This was written for on a photo prompt from Mina Howell for the Penny Dreadfuls podcast.
⚠️ Content: Horror story involving grief, supernatural manipulation, and child POV. No graphic content.
The well had been there longer than anyone living could remember. It was there before the house where we lived was built, stones piled up on top of another and a bucket on a rope.
Years before, covered wagons would stop at the well on their path west, refilling barrels and watering horses, livestock and people, though it was little more than a covered hole in the ground at that point.
Before that, members of the Meskwaki nation would stop to water their horses and fill their gourd canteens for travel. Hunting parties would stop near the well at night and leave again before first light.
The well had been there before it was even a well — just a deep opening in the rich soil of the earth leading to an underground spring that had never seen the sun.
Maybe that’s what made the water so special. Or maybe it was something else entirely.
Whatever the reason, sometimes when you drank water from the well under a full moon, magical things could happen.
At least, that’s what my Grandmother said. She always told the best stories, and as a child, I loved sitting cuddled up against her side on the couch as she sewed, her words creating a quilt just as warm and beautiful as the one growing between her flashing fingers.
I was just five the first time she told me about the well. We’d gone for a walk that day in the vast expanse of her backyard, and we’d passed it. She still kept a working bucket and rope, and a hook stuck out from the stone with a ladle on it. I’d never drunk from a ladle before, so I was intrigued.
It was the sweetest water I’d ever tasted. She’d let me drink my fill, and by the time I stopped, my little tummy bulged with it and sloshed when I walked.
She’d laughed at me and asked, “Do you want to know why the water’s so sweet?”
I nodded curiously, always interested in her tales.
“It’s sweet because the earth here loves us, poppet. That well is where our mother lives, and a mother loves all her children.”
She’d knelt next to me and hugged me into her arms as she spoke the next words as a whispered secret, “But she especially loves the littlest ones.” And then she’d tickled me until we were both laughing.
We’d gone on our way then, continuing our walk around the vast property. Later that night, as she was tucking me into my little bed in her guest room, I’d asked about the mother. “I don’t have a mother, Gramma. Daddy says she’s in Heaven. Is she really in the earth?”
Grandma settled herself next to me on the bed and wrapped her arm around me tightly, pulling me in close. “No, Nina. I’m sure your mother is in Heaven, just like your Daddy says. This is a different mother. Not your mother. Our mother.”
My little brow furrowed in confusion, “But you’re Daddy’s mother.”
She smiled fondly at me. “Yes. But this is the mother to all people. To all the world.” She paused, looking thoughtful as she considered her next words. Finally, she continued, “She has many names. Mother Earth. Mother Nature. Gaia. Terra. Magna Mater. And more. But who she is…? Well, she’s the one who gives us all life.”
I snuggled in close to her. “I thought that was God.”
She chuckled, and I smiled as I felt her chest rising and falling with her laughter. “Well, I suppose everyone has both a mommy and a daddy. Right, poppet?”
I fell asleep that night tucked against her side — safe, warm and content.
The next time we’d talked about the well had been a couple of years later. I was seven, and I was visiting her for the entire summer for the first time. I was so excited, because she let me explore the land surrounding her house during the day, so long as I was back before dark and didn’t go too far.
I’d come across the well while exploring one bright afternoon, and I’d climbed the stone wall surrounding it and peered down over the edge into the dark depths. There was the faintest flash of light at the bottom, a reflection no doubt, but otherwise there was nothing to see.
I called into the well and listened to my voice echo in the space, “Hello?” Hello. Hello. Hello.
I giggled as I imagined that echo was someone calling back to me.
And then I heard it. “Hello, child of mine,” came the soft voice cooing up at me.
I yelped and leaped back, landing hard on my backside and crying out from the sharp pain of the rock digging into my scrawny buttocks. I scrambled up and ran back to the house, the lilting sound of mocking laughter a soft shadow that followed me the whole way home.
I rushed up to Grandma and told her my story in a broken flood of words, desperate to be comforted and told I was safe and everything was fine. She hugged me tightly, cleaned up my scraped hands, and gave me milk and cookies.
She didn’t tell me I was imagining it. She didn’t tell me everything was fine. Instead, she looked worried.
“Why don’t you stay away from the well, for a while, little one. Sounds like the mother is feeling playful,” she advised as she tucked me in that night.
But I was seven. I wanted to play.
The next morning I crept back up to the well and peered over the edge. That time there were two flickering lights at the bottom — they looked like eyes.
I bit my lip, screwed up my courage, and called down, “Hello? Are you the mother?”
This time there was no echo. Just a feminine voice that answered, “Hello? Are you the daughter?” Then soft laughter.
I thought about that. I was a daughter. Was I the daughter?
“Maybe?” I called down.
Another ribbon of laughter floated up through the air — it was a contagious sound, and I found myself giggling along with it.
“I have been called the mother,” the voice answered. “But you may call me Moko, my sweet one.”
“Moko?” I asked with another giggle. “That’s a funny name. I’m Nina.”
“Hello, Nina, child,” she called, her voice a floating melody rising from below. “Would you like to play?”
“Play? Yeah! I like hide and seek. Can you come up here?”
A deep sigh rose, carried on a sorrow so powerful it blew my bangs back off my forehead. “Alas, I cannot. I may not leave the well without help.”
“I’ll help you,” I cried, full of a child’s eagerness to alleviate such a palpable sadness.
A soft chuckle. “Oh, my little one. You know not what you offer. But your kindness speaks well of you and of your family.”
Her sorrow still hung above the well like a cloud of drowsy blue mist. I was desperate to help her, this new friend who was a mother — when I so badly missed my own.
“What can I do to help?” I asked, crawling further up over the side of the well. My upper body floated in the air above the blackness, my toes hooked in the cracks of the stones and my arms spread wide to grip the sides.
There was silence for what seemed like forever, then the voice rose from the dark, “You could come down here. Then we could play…”
As her voice trailed away, I heard echoes in it — the sound of joyous laughter and the high-pitched notes of a calliope playing a carnival melody. I wanted so badly to play with her.
“How can I do that?” I asked. “My gramma would be angry with me, I think.”
The laughter came again. “Yes, child. She likely would be. But I can help you find the way down if you wish it.”
I did wish it. I wished it more than anything in that moment. “I want to play with you!”
A sigh that dripped with satisfaction and joy — she wanted to play, too — and she began her instructions. “Grasp the rope and climb up to sit on the edge of the well.”
She waited as I followed her directions. Once I was perched on the well wall’s edge, small hand clutching the rope like a lifeline, she continued, “Wrap your legs around the rope.”
I did as I was told. “Tightly now!” she admonished firmly. And it was almost like my own mother worrying for me.
Soon I hung on the rope, only air between me and her. “Now shimmy down,” she finished. And waited.
I began to work my way slowly down the rope, clinging like the lemurs my dad had shown me in a picture book.
“What a good little climber you are,” she praised, and I sped up with pleasure at her approval.
The well seemed far deeper than it had when I began. I’d been climbing for such a long time that the opening above me was nearly out of sight, just a circle of light in the distance. I looked back over my shoulder, but her voice stopped me before I could see more than the stone wall and the black.
“Don’t look down, small one. You don’t want to fall.”
I did as I was told, focusing again on the rope. And I climbed. On and on. My arms grew tired, and my legs burned where they rubbed against the hemp rope. My palms, already scraped from yesterday’s fall reopened, leaving a thin slime of blood that slicked my grip.
Finally, I felt hands touch my hips and lift me from the rope. But the hands felt… wrong. The fingers were too long, wrapping around my waist and meeting over my belly button. I glanced down to see the skin was marbled white and gray, like cloudy smoke mixed in fog.
I whirled in her grip and looked up — far up. She towered over me, tall and incredibly slim. More like a sapling on two legs than a person. But her face… it was perfection. She looked like my mother if my mother had been an angel.
“Mommy?” I blurted.
When she laughed this time, as her thin lips parted, I saw the sharp teeth that hid behind them. Her black eyes sparkled. And she didn’t look like my mother anymore.
“Let’s play,” she hissed. There was no melody in her voice this time.
Arms gripped me tightly, and she was wrapped around me so tightly that — head to toe — I could barely even wiggle. “What are you…” my voice choked off partway through the question.
No answer, and I couldn’t breathe as the world turned to darkness.
When I woke, I was sitting in waist-deep water. Alone and in the dark. When I looked up, I could just barely make out the winking eye of the well’s opening. Then a face peered down at me. I could see it clearly, though I don’t know how.
It was my face.
“Thank you, little one! I shall have fun playing!”
That was many years ago. The well has always been here. And someone has always waited.
—
‼️ If you liked this story, you may want to read some of my other fiction.
💀 Did this tale make you want to look over your shoulder — just to check? Buy me a cup of existential dread, and I’ll create the next creepy fairy tale…
Why do i feel like this was a different vibe than normal? Very excellent, immersive, and awesome MC choice. She came across as a whole story on her own. I especially love the way the intro sunk us into her feelings with an innocent vibe.
ooo wow! this was so creepy!
I absolutely love this premise!