The Well

by Jack Cady

  On the second floor the rooms were orderly, and for the most part furnished. No supporting beams appeared, no uncovered rafters. Smooth, bending surfaces and plain fronts on furniture were Edwardian, Empire. On parts of the second floor the styles blended to the stainless steel arcs of Art Deco. The second floor was a floor of bedrooms.

  It was also a floor of bizarre faces, of impressionist carving and sculpture and collage. It was profuse with distortion in paint. He stopped, as if weighing facts. He found an entry and climbed to the third floor. This passage wound in circles, dropped lower, rose. He passed by traps he was only partly aware of. Even if he tripped them, the traps did not spring.

  As he emerged onto the third floor he again paused. “Put it to the test.”

  Off-white walls and a ceiling without apparent fixtures surrounded him. Light came from recessed fixtures in the walls, ceiling and occasionally from the floor. The third floor had half-walls that ran like solid fences, like a maze, beneath lighting arranged so that there were no shadows. He could see over the tops of walls but at a distance he could not see between them. Full walls stood only where they concealed supporting timbers. In the distance was a huge octagonal column that must conceal one of the towers. At first impression the third floor was light and airy, like well-designed museums, or open mental wards. The low walls also ran like a maze, but here the maze was different. Here there were no furnishings, except as the floor was a furnishing. The floor ran in a continuously changing pattern of lines and symbols and colors, like a three-dimensional chessboard. Eventually the floor captured the eye, and then the captured, challenged intelligence would twist the senses into confusion, as was intended. The low walls faded to background and the sky was white and the floors became the sky — the world turned upside down.

  He searched for an entry to the fourth floor, moved toward the octagonal column that concealed the tower. There was a pause in the trilling, so slight that it was almost unnoticeable. Time to make his play.

  “Let her go away young,” he said. “I get twenty-four hours grace in which there’s no influence. If I can’t deliver by then, I deserve the bath.”

  Silence. Then a roar behind him, he turned to see a bank of low walls rising from their seatings in the floor, wood and plaster cracking about him like shrapnel, bouncing from walls and defacing shapes on the floors. Debris lifted, hung in the air, dropped.

  “Eighteen hours, then.” He knew the deal would get worse. He paused, the trilling seemed to concentrate, become louder. “Twelve hours then.” He checked his watch. It was a little after seven p.m.

  “All right. It’s started.” He turned to retrace his steps, moved as quickly as he could. He had no more time to spend on Amy. He could not afford emotion clouding his thoughts.

  When he got to the sanctuary, he was surprised to find her asleep. When he sat beside her he saw the crucifix and thought he understood. It meant nothing to him, but maybe it worked magic for her.

  “I did go to the well,” she said when he awakened her. “I was running away, but I was looking too.” Her eyes were puffy with sleep, and now they also held tears. She rubbed at them like a child. When she stood her body was slightly stooped like a child about to be chastised.

  “I didn’t help you either,” he said. She was younger, her hair was even thicker. Sadness seemed never to have pursed that mouth. There was no gray in her hair, her face was as smooth as a child’s.

  “You’re a lot younger,” he said. “We have to talk and act, and we haven’t much time.” It was difficult to make your voice kindly and businesslike at the same time.

  “We haven’t failed,” she said, “anybody else would have been beaten by now — ”

  “Still, we have to talk. I’m afraid you must leave, and I’m afraid it’s dark.”

  She was feeling herself all over, looking at the backs of her hands, pinching at her arms. “I can still act,” she said, “with the best of them — ”

  “You’ll be no kind of actress at all if we don’t get you out of here.” He explained what he wanted, with neither the time nor the heart to explain why. He could see her misunderstanding.

  “Put on your coat.”

  She stood, her hand went to the crucifix. The tears that had collected in her eyes were now on her cheeks. Later he would feel badly for having inflicted this pain. Later he would have time for the luxury of feelings. He hoped.

  “Amy, when you get over the grade, follow the road that runs by the freeway. There’s a town three miles to the right. It’s still early evening. Chances are someone will come driving along and pick you up. Go to the hotel in Indianapolis and wait.”

  “Why?”

  The whole truth would slow things. Maybe part of it would speed them up. “While you were sleeping I had a sort of confrontation. You have to leave. I’ll follow you, tomorrow. Something still has to be accomplished here, and time literally is of the essence. I can’t explain any more. I’m sorry.”

  She looked at him, trying to decipher how much of what he said was true, and then her eyes widened. “You can’t talk, like in the subcellar.”

  “Yes…Now go to the hotel, wait, do nothing else.”

  “You love me?”

  He was on the verge of losing control. He reached for it, clamped onto a tonelessness. “Always, of course, let’s go now.” He reached for her coat.

  “I know what to do — ”

  “Just get the hell out of here,” he said. “Don’t come back. “

  She was shocked. She shrugged into the coat, turned without speaking and began to walk.

  “I’ll lead,” he told her.

  It was in the kitchens, it drifted behind them. He walked, trying not to show he was aware of it.

  “Look straight ahead,” he told her. “Put your hand on my belt. If anything happens close your eyes and let me lead you.” He did not want her to see what he knew was forming out there. They arrived at the front door.

  How to tell someone you loved and might never see again just how much she was to you, had been, could be?

  “Before you cross the top of the grade feel yourself all over,” he said. “If you’re okay…I mean like always, unchanged, then wave. If not, go anyway. Don’t wave.”

  Tracker watched her go — the wind-blown hair, the long and youthful form. She was on her way, and suddenly he realized she was gone. Even if he succeeded here she was gone. He could visualize the long letter that would be waiting in the hotel room. He tried hard to push back the reaction of his emotions to that.

  Amy struggled in the snow, slid back three times, and then reached the top of the grade. She felt under her coat, reached into her sleeves. She peered at her hands in the dark. She was a dark silhouette as she waved, and then slid out of sight.

  Chapter Twenty

  Movement in a family’s history sometimes stops. When it does, inertia descends like a weight of stones. Evil is content to wait. Eventually one small stone will shift. The weight begins to slide. The force rides the momentum.

  Alexander Lily, Jr, was John Tracker’s great grandfather on his mother’s father’s side, and he was a deacon. His wife, Faith Smith, was a religious fanatic, transplanted from the midwest to the west; and then returned east after her mother’s disappearance. Faith had more than “a touch of the paint brush.” She passed for white by claiming to be Spanish.

  They were penurious people, clever and hard-working. They raised one son and so tired him with cant that he became a questioner all his life. They never missed a church service and contributed almost regularly one-tenth of their income to build steeples. They thanked heaven for everything, although the record suggests that except for money they had next to nothing. They were buried in waterproof coffins encased in waterproof vaults deep in the cold New England soil. It seems safe to say that except for their son Samuel, they neither
added nor subtracted one jot from the life of the earth. This static condition in Tracker’s history waited to be faced. John Tracker had to face it, to act.

  He had to get moving. Had to. He checked his watch. A few minutes before eight. He took a dozen steps, felt himself losing control, and stood fighting to regain it. This time he lost… “What’s in the well?” “Nothin’ in that one, boy. Don’t go anywhere near that other’n.” “What’s in the well?” “Water.” “What’s in the well?” “Fall in there and you’ll see. Look in there and it’ll grab you.” Slow falling, slow, like the descent of the newly drowned into fathoms of water; turning, legs locked, then bent with knees held into his face, arms at first flailing and then rigid and then limp. Hands clasped in claws, fists, loosed, clutching, hooked, and then immobile and stiff as rusted hinges.

  “When you are raised with crazy people, then you’re crazy.” His father’s voice once more seemed present. His father’s voice brought him slowly to awareness. He had not expected this. He stood there, weaving, as the gaping well closed over, shimmered and disappeared. He had no time for this, he had very little time at all. He didn’t know whether this was a manifestation of the house, or of his own mind. Two lights, like blue sparks seen through fog, like eyes, dwelled in the far corner of the hallways beside the coffin. The door was still open at his back. Wind whirled snow into the hall.

  It seemed he had been running for the hall and the doorway, because when Amy had left he remembered taking several steps back into the house.

  He turned to the doorway, saw the trap door yawning open. This was his mind doing this.

  The deal was still on.

  He looked at his watch. In a little under eleven hours, he would leave this house. If he did not succeed in his purpose, he would leave as a creature of this house.

  His rewards would be unlimited money, power, sex and youth. He would be a thing incarnate; also success incarnate, strength flowing from this house and independent of this house. It would no longer make any difference whether the house stood or not. What made the house special, demented, would be loose in the world. It would wear the form of John Tracker.

  But that was if he did not succeed. He’d purchased a dozen precious hours. One was already gone. The force of this house was ironic, sporting, willing to grant time on the promise of Tracker’s capitulation if he did not succeed in discovering the key, the power that would set him free. Of course, to the force inhabiting this house he must have seemed like a pathetic creature, easily ruled, easily captured. He must seem less than Vera, less than Theophilus. So the proposition was really not so sporting.

  “Evil is weak because it is evil.”

  His father had written that the way to survive was to keep doing, to keep walking. So that was the general scheme Tracker had in mind. It was impossible to walk the entire house in twelve — no, now less than eleven — hours. But it was still possible to walk much of it. To take action? He was less sure about that.

  He stood unsteadily before the open doorway and open trap door. In the corner the blue lights faded, and with the fading it seemed there was a movement, like a wisp of mist. He didn’t have to be frightened now, he told himself. He knew what he was up against. He didn’t care how it showed itself, even as Vera.

  He worried about how he was going to stay awake through the night, but in the kitchens it at least ought to be possible to rest and plan.

  Except for the sanctuary, which was not safe after all, he wondered what else his father had built. Thoughts of Justice accompanied his trudging advance to the kitchens. Maybe he could get wired on coffee. In the kitchens he leaned against a door frame while waiting for the coffee to perk. He drowsed, standing. When the coffee perked he inhaled its aroma, took it from the heat, and leaned back against the door frame, his mind rapidly filling with dreams…drifting, going away into sleep—and it was the dreamed-of voice of Justice Tracker urgently calling that awakened him.

  He shook his head, opened his eyes and reached for the coffee pot. It was warm. He checked his watch. Ten hours left. He’d stood there drowsing for at least a half hour.

  No time for regret. He reheated the coffee, then sat at the table determined to drink the whole pot. He wished Justice had made an index to those journals. They might lead him to more information, maybe to the answer, but there was no time to do that much reading. It was John Tracker who must pull this off.

  Tracker stood, checked his flashlight, and began to walk.

  Before the main staircase, which ran over the hidden staircase, there was a concealed entry that also led to the second floor. If you pushed the door the wrong way you got shot. Tracker nudged the door the wrong way. It did not move. He stood to one side and pushed harder. It did not move. He pushed as hard as he could and the door remained solid. This was a mechanical trap; it did not depend on current. So he was not going to have to avoid traps. Apparently he was needed alive.

  Since the generators went off, nothing but the cellar seemed affected, and you didn’t need those generators to run the few small lights in the cellar.

  He wished there were blueprints for the fourth floor. If he failed he would try to fling himself from one of the towers into the river. At least he would die outside this house. It was not much of an option, though. For one thing, it was not likely that it could be done. He would no doubt be stopped. Besides, he didn’t want to die. What was worse than death? He was afraid he knew.

  He climbed to the third floor and decided it came down to: what did he want? He could have money, power, youth, sex. Before coming to this house he had money, limited power, limited sex, and the knowledge that he would get old. Not so bad, but were they enough?

  Amy.

  He shrugged, tried to make himself ignore his feelings for her. He’d taken losses before.

  The third floor was where the terraces were built, and he walked now in the direction of the large one. As he did so he concentrated on the movement of his hands, looked at his watch, looked at his legs moving…he couldn’t afford to be drawn into the world of shifting currents beneath his feet. He looked again at his hands. Maybe hands were like the two sides of your mind.

  The terrace was a broad expanse of flagstones, in the middle of which sat a fountain, decorated with concrete turtles. If you twisted one of them a chute opened that led to the cell where the skeleton lay. He didn’t want to see more death and wondered if the skeleton was the same as before, lying there as though dreaming.

  A cold wind across the terrace chilled him, and he walked to the edge, leaned over. A three floor drop. He would bounce off of at least one railing. It might be worth the attempt, but something was sure to break, and you could not get over that grade with a broken limb.

  He turned and looked up into the dark sky. The house rose above him. Even from the third floor there was another floor to view; ornamented, threatening. Above that floor rose the towers and turret. Wind whipped and swept the terrace. He looked into the dark at the winter landscape. It seemed that nothing was alive out there. The thought struck him as even more oppressive than the house at his back. With the towers behind him, he felt as though he stood on the bridge of a great ship. Out there in the darkness was the snow-covered landscape and the hump-backed mound of freeway that vanished like a thread into darkness.

  The wind whistled, moaned.

  The dead spruce towered from the ground. Nothing alive out there. The world seemed dead.

  Not true, he instructed himself. It was snow-covered. Dormant. The promise of growth and life lay beneath the snow. It was a renewing promise that needed the protective mantle of snow.

  Sex and money and power and youth…Could you also have love?

  He tried to clear his head. There was one decent thing in this place, and Justice had built it. He remembered now. There was a greenhouse up here. He walked toward it, eager, confident that he could cross the en
tire third floor and not be captured in its illusion.

  He walked faster. He felt almost spiritlike, moving through the airy-feeling third floor. The greenhouse was on a small terrace, not hard to reach.

  It was a good place to build a greenhouse, catching as it would the afternoon and evening sun. He walked faster still, went onto the terrace and broke into a run. The greenhouse was not large, no more than twenty-by-forty, but it was a good one. He could remember shades that could be pulled against the hottest afternoons; you had to do that for trees in order to prevent scald.

  The greenhouse was almost intact, without much broken glass. Tracker opened the door, found light switches, stepped inside.

  Crumbling woody plants, leafless stands of skeletal tiny branches, soil dry except under the occasional panes of broken glass where it lay frozen, light puffs of snow scattered about. Planting flats were stacked to the right of the door. Overhead irrigation was rigged from fine spray nozzles. Tracker turned a faucet, found it frozen, and checked the spray heads. They were green with corrosion now, caked about the freckling of holes that directed the mist, but it was a good rig at one time, professional. At the far end of the greenhouse was a large door, which was a rig for trees as well as plant flats.

  Tools were stacked to the left of the door — reaching tools, small tools, pruners, old cord and burlap for root balls. He looked at the center section. There was probably three-and-a-half feet of soil. You could go with pretty big trees. The dead ones still standing looked like small maple.