'Umh-humh? That damn thermometer's here someplace.'
    'Larry,' repeated Sheriff Wilkes. 'What's the matter with the kid's back? Is that 
bruising, or what?'
    Lawrence Dunn adjusted his spectacles and looked down at Oliver's exposed back and 
buttocks. He squinted closer, and then he touched the boy's skin, very gently, with his 
fingertips. 'Hand me a flashlight,' he said.
    Dan and I both stepped nearer as one of the deputies gave Lawrence his light. Sheriff 
Wilkes said: 'Don't crowd him, huh?' but he pushed forward himself and bent down so that 
he could see what Lawrence was doing.
    The deputy coroner pulled Oliver's pyjamas open even further, and what he revealed in 
the bright, theatrical light of the torch made my stomach rise and tighten. One of the 
deputies whispered: 'Jesus-what in hell's name is that?'
    Around the small of Oliver's back, and around his buttocks and upper thighs, his skin 
had taken on a hard, shell-like appearance. Each buttock, instead of being round and 
soft, was now a plate of greeny-grey horn, and dark lumps were forming along the spine. 
Where his thighs met his buttocks there was a gristly, lobster-like joint. Lawrence, his 
hands shaking, turned the boy's body back over again, and we could see that where his 
sexual organs had once been, there was instead a spiny array of blue and green 
crustaceous filaments.
    We were all silent. We stood around Oliver's body in the light of those police 
torches, gathered together in that dark, sodden house, and none of us knew what to do or 
what to say. Lawrence at last stood up, tugging the wet cloth of his pants away from his 
knees, and taking off his spectacles.
    Outside, the wind blew sadly; and inside, the rugs and the carpets sponged up the 
water with a slow ticking sound. Sheriff Wilkes cleared his throat.
    'I think we have an idea what may have happened here,' said Dan, in a low, almost 
inaudible voice.
    Lawrence Dunn looked at him, but Carter couldn't take his eyes off the dull sheen of 
the scales on Oliver's body.
    'If you think you have an idea, you'd better spit it out,' said
    Carter.
    'It's the whole reason we came up here,' Dan explained. 'The Bodines were complaining 
about discoloration in their water-supply, and Mason here brought me a sample to test. I 
found some kind of organism in it, a microscopic creature that kept giving off a 
yellowy-greeny fluid.'
    'Did you identify it?' asked Lawrence.
    Dan shook his head. 'I didn't have time. One of the mice in my laboratory drank some 
of it by accident while Mason and I were out, and when we came back-well, the same thing 
had happened to the mouse that's happened to poor young Oliver
    here.'
    'So you think he's been drinking the water and it's made him turn all shell-backed 
like this?' asked Carter.
    'There's no definitive proof, not yet.'
    'Do you think it might affect anybody else's water supply?' Lawrence wanted to know.
    'I haven't any idea,' said Dan. 'But just to be safe, I'd try to put out a warning if 
I were you, telling the local folks to stick to bottled water for the time being. Until I 
find out what these organisms are, and why they affect people this way, then I think we 
have to assume that the whole community's in danger.'
    Carter looked down at Oliver's jointed thighs, and slowly shook his head. 'I'll be 
damned if I've ever seen anything like that before.'
    One of the deputies, Erroll, a young sandy man with a ginger moustache, came up from 
downstairs with a radio message from the volunteers out looking for the Denton boy. As 
soon as he walked into the room, he said: 'My God, what's that smell?'
    'Smell?' asked Carter.
    'That smell of bad fish. Hasn't it hit you?'
    
    
    Three
    
    
    I was living, temporarily, in a stone-and-weatherboard weekend house just outside of 
New Milford, on the back road to New Preston. The house belonged to my lawyer, the same 
lawyer who had handled my divorce for me, but he rarely came up from the city these days, 
not since he'd broken up with his mistress. I used to live over a macrame and pottery 
store just across from the foodliner store in the centre of New Milford, but the lease 
had expired and the landlord had wanted the place for his aged sister. Shelley and I, 
rather than argue, had packed our bags and our ballcocks and our lengths of piping, and 
moved out.
    Still, Shelley liked it out at New Preston. There was a small farm right opposite, 
where black-and-white cows grazed in the foggy fall mists and that meant there were 
plenty of mice to be played with. And the place was quiet, too. So quiet that you could 
step out of the back door at night and take a deep breath of that chilly Connecticut air, 
and hear nothing at all but scurrying leaves.
    I didn't get back to the house until it was almost dawn. I parked the Country Squire 
on the sloping driveway, and climbed tiredly out. Shelley stretched himself out like a 
watch-spring, and climbed after me. I'd named him Shelley after the poet Shelley, who had 
written: 'How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!' It never took a genius to 
figure out why.
    It was cold in the hallway when I opened the front door. The log fire had long since 
died away, and there was nothing in the hearth but a pile of grey ashes. I kept on my red 
baseball cap and my sheepskin coat while I shovelled the ashes away, and stacked fresh 
logs on the firedogs. I crumpled up a copy of the New Milford paper and put a match to 
it. Shelley watched me from the sofa with an expression of haughty impatience.
    Next, I went into the kitchen, which looked out over the sloping back yard, and put 
on the kettle. I needed a cup of coffee and a dose of Jack Daniel's. I stood by the 
window staring out at the grey and unwelcoming dawn, and thought about poor young Oliver 
Bodine and his missing parents.
    Carter Wilkes had put out an alert for Jimmy and Alison, and he had distributed their 
description to the volunteers who were already searching for Paul Denton. He had also 
sent his deputies around, knocking on doors and instructing people around the New Milford 
and Washington Depot area not to drink their own well water. There was going to.be radio 
and television bulletins, too, although all that Carter had told the news services so far 
was that the danger came from a possible sewerage leak. As for Oliver's death and Jimmy 
and Alison's disappearance, he had played those completely straight. Oliver had died 'in 
a-domestic accident', and Jimmy and Alison were being sought 'in order to aid police 
inquiries'.
    Carter had made no public mention of the crustaceous growth on Oliver's back and 
thighs, neither had he given the Press any leads on Dan's investigations of the mouse and 
the Bodine well water. 'The last thing I want around here is a goddamned flying-saucer 
panic,' he had remarked.