The Well
By Kirsty Merryn
They'd been looking forward to visiting the castle for days. They were on holiday in Cornwall at the fag end of the summer because the train tickets and the cosy little B+B they had booked were much cheaper than they would have been during peak season. If they were being honest though, they would have to admit that it was more autumn than summer and though they had saved a packet, there were other prices to be paid. The little town they were staying in was all but empty of other tourists, and the slate grey sky had stubbornly refused to let even the meanest sliver of sunshine peak through for the whole of their trip. There were another 3 days left of the holiday, and they had been looking forward to visiting the castle, not because either of them were especially interested in history or architecture but because they knew it was a Historic Monument (this always thought of with a capital H and M) and would mean other tourists. Not either that they were bored of each others company, but rather that they were both fascinated by other people. They had been out for a meal on their first night there and had been masochistically satisfied when a drunk and boorish stag party had sat down at the table next to theirs.
“Really?!” She had muttered to him in disgust and with a delicious jab of self-righteous pleasure as one of the group, who were all really old enough to know better, had farted loudly and with aplomb to the enthusiastic applause of the rest of the table.
“For God's SAKE” he had muttered with gleeful chagrin, as later another, seemingly the stag, had violently thrown a frothing pint of local bitter down his throat in one sitting.
These little asides to each other weren't at all genuine; they had been amused by the really very mild, middle-class and middle-aged version of debauchery and pleased for the obviously delighted and smitten groom to be. It was just a part of the game to pretend to be disgusted, part of the sheer delight of being a spectator to the beautiful strangeness of other peoples lives and it had provided them with cheerful conversation on the long walk back to their accommodation. That had been several days ago, and though they really were very happy to be in each others company, they had hoped that the castle would bring them more of these encounters to witness and to dissect together.
When they pulled their hire car into the gravelled car park the sky was the same resolute and miserable slab of stone, the slight breeze had a new, cold edge to it and as they opened their doors to climb the steep path to the castle, they realised that they were, once again, quite alone.
“I can't believe how quiet it is!” She said, looking around in case they'd made a mistake and all the other people were just hidden temporarily from their view.
“I know, but I suppose it's quite late in the year for visitors now. The kids will be back at school, won't they?” He replied in a slightly strained voice as they walked; the hill was really quite steep and he had had a delicious but stodgy pub lunch not that long before. They soon reached the top of the path and stepped onto the flat where a slowly decaying mound of rocks that had once been a castle squatted drably. It was a castle in the proper sense of the word. It had been built 500 years ago to defend the wealth and power of a cruel and greedy man from other cruel and greedy men, and was nothing like the delicate re-imaginings of a Victorian’s Gothic fancy that had come later. It had a curtain wall with the ghost of a portcullis, an imposing, circular inner fort, and really not much else about it. To her slightly disappointed eyes it looked sullen, and stubborn, like it was still there after half a millennium out of sheer bloodymindedness and spite. She was disappointed at not being able to afford a holiday at the proper time, but to have to take the scraps that were left over when more affluent people had moved on, and disappointed by the complete lack of those other people, the noise and the heat of them and the entertainment their presence would have brought.
They headed through the gaping maw in the stone wall which would once have housed a portcullis, and into the inner courtyard. In here they were thoroughly sheltered from the brisk wind that had caused her to reluctantly wind a scarf around her neck that morning, and the walls towered a good 30 feet around them on three sides. In front of them was the large, sturdy tower, displaying small cross-shaped windows to shoot arrows out at attackers and no doubt housing an exhausting spiral stair case. On the far side of the courtyard was a sheer, crumbling rock face that fell straight down to the sea and served as the fourth wall of the battlements. A relatively safe distance back from the scrubby grass of the cliff edge stood a bench and a round stone well.
They both walked towards the bench automatically, too dampened by their small disappointment to want to climb the punishing steps of the keep and see the view from the top. They held hands as they walked, and listened to their footsteps echoing off the surrounding walls.
“They never seem like they would have been much fun to live in. Castles.” He said, as they sat down next to each other and looked out at the full expanse of the cold grey sky and the angry grey sea. It was choppy today, and far below them the water crashed against the cliffs, and filled the air with a dense sea vapour. She “hmmmed” in assent and they lapsed back into silence. Next to them the well stood only a foot or two above ground, a circle of uneven blocks of stone topped by a metal grate. The dull darkness of the day prevented any reflection to shine back from whatever water might have been at the bottom, so it was impossible to tell from a look quite how deep it was. The wind skimmed across the rusted metal grate that sat on top of the well and drew out a low melodic sigh, like air blown over the neck of an empty glass bottle, an oddly human sound. A grubby sign was fastened to the side of the well, hand written in white paint on a thin plank of wood and held on by two rusted lengths of wire looped through the grate. It clacked gently against the stone in the cold breeze. She bent over so she could read the writing on it.
“Warning!” She read “The water is deep; anything that falls in probably won't come back”. The writing was very faded, and there was something old fashioned about the broad loops of the “d”s and “b”s, and the sweep of the top bar of the T. There were salt crystals clinging to its corners, and she dabbed some with the tip of her finger, and lifted them to her mouth. She tasted the sea and wondered at the strange wording. Why not just say that the well was deep, in fact why say anything at all when it came to that? Though the grating was rusted it still looked sturdy and it must have stopped all but the very smallest things from falling through. She wondered at that odd attempt at humour, at who had written it and hung it there to clack in the salty air. She felt the familiar, human compunction to make water splash and hunted in her purse for a penny. She'd received one in a handful of change when she'd bought a coffee this morning, she remembered. She found it and took it out to look at it. It seemed fitting somehow. It was an old penny that had gone green; it felt thick and rough. The queen's face was a round, mossy oval and the date was concealed. She leaned over to watch as she slipped it through the small gaps in the wire. She felt a little jolt of vertigo in her stomach in that second before she let go, as if she wasn't dropping the penny out of choice at all, and then she thought that what she was dropping probably wouldn't be seen by another person ever again, but would just sit there at the bottom of the well, in the pitch black dark, lost. The shadows were impenetrable inches from her hand and as she let go she immediately lost sight of the penny, but she could hear it softly bouncing off the walls as it fell. It seemed to fall for a very long time. Eventually, when she had waited for so long that she thought she must have missed it, she heard a small, distant splash as the penny hit the bottom. She shivered, and quickly moved her hands from the cold grate. As she brushed the layer of dust and salt from her palms, a small sound, like a low sigh, seemed to float up to her from the bottom of the well.
“Don't!” she said, smiling, turning to where she was sure he would be crouched over the grate, hands cupped around his mouth, grinning moronically and bending low to make the sound echo off the stone walls. But he had moved over to read an information board that stood near the end of the stone wall several feet away and hadn't seen her drop the penny. She stood up sharply, and went over to join him, not quite sure why she felt a cold shiver of fear bunch up inside her. She told herself that it was the wind, just the wind.
“Maybe we should go” she said, slipping her hand into the lovely comforting warmth of his, and smiling rather weakly up at him.
“You OK?” he asked her, “you look a bit peaky.”
“Fine” she lied, giving his hand a squeeze, pushing the friendly familiar heat deeper into her palm. “It's just it's getting colder and I think it might rain.”
“Yeah, I think you're right.” he smiled down at her. “Let's stop in that pub again on the way back, shall we? Warm ourselves up?”
“OK.” she said and she led him back to the car, not dropping his hand, not looking back to the well where the grating continued to whistle softly to itself.
When they returned to the B+B later with the smooth heat of Stella in their bellies she felt much better, and a little embarrassed about being so jumpy earlier. So daft that a grown woman could screech at sounds - perfectly natural, outdoorsy sounds - like a little girl. She hummed a tune to herself as she went into the old-fashioned avocado green ensuite of their b+b room to run a bath, and pulled her rather wind-ruffled hair out of its elastic.
“Well, they've upped the service since we've been out!” he called out to her from the bedroom where he was taking off his shoes.
“What?” She couldn't hear him over the frothing water, and put her head round the door to the main room, suds up her arms. “What did you say?”
“I said they've upped the service since we've been out. Mints on the pillow!” He gestured towards the bed with a grin. “They've only remembered the one, mind you. But still!”
She looked towards the pillow on her side of the bed curiously as he turned to hang his jacket on the back of the door. It took her a second to work out what she was looking at. It wasn't a mint, though she could see why he had thought so. Coat duly hung, he wandered into the bathroom so that he could clean his teeth before she hopped in the bath. She half-tip-toed over to the bed in a sort of cold horror, eyes fixed on the pillow. Not a mint, no, but something that looked like one, something small and round, and green. A penny. She felt odd and slightly drunk, though she'd only had the one half so she couldn't possibly be. She put a hand out to touch the thing on her pillow, just, with the tip of one finger. It was cold, utterly and intrinsically cold. Cold like something that had never been warm. She couldn't take her hand away. She left it there, the tip of it resting on the metal, and a soap sud slipped down her finger and dampened the pillowcase. She tried to shake her brain into giving her some answers. It couldn't be the same penny, how could it be? Hers was in that thick impenetrable dark at the bottom of that deep, deep well. But then again, here it was, unmistakeably the same penny, and cold under her finger, not warming with her body heat like a coin should, but cold, like it wasn't there at all, but still somehow at the bottom of that well.
“Feels like more rain tonight.” She jumped, and compulsively snatched the coin into the palm of her hand. A shiver of disgust ran down her arm and spine; the penny felt gritty in some way. Briny.
“You alright?” He looked down at her hand and up into her face with raised eyebrows and a smirk. “Don't worry, I know the mint was on your pillow, I wasn't going to try and nick it!” he raised both hands up in surrender, grinning and pink cheeked from the warm room and the alcohol, and she somehow forced a limp smile out of her face.
“I think it was off, maybe a joke from the cleaner. I'll chuck it in the bin.” She walked back into the bathroom and he put both hands gently on her shoulders as she tried to pass.
“Hey. What's up, you OK hamster?” It was a stupid name he'd invented for her on their first date, he'd taken her to the fairground and he said that the way she'd squeaked on all the rides sounded just like a hamster. The use of the silly pet name helped in some way to wake her up, and she managed to flash him a brief, watery smile.
“Just tired, it's the fresh air. It takes it out of you. I'll be better after I've had a bath.”
“OK.” He let her go of her shoulders, a little bewildered, and watched as she closed and locked the bathroom door.
She stood with her back to it, her breathing ragged and irregular, like the odd and distinctive pattern of mould on the coin in her hand. The fog of steam from the nearly full bath curled round her, and she turned the taps off. What was it doing there, there in her hand? Her brain broiled and fought with itself, but no answer was forthcoming. It was cold, so cold, how could it still be so icy cold, she'd been holding it for minutes? She felt the horrible flutterings of panic, and without thinking plunged the hand that was holding the coin into the bath of hot, bubbly water. Her hand hit the bottom of the bath with a painful jolt that echoed round the room, and she winced at the pain and the scalding hot water. Still, the coin felt like a sliver of ice burrowing into the soft skin of her palm. The air in the bathroom had changed somehow. She smelt salt in the air, and the steam from the bath seemed to be more cloying, and wild. She realised then that her whole hand was freezing cold, and she looked down into dark, pitch black water in the bath. It was like looking down into that well. She couldn't see her hand, it seemed cut off at the wrist. A faint whistling sound filled her ears, like furious air moaning through a metal grate. She pulled her hand backwards with a gutteral sob, wondering why it seemed to take an hour, two, as if it were coming back from a long way down, and fell backwards onto the bathmat with a sob. She didn't hear him hammer on the door in fright. She stared at the penny in her cold, numb hand.
At 3 in the morning the rain was thundering down, beating so hard on the windows and walls around them that it seemed like it was trying to get into the room. She sat, propped up on her pillow, the penny in her outstretched palm, and she wondered how long the room would take to fill with water, with the rain coming down as hard as it was. How could he sleep? She thought. With this racket, this unbelievable racket, how on earth could he possible be asleep? She felt a little crack of annoyance gouge into the odd state of detachment she'd found herself in since eventually appearing out of the bathroom, and it was comforting. She clung to it, and built upon it, like someone pinching the back of their hand savagely to help themselves stay awake. Of course, he'd had too much to drink, like always, that was how he could sleep through this almighty, biblical storm. The penny winked, green at her, colder than the grave in her hand. She held it to her ear and listened to the hollow moan of the wind through the well grate. She didn't know what to make of it, of any of it. She needed to sleep, but she couldn't think of a time she'd felt more awake. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, to try and damp down the panic that had started to swirl around in her stomach. It can't be the same penny, she thought, for the hundredth, the thousandth time that evening. And even if it is the same penny, what does it matter? It's a penny, just a penny. What can it do? She didn't linger on that. The words from the sign on the well repeated themselves in her head, over and over “anything that falls in probably won't come back, probably won't come back, come back.” But it had. And why had it, and why was it so COLD. She clenched her fingers around it hard, making the skin on the knuckles turn white.
She practiced some yoga breathing, low and deep, making it rasp out like the waves of an ocean, as she'd learnt in class. She felt his hand press into her shoulder, and the ball of resentment she'd so carefully cultivated melted. She felt guilty that she'd woken him up and guilty that she'd thought such mean things about him before. She opened her eyes and smiled down at him, down at his recumbent body, not smiling at her sympathetically but deep in sleep, breathing heavily and curled up away from her, in the same position as he'd been when he'd fallen asleep hours before. As she looked at him she felt the hand lift away from her shoulder. She swallowed again and clenched the penny tighter.
“But, look, are you sure you want to go back to the castle? It was a bloody ghost town yesterday, there's not even much there to look at.” She flinched at his choice of words, and did her best to seem cheery.
“I know, but we didn't climb the keep yesterday, and... it'll be great fun! It just seems a shame, as we're down here, not to make the most of it! It's very old you know, and, and...it's historic!”
He looked at her flushed face, and down at the her hand that she'd kept oddly bunched up all morning and was white from the pressure; he wondered what was up. She'd been talking in this way since they'd woken up, though she hadn't looked rested, just over cheery, like a 50s soap advert. Well, if it helped her with whatever it was that was going on. They didn't have anything else especially to do, and anyway it was on the way to the brewery he fancied taking a tour of, maybe they could fit that in after, when she had got it out of her system and hopefully perked up a bit. He shrugged, and opened the car door. “Whatever makes you happy.”
They drove to the castle in silence. She had hardly slept at all in the night; each time she had dozed off she'd been woken by the moan of wind through metal grating, or the cold of the penny burning down through the layers of her hand through to the bone. She could hardly feel it today, but she couldn't let go. It helped in someway, to hold on to it. She didn't know what would happen if she dropped it again. Finally, she had given up at 6 when a voice had screamed with horrible force in her ear, and had leapt into the shower sobbing, trying to wash away whatever it was that had been sitting up with her all night.
They arrived at the castle and she found she couldn't open the door. The castle looked uglier than before, and furiously hostile, like one visit was permissible and anything more an imposition. He got out unheeding and stretched his back
“I didn't sleep very well last night you know.” He said to her arching his shoulders “Maybe that steak and kidney pie was dodgy.” She lifted trembling fingers to the door handle, and turned.
The sign said that whatever you dropped probably wouldn't come back. Well it had once, and that was an aberration, a mistake, and she had to take care of it once. If it came back once against the odds, what was the likelihood that it would come back again. She was holding the handle down, but she couldn't find the force to push the door outwards. It was wrenched out of her grasp and she lurched forward, nearly falling.
“Come on you” he smiled down at her, door in hand “Let's go and have an Historical experience.”
She stood in front of the well and breathed the cloying, briny air. The grating whistled mournfully to her, or to the penny, in welcome. She shuffled closer in a horrified daze and felt the inky black of the well below rushing up to meet her. She had to drop the penny back in, she was sure, but she didn't know how she was going to bring herself to lift her hand to that grating, and drop what sulked between her fingers into the void for a second time. It was watching now. It was closer.
She stood, crying unconsciously, damp tears mingling with the sea mist on her face, her hand half raised in front of her. She shuffled forward another hideous step. The moaning of the wind was louder. She felt her stomach and her feet beneath her lurch and dropped to her knees to vomit, but the sensation passed. The top of the well was at eye level now. The humming of the grating had other tones she hadn't heard before. She could see green lichen growing on the far inner wall and then nothing. Dark. Waiting. With trembling limbs she lifted her hand high above her and over the grating. Her lungs were full of the wet sea air and she knew she was drowning. Slowly, painfully, she forced the fingers of her white, bloodless hand to open. Nothing fell. The coin was riveted to her palm from the pressure of her holding it so tightly for so long, like an old parlour trick, and she scrabbled at it with her other hand, an odd low wail starting from her lips. It fell, eventually it fell - and stopped. The holes in the grating were small, and it had wedged between them. She would have to push it through. The grating snarled and screeched. She lifted her hands to her head and wailed.
He'd gone over to look at the plaque he'd started to read last time, to look at the weather stained illustrations on the plastic board, the dates that were so long ago that they almost seemed made up. He span as he heard a strange animal screech, and saw her on her knees in front of the well.
“What the fuck?” he didn't realise he had spoke, and leapt towards her reflexively. And stopped. She was scrabbling backwards on her knees, away from the well, dangerously close to the cliff face. He'd never seen such an expression on a human face. Terror was scorched into every inch of it, she didn't seem human at all, but like a bullied, hunted creature. She held her hands out in front of her,shielding her face, and they were curved like claws. He forced himself to start running towards her, unable to call out, muted by that look of impending death on her face and a tight feeling in his chest. She was at the cliff edge, he was too far away. He burst into a sprint. He shouted her name as she stumbled, as the brittle soil gave way beneath her knees. He watched the pink of her long scarf billow elegantly up into the air, watched as she was catapulted out and into the foaming water below. He couldn't hear a splash over the crashing of the waves against the cliff.
He looked down at where she had disappeared beneath the waves. It was too soon to feel anything. He didn't know what it was he had even seen. He turned to the castle, where it sat as immovable as ever and at the well, to try and understand what it was she had been looking at, but there was nothing there, just the drab, dark well. The grating hummed to itself quietly. On the side a small sign clacked in the breeze. “Warning - the water is deep. Anything that falls in probably won't come back.”