Bumstead's Well

by R E Swirsky

  "I'm going to need a jacket down here!” he yelled. He gazed into the abyss below him.

  "A what?" Roger asked.

  Vincent glanced up. "A jacket! Or a coat! It's really cool down here! I'm not sure how cold it'll be at the bottom."

  "Do you want me to get your hoodie from your truck?"

  Vincent didn’t expect it to be that much colder down inside the well. "How about Aaron's coat instead?" he replied. "I think the one he takes to work is still in my truck."

  Aaron's coat was heavy denim lined with a thick layer of fleece.

  "Just a sec," Roger said. He disappeared from the opening above.

  The rope continued to jerk downward, and Vincent looked about anxiously. He cast his eyes upon the dark stone walls, and the earthy smell caused even more goose bumps to speckle his arms. A misty grey light bounced off the outer edges of the moisture covered stones. The moisture worried him. He hoped this was a dry well, but the goopy sounding "thunk" from earlier now had him worrying.

  The well darkened once again as Roger returned into the opening. "I've got Aaron's coat and your hoodie. Do you want both?"

  "Nah, just the coat. Give my hoodie to Aaron."

  Roger disappeared again, and the well brightened.

  The boys stumbled upon the well a week ago. It was a blistering hot week at work, and Aaron insisted they needed to cut loose and find a secluded place to party. It needed to be somewhere private where they could build a small fire and hang out with the flat of Big Rock beer he purchased. Roger suggested the old Bumstead farm along the river a few miles beyond Head Park. It was close enough to town, boasted a thick forest of evergreens and poplars near the river for privacy, and had many valleys, dips, and old building foundations to explore. No one would ever know they were out there.

  Vincent discovered the well as they chugged back on beer and horsed about amongst the remains of the once prosperous farm. It was an odd, cube-shaped, wooden box, with two large poles protruding from the corners, that drew his attention toward the poplar trees near where the original farm house once stood. They soon ripped away the grey, rotted wood and the old, stone-cased well was revealed.

  There was an immediate air of mystery that hung suspended in the night as the stones were suddenly suffused with moonlight when the boards were pulled away. The way it appeared to have been purposely concealed for many decades was disturbing. The boys fell quickly into fabricating dark tales centred upon the old well. A roaring fire soon followed, and the nefarious chatter continued as the last remnants of the sunset finally faded away behind the mountains to the west. Stories of disease and contaminated water morphed into purposeful poisoning of the water and ended up in tales of death and murder. Aaron told the most ghastly tale of the night. It was a horrifying tale of unwanted newborns being scurried away in secrecy under darkness of the night and tossed down into the icy water to silence their tiny cries.

  As the hours passed and more beer was consumed, Vincent became fearful of the well. Glancing over at it as the firelight danced upon its rough exterior sent shivers up his spine. His fear was strong, but it wasn't enough to prevent him from energetically proclaiming that he wasn't the least bit afraid of the well. In order to prove it, he boldly accepted Aaron's challenge to spend one night alone at the bottom the following weekend. Even as the words left his lips, he wanted to take them back, but his liquor-induced pride wouldn't let him.

  After a number of uncomfortable minutes of spinning in circles and jerking about in short spurts on his way down, Vincent felt a strange elation as the stool lurched sideways and the rope slackened. He was planted firmly on the bottom. He expected fear and trepidation to run madly through his veins, but he wasn’t afraid at all for the moment. He stepped off the old broken stool and his thoughts quickly turned to having completed some great accomplishment. He imagined no one had stepped foot down here for a hundred years or more. For an instant he thought he knew how Neil Armstrong felt when he stepped off the ladder and onto the moon. "One small step for man, one giant step for..."

  But before he could finish the thought, his foot slipped out from beneath him and his buttocks and one elbow sank into one inch of slime-covered mud.

  "Damn it!" he shouted as he grabbed firmly to the rope and righted himself.

  "You okay down there?" Roger asked.

  "Yeah, I'm okay. It's just bloody muddy down here, that's all."

  He tried to flick the mud away from his hands, but it wouldn't come off. He resorted to wiping the thick, pasty mud free on one of the legs of Aaron's jeans.

  "At least it's not full of water," Roger hollered back.

  "Yeah, right," Vincent replied unimpressed.

  The well darkened even more as Aaron popped his head alongside Roger's atop the well.

  "You okay?" he called down.

  "I'm fine!" Vincent shouted up. He was annoyed.

  Both Roger and Aaron laughed.

  "I'm gonna lower the other stuff down now," Aaron yelled.

  By other stuff, Aaron meant the food, water, and fleece-lined denim coat, which was now stuffed inside Aaron’s work duffle bag.

  Vincent stepped away from the stool and let go of the rope. Aaron pulled the rope and stool back up to the top, set the bag atop the stool, wrapped it within the rope, and lowered both back down to Vincent. It was very dark at the bottom of the well and Vincent fumbled with the knots a few moments before he was able to remove the bag. He placed the bag onto the muddy surface in a spot he thought was the driest, but it was difficult to tell if there even was such a thing as a dry spot in this pit. He quickly removed Aaron's coat from inside the bag and slipped it on.

  Suddenly, without warning, the rope tightened and the stool lurched upwards a few inches from the bottom.

  "Hey! What the hell?" Vincent shouted. He grabbed at the rope with both hands and jumped onto the stool before Aaron could pull it up any higher. Immediately Aaron stopped pulling on the rope and tucked his head into the opening.

  "No stool, Vinnie!" Aaron shouted down. "You are only allowed clothes, food, and water."

  "C'mon! I didn’t know it was going to be this muddy down here. Please, Aaron! Leave the stool!"

  "No stool. You agreed to the terms. Now let go of the rope."

  "No!" He remained standing on the stool as it spun around in circles suspended four inches above the bottom. "Roger, talk to Aaron. We didn’t know it was going to be this muddy down here. What am I supposed to do, sit in the mud all night? Leave the stool down here. Please, Aaron."

  "Just a sec." Roger and Aaron laughed and disappeared. A few minutes passed by before the two heads popped back into view.

  "Okay. You can have the stool, but no rope."

  "What? No rope?"

  "No rope. Get off the stool and untie it," Aaron demanded.

  "No way!"

  "Untie the rope or I'm going to untie this end up here and drop the entire rope down inside."

  "No! Don't do that! C'mon already you guys! What do you think I'm going to do? Climb up the rope if you leave it there?"

  Roger said something that made Aaron laugh, but Vincent couldn't make out the words. The two disappeared again for a few moments.

  "Okay, you win," Aaron said as he loosened the rope and the stool dropped down and sunk into the mud. "You can keep the rope and the stool."

  "I've seen you in gym class, and you certainly can't climb a rope," Roger added.

  "Ha, Ha. Very funny," Vincent replied, but he knew it was true.

  "We'll tie it off up here to the pole. And don't you dare get my coat dirty down there," Aaron called down as he donned Vincent's hoodie.

  Vincent eyed where he rubbed the mud on the jeans, and even in the darkness, he could see more already mashed deep into the shoulder of Aaron's coat. He had only just put it on. There was no way anything was going to stay clean down here.

  "I'll try to keep it clean."

  "You better!" Aaron shouted.

  Two flashes lit up the inside of the we
ll. The two boys began to snicker uncontrollably. "Look at the poor boy trapped down in the well! How will we ever get him out?"

  "Is that my phone? Aaron? That better not be my phone!"

  Roger stuck his head deep inside the well. "It is, and he just posted the photos onto your Facebook page!"

  "He did not!" Vincent cried out.

  "He did! I saw him!" Roger said.

  Aaron cackled again. "You'll have to wait and see now, won't you? Little boy in the well." Another flash lit the space around Vincent.

  "Fuck you, Aaron!" he said. He thrust a finger upwards and pointed at Aaron. "You're dead if you post that!"

  "Scared your girlfriend might see it?" he replied. "Oh that's right: you don't have a girlfriend." He laughed again.

  "I do too!" Vincent shouted, but he knew it was a lie. He didn’t have the courage to ask her out yet, and it weighed heavily on his mind since he arrived home from University for the summer.

  "Who? This Anna girl from British Columbia you talk about? You don't even have a picture of her."

  "So? That doesn't mean she isn't real."

  "Little lost boy in the well!" Aaron taunted again. "Look at the little lost boy in the well!" The banter continued for the next hour as the sun slowly receded even further behind the mountains.

  CHAPTER 3 Day One - Friday 8:47 PM

  Amy Gardwinder was in a very bad mood, but it wasn't due to the delay from picking up her new truck and semi-trailer. The small white Sentra that pulled out in front of her just shortly after she turned onto highway 63 more than an hour ago had her blood boiling.

  Tonight was Friday, her son's 10th birthday, and she desperately wanted to make it back home to the acreage on the outskirts of Bluffington for his party. She already accepted that she'd have to go back into Calgary on Monday to unload her cargo, but until the Sentra pulled in front of her, she was confident she would be home in time to catch most of her son's party.

  It was a management decision to purchase all new trucks that ran on Compress Natural Gas (CNG) instead of the usual diesel fuel. As far as Amy was concerned, there was nothing wrong with her old truck, and she really didn't give a second thought to this new rig.

  "The CNG will save the company thousands of dollars in fuel each month, and it just makes economic sense,” she was told. New filling stations were popping up at various locations across North America, and Calgary just received its first at the Flying J Truck Stop only blocks away from the trailer compound.

  She was far behind her usual schedule tonight hauling the fully-loaded twenty-two tons of water purification tanks she picked up from Indianapolis back to Calgary. She drove for three solid days, stopped and rested as required, and even topped up her new fuel cylinders just three hours ago at the CNG fuelling station in Medicine Hat. The trucks new fuel range was significantly less than diesel, which caused more frequent stops and delays than she anticipated. There was no cheating the new GPS tracking on the new trucks; it logged every minute the truck was in motion, and there was no way she could make up any more time than she already had.

  "C'mon, you bastard! Move it!"

  Amy pulled on the cord for two short bursts from her horn. She ran one hand through her hair in frustration.

  "Pull over already, or pick up your God damned speed!" she hollered.

  The car could have waited for her to pass by before it pulled out onto the highway. There was nothing but wide open, straight sections of highway for hours before, but just as Amy was about to enter the Foothills, with their twists and turns that crawled up and down tree covered hills all of the way back home to Bluffington, the car lurched out onto the highway. She was forced to slam on her brakes or crawl right up and over the rear end of the car. She hoped it would pull off on some side road, but it remained right in front of her the entire time.

  The road turned quickly to the left, and the car’s brake lights unnecessarily lit up and caused Amy's big rig to creep forward precariously close to the bumper once again.

  "Damn you!" she cursed. She slammed her fist onto the console and dropped down one more gear. Her engine screamed as it retarded her speed even more, and Amy's frustration screamed with it.

  There would be little opportunity to pass this car on her way back to her acreage on the edge of town. She picked up her cell phone and called her husband, telling him to start the party without her. It was getting late, and she still had a good hour of driving left.

  Amy followed the white car mile after mile as the road twisted its way through the valley. The little white car stuck like glue to the centre line and refused to move any faster than ten miles an hour below the speed limit.

  CHAPTER 4 Day One - Friday 9:11 PM

  "...and Aaron, my Gramps can't know you're driving my truck!”

  Aaron jingled Vincent's truck keys. "He won't. I'll drive it straight back and park it behind the hotel. No one will even see us."

  "Gramps would kill me if he knew I let someone else drive it. He'd probably take it away from me."

  "Gramps will kill me if I let someone else drive my truck," Aaron mocked in a taunting voice. "Just relax for once, Vinnie. He'll have no idea. You just chill out down there, and we'll see you back here in twenty-four hours."

  "You mean twenty-four hours from when I first got down here," he corrected.

  "Right. That's what I meant." Roger and Aaron looked at each other and giggled.

  The two friends soon departed and left Vincent alone and feeling unsettled. He tired quickly of their laughing and giggling. It seemed like they had an ulterior motive about this dare. He listened to the sound of his truck as it started up, and he followed the sound until it faded away and mixed in with the other sounds that trickled down the well.

  He zipped Aaron's coat tight to his neck, sat down onto the small stool, and leaned his back awkwardly against the hard, uneven stones.

  "What the hell am I doing down here?" he asked himself. "Me and my big mouth. Stupid alcohol!”

  The sky cleared as the night air cooled, and Vincent prepared himself for a very long night. He untied the rope from the stool. He tried to move the rope off to one side, but it just swung back to the centre.

  "Humph," he grunted. His eyes followed the rope up to the top to where it dropped through the edge of the small opening above him. “Holy crap. That’s far. This is probably the stupidest thing I’ve done in my entire life.”

  Vincent felt foolish for letting himself get talked into this. He was slyly outwitted by his two friends last Friday night. Now he found himself packed up and corralled like some beast down at the bottom of the well. It stirred many emotions deep inside him.

  He continued to stare up to the top, and he quickly became anxious as there was nothing he could do about his current situation. He was currently imprisoned and at the mercy of his friends. His mind ran amuck: what if they didn’t come back? The thought horrified him, and it dredged up a tragic memory from his past that he wished he could forget.

  Vincent was only ten years old when his mother hastily packed him with his two small suitcases out of his home, dropped him at his grandparents’ doorstep, and walked out of his life forever without explanation. Her actions left him with a devastating wound. The night ended with him whimpering and shivering on the stoop of his grandparent's home while he tried to comprehend what he did to deserve it. Now isolated at the bottom of the well, with no way out, he was reminded way too much of how he felt that night. Even the damp coolness in the air was reminiscent of that horrible memory.

  He could easily touch the walls on either side with his elbows still bent. He tried not to think about how confined the space was, but it was impossible. He drew his fingers down across the rough-edged stones to make sure they were real. It was like a small, sunken jail…or tomb. It was only four to five feet across at best. He quickly retracted his thought of the word tomb and looked up. He estimated he was fifty to fifty-five feet below ground.

  A foreboding from the fireside stories of last weekend sl
owly swooped down the well and swirled about within him. These thoughts were not much better. He very much needed a distraction to prevent his mind from sliding back into the dark places he would rather not visit.

  He reached for the duffle bag and opened it up to see what was inside. It was much too dark to see anything clearly so he felt around with only his hands and immediately felt a number of water bottles on one side. He counted five bottles. The crinkle of thin plastic bags beside the water was easily recognizable as potato chips and the stiff heavy plastic pouches on the other side was surely beef jerky and pepperoni sticks. The last item was a small rectangular box that had to be crackers. Aaron was always purchasing boxes of crackers to nibble on. He pulled out one of the bottles of water, opened it, and immediately chugged back half of the bottle. He then pulled out one of the bags of chips and tore the bag open with his teeth.

  "Dinner. Yum yum," he said, mockingly.

  He gazed up to the tiny opening above him and nibbled away at chip pieces as the hairs on his neck slowly stood on end. The lingering fears that accompanied him to the bottom of the well settled in for the night, circled around him, and prepared to feast.

  Vincent had good reason to fear. What he did by putting himself into this predicament had farther-reaching implications than he could ever have imagined. He had unknowingly set a series of events into action that would ultimately change his life, and the lives of those dear to him, forever.

  CHAPTER 5 Day One - Friday 9:23 PM

  Aaron cracked up with laughter as he steered Vincent's Toyota truck down the short, gravel road leading out of the Bumstead property. "What a doofus."

  Roger laughed uneasily alongside him. "I wouldn't do that."

  "Do what?"

  "Spend a night down there. There's no way you would ever catch me going down inside someplace like that overnight."

  "I told you he'd do it though, didn't I? He only did it because I dared him to. He tries to act like he isn't scared. He wants to show us that he can be a tough guy. That's why I pushed him. He’s always so cautious, and this will be good for him. Pop him out of his bubble for once.”