The Secret Beneath the 1994 Well

I caught Sarah by the shoulder before she could lean any farther over the opening. Cold shocked through my palm. She felt wrong beneath my hand, chilled so deeply it was as if she had been left out in winter snow.

Her skin was icy against mine. In that blazing midday heat, it made no sense at all.

“See, Mommy,” she murmured. There was nothing in her voice—not fear, not curiosity, not even the little-girl excitement I expected.

I forced myself to look past her and down between the old stones.

The water lay far below, perhaps ten feet down, but it was no longer the muddy color of a neglected farm well. It shone a fierce red, bright enough to seem lit from within.

It did not move like water should. It had the heavy, gleaming look of fresh paint poured into the dark. My mind supplied another comparison before I could stop it: blood.

Then a voice drifted upward from the well.

“Sarah. Sarah.”

A woman was calling my daughter. The sound was damp and grief-stricken, full of a need so terrible it seemed to press against my chest.

I tried to drag Sarah away, but Mark seized my arm and hauled me backward. His grip hurt. Sweat had appeared all over his pale face.

“Don’t stare at it,” he said through his teeth.

He called 911 with shaking hands, telling the operator someone had broken into our property and ruined the well. He spoke of vandals and trespassers, anything except what stood beneath us in that hollow.

The woman kept saying Sarah’s name. Mark acted as if no sound had reached him. He would not glance into the opening, and he would not admit there was a voice at all.

Sheriff Miller arrived about twenty minutes later in his cruiser. He came out wearing the patient, irritated look of a man prepared to settle some ordinary country foolishness.

He had known Mark and me for ten years. I could see from the way he rested his hands near his belt that he expected a squabble with a neighbor, or a prank pulled by local kids.

“All right,” he said to Mark, brushing at an insect near his throat. “Show me what’s going on.”

He crossed to the ruined cover and bent over the stone rim.

The change in him happened so quickly I almost missed it. His practiced sheriff’s calm emptied away, leaving his face drained and stricken.

He recoiled, caught his boot on a root pushing from the ground, and went down hard in the dirt. Before he had even settled, his hand had gone to his sidearm, undoing the strap with white-knuckled fingers.

He did not ask us what we had seen. He did not look at Sarah. He grabbed the microphone at his shoulder, trembling hard enough that its curled cord jumped against his uniform.

“Dispatch,” he said, barely getting the word out. “Send state troopers. Now. And notify Mayor Higgins.” He swallowed. “It’s back. Just like it was in 1994.”

I pulled Sarah against me, staring at the man entrusted with protecting Oakhaven. Something under our pasture had frightened him beyond reason, and he had apparently feared it for decades.

Mark’s shock hardened into the angry voice he used whenever things slipped beyond his control. “What are you talking about? That’s rust. The old casing gave way and stirred iron deposits into the aquifer. That’s all this is.”

Miller pushed himself upright, dirt clinging to his trousers. “Don’t look down there,” he told Mark, avoiding all of our eyes. “Get your wife and daughter inside. Lock the house.”

Mark stepped toward him. “I’m not shutting myself in over a busted pipe. And explain 1994. What happened then?”

“Inside!” Miller shouted. Even Mark retreated a step. Miller’s hand remained on his holster. “That girl does not stay by herself. Do you understand me? Keep Sarah with you.”

I did not wait for another argument. With my arm locked around Sarah’s shoulders, I led her from the pasture and into the house. Behind us, state police vehicles tore up the gravel drive, and the troopers headed straight for the hollow. Within minutes, they were treating our pasture and the well as an emergency scene.