Horror: An Old Rhyme

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by Stephen Lochton Kincaid

 

  

            “Come on, Johnny!” Johnny’s little sister called back to him as she ran down the path through the blackberry brambles.  Johnny always dragged his feet when they went to the well.

            Johnny heard his sister but didn’t look up from the rock he was kicking along.  He hated going to the well.  For one, why was it so (Johnny wouldn’t cuss out loud, that would get him the switch and get it quick, but he would in his mind if he wanted to, they couldn’t punish you for what you said in your mind) damn far from the house?  They had the hand pump out back for the animals and taking baths, but the water was too silty for drinking or cooking with.  So … the well.

            He came out of the brambles next to his sister and gave the rock one final kick.  It was a good one.  It bounced almost halfway up the hill before it hit a tree stump, flew spang into the air five feet, then landed and rolled to a stop.  Ordinarily, such a good kick would bring a little smile to his face, but not today.

            “Come on, Johnny!”  Sis started running up the slope, laughing, her gingham dress flapping, her braids bouncing merrily up and down, and Johnny gave a little sigh.  Sis had too much damn energy.

            Johnny trudged up the hill, still looking down at his feet.  Why couldn’t they get indoor plumbing?  In this brave new year 1939, indoor plumbing was all the rage.  Billy Treewell’s parents had gotten indoor plumbing last year, and Billy hadn’t shut his trap about it ever since.  I don’t have to fetch water no more!  I don’t have to walk through three feet of snow in the dead of winter and shit in a stinky hole cut in a board no more!  Well, good for you.  Now can you please shut up about it?

         But Johnny didn’t even have to look up from his feet to know why they couldn’t get indoor plumbing.  His feet were clad in a pair of his dad’s old Sears Roebuck work boots.  The leather was shiny and one sole was held together with masking tape.  The toes were packed with newspaper because, Johnny being only eleven, his feet were still five sizes too small for them.  Stew bum shoes, Johnny thought morosely every morning when he put them on.  That thought was always followed by a blinding white-hot wave of resentment at his parents for being poor.  Of course, that was always followed by a sickening wave of good old Catholic guilt.  His parents couldn’t help being poor, he knew that; he just had a hard time accepting it.  (Although it had occurred to him one night, lying in bed and listening to his parents shout at each other through the paper thin walls of their old farmhouse – shouting being their main means of communication – that they always seemed to have money to buy those gross Pocono cigarettes, the ones that kind of smelled like burning rope when you rolled them up and smoked them.  They always had plenty of money for that).

            About halfway up the slope, Johnny stopped and looked at the well.  A little shiver ran down his back.  Even on a bright, sunny day like today, Johnny thought the well looked hateful, like a poison toadstool sitting on top of the hill.  Sis had already reached the top and was skipping around it, singing.  He wanted to tell her to knock it off, to get away from it, because her bouncing around it like that looked

            (obscene)

just weird.

            “Pepsi Cola hits the spot!” sis was singing when Johnny got to the top of the hill.  She did a headstand – it was a fairly good one – for a minute, then lost her balance and fell on her prat, laughing.

            Johnny approached the well slowly, not even aware that little beads of perspiration had popped out on his forehead and he was breathing quickly and shallowly.  He started cranking the axle to unspool the rope and lower the rusty tin bucket, careful not to look down.

            “Look at me,” the thing in the well said.  Softly, cajoling.

            Johnny’s heart triphammered in his chest.  A little moan escaped him.

            “Look at me,” it said.  No longer soft or cajoling.  Demanding.

            “No,” Johnny whimpered.  Sis was doing cartwheels now, springing around in the grass and shouting “Twelve full ounces, that’s a lot!”, laughing, giggling, and Johnny’s pulse beat heavy behind his eyes, making his head pound.

            “LOOK AT ME,” it commanded, and for the first time ever, his resolve broke.  It was not a conscious decision, not fully.  His will to fight it, which had been deteriorating, simply crumbled.  He’d always been terrified of the thing in the well, but he’d also been … curious. 

He put his hands on the ledge, grimacing at the cold, slimy feel of the weathered-black stone, and peered into the dark throat of the well.

            Blackness down there, utter blackness.  A void, really.  Johnny couldn’t hear his sister anymore, couldn’t hear anything … couldn’t smell anything either, and that was weird because at the mouth of the well he always smelled that damp, gassy smell waft out like the last belch of a corpse.  It felt as if his head was wrapped in cotton. 

            Johnny peered into the blackness and saw nothing.  Then, as he was about to pull away, he thought he saw a tiny blob of color deep at the bottom.  He leaned closer, intrigued, and more colors appeared, blues and greens and reds.  They began to swirl around, lazily, in a slow eddy. 

            It’s a kaleid-er-scope, he thought, amazed, transfixed.  There’s a kaleid-er-scope in the bottom of the well!

            As he watched, the colors all popped like the fireworks they shot over the bandstand every Fourth of July, fizzling into pale yellow sparkles.  Unlike fireworks, though, these sparkles didn’t burn out – they came together and coalesced into one single circle of light.

            Something about that sickly yellow light made Johnny feel nauseous.  It was the color of rotted fruit, of the evening sun filtered through a dirty window pane in a deathroom.  Of ancient wallpaper that dripped and ran down the walls.

            That wasn’t right, Johnny thought, bewildered.  Wallpaper couldn’t drip and run down the walls … could it?

            But it didn’t matter – something was coming now, he could feel it.  The circle of light was expanding; the light seemed to be its precursor, its herald.  He didn’t want to see it, whatever it was; he was desperate not to see it.  He tried to pull away but found that he couldn’t move.  His muscles wouldn’t respond.  He felt like a fly stuck to a strip of glue-paper. It was a trick, those colors had been a dirty trick, please god don’t let me see it–

            It breached the veil and Johnny saw–

           The thing that waits for us, waits and watches in the gulf beyond the stars, bathed in its hideous sallow light.  He was looking up at it while looking down into the well, and the effect was dizzying.  It was a dark god, a walking monolith, and its crown (if indeed it had any kind of termination) was lost in the haze of that eldritch yellow light.  Its skin was a patchwork of screaming human faces.  His eyes were immediately drawn to his own face, one among millions, maybe billions, its features pulled down in sheer agony as though it was made of putty.  

         There was no running from it, he knew, no hiding.  Not even insanity was an escape, because once it has been seen, it cannot be unseen. 

         Johnny–

          Johnny slammed his head into the stone ledge of the well.  It made a hollow thunk sound as someone slapping a watermelon to test its ripeness will make.

         Sis stopped cavorting in the grass.  “Johnny?” she said tremulously.

         Another slam.  Now his forehead was opened up and a rivulet of blood trickled down his face.

         “Johnny!  Stop that!”

          Johnny began slamming his head relentlessly into the stone.  His face became a caul of blood.  Sis clapped her hands to her cheeks and shrieked.

          There was one final, hard slam.  This one produced not a thunk sound but a loud crack.  Johnny slid bonelessly down the side of the well, his head now decidedly misshapen.  His body picked up momentum and began to tumble down the hill.  One shoe popped off and followed him down.  As he rolled on his back, Sis saw, with horrid fascination, that his gray eyes were wide open and staring vacantly into the umbrella of the sky.

          She watched him fall, tears pricking her eyes, her breath thin and reedy.

          “Look at me,” something said behind her, and she gave a little jump.

           “Look at me,” it said again.  It sounded like it was coming from the well.

           She turned around slowly, her brother momentarily forgotten.  She had never heard the voice before; Johnny had always drawn the water.  Was someone trapped at the bottom of the well?  She approached it cautiously, curious but frightened, her legs trembling like jelly.  She put her hands on the stone and peered over, into the darkness.

           A few moments later, as the old rhyme went, and Jill came tumbling after.

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       Stephen Lochton Kincaid grew up in the flatlands of Kansas.  After spending most of his life there, he now lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he draws upon the lowering gray skies and primeval forests for inspiration to write the stuff of nightmares.

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       Kelly Sauvage Moyer is an award-winning poet, photographer and fiber artist, who pursues her muse through New Orleans’s French Quarter. The author of four books, including Hushpuppy and Mother Pomegranate and Other Fairytales for Grown-Ups (Nun Prophet Press), Kelly is currently working on a witchy novella and directing a slew of short films. She is the founding editor of Circle of Salt. https://circleofsaltmag.blogspot.com/