The Well

The Well
By C.C. Moore


Mary opened her eyes. She saw a rectangle of light—perhaps a slice of sky through shattered boards. Where am I? Something hurt. As consciousness returned so did pain, coming in waves like an irrepressible tide.

“Please…” she whispered. The patch of blue sky winked at her. Winked? No, not winked. Trees blew with an unfelt breeze far above her, and she realized she lay at the bottom of long, mossy tunnel.

She tried to sit up, and her head pounded, flashes of light popping in front of her. The throbbing ache brought tears, and her vision blurred while the strange odors of damp and earth burned her nose.

Blinking, she gazed at mortared stones covered with a strange, uneven pattern of moss. The cold wetness soaked through her clothes, and the light around her was hazy, fractured. The sunlight could not reach her.

She remembered walking in the woods, but she couldn’t quite remember the fall. Had she stepped on something and …what? An echo of a loud crack reverberated like a dream half-recalled.

She scooted backwards in the thick layer of mud and silt until she could lean against the stone wall. Fiery blazes of pain shot through her leg, and she stared down at her mud-covered jeans. The ankle was swelling fiercely above the rim of her boot, pulsing with sharp agony. Was it broken or just sprained? She had no idea, but wiggling her toes made her catch her breath and squeezed her eyes tightly closed. Her lungs ached and she sobbed out the air, the sound loud in the silence of the small space.

She glanced up, and watched the trees swaying through her tears, the light flickering above her. Would anyone come looking for her?

The house party was probably still in full swing, she could even hear the faintest sound of the music coming from the pool house. Her boyfriend would come looking for her eventually, wouldn’t he? Henry wasn’t the bad sort, but coming to this party with his prep school friends had been a big mistake. She hated this crowd of spoiled rich kids, and that’s why she had been out walking in the woods beyond the estate. The stink of too much weed and the inane conversations had given her a massive headache.

But would Henry come looking for her? He had complained that she wasn’t “bonding” with his buddies—that she came across stuck up. But how was she to bond with women who tossed their long hair every five minutes and could barely talk of anything except cars, shoes, and wouldn’t you just die to be caught in denim or last year’s peasant blouse?

She gave a bitter laugh, looking down at her jeans and hiking boots.

Weren’t they all going to laugh when they found out she had fallen down an old well. Her laugh became a sob. What if Henry didn’t come looking for her? How was she going to get out?
“Help!” she yelled. But even if the well had been at the backdoor of the mansion she doubted any of those people would hear her. The music had been pumping out of the speakers for two days straight.

“We’re glad you’re here.”

She blinked, her heart stopping for a second. Right across from her was a little boy, no older than six. The bones of his skull stuck out beneath his thin layer of skin—so pale, it reminded her of parchment. His huge dark eyes stared at her from the shadows across the small circle. Her gaze raked over the stones and mud. She saw no openings, no caves, or cracks.

“How…how did you get in here?” she said softly, her voice breaking a bit on the end of the sentence. Her heart was beating again, but frantically, like a jungle drum in one of those old black and white movies.

“We’ve always been here,” the boy said, watching her with those so, so dark eyes. He crouched too still for a child. The brown shirt he wore was appeared handmade from rough linen and the wooden buttons were swollen with moisture.

“Always?” she managed, and it sounded more like a squeak. Chills went up her back and she glanced up at the slice of sunshine. Was it getting darker?

“I guess not always. But ‘shor has been a long time since Pa put all us kids down here. In the dark. But not Ma. He put her somewhere else.” His eyes sharpened on her with a strange hunger. “We be needing a Ma.”

Get a grip, she told herself. He’s a real person, and he’s only a little thing. What could he do? “How do you get out?” she asked as casually as she could manage. Her voice sounded higher than usual and shaky. How did you get in? She wanted to ask but didn’t.

His fathomless eyes narrowed, becoming pinpoints of black, like holes in space.“We don’t. And you won’t either.” He sighed with a toothy smile and rubbed his hands together. “We be needing a Ma. Them little ones, they need some looking after.”

Mary clenched her fist into the mud, squeezing out the slimy gunk. The sludge chilled her fingers, as if sucking the heat from her body.

“I’m getting out of here,” she said, more for her own sake than his.

She struggled to rise, her sore ankle shooting bolts of pain up her leg. She cried out and broke into a sweat, clutching at the slimy stones. Somehow she managed to balance on one foot as she searched the wall for handholds. Could she climb with a broken foot? She was freaked out enough to try. Or maybe she would find the boy’s way in. If he had one, some part of her added, and she shut that thought down hard. I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in ghosts. She repeated this silently like a mantra to cling to and give her hope.

“That’s what my Ma used to say.” The boy gave a cruel laugh. “And she used to say that Good conquered Evil. It was in the Book, you know. The Good Book. And she would read to us everyday. But Evil won, didn’t it? Cause Pa just took up that axe and Ma went down screaming.”

Mary stared at him, her breath catching in her throat. “What are you?”

“We just are,” The boy answered, dark eyes gazing at her with an odd unnatural patience.

She tried dug her fingers in above her head. Up went the good foot, and she found a small ledge to brace her boot. She lifted up and her bad leg dangled like a dead weight. Her hand reached higher, finding a grove in between two stone
.
“Mary!” A voice echoed through the woods. Mary sobbed and rested her face against the mossy stones.

“Help! Down here. Henry! Help!” She called up at the cracked opening and then a shadow blocked out the sky. Henry! He had come. Thank God!

“Oh, Lord! Mary. Don’t move. I’ll get a rope or something.”

“Hurry.” She yelled after him. She didn’t want him to leave. She didn’t want to be left with the boy in the shadow. But Henry was gone, running off. Running back to his friends who had been riding waves of white powder and smoking mounds of weed all weekend. She gave a soft sob. How long would it take to make them understand that she needed help? And then a worse thought came. What if Henry left her there? What if he didn’t come back?

She shook that thought away. He had come once. She just had to wait.
“You can’t go.” The boy stood up, he bared his teeth like a dog snarling. “We need you. Them little ones need a Ma.”

She tried not to look at him but stared instead at the patch of sky. Was it darkening now, fading with touches of violet? “I don’t want to stay,” she whispered. Maybe he was just a hallucination. After all, she had hit her head hard. “Go away,” she said. “Go away.”

“We won’t let you leave,” the boy said from behind her and she turned to glance at him. Water seeped out of the corners of the lower stones, spreading across the uneven floor, hiding the sludge with a swirling current. While staring at it, Mary slipped. She fell off the wall, landed on her bad foot. Screaming, she fell to her hands and knees. The water was ice cold, and she sunk inches into the mud. She cried for a moment, gasping for breath.

The boy was no longer alone.

Now four children gathered on the shadowy side of the well. They were all smaller than him, the youngest a toddler, but they all stared at her with unnatural stillness. Their eyes were not those of children, but fathoms deep and old. Old eyes filled with rage at the Living. Her every breath was an affront to them. Pale faces were like masks, and beneath the masks was a hatred that she could barely comprehend.

“You will stay with us,” a little girl said her wet braids dotted with moss, her calico dress hanging loose around her boney body. “We need a Ma.” She grinned with too many teeth for such a small body.

The two smallest ones hissed, eyes flashing red.

“No!” Mary sobbed and tried to climb the wall again. Her bad ankle couldn’t bear any weight, and panic ran electric fingers up her spine.

A small hand fell on her back. Hands. They yanked her from the wall with surprising strength, and she fell back into the ice cold water. The churning murk was a foot high now and her head fell under. She tried to rise, but the children pressed her down. Icy liquid went up her nose and into her mouth, tasting of earth and rot.

Four demonic faces smiled down at her with toothy grins, small hands holding her as she struggled. Her lungs screamed with need. Their hands on her shoulders and chest pinned her down despite her twisting and turning. Have. To. Breath. She gave one huge push, arching her back, and ignoring the jolt of agony coming from her ankle. Nothing mattered but breathing. Her mouth broke the surface, and she sucked in air, glorious air. Snarling, the children grabbed her again, one snatching her backwards by her hair. She flailed her arms, but hit nothing, and the water covered her face once more.

“You’ll be one us,” a voice said, as clearly as if she hadn’t be drowning and kicking and splashing. I am not going to die. She was twenty-four years old and had her first painting hanging in a gallery, and a boyfriend who she loved even if she didn’t like his friends, and parents who will miss her, and a cat named Borsh, and god knows she couldn’t die like this. She couldn’t die in that miserable hole, drowned by demonic spirits of dead children! This just wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

A rope hit her in the stomach, and she grabbed it. She held on for dear life, the children backing away to the dark sides of the well. She sobbed. She laughed and choked, and then sobbed again, spitting out the muddy water and wiping her face. She tied the end around her waist and started to climb while Henry and his friend Jason pulled and pulled.

When she glanced back she saw bones gleaming pale in the shadows, bones dug up in the mud from her struggles. Small bones.

She crawled out into the dimming light still crying and dripping. Henry pulled her into his arms and held her while his friend Jason looked at her ankle.

“Dude. It’s totally broken. We better get her over to Community General. I’ll go get my jeep.” He jogged off while she was still trying to catch her breath and calm the hysteria.

Henry pushed back her sopping hair, and rubbed some of the mud off her cheek. “Hey there. You’re going to be all right. What were you doing down there? I saw you splashing around. Did you fall?”

“I…” She hesitated. She couldn’t tell him the truth. Not Henry the engineering student and self-declared Rationalist. He would think she had lost her mind.

She bit her lip before continuing. “I found something. Have Jason call the police. There are some old bones down in the well. I think they’re the bones of some children…” Four children to be exact, she shuddered, four children who had been stuck down in the darkness for a long, long time.

“Are you serious? Oh, baby, that must have been horrible. God, who could do such a thing?” He peered over the edge and frowned. “We’re they old?”

“Very old,” she said softly. Old and angry. And lonely. She peeked over the edge. The water was receding and a skull gleamed in the last of the grayish light. Off to one side, in the deepest shadow she thought she saw a face looking up at her. A pale face with dark, dark eyes… She sat back and shuddered. Maybe they would rest when their bones were found. Maybe they would be able to move on.

Or maybe they would follow her.