The Waters of Life

by Michael H. Kelly

  “Well, shucks,” said Gaunt, with a dismissive shrug. “Jenny here's always telling me I've got out of the wrong side of bed. Aren't you, darling?”

  “Sure, Dad,” Jenny growled, “though this time we do appear to be right up shit creek.”

  “You really think the government isn't prepared for this sort of bollocks?” said Gaunt. “There's nothing to worry about. They'll send the troops in, there'll be a lot of shooting and burning of bodies, then it'll all be over and we can pop out again. It's just like a human outbreak of foot and mouth, that's all, they'll be uppity for a while about spreading infection, but it'll all die down and go away. You mark my words.”

  “As I said,” muttered Bell, “Wulfred chose his tool well.”

  Gaunt scowled but said nothing further, his hand tightening around the gun he had picked up.

  When they reached the table and chairs, they all slumped down to catch their breath. Milder produced a camping stove and kettle from a musty old cupboard. He punctured the gas canister and lit the stove, filling the kettle from a bottle of water. “We don't have much,” he said, “but there's tea and sugar and some beans and tinned fruit here. Only powdered milk, though, I'm afraid.”

  “A cup of tea would be lovely,” said Ellwood, gratefully accepting any reminder of normalcy.

  “Yes, it would, I'm sure we're all parched,” said Eric. “But would you mind explaining what we're doing down here? Do we actually have a plan, or are we just hiding away?”

  “We're hiding away for an hour or two, just to make sure the infected puppets of Wulfred's will have left the area,” explained Bell. “Then we can deal with him and silence his will.”

  “How are we going to accomplish that?” asked Eric.

  “There are two ways,” said Milder. “The first is to seal him away in stone, as our Brothers tried to do a thousand years ago. Obviously, that didn't work. Although his will was stifled, he still managed to channel the spring to burst through his sarcophagus. The water became a means of extending his influence back into the world. We have spent the last thousand years keeping that influence suppressed. But now so many people have tasted the water that his will can flit among them unfettered, urging them on to do his bidding. And every new person they infect increases his power. When his mind is free, his body doesn't need to be. The other way is to destroy him with fire. He must be burnt utterly to ashes and the ashes must be sealed in concrete and buried in the deepest bowels of the earth.”

  “How is he even still alive?” protested Ellwood. “Why hasn't God judged him and cast him into Hell?”

  “His will refuses to give itself up to death,” said Bell. “God will judge him eventually, but he remains a bound ghost, festering in his tomb, the diseased substance of his body held together by the sheer joy of suffering and the burning need to inflict pain and corruption upon the innocent. We must do our duty and destroy him, then God will claim his soul, when no fragment of foul flesh remains for it to cling to.”

  “We're not talking about a little bonfire either,” insisted Milder. “A pyre like that which consumed Peter the leper wouldn't suffice for his tormentor. We need a huge blaze, an extremity of heat which will evaporate flesh and reduce bone to powder. His body must be reduced to nothing but neutral ash, no solid elements remaining.”

  “So we'll need fuel?” said Eric.

  “And lots of it,” nodded Milder. “We can siphon the tanks of the film vehicles.”

  “You're welcome,” said Gaunt, grinning sarcastically.

  Diane backed away from the hideously grinning figure who advanced upon her, entering her home. She reached the stairs and began stumbling up them backwards.

  “Don't worry, Diane,” called Sandra, stopping at the foot of the stairs. “I'm not going to hurt you. Didn't I tell you I was going to help you? Eric told you that too, didn't he? I'm going to take you to him. Don't you want to see him?”

  “No … no...” moaned Diane. “He told me to stay here. There's something wrong with you, anyone can see that. You're not here to help. You keep away from me!”

  “I'm not going to come anywhere near you,” smiled Sandra. Then her eyes turned hard. “Someone else is going to do that, Diane. Someone much closer to home.”

  “Hello, Mum,” said a voice from behind Diane. She spun on her heel, wobbling dangerously on the step. Heather had appeared from her room, silently descending to stand directly behind her. Her daughter looked dreadful, her eyes yellowed and ringed with sunken shadow. Snot dribbled continuously from her nose and her complexion was so discoloured that it was almost pale green.

  “Careful, Mum, we wouldn't want you to fall,” said Heather in pleasant tones. She stretched out her arms and Diane shuddered in pity and revulsion. The skin of her arms was sagging and thickening, hanging in ripples as if it was the sleeve of a baggy jumper that had been pushed up because it was too long. The skin was chalky white in colour and gave off a faint but foul odour.

  “Dear God, Heather, what in Heaven's name has happened to you?” sobbed Diane. She wanted to hug her daughter, but simply clutched at the air ineffectually, too repelled to make contact.

  “You're wobbling, Mum,” said Heather. “You need to take more care on the stairs. Here, let me steady you.” She reached out before Diane could stop her, cupping her mother's face in her cold, nerveless hands.

  Diane took a rushing in-breath. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't. She could feel the changes taking place in the cells of her body, which were responding to the contagion at an incredible rate. She knew that lesions would start showing on her skin in mere minutes. She was aware of something else too: an insidious, evil mind that touched her own, tormenting her and laughing at her. whispering sick promises of what the disease would do to her. But unlike many of the infected, it didn't seek to influence her or steer her, it was content to taunt. The first wave of infected were necessarily taken over by Wulfred's will, directed to spread his contagion as his footsoldiers. But Diane was the first of the second wave, in whom he merely rode as a mocking passenger, leaving them with sufficient free will and awareness to truly suffer from their condition. At last, the scream came, hoarse and rattling, bringing phlegm and thick mucus up with it from her lungs, which were already clogged with foulness.

  Diane's legs gave way beneath her and she fell, tumbling down the stairs to land at Sandra's feet. She cracked her elbow agonisingly against the banister on her way down and she lay at the foot of the stairs, weeping.

  Sandra reached down and seized Diane by the hair, pulling her back onto her feet. Clumps of hair came loose in her hands, exposing white, flaking scalp.

  “Oh Diane, there's no need to be so panicky,” Sandra said thickly, her own tongue beginning to swell and blacken now. “I haven't lied to you at all. I'm going to take you and Heather to see Eric right now. Won't that be lovely?”

  Then Heather was behind Diane again, hoisting her up by looping her own arms under her armpits. Diane almost screamed when she felt her daughter's skin sliding loosely about, like gangrenous sheaths upon her bones. Then she was bundled outside and towards Sandra's car. The screams finally came, long and loud and shrill, when she saw the festering mounds that were the barely recognisable Wilmot women, waiting on the back seat of the vehicle.

  Sadie oozed out of the car and Heather and Sandra bundled Diane into the middle of the back seat, Sadie climbing awkwardly back in beside her, so that she couldn't try to escape. But Diane was too far gone to try anything, sobbing uncontrollably as she sat in the sticky puddle of ichor that coated her seat.

  Sandra got in and started the engine, as Heather slid into the passenger seat beside her, still smiling broadly, a radiant beam upon her ruined face.

  “Okay then,” said Sandra happily as she drove off, “next stop, the monastery!”

  They sat in silence, deep beneath the earth, in the stillness of the catacombs, each alone with their thoughts now that the Brothers had finished giving their account of things.

  Finally
, Jenny could stand the hush no longer. The tension was building inside her and she blurted out the question that had been playing on her mind for the past hour or more, ever since Bell and Milder had explained the situation – or their version of the situation, she still hadn't decided if she was buying all this mystical tripe.

  “So what about me?” she demanded. “What happens to me? Why haven't I become diseased?”

  “Why should you?” asked Milder.

  “Because I've been close to the sick,” she said. “Closer than most anyone else. I've touched a couple of them. So am I gonna get sick? 'Cos if you two guys figure you'll pop a bullet in my head, I'll fuck you both over right now.”

  “You'd have to be fast, girl,” said Bell nonchalantly, producing his pistol and aiming between her eyes with lightning speed. He held it steady for a moment or two, then tucked it back away. “But who knows? If it was before they all lost their own minds and started following Wulfred's directions, maybe they weren't contagious enough? Or maybe you will get sick. I don't know, can't help you. But if you do, you'll beg us to kill you.”

  “Fuck off!” spat Jenny. “I'm a fighter, I never give in. You'd never find me begging for death.”

  Eric was taking an interest in this turn in the conversation. “Perhaps you're immune somehow?” he suggested. “If so, we should get you to a hospital, have some tests done, they could discover an antidote.”

  “You've been watching too many lame movies,” said Bell. “It's never that simple. Not ever. In any case, there's no immunity to this disease.”

  “I don't know so much,” said Milder, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Like all diseases, this conglomeration of infection can be passed on in a variety of ways: some of its constituents may be transmissible by touch, others by airborne droplets. But all of these methods usually require quite extensive exposure unless you're unlucky, and then they can take quite some time to incubate. So you may still have picked up something unpleasant the good, old-fashioned way and won't realise it for several days or weeks yet, but you'd have to be unlucky to have done so. However, this is no normal disease. Back in the bad old days, when he was a living, breathing person, Wulfred had to rely on those unreliable and slow working infection methods I've just mentioned. But now... This outbreak is a psychic contagion, Wulfred's will reaching out to plant the seeds of disease in the mind, which generate physical symptoms incredibly quickly. The more horrified, frightened and low spirited the victim is, the faster the disease takes root and manifests itself; it can be practically instantaneous in the most suggestible cases. But not everyone is susceptible to Wulfred's will, just as not everyone is susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. We've just heard Miss Gaunt's assertion that she's a fighter and she never gives in. She'd likely just shrug off any insinuations of Wulfred's that tried to worm their way into her mind. Perhaps she is immune? Not from the risk of physical contagion, but at least from the psychic command to sicken?”

  “I didn't bring my daughter up to bend the knee to anybody,” said Gaunt proudly. “Not even me.”

  “So I could just walk out of here?” asked Jenny.

  “I wouldn't blame you if you did,” said Eric. “And I don't like the methods used by these two characters any more than you do. I think poor old Ellwood has been traumatised by the depths they'll stoop to as well. Just look at him, sitting there praying. He never imagined anything like this, poor sod. But I'd rather you stayed. Your determination can boost the determination of all of us, maybe give us a lift to beat this thing, to nail this psychic vampire once and for all. Plus, you're still vulnerable to physical infection. It's probably best to wait for a while at least. I don't fancy getting too close to any of those victims, do you?”

  “And what if the government decide to take extreme measures to contain the outbreak?” asked Gaunt with a mocking grin, leaning forward. “Have you considered that? We're in a remote rural district, with a low population, just a handful of villages. So what if they decide to sacrifice us for the greater good, wipe this thing out altogether? Maybe they'll drop an air fuel bomb, or a small nuke? What then? It's no comfort being clear of disease if we get reduced to smoke and ashes, is it now?”

  Milder nodded slowly. “It is unlikely,” he said, “I fear the contagion will spread too fast to be contained in this way, and the government will not wish to court the unpopularity of such an extreme action if its success was not assured. However, if they were to act quickly enough, it would indeed utterly incinerate Wulfred's tomb and remains and thus solve our problem. That would be most satisfactory.”

  Bell nodded vigorously in agreement.

  “Satisfactory, my arse!” bellowed Gaunt, slamming his fist down on the table. “I say we get out of here now!”

  “Out of the question,” snapped Bell. “We need to make our plans and wait for the most opportune moment to put them into effect.”

  “Actually, I think we may not have much choice in the matter,” said Eric, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as his brain deciphered the implications of faint sounds that had been nagging at his subconscious for the past few minutes.

  Sandra parked her car alongside the Tel's Star Productions make-up trailer. She and the others stepped out, Heather supporting her mother, whose legs were giving way beneath her, overcome by a paralysing numbness. Diane whimpered and moaned, the deadening of her nerves at least giving her some relief from the unbearable anguish caused by the purple-black buboes that had swollen monstrously around her neck, armpits and groin, and the gnawing agony as her fingers and toes blackened and lost their circulation.

  “Don't become too delirious, Diane, dear,” said Sandra brightly. “We want you to enjoy your reunion with your lover, don't we? He'll be here soon, don't you worry about that.”

  She led the way towards the monastery and walked unerringly, but painfully, to the rubble-strewn room which had once been the old library. Her legs were now beginning to swell with fluid, thickening like tree trunks, hideously out of place on her slender frame. At the same time, the flesh of her face, arms and torso was withering and becoming pinched and cadaverous, lurching along on bloated legs like two tubular sacks filled with lumpy porridge. Her lips were eaten away by disease, leaving her permanent, gloating smile framed by blackened, blood-crusted scabs. She was barely recognisable as the beautiful woman she had been when she had gone to bed just the previous night.

  Sandra made no attempt to open the entrance to the catacombs. She simply stood and waited, watching it, accompanied by Heather, Diane and the Wilmots. It would be a generous soul who could now recognise Sadie as ever having been a human being.

  As they stood and waited, other ruined victims came lurching into the library, establishing a semi-circular perimeter around the concealed flagstone entrance, but keeping their distance from it. Contrary to the Brothers' expectations, Wulfred was sending some of his most susceptible meat puppets back to the monastery. Had they been aware of this, Bell and Milder would have wondered how he could possibly have known they were there, and how the evil abbot planned to extract them from the catacombs. They were soon to find out.

  “Be quiet!” said Eric in a loud whisper, gesticulating with his arm to shut the others up. Gaunt was still feeling angry, but he hadn't missed the implication that Eric agreed with his insistence upon leaving, so he finally shut up long enough to listen.

  There was apparent silence for a minute, but even this was punctuated by sounds so tiny yet so threatening that they caused all present, except possibly Bell and Milder, to shiver in apprehension.

  Then the first clear noises began to be heard from the gloom of the tunnels. There were faint dragging sounds, pitiful whimperings and little sobs. And with these sounds came an odour, subtle at first, but growing by the moment, a sickly sweet stench of decay, with a hint of the bitterest sourness.

  “It can't be!” said Bell, aghast, slowly rising to his feet.

  “Why not?” shouted Eric, also standing and facing the monk. “Why the hell
do you imagine they were preserved for all these centuries? He's been in them all along!”

  Then, out of the darkness the children came, dragging their poor, disfigured bodies. Their blood had ceased to pump centuries ago, but still their dry flesh clung to their bones, foetid and consumed by disease, the suffering that Wulfred had inflicted upon their innocent young bodies still gripping their souls and holding them prisoner in perpetual torture beyond the gates of death. Nothing had been able to release these delectable little treasures from Wulfred's hold, not even the stopping of their hearts.

  “What the fuck is this?!” shouted Gaunt, leaping to his feet and backpedalling away from the advancing children. Jenny also stood and moved away from them, an expression of utter horror on her face as fingerless, mitt-like hands groped for her.

  “I think your alarm clock has just sounded,” said Eric, trying to resist the bile that rose in his throat.

  “We have to get our of here – now!” said Milder, trying to usher them all back the way they had come.

  “That's what I've been trying to tell you,” said Gaunt.

  “There are too many of them to shoot,” said Bell, “and if we try to fend them off any other way, they're bound to touch us. If they do, we're dead, Wulfred has been rooted in them for a thousand years. We'd probably be dead in seconds.”

  The group retreated rapidly from the room. All except Ellwood, who sank to his knees in prayer. “No, no,” he wept. “This is too much. Not the children! Dear God, not the children!” He looked at Bell and Milder, his eyes flashing with rage through his tears. “I believed in you!” he shouted. “And all the while, you were keeping children like … this! And they were still alive and suffering for all this time! And you knew it!? May God have mercy on your souls, for there's none in mine for you!” He clasped his hands before him and closed his eyes tightly, whispering, “Suffer little children to come unto me...”