Down in the Well
If you've never lived on a farm, you may be unfamiliar with the slow, steady cadence of pastoral life. Days fall into a definitive rhythm, rolling by much the same as calendar pages flip by. Wake, chores, eat, chores, cook, clean, sleep.
There's variation, sure, but you more or less know what's waiting for you out there whenever you flop out of bed, often before the sun climbs up over the flat line of Kansas horizon. Consistency is nice. It forms the backbone for a solid home life, but it does have a drawback: When something out of the ordinary happens, problems compound.
It started as a simple drainage problem. The soil at the edge of the fields was a bit too damp for this time of year and we hadn't had rain for nearly a month. Now, this isn't too out of the ordinary. We've certainly had our fair share of issues with watering issues, but when we inspected the sprinklers, everything looked fine. We wrote it off as an overly dewey night and moved on. Hell, the crops didn't seem to mind the moisture and we were far from a crisis scenario here anyway.
But then the noises started.
I was up with the boy, Todd, about an hour or so before sunrise, prepping the harvester, when we heard it. Some sort of gargling, like a drain backed up. The ground beneath my boots was softer than it should have been. Those are two bad signs right there.
Having cleared the water system already, we decided to do some sleuthing of our own, which, thankfully, wasn't a tough case to crack. Just follow the sound.
It was low, far from a deluge, but steady — a consistent sucking, bubbling noise. We traced it away from the field and out to the edge of the property line, where the old well sat nestled between a pair of tilting red cedars. The sound got louder the closer we came. Mystery solved. Part of it, anyhow.
Now, the well is deep, dug into hard packed earth by my grandfather years and years before I was even a twinkle in a lover's eye. If you've ever leaned over the edge of an old well, you'll understand that there's a smell to 'em. It's not rank or rancid — not usually, anyhow, things do have a habit of crawling in there and dying from time to time — but there's an age to the odor. They smell old, and wet, but one thing that's consistent is that they simply smell.
The other thing you'll know is that wells are dark. You can't see the bottom. Hell, you can't see very deep into them at all.
These two facts make it hard to diagnose a specific issue with your well, other than the general, "This thing is old and shoulda been filled in years ago."
But, hell, we gave it a shot. The gargling was louder here, but still deep down. I couldn't see any water, and, truth be told, we hadn't utilized this old well in quite some time. All the same, something was wet down there and it was seeping out to the rest of the farm. We were gonna need the backhoe.
Bad news. Not the worst, but still bad.
I sent the boy to tend the field and get on with his dailies while I made my way, grumbling, over to the barn. This wasn't a job that could be done in a day, but I've never been one to dawdle. I was nearly there when I heard Todd's screaming.
He's a good boy, hardworking, but he's got an impatient streak that inevitably leads to broken equipment or, worse, broken bones. I sprinted back across the field. There was blood when I came up on the boy, but it wasn't Todd's.
Heaped up against a stalk of corn was a downy tuft of wool, tinted with red. Todd turned to me as I approached, his face whiter than the dead sheep's fleece. I placed a hand on his shoulder, soothing the boy, but the sight unnerved me, too.
It wasn't just wool that lay there. The ewe had been skinned, from snout to tail. Formless, it was piled up in the dirt, the jellied candies of its eyes staring up at us from hollow sockets in a deflated face.
It was like its bones had been sucked out.
The boy looked to me for an answer, but even if I could find one, I wouldn't know how to put words to it.
That gargling sound started up again.
Problems compounding.
I kept the boy near me as we traversed the field, back to the old well. Maybe a fox or a coyote or some other predator had taken up residence there, opportunistically picking at my sheep and then slinking back to cover? Maybe it had loosed a stone or something deep down in that well, letting the old, tepid water seep into the soil?
Pathetically, I grasped at these thoughts, trying to rationalize a situation I knew had no rational explanation.
When we reached the well, I instructed Todd to stay a few steps back as I broke off a long branch from one of the cedars. I approached the edge of the well, telling myself it was prudent caution of a cornered predator and not bone-deep fear of some eldritch unknown that slowed my steps. The gurgling sound had grown more urgent, but what gave me pause as I lifted the stick over the stone rim of the old well was the new noise mixed in with it. A mewling, like a newborn calf or lamb whining for milk. It was faint, but it was there. I tried to ignore it.
I plunged the stick down into the blackness of the old well. There was nothing solid for a good ten feet. I could feel the stick rattling against the stone sides of the well as it descended. I leaned over the rim, careful to keep my footing. The stick stuck on something thick. The gurgling sound stopped.
I felt a tug, weak and almost tentative at first, but then harder and stronger. Something yanked on the stick. My feet left the ground. I called for the boy, who wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled. Whatever had the stick pulled harder. There was a loud snap and then I found myself on my ass in the dirt, Todd sprawled out beside me, panting. In my hand was the shattered end of the stick.
Whatever it was that was down at the bottom of that well, it sure as hell wasn't a fox or coyote.
The boy, impatient as always, urged me to run back and grab the shotgun. That wouldn't do. You can't blindly fire scattershot down a hole lined with stones and not expect a bit of blowback, I explained to him, besides the fact that we were working to mitigate further leakage here. Last thing I needed was more dislodged rocks in that well.
No, we were using the backhoe and we were digging up what I should have dug up a long time ago. Whatever the hell was down there wasn't going to stay down there unless it was under a few dozen pounds of concrete.
Todd trembled along behind me all the way back to the barn. We got the hoe up and running and headed back to the well, sun, now up and climbing across a cloudless blue field of sky, beating down on us.
I instructed the boy to stand back as I kicked the hoe into gear and sent its bucket into the damp earth about the well. It dug in easily. The gurgling was angry now and that strange, awful mewling sound grew louder.
I scooted the boy back a few more yards with a wave of my hand. Scoop after scoop of moist, rotten mud came up from around the well. I needed to dig down to the base of the well, careful to not topple the whole thing in on itself and have whatever brackish liquid therein bubble up across my farm.
Aside from the disquieting sounds, the work was routine. I pulled the mud from the ground and stacked it in a wet pile nearby the deepening hole. As I pulled the latest bucketful of muck loose, however, things took a turn.
Upending the bucket, there came a torrent of thick, oozing viscera of jagged bone and blood so dark it was nearly black. There were chunks in it, pulsating and leaking.
I heard Todd vomit. I nearly did myself.
Something had been feasting on my sheep. What, I couldn't say.
There was more in the hole, I could see now. I'd need to get it all out before I started sifting through and —
The boy was moving towards the muckpile. His goddamned impatience. Half a second more and I would've buried him in another load of it.
For the second time that day I heard the boy scream. This time was worse.
The throbbing pile of sheep parts moved, lurching. It globbed over Todd's ankles and the boy's screams pitched an octave higher. I jumped down from the seat of the hoe, but even before I could take a step across that moist ground toward the boy, I knew it was too late. His screams were beyond human, the worst thing I've ever heard. Unending, a siren blaring across an open field. A horrid cracking sound came next, like wood splintering over a knee, but repeating and echoing. I watched the boy's expression go slack, his body collapsing in on itself in a ludicrous display.
The muck pulsed and rose. It had taken on a purposeful shape and I didn't want to wait around to see what that ends that purpose was pursuing. I hopped back in the seat, tearing a gash down my leg in the process. I moved the hoe back in position. The shape, made of bone and guts and other dark things, lunged. I brought down the bucket's nails, raking at it.
The thing burst open in a putrid spray of gore.
Now I vomited.
I mashed at the thing again and again, spreading it thick and wide like jam on a slab of country toast. I kept at the control, straining over them, until my vision went cross and my hands were numb. Below me was a smear of nightmares.
I spent the rest of the afternoon smashing in the well and pouring concrete.
I don't know what I saw. I'm not even sure if I did see it.
All I know is that I slept heavy as a stone last night and dreamt of Todd's young face, eyeless and hanging loosely at the tip of a dripping neck attached to some throbbing abomination.
When I woke up, the drains in my kitchen were backed up. Something was bubbling in the pipes behind the drywall.
I'm going to pour more concrete today.