15 Minutes of Flame

by Christin Brecher

  I could see misgiving written all over Shelly’s face. I knew it had nothing to do with the fact that I might be on a covert mission to break into a well. No. I knew what she was thinking. She was wondering if I’d come up with a new feature for the Haunted House that would add more work to her to-do list between now and Friday. I could see that, behind her suspicious eyes, she harbored a true fear that she’d be climbing down or up two stories to attach a fake witch to the house, or something worse. She’d likely be relieved to know I would be risking life and limb at the well rather than creating any more complexities for the Halloween event.

  “The broken window in my apartment spooked me,” I said. “What if I had a fire? I’d need something to climb down to safety, right? Can’t be too careful.”

  Shelly nodded, approvingly, obviously glad to be off the hook.

  “Good idea,” she said. “I was going to call you, by the way. With all the interest in skeletons on the island, the girls have realized they have street cred.”

  “In spite of the murder today?” I said. Perhaps I’d underestimated this gang.

  “I called the Chief of Police, who assured me that the murder was specific to that man Solder, and not because of skeletons. The parents ended up being more of a problem, but they calmed down after I told them what the police told me. We’re going to have a meeting after school tomorrow, to see how things go. Assuming we have no more calamities, we feel we can proceed.”

  “I’m thrilled,” I said.

  “I don’t think it would have happened had you not moved in to that house,” said Shelly. “The island’s neediest have you to thank.”

  “Not at all,” I said, eyeing one more thing for my basket, a box of latex gloves. No way was I going to contaminate evidence. Or get splinters.

  I could sense the sun was setting, that time was ticking, but I smiled, patiently, as Shelly showed me a couple of paint pots and asked my advice on which color would be best for the witch’s cauldron they were making. When we finally had that business settled, I headed to the register, casually grabbing the gloves on the way. I paid and headed straight to the Morton house. My phone rang as I parked the car. Peter. I decided not to loop him into this trouble, so I let it ring, then texted him that I’d call in a few.

  I headed into the house and upstairs to my room. Tinker followed me.

  “How was your day?” I said to my little friend.

  He purred and jumped on my bed. I noticed that having had the room to himself today, he’d made himself comfortable. There was a nice round indent on one of my pillows and another one on a sunken old club chair. He’d certainly picked the two coziest spots in the room, and I was happy he’d been contented. Haunted or not, I still liked the Morton house. The old nooks and crannies were like blank canvases I wanted to fill with stories and candles and creativity.

  Right now, however, my creativity was focused on what I should wear to break into Old Holly’s property and climb down his well. Dark clothing to hide myself, durable clothing for the exertion. My jacket was navy blue. I’d have preferred black, but at least it was dark, and it was short. I could be active in it. Among the belongings I’d taken with me to the Morton house were black jeans, dark sneakers, and a black hoodie. The back of the hoodie had an ad for the Rose & Crown, a great pub in town, but it was the warmest thing I had. Plus I’d won it at the bar’s turkey bowl last November, so it felt like good luck.

  I dumped my purchases onto the bed. Tinker hopped up, showing interest in the items. He sniffed at the ladder. I wondered what he smelled. I lifted the item to my nose, but all I got was the aroma of the thick nylon strings that wound together to make the strong rope.

  I plugged my phone into the wall, to make sure I was at 100 percent before I left. I had every intention of taking many photos once I arrived at the bottom of the well. Then I went to the bathroom to freshen up.

  “You’re crazy,” I said to my reflection.

  The feeling lasted about three seconds. Instead of psyching myself out, I put on some lipstick and packed the bag.

  “Keep guarding the house,” I said to Tinker. “Home sweet home, right?”

  Tinker meowed in agreement. As I headed downstairs, I found myself imagining what the Morton house walls would look like with a fresh coat of paint. Maybe I was trying to keep myself from overthinking my decision to break into Old Holly’s property and drop down his well at night, but if so, it did the trick. By the time I closed the door behind me, I had chosen a pale blue.

  Outside, the street was quiet, which was exactly what I wanted. There are a few homes on the street, and none too far apart. Houses in Nantucket’s town were built fairly close together in comparison to those out by Old Holly, and as a result, anyone could see me jump in my car and head out. I looked into the front windows of the homes down the road as I pulled away, however, and felt fairly certain no one saw me.

  About fifteen minutes later, I was heading toward Old Holly’s driveway. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t park at his house, so I searched for a place to hide the car. The fog had picked up again, as it often does at night. I could see it floating in front of my lights, low and thick, as I slowed the car to a crawl on Old Holly’s quiet road. When I was close enough to the house that I could walk, I pulled onto the shoulder of the road. My car is a bright red, so it was useless to try to camouflage it. I drove the Beetle a little deeper into the brush, crossing my fingers that there would be minimal scratches as I heard twigs and branches scrape across it.

  Turning off the car, I grabbed the bag and the ladder, and hopped out. In less than a minute, I was headed down Old Holly’s driveway. The moon was getting full, as I’d known it would from Peter’s moon watching, but clouds and fog passed it intermittently, making the path hard to follow.

  A policeman was in a patrol car since the well was still a crime scene. Fortunately, he was looking at his phone, so he wasn’t hard to sneak around. Once I passed the car, my dark attire began to pay off. I easily slipped into the darkness of the night.

  As I made me way across the cold, dead grass, I saw only one light on in Old Holly’s house, the one in the living room. I could hear that the television was on, which gave me more confidence that I could make it to the well without being caught. I knew if Old Holly was watching baseball, there could be a war outside, and he wouldn’t bother to check on it. Even still, I drew my hoodie up and dipped my head down. My pace was fast, but light. In no time, I’d passed the house and was headed down the field toward the well. I was less concerned about noise now. Instead, I feared I’d stand out in the empty field if the clouds parted and Holly happened to look out of his window. I kept to the perimeter of the field for as long as I could.

  About halfway down the field, I stopped. I was only about five yards from the table the police had set up this morning. It was still on the field, exactly where we’d left it. The reason I stopped was that I heard a noise. I waited a moment to see if I could determine the direction it had come from and what kind of animal had made it. As I waited, I noticed that there was no noise coming from the main house. No cheers of victory. No curses of discouragement. Nothing. I knew immediately that something was off.

  The noise began again.

  Footsteps. Human ones.

  There was no doubt about it.

  I ran the extra few yards and dove under the table. From my hiding place, I waited for what felt like an eternity. The footsteps continued, in a pattern of start and stop. Whoever was making them did not seem to be following a certain path. It seemed more like the steps of someone in search of something, but what? Me?

  It occurred to me that in spite of the many items I had in my bag for the climb, I did not have anything to defend myself. If I had learned anything, it should have been that Solder would have benefited from some sort of defense. Right now, all I had was a folding table.

  I silently cursed myself and looked around for a stick or anything useful. Oddly, I did find something. It was an old TV antenna, the kind us
ed before the days of cable. I wondered how much other junk my cousins had had to haul off the property, but the slim iron rod seemed as good as anything for protection. I was reaching my hand out toward it when I heard a grunt. The voice was one I had heard before, earlier in the day. It was the sound of Old Holly when the starting pitcher had walked someone to give up a run.

  Sure enough, from my hiding place, I saw Old Holly emerge from the thicket. His head hung low, and he was muttering to himself. I guess my ears aren’t as strong as my sense of smell. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. My eyes, however, had adjusted to the darkness. As Old Holly stepped from the brush and onto his field, I saw him clearly. I saw everything from the whiskers peeking out from the hood over his head to the heavy hiking books on his feet and the item he held in his hand. An axe.

  I put my hand over my own mouth, lest I let out a cry of surprise. The last thing I remembered from the crime scene today was the police searching for the axe, without success.

  I watched until Old Holly reached his house door. Fortunately, his head stayed focused on the ground in front of him, step by step, until he stepped inside.

  “You moron,” he shouted at his TV with his axe in his hand. I gave him another minute or two to settle into his chair and then crept out from under the table.

  After tripping over a few twigs and branches on the short path to the well, I was face-to-face with Nancy Holland’s tomb. The police, I noticed, had put a tarp over the well rather than secure all of the wooden planks that had originally protected it. This was good news for me. All I had to do was loosen two of the stakes that held down the tarp and push aside one of the planks to create enough room for my body to fit.

  I dropped my backpack on the ground. I was still concerned that Old Holly could notice me if I turned on my helmet light, so I proceeded in the dark. Pulling the strings open on the ladder, I began to unroll it. My adrenaline was running high. I was excited to find out what awaited me at the bottom of the well.

  “Perfect,” I said to myself when I adjusted the hook to fit over the edge of the well.

  The ladder began to fall into the abyss. For a moment, I didn’t hear anything as the two ropes and the small wooden rungs that held them together tumbled downward. After about three seconds, however, I heard a clack of wood against stone. Then another, and another. Fortunately, I could no longer hear Old Holly yelling at the television, so I knew he couldn’t hear me.

  I secured the strap under my helmet and put my backpack over my shoulders.

  “You’re crazy,” I whispered to myself.

  The well’s wall reached the bottom of my rib cage, but in the dark, with the prospect of climbing over the rough and uneven stones, the structure seemed much higher. I leaned against it with both of my arms and hopped up, bracing the tips of my rubber-soled shoes against the wall to give me traction as I scrambled up the edge. I felt along the ladder until my hand reached the far end of the rope. Then I pushed my foot that was dangling over the well until I felt it hit the first rung.

  “Now or never,” I said.

  With that, I hoisted the rest of my body overboard.

  My first rung was a disaster. Bringing my outer leg over the edge hadn’t gone as smoothly as I could have hoped. Although the hook did its job of keeping me from falling to my death, the ropes did not cooperate. I immediately swung to my right in a way that reminded me of those carnival games where you try to climb up a ropes course designed to topple you over if you don’t have perfect balance.

  Fear of losing my life, however, gave me magical abilities. Although I at first flailed and grabbed and spun around, my body and the ladder eventually came to a compromise. Once I’d gotten my sea legs, I turned on the light. I didn’t look down, for fear that the depth would be too much to see, given my precarious position. Instead, I focused on the stones of the well and the distance between my foot and each rung as I descended.

  “One. Two. Three,” I said, counting my way down.

  The counting was comforting.

  The rubbing of my fingers against the stone wall was not, even with my gloves on.

  When my foot searched for but could not find another rung, I took a deep breath. Finally, I looked below me.

  The good news was that I could see the bottom of the well.

  The bad news was that it was still too far below me that I could not jump without risk of breaking a bone or two. And even if I’d devised a way for a successful jump, there would be no way I could pull myself back up the ladder when I was done.

  So there I was, dangling from a ladder five stories below Old Holly’s well. Adding to my frustration was the scene below me. I could see poor Nancy Holland.

  I knew immediately that she had had a bad ending. I didn’t know much about bones aside from having viewed Patience Cooper’s in The Shack. She had looked mostly like the skeleton that had hung from a hook in my biology class in college. The bones generally lined up with the image in my textbook.

  Nancy’s bones, however, did not match up. Her right thigh bone lay perpendicular to her hip bone, and her shin was at a right angle to it. I could see this because the dress she’d been wearing when she tossed herself over had flown up over her torso. And her shoe had flown clear across to the other side of the well. I wondered if her bonnet had stayed on or if Solder had found it lying somewhere else too.

  Behind Nancy’s head was a dark bloodstain. I didn’t remember Solder commenting on it, but it made sense. I couldn’t see the back of her head, but it was a safe guess that when her head hit the ground, it had probably cracked open. Even if she had survived the fall, she wouldn’t have been able to stand.

  “Ow,” I said, as much about poor Nancy’s legs as about my own, which were beginning to ache.

  I risked taking one hand off the ladder for a second to adjust the light on my helmet. By raising the angle, I was able to get a better look around the perimeter of the well’s floor. My eyes sought the map. Solder had not shared how big it was, and I had not asked Leigh. All I knew was that it had originally been in Nancy’s canvas sack, and that it was not in there when Solder’s body and backpack were found. Looking around the bottom of the well, I could not find it either. Nancy’s dress might be covering it, but it was hard to tell.

  There were some leaves and rocks and, of course, Nancy’s shoe. To Solder’s point, the space was impressively empty for a tomb that had only been covered by the planks. The family had done a great job of protecting Nancy from the elements. It reminded me of the equally odd burial of Patience Cooper. Neither woman had had the dignity of a proper burial, but they had remained protected for over a century.

  Then I had my big idea. I remembered that I’d tossed the old TV antenna into my backpack after Old Holly had returned to his house. It occurred to me that if the antenna opened out long enough, I might just be able to poke around Nancy’s dress to make sure the map wasn’t there. I reached behind me to pull it out.

  Once again, as I took my hand off of one side of the ladder, the ropes began to swing around in a circle. I’ll describe it, so you don’t need to try it out at home. Understand that it’s downright tricky to reach into a backpack on a swinging ladder. Eventually, I was able to brace my back against the stone wall by spreading my feet to both edges of the ladder and poking my knees into the next rung, thereby creating two rungs’ worth of space. In this awkward position, I pulled out the antenna and proceeded to rehang the backpack on my front versus on my back.

  For a moment, I thought I’d really figured things out with my multi-limb balancing act, so I leaned forward, my elbows against either side of a rung a couple rows up from my knees. That’s when I knew I’d pressed my luck. Once again, I was spinning in circles, now with an antenna in my hand and my headlamp highlighting every stone in circular fashion. I’d gone from feeling like I was on a ropes course to feeling like I was on a carnival ride I’d tried during college called the Gravitron, during which a seat belt and centrifugal force were the only things that kept m
e from flying into the park grounds. The only noise other than the knocks and bumps created by my tormented body was the whistling sound of the wind as it tore over the well.

  And, of course, once I twirled one way, I then twirled the other, until finally I had a moment to fight back and regain my balance.

  “Ha!” I said to the ladder.

  Careful not to make any more radical movements, I opened the antenna with my teeth and then reached out to the body below.

  The stick was too short.

  If I’d had about three more feet, I might have made it.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever found yourself in a similar predicament. If you have, I’d be curious to know what you decided to do. Stay? Go? Anything in the middle?

  Me? At that moment I thought, hell, what do I have to lose? Fully prepared for another battle with the ladder, I slid my body downward, keeping both hands steady until my knees were at my chin. Something like a ballerina fantasy came over me. Or a trapeze artist. Whatever it was, I pulled down on the ropes with my forearms and gently reached my legs through the rung so that I was seated on the lowest rung of the ladder.

  It was a miracle of coordination. It was also quite a relief to be off my feet. I’d been holding the antenna in my mouth, and now, clinging my arms around the ropes on either side of me, I took hold of the steel rod and pulled it open. I was even thinking I might be cocky enough to take my phone out of the knapsack to take a few pictures if I found the map.

  I am proud of the fact that I am resourceful. A woman of action. A problem solver. The flip side, however, is the occasional overreach. Once again, the rod was too short. It took no more than a moment of trying to reach out to Nancy’s dress before the ladder began to violently rock again. I hadn’t thought it could get worse, but suddenly, though my back had been resting against the well’s wall, I lost my grip. Next thing I knew, I was falling backward. I was aware that my helmet was doing a good job of staying on my head, that my backpack was still hanging in front of me—actually now over my face. My head had just reached back to see the floor below when I stopped falling.