Posts tagged ‘plumbing problems’
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XVII
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XVII
I now knew the source of our plumbing problems. I also had a sickening feeling I’d discovered what happened to Marcus Worthy and to our cat Molly. I was also sure our plumber Dave was no longer servicing anyone’s plumbing. We took Jack to the hospital. He was in pretty bad shape, but the doctors say he should recover.
I next notified the police and got a contractor who immediately sealed all the drains so we would not have a return visit. Finally, we had the old septic tank removed and a new one installed. Once all this work was accomplished, we checked out of the hotel where we were staying and returned home.
A week went by, and we got a call from Jack’s doctor saying Jack was well enough to be released from the hospital. Laura and I left to pick him up. Jack was still quite sore, but ready to go home. On our ride back, I explained about the lab I had found and the source of the animal that had attacked him. I don’t know if he really understood, but he listened intently. As we pulled into his driveway, Jack looked over at our property. He took a moment to inspect the new look of our landscape then said; “I see the hill of dirt where they dug up your septic tank. But what the hell is that tall fence doing around the pond, with all those danger signs?”
“Oh, you mean that six-foot electrified fence around the pond?” I answered. “You see Jack,” I continue, “the septic old tank, when they dug it up – was empty.”
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PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XVI
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XVI
I ran to the master bath and saw a sight that defied description. There was Jack, wrapped in a huge set of tentacles. On the floor lay an animal with a body almost four feet across. The body was shaped like a star and from beneath the star, in its center, issued some sort of organ. Suddenly, what little I knew of marine biology came back to me. The way starfish digest their food flashed into my mind. They express their stomach from within their body, capture their prey and bring the digested meal back inside. On my bathroom floor was one of Worthy’s experiments – in the excited state.
I ran back to the kitchen to grab the meat cleaver, at the same time yelling to Laura, “Get Robin and both of you get out of the house!”
“What’s going on upstairs, and what was that scream?” she asked.
“Do what I say, damn it, there’s no time to explain,” I shouted. Laura fled the kitchen in search of Robin. I ran back to the master bath and started hacking at the tentacles. The star-jellyfish pulled its stomach back in and the tentacles slowly released Jack. He had passed out, probably from the combination of being constricted and the hundreds of stings he had endured. I pulled him out of the bathroom and while doing so witnessed an amazing spectacle. With its remaining tentacles, the creature pulled itself back up into the sink. Then, it went from the starfish state to a sink full of foul-smelling jellyfish ooze, and in a few minutes silently slid back down the drain.
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XV
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XV
I left the barn, and with the shadows lengthening, returned to the house for a shower and dinner. Laura was busy in the kitchen; I asked her if she has a minute and we sat over coffee and discussed my discovery. I spent a restless night but finally fell asleep and awoke to the smell of breakfast cooking. I headed downstairs and found Laura in the kitchen.
Greeting my lovely wife I said, “Beautiful morning, isn’t it honey?”
Laura half turned and replied, “Think again honey! All of the sinks are blocked.” And as she stepped away I could see the sink was full of dirty water. Can you do something?” she pleaded.
“Let me see if Jack has a snake,” I shouted over my shoulder as I ran out of the house.
Jack was in the garden as usual, and I had to shout a few times before I got his attention. “Do you have a snake?” I asked.
“Of course I’ve got a rake,” came his reply.
“No, a snake, a plumber’s snake,” I shouted.
“No need to shout, got one of those too,” came his answer. “Tell you what, let me find it and I’ll be right over and clear up your plumbing problems once and for all.”
I watched him go into his house and then ran back to mine. By now Laura was bailing the sink out into buckets. The smell was terrible. I had just thought – better you than me, when Laura shouted, “Go upstairs and check the master bedroom!”
Halfway up the stairs I was met by the same sickening smell that filled the kitchen. As I neared the bathroom, I saw an ever-increasing puddle coming from beneath the bathroom door. I glanced out the bedroom window and saw Jack walking over with his snake. I thought of shouting for him to hurry but knew it would be useless.
Jack stopped at the kitchen and put the snake down the drain, met with some resistance, then the drain cleared, and the water flowed down and away. He then went to each of the sinks in the house and met with the same success. As he started to work in the master bathroom, I mentioned that this was where the problem started and seemed to always return.
“I’ll just ream out the drain with the full length of the snake. Why don’t you run along and do something useful,” Jack quipped.
I went to the kitchen to make sure Laura was okay, and that the problem hadn’t returned. Then I entered my office to try to get a little work done before breakfast.
I was at work for no more than fifteen minutes, when I heard a blood-curdling scream; Jack was in big trouble.
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XIV
PLUMBING PROBLMS: PART XIV
What did he do with the animals once the experiment was terminated? Worthy only studied the animals when they were young and then projected the potency and yield of the adult animal. He did not keep the animals until they were mature. I thought of how I disposed of dead goldfish when I was a kid, why there were supposedly alligators roaming the sewers of New York. My thoughts return to my plumbing problems. Thank God this house is nowhere near the ocean, and that it has its own septic system. But there must be a connection between the septic system and the pond. That’s perhaps why Jack had seen fluorescence in the pond and that is how the creatures managed to survive.
I continued to read Worthy’s lab book, absorbed with the progress of his experiments. Then I came to the final few pages and photos. Worthy had found a substance made by jellyfish of interest. He also found a similar molecule in starfish. What followed were the technical details of creating a new creature. The data was accompanied by two photos, which I found both curious and interesting. One photo showed just a mass of tissue with the caption, resting state. The other photo was that of a jellyfish, but the likes of which no one had seen before. The body of the jellyfish had a star shape, rigid with tentacles jutting from the star tips. This photo had the caption, excitation state. His notes went on to explain the two states. Resting state was when the animal was not being stimulated by the presence of food. Excitation state was when the animal was hunting or sensing danger. It appeared that the animal was covered with millions of tiny scales. The scales were separated from each other during the resting state, but when the animal was excited, the scales interlocked giving the animal a solid body with flowing tentacles.
Before I knew it, I had spent hours going over his notes and photos. Going up the stairs, I took one more look around the lab and thought of the joy Worthy must have experienced in his subterranean laboratory, free from the inhibitions of corporate society.
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XIII
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XIII
The beginning of the lab book dealt with his theories, the purpose of his research. His interest was in natural products, but he wasn’t interested in the usual source that was exploited, plant life; he was interested in the natural peptides found in marine life. His work took yet another turn. Once a molecule was discovered in a plant demonstrating its promise in fighting a disease, chemists would take over and refine the molecule, increasing its potency until they had a drug. Worthy’s method was quite different. When he found a peptide in an animal that he felt he could improve upon, he searched for another animal that produced a similar peptide that would complement the actions of the first. The product, he hoped, would be more potent than the sum of the two individual peptides. He would isolate the DNA from the two animals, then cut and splice the DNA, inject the DNA into a DNA depleted sea urchin egg and await the results. If he met with any success, the result would be an animal the likes of which the world had never seen. He would also make an insert that would allow the animal to have an increased response to growth hormone – the bigger the animal the more the peptide to harvest. Worthy then created the correct environment for the cells to start multiplying. Soon an embryo was formed, and then the animal itself.
Along with his notes were Polaroid photos of the resulting animals. One experiment combining two creatures of interest was the union of the genes of a hammerhead shark and a catfish found in Florida.
Hammerhead shark, I thought to myself. I recalled the description of the fish Jack had found. “Had a head shaped like a pipe,” he said. A hammerhead shark, in an advanced state of decomposition, with its body twisted might look like an animal with a head shaped like a pipe. One aspect of this combination really frightened me, and that was the curious properties of the catfish part of this animal. This catfish was able, when the water in which it lived began drying up, to walk short distances using its fins. I recalled when ‘JAWS’ was first published and then made into a movie; people thought the ocean wasn’t safe. If this critter got loose, not only would the water not be safe, but the shore as well. I continued to read the lab book and look at the pictures of bizarre animals. Many entries finished with the comment – results unsatisfactory, experiment terminated.
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XI
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XI
It was fall now: time to harvest what our garden has produced, cut and split firewood and get ready for the winter, our first winter in the country. I wanted to get as much firewood as I could in the barn. But before I stacked wood in the barn, I would have to clear the place out, a job I’d been avoiding for as long as possible. Unfortunately, there was no avoiding it any longer.
It was a beautiful crisp Saturday afternoon, and time to tackle the barn. I began by picking up the clutter on the floor, old tools and the usual barn debris. Off to one corner I saw a stack of large wooden boxes. I assumed they would be too heavy for me to move on my own, so I cleaned up around them. Soon, I had the barn in reasonable shape.
After a few days, I returned to finish the cleaning. All that remained was that stack of wooden crates to move and I would be done. I still thought I’ll need help moving them, but I figured I’d give one a try. Much to my surprise, the boxes were empty and extremely light. Why would anyone store a bunch of old wooden boxes in a barn, wasting all that space? Once the boxes were removed, all that remained to be done was sweep out the hay that littered the barn floor. I began with the area I had just cleared when I noticed a large metal ring set in the floor. A little more sweeping revealed a large trap door. Must be some sort of root cellar or storm shelter I speculated, could be a fallout shelter. The house was extremely old, dating back to the nineteenth century, but the barn was more recent, maybe only fifty of sixty years old. Pulling open the door, I saw a set of concrete stairs descending into the darkness. Spying a light switch on the wall, I flipped it up, and saw banks of fluorescent lights coming on below.
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART X
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART X
As soon as he walked in he remarked, “I’d say you have a plumbing problem. This place smells like a sewage treatment plant.”
By now my patience was wearing thin, “Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn’t really noticed.” Once I got that out of my system, I asked if he had talked to the wife.
“Talked to her right after you called me; that is one pissed-off woman. Asked her what I should do with the truck if Dave doesn’t return for it. She told me what I could do with it and hung up.”
I could see Officer Marks was as anxious to get involved in this mess as I was. He checked around the house, spent as little time in the bathroom as possible and said he would send a tow truck in the morning if Dave had not snuck back to get his vehicle.
That night I slept in the guest room.
About mid-morning a tow truck arrived and took away the van. I phoned a cleaning service and told them about the mess I needed cleaned up. They came out and in a few hours the house was restored to normal, but I was starting to wonder what that means for my dream home.
Months passed; I contacted the police a few times to see if they had located Dave. They said they hadn’t. I did not call Mrs. Dave Watson Jr., but I occasionally thought about Dave, especially when the plumbing acted up, and what could have happened to him when he left our house. In the meantime, our household had settled into a daily routine. Laura found a local real-estate job and was getting to know the area and making new friends. Robin was settled in her new school and getting to know the local kids. I had set up my office and started crunching data and writing papers. We had now been in our new house for half a year, and during my workday, I would stop and stare out my window at the huge oak trees and open fields that are mine and think how lucky we are to have found this house.
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART IX
PLUMBING PROBLEMS IX
“Hang on,” she said, “I’ll try his cell phone.” She came back on the line and said her call to Dave could not be completed; something was wrong with his cell phone. I wasn’t prepared for her next response.
She half shouted and half cried, “That bastard!”
There was more to come.
“He’s with his slut, that son of a bitch. That’s the only place he can be.” Debbie continued with an explanation that I really didn’t need to hear. “We had just been married a year, and I knew I wasn’t his first girlfriend, but I figured I’d be the last. Dave had accepted a job from a woman new to the area and I found out he was servicing more than just her plumbing. No that’s wrong, he was servicing her plumbing.” Debbie wailed, “That’s the only place he could be, and if that’s where he is he can go to hell!”
As fast as I could, I offered to let her know if Dave returned, said good-bye and hung up. I needed to have my plumbing fixed and not to be in the middle of a marital dispute.
I searched around the house and walked the fields again but there was no sign of Dave. By now night was approaching. With reluctance I called the police. I related to the officer Dave’s disappearance and also about my conversation with his wife.
“Sounds like a sticky situation,” came the officer’s reply. He continued, “I’ll phone the wife. She’s the one that has to file a missing person report. After I talk to her I’ll take a run out to your place and see if I can figure out what is going on.”
I said I’d be watching for him, hung up and looked into having the mess upstairs cleaned up. A few hours later a police car pulled up behind Dave’s truck. By now it was quite dark, so I put on the outside lights and saw a policeman walking towards the front door. He introduced himself as Officer Marks and I asked him in.
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART VIII
PLUMBING PROBLEMS VIII
While Robin was involved with her various activities, I busied myself with some errands. After a few hours we returned home and as we approached the house, I was surprised to see Dave’s truck still in my driveway. I got Robin settled with a snack and a video we had rented, then proceeded upstairs to see how things are coming along. I thought Dave would be long gone by now. The fact that he was still here was not a good sign; a big bill was heading my way. Halfway up the stairs, I was greeted by a horrible stench that started me gagging. I made it up the stairs and opened some of the windows. The house smelled like Porto-John on a hot summer day. I was not really prepared for what I found in the master bathroom. Dave’s tools were scattered over the floor, but Dave wasn’t there. Yellowish goo, inches deep in some places, covered the bathroom floor. The smell in the bathroom was horrible, smelling as if the septic system had backed up and that smell was combined with another smell that defied description. I hurried from the bathroom and started calling for Dave. I went outside for some fresh air and took a short walk around the property. Jack was working in his field, so I asked if he had seen anyone walking around my place. Jack just shook his head and went back to his work. Finally, I phoned Dave’s office and was greeted by the voice of a young woman who introduced herself as Debbie Watson and asked how she could help me. I told her who I was and that Dave’s truck was still at my house but I couldn’t find Dave and my plumbing problems were getting worse. Debbie’s voice changed from that of a professional secretary to a worried wife and then to something else. She suddenly sounded furious.
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART VII
PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART VII
As the weeks went by, my mind was occupied by the problems I was having with the plumbing. I drove down to the hardware store and bought every drain cleaner known to man, but nothing worked to clear the sinks. But then, they would clear spontaneously. I talked to Jack and some of the other locals about a recommendation for a plumber, someone reliable and not too expensive. They told me about a plumber everyone used that had just retired and the business had been taken over by his son, a young newlywed who was eager to build up his clientele and reputation, so I gave him a call. Two days later he drove up our driveway. DAVE’S PLUMBING was the sign displayed on the side of the panel truck. I opened the front door; we shook hands and he introduced himself.
“How’re you doing sir? I’m Dave Watson Jr. Now what exactly is the problem?”
I described the intermittent clogging of the drains, what I had tried and that nothing seems to work. Dave was a young man, in his mid-twenties, and eager to tackle the job. “I’ll check it out. Could be,” he said, “that you’re cleaning some of the build-up on the walls of the pipes and that’s causing the drain to appear cleared. But the cleared opening is so small the slightest material going down the drain will just clog it again. A snake should ream out the pipes and clear up your problem just fine.”
My wife was gone visiting her sister for a couple of days and Robin needed to be run around as usual, so I asked Dave if he would mind being left alone for a while. If he was done before I returned, he could lock the front door and mail me the bill.
“No problem,” came his reply, “you take care of your girl and I’ll see to the plumbing.”
With the owner and his child gone, Dave went out to his truck to gather what tools he needed. He first noticed the smell as he approached the master bathroom, a horrible odor that convinced Dave that things were backing up in there. He opened the door to an unspeakable sight, he turned to run but was grasped by the neck and pulled to the floor. The stinging pain was followed by paralysis as he helplessly viewed his attacker, then thought ceased.
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