The Well

 

Cecilia awoke to the distant sound of a baby crying. When she opened her eyes she was in their old home, in their old bed. She was alone. Everything was like it had been before they had sold it. The mirror they had gotten before they were married faced the bed. She sat up and looked at it. Seeing her own confused reflection intensified the uneasiness she felt.

“Michael?”

There was no answer. What was she doing here?

She again heard the cry of the baby. Her baby, could it be?

“Michael! Michael!” She was screaming for him now. She couldn’t face this alone. But there was no answer.

Cecilia knew this couldn’t be real. It wasn’t possible it was her baby. Yet she couldn’t keep herself from rising out of bed. She stepped gingerly across the plush rug, holding her breath. As she moved down the hall, she suddenly knew it was Annie. She began to run.

“I’m coming,” she said as she turned the corner into Annie’s bedroom. The reality of the situation was no longer an issue. Annie was crying. Annie was her baby. Annie needed her mother.

And there she was in the crib, perfect little Annie. Caught in mid-cry, the baby was startled nearly to silence when she saw her mother. It made Cecilia smile. Annie was still whimpering as she lifted her daughter out of the crib.

“Oh, hush,” she said gently as she kissed her daughter’s forehead, instantly relaxing the infant’s face. Her lips lingered briefly as she took in the scent of her baby. Cecilia closed her eyes and began to rock in a familiar way back and forth, from foot to foot, pleased by the sweet weight of Annie in her arms again. But even before she heard the sick, crushing sound, part of her knew this moment
couldn’t last.

And then there she was again, holding an empty blanket. All she had left was a blanket in a bare, dark room. There was only one thing she could do.

“No…” she screamed. “No…Annie, my baby girl…No…”

Reeling from her dream, Cecilia was sitting outside. It was early, and her screams had woken Michael. When she had these dreams she often found it hard to speak for hours afterwards. She had quickly pulled on a sweatshirt and slipped on her shoes without answering Michael’s questions. He already knew the answers. Now she sat in the cool spring air trying to breathe in some comfort.

They had sold their house, bought the R.V., and taken off with a full bank account after the settlement had paid out. Cecilia needed to be in open space, she had told Michael, because it made her feel better. Soon Michael brought her a cup of coffee and a kiss. He was silent, now recognizing her post-nightmare state. He went back into the R.V., and she could hear the sounds of the early morning news through the open window on their satellite TV. She found that her clarity was beginning to return.

After Cecilia washed and dressed, she returned to the picnic table to apply sunscreen. Michael was packing a lunch for them to eat at the well. As she smoothed the lotion onto her arm she could feel the deep scar, and it raised the hair on the back of her neck. She literally shook off the feeling. Soon Michael came bounding out of the R.V. with their backpacks.

“Are you feeling better?” Michael asked as they began to walk towards
the trail.

“Yes. I’m so sorry that I keep putting you through that. I wish I could stop it. I mean, we’re living our dream. Except, except for…”

“It’s OK.” Michael took her hand. Cecilia couldn’t be more grateful, he really did understand. He was the only person who could.

She remembered lying in bed numbed with pain medication and sedatives when they finally got home from the hospital. She had listened to him cry himself to sleep, long after the potent drugs should have made her pass out. Michael didn’t know that her sorrow defied the strength of the meds, and hearing him cry like that was somehow more of a comfort than a burden.

They walked carefully down the rocky, slightly down-sloping trail. It was easy to fall, especially when walking over the little pebbles that seemed to be scattered almost everywhere. When they made it to the end of the trail, they found limestone rocks mixed with scrubby brush, yuccas, cacti and towering cypress trees. And then, of course, there was Jacob’s Well itself.

It was a large opening in the limestone, unlike anything Cecilia or Michael had ever seen. There was a sense of the magnitude of the well’s depth even from the surface, and it appeared to radiate blue and green from somewhere far below. The water was unbelievably clear and rounded, rocky crevices continued down into the water as far as they could see. The water flowed out of the well, forming a creek. Michael’s brother had gone to college near the well and had told them that the artesian spring had a series of dangerous chambers where several divers had lost their lives.  

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of (was it really?) a baby crying. Her entire body tensed up, and the dismay she had felt earlier started to flood back. She held her breath until she realized it was just a family down in the creek.

A boy and his mother giggled as his father slowly glided the now grinning baby gently back and forth on its back over the surface of the water. They seemed to be having fun together.

“Michael, let’s get in the water.” They removed their shoes and stood at the edge of a large rock above the well.

“You go first,” Cecilia told Michael. And he did, landing in the water with a splash and a yelp.

“It’s cold!” Michael yelled up to her. “Your turn.”

She closed her eyes and stepped off the rock, dropping away from the painful morning. She plunged into the spring below. She went down deep, so far that her ears popped. She came to the surface and realized that the water was chilly enough to have taken her breath away for a few seconds. When she was finally able to choppily inhale, the air came out accompanied by laughter. Cecilia felt weightless and saw Michael returning her grin.

They climbed out of the water and back up onto the diving rocks to spread out their towels on the warm limestone. Eventually the family swam closer to the well, directly below Michael and Cecilia. Cecilia turned onto her stomach and watched as the woman got out of the water with the baby. She sat on a lower bank across the well from them. The man and the boy splashed around laughing as they swam towards the spring.

“Daddy, will the well suck me in?” The little boy seemed truly concerned. Cecilia guessed he was about four years old.

“No, it won’t. I’ll keep you safe,” the boy’s father said, smiling up at Cecilia. He grabbed his son, laughing as spun him around.

When they stopped spinning, the boy was turned to face her, and a strange look came into his eyes. Maybe he was scared by her unfamiliar stare? But the boy’s look changed quickly into one of recognition, and then he said it.

“Mommy?!” A wary smile spread across the child’s face.

“No son, that’s not your Mommy,” he said. Alarmed, he turned his son so
he could look him in the eye, but the boy was defiantly turning his head to look
at Cecilia.

He didn’t seem to be convinced by his father. The child was determined to keep his eyes fixed on Cecilia, and she was confused and barely able to breathe. Wasn’t the child’s mother sitting right across the bank from all of them?

“What did he say?” The woman called to the man. She was clearly concerned.

“He, uh…he thought she was his mom. The light in her hair or something, I don’t know,” answered the man.

Cecilia watched the man swimming with his son in his arms back to the shore. The mother already had the baby in the sling by the time the other two made it there. Cecilia was stunned by the way the other couple was packing up to leave without saying a word. She wanted to yell an apology or ask if she had done anything wrong. But before she could decide what to say, they were already walking away from the other side of the creek. She couldn’t help meeting the boy’s gaze as he looked back, pulled along at a fast pace.

“That was kind of weird. Why would he think you were his mother?”

“I don’t know, Michael.” She almost felt guilty for being present to confuse
the boy.

“Do you think those people abducted him or something?” Michael’s eyes
became conspiracy-theory wide.

“No,” she said with certainty, “just…confused.” She tried to explain with her eyes what she couldn’t bring herself to say. She wasn’t sure if he understood what she meant, but he dropped the subject immediately.

Later as Cecilia and Michael started to make their way to the trail, she turned back to get a last look at the well before leaving. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something move in the brush, near the roots of a large cypress tree on the other side of the spring. Although the movement stopped instantly, she had already trained her eyes on the source.

It was the young boy who had mistaken her for his mother. Empathy washed over her, but she knew it was time to leave. She took Michael’s hand and they began to walk away. Cecilia couldn’t help looking back one more time to wave goodbye, but she saw only the rough landscape and the bottomless blue-green well.

Reviews

[Raef C. Boylan]

I'm impressed by the quality of this story; the mysterious element to it is appealing rather than irritating (some stories are so desperate to appear abstract, that they end up vague and sort of annoying; yours isn't like that). The dialogue is real, the characters believable, and the scenario - although in specific terms, an unfamiliar one to most - invokes empathy in a human-experience kind of way.
I was completely absorbed in this when reading; enjoying the story, and the wondering that it provokes.

Great work.
Thanks for posting this.

[Andrea]

This story was beautiful. I wish I could have understood it better, though. I understand that you're trying to connect the mother with the loss of her child to the child who lost his mother, but for some reason these two seem disconnected. It seems like she's just searching for an excuse to find another baby.

Otherwise, the suspense you created was beautiful.

[Rain]

Wow..
You talk about egrossing. This was so well written. I want more. I need tou to go back. lol. From beginning to end it had a haunting feel to it, although it was subtle, it was there, That's tremendous writing. Is that it ? You are leaving it as is ? I love it, and the ending stays with the rest of it, but I don't want to use my imagination. I want yours! :) Just a brilliant piece. Rain..

[Murphy]

wow...I found this story mysteriously engaging; it progresses nicely and the ending is very natural.

[Genie]

What a great story! It's incredibly well-written, well-paced, the mysteries are compelling to the point where I found myself leaning forward to read. This could be the start of a longer piece -- a novel or novelette. VERY well done and impressive!