“Are you gonna throw it in or not, Clarissa?”  Danny groaned, staring at his watch.

“I’m thinking, don’t rush me.”

“Make a wish, ‘Rissa.  Mom’s going to kill us if we don’t get home.”

“How can I think straight with you wagging your tongue?”

Danny didn’t care what his little sister wished for.  He’d already sent his coin down the well.  He knew it might not come true, there was always that chance, but he as others believed in Shutterglade, that the Matheson Well was sworn to grant wishes.

Clarissa clasped the coin in her hands.  She could sense her brother’s irritation at her back.  Her very presence seemed to irritate both him and their mother ever since her father had abandoned them.  The absence had left her bearing the brunt of their anger.

She did as Danny had instructed and pressed the coin to her lips and gave it a gentle kiss.  So many things she could wish for, but she knew there was only one thing that could set things right.  All she wanted beyond anything else was to be happy again.

“Oh no!” Clarissa screamed.

The coin fumbled through her fingers and into the black water of the well.

“What did you do now?”

“I made a wish, but I made it wrong.  I dropped my coin.”

“It’s gone, ‘Rissa.  I told you, one wish only.”

“But I did it wrong,” she repeated, thrusting her hands into the water fishing for the lost coin.  She perched herself on the edge of the stones like a squirrel gathering water from a puddle of rain.  “I wish for Daddy, that’s what I want most of all, Daddy to come home!”

Danny reached out to pull her back, but as his hands grabbed at her thin little arm, she slipped into the water out of reach, breaching the surface of the stagnant pool.

His legs went numb, collapsing under him, bent askew as he slumped alongside the edge of the well.

What have I done!  What have I done!  He screamed inside thinking of the coin he himself had tossed into the well and the wish he’d made; the only wish he ever made since becoming the man of the house and being forced to look after his disgruntled mother and annoying sister.

“Give her back!” Danny bellowed aloud, his voice cracking and tearing apart like a rupture in the earth.  “I didn’t mean it!  Honest.  I take it back.  I take it back!”

***

The Keeper of the Well sucked the eyes of the little girl from her sockets, the length of its tentacled tongues darting into the holes to fondle the tiny chasms clean.  It split the skin and crunched the bones, devouring meat, entrails, and extremities in gluttonous chunks.  It slurped up the stomach fluids from the bowl of the child’s abdomen like hot soup, rivulets of the filth pooling down the sides of its greedy maw.

Many had come to toss a coin in the dark water seeking the granting of a single wish.  And the Keeper was obliged to abide by the ancient law of which it was bound.  But too often it found human nature’s propensity for greed in rivalry with its own voracity for sustenance and this simply would not do.  The young girl had relinquished her wish the moment she sought to reclaim her coin, and with that offense, she belonged to the Keeper.

“Give her back,” the boy’s distant voice echoed, bouncing off the walls of the creature’s home deliciously aggrieved.

The Keeper looked up towards the vague silhouette at the surface high above.  Grinding its jaws it stared at the skull in its clawed hands.  It no longer held its symmetry, cracked at the jaw on the right side, a bizarre half-mask the creature admired with profound affection.  Each victim for all their selfishness was sacred to it.  They had come with desire, never knowing how their transgression against its ancient rules was as tantalizing as salted meat.

It traced its sharp, black lacquered nails along the interior of the eye sockets, the memory of her cornflower blue eyes now resting in the channels of its bowels.

Something in its stark demeanor changed and for an instant the primordial beast felt the slightest hint of sympathy.  Admiring the skull one final time, it bid bon voyage to the fleshless mask and watched with a surly smile on its mottled lips as the skull floated up the length of the well.

***

Danny fell by the edge of the well hugging the stone border, his fingers dangling in the dark water.

“I take it back, honest.  I take it back,” he cried, but nothing could assuage the guilt in fierce competition with the fear climbing up his spine.

The water bubbled under his fingers and he felt something drum against the tips.  He lifted his head and craned his neck over the side of the well.  Danny dipped his hand into the water and curled his fingers around the strange object floating on top of the water.  Withdrawing, he shook the object rigorously before wiping his tear stained eyes to get a good look at what he found.

***

“More and more, they’ll come to me, casting down their offering,” the Keeper of the Well considered as it suckled on the end of a leg bone, siphoning the marrow through the undulant tentacles of its tongues.  “Some will walk away satisfied by what I impart, but there will always be one to bring me what I need.”

The boy’s cries filled the deep cylindrical chamber, his pain reaching the Keeper’s ears sweet as wind chimes.  Even with the tender meat of its last meal still caught in its teeth, the hunger emerged.  The ancient creature stirred with insidious, carnal yearning for new flesh to descend, to renege on a wish granted and plunge through the dark ripples of the well and into the final judgment of the Keeper’s jaws.

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©2010 D.A Hernandez

After smoking a joint Regina dozed off in the recliner. Her granddaughter Tina grabbed the TV remote from her hand, and changed the channel from Jerry Springer to All My Children. She slapped Regina on the back her head.

“Wake up, Granny!” she hollered.

Regina bolted upright. She glared at Tina through red-rimmed eyes and swatted at her hand.

“Dammit, child! Keep your hands to yourself.”

“Bite me,” Tina replied.

She grabbed her grandmother’s baggie of weed and Zig Zag papers off the end table.

She rolled one, and Regina snatched the baggie out of her lap.

“Get your own, ya little leach! I paid for these with my Social Security check, so you go get your own.”

Tina punched her fist into her hand. “Shut up, you old biddy, before I smack you again.”

Regina stuffed the baggie into her bra, and settled back in the chair, fuming. “Ungrateful little brat. You ought to show some respect for your elders. Don’t forget, if I hadn’t taken your mom and you kids in after she got thrown out of that apartment in the city, you’d be sleeping in the streets.”

“Yeah, like you would let us do that,” Tina said.

“Believe me, I thought about,” Regina said.

She re-gathered the kinky gray-brown strands of shoulder length hair and wound the rubber band around it into a fresh ponytail. The farm had been her own little slice of heaven after her husband disappeared. She could smoke weed whenever she wanted and get as stoned as she wanted.

Then, her daughter and the brats showed up, and invaded her privacy. She couldn’t wait to enjoy that quiet again.

The grandkids continually bitched about being bored, and having nothing to do. Of course, their mother had said the same thing, before graduating from high school and moving away. Although she vowed never to come, she told Regina the only reason she did was to keep her and the kids from staying at the city mission.

At that moment Regina’s grandson waddled into the room. Louie snatched the remote from his sister with a beefy hand, and shoved her onto the couch.

“Sit down before you fall down, butt head.”

“Hey jerk, give it back!”

“Screw you.”

He flipped the channel to a science fiction movie, and plopped down on the couch.

“Turn that crap off,” Regina said, “and switch it back to Springer. I was watching that before either of you came into the room.”

“Shut up!” They yelled in unison, and curled up in their respective corners of the couch.

“Hey Granny, give me a joint!” he said.

Regina struggled to her feet. “Hell no, get your own.”

Regina hobbled to the kitchen, and rummaged thought the cupboards. Then, whistling softly, she ground a handful of castor beans and stirred the powder into the tomato sauce beginning to simmer on the stove.

An hour later she hollered in a lilting voice, “Oh kiddies, dinner is ready.”

Tina rolled her eyes. “Oh gee, I wonder what kind of tasteless crap she made today.”

 “I don’t know,” Louie replied, “but whatever it is, for once it smells pretty good.”

The tangy aroma of spaghetti sauce filled the kitchen. Regina piled spaghetti and meat sauce on their plates.

Louie pulled a green leaf out of the sauce. “What the heck are these things?”

“That’s a Bay leaf,” she replied. “It gives the sauce a more flavor.”

“Wow, granny, this is pretty good,” Tina said, her cheeks bulging with a forkful of spaghetti. “It’s really sweet.”

Regina held up a jar of grape jelly, and smiled. “Secret recipe.”

“Aren’t you eating, granny?” Louie asked.

“Nope, it’s too spicy for my stomach.”

 “Good, then, can I have some more?”

Regina raised her eyebrows, and whistled. “Wow, you ate like you haven’t eaten in
weeks. Of course you can.”

She refilled his plate, and sat back sipping on her coffee. At least there was one thing she did they appreciated, she thought.

After dinner, the three of them sat and watched television. Regina smiled at her grandchildren, and leaned back in her recliner. An hour later, Louie suddenly clutched his stomach.

“Oh, I think I’m going to be sick!” he said, and ran toward the bathroom.

“That’s because you ate like a pig!” Tina hollered.

A few minutes later, Tina’s stomach twisted and gurgled.  She suddenly projectile vomited, and fell off the couch, writhing about with her eyes rolling back in her head.
Her mouth began to foam, and her windpipe closed off.

“Oh, damn it!” Regina said, in mock disgust. “I hate having to have to clean up these messes.”

Her arthritic fingers burned as she dragged Tina through the kitchen. She rolled her granddaughter off the back porch next to a wagon. 

In the bathroom, Louie had curled around the toilet like a horseshoe. After tying a rope to his feet Regina dragged him through the house, and out the door.

She loaded them onto the wagon and pulled them to an old covered well behind the barn.  As Regina removed the plywood lid, a Wolf spider scurried across the surface.

“Grandpa! You have company,” she said, and dumped her grandchildren into the well.
A faint, sloshing thud rose up from the deep shaft as each one hit the bottom. As Regina pulled the faded plywood cover over the hole, the Wolf Spider sat on the edge of the well as though watching her. 

She pulled the baggie and papers from her bra and rolled a joint.  She took a hit, and leaned toward the spider.

“Now, I know why you eat your young,” she squeaked, exhaling.

The spider pumped its brownish gray body up and down as though agreeing, and then scurried down into the well. After returning to the farmhouse, Regina left the spaghetti and sauce on the stove, hoping her daughter would be hungry when she arrived home.
______________

©2010 Hal Kempka