The Well - Book One of the Arizona Thriller Trilogy

by Sharon Sterling

  At the entry to the Well, the gate swinging ajar and the chain sprawled like a dead thing on the blacktop reassured Allie she hadn’t been imagining things, wasn’t having some kind of manic or psychotic episode after all.

  Driving a few hundred yards further, driving into trouble, she told herself, she saw the car sitting at a random angle in the parking lot, but it sparked no recognition. She knew what Kim and Crystal drove, a late model SUV in candy-apple red and an older Chevy pickup, respectively. This thing looked beaten up, one tire a mere shred of rubber clinging to its rim and a thin stream of fluid, maybe oil, trickling from beneath the hood. If fluid is still dripping it can’t have been here long, she thought. She wondered why someone had abandoned it, and again she questioned her reason for being here.

  ***

  Minutes before, Kim had brought the Z to a lurching stop, turned off the engine and opened her door, but remained in the seat, unable to move.

  After the rollercoaster-like ride, silence and stillness closed down around her. Her ears rang. She detected no sound or movement from her prisoner or from the darkness outside. The wedge of doubt that had penetrated her earlier inserted itself more insistently, split her wooden assurance and paralyzed her.

  The dome light of the Z cast more shadows than illumination. She could feel the darkness outside the car trying to enfold her, suck her in. It felt like a black hole in space that could swallow her.

  She shook her head as if to clear the image. What, am I losing my nerve now, afraid of the dark like a little kid? Then she noticed that the glove compartment had popped open at some point during the chaotic ride. In it, she saw a large flashlight. She grabbed it and stuffed it inside her jacket, telling herself that finding it was a small stroke of luck but getting here at all was fate’s endorsement of the plan, urging her to continue.

  She got out and shut the door, went and opened the hatchback. He lay on his side in a fetal position with his eyes closed, pretending to be unconscious. “Get out!” she commanded.

  When he didn’t respond, she prodded him with the pole end of the pitch fork. Fast as a snake, he grabbed at it with his bound hands but she had the advantage of leverage. She jerked it out of his hands, and turned it to use the business end. With metal prongs pulling and biting into his side, he stopped resisting, unfolded his body and climbed out.

  Although Kim had never been here after dark, she knew this place, both the trodden and untrodden pathways. Rather than follow the concrete steps upward to the overlook and then down again to the Well, she prodded him toward the left, where she found her shortcut through the brush.

  The dirt path had grown uneven and narrow, every inch begrudged by the chaotic growth around it. Branches, shrubs and weeds pulled and scratched at their legs as they passed. Above and ahead of them, the mist was a column of white that supported nothing. It was also a curtain they must penetrate.

  When he realized where they were going the sounds from beneath the duct tape on his mouth grew loud and high pitched. He stumbled, caught himself by grabbing a branch with his bound hands then turned toward her as if to plead for mercy.

  On the defensive, she aimed the flashlight into his face and recoiled in shock and disgust. His hair lay like a damp mat over his skull. His eyes were bloodshot, his face wet with tears. Snot ran in a steady stream over his duct taped mouth, dripping off his chin. Silently, she pulled the gun from her pocket and with the other hand brandished the pitch fork at him. He turned and shuffled onward.

  Soon they reached the rim of the hill, and began to descend. Near the water, she saw two small orbs of red looking up at them from the ground. She steadied her flashlight on the spot. The raccoon retreated with a rustling sound.

  The path descended to within a few feet of the water. As good a place as any, she thought. She pocketed the gun, aware that she had the advantage of surprise. He knew his fate but not when she would send him plunging into it. One hard push against his back with the pitch fork sent him into the shallows.

  He made a muted splashing sound while mud, algae and water plants swirled around and above him like ingredients in a blender. He thrashed and floundered, but his panic succeeded only in moving him toward the middle of the Well. Then he began to tread water, attempting with a clumsy dog paddle to return to the bank.

  She extended the pitch fork and with the back of the prongs against his neck and head, sent him turning, spinning slowly away, until the mist wrapped around and engulfed him.

  Looking at the place he disappeared, she envisioned dark clouds of leeches, leeches by the millions, rising from the bottom to worm their way into every tender, blood-engorged part of his body, attaching their hungry mouths to his feet and legs, his genitals, his stomach and back.

  Silence. She could almost believe he was already dead, that he had descended into the depths as dirt and slime, transformed into a wraith and was, this minute, rising with the mist into oblivion.

  Now she heard him again. The splashing and inhuman grunting sounds grew louder. The mist parted, driven away by his frantic thrashing, revealing a white face infested with just a few dark blobs. It won’t be long, she told herself. He’s getting what he deserves.

  A dizzy, rising sensation filled her head, then she was no longer present in her body. Her mind retreated to another desolate, dangerous place, the past. In a daze, she remembered the sick things he had taught her as a child.

  He taught her to shoot his gun, aiming at cans of soda that had the names of her family members scrawled on them. He taught her that she did not belong to herself, that she and her body were at the mercy of anyone ruthless enough to claim it.

  He taught her that sweet seduction could become savagery in an instant. He taught her that a scrawny seven year old’s body could experience simultaneous pleasure and pain. He taught her many things she had been trying to unlearn ever since, but the worst thing he taught her was that any benefit, any favor, any scrap of good bestowed on another person was an unintended consequence of one’s own intent or desire, an unintended consequence of one’s own pleasure.

  From deep inside her emerged a lullaby that her mother had sung to her long ago, and now she hummed it to herself.

  When she felt cold air follow the trail of tears down her cheeks, she realized with a start that she was crying. Furious, she dropped the pitch fork and pulled the pistol from the inside pocket of her jacket. This will end now. The leeches feasted on his blood. Now they can swim in it.

  The mist, her tears, and his wild but gradually weakening thrashing made it difficult to take aim. She struggled to find what she couldn't see. A faint sound intruded. A car motor, the slam of a car door. For a moment, she could not separate the sounds from the memories that had overtaken her. Then she heard footsteps on concrete, and knew it was happening now! She stuffed the gun back in her pocket, threw the flashlight, and ran.

  Kim's panicked flight brought her a quarter of the way around the circle of the Well. She began to climb up the bank at a place she thought would lead to the junction of the Well’s access road with Beaver Creek Road. The footing grew more treacherous, with loose rocks, cactus and dead branches creating an invisible obstacle course. In daylight, it would have been challenging. In the dark, it was bush-whacking at its worst.

  Just over the crest of the bank, her heels slid out from under her on the unstable scree and she sat down hard. Deflated and confused, she remained sitting while she caught her breath and wondered what had just happened and what she should do now.

  The only coherent answer was that she needed to put as much distance as she could between herself and the Well. She rose and continued to climb down the bank, placing her feet and legs at an angle to the incline to prevent another slide. She moved more deliberately now, focused on the next step and then the next.

  When she reached the main road, she wanted to whoop in triumph but the silence of the night prevailed against any fleeting expression of joy. She turned right, back the way she had come driving the Z.


  ***

  Only momentum and stubbornness kept Allie at the Well in the middle of the night. She climbed the concrete steps to the top, looked down into the mist, sighed with relief when she saw nothing and turned around to leave then turned back again. A small shaft of yellow light had drawn her attention. What was that? What was that in the water? The roiling haze parted enough for a glimpse of a moving object. Something dark and round. An animal? A head...a human head?

  Lighting her footsteps with the flashlight, she descended the precipitous, twisting steps as quickly as she could, then stepped off the path to work her way left, around the lip of the Well. A dozen steps brought her to the small beam of yellow light: a flashlight upended in the middle of an agave plant. Careful of the needle like tips of the blade shaped agave, she retrieved the flashlight and pointed it, along with her own light, into the Well.

  Stunned, she made out the head and face of a person. It really was a person, someone floundering in the water. For one timeless second she lived and breathed in the dream that haunted her months ago, a dark sky and darker water swallowing a man who shrieked soundlessly for help.

  “Hey!” she yelled. The sound of her own voice startled her.

  The figure in the Well turned toward her and began moving in her direction. As he approached, she realized she needed to find something to fish him out with. She focused her flashlight on the ground, looking for a long, sturdy stick, but found instead a long handled pitch fork. Dropping one of the flashlights and stuffing the other into her jacket, she grabbed the gardening tool and extended it as far as possible over the water, yelling, “Here, over here, keep coming.”

  She held out the pole. All she could see through the mist was a pale half-circle that looked like half a face. It came closer. She saw something like a loose scarf sagging around his mouth and chin. He grabbed at the pole with both hands. Why were both hands together?

  His sudden pull almost caught her off balance, tumbling into the water. Instead, she dug in her feet and pulled back, glad of the hard heels of her boots that sank into the earth to give her leverage.

  The man, she could see by now that it was a man, kicked weakly then allowed her to drag him the last few feet out of the water and onto the muddy bank. He lay there on his stomach in the weeds, while she stared in disbelief at a naked man hobbled, bound and duct taped.

  She tossed the pitch fork aside, bent to grab his arm and help him to his feet. He wavered, struggled for balance then reached up and yanked the duct tape down from his mouth. It settled like a ragged necklace around his collar bones.

  He brushed away several dark, quarter-sized blobs clinging to his face and neck and gasped, “Who are you?”

  “I...my name is Allie. Who are you?”

  “Never mind. Just help me to my car.”

  “Your car? That white thing up there? I hate to tell you but I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I’ll take you to the hospital.”

  “Help me, get this crap off me,” he demanded, indicating the rope and duct tape around his hands and ankles.

  “I can’t...I don’t have a knife. Let me see...”. Her mind racing, she realized he had to walk out of here, she certainly couldn’t carry him. She had to get the rope and tape off.

  She bent, acutely again aware of his nakedness, and began to untie his hobbled feet. The wet rope around his raw, bleeding ankles yielded its knots without too much effort. By the time she had it off, he had wrapped his hands around his upper arms to stem his violent shivering.

  “Here,” she said, stripping off her jacket and handing it to him. He stood holding it with both hands, until she realized he couldn’t put it on with his hands bound. She draped it around his shoulders. “Stay here. I’ll go get my phone and call the police and an ambulance.”

  “No! Just untie me!”

  Pushing away the rise of resentment at his demand, she started to work on the duct tape and rope around his wrists. Her weak fingernails bent back, causing her pain without results. “It will have to wait until I get back from the car. I have a knife in an emergency kit.” She turned back toward the concrete path, ready to run up the steps.

  “No!” he growled, “I’m coming with you.”

  “All right then, go in front.” She aimed the flashlight just ahead of his feet and followed him.

  They went a few stumbling yards until he began to retch into the bushes. She waited until the gagging and dry heaves subsided. This was too much. She felt more puzzled and wary every second. “Can you make it the rest of the way? Maybe I should just go.”

  “No! I’m fine. I can make it.”

  They climbed the steep bank, then over and down the steps in silence. When they reached the parking lot, he stumbled to the white car and stuck his head through the open driver’s side, then put his bound hands on the roof and hung his head. “Shit! No keys.”

  “Wait a minute. You can’t be thinking of driving that thing. You need to go to the hospital.”

  His silent stare raised a clearer sense of alarm. “Who are you? Who did that to you?”

  Without speaking, he turned and took a few steps toward her. Something in his face and body language made her step back. Wait a second! I am not afraid of this half-drowned man who has no weapon and is letting it all hang out.

  Yet without another word, she strode to her car, retrieved her phone from her purse, and while keeping her eyes on him, pressed nine-one-one.

  The next few hours were a blur of vehicles arriving and uniformed strangers converging on her to ask questions she couldn’t answer.

  First, the fire truck from Maguireville brought two volunteer fire fighters and an EMS tech. He wrapped the naked man in a wafer-thin, silver thermal blanket and returned Allie’s jacket to her.

  Relieved, she took it and went back to her car to turn on the heater and soak up its relative warmth. The jacket felt damp. Some intangible trace of him lingered there. Her better judgment told her to put it on. She couldn't bring herself to do it.

  The EMS techs were about to load him for the trip to the hospital when the brown-uniformed sheriff’s deputy arrived. Allie hoped she would see Mike’s pleasant face but the deputy was not Mike. The Not Mike swaggered to the fire truck and began to talk with the other first responders. The victim sat on the bumper of the fire truck, clutching his warming blanket. She couldn’t hear their exchange but she guessed the deputy finally determined the victim was in no imminent medical danger because he began to question the man.

  The Arizona State Highway Patrolman arrived, climbing out of his cruiser with a posture of authority. He strutted over to the others, hand resting on his pistol.

  Soon she heard their voices rise in disagreement. She rolled down her window and caught snatches of the argument about who should transport the near-drowning victim.

  The trooper either won or lost the argument, she couldn’t tell which. In any case, he returned to his car and drove off. The fire truck with the patient inside followed, its siren bleating for attention as commandingly as if it entered a city street full of traffic to warn away. Vivid red and blue strobe lights accompanied the sound, illuminating the previously deserted parking lot before fading away.

  ***

  After Kim's struggle through the brush, walking felt effortless on the level blacktop but after a few yards she paused to pick twigs and cactus spines from her jeans and took off one of her boots to shake out the pebbles she had just begun to feel although they had bruised the sole of her foot during her descent down the bank. As she made a final swipe to brush dirt and twigs from her jeans, she felt the keys to the Z in her pocket.

  Without hesitation, she pulled them out and threw them as hard as she could into the densest part of the underbrush, where they vanished without a sound.

  Another sound intruded, the wail of a siren. That and the glow of distant headlights sent her scrambling back into the brush.

  She crouched, her heart thumping in her chest, pulsing in her throat with the visceral fear of a hunted anima
l. Her chin bent to her chest, she didn't dare to look up. She held her breath.

  The vehicle headed away from the Well, back toward Maguireville. She waited. Silence and quiet. She returned to the pavement. Feeling safe now, she was grateful for protective darkness and the complete absence of traffic on the road. Inexplicably, she was suddenly calm and confident. She took out her phone and pressed the number to speed dial Crystal.

  ***

  Allie began to feel this experience was as unreal as a dream or a theatrical farce. It might make a wonderful limerick. 'There was a naked man from Maguireville…'. Or maybe a joke. 'Five uniforms, a naked man and a therapist meet in a bar…'.

  Smiling to herself, she wondered if this was the black humor she had talked about with her friends, then decided she was too tired to question anything. She was sleepy, exhausted and just wanted to go home. She reached for the key in the ignition, then realized the deputy hadn’t left with the others and was now walking toward her. Abruptly, he ordered her out of the car and began to question her. Soon she could tell he was as irritated as she.

  “I can’t tell you anything else,” she said. She leaned back against her car and folded her arms. “I know it sounds strange, but I just had a feeling I should come here. I don’t know the guy, and I certainly don’t know who did that to him.”

  The deputy put a hand on his gun belt and looked at her with an expression of disbelief. He managed to curb it just before it became a blatant insult. Then he demanded to see her driver’s license. He took it to his brown patrol car where he talked on the radio for several minutes.

  When he returned he said, “Okay, Miss Davis. Everything checks out. Mr. Upshall said you didn’t do it, he said you helped him. You don’t have any warrants. I took your statement, so you can go home now, but we’ll call you tomorrow to come in and clear up some things.”

  Allie registered the threat of more interrogation, then the name Upshall. She was wide awake again.