space, carried on the breeze itself. I glanced over my shoulder, but found no one. The wind ruffled the branches of the trees, which clicked against one another like the sound of bones rattling.
“Henry.”
The voice was little more than a gentle whisper, and there was no way it could have reached me from any great distance. Yet I was sure that there was nobody around me. Unless they were standing in the trees, out of sight. But that didn’t make any more sense, because my every intuition said the voice was coming from the other direction. I spun and faced that way, looking over the empty landscape, back toward the house, back toward the…
The well.
“Henry.”
I moved as if in a trance. I don’t know how else to describe it. One foot before the other, as though my brain instructed them to go on auto pilot while it detached itself. I was moving, crossing the grounds, heading toward that place I swore to myself I would not go. But here I was. Each crunch of my shoe on the grass was as accusatory whisper, a reminder that I was breaking my own rule.
“Henry.”
I went toward that sound, sweet like a morning serenade, my hairs standing on end, a curious tingle in my spine and my skin crawling as though covered in bugs. I did not want to go.
I went.
“Henry.”
I sat down at the base of the well. I don’t know why. It just seemed like the thing to do. I leaned my head back, expecting to feel the cold, rough bricks against my back.
Instead, she wrapped her arms around me, and I felt the warmth of her embrace.
Who was she? I don’t know. I don’t care. Beautiful. That’s all I needed to know. She was beautiful and warm, and she was holding me, and her lips brushed my ear and it was all I could do not to convulse.
“Henry,” she purred, and I surrendered to her spell.
Her complexion was milky white, her skin silky smooth and soft where it pressed against me. She smelled of perfume, some floral scent that hovered around her and reminded me of wildflowers growing thick together. She stroked my hair, her fingers running smooth paths through the strands, her fingertips teasing my scalp. She seemed to be wearing some kind of thin gown, and from what I could feel there was nothing on underneath it. I was at once comforted and excited, and I just leaned back into her while she cradled me there on the ground.
My lids grew heavy. I wanted so badly to sleep in her arms. Her voice continued to sing into my ear, the words easing all of my troubles. I could feel her lips against my earlobe. This must be what Heaven feels like.
“Who are you?” I finally managed.
She responded by running her hands along my back, massaging my spine and my shoulders with a sure, skillful grip. Please let this never end.
“You’re Trevor’s mom, aren’t you?” I said. “The voice at the bottom of the well that called out to me before. That was you.”
She responded by running her hands along the sides of my face. I turned back, straining to see her more clearly. Her golden blonde hair was long and wet, as though she had just stepped out of the shower. Her eyes were the most crystalline blue I had ever seen. Her thin, pink lips looked delicious.
She guided my head with a sure hand, and I nuzzled into her throat, where the smell of her completely enveloped me. As enjoyable as all of this was, I was sure that something was being drained from me, some power or force or something, but there’s no way I could explain that properly. It just was what it was, but whatever it was, I was pretty sure that I didn’t need it. She can have it. She can have whatever she wants. I just want to rest here, up against her, and let her lull me into sleep. Maybe then things will be better. Maybe then things will make sense. She can fix it for me.
I felt a strong pressure at my heart, like she had reached in and squeezed it.
I still didn’t care.
She can have that too. I just want to lie here and…
Nothing.
6
It was the screaming that awakened me.
I bolted upright, noticing the darkness descending from above. How long had I been out of it? My head swam in a groggy fog. It was all I could do just to remember where I was and how I had gotten there. I was seated at the base of the well, entirely alone. I tried to stand, but it was like only half of me still existed. My movements were not entirely my own, like stumbling out of a deep dream that refused to let go.
That scream again.
But it wasn’t a scream exactly, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. I realized that a moment later. It was somebody yelling. Yelling my name.
“Henry!”
Trevor. He was calling for me, looking for me, and he sounded far off, perhaps out in front of the house somewhere, where I couldn’t see him. And unless he went around the side of the house and wandered all the way down here, it was unlikely that he would see me.
I remembered the woman. And I wanted her back. But when I leaned over the well and called softly into the waiting darkness, I received no response. Part of me wanted to just jump over the side and join her in the murky depths below, join her for all eternity. But just a part of me. The rest of me still had a will to live, thank God for that. But maybe that too would pass after a few more of those sessions with her.
I slumped back to the ground, facing south, suddenly aware that I was seated almost exactly where Elaine had told me to dig. She said I would find it about a foot down. But find what? I wasn’t sure, and the part of me that seemed to be missing must have also been the part that most wanted to find out, because with that curiosity came a feeling to just leave it alone.
But that gaze. That horrible gaze from the window, and the apparition of the boy looking back at me. Those had been horrible experiences. And I thought of Seth, lying twisted on the ground. Could I really be in a position to appease whatever forces had done that? Did I want to appease them?
Surata.
That word popped into my mind. I could not explain where it came from. It was just there, like somebody had etched it into my frontal lobe with a chisel. I had no idea what it meant or why I would have thought it at that exact moment.
But I did know one thing.
I needed to find out what was buried by the well. For Seth, if nobody else. He may have been a big jerk for all of the five seconds that I knew him, but being a jerk did not make somebody deserve to be pushed out of a window.
So I used the only tool at my disposal: my hands.
I ripped up great fistfuls of dirt, feeling the griminess as it got under my nails. The cool moistness of it was surprisingly repulsive. It was thick and clumpy, like clay, but still I burrowed deeper and deeper, and over the next few minutes my hole stretched farther down and became wider. It seemed like surely I must have dug deep enough to have found this object that Elaine told me about, but had still not turned up anything. So I expanded outward, digging more to the sides, always mindful that she said the object was at the base of the south side of the well. I must be close. On and on this went.
Until at last I found something. Something solid. It was hard to tell at first what it was, because it was soiled, covered in thick, sticky mud. But I pulled it free finally, some kind of small, round object, and at first it wouldn’t give. I realized a moment later that it was attached to a thin chain, which was also caked with mud. I maneuvered the chain free of its grave, pulled the object free, and then plopped down on my butt with my prize.
My arms were muddy up to my elbows. I shook off as much of the gunk as I could, and then began peeling the mud off of the object, and in the diminishing light, noticed a certain dull glint to it. I tried wiping it off in the grass, smearing it along, until at last I knew what I had found. It was still very dirty, and would require further cleaning once I brought it inside, but there was no denying what I had located.
A pocket watch.
One of those old fashioned pocket watches that hung from a chain in the pocket of the man wearing it. It had long ago stopped functioning, but maybe it could be restored to working o
rder. I had no idea. That was a question for another day. But for now, right here, I knew I was holding something important, although what its purpose was, I had no idea. Elaine had all but spelled out for me that this object was somehow the key to stopping the madness around here.
I’d have to figure that out later. Right now I needed to get it back to the house and finish cleaning it off.
As I stood, flipping it over in my hands, I noticed monogrammed initials along the back of it.
LJD.
Lionel Drury?
It had been several minutes since Trevor had stopped calling for me. He must have given up. But would he go get his father? Would he report me missing? There was no telling. For now, I did not want to get caught with my muddy arms, holding this strange dirty relic. I needed to get back. And now.
Perhaps there was more depending on that than I realized.
7
I cleaned off the pocket watch as best I could, using a wash cloth in one of the upstairs bathrooms. By the time I was done, pretty much all of the mud was gone, and the object shone in the overhead fluorescent light. The monogram was clear as day now, and I was sure that this watch had belonged to Lionel Drury, Trevor’s grandfather, who had run the estate back when it functioned as an orphanage. A minute crack wove along the glass case, but altogether the relic was in decent shape.
After I washed my hands and arms thoroughly in the sink to cleanse them, I stood there admiring my find and wondering how exactly it was supposed to be used.