on sodden denim. Now that scream left her lips as the agony exploded, eating right into her bowels as if some carnivorous reptile had found an orifice and was intent upon devouring her intestines. She clung on to the stair rail as she almost fell. God, that boil had burst with a vengeance!

  She recalled the time many years before when she had once burst a boil, the excruciating pain for a minute or two, the flood of pus. And after that it had been all right; a swab of cotton wool soaked in TCP, and she was fine. She hoped that was what had happened now. I’ll be okay, she told herself. I just have to put up with it for a short while.

  She made it to the bedroom. Mike wasn’t there, but she had known all along that he would not be. For some reason he was no longer a priority; she tugged off her clothes, smelled them, felt the sliminess of the stinking matter on her fingers. Near panic again, she grabbed the hand mirror, holding it so that she could see her rear reflected in the full-length wardrobe glass.