Evil Water and Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  It seemed so dark now. No one could possibly see him, even from a few feet away. His erection was almost painful.

  He loosened the coat; held himself. Sally’s after-image lingered. Almost immediately he ejaculated into the well.

  He went back to the house, and up to bed. Surely he had experienced a waking dream, a hysterical vision, a sort of self-hypnotism.

  Alicia stirred, and groaned.

  When he returned from Lederbury the following evening, Sally was loitering near the open five-bar gate of Hollyhocks. Paul swung the Saab in on to the shingle fronting the house and got out.

  “Hullo, Sally.” He felt himself flush.

  “Enjoy yourself on Lammas night?”

  “Urn,” he said.

  “See something”

  “Saw what I saw.” That sounded like a good country answer.

  “An’ you gave yourself t’ water,” she said, and walked away.

  Gave himself to water? He remembered how he had ejaculated into the well. She couldn’t have seen that; even if she had been there in the first place.

  After greeting Alicia briefly he hurried down the garden and stooped over the iron grille. Any stains which might have been his doing were indistinguishable from other marks. Suddenly he gripped the grille and wrestled it free. The bucket was still upside-down beside the well, with the rope coiled underneath. He dropped the bucket down deep and hauled water up, emptied it over the grass. Absurdly he felt that it was urgent to recover himself—his substance—from the well. He had hauled up and dumped a dozen bucketfuls without any sign of hitting bottom when Alicia walked up.

  “Funny homecoming! Did you lose something down it?”

  “Damn fountain-pen. Fell out.”

  “Isn’t that your fountain-pen?” Her ring finger pointed at his breast pocket.

  “Different one. Borrowed it from Tom at work. Now it’s gone.”

  “Are you sure it fell down the well?”

  “Course I’m sure!”

  “When? Just now?”

  “Ye … No, yesterday.”

  “Hence your sudden dash down the garden? Well, a pen would probably sink. So it’s lost. Better buy Tom a new one.”

  After that he could hardly continue trawling. Why was he trawling anyway?

  “Why guard dogs?” echoed Matt. “Look, Paul, if any idiot—burglar or vandal or industrial spy—broke in and breached the safe-handling area—”

  “Safe-handling?”

  “For experimental hormones. The tailored ones. We have to dump some concentrates in the furnace. Can’t have chickens sprouting four legs. Much as the poultry trade might appreciate it!”

  “Are you serious?”

  Matt paused before replying, “Course not. Drink up. My round.”

  *

  “I think we ought to have our baby christened properly,” said Alicia.

  Paul looked up, amazed, from his plate of beef bourguignon. “You’re joking.”

  “It seems vaguely appropriate, in an old village. Doesn’t commit us—or the baby—to anything. I was speaking to Hubert the other day.”

  “So the vicar’s been working on you?”

  “It wouldn’t do any harm. Picturesque ceremony. Grandparents would like it. Take snapshots.”

  “You wouldn’t get old Adrian trotting along.”

  “Do we want to? But you might be surprised.”

  “Astonished is more like it. You don’t believe the nonsense. It’s almost an insult to our child.”

  “Hardly. It’s part of belonging to the community. It’ll do us good.”

  “We already do belong.”

  “What you belong to, I don’t necessarily belong to. Late nights at the pub while I’m—”

  “Okay, okay. I’ve no bitingly radical objection. Mind, I think it’s disingenuous.”

  “Fancy word, that be,” she mocked in a broad accent which no one local actually used.

  “Okay. I give up.”

  “Good. Hubert will call round to chat to us.”

  “We don’t need to go to church for weeks on end, do we?”

  “Only the once.”

  The baby was due in late October. Autumn was an Indian summer with warm still nights, the temperature only dipping two or three degrees. In the garden of Hollyhocks, hollyhocks reared high their spikes of rose and burgundy flowers, blooms made out of crepe paper by slightly clumsy children.

  On the first Friday in October Paul was in the White Hart as ever, though he had promised a terminally pregnant Alicia not to stay too late. Sally wasn’t in the pub; he hadn’t spotted her since the day he had tried to bail out the well. Glancing at his watch, he found to his surprise that it was going on for eleven.

  “I’ll be off, Matt. I’ll just win a fortune on the way out. I’ll bust its guts.”

  “Give the bugger hell, boy.”

  The gambling machine in the hall had been changed. Odd that he hadn’t noticed this on his way in. He recalled how earlier the village lads had been clustered round it.

  No wonder; the new machine was named STRIPTEASE.

  Each letter in the word overlayed a woman in successive states of undress. Numbered fruits on the win line caused that number of letters to light up. Instead of a query mark to signal a random chance there was a sinuous nude with one hand across her breasts, the other clutched between her thighs.

  He fed in coins, hoping for a hold so that he could complete the word and light up the flashing option features allowing him to “stroke” or “grope” or “thrust” his way towards jackpot.

  Ronnie had already doused the hall lights, leaving the STRIPTEASE machine alone lit up, bright and pulsing. As Paul played, racking up nine letters of the word before losing them again, the stripper’s face began more and more to resemble Sally’s. He won minor prizes and fed them back, then more change from his pocket. His pulse was racing. He must succeed in stripping Sally, to be able to stroke or grope or thrust his way to victory.

  A query-nude popped into place. Lights ran along the STRIPTEASE panel, inviting, denying. He thumped the button; the word lit as far as STRIP. The nude held, and he scored fruit worth two apiece. He couldn’t lose. He thumped the START button. T-E-A-S-E lit up. The machine played an electronic fanfare. Lights flashed from “thrust” to “stroke” to “grope”. He punched “stroke”. Softly softly catchee monkey. Reels clicked up and down. Three nudes appeared. The machine played “Kiss Me Tender”. A hitherto blank panel came to life, showing Sally lying stark naked, spread-eagled on a bed. The pay-out slot began to ejaculate tokens.

  “Triumph, eh, boy?” Matt poked his head round the door.

  Hot—yet why should he feel guilty?—Paul stared back at the machine.

  It was the same machine as last time: STOWAWAY. The glass frontage showed a sailing-ship with an angry captain and sailors chasing a stowaway who was trying to reach the jackpot hold. There had never been any such machine as STRIPTEASE. Yet he had played it for ten minutes. He had believed he was playing it. He must be drunk, so drunk that he was seeing things. He didn’t feel specially drunk. The flashing lights in the dark of the hall must somehow have mesmerized him, put him in a trance in which he hallucinated. He staggered against the heavy box in shock—as if embracing it. He realized he had an erection. Turning to hide this, he fled towards the door to let himself out into the protective darkness.

  “Hey! How about your winnings?”

  “Cash them in for me, Matt, will you? Have a drink. A short. I just remembered I’m expecting a phone call.”

  He stared up at the flood of the Milky Way. The big dipper pointed the way back home.

  Diamond-frost stars, those! However, the night was much milder than those sharp stars diagnosed. No need to zip his coat. On the contrary, he felt overheated, sought the caress of the breeze.

  He tried to forget about the striptease machine but couldn’t. An electronic succubus, all of his own imagining. …

  At Pook Corner, a shadow detached itself from th
e bushes.

  “Ev’nin’, Mister Philips.”

  “Sally!” He smelt musky perfume. She was wearing that raincoat, buttoned up to the neck; boots on her feet.

  “Did you get a jackpot, then?”

  “What?” he gasped. He often played the machine in the pub; the good old STOWAWAY. She would know that.

  “Oh I knew, Paul. I could feel your fingers on the buttons, couldn’t I? Touching and pushing. Holding and stroking. I’m sensitive, remember?”

  Telepathy, thought Paul. Unless somehow Sally caused his hallucination.

  She bumped up against him, and he began to kiss her. His hand roved down her back, circulated around her buttocks. He was sure she was wearing nothing under the coat. She ground her loins against his, groaning faintly, as a cat growls over a mouse it has caught. He seemed to hear liquid running from her, down her legs. Juices, from the excited wetness in her. No, it was the stand-pipe near by. … That was still leaking vigorously despite the Parish Council’s efforts at volunteer repair.

  She resisted. “Rose Cottage is empty. I have the back-door key with me.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’ve lots of old keys, Paul. Keys going back for centuries. Come with me.”

  So he went.

  She tugged him by the hand, up twisty pitch-black stairs which she seemed to know well. Only a carpet and open curtains remained in the starlit room she drew him into; plus an abandoned single mattress lying by the wall.

  She kicked off her boots, dropped her coat. Naked Sally began to unbutton him, unzip him, stroke him and lick him. His body was someone else’s—hers. It was behaving as it wanted to behave. As she wanted it to behave. His muscles and nerves rippled like harp strings, playing water-music. Soon he had entered her, upon the mattress; soon he pumped himself into her.

  Sally was whispering. “Blamed her for the Plague, bloody fools. So they ducked her. That’s what they did to women as they thought was witches. Or as they knew to be. Not that witches did ’em harm. Helped ’em. Kept their waters sweet. Trussed her up tight, they did, and tossed her in Pook Pond with a rope to haul her out again if the fancy took them. If she sank, she wasn’t a witch, see. They might pull her ashore afore she drowned; or after. She was guilty if she floated.

  “Huh. A girl with water-magic floated on Pook Pond all right. What did they do then? Well, what?”

  “Built a bonfire?” Paul asked reluctantly.

  What was she telling him? That she, Sally, had been a witch in an earlier life? That she’d been reborn—into a family which could well have lived here ever since medieval times? A—how appropriate—a Baptist family. When she was barely knee-high she’d rediscovered her affinity for certain water. …

  “Naw. Witches weren’t burnt in this country. Just heretics was. Ord’narily they hanged witches.”

  “So they hanged the poor girl.”

  “Naw. They had a bright idea. Boiled me alive in a cauldron. Till I scalded to death. Till the flesh floated off me bones. Then they fed the stew to the hogs.”

  “You …”

  A thought crossed his mind. Could those ignorant peasants of an earlier epoch have guessed that the boiling of water killed off any harm in it? Any germs, or imps? Was there something in the spring-water? Down the well? And in Pook Pond? Some sort of collective microscopic life? Some … spirit? Yes, like those spirits which the Greeks believed had haunted pools. An ancient force which could enter its devotee and permeate her waters? This was a spirit which, in Sally’s saliva when she wished ill, could blind a boy. …

  “That was their mistake. When they ate those hogs, they ate me. So I come back. An’ I keeps comin’ back. As I came to Master Humphrey.”

  “What?”

  “Humphrey Barton. When we made love, him and me, he promised he’d build me a temple for our water. Ours. Later on he said he’d heat the water. He’d boil it. I remembered how I’d been boiled alive; an’ I hated him for that. I’ll never drink tea, you know. Or coffee. Only milk and fruit drinks. An’ spring-water.”

  Paul felt afraid. He had to leave, get away.

  “You can bail me out from this bloody boring village,” she murmured. “I’ve waited. I’ve watched out. You’re the one. Knew you’d turn up. Water showed me.”

  “Sally, I’m just an insurance manager, not a millionaire.”

  “That’ll do. Lots of money in insurance.”

  “Cheques; not cash. Electronic money. I don’t have any safe I can rob, and run off with the loot to South America or whatever mad idea—!”

  “Never asked you to. I’m not a fool. Think I’d want to be Mrs Paul Philips the Second for years? I deserve more. You’re going to sell my Mum and Dad insurance. Lots of it. Hundred thousand. To look after their little girl in case of accident. Instead of ‘Let’s trust in the Lord’! The water in their tea’ll persuade them. Next it’ll poison them, same as it poisoned those dumb buggers once before. I’ve the power, you know. You saw on Lammas. Want to watch the other scene? Where those bastards dunked and boiled their wise girl? I could arrange it.”

  “I don’t want to. No.”

  “While it happens I’ll go away for a week or two. I’ll be staying with me aunt in Scotland. You’ll not make any fuss about the claim.”

  She was deranged. Dangerous. But he believed her. No, there wasn’t a “spirit” in the spring which fed Pook Pond. Couldn’t be. There was a spirit in her. A talent. A terrible power. A knowledge.

  In Rose Cottage that night he’d given his substance to her—his living fluid—far more directly than he’d done at the well on Lammas midnight.

  “I suppose you fancy living it up in London? Or is it Monte Carlo? Or New York? You’d be leaving your pond, your source. A … priestess surely can’t do that.”

  “Think so, Paul? I carry me water with me. In me bladder, in me veins. In every watery cell of me body. And think! You’d have me out of the way. You could live tame again. Maybe you don’t want that, eh?” Her hand aroused him, despite all. “An’ I’ll be wild if I don’t get what I want. Wild.”

  Yes. And he would be an accessory to murder, as well as a partner in fraud.

  Finally he escaped. He didn’t arrive home till two o’clock, creeping in quiet as a mouse. As usual Alicia had left some lights on. Hastily he killed those in case she woke and spotted the alarm clock.

  She did stir. “Paul? That you?”

  “Me.”

  “Wha’s time?” Already he could hear that she had turned over again.

  “Bit after twelve,” he murmured. “Night.”

  He dreamt he was heading down the garden towards the well. A fierce suction drew him against his will; a powerful, dragging draft. If only he could break free, run back to the safety of Hollyhocks, slam and bolt the door. When he looked desperately for reassurance the house was no longer there. Other cottages loomed in the night, rough stone hovels thatched with straw. In vain he dug in his heels; he seemed to slide over the grass—till he came up against the wall of the well, which he gripped limply. His hands were jelly, meat boiled off a bone. How the mouth of the well dragged at him, the air current kissing and sucking. The deep dark well: down in its black-water depths was death. And something worse; something prehuman and vile that would swallow his mind and play with it, during gibbering, insane eternity.

  Terror woke him, sweating. He slid from bed, hurriedly felt his way to the toilet (somehow avoiding the hands of darkness), switched on the light. He sat a long time, reading a travel magazine.

  Finally he dared turn off the light and creep back to bed.

  He was woken, what seemed moments later, by inhuman nasal screaming. Hogs were fighting over the swill of the witch’s boiled flesh and guts. It was still dark. Then he recognized the grind of a truck engine, the groan of springs and chassis.

  Pigs on their way to be slaughtered.

  Pigs crowded on to two tiers of Sam Langley’s huge old truck, which was cornering, heading up the village.

  The pi
gs were fighting because they were packed in with strangers. And were shit-scared. They’d been driven from hot, wallowing, smelly sleep in their intensive-rearing shed into another world, a chilly, tight, roaring, swerving alien world where they could only scream; but their desperate panic shrieks wouldn’t help. The rumble of the truck and the squealing quickly receded. How much more hygienic—for the human inhabitants—than in the nineteenth century when the pigs roamed free, and might bite a paralytic peasant boozer’s hand in half.

  He lay thinking about witchcraft. A witch needed you to believe in her powers, wasn’t that so? And it helped if she owned some part of you. A hank of hair. A nail-clipping. Semen, blood. Or else nothing would happen. Unfortunately he did believe in Sally Dingle. Since Lammas night. Since the STRIPTEASE machine.

  Those “experiences” had been caused by auto-hypnosis. By his own mind. Surely.

  Begin to disbelieve, then! Command yourself to be a sceptic!

  How?

  He spent the next few days exercising his sceptical faculty. He rehearsed a certain inevitable encounter.

  As he was driving back home through the village a week later, at six-thirty, the headlights of the Saab picked up Sally walking towards the White Hart. He stopped the car beside her, beneath the illuminated inn-sign.

  He spoke harshly. “Now you listen to me. Your parents won’t be taking out any policies with Life Mutual, ever. That’s the end of it all. Understand?”

  Her eyes moistened. She didn’t seem to be crying, exactly. Her voice was as cool as the evenings had now become.

  “The end, is it? Maybe you need some more … incentive.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Didn’t say what kind of incentive, did I? Wasn’t necessarily offerin’ you another night in Rose Cottage.”

  “You can no more threaten me than you can bribe me. I’d deny everything. Wild fantasies of yours.”

  “Wild, yes.”

  “No one would believe that we had, well …”

  He oughtn’t to have halted under the lit-up sign. He could always say, if challenged, that Sally had recently been accosting him in a totally silly way. He hadn’t told anyone, so as not to upset Alicia at a critical time. So as not to lose face with the Boys. They too would have refused Sally’s advances; but you had to pretend otherwise.