2024 Spooky Stories Contest Winner
There Is A Well by Cole Szostak
There is a well. It is old and gray, and moss nestles into the corners of its worn stones the way gravel nests into pockets of a mountainside. As though it has always been there, as though the hills and forests will shift and warp long before a single stone of it topples. It has a little wooden roof, and there are holes in its supports where an axle for a bucket is supposed to go. But there isn’t a bucket. The well doesn’t want anything to leave.
There is a well in the forest behind my house. It is deep, deep enough that after a decade of living here I hadn’t found it. Though I am certain I had visited that glade before. But it is not so deep that I cannot reach it in a few minutes walking. The place where it sits has no other buildings, no other signs of humanity. I have looked at historical maps of the town in the library, nothing has ever been built anywhere near that spot, nothing in need of water from that dark ring of stones.
But, there is a well behind my house. The grove where it sits is cold and dim like all groves are in autumn, and Cooper refuses to enter the small perimeter of trees, no matter how I pull at his leash. The overcast sky turns the brown carpet of leaves gray. As gray as the stones of the well, the only hint that color still exists being the bright green moss that clings to the well like birds to a sturdy oak. I have looked down the well. I cannot see the bottom. I cannot see where they went.
At first it was small things. A sock, a shoe, a paperweight, a kitchen knife. They were gone. I had not misplaced them, there was nowhere for them to have gone, I live alone, I had not touched them, there was no way they could have just vanished. But they did. And where they had vanished from there were small puddles of stagnant water, as cold as ice in my well-heated home.
Then it was a chair. I don’t have use for all of the chairs surrounding my dining room table, so I was content to let the well have it. At that point, I knew it was the well that had taken it, no one else could have. My home security system told me that no doors or windows had been opened, and all of them were firmly locked when I checked by hand. My ever-alert Cooper had not stirred in the night. There was nothing broken, no forced entry from the outside. But my chair was missing, and leading from it to the door were small pools of icy water laid in a staggered line like footprints. But they were not footprints. The Well has no feet.
I crunched my way through the fallen leaves, the layer of brittle brown dead matter as thick as my ankles. But it did not stop me from reaching the place where the well sat. I looked at the Well. It did not look at me. Did not even acknowledge my presence, for it had no eyes with which to see and no brain with which to be aware. It sat still, as all wells do, as leaves slowly pirouetted out of the sky to skid off its sloped roof, and every so often, to gently float into its open maw, disappearing into the ink that lay beyond the Well’s threshold.
There is a Well that comes and goes from my home as it pleases, though it does not move from its seat in the forest. It cannot. It does not need to. But still it enters my home and takes what it wants. My favorite pen. My grandfather’s hunting knife. My writing desk. My bed. I got further proof that these things were not simply vanishing, that the well was taking them, when I woke up and could not find Cooper. I knew that Cooper hated the clearing. Cooper never would have gone willingly. The Well had taken him. My floor was covered an inch thick in water that made my feet numb and my toes blue.
I am writing this simply as an explanation of what has happened. Of what I am going to do. I can hear the Well, though it has no voice with which to sing, still its melody carries through the trees to my home. It spills out of that rigid throat which is the whole being of the Well, and it finds my dreams and sits there. The Well’s song pools in my mind like cold water, and I cannot stop my hand from shaking. When I went to buy the rope, I got a worried stare from the cashier. He has nothing to worry about. There is not a well behind his house. But there is one behind mine. And as I prepare my rope and headlamp, as I steel myself to slide down that cold stone throat, I hear the Well sing. And I know it has no bottom. I know I cannot reach the place where it has taken my things.
But there is a Well in my home. It has not moved and yet it sits here and watches me write about its lack of eyes, and the moss purrs and snuggles closer to the unmoving edifice that has taken all I have. I must climb down it. I must find my things. I must find Cooper. I know that I cannot. But still I must. I have put on my second best boots, for my best are in the Well, and I have my rope and lamp. I hear the leaves fall gray onto my house, and I feel the wind run still along my path. Nothing will impede my short walk over the ashen leaves.
My walk behind my house. My walk to a gray clearing that is colder than ice. There has never been a home there. But there is a Well.
Cole Szostak was the winner of our annual Spooky Stories Contest. Find this story and more in the upcoming Fall Preview (grab a copy at Late Night in Peirce!)
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