The Well

by Jack Cady

  The tension and the pacing were tiring him. He brought a chair from one of the smaller kitchens, sat down, rubbed his eyes, looked at his watch. For a moment the watch seemed like an alien trinket strapped to his wrist. It seemed without purpose. This particular watch came from an insurance inventory, he recalled, that had been raided by the former owner, by truck drivers and claims adjusters until most of the value was drained off. The insurance company really took a bath on that one.

  When he was twenty, the last time he’d come to this house when his father was alive, it was because Justice wanted to see him and maybe advise him. Of what? Concentrate. That new construction, twenty years ago his father talked of that new construction, and John now found himself remembering a phrase like “life’s work,” and words like “sanctuary” and “preservation.” He’d definitely have to check on that before this place was destroyed. His father advised him to do something, take some kind of action, but he couldn’t remember what.

  He yawned. His knees ached slightly. Two days before he’d done some pretty fancy scrambling on that snowy grade. A man shouldn’t let himself get even the least bit out of shape. Then his blinking eyes opened, startled. He checked his watch again. The watch — a mind of its own — held to the opinion that the time was 6:30 p.m. He shook it, looked at its lighted dial. The thing was moving, seeming to speed. Fear clouted him like a hammer. He’d been desperate over Amy, angry with Vera, and afraid for Amy. On this second visit to the house, though, he’d felt neither his own unreason or very much shock. Even the skeleton that had rattled like dice and appeared in the false bottom of the phony coffin had caused no fear like what he now felt. Fear that time was misshapen. He shook the watch again. They could have been here, at most, three hours. Surely it could be no later than early afternoon.

  The halls and rooms and doorways did not look different. Inside this house it was impossible to say whether it was day or night unless you found a window. Always there was the perpetual gloom of this house, where lights sometimes flicked off as you entered a room bringing you into total darkness at midday.

  He looked at Amy, still huddled into the blanket, and battled a panicky urge to run and find a window.

  This was a trick, and to hell with it. That was becoming his answer for everything in this house. It was one thing to know about tricks and traps, it was quite another thing when time not only shifted but went haywire. The silent house felt like a slowly descending weight, exerting pressure, like the piling on of stones, like a force that entered his chest and legs and arms to dull and slow them. He remembered dreams about trying to run underwater. It felt like that.

  All right, try to reason it out. Perhaps he had slept. No doubt he had slept, but surely not for four or five hours. He felt displaced, as though he had been carried to the edge of an abyss, as though he were standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon with the wind at his back gusting, popping, echoing. He felt the way Rip Van Winkle must have felt as thunder bowled between the mountains on his return from sleep. But that was not the Hudson River out there, dark and rolling beneath the cliff. That was the Ohio, the wall against weather; the liquid symbol of movement that, since he was a child, always let him know that he could leave. That river, symbol of trade to some, of power to others, always meant to John Tracker that there were options if things got too terrible.

  He raised his head and listened. This deep in the house the only weather sounds you ever heard came from wind. In this great well of a house, built over a well, even the sound of thunder did not penetrate. In that huge dining hall that looked onto a terrace, that looked up as if from a well at the towering sides of the house, sound did not penetrate. Rains came to the terrace, and ice, but the wind rode high up there and was like a cap on a well.

  Tracker listened and felt, more than heard, the far off pressure of wind.

  A trick. His mind now automatically responded that way. The storm was not due for a day, or perhaps two. They had plenty of time. He looked at Amy. If he woke her up while he was afraid he would telegraph his fear to her, and that would slow them even more.

  At least he had to discover if darkness had come, if the distant winds were real. But he couldn’t leave her. He began to back slowly through the kitchens, Amy in sight, and headed for a doorway that would allow him to look into the dining hall. He was ready at the first sign of any trouble to rush back to her. He was taking a chance and knew it. These kitchens were safe, but nothing in the house of the Trackers was ever one hundred percent safe. That would have ruined its reputation, denied Tracker history.

  Step at a time, half-step at a time he eased backward until he stood beside the doorway. Amy was still asleep. He turned from her and looked into the dining hall, waiting for his eyes to adjust. The great floor area was as black as ocean depths, there was no light on the terrace beyond those windows.

  Then like a burst of phosphorescence on the crest of a wave, a glimmer of blue light began to radiate and build from a dark corner of the terrace. He stood watching it increase, and, in despair, could now see through those lead-enclosed windows just how heavily it was snowing.

  Chapter Ten

  Christian Traker was John Tracker’s great great grandfather on his father’s father’s father’s side, and he lived in Darmstadt, Germany.

  Christian was a fat man who made his living as a butcher. His health, of which he was known to brag, he credited to the custom of drinking blood then current in his trade, and which, of course, violated Genesis’ rule. Christian, after hammering the beast, would string it to drain, open the artery at the throat and catch the steaming blood in a cup. On cold mornings, or on mornings after nights when he had drunk too much schnapps, he was known to brag that he could drink an ox dry. Like most men of his time he had a mustache and beard, which often sported dried and caked blood.

  Christian Traker died of a heart attack at age forty-five.

  John and Amy sat together in the kitchen while she blinked herself wider and wider awake. Actually she seemed in rather good spirits, considering the situation. It was almost as though she remembered the maze as something that had happened years before.

  Tracker rubbed at his elbow. It was sore, he must have bumped it as he scrambled through the maze. He doubted that they could leave during that storming night. He also doubted if he would keep much of his strength if he didn’t eat something soon. It felt strange to be hungry when you’d never had any practice. It felt doubly so when you were accustomed to eating in the best restaurants. Of course the kitchens were well-stocked with food, and in back of this kitchen those pantries were well-filled. The food might even be good, but it might also be salted with poison.

  “Is there any coffee?” She was smiling, and looked wonderful to him, considering the dishevelment of her hair and clothing. In fact, that made her look good in a special, personal way that he liked.

  “We don’t dare drink it, we don’t know what’s in it.”

  “That’s silly. If Vera was going to drink it — ”

  “We don’t know what Vera was going to do.”

  “She was pretty mean, but so were you. You were insulting.”

  “I was only describing her — ”

  “You cursed, I hate it when a man curses.” Her eyes told him she meant what she said, but her voice was soft. She was pleased by the memory that came to her. “I brought lunch,” she said. “Two sandwiches and two apples. In the truck.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Beyond the kitchens the house seemed colder than before, and his flashlight seemed a poor tool in the dark rooms that lay like crypts. The boom of wind came through clearly as they moved toward the outside of the house. Although they came from deep in the house, it was familiar territory and it did not take Tracker long to lead them to the front hall, where the coffin stood beneath the portrait of Justice. He opened the door against a crush of wind. The trap was still on
safety. The wind funneled at them. The mound of freeway lay like a white mountain in the darkness. Snow blew along the grade, and from the river far below the wind rose over the bluffs and moaned through the channel between the freeway and the house.

  Tracker recoiled from it, then gathered himself to make a dash to the truck. There was no chance in the world, even with that truck, of driving through this. The truck looked isolated, but also real and sensible and reassuring. Then he took a second look. He’d deliberately parked the truck on a slight grade, and was sure he had set the brake, sure the truck was left in gear. The equipment could not possibly have a tare weight of under three tons, yet the truck was slewed sideways on the grade, the front end slightly lowered, like it sat in a pothole. The wind had seemingly twisted it as easily as a child might turn a toy car.

  “Stay on the porch, I’ll be right back.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  So he took her hand and they plunged into the wind. Blown snow stung their cheeks, their eyes watered. When they reached the truck they found the doors were frozen shut. Tracker muttered under his breath. You never parked a rig in winter without making sure you could get back inside; he shouldn’t have closed the doors tight. Some moisture always collected in the cab of a landscape truck; condensation had him beaten. He hoped he at least hadn’t set the brake. If an emergency brake froze, you were really in a fix; unless you liked to drive in reverse.

  And then he remembered. He’d jumped from this truck to save Amy. Maybe it wasn’t in gear, maybe he didn’t have time to set the brake. The keys were still in the ignition. He wiped snow from the side window, then from the windshield, and shined his flashlight into the cab. The few tools he’d had with him were in the cab. He pounded on the door, then backed up and kicked it as hard as he could. It wasn’t much of a kick because it wasn’t solid, his snowy shoe skidding across the surface of the door. His knee felt like it was wrenched. He just was not going to jar that door loose with a kick.

  There was still a crowbar back in the house, laying somewhere in that room where he saw the projection of Theophilus. When he’d run from the apparition he’d been in no mood for carrying crowbars. He could use it now to wedge the door open or break the window. His mind automatically flipped figures and told him it would be cheaper to break a window. He told himself that he really was crazy. Here they were, half-starved, in the middle of a storm, and he was thinking about economics. “Let’s get the hell out of this,” he yelled, but the wind swallowed his voice. He motioned to her, took her arm and they trudged through the blowing snow back to the house.

  After the wind, the house seemed a warm shelter. Amy stood shivering, but not the way she would if she were tensing against weather. Tracker felt something between disgruntlement and anger. If he’d not had to jump from that cab in the first place he would have remembered the door. If, on the other hand, he’d been half as smart as he thought he was, he would have left the door on half-latch.

  He looked at the portrait of Justice, at the empty hall, at the unempty coffin. His belly rumbled. His knees and elbows twinged. Wind was banging the house like a fried-out drummer kicking over a set of drums. His grandmother was walking and planning devilment. Behind him snow was chin-high to a tall giraffe. Tracker felt a choice between total despair and laughter, so he chose the laughter. It did not fill the belly, it did not tell him the right time, but at least it was better than letting this crazy, rum-dum carnival show overtake him and make him so afraid he couldn’t act.

  Amy looked at him nervously, and then some of their situation dawned on her and she began laughing with him. Two children standing in front of a Frankenstein movie and giggling because they knew they were about to be scared witless.

  “We can do this just as easy where it’s warm,” Amy said.

  She did not know about the crowbar. He decided to take the long way around to the kitchens and pick it up. Food or not, he wanted to dig in the snow and check out that truck which now sat at an awfully peculiar angle. He might just as well get the food she’d brought when he checked the truck.

  “This way.” He explained what they were doing as they walked. “You can watch the old man standing in sulphur if you want, but it isn’t really worth it.” He tried to make his voice light, but the tones were wrong.

  “You’re afraid.”

  “It’s a little shocking, that’s all. I don’t mean to frighten you.”

  She did not look reassured.

  He thought that by now she might understand some of the dark in his past. He couldn’t tell her that for nearly twenty years he’d tried not to dream. He couldn’t tell her that at one time a psychiatrist was the only thread that anchored him to an otherwise crazy world. All he could do was walk silently beside her, feeling clumsy. This woman trusted him, had lain naked beside him, had whispered to him and touched him and smiled at him. As the world operated, this woman was his lover, and the problem was that he did not know how to love. He only knew how to try. That would make anyone lonesome.

  “It’s just this,” he said in a low voice. “This place was once very real to me. It isn’t real anymore, but it seems a part of me doesn’t understand that.”

  “Me too,” she said. “I mean, I think I know what you mean.”

  “How could you?”

  “You hardly ever drink,” she said. “In three years I doubt if I’ve seen you take a dozen drinks.”

  “The only way to do business is over nothing stronger than a cup of coffee — ”

  “That’s not what I mean.” Her voice was intimate in a new way. Confessional. It was a voice that cared little for nice clothes or bright talk or to be seen in stylish places. “My father is a good man,” she said. “A good man.”

  “I understand,” he said, and he did. Her voice was filled with years of sadness. Sometimes she would cover a confused situation with a casual, or would-be sophisticated voice. There was nothing of that in this confessional voice.

  “They say a part of us never grows up,” he said. “We stay frightened little kids.” He’d never talked this way to anyone.

  “I think that’s true,” she said. “No, I know it’s true.”

  When they got to the room he played the flashlight beam across the floor. The crowbar was lying in the center of the room. The light played on a tapestry of camels and palm trees, across dusty furniture.

  “Stand here,” he told Amy. “Unless you want to see.”

  “I don’t.” She was hugging herself because of the cold.

  “I’ll be just a moment.” He stepped through the doorway, knowing that he was about to see the apparition. Nothing happened, which gave him a chill that didn’t come from the cold room. Apparently he’d missed the tripping device. He stepped into the hall, reentered the room.

  Still nothing. An idea came back. It wasn’t exactly shocking, but it began to work on him. He knew Theophilus, he knew that old man like saints know their Bibles, and he was beginning to feel that he’d set himself up by not listening carefully to Vera. He tapped the crowbar all around the entry, kicked the floor inside the room. Nothing happened.

  “It must have been a one-time show,” he said to Amy. “Some of the traps are good for only one shot.” He remembered the burnt flashbulbs and sheared-off sword of a former trap. He also did not know if he believed a word of what he said. He wanted time to digest this new idea.

  “Let’s get back where it’s warm,” he said, and took her arm and walked toward the kitchens. He tried to add up what he knew as he walked beside Amy. The apparition was not an apparition at all. It was a crazy old man who could use lights and mirrors and smoke to produce illusion. It was a man who must be in his eighties, at least; but who could still rig a set-up if he was given a little advance notice. John figured he’d maybe even seen Theophilus himself, and not a projection. Theophilus was still alive.

 
If Vera was still here, why not believe that Theophilus might also be here. He thought about it with a different slant and his mind sparked with a sudden, painful hope. If those two were still walking this tomb of a house, then there was no reason to believe his father was dead.

  The empty house suddenly seemed peopled. It felt like years had not passed. Vera and Theophilus and Justice were all here somewhere. Tracker felt nearly optimistic.

  When he was twenty he’d rejected his father, had rejected everything he knew about this place. Now at forty he could understand how he could grow in experience, knowledge, and wish it had not happened.

  As soon as he found Vera he would get the final truth of it. “I’ve got something worked out,” he told Amy. “When we get to the kitchens I’ll tell you.” They were passing through a corridor where the dim, night-sleeping lights were fairly close together. Shadows heightened the drama of Amy’s features; her high forehead and cheeks were even more distinct.

  She stopped. “I’m feeling sort of tired. Even though I got some sleep.” She sounded apologetic.

  “We’ll be in the kitchens soon.”

  “That isn’t why I stopped.” She smiled. It was a smile that came slow and built slow and ended slow. Her eyes were fatigued but they also seemed lighted with an interior joy. Her soft hair framed her face and covered her shoulders. “Now this is really dumb,” she said. “I don’t mean that what I’m going to say is dumb, but it’s a dumb time and place to say it.”

  “What? Is something wrong?”

  “I haven’t said it before…I mean, I’ve said it a couple of times when we were in bed but it somehow means something different with your clothes on.”

  He understood, dared to understand.