The Well

by Jack Cady

  She was not even gasping, it had to be an act. She looked stronger, when she should have been depleted.

  “Get her to bed.” Amy seemed to overlook everything, the blow, the hard words.

  “On your feet,” he said. He gave her his hand, reached behind her to help, and was surprised when she cooperated.

  “We’ll take care of you,” Amy said.

  “Fits happen,” Vera told her. “Then they go.”

  “Help her, John.”

  “Stay close to us,” he told Amy. He took his grandmother’s arm, which seemed as thin as wire. He led her from the kitchen. She tried to resist. He pressured her arm with firm fingers and kept her walking, then suddenly found himself walking scared.

  “I’ll get you,” she whispered. “Ass ’n appetite.”

  “You’ll not. I had nothing to do with this.”

  She was walking good. Now she tried a different tactic, looked at him almost as though he were a friend. There was a smile on her face, he could swear it. The smile of a whorish girl, but a girl nonetheless. Then her face tensed, her eyes opened wider. In the center of them, deep from something or somewhere else in time, luminous red forms moved. Her eyes were not red, but there was red in her eyes. Her tense face tightened more. It bore hatred mixed with something John Tracker had named at various times but had never really seen on a human face. He thought he knew the look of greed, lust, envy; but he realized without question that he was now looking at the force that embodied them all. He was looking at absolute evil.

  Tracker faltered, and as he did his grandmother’s face changed. Now it was old and bland, although her movements were still strong, and he decided that his grandmother was the greatest actress he had ever seen.

  “What’s got hold of you,” he asked. “You change from one thing to another every minute.”

  Later he would remember that she tried to speak, her jaw tried to move. Once more she tensed. “I give you one answer,” she said. “I aint changed, and neither have you. You’re just growin’ toward what you already was.”

  They arrived outside a closed door. “This here’s my room.”

  “I know, it always was.”

  “Go away.”

  “We’ll get you comfortable.” Amy was trailing behind, missing some of the conversation, but now she sounded like a nurse.

  Tracker gave Vera credit. When she wanted something, she had the moves it took to get it.

  “I’ve lived here all my life,” she told Amy in a pathetic but curiously dignified way. “You want to tear down my house. At least let me have my room.”

  “I’m sorry.” Amy was also near tears. “We really had nothing to do with this.”

  “You are a good child,” Vera said. “You are a good girl. Please go away.”

  “I’ll come for you after the storm,” Tracker told her.

  She looked at him, her ancient face cross-hatched with wrinkles, with hate that she was hiding from Amy; and with sagging flesh around a face that still looked so much like a death’s head. She whispered so softly he could barely hear, and he was sure Amy could not hear.

  “Which storm,” she said. “The real storm only just started.”

  Chapter Twelve

  If John Tracker was uncertain about his grandmother Vera’s power, and its source in witchcraft, some of his confusion came from his own past. Although he had not known his mother, Sarah, from early childhood until age ten, he had spent his teenage years living with her and so came to know a woman who was sometimes an example of confusion. Sarah had been a woman with many and various directions.

  She was the daughter of Samuel Lily, a lay preacher who worked in the shipyards. Like his daughter after him, Samuel was a questioner. Eventually he rejected religion because of the emptiness of dogma, and in his continuing search for understanding he read all manner of radical tracts. His friends tolerated Samuel’s radical speculations because they liked him. Samuel was a gentle and sometimes befuddled man. He was killed during World War II when oxygen tanks blew up in a welding shed. Considering his befuddlement, and his innocence and openness to all ideas, it is likely that there was no really viable spot for him on the face of the earth.

  The word “sanctuary” echoed in John Tracker’s mind as he and Amy returned to the kitchens. Vera frightened him. The clear-headed, business side of his mind, ironically, did not know what to think or do, though it was juggling possibilities.

  A psychiatrist, he speculated, might say that he had repressed fears for so long that his mind was now giving sensory form to those fears. A believer in genetic memory might accuse him of questioning what was inevitably there, and so missing the obvious answers. One thing was certain; no matter how he tried to apply worldly logic, Vera was stronger than Vera ought to have been.

  In any case, the side of his mind which he’d never trusted was like a dog with its hackles raised. Bad as it was, it had sense enough to tell him to leave this house, even if he and Amy might be lost in the storm. Fight or run, but at least move.

  He felt an urge to return to Vera’s room and kill her. The thought repelled him. He might be a lot of things, but he was not a murderer.

  He was afraid, though, of a man in at least his eighties or early nineties. In this house, if Vera lived, Theophilus was king. Theophilus had choreographed this house, orchestrated it. He could play this house with all the dexterity of a concert pianist. Men’s minds deteriorated as they grew old, which meant that Theophilus might be even more dangerous now than before.

  Sanctuary.

  It was his father’s word. His father used it when referring to the new construction, still in the planning stage when John Tracker was twenty. John saw no better alternative now than to reach that new construction. With a safe wall at his back he could figure out why Vera was so changeable and so strong. It was almost as though she were two people, as though she tried to talk to him but someone else got in her way and did all the talking instead. Sometimes, he realized, she seemed almost mechanical. Tracker did not know what he thought, or believed. He only knew that he and Amy must get to a safe place.

  They reached the kitchens, where she went to the stove to heat the remaining coffee. She didn’t seem exactly frightened, but her face was drawn.

  “What did you see? What do you think?” He watched her closely. She was moving well but with fatigue.

  “I think Vera is crazy,” she said. “Living here all alone, or with Theophilus, she’d have to be.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m afraid of her, but mostly I’m afraid for her.” Hovering above the warming coffee, Amy brushed at her long hair with one hand, reached back and rubbed her neck.

  “Afraid for her?”

  “John, when I was a little girl, back in the days of angels and demons — ” She broke off and turned to face him. “I made a mistake someplace.” A hint of the confessional voice returned. “Sometime or other, I learned to laugh at things I couldn’t explain.”

  “That might not be such a mistake,” he said.

  “Not according to catechism. You trust your good angels.”

  “I don’t believe in angels.” He did not like the way the conversation was going, it seemed too close to Justice’s forgotten words.

  “I believe in angels. Anyway, I do now.”

  “These kitchens are central,” he told her. “I’ve changed my mind about staying in them tonight.”

  “All right.” Her fatigue was clear in her quiet voice. It bothered him that she seemed so tired. She had slept, after all, and he wondered how long he had slept.

  “It’s warm here,” she said. “It’s nice to be warm.”

  “I think it will be nicer where we’re going.”

  After two hours he was not so sure his decision was a good one. Defenses stood in front of the new
construction, as if Theophilus had thrown every resource of his mechanical genius into making Justice’s vault inaccessible. Still, if you were careful it was possible to make slow progress in the house. He pushed heavy pieces of furniture ahead of him, which took care of the cruder mechanical traps. What bothered him were chemical activators or traps hooked to a timer. A man could trip one of those, proceed with his business and be killed five minutes later. To defend against them he waited for ten minutes after each major entry. Only then would he explore the room.

  The traps were a large, curving spectrum of mixed violence. Rooms halved as sections of wall twisted; concealed lamps bloomed to burn eyes; compressed air exploded to fill rooms with salt and sand and roofing nails — grapeshot, a scarifying material not much different than what was once fired from muzzle-loading cannons.

  He tripped a pressure switch and jumped back as the door shut and snap-locked. There followed sounds like the whoosh of a train blowing, then silence. In ten minutes the door slid open. He and Amy were hit with a cold blast, a rushing and sucking of air. The cold dispersed. The room had been pumped full of carbon dioxide.

  When the room was safe, John reentered, checked routinely. The door jamb of ornate framing stood slightly away from the wall. He ran his fingers behind it, found a switch, pressed and got out of the room.

  A wall panel raised to reveal a plain wooden door with a passage knob. No lock. It seemed like an invitation to easy destruction, but by now Tracker was picking up a pattern in Theophilus’ design. This door violated the pattern, it was too simple.

  He crossed the room, shoved the door open with his crowbar. Nothing happened. Then, through the open doorway, lights flared to reveal a set of concrete steps leading downward. Fifteen feet away, and about two feet above eye level, rose a concrete wall. He watched, waited and understood that he was seeing a building that was partially underground, like a bomb shelter or an Egyptian tomb.

  Or like a treasury, he thought. This was the kind of place that might be built to contain a fortune. Perhaps he had not found Justice’s sanctuary at all.

  He was worried about Amy. She was so quiet, just following. Her fatigue was obviously great. He didn’t know which of many fears might be assaulting her, but he knew that guilt was attacking him. He should never, regardless of her pressure and his needs, have allowed himself to be talked into bringing her along.

  “How do you feel?” He touched her shoulder.

  “Could be worse.” Her voice was flat. It was unlike her. She didn’t say trite things like that to dismiss serious situations. Almost, it seemed, she was acting, and he was being allowed to see only a projection of what she wanted him to see.

  “It’s almost over, I think I’ve found what I’m looking for.”

  “Let’s go, then. Right away, right now.”

  “Follow me, but stay at least ten feet back.”

  It turned out that he was entering a building within a building, the outer shell distant enough from the inner shell to cause an insulating crawl space. Tracker descended the stairs and pressed hard against a door that moved slowly inward. The door, made of steel, asbestos and concrete, was a beautiful piece of engineering. One man could move it, and yet, Tracker thought, the thing could not possibly weigh less than a ton. A fire door. No locks.

  Beyond that door stood a second door, also huge, but with a combination lock. At first glance it looked like the door to a bank vault. Tracker faltered, he hadn’t thought of this. Even high explosives placed in the space between those two doors might not move that massive piece of steel.

  Then he looked closer, and remembered one of the first traps he’d encountered on his return to the house — a silver sword had been sliced, clean, as though with a cutting torch. Now this door, seemingly impregnable, stood slightly open. The bolts were cut clean, as though they had been lasered.

  If this was what his father, Justice, had believed was a safe place, then Justice had been wrong. Very wrong.

  Amy stood just outside the entry to the first door. He turned back to her. “I’ll check, and be right back to get you.” He pushed on the vault door and was unsurprised to find it as thick and heavy as the first one. As the door opened, lights came on. He stepped into a comfortable room, the reinforced concrete walls of which were covered with paneling. Soft rugs. Ceiling-high bookcases on one wall were stacked with what appeared to be ledgers as well as the worn browns and reds of aging books. A work area contained an immense desk, files, papers, scissors, gluepot, work table and drafting table. At the other end of the room was a living area.

  It contained no remains. Large bed, dresser, a night table. A radio and an old-fashioned phonograph. There was no lavatory and no toilet pipes would violate the fireproof integrity of the place, and he estimated that the room would rate out to any number of hours and degrees that a fire insurance company could imagine.

  He stomped on the floor. There was no echo and the thick carpet did not give, but the stomp caused a flash of pain in his knee, which told him that the floors, like the walls and door, were asbestos lined with thick concrete.

  There was a sense of strength that rose as he looked at his father’s domain. It was not, however, the strength of the known, and as Tracker looked about him he felt acutely his own ignorance. Rather, it was the strength of the discoverable. In this room, with its occupant long gone and probably (possibly?) dead, John Tracker felt that he was now coming to terms with the house. He only had to discover what those terms were.

  There were sounds behind him — Amy pushing the massive fire door of the outer building. He turned, and she stumbled through the doorway of the vault. Her face was drawn, blanched as she emerged from shadow. She was moaning. Her eyes closed, then opened in a frozen stare. She sighed, like a last breath. She pitched forward, and he barely caught her. Her body relaxed. She was dead weight.

  Grief and fear and guilt swarmed at him as he carried her to the bed and eased her onto it. He turned to meet the attack, saw nothing, and headed toward the door.

  He passed through the first doorway with an anger that seemed capable of breaking concrete. His mind was direct and clean, a killing mind. It was a mind that had been under pressure for so long that there was no patience left. Theophilus had to be out there, and he hoped that Theophilus was capable, even armed. The pleasure of killing him would be that much greater.

  He leaned on the fire door, felt it swing slowly, and impatiently leaned into the swing. He would come off that door with hands tearing into anything that moved.

  He got clearance and slid through, hands flexing; and he halted, midstride, as though poleaxed. Someone, something, screamed. He had no experience with such sounds. The rising, prolonged cries rested like a base under the entire structure of the house, rose from the subcellar to wash through empty passageways and the corridors; hung in the updrafts of windscoured chimneys; bounced from ice-rimmed windows. As though from a subterranean monster squalling through the depths of the soul of man. Something, someone out there was dying with a scream that was ancient, that seemed to bespeak every agony ever wrought by history. It swelled, burst, and died choking.

  John fumbled, tried to move. The wake of silence left by the choking began to intensify. All else seemed remote. He returned, staggering, pushing the heavy weight of the door, to go to Amy and sit beside her. He knelt to rub her hands, her face, her arms. He cradled her head, moved it back and forth — direct, simple movements to help restore circulation to a person in shock.

  The silence enclosed them like a vacuum.

  Amy’s breathing was better, but for a long while his was not. They seemed to come out of the shock together. As his receded, his fear reorganized thoughts, his feelings combined into a profound despair. Amy had just been subjected to too much. They might survive this, but survival might be a very cold victory. Too much had happened. He’d never really been loved before, and he
remembered the tenderness in her voice, saying that she loved him, and felt this last awful thing was too much, too much for them. And so his sense of loss, of grief.

  Her breathing was regular now, becoming stronger. At least he could discard his fear for her immediate safety, and wonder about the incredible screams. His first impulse, as for so much that was inexplicable in this house, was to call them a trick. Theophilus could build anything, could imitate anything; and telling himself that, he had to believe that the screams were not a trick. You couldn’t imitate something that had never been heard before.

  Amy continued to improve, and passed from unconsciousness into sleep. His watch read a little after 11 p.m., and he became aware again of the enclosing silence. He reached to the bedside table and turned on the radio. A low hum as it warmed up, then an announcer speaking with detachment of traffic accidents caused by the storm. He changed the dial. Hard, pulsing music. He lowered the volume.

  “I’ll be all right.” Amy tried to sit up.

  “In a little while. You’ve had quite a shock. Just lie there and take it easy.” He touched her cheek, her lips. His voice sounded stronger than he felt. “You’ll be all right soon,” he told her. “We’ll stay here until morning, and then leave if it’s no more than a normal storm.” He hoped he could drive away in daylight. They might even be able to walk to the nearest town if they could get over the grade and onto the county road.