How stupid do you have to be to fall down a well? Pretty stupid, I’m sure.
When I was eleven I did the very same thing when collecting water with my brother. Even after my mother, peeling and chopping a pile of potatoes over the sink, apron soaked with water and littered with small potato skins, warned us.
“Careful round that well,” she declared, eyes stuck to the potatoes. “You remember what happened with Dorothy’s poor wee lass.”
That’s the last thing I would hear my mother say until I was brought back up. She’d hold me like a newborn, and scream at my brother for letting such a thing happen. I don’t think he deserved it, though, but this had only ever happened to the girls of the village.
As I fell to the bottom, I was startled by the shock of the fall on the side of my shoulder. No splash of water hit me, no cold shock was felt. I had in fact hit the cold, damp, slimy bottom and heard the echoes of my screams circle upwards, climbing up the walls that I couldn’t. Dorothy’s daughter had died trying.
For a while both boys just looked downwards, frozen in shock. I couldn’t see their faces but I could see the outline of their eyes white and wide, stuck to the wall. As they ran for help I remembered that same look they gave Dorothy down here. I only had a moment to adjust my eyes to the darkness before a light shone to the left of me. It was green algae shimmering and glistening. Soon after more spots of glowing algae appeared, leading to a tiny path. Guiding my hand down the trail I felt a hole where the algae stopped. It was cold, a breeze blowing through it.
Strange.
I tried to plug the hole with some moss and stones as an old story that my mother had told me fell into my head again, down my spine and into every nerve of every limb. I shouted for my brother. Then my mother.
I recall Dorothy screaming this story word for word as if possessed whilst everyone tried to save her. The stones and moss I had stuffed pitifully in the hole now fell to the floor, the breath sounding more and more like heaving breathing. Luckily I heard footsteps crashing up the hill, and a rope hitting the sides of the wall. I got to my knees, realising they had bled, and heard the breathing grow faster. A figure similar to a claw followed my feet whilst I felt for the rope. A torch someone had brought shed light on the walls, which I could then see was stained with blood and the green algae which was now rotting, the smell becoming unbearable. Water burst through the hole and almost drowned me. I kept climbing, trying not to look back again at the curse that awaited me down in the depths. My brother now goes to the well alone.
