***********************************
“It’s
kind of a sad story,” T. J. Wylie said to the young couple he was leading
around the empty house. T. J. was
a lean, tanned forty-something who smiled a lot and wore an absurd amount of
cologne, but he also had a reputation as the best real estate agent in the
area. “Elderly woman, living with
her thirty-year-old son. The son
had some kind of mental problem.
The old lady got cancer, and no one knew about it. All she knew was that she kept getting
stomach aches, and of course the son didn’t know any better. One day the son walked over to the
neighbors, and said he couldn’t get his mom to wake up. The neighbor is a nurse – she ran right
over, and couldn’t even get a pulse.
They pronounced her dead on arrival at Colville General. Massive stomach cancer.”
Maria
Hayward winced at her husband, Jeff, and Jeff said, “Look, T. J., can we move
on to another topic?”
T.
J. laughed. “Oh, yeah. Sorry. Some people just want to know what happened in a house
they’re thinking of buying. I
guess I shouldn’t be telling you horror stories, right? Don’t want to talk you out of it.”
“It
wouldn’t,” Maria said, but her voice sounded a little tentative. “What happened to the son?”
“Not
sure,” T. J. said. “Probably
living with a relative. But they had
no real choice other than selling the house – no way can he live here on his
own. The house sale is being
handled by a broker, who is acting on the son’s behalf.”
The
house itself showed no sign of its troubled past. It had been cleaned until it sparkled. The carpets showed some sign of wear,
but were immaculate. The
midafternoon sun’s rays slanted through the kitchen window, illuminating oak
cabinets topped with a spotless faux-marble counter.
“It’s
really a charming place,” Maria said, under her breath, while following T. J.
and her husband up the stairs toward the master bedroom on the second floor.
Jeff
nodded. “It’s ideal.” He flashed a grin back at his wife, and
whispered, “But don’t tell him that.”
They
glanced over the disclosure agreement while standing in the kitchen, reading it
by the last bit of ruddy sunlight.
“The only thing of note,” T. J. said, “is that the house is plumbed from
a rather antiquated well. Just
about anything else that someone might be concerned about, in terms of
structural soundness, has been taken care of. The brokerage that is handling the sale already had a lot of
work done on it, prior to listing it.
The breaker box was rewired, everything brought up to code. New roof put on. All the interior plumbing checked. There’s no water in the basement, any
of that kind of stuff. You’ll want
to have your own inspection done, of course, but they really made sure that they
had it market-ready before they listed it. That’s kind of unusual, but you have to admit that it makes
it more appealing. You wouldn’t
have to do a damn thing to this house – just walk in and unpack.”
An
hour later, Jeff and Maria had an offer written up. 24 hours later, it was accepted. As T. J. predicted, the required home inspection turned up
nothing of note. The Health
Department checked out the “antiquated well,” found it in good working order,
and it was given the thumbs-up.
Loan
papers drawn up, title search performed, and two months later the Haywards were
seated at a table with T. J. Wylie, their lawyer, and the sellers’ agent and
lawyer. The previous owner’s son,
who was listed as the legal owner of the property, never showed, and had signed
all the papers ahead of time.
The
whole closing took a grand total of a half-hour. T. J. said afterwards that he had never had such a smooth
sale in his entire career.
“I
barely earned my commission,” he said, grinning, as he shook Jeff’s and Maria’s
hands.
“Nonsense,”
Maria said. “It was a pleasure
working with someone we felt we could trust. You were worth every penny.”
T.
J. flashed a bright smile at her.
“Well, I’m glad you think so.
I’d hate to think that you weren’t completely satisfied with your
purchase.”
The
next two weeks were consumed by unpacking, sorting, decorating, and general
settling-in. All of this took
place while Jeff and Maria were still working full time – Jeff as a physician’s
assistant, Maria as an elementary school teacher. But despite the draw on time and energy that day jobs
inevitably represent, the last box was finally emptied and broken down, to be
added to the stack of flattened cardboard already in the garage. Life settled down, and it stopped
seeming weird to Jeff to take the different route home, past the apartment
building where they used to live, and out onto the country road, past the dairy
farm and the cornfield, past the house with the covered bridge, and down the
long driveway into their own garage.
All,
in fact, would have been very well, had it not been for the fact that it was
about that time that the insomnia started.
Jeff
had always been a sound sleeper; he could fall asleep within minutes, and
unless awakened by his alarm, easily slept until nine or ten in the
morning. At first, it was subtle –
a low-level discomfort, a restlessness in his legs, that kept him shifting his
position, left him in a light doze rather than in a deep sleep.
But
it wasn’t just physical unease that disturbed his nights. His dreams changed, as well. Before, the content of his sleeping
brain had been pretty much what everyone experiences – dreams of being at work,
of seeing friends and acquaintances, of sex, of being chased, of falling. Now, those familiar themes were gone,
to be replaced by long dream sequences in which nothing really happened, but
that left him agitated and unrefreshed upon awakening, and unable to remember
what exactly it was that had disrupted his sleep so profoundly.
He
happened to mention his insomnia to Dr. Preston, one of the three doctors at
the practice where Jeff worked, over lunch one day. Preston seemed sympathetic, but unconcerned.
“Insomnia
is pretty common,” he said, taking a big bite of a roast beef sandwich dripping
with mayo. “If it suddenly crops
up, it’s usually associated with changes of other sorts. You just moved, didn’t you?”
“Yup.”
“There
you are, then. That’s stressful,
even if it’s good. So I wouldn’t
expect it to persist. Just be a
little careful about what you do before bed – don’t eat a heavy meal and then
hit the sack right away, limit alcohol and caffeine, don’t exercise hard right
before bed. I’ve even seen
research that indicates that you shouldn’t use a computer or watch TV right
before bed – the light stimulates the wakefulness centers in the brain.”
“I’ll
keep an eye on that.”
“Also,
if you can’t sleep, get up. Beds
are for sleeping and sex. If
you’re not doing either one, get up and do something else – then go back to bed
when you feel sleepy.”
“Okay,
I’ll give that a try.”
“But
anyway,” Preston said, taking another bite of his sandwich, “it’s probably
nothing to be concerned about.
You’ve had a physical in the last year, yes?”
“Yup.”
“Nothing
alarming?”
“Nada.”
“There
you are, then.” He popped the last
bite of his sandwich into his mouth.
“So
not nearly as much of a concern as diet-related heart disease, then?” Jeff
said, a half-smile on his face.
Preston
wiped the mayo from the corner of his mouth. “Exactly,” he said.
He
gave all of Preston’s suggestions a solid try that evening. He gave himself a good four hours
between dinner and bedtime, didn’t hit the gym in the evening as he often did,
and resisted the temptation to grab a beer as he was reading the
newspaper. He made sure he got
laid – that, by itself, had often been sufficient to knock him out for a good
eight hours solid.
It
was nowhere near dawn when Jeff rolled over in bed, and opened his eyes. He could tell just by the way the
darkness felt. He turned his head
to the side, and saw that his digital clock stood at 2:39. “Christ,” he whispered softly,
and glanced over at Maria, who was sleeping soundly, the blankets moving slowly
to the regular rise and fall of her breathing. He stretched, tried to get comfortable, closed his eyes –
and opened them a minute later.
After
two more abortive attempts to go back to sleep, he pulled the covers back and
swung his legs out of bed. He
grabbed his robe from the hook inside his closet, pulled it on, and knotted the
belt securely across his belly. He
padded barefoot across the hall and into the upstairs study, where the light of
a nearly-full moon slanted in the windows, turning everything a surreal
gray-white, leaving sharp-edged shadows on the hardwood floor.
Without
turning the light on, he went over to the window, and looked out across the
yard. The same silvery light turned
the front garden into a surreal grayscale landscape, the dew on the grass
shimmering like pearls. Everything
was still, sparkling, a million stars glittering in the night sky.
Then
his eyes caught movement.
It
was down along the driveway, in the shadow of some lilac bushes. Probably an animal, he thought, and he frowned, squinting, trying to see
what it was. A possum or a
raccoon.
But
there was something about the way it moved that seemed distinctly
non-mammalian. He leaned forward
until his forehead touched the cool pane of window glass, and then, suddenly,
he saw it again. Something twisted
and looped around the two-foot-tall capped wellhead pipe that stood nestled in
amongst some lilac bushes that lined the east side of the driveway. He hadn’t seen it clearly, but it
seemed to have a furtive, smooth motion, like the sinuous movement of a
snake. But it was hard to
pinpoint. When he looked directly
at it, he couldn’t see anything there; but as soon as his eyes had moved
elsewhere, he caught it again.
Jeff
went to Maria’s desk, where she kept a pair of binoculars – a gift from her
father, who was a fanatical birdwatcher, but seldom used because neither Jeff
nor Maria cared particularly about birds.
He uncapped the lenses, and held them to his eyes, turning the focus
wheel until the tops of the lilac bushes came into focus, and then moving them
slowly downward to the wellhead pipe.
The
cap on the pipe was ajar.
Frowning,
he stared at the pipe, thinking at first that it was a trick of the
moonlight. But there was no
mistaking it; the metal cap, which he had watched the inspector from the Health
Department screw down securely two months ago, was tilted upwards, and the pipe
showed a black crescent of shadow near its top where the moonlight couldn’t
reach into the opening.
In
the magnified field of view, all he saw was the cylindrical wellhead base, the
irregular branches and fallen leaves of the lilacs, the shaggy dew-lined spikes
of grass in need of mowing. Jeff
watched for several minutes, scanning the ground beside the wellhead, and saw
nothing that corresponded to the motion he’d seen earlier, and nothing that
could explain why the well cap was moved.
Finally, he dropped the binoculars to his side.
Five
minutes passed. There was no
further sign of movement, and he gradually convinced himself that he had
imagined the whole thing. Soon, he
realized that he was tired again.
“I’ll fix the well cover tomorrow,” he said out loud, and set the
binoculars on Maria’s desk.
He
returned to their bedroom, shucked his robe, and slid under the covers. Maria appeared not to have moved since
he’d left, twenty minutes earlier.
He yawned, curled up on his side, and was asleep within minutes.
Maria’s
job started before Jeff’s; she was one of those early-riser types in any case,
and Jeff was still mostly asleep when she came in to kiss him goodbye. He responded to her cheerful, “Have a
great day, honey, see you this evening,” with a mumbled and barely understandable,
“You too.” Five minutes later, he
heard the front door close.
It
wasn’t until he was showering that he recalled the previous night’s strange
events. Something opened the
well cap, he thought, as the well
water streamed down his body. I
need to remember to check it before I leave this morning. How
on earth am I going to make sure I don’t forget?
Much
to his surprise, the thought of his odd nighttime experience stuck with him,
and he had no difficulty remembering to look at the wellhead, tucked away
amongst the lilacs next to the driveway, as he walked out to the garage. In fact, the whole incident was
peculiarly vivid, in contrast to the odd dreams he’d been having since his
insomnia began, which faded into nothing upon waking.
But
the cap on the well was firmly in place when he walked past. He frowned at it, and then reached down
and jiggled it. It moved slightly,
shifting against the set screws that held it down, but there was no doubt that
it was not only where it should be, it was secured.
It
must have been a dream, he thought,
frowning. But it seemed so
real. He jiggled it one more time, for no particular reason, and
then stood up. Bizarre. He
shrugged, picked up his thermos and lunch box, and headed for his car.
By
the time he got to work, he had put it out of his mind entirely.
Despite
following Dr. Preston’s advice, the insomnia did not abate.
He
tried melatonin. He tried
valerian. He tried them
together. When those did nothing,
he resorted to sleeping tablets, out of desperation. He fell asleep quickly after taking one, and spent about two
hours in a deep, dreamless sleep, but then woke at two AM, unable to sleep but
in a mental fog that left him stumbling into walls when he got up to use the
bathroom.
I
guess I just have to live with it, he
thought miserably the morning after the sleeping tablet episode, as he was
drinking a cup of coffee and trying to jumpstart his brain. It sucks, but I guess it’s just part
of aging. Didn’t think it’d happen
this soon, though.
Maria,
fortunately, didn’t seem to be disturbed at all by his restlessness. She was sympathetic, and reached out
and touched his face gently as they were watching television one evening.
“You
just can’t keep your eyelids open, can you?” she said, concern showing in her
dark eyes.
Jeff
laughed, a little sheepishly.
“No,” he said. “But it’s
just so goddamn frustrating. I
feel like I could sleep for days, but if I go to bed, I know I’ll be wide awake
in a couple of hours.”
“That
sucks,” she said. “But maybe you
should just go with it. Like Dr. Preston
said – don’t just stay in bed. Get
up and do something until you feel sleepy. Maybe you need to find a nocturnal hobby. Write the Great American Novel, or
something.”
“I’d
be okay with it if it wasn’t for having a day job. I almost fell asleep at the wheel driving home yesterday.”
Maria
picked up the remote and shut the television off. “You should just go to bed. I don’t care if it is eight o’clock.” She smiled fetchingly. “And I plan to wear you out a little,
first. That should help.” She leaned against him, and slid a hand
under his shirt. “You’re not too
sleepy for that, are you?”
He
wasn’t. But like clockwork, he was
awake at just before two in the morning, and swore quietly at the digital clock
and his own uncooperative body.
“Sleeping,
check,” he muttered, as he sat up in bed.
“Sex, check. So get
up.” He put his robe on, and left
the bedroom, his bare feet making no noise on the hallway carpet as he walked
toward the study.
He
sat down at his desk, turned on his computer. Checked his email, checked Facebook, checked the news. There was nothing of interest anywhere,
nothing to keep his attention for more than five minutes. He gave an angry push to his chair, and
the seat swiveled around, the wheels creaking a little on the hardwood
floor. That was when he saw the
binoculars, still sitting where he’d left them on Maria’s desk two weeks
earlier.
He
stood, and picked them up. There
was less light now, a waning moon and ragged-edged clouds that were scudding
across the sky on gusty winds, but he raised the binoculars to his eyes and
panned them over his dark front yard.
Underneath
the lilac bushes, the wellhead cover was ajar again.
Jeff
frowned. Am I dreaming
this? Like last time? he thought, and then frowned. Was the last time a dream?
Again,
there was a hint of movement, but with the dim light, all he caught was a
momentary ripple of motion that revealed nothing. He slowly lowered the binoculars from his eyes, and then,
with a decisive motion, stood up, left the study, and went downstairs to the
living room.
In
an alcove in the foyer was a large flashlight – a necessity in the country,
where windstorms often knocked the electricity out, sometimes for hours at a
time. He picked it up, and clicked
the switch. A powerful beam
illuminated an oval on the carpet, making every fiber stand out in relief. He walked back up to the study, and up
to the dark rectangle of the window the overlooked the driveway. Holding the flashlight in one hand and
the binoculars in the other, he looked down toward the tangled row of lilac
bushes. He raised the flashlight
to the window, and the binoculars to his eyes.
Jeff
half expected that when he looked, the wellhead would be sealed, but it
wasn’t. The metal cap was still
askew, its opening showing as a black circle. The flashlight beam was attenuated by distance, but was
strong enough to illuminate the area at least as well as the full moon had the
previous time. He saw the leaf
litter at the wellhead’s base, the gnarled branches of the lilacs rising behind
it, and could even make out the screws set in the lid.
There
was a sudden movement in his field of view, and he jumped a little. The light caught on something dark,
with a glossy surface like burnished leather. It was gone as quickly as it had appeared. He panned the area, trying to move the
beam of the light to match the motion of the binoculars, his shaky and
unpracticed hands sometimes causing the image in the lenses to disappear into blackness. After a few moments, there was another
movement, and he swiveled the focus wheel, trying to get a better view. Then his breath caught in his throat.
There
was a something sitting perfectly still in the middle of the field of vision.
What
he was looking at was a little like a centipede. It had a flattened body, made of many segments, and jointed
legs. But the head was distinctly
unlike that of the little brown centipedes that Jeff sometimes saw while
weeding the garden or moving firewood.
The front quarters were lifted off the ground, pairs of legs reaching
forward like pincers, the hinged neck curved like a swan. The head was bullet-shaped, smooth, and
shining, and there were two large, bulging eyes that had multiple facets. The light glittered where it caught
them, reflecting a spectrum of colors back to Jeff’s eyes.
The
thing was a little over two feet long.
It
was only still for a moment. With
insect-like suddenness, the legs started to move, and the body undulated across
the ground and was gone. Jeff
tried to follow it, but it scuttled away into shadow, and the flashlight beam
bounced wildly over the ground and lost it. After a breathless moment, he got control of the flashlight
and binoculars, and aimed them both at the wellhead.
The
wellhead cap was back in place.
“What
the fuck?” Jeff breathed.
He
spent fifteen minutes perfectly motionless, looking through the binoculars, the
flashlight beam aimed at the wellhead.
Nothing happened. Finally
his shoulder muscles began to ache so badly that he had to lower his arms, and
the window returned to a sheet of flat black, whatever was going on outside
obscured by the night.
A
half-hour later, he gave up and returned to bed.
He
did not get back to sleep that night.
When
Maria’s alarm went off, he was still lying on his back, the blanket at
mid-chest, eyes wide open, arms cupped behind his head. Maria, on the other hand, was awakened
out of a deep sleep. She moaned
with displeasure, stretched and yawned, and with one practiced hand smacked the
“off” button on top of the clock.
Jeff
turned to look at his wife as she pulled the blanket back, and swung her legs
out of bed. The slanting rays of
the sun were just coming through the window, and as she sat up, they caught the
skin on her back, and Jeff gave a little intake of breath, just loud enough
that she turned toward him.
“What’s
wrong, hon?” she said, her voice slurred with sleep.
“You…”
he said, and he swallowed. “You’ve
got a rash on your back.”
She
reached back with one hand, and her fingertips brushed her shoulder blade. “Really? It doesn’t itch.”
“It’s
huge,” Jeff said. “I mean, it
covers most of your back. Both
sides. Go look in the mirror.”
She
stood up, frowning, and went into the bathroom. After a moment, she said, “Huh.”
“It
doesn’t hurt?” he said, loudly, toward the open door.
“No,”
she said. “Not at all.”
“So
it’s not poison ivy, or something like that.”
He
heard her laugh. “No. I think if I ended up lying down in
poison ivy, you’d have had something to do with it, and you’d have it, too.” She returned to the bedroom. “I wonder how long I’ve had it.”
“It’s
the first I’ve noticed.”
“Well,
my mom’s advice was always that if you get a symptom, either it’ll get worse,
or it’ll get better. If it gets
better, cool. If it gets worse,
see a doctor.”
Jeff
gave her a half smile, but he thought, What if it’s something in the
water? Maybe that’s why I can’t
sleep, and why Maria has a rash. Then a more rational thought came to
him; C’mon. What on earth could
do both of those things? They’re
completely unrelated. But the first, frightened mental voice
returned with, And the previous owner died of stomach cancer. And her son had something wrong with
him, too. Maybe it’s the water.
The
bugs in the water.
But
he couldn’t very well tell Maria that.
So she got ready for work, and he kissed her goodbye, and that was that.
He
also filled a plastic bottle with tap water before he left for his own job… and
during his break, he looked up phone numbers for water testing services.
“You
had the well checked out when you bought the house, right?” the fresh-faced
young woman in the lab jacket said, when Jeff went in four days later to get
the results.
He
felt his heart accelerate. “Yes,”
he said. “Why? What did you find?”
“Nothing,”
she said with a smile. “I just
wondered why you wanted it tested.”
“I
just… I just thought, you can’t be
too careful.”
She
spread the sheet down in front of him.
There was a long list of chemicals from the familiar to the exotic, and
columns of numbers headed “Detected,” “Recommended Maximum,” “Legally
Permissible for Municipal Drinking Water,” and “LD-50.”
“What
does LD-50 mean?” Jeff asked.
“Nothing
that’s relevant here,” she said.
“But it’s the dosage, per kilogram of body weight, that would have a
fifty-fifty odds of being fatal.
As you can see,” she ran her fingertip down the list, “there’s nothing
in your water that even approaches the Recommended Maximum, much less the Legal
Maximum. There’s nothing in your
water that we test for that is of concern.”
“What
about things you don’t test for?” Jeff said, before he could stop himself. That sounded crazy paranoid, he thought.
But
she just laughed. “Our testing
equipment is state-of-the-art.
Maybe there are some obscure toxins that we couldn’t detect, but I can’t
imagine what they might be, nor how they could end up in your well water. As you can see from this list, we test
for both organic and inorganic chemicals, as well as biological contaminants
like coliform bacteria. You don’t
need to worry.” She slid the paper
toward him. “I would drink this
water without hesitation. And
believe me, I don’t say that to everyone.”
Maria’s
rash worsened. It gradually spread
to her face, and her initial lighthearted comments were replaced by a silence
that Jeff knew to be worry. When
the reddened patches became warm, and tender to the touch, she finally broke
down and made an appointment to see a doctor.
The
diagnosis of lupus, when it came, was no surprise, but Maria wept as Dr. Sasaki
told her about autoimmunity and immunosuppressants and how to manage the
symptoms. Jeff held her hand,
feeling a coldness inside, and remembering the centipede-thing disappearing
down the wellhead. Stomach
cancer. Lupus. Sleep disorders. Developmental disorders. What else can it cause?
“What
causes lupus?” he asked suddenly.
“Well,”
Dr. Sasaki said, “the simple answer is, no one knows for sure. There seem to be some genetic factors,
but it doesn’t clearly run in families.
It is associated with other autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid
arthritis, but there’s no clear pattern.
The most likely cause is a genetic susceptibility combined with some
sort of environmental trigger.”
“An
environmental trigger? Like
something in the water?”
Both
Maria and Dr. Sasaki looked at him, frowning. “Why do you say that?” the doctor said, turning her pencil
in her hand.
“I…
I just thought of it, when you said environmental factors.”
“Oh.” She gave him another curious look, and
said, “What most researchers mean by environmental factors is something like a pathogen. It has been established, for example,
that some cases of multiple sclerosis are caused by the combination of a gene
and a viral infection. So, it’s
possible that this could also be true in the case of lupus. But if this is the actual etiology,
it’s far from proven.”
“I
see,” Jeff said. “What happens if
you kill the pathogen?”
“You
misunderstand me, Mr. Hayward,” Dr. Sasaki said, her voice taking on a tone of
slight irritation. “If this is
indeed the true cause of the disease, by the time the symptoms show, the
pathogen has long since been eliminated from the system. It is the body’s immune reaction
against the pathogen that causes the disease, not the pathogen itself.”
“Oh,”
Jeff said, and thought, You’re a PA, you should have known that. But his
brain felt fuzzy and unreliable; besides the insomnia, he had been fighting a
low-level headache for a day and a half, and his thoughts seemed to zing around
in his skull with little volition on his own part. “I’m sorry if I’m asking dumb questions.”
Dr.
Sasaki’s expression softened. “No,
please don’t worry,” she said.
“There are no stupid questions.
And this is a difficult thing to deal with. I’m here to help in any way I can. But remember the good news; this is a manageable condition. With medication, people with lupus have
every expectation of a relatively normal life.”
That
night, despite his fatigue, Jeff didn’t go to bed.
Maria
was exhausted. Between the
emotional distress of the diagnosis, and the side effects of the first round of
immunosuppressants, she was off to bed by eight o’clock. He kissed her goodnight, said, “I’ll be
up soon,” and watched as she trudged up the stairs. There was the sound of the sink running, then the toilet
flushing, and then their bedroom door closed.
He
watched the clock for another five minutes. Then he got up, and went into the kitchen.
He
emptied out the water pitcher in the fridge. He dumped the ice cube tray, too. He pulled out a container of vegetable soup that they’d had
for dinner the night before, and poured it down the garbage disposal. After a quick glance through the rest
of the contents of the fridge, he closed the door, then went into the garage,
and got a case of bottled water.
He
used the first bottle to rinse out the pitcher and the ice tray. Then he refilled both, using two more
bottles, and returned them to their customary places. He put the remaining bottles in a cabinet, hiding them
behind some canned goods, and wondering as he did so why he was being so
secretive about the whole thing.
It’s
because you know it’s ridiculous, he
thought. You start
hallucinating bugs in the well, and you start connecting dots that have nothing
to do with one another. The woman
at the water testing place told you the water was fine. You’re being ridiculous, and trying to
cobble together explanations for things because you can’t stand that there
isn’t a connection.
And
what about the bugs? he thought. You saw the bugs.
You
THINK you saw bugs, came the rational
thought. You are the one who is
not only seeing bugs, but imagining that you’re being poisoned by the
water. It’s not toxins in the
water; it’s schizophrenia. Maria
isn’t the only one who needs to see a doctor.
But
he went up stairs, into the study, and went to the window. He set up some books, and an old metal
wine-bottle rack, and used some baling wire to hook up the flashlight so that
its beam was aimed directly down at the wellhead. Then he picked up the binoculars, rested his elbows on the
windowsill, and sat down to wait.
By
midnight, he had slipped into a light doze, and was awakened by the binoculars,
still clutched in his hand, tipping forward and clunking against the window
pane. He jolted awake, and then
brought them back up to his eyes.
The
wellhead cap was ajar, and in the circle of faint yellow light projected by the
flashlight, there was a shiver of movement.
It’s
back, he thought, feeling his heart
accelerating in his chest, feeling the pulse hammering in his head, bringing
his headache to new levels. He
winced, and squinted into the binoculars.
He could see, just on the diffuse edge of the flashlight’s beam, a
ripple of motion. Legs, Jeff thought.
Lots of legs. But then, on the other side of the
oval, he saw another quick, sinuous movement, too far away for it to be the
same creature.
There’s
more than one of them, he
thought. Of course. There would have to be. But how many? And then
he thought, It doesn’t matter.
Tomorrow morning, I’m going to end them. However many of them there are.
He
watched, fascinated, for nearly an hour.
The
centipedes – he saw that there were at least three, but there may have been
more – avoided the light except when they had to enter it. The flashlight’s beam was pointed
directly at the wellhead mouth, and he got a good view of one of them – the
thing looked like it was three feet long – curving up and over the edge, and
down into the dark cylinder of the well.
To think we were drinking that water, Jeff thought, and shuddered. Between the headache, and the fatigue,
and the memory of the jointed, many-legged body slipping downward into the
well, he had to fight down the urge to vomit. But finally, the flashlight batteries were wearing down, and
the beam was getting dimmer, so he shut it off, and set the binoculars down
with a thunk.
Tomorrow, he thought grimly. Tomorrow, you bastards.
Maria
was too ill to go to work the next day, and Jeff called in sick himself. He still had the headache, and although
he probably could have gone in, he had other plans once the sun came up. Maria was still sound asleep when the
first red light crept over the horizon, and he left the house quietly. How he would have explained to her what
he was doing, if she awoke and saw him, he didn’t know.
Why
aren’t you telling her? he thought,
as he went to the garage. She
should know. If this is real, she
should know. But the pain behind his forehead just
increased when he considered telling her what he’d seen, what he thought was
happening, why she was ill, why the previous owner had died. Maybe why he, too, now had insomnia and
a headache that seemed to slam against the inside of his skull at every
systole, a headache like none he had ever had.
He
went to the garage, and picked up the two five-gallon carboys of pool chlorine
that he’d bought at the hardware store, on the same trip when he’d bought the
bottled water. He went out to the
wellhead – firmly screwed down, he saw, without any surprise – and pulled a
screwdriver out of his pocket. He
undid all three set screws, and pulled the lid up.
The
hinge creaked, as if it hadn’t been moved in a while.
Jeff
unscrewed the lid on the first of the chlorine containers, and with some effort
tipped it up and poured its contents into the well. His nose wrinkled at the smell; a drop of the concentrate
hit the pants leg of his jeans, and within minutes bleached it white. He tossed aside the first container,
and then emptied the second one in, as well.
Then
he went to the garden hose mounted on the side of the house, and dragged it
over to the wellhead. He ran the
hose down the cylindrical pipe as far as it would go – perhaps twenty feet –
and then went back to the house and turned the hose on full blast.
The
pump kicked on as the water began to flow, up the intake pipe into the house, into
the pressure tank, out through the side wall into the hose, and back into the
well, recirculating the chlorine.
Enough, the man at the hardware store said, to kill damn near anything.
Certainly
enough to kill some centipedes.
Even big ones.
Jeff
went back to the house, and with a sudden pang of alarm, realized that he
should tell Maria not to take a shower for a while, not until he had drained
the chlorine out of the well and the pressure tank and allowed the whole system
to recharge.
He
was just going up the stairs when he heard the weak cry of pain from the
bedroom, and the crash as Maria fell.
Jeff
pulled the hose out of the wellhead before the ambulance came, and brought it,
still running, to the ditch. The
water spurting out of the hose was gray with churned up silt, and smelled like
a YMCA public swimming pool on a bad day.
After leaving the hose running in the ditch, he went back and screwed
the wellhead cap on tight.
I
might not be able to use the water for a while, he thought, but it will be worth it. Maybe once they’re gone, her lupus will
disappear. And my headache. And the insomnia. Maybe it will all go away.
The
ambulance ran over the hose, now lying across the driveway, when it pulled in
ten minutes later to pick Maria up.
Jeff followed in his car, on the suggestion of the paramedic, who said
that otherwise Jeff might get stuck at the hospital with no
transportation. Jeff drove toward
Colville General with his thoughts bouncing around erratically.
That
has to have killed the bugs. They
can’t have survived that. I hope
Maria is okay. The paramedic
didn’t seem all that concerned, and he should know, right? Right. God, my head hurts.
I wonder how long it will take before the water will be safe to drink? How will I know?
The
doctors at the hospital said that Maria’s fainting spell was due to anemia, and
was probably caused by the combination of the medications and the lupus
itself. He recommended she should
be kept overnight for observation, and given a transfusion of erythrocytes and
platelets to bring up her blood levels to as close to normal as possible. The fainting spell and the systemic
pain, they said, were common symptoms, nothing to be concerned about over and
above the background worry of dealing with the lupus itself. Adjusting the medications would take
time, and the disease itself was notoriously unpredictable.
Like
everything, Jeff thought. Like a perfect house that has
venomous centipedes in the well.
Like toxins that don’t show up in a water test.
Like
this headache that won’t go away.
On
Maria’s urging, he returned home at a little after eight in the evening.
“You
aren’t going to do me any good by staying here all night,” she said. “I’m feeling better, and all I want to
do is sleep. And heaven knows, you
can’t afford to lose more sleep yourself.
Go home, and relax, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
He
didn’t need much urging; his head was still throbbing, and he also wanted to
check to see if there was any sign of activity near the wellhead. He’d been thinking about it all day;
thinking about the centipedes, dying in the poisoned water, their bodies
sinking to the bottom of the well, disintegrating.
Gross
to think about, he thought, as he
drove home, but no worse than what they’ve done to us. It’s the law of the fucking jungle,
that’s what it is. His expression became grim. They deserved it.
He
got back just as the last of the light was fading. He’d turned off the hose that morning, but left it in the
ditch, and he could see a path of bleached and dying grass and weeds where the
chlorinated water had flowed, into the ditch and away.
See
if they can withstand that, he
thought. I’ll give THEM toxins
in the water.
He
picked up the hose, dragged it back to the spigot, and turned it on. It gurgled once, bucked a little in his
hands, and then the water came out, still looking a little silty. He sniffed it, and got a faint chlorine
odor, but nothing like what had come out earlier.
Good. The well has recharged. That should be the end of it, then.
Jeff
went inside, and forced himself to eat some leftover baked chicken that he’d
cooked the previous evening. He
was washing up, watching the water running over the dirty dishes, and suddenly
froze, his eyes opening wide in horror.
It
isn’t just drinking water. It’s
the dishwasher. It’s the
laundry. It’s standing in the
shower, letting that water coat our skin.
It’s brushing teeth, washing hands, even using the toilet. We’ve been living with them, ever since
we moved in, immersed in them. No
wonder we’re both ill. Well,
they’re dead now.
I
hope.
Ignoring
his fatigue, and the pain in his head, he went up and took up his station in
the study.
When
he looked through the binoculars, the complete darkness of a cloudy night made
it impossible to see anything. He
rigged up the flashlight again, and only then realized that he’d forgotten to
get new batteries. There was
enough remaining juice to create a decent beam of light, down through the
glass, and across the driveway.
And
in the pale yellow light, he saw that the wellhead was again open, and there
were dozens – hundreds – of the centipedes, flowing over the lilac bushes like
a seething waterfall, rippling across the driveway.
Jeff
gave an inarticulate cry, and dropped the binoculars unheeded to the floor, and
then ran down the stairs toward the front door.
“I’ll
show you!” he shouted. “You think
that the chlorine was bad? I’ve
got worse! On to plan B!” He threw open the front door with a
bang, and ran toward the garage, yanked the garage door upwards, and went to a
wheelbarrow he’d loaded the previous day.
With a grunt, he lifted the handles, and pushed it, creaking, up the
driveway toward the wellhead.
They
began to swarm him long before he got there. He expected them to bite, but he felt no sharp mandibles
pinching him, no stings; just a clatter of legs, a ripple of movement as they
ran up his pant legs, a faint scratching on his bare skin. One came out of the neck of his shirt
and scuttled up his face, where it sat for a moment facing him, regarding him with a dry,
crystalline gaze.
Jeff
laughed, a manic, desperate sound, and began to rip open the bags of cement
powder he’d bought the previous day at the hardware store.
“Let’s
see what you do with this!” he shouted, and began to pour the cement down the
wellhead. The centipedes that were
coming out of the opening now were covered with gray powder, but it didn’t seem
to slow them down. He tore open
bag after bag, and screamed with triumph as he heard the splashing noise it
made as it hit the water below, turned the well water into an ever-thickening
sludge. “You haven’t won!” he
shouted, as he dumped the last one in, fell to his knees, felt the creatures
cover him as he had covered them.
He
looked down at the wellhead one last time, but then one of the centipedes
crossed his eyes like a blindfold, and others plugged his ears, nose, mouth,
the only thing that could finally stop his triumphant laughter.
And
that was when the pain in his head, in a fantastic explosion of fireworks,
finally and completely ended.
T.
J. Wylie leaned against the hood of his car, watching the young couple eyeing
the house with obvious interest.
“Beautiful
place, isn’t it?” he said.
“Gorgeous,”
the young woman said. “I thought
this was just going to be a starter house, from the description, but it’s much
more than that.”
Her
husband nodded. “It’s so well
cared-for.”
“The
previous owners didn’t own it long,” T. J. said. “But the ones before that had it for some years, and really
looked after it. I think you’ll
find the interior just as appealing.”
“Why
did the previous owners sell?” the young man said.
“It’s
a really sad story,” T. J. said, with a sunshiny smile, not looking sad at
all. “But I probably shouldn’t go
into it. I don’t want to leave you
with the feeling that the house is… macabre.”
“A
ghost story?” the young woman said.
“I love ghost stories!
I’ve always wanted to live in a haunted house.”
“No,
nothing like that,” T. J. said, laughing.
“It’s just the ordinary kind of sad.”
“What
happened?” the husband said. “It’s
better to find out – the neighbors would probably tell us eventually, anyhow.”
“I
guess so,” T. J. admitted. “The
owners were a married couple, no kids.
Nice people, I’ve heard.
She got lupus – you know, what Dr. House always talked about.”
“That’s
bad, isn’t it?” the young man said.
“Bad,
but not usually fatal. But hers
went really quickly. She became
anemic, went into the hospital for a transfusion, and that night had a bad
reaction and died. But the husband
never found out about it, because he died before she did.”
“Oh,
my god,” the young woman said.
T.
J. nodded. “I told you it was
sad. See, the man, he didn’t know
it, but he had a brain aneurysm.
You know, a bulge in a blood vessel wall. It made him kind of lose it – I guess it was pressing on
some part of his brain that made him hallucinate, or something. The people he worked with said he’d
been acting kind of paranoid. And
I’m sure the fact of his wife being so sick didn’t help. So when his wife was in the hospital,
he came home, and for some reason poured about ten bags of cement down the
well. Completely ruined it.” T. J. looked at the house in a thoughtful
way. “He had a stroke afterwards –
I guess the strain was just too much for him. They found him in the driveway, surrounded by empty bags of
cement powder. So he and his wife
died on the same day, and neither one had any idea.”
“Wow,”
she said. “That is so tragic.”
T.
J. smiled. “Look, I’m sorry I
brought it up. Like you said, though,
you might have found out about it from a neighbor, or something, so I’d rather
be honest and tell you up front.
Honesty is my policy.” He
gestured toward the driveway. “And
the well was redug – it wouldn’t have been saleable without working plumbing,
right? Works fine. It’s been tested by the health
department. Nothing but pure,
clean water down there.”
“That’s
what counts,” the young man said.
“Exactly,”
T. J. said. “Want to see the
inside?”