A Penny Down the Well: A Short Story Collection of Horrifying Events (14 page)

“
You can’t run forever!”
Barker called out. “You have to come back to school sometime! And
even if you don’t come back, we’ll come after you!” Which reminded
Jacob of the threat Barker made to his parents. But the frustration
heard in Barker’s voice and the aimlessness of his remark was a
sign of hope for Jacob.

Jacob tightened his grip
on the stone, continuing to dangle helplessly from the edge of the
well. One slip and he was doomed to fall to what was likely his
death. One peep or audible movement and he was at the mercy of
Barker’s fury. There, hanging at the peak of the dark, unforgiving
pit, Jacob was in the only medium of survival. Life somewhere
within death. Earthly purgatory.

The brush of the forest
floor was rustled again, becoming less and less audible, suggesting
that Barker finally made his way on. Jacob hadn’t yet breathed a
sigh of relief. He had to muster himself up and out of the well,
after assuring the coast was clear. Slowly and carefully, Jacob
pulled himself up to peek over the shelf of the stone well, looking
for any sign of Barker. There was none. He made it. Unfortunately,
it was then that the stone he gripped with his right hand gave
completely and shot down into the well as Jacob struggled to hold
himself steady. His bare palm thrashed outward in fear, trying to
grab any available surface that would support him in the well’s
innards, but none offered a hand. He swung like a broken pendulum,
supported by a single hand gripping a mortared stone that was now
his only line between life and death.

Sweat began to bead at
Jacob’s head as he whimpered at the direness of the situation he
was in. His eyes shot up to opening of the well; his refuge.
“Not... like this.” He muttered before taking a quick breath. He
held it as he mustered every bit of strength he could to swing his
body to the right to allow for his loose hand to reach up for the
shelf of the well. With his desperate exertion, he snatched the
shelf of the well where the stone he’d held before had slipped and
sailed into the blackness. Feeling the urgency of his situation and
knowing that he hadn’t much strength to hold on much longer, Jacob
desperately pulled himself up from the well and then thrust himself
over the edge, onto the forest floor. The piled, fallen leaves
cushioned the impact of his fall and were, perhaps, the first thing
all day to aid him and not attempt to contribute to his demise.
There, he laid, back to the ground, sweat-stung eyes staring up to
the canopy of the dense forest, looking through a small opening
between the trees leaves as though he were still inside of a well,
only one of tall trees instead mortared stone.

Jacob sat up and glanced
back toward the direction of the road. He thought of Harry, who was
probably in a much worse situation than Jacob was currently. He had
three of the goons following him instead of one. However, Harry was
fast and could certainly outrun the others if he had to. Jacob
could only hope he was alright.

Carefully, Jacob stood
from the ground and went about brushing the twigs and leaves from
his arms and rear. He watched the odd well intensely, mystified by
it, as though it bore some sort of unusual cloaking power—of
course, it didn’t. Jacob approached the stone cylinder with
reverence, treating it as a sort of monument to his salvation,
despite its efforts to swallow him entirely. Quietly, and to
himself, “I guess wells
are
good luck after all.” His hands went to the stone
shelf of the well, from the outside, where it was much safer to do
so. He smiled, looking down into the black pit once again. He
wanted to shout into it, to test how deep it was, but he dared not
to do so, taking into account the potential that Barker was still
wandering the forest. Jacob assumed he wasn’t; Barker wasn’t known
for his patience and determination. Instead, Jacob shoved his hands
into his pockets, sorting through gum wrappers, some pencils and
finally a small coin. He pulled the coin from his pocket, giving it
a look over. It was an old penny, the sort that had been through
hell and back, green and white with corrosion but still worth an
uncherished, single cent. Jacob shrugged, “Well, I hope good luck
isn’t judged on what’s spent...” And he flung the penny down the
well, making his wish. He wished that he and Harry wouldn’t be
bullied anymore. That they would live their lives in peace. He
wished, simply, that he would survive this most recent ordeal, if
nothing else. With a sigh, Jacob began back toward the road,
heading home.

That’s when something
unexpected occurred.

A page was flipped in the
only book that was ever cast into the well since the imprisonment
of Dr. Gerard Binkman. With a curious bit of self-talk, the Doctor
mumbled, “What
do
you have in that chest, Mr. Porter?” Curious about a bit of
mystery in the book he read. It was about then that a large stone
came blasting through his silent space, like a meteorite across the
earth’s sky, slamming powerfully into the hard ground right beside
him and near his treasured (though quite tattered) top hat. The
sudden noise and closeness of the falling stone brought the doctor
to shoot up from his ill-fashioned stool, send his book flailing
into the air and onto the ground and caused him to move a short
distance away from the curious, inanimate intruder. When the
silence of his stony prison ensued, he took a careful step toward
the fallen rock. His gloved hand scrambled for the monocle that
rested near his breast pocket and, when retrieved, he fastened it
at his eye while nearing the stone with absolute caution. Quickly,
the doctor glanced up toward the hole at the top of his prison,
waiting to see if anything else would fall into his desolate
chamber. When nothing did, he moved next to the stone and lowered
himself into a crouch, causing the ends of his dusty, black slacks
to hike up over his ankles.

“
Erosion?” He said,
wonderingly. “Is it raining?” He would know if it was. When it did,
his cell flooded with water, often demanding a quick rearrangement
of the furniture he’d managed to craft from fallen branches and
leaves. Of course, nothing had fallen into the well for a long,
long time, ever since it was closed with its heavy wooden cap.
Water was the only invader that seemed capable of slipping through
the deteriorating wooden cover and it often provided a nuisance in
an already very undesirable situation.

Immediately, Dr. Binkman
started considering what he could use the stone for. Anytime a new
object was delivered into the well, he had to make a consideration
for its usefulness. This, though, was merely a stone. His purple,
dead lips quirked to the side as he thought, then moved on to
experimentation. He lifted his only book from the ground, placed it
flush against his stone wall, and then put the rock on the other
side of it, to keep the book vertical. “A book end? Hm.” He shook
his head. He lifted the stone, allowing the book to flop over flat
on its back. He turned, tossing the small, yet cumbersome stone
across the room. “A throwing object!” He shouted as the stone
sailed across his prison, smashing into his feebly constructed
seat, causing it to break into bits. “Oh! Well... that’s quite
unfortunate.” He frowned, his monocle falling from his eye to hang
by its gold chain. He let out a long sigh as he considered other
ideas. It was about then that he heard a different sound, one a
little less frightening and more captivating
—
a sound he hadn’t heard in decades:
the sound of a coin.

Dr. Binkman’s heart would
have raced had it still beat. But, it had been long dusted over and
rusted since his imprisonment in the deep pit. Still, his face
expressed pure excitement. “I-Is... is that it? What...” And his
gloved hands extended hungrily toward the small object that fell.
“Could that be?” His voice stammered with the immensity of his
excitement. “Finally? Has it happened?” And he lowered himself to
his knees, in a reverent position greater than the crouch given to
the fallen stone, or the ritualistic submission to crosses their
hanging deities on Sunday mornings. His fingers fumbled to pick up
the small, corroded penny, but when it was properly gripped, he
replaced his fallen monocle and gave it a look over. “It is! It
is!” He shouted, leaping from his knees to his feet in a single,
exuberant push. “I have it! I finally have it!” He held the soiled
coin high in the air and began to dance around his confined, damp
place, jumping occasionally in the air to tap his heels together
with jubilee. “I can’t believe this is happening. It’s finally
happened. Oh! Count! I need to count!” And on he went toward a
small hole in the wall. There, he pulled a tiny satchel that
jingled and jangled with the sound of coin currency. Like a child
made to listen to a story, he sat himself down cross-legged on the
floor and poured the coins onto the ground. Dr. Binkman corralled
the coins into a single pile and began counting them and placing
them into a second pile. “One dollar.” And he continued on, with
each coin counted in a breathy, sub-audible exertion. “Two
dollars!” He shouted, feeling the spine tingling sensation of
potential success. “Three beautiful dollars.” On he counted, coin
by coin, flipping the counted coins into an ever growing pile.
“Four!” He shouted, shooting his clenched hands into the air. And
quickly he was back to it. “Five whole dollars!” The original pile
was shrinking and he only hoped he hadn’t miscounted. It was nearly
impossible, as Dr. Binkman counted the coins almost every day. “Six
dollars... Six dollars and fifty cents... six dollars and sixty
cents... six dollars and sixty-five cents...” And he paused in awe
of what was certain success, definitively so when he lifted the
very final, corroded coin that fell. “Six dollars... and sixty-six
cents! I’m free! I’m free!” He rose, dancing around again. He
shouted to the walls, as if they could hear him. “You hear me?! I’m
gone from this blasted place! I’m gone, gone, gone!” And he lowered
to the ground, scooped the coins into his hand and placed them all
into his satchel.

When Dr. Binkman stood,
there was a long stride in each of his steps as he approached the
obscure, moss-covered door that led to his captor’s chamber. With a
firm plant of his feet, a sort of military-style “attention”
stance, he rapped on the wooden door, drawing the attention of the
door guard.

The hulking obscenity of a
creature lumbered toward Dr. Binkman’s door, grumbling an utterance
that curdled phlegm in its throat (a throat unobservable for the
fatness of the creature). When it arrived, it lifted long, pointy
digits, seemingly poured onto the mass that was its palm, to lift
its only remaining eye that hung from the deep socket. The hanging
eye was appropriated and pointed toward Binkman and the guard
asked, in a low, guttural tone. “What?” Words struggling through
decay and nasty obstruction.

The doctor lifted his
satchel, shaking it in the little, barred window of the door. He
neared closer to the wooden surface and giggled with excitement as
he spoke. “I have the coin necessary to buy my way out of here! I’d
like to speak with Our Lady, hmm?” And he fondly tapped the door
with his gloved fingers.

The monstrosity turned his
eye to look down one way of the hall and then the other. The eye
was pointed again at Binkman, pushed between the bars of the door
to peer around inside of the cell, to verify the doctor wasn’t up
to something he shouldn’t have been. When everything seemed clear,
the eye was dropped to hang and the detestable guard pulled open
the door, ripping from it years of rust and corroded fusing.
Binkman prepared to step out, but he quickly shifted and turned
back toward the room, offering a “hold just one moment” finger to
the impatient abomination. Hastily, the doctor snagged his top hat
from the ground, dusted at it (though it made little difference)
and rushed back to the door, stepping on and out of it into the
corridor.

The creature, whose very
existence was vulgar, slammed the door shut, rousing many other
confined prisoners. It then moved down the hall, hanging eye
swinging back and forth while massive, pallid legs urged the sick
beast forward. Dr. Binkman noted that the creature smelled of a
combination of rotting fish and fresh vomit and Binkman
purposefully maintained a tolerable distance from his lead. The
entire skin of the creature was coated with a sort of dripping ooze
that left a small, pungent trail in its wake. Its flesh hung in
certain places and in others gripped far too tightly to its
imbalanced skeletal frame. When they reached the end of the hall,
the grotesque guide stepped back, allowing Binkman to carry on
himself to what was a large door to the main chamber of the prison.
Dr. Binkman tipped his hat politely to his guide, which received
little response from the unamused attendant. Next, the doctor
wasted no time pulling the large door open and stepping into a room
he’d only had the opportunity to see once or twice since his long
imprisonment within the bowels of the earth, deep below the
well.

The room itself was
different than the mossy, damp halls that led to the prisons.
Within, the walls were constructed of a smooth obsidian stone, so
black that they played tricks on the mind. It seemed that, should
one approach too closely, they’d be sucked into the infinite abyss
of them forever. The floors, however, were more of a dark tile,
with veins of white running through them, as lightning would
through a night’s starless sky. The contrast (and always the most
alluring feature) were the large, crimson red ribbons that framed
the room’s crest, along the ceiling and across the peaks of those
obsidian walls. Silk and transparent, the ribbons offered little
comfort from the infinite abyss they attempted hiding, but still
they were attractive. And that seductive red did not end at the
decorative ribbons; they culminated at her lips. In the center of
the room The Lady sat, draped sideways across her throne of
bleeding skulls. Her long, red hair hung down to the floor as her
head draped back over the left armrest, her haunting green eyes
watching Dr. Binkman as he sauntered awkwardly into her presence,
and she simply waited, stoically.