The Well

by A. J. Whitten

  Sam let out another furious shout, then more of those odd words. I ducked to the left, the right, then left again, a receiver with a football dodging the opposing team, trying to think ahead of him, ahead of whatever creepy nature thing he had working for him.

  The yard opened up one hole after another, grassy hands springing up, reaching for me, their green fingers coming so close that I could feel the whisper of their touch against my ankles and my calves. My chest burned, but I kept running.

  I veered toward the driveway. Sam shouted another order. Suddenly, the lawn split apart, an earthquake driving a wedge right down the side. The ground shivered, and my steps faltered.

  The lawn rolled up on one side, a huge wave of grass, then started toward me. There was no way I was going to make it to the driveway.

  Maybe no way I was going to make it out of here at all.

  I turned and ran in the only other direction left.

  Toward the woods.

  Cooper … oh, Cooper.”

  Sam called my name like a mother coaxing back a runaway preschooler. I ducked lower behind the massive oak tree and tried to catch my breath without making any noise. Just a few minutes, that was all I needed, and I’d be ready to run again.

  “Don’t make me call on them,” Sam said. “Don’t make this difficult.”

  Call on whom? The vine men? I wasn’t worried about them. I’d dug the lighter out of my backpack and had it in my hand. The knife in the opposite hand. I figured I was ready for whatever Sam was going to do.

  Leaves crunched. He was close, maybe only two feet away. I slid down more. Held my breath.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said. Then he spoke again in that language, releasing a few short words.

  For a long second, nothing happened, and I thought I was in the clear. Then the trees began to move.

  They lifted up out of the ground with earsplitting crunching noises. Their roots became legs, branches became arms, and tops swung down to become heads that seemed to be scanning the woods.

  Looking for me.

  The oak in front of me jerked up and I scrambled back, only to find myself hitting the legs of another tree. Whipple barked, and Sam-

  Sam laughed.

  He called out another command. The trees turned as one and began to move toward me. Whipple went crazy, barking and circling, then took off running in the woods. I tried to run before the trees could reach me.

  But I was battling impossible odds. Before I could move, the earth opened up again and began to swallow me, dragging me down, down, down, sucking me into the dirt like quicksand. Was this what had happened to Gerard and Auguste’s mom? I dropped the lighter and knife, trying to fight against the dirt vacuum. I opened my mouth to scream, and a stream of dirt squirted upward, like a backwards waterfall, toward my face.

  I shut my mouth, and dirt smacked against my closed lips. But it didn’t give up, the brown granules building a snaking path up toward my ears, my nose-

  I was going to die.

  The dark, heavy blanket sucked me down, squeezing my chest so I couldn’t drag in another breath. Panic engulfed me, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t battle the giant sucking hole filling in around me as fast as it opened up. It was up to my chest, neck, chin, then under my nose. I closed my eyes.

  Sam, you win.

  Just as I was about to go under, I heard a muffled scream, something that sounded like my name. I wanted to say it was too late, to let me go, but I couldn’t. The dirt had walled my mouth shut.

  Something charged past my head, then touched my shoulder. It latched on and began to pull. A hand, someone trying to …

  Save me?

  Survival instinct kicked in. My feet began to work, pushing against the dirt still trying hard to suck me in. I clawed with my fingers and at first felt as if I were going nowhere, and then my chin was free, my neck, my chest, my arm.

  “Take my hand.”

  I twisted and reached. And latched on to my mother.

  “Hurry,” she said, her eyes wide with fear.

  “How … ?”

  She shook her head, placing a finger against her lips.

  I nodded and crawled out of the hole with her help. I’d lost the lighter and knife, but it was a small price to pay for being alive.

  She reached out and placed a hand on either side of my face, as if making sure I was okay. I hesitated, but then I saw she was Mom again, no craziness in her face, and I decided right then I’d trust her. She’d saved my life when she had had every opportunity to let me die.

  “I called the police station,” she panted. “When I heard Sam had been released I realized what he might do …”

  She drew me in for a quick, tight hug and a kiss on my head. I swore just before she pulled away that I felt a tear drop onto my neck.

  “Where is Sam?” I asked nervously.

  “Sam went to get him,” my mother whispered. “We need to run. Can you do that?”

  The trees were closed in tightly, like a fence of forest. They stood still, watching, observing, maybe waiting for Sam to return and issue new orders. I could see gaps between their trunks, wide enough for us to sneak through.

  “Yeah.”

  We squeezed through a small gap between an oak and a maple but got only a few steps before Sam came crashing through the forest. “Where do you think you two are going?”

  “Sam, leave him alone,” my mother said. “Let him go.”

  “No can do. He was bred for this. Thanks to you, Mom.” Sam barked out another series of orders, and we were ripped by the trees from where we stood, swung from tree to tree like rag dolls to our final destination.

  The only one Sam had ever intended.

  The well.

  My mother and I landed in two crumpled heaps on the ground. I got to my feet, aching, hurt, but with nothing broken. My mother didn’t move. Whipple came charging through the woods and nosed at her, whimpering.

  “Mom?”

  “She’s served her purpose, Cooper. Let her go.” Sam strode up to the well, grinning like he’d won the lottery, his blond hair touched by the sun behind him.

  “Do something! Help her!”

  “I don’t need her anymore. She was the incubator for you, and now she’ll let me keep my hands clean. The mother killing her own son.” He laughed. “No one would ever believe the truth about what really happened to dear Cooper.”

  My mother moaned, and Whipple nudged her. But still she didn’t get up. I wanted to go to her, to help her, but Sam reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a switchblade. In one deft move, he depressed the button and released the blade. It gleamed in the light, evil. Menacing.

  Sam took a step closer. With a noisy, shuddering crunch, the trees closed ranks, sealing off my escape. “In life, Cooper,” Sam said, “we all need to make sacrifices for a higher purpose. And you, you need to sacrifice yourself so the rest of us can continue to live. We’ll have a wonderful life, and so will so many more generations of Jumels. Then, in two hundred years, you’ll have your turn.”

  I backed up, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere but into the well.

  “Today is a very special day, Cooper. Today is your-” He waved his hand, meaning for me to finish the sentence.

  “Birthday.” I knew that, but the creature was dead. What did it matter anymore? Didn’t Sam know what I’d done?

  “And someone else’s birthday, too.” He grinned, and it sent a chill down my spine. “Not to mention, today is also the anniversary of Auguste’s sacrifice. And the day he finally returns to the living.”

  “I killed Auguste, Sam,” I said. “It’s over.”

  Sam shook his head. “Oh, he’s not dead. There’s still time. As long as he has your blood before the sun goes down, the destiny can be fulfilled. All it takes to continue his legacy”-Sam advanced on me-“is for the chosen one to take his place before sundown. Go ahead, Cooper. As you can see, he’s been waiting a long, long time for you.” Sam pointed over my shoulder with
the blade. And smiled the kind of reverent smile you gave the pope.

  I turned. The monster hung over the edge of the well, his thin frame barely clinging to the stones. His skin draped off his body like loose wallpaper and his mouth hung open, slack like a thirsty dog’s. A thick red gash ran down his chest, exposing the wide, yawning pus-filled hole opened by my knife the previous night. Vines cradled him in place, massive webbing keeping him upright.

  He hadn’t died.

  He was still here.

  Waiting.

  For me.

  I tried to step back, but branches poked into my back, shoving me forward, closer. The ground beneath my feet undulated, an ocean of dirt forcing my feet to stumble another step closer. Another.

  The creature smiled, but it was a weak grin. One that said he wasn’t doing so well. Those same eyes as before looked back at me, but the spark inside them had dimmed a little. In the light of day, the creature seemed ten times worse paler, deader. Or maybe that was only because I had wounded him so badly the night before. I hoped, at least, that was why.

  Whipple circled the well, barking and yelping. My mother still lay off to the side, but I could see her stir.

  “Cooper, meet your father, Auguste.” Sam crossed to the creature, getting almost close enough to touch him. But not quite. Was Sam scared of the monster, too?

  Wait. Father? Had he said father? What the hell?

  “This thing here, this creature,” Sam went on, “has lived in this cesspool all these years so that we could live like kings. I know he’s a hideous, pitiful thing to look at, but he has power. Power you can only imagine.”

  I shook my head, tried again to back away from this horror. From the truth I still didn’t want to face. “I’m not related to him.”

  “Oh but you are,” Sam said, beaming with pride, and my stomach turned over. “It’s a great honor, Cooper. A great, great honor.”

  Maybe in Sam’s sick mind. “But … why me?” I started to realize that this time, there was no way out.

  I was going down there. To stay.

  “Because you were made for this,” Sam said, as if he were explaining to a toddler that babies came from the stork. “I had to have a blood descendant, one of Auguste’s, because that’s what the land demands. An heir to the creature in the well every two hundred years. It’s the price we pay, and the land gives back.” He looked over his shoulder at the well almost reverently.

  “You go down there, then,” I said. “You’re a Jumel. You’re so set on this.” I looked behind me, but the ground and trees kept up their wall.

  “You couldn’t pay me enough to do that.” Sam chuckled. “Besides, the power is strongest from Auguste’s own progeny. I, unfortunately, am descended from Gerard. But you, my dear Cooper, come straight from Auguste.”

  If this wasn’t so horrifying, I would have laughed. But I didn’t. What the monster had said to me in the well-“child of my loins”-had been true. Auguste raised his head and smiled. “Cooper,” he whispered, his voice cracking into almost nothing. Breath wheezed in and out of the pus-filled cavity in his chest. “Dear Cooper.”

  “I had to find a carrier for his seed,” Sam went on, ignoring the labored breathing of the creature. “I tried so many women, and they all failed me. Lost the babies, those idiots. Then your mother came in one day. A little wine to help her relax-a bonus of coming to my practice, I told her-and presto, she’s asleep. That was my chance to impregnate her with Auguste’s children.”

  I needed you, Cooper. Needed you to set me free. And now when you take my place, I live again as a man. My seed … for the return of my life.

  The creature had gone back to talking in my head. I knew it was because he was weaker, having been wounded by me. But that didn’t stop the horror of his words. “I don’t understand. How is that thing still alive? After two hundred years?”

  Sam grinned. “You are what you eat, Cooper.” And then he laughed, a laugh that almost made me puke. “Or maybe it’s `you eat what you are.”’

  Repugnance shot through me as I realized what the creature had been eating for centuries. I thought of Sam’s specialty when it came to delivering babies. Twins.

  “Twins.” I would have ralphed, but the trees had crowded in even farther, pressing me within touching distance of the creature.

  “They aren’t so easy to get, you know,” Sam said, still keeping his distance from the creature. He gave it a wary glance every now and then. “But when you work my job, sometimes … accidents happen.”

  The bundle. The bloody blanket. “B-b-babies? More than just the one last night?”

  Sam shrugged. “Not too many, Cooper. Just enough to keep Auguste alive until you turned fifteen. It’s a magical age, don’t you think?”

  He was raving. A lunatic. I didn’t think he expected an answer.

  “Of course, your twin was vital to his existence. Your twin gave him the strength to survive the past fifteen years, gave him the knowledge and proof that his sentence was almost finished. It was perhaps his most important feeding. And now here we are; you’re finally fifteen. In other cultures, fifteen is the age for change. For girls in Spain, it’s their quinceanera. In the Baha’i faith, it’s the year a boy becomes a man. In Japan, they have a genpuku ceremony for teenage boys.” He tipped the knife under my chin. “But here, dear Cooper, we have a ceremony of a differ„ ent sort.

  “You’re insane. I’m not going down there.”

  You will, the creature whispered. It is your destiny.

  Sam chuckled. “It’s October tenth. Two hundred years since Auguste was sent into this hell on the special and sacred ground that has fed his existence. Poor you will have to wait two hundred years for your turn to live again.”

  The creature reared up on the edge of the well, throwing forward what seemed like a last-ditch effort of energy, his eyes glittering. “Stop talking … and … do it now! Give him to me!”

  Sam spun toward the monster. “Shut up, old man. I’ll do what I want.”

  “You … work … for … me,” the creature rasped. “I … am … your”

  “You’re my meal ticket, and that means you don’t need to talk,” Sam said. “So shut your mouth, you stupid beast.”

  “Watch … how … you … talk to me.”

  Sam leaned toward Auguste. “I can talk any way I want to you. I don’t even need you anymore, you hideous troll.” He reached out and grabbed me by the shirt. “Cooper is the future of this vineyard, not you. As long as he’s in that well, Jumel lives on. And you can just die.”

  In the creature’s eyes, I saw hatred. Not for me. But for Sam.

  Sam ignored it all and instead closed the gap between me and him. “You will be sacrificed today, Cooper. There’s no escape. Consider yourself … a business expense. Just like Paolo and those babies.” He laughed, then thrust me against the well. I tried to twist away, but Auguste grabbed my arms from behind. The vines twined around him and me, knitting his grip tighter. He pulled me back, exposing my neck to Sam’s blade.

  “Give up the fight, Cooper. Accept your destiny,” the creature whispered, well water dripping from his mouth and puddling on my neck, the stench emanating off him in waves. His claws dug into my shoulders again, opening old wounds. Blood burst from my cuts like grapes being popped open.

  I struggled but got nowhere. My dog bit Sam’s ankles, but Sam kicked him in the head. The dog cried out. Fury blinded me. “Leave him alone!”

  Sam swung the knife across. I jerked to the left, but it wasn’t enough and the knife nicked my throat. Pain raced through my body and I screamed.

  Auguste’s web closed around my throat, cut off my breath. The world began to go black. “Stay still,” the creature whispered, “and the change will be almost painless.”

  He lowered his head to my neck, and the vines danced up my skin, slithering along my arm, my throat, my cheek-

  Just then, a burst of orange erupted around us. Flames? I couldn’t tell. I heard the trees crunch and stomp,
moving away. Whipple started barking. The screaming doubled. Was that me? The creature? Whipple?

  “Don’t stop!” Sam ordered the creature. He raised his arms back, palms out, ready to shove me down there. I tried to turn to the right to get away, but the creature’s grip tightened even more and he let out a gasp, as if he was pouring every last ounce of strength into the effort to hold on to me and drag me down with him. No escape, no way out.

  I saw Sam’s hands coming toward me and braced myself. I closed my eyes and thought of Megan.

  Ponytail.

  Pink dress.

  Box of Crayolas.

  Blue eyes.

  Her smile.

  “Cooper! Run!”

  I opened my eyes, and there was-

  My mother. Holding the lighter I’d dropped earlier in one hand and a thick sheaf of branches in the other, the leaves aflame. She used the homemade torch to hit the trees, forcing them back. It was enough to clear a hole and let her in. Then she lunged at the monster, flames first.

  Fire licked at the creature’s body and he cried out, loosening his grip. At the same time, Whipple leaped onto Auguste, biting one of his arms. Auguste went to smack the dog, which gave me just enough time to jerk away from the creature.

  Sam wheeled toward my mother and raised the switchblade. He screamed his hatred with a burst of expletives.

  He was going to kill her.

  I dove for Sam’s knees, trying to tackle him as I’d tackled a dozen sophomores and juniors in football, knowing if I hit him hard and low, I’d take him down. When I plowed into him, Sam teetered backwards, staggering several steps.

  But he wasn’t a high schooler. He was an adult. A very angry, very determined adult, who recovered his balance and started toward my mother again. I was still on the ground, too many seconds from another tackle.

  I kicked out, sending the closest thing I saw sailing under Sam’s feet. He stumbled, then began to go down, tripping and falling-

  Right over the skull I had left there a few days before. Way to go, Paolo.

  Sam, with his arms pinwheeling, turned, reaching for someone, something to help him, but there was no one there. No one who cared. “Auguste! Grab me, you idiot!”