The Wishing Well

The old wishing well outside of town stood especially lonely today. Thanks to the pandemic, most people didn’t venture this far outside of town. I was not most people and was grateful for the quiet. People weren’t my thing, so nothing changed for me when the rest of the world did except for the massive amount of overtime my employer forced upon me. I didn’t believe in luck or wishes, but these were desperate times and I was willing to toss my last quarter into the depths below for just one wish.

The river stones that made up the well were cold against my skin, the smell of mildew rose from the water below. The well hadn’t been used to supply water to the town in over a hundred years. In that time, stories and old wives’ tales sprung up creating somewhat of a tourist attraction. Until recently, people traveled far and wide just to toss their coins in the well for a bit of extra luck. Some of the old-timers swear the legends are true.

I was in the market to purchase a house for us until some unexpected medical expense wiped out my savings. Five years I had saved to get us out of the two-room shack we were living in. The roof leaked and there were holes in the floor, but it was paid for and it beat being homeless. I could have said the heck with it and tried to rent a place. The rent was so high in these parts, you’d think people were renting out mansions.

The quarter slipped from my fingers and clinked against the stone wall before dropping in the water below. The echo of the plop was loud enough to startle me from my thoughts, and I glanced down at my now empty palm. Oh well, so much for the wish I walked all the way out here for. I pushed myself off the old well, the river stones glittered in the fading sunlight like tiny specks of diamonds woven into the stones.

A slight drizzle started before I made it back home, puddles were just forming halfway down the narrow trail through the woods. The warm Summer air seemed to drop several degrees the closer to home I got. A shadow passed across the trail and I froze for a brief moment, the hair on the back of my neck prickling my flesh. A combination of the setting sun and critters scurrying in the dead leaves were wreaking havoc on my imagination.

The snap of a twig startled me and I swirled around toward the way I just came from. I caught a glimpse of the neighbor’s orange tabby chasing a squirrel and something black lying at the edge of the trail. I stared a few minutes trying to decide if I should investigate or not. I couldn’t tell what the thing was from where I was standing. Curiosity won and I walked toward the inanimate object.

It was a little black notebook held closed by a strip of elastic, the cover looked practically brand new. I picked it up and held it in my hands, a cold sensation washed over me when I opened it. It was someone’s journal, each page representing different dates. As far as I could tell, the person writing the journal entries was afraid of someone she only called “The Shadow Man.” There was a name and an address on the inside cover:

Lily Delarosa

138 Starling Rd.

Braxton, GA

By now, there was barely enough light for me to see the path back home and I couldn’t read the words anymore. I fished out my cellphone from the back pocket of my jeans and used the light from it to read more of the journal. I fumbled with the book when the pages flipped to the back where the words “FIND ME” was scrawled out in such a menacing way I could hear it being screamed in my head. I gasped and dropped the book, my heart pounding against my ribs.

It took a moment for me to catch my breath and steady my shaking hands. I decided some local kid was playing a prank and left the notebook where I found it. It looked like someone had just dropped it there no more than an hour before I made a trip to the well. Tree frogs were singing by the time I made it back to my two-room shack, a dim light shown through one of the few windows.

The scent of coffee and old wood filled me when I stepped inside. It was only a few degrees cooler inside than outside which was still hot by Georgia standards. In the one bedroom, my thirteen-year-old daughter had fallen asleep with a book lying open on her chest. I walked over and leaned down, kissing her forehead before taking the book and lying it on the table next to the bed. She seemed to sleep more since her father passed away a few months ago from the virus plaguing the world. Before that, he suffered from constant chemo treatments. If the virus hadn’t killed him, the cancer would have.

A loud crash woke me from a dead sleep, the clock on the wall told me it was between two and three in the morning. Whatever it was also woke my daughter and she was sitting up in bed next to me. Her hand flew to my arm and squeezed when breaking glass echoed through our tiny home. “Stay here,” I whispered to her and tiptoed into the main room of the shack. I froze, stunned at the glasses and frames flying from one part of the room to the other.

My heart leaped into my throat and I shoved my daughter back into the room, slamming the door shut just as something crashed against the cheap wood. I held the door shut, my daughter staring at me with eyes as wide as mine probably were. We stayed like that until nothing, but the sound of our breathing echoed in the small room. I tried to open the door, but my daughter grabbed my arm. “Mom?” her voice was as shaky as her tiny hands. I pressed my finger to my lips to urge her to be quiet and I opened the door just a crack. The whole room was one giant mess except for the table where a black book lay on top.

I made my way through the glass and debris, snatching the journal up and flipping through the pages. It was the same journal I left back on the trail. The hairs on my arms rose, prickling my flesh until the whole sensation traveled up my spine. I sat the book back on the table and made my way back to the room with my daughter. I urged her to go back to sleep though sleep was far from my mind. I had to figure out a way to get rid of that cursed book.

After my daughter went to school the next morning, I took the little black book and tossed it in the burn barrel outside with enough gasoline to torch a hundred little black books then tossed a lit match inside. The heat from the flames making it even hotter, sweat trickled down my brow. I didn’t care, I wanted to watch the evil thing burn.

Satisfied I was rid of the infernal thing, I went back into the house and had to catch myself on the door frame. Sitting on the table was the little black book I just burned or thought I had just burned. For the next several hours, I tried everything I could think of to get rid of it. Every single time, I would come home to it lying on the table. By the time my daughter came home from school, I had given up hope of ever getting rid of it.

“Why don’t we just return it to the address? It’s only a forty-minute drive from here,” my daughter suggested. I didn’t want to tell her I was afraid of what we’d find if we went, but I didn’t tell her that. Despite my gut wrenching in knots at the idea, I made plans for us to make the drive to Braxton the next day.

That night I lay awake in bed staring at the ceiling. I was half expecting more of our things to be destroyed, but it was a quiet night. Around three, I did hear something whispering. In the corner of the room was a pale skin girl no older than my daughter, her red hair tied in pigtails. Water dripped from her outdated blue dress, every time she tried to speak, water flowed from her mouth. I sat upright in bed. The poor girl raised her hand and the little black book I had left in the next room now hovered in front of my face, the words ‘FIND ME’ seemed to scream at me like before, or it may have just been my own screaming. My daughter woke up and fell out of bed when the book dropped into my lap. I could do nothing but cry and try to keep my entire body from rattling the bed. I couldn’t quit shaking no matter how hard I tried.

It was around four in the morning when we left with the black book. I didn’t care that we made it to Braxton before six. I would wake the entire town up searching for Lily Delarosa’s address if I had to. We found the house, it was almost as run down as ours though it was a great deal bigger. A little, old lady answered the door and tears sprung to her eyes the moment she saw the little black book in my hand. She immediately apologized and told us we were not the first to arrive at her doorstep.

Lily was her fourteen-year-old daughter that disappeared in the early ‘90s. The ‘Shadow Man’ Lily referred to in the book had killed five children including Lily. He was caught when someone’s hunting dog found four of the five bodies. Lily’s body was never found, but her little black book somehow made it to different people over the years and always after the people had visited an old well in my hometown. I went to hand her the book and stopped when a thought occurred to me. The wheels in my head wouldn’t quit turning and the old lady jumped when I gasped. “I know where she is!” I almost yelled. The woman’s eyes lit up for the first time since we arrived and hoped I was right.

By noon, I had every law enforcement agent I could think of at the old well in my hometown. By nightfall, officials had pulled out human remains too small to be an adult. The well had been there so long, it was a huge possibility the remains belonged to someone else. I had a feeling they were the remains of Lily Delarosa. Ms. Delarosa clutched my arm as she recognized the remnants of her daughter’s blue dress.

My daughter and I walked back to our small shack and opened the door, my arm firmly around her shoulders. At this point, I half-expected the little black book to be lying on the table. I urged my daughter behind me to keep her from stepping further inside because something was lying on the table. It wasn’t the little black book though, it was an envelope with the words “THANK YOU” in the same handwriting as in the book.

I glanced at my daughter and walked over to the table, snatching the envelope from where it sat. Inside was $20,000, the same amount I spent on my late husband’s medical care. In a way, I suppose my wish at the old well had come true.