By Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
Chapter Two "Whispers in the Well"
Bart and Basher stood up and dusted themselves off. They had fallen from a great height, but seemed none the worse for wear--which is to say that they seemed just as bad as they always did. Bart's slouch hat came down greyly and shadowed his black, resentful eyes. Basher, dusting off his pants bottom, looked about dumbly as if he had just teleported into a strange land from outer space. And yet, his looks, which held no vivid, malicious intelligence, held a good deal of low cunning. They stood astride of a great branch of the ash tree that had grown from time immemorial over the old well.
"What the devil do you two think you're doing?" demanded Alan, his straight blonde hair shifting to show a brow intense with anger. More than half of which, no doubt, was anger at letting himself be spooked by a pair of intrusive bumblers.
It was Bart who answered. "We were just taking in the view, don't you know?"
"Oh, its the view is it? And what did you see from up there?"
"Just a lot of children spooking themselves with a dumb kids' game, singing in a ring around the old well."
That stung, but Alan tried not to let it show on his face. He had always like the singing game, which they all had learned practically since they were old enough to walk. Alan himself thought there was something juvenile about it, but certainly didn't want to hear the same thing coming from Bart.
"The singing game is what we always do by the well," piped up Missy. "You're just mad cause Sarah scared you off after you tripped her."
Missy may have been just a very young girl, but she had quick eyes and didn't miss a lot of the things going on around her.
"Be that as it may, Basher and I have a perfect right to climb this old tree, or any tree in the woods."
This was true enough, but it was just like Bart to invoke his rights as a citizen to cover up his mischief-making. The conversation went on a little ways longer, and Sarah stayed out of it, plopping herself down on the broken branch and pulling up grass blades while the others argued about rights versus duties. They also argued about who was to blame for being scared, Bart and Basher or the children for letting themselves get carried away by the hooting sounds of the old well.
Sarah noticed that a hive of ants was pouring out of the broken end of the branch. It was probably their activity that had weakened it enough in the first place to let Bart and Basher fall. They were red ants and seemed like nothing so much as a slow long spill of blood marching out of one end of the branch on tiny legs. The old tree that they had known all their lives had lost a limb due to the carelessness of a pair of boys and the neglect of the all, and here they were having a big row about who has a right to do what.
"His right, his rights," said Bobby Findrlesy, putting his arms out and making a settling motion. "There's not a one of us who would be deprived ourselves of our rights, so let's give Bart and Basher theirs."
"A right to be careless and stupid and cruel," interjected Missy Quicknass.
"Nevertheless, nevertheless."
Sarah certainly doubted that such rights as those Missy had expounded existed, or that if they did that they should prevail over the duty to do good and shut up. At least, in this case, silence would be a relief.
Sarah felt a sharp pinch above her heel that made her jump. She looked down, and there was a fierce red fire ant biting her through her stocking, right into her Achilles heel. In fact, her skirt was alive with little red invaders. This was more than she could stand. She ran from the branch, beating her skirts, and wound up leaning against the well for support as she shook the last of the ants out of her shoe. By the time she looked up again, most of the others had moved away. Their voices were little more than faded squeaks filtering back through the wood.
The sun was a bronze tangle in the trees west of the clearing. The evening wind was beginning to move over the clearing, and a peculiar sighing was starting up from the well again. Or from the leaves in the tree. Sarah couldn't be quite sure. But it did sound as though something was trying to be said, almost. This was not the wordless sigh of an animal. It was something more, like words remembered out of a dream. At first they may seem so unintelligible that they don't seem to be words at all. But, if you let yourself fall back into the dream a little bit without quite falling asleep, what came out of the dream begins to reveal its meaning to you again. That's how it seemed to Sarah as she stood very still against the cold wall of the well.
After all of her troubles today, the staring down of Bart, the ruination of choir practice--the one thing she truly loved at school--and then that great crack of the branch and the fire ants biting her. And her parents never did understand her. Sarah wanted to believe that the well was saying something to take the sting out of all these things. And it did. It seemed to say that she would be all right; that her troubles would diminish, and, what was more, she would triumph over those who had tried to humiliate her.
It was almost like a sad lullaby sighing from the well. Not the sane, peaceful kind of lullaby that mothers sing over their babies. But something more grown-up, darker and all mixed up with the muted sounds of bugles and distant trumpets. Like men marching off to war, their hearts full of great deeds and high destiny. And then again, it was as soft as the back of Roanie's coat--Sarah's father's great Irish setter. Oh what longing there was in the almost-words!
Sarah found herself leaning in over the lip of the well, singing in her softest, best voice back at whatever melody she was hearing in her head. She looked far down into the well, an almost unbelievable depth of blackness. Sarah had always been more or less afraid of the dark, and it was highly unusual for her to stare so long into someplace where she couldn't see anything. The walls of the well gave off a clammy damp that normally would have made her shiver, but she was too busy concentrating on the long lines of the song to notice.
Down and down she looked, her blond hair falling all around her face and shutting out the rest of the world except for the black of the well. She could hear the clear echoes of her own voice floating up out of that darkness as she sang--a pure tone that she sometimes achieved and that had endeared Sarah to the choirmaster Mr. Hecatomb. It had what he called "the loveliness." She looked and looked as the song and the echoes rolled on, removing time and leaving Sarah almost floating above the well's opening. And then, something. Was that a glimmer or a flash out of the bottom of the well? Sarah leaned more deeply into the well, her left foot lifting off the turf.
As her eyes focused farther in, she could discern what looked like a small coin of light at the bottom of the well, and even the dot of her face floating below. She wasn't just floating above the well, she was floating in it too. Sarah could see that she was down in the deepest dark of the tunnel, in the dampest and coldest place she could ever imagine being.
"Oh!" she said. For just as she had leaned farther and farther in, a pebble she hadn't noticed had gotten loose under her hand and had fallen into the well, smashing her reflection into a hundred pieces. Sarah suddenly stopped singing, but the soothing sighing of the well went on, and she kept looking down, unable to draw her attention away from where her face had been floating in the darkness. As the waters calmed, Sarah thought she could make out the wobbly blot of her head again. There, and gone, and back again.
Now there were two of her for a moment as the waves rolled and slowed. And then, just as her face was starting to come clear once more, it seemed to her that the other face wasn't her face at all. It was a much older face, a crone's face, and the eyes in it didn't have anything like song behind them, but only a freezing cold calculation. Was that a hand reaching over her mouth in the reflection? A long claw of shadow and nasty determination. Sarah felt helpless to do anything as long as the well kept sighing on about destiny and fate, the inevitability of some deep plan it seemed. The shadow hand was almost all the way around her mouth, and Sarah felt as if she could barely breathe. And then another hand, as long and thin and strong as the first one came around her throat. The old crone over her shoulder seemed to become more animated, and a gash broke into her face like some sort of hideous smile.
Sarah gasped.
END OF CHAPTER TWO