The Boy in the Well
Written by Danny Rhodes
Danny Rhodes is the author of the novels Asboville, Soldier Boy and FAN. His short stories (over 30 tales) have appeared in some of the leading Horror publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including Black Static Magazine and Cemetery Dance Magazine.
Website: www.dannyrhodes.net
Twitter: @danrhodesuk
The snow came yesterday, tiny white crystals so delicate and yet so determined. In a few hours the neighbourhood was hidden under a blanket of white. Once again, between bouts of splintered sleep, I was forced to think of him.
I was nine years old when the bad winter came. I’d seen snow before, a few inches each year that came and went, brief and playful bouts that added a touch of magic to the Christmas holidays and then melted quickly to nothing. But the bad winter was different. The snow fell and settled. More snow followed, snow piling on snow. There were huge drifts on the hills, great expanses in the streets. The first time I went out to play in the snow that year I became disorientated. All the distinguishable features of the world I knew were buried from my sight. There was just a wilderness of white. My mother had to come out into the street to fetch me in.
I had a dog at the time, a cocker spaniel called Snap. I’d had him three years and he was ‘my’ dog. I called him Snap so that all the other kids would think twice before giving me any trouble but in truth he was softer than soap. He liked tearing around the yard with me at dusk and sleeping on my bed at night. He loved to sniff out every nook and cranny he could find when I took him for walks, which I was allowed to do on my own as long as I only went as far as Nonsuch Park, as long as I was back at a certain time and as long as I promised that I would never, under any circumstances, enter Cheam Woods. My father said the circus families, who sometimes hitched their trailers there, used the woods for all sorts of business and that I had no calling to have any dealings with them. My mother simply didn’t like the woods at all. My parents were protecting me I suppose, as all parents protect their children, keeping me away from a life that was unpredictable and dark in ways that I would never have understood at that age.
My walks with Snap were predictable and safe. I kept him on his lead while we were on the avenue and then let him off when we entered the alley behind the high school. He’d tear away from me then, down the alley and out into Nonsuch Park. Together we’d skirt the park’s edge so that Snap could forage in the undergrowth and I could avoid running across the older boys who played football in the grassy middle, or the teenage gangs that huddled together on the swings, smoking and laughing. The walk took me forty five minutes, an hour if I dawdled, which I did when I had chores to return to or if my parents were arguing and I wanted to stay out of it all.
It was January of the bad winter when my mother packed her bags. My parents had argued all through the Christmas holidays. With only new snowfall and insults marking one day off against another, a type of cabin fever overcame us. In the end my father delivered my mother to her mother’s in the centre of town then came home and explained himself. It was just for a few days, he said, just while the snow was a problem. By staying closer to town my mother could get to her job. She wouldn’t be stuck in the house day after day. He said it would be better for everyone, that it would let the air in.
But my mother never came back.
Her absence had a peculiar effect on me. I experienced a new found freedom because of it. My father was busy and did not have the time to watch over me as my mother did. He did not guard the fridge or the pantry or watch the clock in the evenings while awaiting my bedtime. He let me stay up and watch TV shows I had never seen before. He stocked up on snacks, bought in take away food and let me munch away to my heart’s content. He didn’t ask me to tidy my room once, and he promised that if I stayed out of trouble for the rest of the holidays he’d take me to see Wimbledon FC play at home when the season next came around, something we’d never done together.
Perhaps I got complacent about my father’s rules. Perhaps I lost some respect for him. Perhaps if my mother hadn’t gone away I would never have found myself with Snap that cold afternoon, trundling through fresh snowfall, the sun weakening in the sky, no snow falling then but the promise of more and more to come. I was following a set of footprints, letting my imagination carry me away, tracking a fugitive through the wilderness with my trusted companion at my heels.
When I got to Nonsuch Park it was deserted and as still as death itself. There was just a clean blanket of snow covering everything except the single set of footprints I was trailing, unusual because the person had been carrying something alongside them as they walked. In my mind it was a rifle, the outlaw I was following using it to prop himself up, tiredness setting in as the unrelenting chase went on and the inexorable hero hunted him down. I followed the tracks around the edge of the park while Snap bundled his way through the snow, his breath forming in bursts of vapour, his black fur sprinkled with white flecks. The tracks went on and on, skirting Nonsuch Park as I liked to skirt it, never wavering or altering, just two clean footprints set at even distance and the regular spike of the implement marking the way. And then, quite unexpectedly, the tracks turned into Cheam Woods.
I hesitated.
I stared after the tracks as they disappeared into the trees and I think I knew, somewhere deep within myself, that my life was about to change forever. Snap waited at my side, anxious to enter the place I had always denied him, turning his head upward and then looking back at the trail in perplexed wonder. Were we actually going to go in there? I stood motionless for several moments, staring after those tracks, wondering who they belonged to, wondering where they might take me, my brain calculating the fact that if I followed the tracks in I could turn around at anytime and follow the tracks back out again. There was no risk of getting lost. And so, for the first time in my life, I defied my father.
The blanket of snow made it difficult to stay on the path. I could only make out its existence by calculating the space between the trees and searching for the curious footsteps. Snap tore around regardless, to one side of me and then the other, at times disappearing from view completely so that the only signal of his companionship was the distant cracking of twigs and branches as he barrelled past them. The tiny movements of the trees in the gentle evening breeze added further creaks and groans. In those isolate moments of loneliness my mind invented monsters to accompany each sound. Snap would reappear, panting and breathless. For a moment he was my trusted companion again and then in a blast of energy he was off once more, back into the trees, following some scent that no human would ever have knowledge of.
I concentrated on the trail and fought to keep my mind off monsters by thinking instead about the owner of the footsteps. Was it an old man with a walking stick, disorientated and lost? Might I come across his frail, frozen body in the snow?
I followed the trail for another ten minutes, these thoughts busy in my head, forever calculating that it would be okay to go just a little further, just as long as it didn’t snow again, just as long as the light held. And I would have gone on forever perhaps had I not suddenly reached a clearing amidst the trees, a place where the snow lay like newly sprinkled icing sugar, so perfect and delicate. I resented the footsteps that marched right on through that clearing, oblivious to the picture they had spoiled. Or perhaps they hadn’t spoiled it. Perhaps there was something magical about a single set of footprints leading across a snowy clearing in the trees, the sort of footsteps that might appear in a Robert Frost poem. My teacher sometimes read his poems during break times. She sat with the book in her lap, the pages spread open, her palm pressed against them and her words carried us to faraway times and places.
‘Whose woods these are I think I know’
Remembering those words I felt a cold dread run through me. For the first time I considered who else might own those footprints and what they might do to a young boy on his own in a wood where even the virginal snow itself would help muffle a scream of terror. It was getting late. It was time to turn for home. At some point my father would think of me and begin to wonder.
Snap did not fear anything though. He was racing around the clearing, sending snow high into the air in great swirls. Each time he landed there was a puff of white behind him. I watched him, jealous of his innocence and vigour. I wanted to be enjoying the blanket of snow. I wanted to be tearing about after him, but another part of me could only repeat that line of poetry over and over again.
‘Whose woods these are I think I know’
The words would not leave me. And I felt something watching us.
Suddenly I heard Snap yelp. I turned in time to catch the briefest sight of him as he disappeared into the snow. He didn’t come out. Stillness descended on the clearing. I waited. For a long time there was nothing, just the tiniest creaks of the trees as they swayed immeasurably to and fro and then I heard Snap whining. He sounded far off somewhere. He was calling his master. I raced across the clearing, my feet kicking up snow. Twice I stumbled forward into it, twice I got back to my feet, the snow caked to my clothing, but the third time I fell was a blessing. That was when I discovered the well. The undulations of snow had hidden it from my vision and my fall had prevented me dropping headlong into darkness.
For a moment, teetering on the brink, I thought about Snap dying there in the well, his black body tumbling through the void, landing with a dead thud in the bottom, his skull breaking open, the blood colouring the snow that lay there. I was almost ready to leap into the well myself and try to save him. But then I considered how I was going to explain any of this to my father and I stopped myself. What excuse could I give to him for leading Snap to this place, for being in Cheam Woods alone? Why had I disobeyed him?
These thoughts were running around my head when the voice called out to me across the clearing.
“Wait!” it cried. “You’re too close to the edge!”
It was a soft voice, as moulded as a drift of snow. He came out of the trees, a boy like no boy I had ever seen. He was dressed in a ragged pair of jeans. He had a chequered lumberjack shirt on his back. He wore moleskin brown boots. His hair was long and moppish and it fell in front of his face each time he moved his head. He was tall, too tall for his age. He was carrying a walking stick and he limped across the clearing towards me. Each time he took a step he leaned on the stick for support and as he drew closer I realised it was his tracks I had been following through the snow. I stood transfixed as he approached, unaware of what to say, momentarily lost in some fantasy in which the stranger and I camped out in the woods, built traps and dens, sat huddled against camp fires while the world continued on its merry way. Then I heard another whine from deep in the well and it brought me to my senses. Snap was still alive down there and I had to get him out.
“My dog,” I said. “I have to save my dog.”
I crept towards the edge of the well, not knowing where was safe and where was not, inching forward on fresh snow until some of it broke and fell away.
“If you fall you’ll die,” said the boy. “Dogs are tougher than people.”
“But I have to save him,” I said.
The reality of the situation was catching up with me. I found myself choking up. I would have cried too, if it wasn’t for the presence of the boy. I couldn’t let myself cry in front of him because I just knew that he would never cry. He was stood beside me now. His skin was mottled and toughened but somehow his face still looked cherubic, as though he were blessed with knowledge and understanding beyond his years. Closer up, his hair looked lank and wiry. His fingernails were caked in dirt. There was a tough determination behind his eyes. I wondered how that could be, how a boy could be so many things.
“I can save him,” he said.
There was something in his face, something in his eyes that made me trust him. I put my faith and the life of my dog in his hands.
“We’re going to need some things,” he said. “In my den.”
“You have a den?” I asked.
The boy nodded. When he saw my eyes begin to widen with expectation, he grinned. Two of his teeth were missing. One looked to be broken at the base. I didn’t care though. I was flitting between two states of being, half worrying about Snap, the other filled with the fascination of discovering a new friend who lived in a den in the woods and spoke about saving dogs from wells like he really knew how to do such things.
“We’ll need rope and a basket,” he said. “I’ve got both. I know the rope’s long enough because I’ve been in the well before.”
“What for?” I asked.
“To see what’s down there,” he said.
“How many wells are there?” I asked.
“In the woods? Loads. And caves and tunnels.”
“Will you show me?” I asked.
“Let’s save your dog first,” he said. He set off across the clearing, limping along with his cane.
“What happened to your leg?” I asked.
“It’s always been like this,” he said.
His den was hidden in the folds of a great tree and it was impossible to see until you were almost upon it. He pulled on a rope and a ladder fell to greet him. He clambered up it, an expert acrobat despite his disability and disappeared. A moment later he was back. He was carrying a wicker basket and a rope.
“Do you live here?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” he said.
“Don’t you have any parents?” I asked.
He didn’t answer me.
Despite his disability I struggled to keep up with him as we hiked through the snow. I had no breath for conversation.
It was almost dark when we reached the well again. The boy slung the rope around a tree, fixed the basket to one end and lowered it into the darkness. Then he gripped the rope and leaned back on it before descending. A minute later the rope slackened and he called up to me.
“Your dog’s okay,” he said. “I’m putting him in the basket. Haul him up.”
I gripped the rope and pulled with all my might, my feet slipping in the snow, my hands burning each time the basket bumped against the side of the well. Snap was heavier than I expected but I couldn’t allow myself to fail so I pulled and pawed through gritted teeth until the basket turned at the lip of the well and Snap jumped from it into my arms. For a few seconds I was glad just to hold him and pet him. He barked furiously and leapt down into the snow until I started to worry that he’d fall right back in the hole I’d dragged him from. I almost forgot about the boy in the well.
“Now tie the rope to the tree and send it down,” he called.
I untied the basket and was tying the rope as instructed when I heard my father calling my name. Panic gripped me. I thought about my footprints in the snow. Had he followed them? What if he discovered me in Cheam woods? All of my new found freedoms would be lost. I’d lose face in front of the boy if my father scolded me, look like a spoiled child. I would never be able to visit the woods again, never learn of the secret caves and tunnels, never get to sit out in the wilderness or hide myself away in the boy’s magical den. I had to get back to Nonsuch Park without my father spotting me. I had to make up a story to fill the hours I had been absent. There could be no woods and there could be no boy. Dropping the rope, I turned and fled across the clearing away from my father’s voice, into the trees and shadows, Snap racing at my heels.
When I thought about the boy again it was much later. I was in bed, my hide sore from the tanning I’d received as my excuses had melted to nothing under my father’s questioning. It was snowing out. On my father’s radio, which I could hear through the thin walls, the presenters were talking about the coldest night in decades. I regretted that I hadn’t thanked the boy for saving Snap and I pledged to return to his den to do exactly that but my father kept me in the house for a week and when I was allowed out again I always feared entering the woods in case my father was testing me and keeping an eye out. So I didn’t pay the boy a visit. I did look for him in Nonsuch Park though, and I took detours past the circus camp whenever it was inhabited in case he was there, though I could never pluck up the courage to enter that world. I would stare at the rash of caravans and wonder. I was looking for a tall wiry boy with a cherubic face, moppish hair, dirty fingernails and yellow teeth. I looked every day to begin with, then a few times a week, then occasionally, then never. Other things came to replace thoughts of the boy: sports; girls; my father’s second wife; my mother’s death; high school; college; marriage; my father’s death; children of my own; divorce; a life of repeated patterns.
I forgot about the boy in the well.
But when it snows like this, hard and heavy, I’m forced to think about being in Cheam Woods with my old friend Snap. I think about the childhood I had before my mother left home, how I grew up so quickly when she did leave, how there was no room for a child in my father’s world, only a trustworthy, independent son who would learn to face the world without faltering.
And I did learn not to falter, for a long time, until a day of snow, when my own children took the dog to Nonsuch Park and didn’t come home, until I started to wonder where they might be as twilight threatened, until I set off for the park in my boots, leaving my estranged wife waiting by the phone for news, my chest constricting with the longing only a parent has for their children, following the tracks of the three, the two children and the dog, to where they converged with another set of tracks, a set of limping footprints, a walking stick falling at regular intervals between, following them into Cheam Woods to a clearing dusted with virgin snow.
But my children were not there.
There were interviews and news reports, sightings and suggestions. There was talk of circus families and kidnapping, but nobody knew where my children had gone and nobody knows where my children are.
Sometimes at night I hear them crying, calling out from a deep, dark place and I think I might be able to find them if I follow their muffled cries. But each time I do the boy in the well begins to cry too and then he screams his own muffled screams and when he does my children’s screams are lost. The boy in the well screams for help, screams for someone to come to his aid on a freezing night in Cheam Woods, screams for somebody to reach down and catch the rope, the rope that sent him crashing to the foot of the well when I let go of it in panic. In the darkness I see his black fingernails clawing and scraping at the walls, the blood thickening beneath them. I hear those fingernails break.
Each Autumn when the circus comes to Nonsuch Park and the big top is buffeted by the winds I find myself wandering amongst the caravans and canvas awnings, searching for a glimpse of my own flesh and blood. Each winter, when the circus has moved on and Cheam Woods is buried in snow, I spend my nights listening for the sound of the boy in the well calling for help.
I hear the boy’s screams and my children screaming for me in the blackest of places and I scream too.
I lie awake screaming.
‘The Boy in the Well’ first appeared in the 2012 Anthology Night Terrors II published by Bloodbound Books, USA
