Clara awoke to damp air and the soft glow of pre-dawn light filtering through the curtains. Her pillow was soaked with sweat from nightmares—visions of little Eli slipping into the well, eyes vacant and pleading. She bolted upright, staring at the ceiling as if it, too, might whisper Abigail's name.
Quietly, she slipped from the bed, careful not to wake Eli. He lay curled beneath his blankets, breathing softly. Clara paused in the doorway, her heart hammering. Last night's vow to dig deeper echoed in her mind. She owed it to her son—and to the Harper family who'd fled this house more than a century ago.
Downstairs, the house groaned around her. Floorboards creaked, wind sighed through the eaves, and somewhere beneath the kitchen, the trapdoor lay sealed with boards and furniture. Clara poured water from the kettle into a chipped mug, sipped, and squared her shoulders. Today she would search the attic.
The attic stairs groaned under Clara's weight. Moonlight slanted through a tiny window, illuminating dust motes in the stale air. A single bare bulb hung from exposed rafters—its filament cold and dead. Clara clicked on her flashlight and climbed the last three steps.
Boxes and old furniture were haphazardly piled, as if the previous owners had abandoned the space in haste. She remembered the stepladder leaning against the far wall and headed straight for it, brushing aside a stack of moth-eaten coats.
A battered trunk sat at the foot of the ladder. Clara knelt and pried open the rusty latch. Inside lay a leather-bound journal, its cover cracked and stamped with the name "Abigail Harper." Beneath it was a folded parchment, yellowed and brittle. Clara's breath caught—this was the map she'd glimpsed in the kitchen drawer.
She retrieved both items, her fingers trembling. Back on the dusty floorboards, she placed the journal in her lap and smoothed the map beside it.
Abigail's Journal
The first pages were neat, written in looping script:
July 3, 1890
Father says this house holds promise. He bought it cheap, said the well would bring prosperity. I see nothing but decay. Mother weeps at night, and little Eli stares into the well as if it speaks to him.
Clara's chest tightened. Eli, six years old—exactly the same age as her son. She turned pages until a blot of red ink stained the margin:
August 17, 1890
Eli will not leave the well. He tells me things I do not want to know—names of the lost, the hungry voices calling. Father laughs it off as superstition, but I feel something dark stirring in the water.
Each entry grew more frantic:
September 9, 1890
I tried to seal the well, but the stones shifted under my hands. Eli laughed as though the well were a friend. It whispered my sins back to me—my anger, my guilt. I am trapped here with a voice I cannot silence.
Finally, a torn page:
October 5, 1890
We leave at midnight. I cannot bear another moment of that whisper. It knows us. It wants us. Father is gone—he refused to flee. Eli and I must save ourselves.
Clara's vision blurred. Abigail's final escape had been without her husband, leaving him to whatever the well demanded. Abigail's guilt and fear still pulsed through her words.
The Harper Map
Clara unfolded the parchment carefully. It depicted the farmhouse and surrounding land, drawn by hand:
A dotted line from the back door to the well.
A circle around an area in the northeast corner of the property marked "Tombs".
A note scrawled in the margin: "Salt and iron alone cannot hold it. Must bind at its source."
Clara traced the dotted line with her finger. "Tombs," she whispered. Outside, the yard beyond the kitchen door felt like a graveyard untouched for decades.
Her mind raced. Abigail had thought sealing the well enough, but the map hinted at deeper magic—something rooted in earth and blood. If she could bind the source, perhaps she could save her own Eli.
A New Plan
Clara tucked the journal into her jacket and rolled up the map. She climbed down from the attic, each step echoing in her skull. In the kitchen, sunlight spilled across the table where boards still covered the trapdoor. She paused, running a hand over the rough wood. The cellar wasn't enough. The true threat lay beneath that backyard patch marked "Tombs."
She poured water into another mug, then grabbed her keys. Eli stirred upstairs but did not wake. Clara paused in the hallway, pressing a finger to her lips. She would explain later. For now, she needed to act—and she needed help.
An Unexpected Ally
Clara drove into Woodpile's center, passing the shuttered general store and the small church with its weathered steeple. Her destination was the local historians' office—a brick building beside the old sawmill, where she hoped to find records of the Harper family and that northeastern corner of the property.
Inside, Mr. Perkins, the town historian, looked up from a pile of ledgers. His spectacles balanced on the tip of his nose, and he regarded Clara with mild surprise.
"You must be Miss Bennett," he said, peering at her. "You requested the Harper files?"
Clara nodded, handing him Abigail's journal. "I found this in the attic of the old farmhouse on Harper's Lane. I need more information—anything about these 'tombs' marked on a map."
Perkins flipped through the journal, brow furrowed. "I've heard rumors—family cemeteries long forgotten, graves moved during the town's founding. But no official record of a tomb cluster. Something was erased."
He beckoned her to a cluttered table. "Follow me."
He led Clara to a dusty cabinet of microfilm reels and machines. "These are land surveys from the 1800s," he said, loading a reel. The projector clicked and whirred, displaying a grainy map on a screen.
Clara leaned in. The farmhouse and well were clearly marked, and beyond them, a rectangular plot—gravesite 17 to 22—lined like soldiers in neat rows. Next to it, a smudge of ink and the word "Desecrated."
"What does that mean?" Clara whispered.
Perkins shook his head. "Legend says the Harpers broke rules of the old soil—buried twisted rites with the bodies. The town fathers moved the graves, but the earth remembers."
Clara's blood ran cold. The well was not just a water source. It was a gateway to something older—an anchor for restless spirits bound to the desecrated ground.
Midnight Resolve
That night, Clara returned home, the weight of history pressing on her. She tucked Eli in bed and kissed his forehead. "I have to go back to the well," she told him softly. "I need to bind it at the source."
Eli's eyes filled with tears. "Please be careful, Mom."
"I will," she promised, brushing his hair back.
Clara gathered salt, iron spikes, and a length of rope. She tucked Abigail's journal and the microfilm map into her pocket. Outside, the full moon bathed the yard in ghostly light. She set to work, tracing a new circle around the northeastern yard patch where graves once lay.
Her shovel bit into earth, exposing roots and stones. She placed the iron spikes in the ground and sprinkled salt. With trembling hands, she read Abigail's final ritual:
"By earth's old bones and blood's deep grace,
I bind this well to its rightful place.
Forgotten dead, sleep now in peace,
By salt, by iron, let all whispers cease."
She planted salt beneath each spike, then wrapped the rope three times around the well's rim, chanting the verse. The wind stilled. The circle glowed faintly—an echo of Abigail's binding.
Then—a crack, like bone snapping. Clara staggered back as the earth trembled. A swirl of leaves and dust coalesced above the grave patch, forming a shape both frightening and familiar: half-buried stones etched with names she recognized from Abigail's journal—Eli Harper… Abigail Harper.
Clara's heart fell. The binding had awakened something ancient, something of the desecrated dead. The dirt beneath the well gaped as if alive.
She stumbled away, clutching her chest. The whip of wind carried a whisper—low and triumphant:
"You cannot bind what is already free…"