“Why don't you ever listen? I told you to tie that thing at least four or five times,” Christopher barked. “You want me to drop to the bottom?”
Danny didn’t answer. Instead, he moved in to tie the extra knots that secured the rope to the tree trunk.
Chris shoved him aside and continued his rant. “Jeesh. I thought you used to be a Scout.”
Danny opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. When Chris got into one of these moods, it was better not to say anything.
Chris stomped over to the edge of the well, then snapped at one of the twins. “Darren, gimme that pack, will ya?”
Darren, the only redhead in the group, picked the old military bag that had belonged to Christopher’s uncle and tossed it at him.
“Man! Be careful with that!” Chris said. “Sometimes I wonder how you guys had enough brains to survive this long. What if I hadn’t caught it?”
He slung the dirty green pack over his shoulder and threw one leg over the edge of the well. With one leg dangling over the abyss, Chris thought, I’m really going to do this. He couldn’t believe his own nerve. Those other guys hadn’t heard the voice mewling from the well. In fact, they thought he was crazy, and sometimes he wondered if they weren’t right. But he’d heard it alright.
For the last week or so now, the voice from the well had been calling him. Well, to say it had been calling him was a not quite right, was it? It sort of emanated from the well, but he had heard it inside his head. Chris wasn’t the youngest of them. At almost 11 years old, he had a hard time explaining the voice to the other boys, and he almost decked Danny when he laughed at him. But he figured that even a grown-up would have had a hard time describing the way the voice spoke to him. All he knew for sure was this; it was creepy. The call wavered into his head distant and crackly like something from one of those late night movies he liked to watch when his parents were already asleep; the black and white ones from the fifties and sixties.
Nearby, Mike nudged the football with his toe. It would have left a smeary trench in the new, soft snow, but the six of them had trampled most of it flat. Tom picked up the ball at his friend’s foot and, without a word, the two of them returned to the yard and started tossing it back and forth.
“Danny. You’re gonna keep that flashlight shining down in here, right?” Chris asked.
The other boy nodded.
“I can’t hear you,” Chris sang in a voice like a drill sergeant.
“Yeah, Chris. I’ll shine the light in the well,” Danny replied, obviously irritated.
“Good.”
“You sure about this?” Derrick asked. “What if you fall?”
Chris glared at Derrick in disbelief. “You guys are gonna make sure I don’t, aren’t you?” he sneered.
The twins, Derrick and Darren, glanced at each other, some secret message flashing between them.
“Now, I want all of you over here, letting the line out slowly so I don’t drop like a stone,” Chris said. Then, just for good measure, he added, “And don’t do anything funny or I’ll kick each of your butts when I get back up here.”
Tom and Mike dropped the ball in the yard and sauntered back to where the others were already huddled around Chris and the well.
When all of the boys had a good grip on the rope, Chris squirmed into a repeller’s posture. If the well had been a little bit narrower, he might have been able to “walk” down with his back against one wall and his feet on the far side, but the opening was too wide for that. So he gave the command and four of the other boys let the rope out while Danny shined the flashlight into the hole.
Chris’ heart was pounding so hard he could hear the blood rushing in his ears. There was no telling what could be down there. The ancient shaft bore straight down without any visible obstacles or interruptions.
Maybe ten minutes later, his heart skipped a few beats when his foot slipped into thin air. The wall should have been there, but maybe a few stones had fallen loose. The boys above had let out most of the 100 foot rope. Still, the water gurgling at the bottom sounded like it was a mile below.
“Hold on. STOP!” He yelled at the others. The rope stopped its descent. He probed at the gap in the wall with his foot, but he could not feel the edges of the cavity.
“Hey. Gimme another foot,” he called. The rope obeyed, letting him down a little lower.
Now, he kicked his foot around in the opening, and he still couldn’t feel any obstacle. It seemed to open up into a larger hole, maybe even a cave of some sort. Danny’s flashlight offered little in the way of useable light down here. Chris wanted to take out his own and shine it into the void, but he needed both hands on the rope to keep the line from digging painfully into his armpits. He yelled more directions to the others.
“Alright. Let me down slowly until I say stop, okay?”
No one answered, but again, the line played out an inch at a time. When he passed the point where his feet could still touch the wall, they swung out behind him, leaving him to dangle at the end of the line. He wondered if this was what a worm felt like, dangling on the end of a line swinging around in a dark and alien world. When his feet found the wall again, he called for them to stop. He kicked out and swung back. On the return trip, his body should have slammed into the wall, but of course, it wasn’t there. Instead, he swung onto some kind of landing where his feet found solid ground. When he stood up, he hit his head on the rocks above. The pain was exquisite, and he felt a bit dizzy, but at least the rope had relaxed. He slipped it over his head and let the looped end lie on the ground. Between his stinging armpits and his aching ribs, hanging from a rope by a rope that hooked under his arms had proven to be very uncomfortable. He didn’t much look forward to the return trip.
When the dizzy spell passed and he was sure he wasn’t going to fall from his ledge, Chris took the flashlight from his pack and fumbled for the switch. In the darkness, the thin beam was bright and made him squint. To his wonder, he found that this was not a cave at all. He had not known what to expect when he began this little journey, but somehow he was not shocked to find a tunnel cut deep into the bedrock wall of the well.
He wasn’t sure what to do. Should he have one of the others join him? Maybe Danny. Sure, Danny would do it. Besides, he could really use someone to come down here and carry his pack. It was going to get heavy.
He called up to the other boys. “Danny. I need you to come down here. There’s a tunnel.”
One of the other boys, it sounded like Mike, answered back. “Are you safe down there?”
“What?” Chris yelled.
“Are you safe? You’re not going to fall, are you?” Mike called again.
“Yeah. I’m fine. It’s… There’s a tunnel down here. Have Danny get his lazy butt down here.”
The next voice to answer sounded like Tom. “I don’t think so, Chris. I think we’ve had about enough of your crap.”
“What are you talking about?” Chris yelled. But he already knew what they were talking about, didn’t he? He had pushed too hard; been too cruel to them for too long. And he knew even before he heard the whispery sound of the rope skipping off the walls that he would not be returning home via the top of the well. Not today. Maybe not at all.
“Good bye, Chris,” one of the twins called.
“Yeah. Good luck,” said his brother.
Then the hint of light from Danny’s flashlight winked out and Chris started screaming. “No. Wait. Come back. I’m sorry. Tom, where are you?”
“Darren, Derrick? … Come on, guys. This isn’t funny.” He waited for an answer, but none came.
“Danny? Please. … Help me out of here.”
In desperation, he screamed one last plea to Mike, begging him to drop another rope down into the well; then he just wept.
He probably sat there for an hour, maybe more, willing the rope to come back. He thought about those morons he hung around with and schemed his revenge. When they finally came back to let him out, they would pay. Oh yes, they would pay dearly. It never occurred to him that they might not ever come back.
Time marched on, and other thoughts began to assert themselves. First of all, he had played his flashlight all around himself, and there was another tunnel across the well. It must have been long because it just swallowed up his tiny light beam. His tunnel, as he had now begun to think of it, looked like it went a short distance and intersected with another. Most interesting of all was the way the walls almost appeared to be machined. The floor, the walls and the ceiling were nearly perfect in their straight machined edges and corners. It was like a mine tunnel carved by master stone cutters. But they must have been short; the ceiling wasn’t more than four feet from the floor.
The other thing that gnawed at him was hunger. Four granola bars and a water bottle weren’t going to last long. And if he was right about the voice in his head, then one of these tunnels must go somewhere. He decided he had to start exploring. He had no intention of jumping across the well opening to investigate the tunnel on the far side, so he turned and moved into the one behind him. It was not until he reached the intersection that he even remembered the orange spray paint can, which he dug out of his pack and used to mark the way he had come. He sprayed a simple “CP” and an arrow on the ceiling and then decided to go left. It was slow going, and crouching in the low tube made his back ache. Without warning, his flashlight began to flicker and dim. Now, for the first time, he began to feel real fear.
Batteries! He thought. Why didn’t I bring extra batteries?
Several yards ahead, he thought he saw something moving. Not an animal. It was more like the tunnel was itself was alive, but, of course, that was ridiculous. But his light was fading and his fear bloomed into sheer terror. There were two ways to go; forward or back. Neither seemed like a good option. He continued inching forward. Just as his flashlight began to illuminate a swirling mist before him, it went completely black. Chris whimpered quietly and continued, feeling his way along the smooth rock wall. When he reached the place where he assumed the mist had been, the wall under his fingers changed. It started to feel warm and pleasant, even friendly. His terror shrank to fear, from fear to mild anxiety, to calm, to peace. A soothing feeling coursed through him. He didn’t know where he was going, but as he slipped all the way into the mist, it occurred to him that he didn’t really care.
TEN YEARS LATER
Ten years after Christopher’s betrayal, another young man hurtled miserably toward his own destiny. For now, his face was dry, but Jeremiah Duncan McAllister had been crying for the better part of the last three days. ...
