The Wells of Hell by Graham Masterton

Just as we reached the porch,
the rain came down in torrential sheets, drumming on the tarpaper roof over our
heads, gurgling in the gutters, and drifting across the lawns in ghosts of
spray.
    ‘Sure been a wet one this year,’
said Greg McAllister, taking out a pack of Camels and lighting up. ‘The back
end of my four-acre field is just about awash.’
    ‘You still farm?’ asked Dan.
    ‘I keep a couple of cows, but that’s
about it. And they’re just for scenery.’
    I leaned against the wooden planking
of the house and took off my baseball cap. ‘I never heard any stories about any
curse,’ I told him.
    ‘On the wells you mean?’ asked
McAllister, blowing out twin streams of smoke from his hairy nostrils. ‘Well,
it was a pretty old story, one of those real old folk stories that died out,
you know? Some of the people round here have heard about it, the geriatrics,
but most of them haven’t. New Milford ain’t the same place it was when I was a
boy.’
    ‘What kind of a curse was it?’ asked
Dan.
    Greg McAllister sniffed, ‘Well, it
was a kind of a rhyme, that was all I ever knew. My pa
used to tell it to me when I was going to sleep, when I was real small boy. He
said nobody round these parts ever drank the local well water, they always went
across to the Nepaug Reservoir with a tanker, and brought back their own, and
way before that they maybe went across to Squantz Pond. But they never drank
from their own wells, only used it for washing or irrigation or watering the
beasts.’
    I took out a cigarillo and lit it. I
was feeling slightly nauseous, and I wondered if maybe I’d eaten my steak
brochette too quickly. I had been in a nervy sort of condition, after all. I
could have done with a pint and a half of Pepto-Bismol, and a couple of packs
of Rol-Aids.
    ‘You smoke those things with the
plastic tips?’ asked Greg McAllister. ‘I heard those plastic tips could give
you cancer of the teeth.’
    ‘Cancer of the teeth}’ asked Dan.
    ‘That’s right. Plastic’s supposed to
be the biggest cause of cancer, bar cheese.’
    I glanced at Dan. It seemed like
Greg McAllister was slightly less than a reliable witness on the subject of
health. But Dan pulled a face as if to say, well, he’s the only witness we’ve
got. Out loud, he said to Greg: ‘Tell us about this rhyme, then, Greg. Can you
remember how it ran?’
    Greg smiled, a crinkly smile that folded his mouth like a used tissue. ‘I sure can. My pa
told me that rhyme over and over, every night of my boyhood, and I guess I
won’t forget how it ran until I’m stiff as a board and ready to meet my Lord.’
    He took a deep drag at his
cigarette, blew out smoke, and then said: ‘ The way it
went was this:
    “Don’t drink thee water, Drink thee
wine, Lest old Pontanpo’s curse Be thine.
    “We sup us not From Preston’s well, And so we keep Our skin from shell.” ‘
    Dan raised his eyebrows. He said to
Greg McAllister: ‘Your father told you that rhyme? How long- ago was that?’
    Greg rubbed his chin and thought.
‘I’m sixty-one come February, so I guess that was all of fifty years ago.’
    ‘Did he ever say what the words
meant?’ I asked him.
    Greg looked puzzled. ‘What they meant?’’
    ‘That’s right. Did he say what old
Pontanpo’s curse was, for instance? Or what keeping your skin from shell
meant?’
    The rain spattered on to the boards
of the porch. Greg shook his head slowly from side to side, and said: ‘I don’t
reckon he did. He may have done, when I was real young. But I sure don’t
remember any meaning. It never did occur to me to look for a meaning. The words
mean what the words mean, and that’s all.’
    ‘Can you guess what they mean?’ I
persisted.
    ‘Well, sure,’ he told me. ‘When it
says “drink thee wine”, it means you have to stay off the well water, and I
guess old Pontanpo was some kind of a Red Indian. It sounds like a Red Indian
name, don’t it? Maybe the Red Indians put some curse
on the