Story Time with Ms. Von Doom

Hello boys and girls. Welcome to Story time with Ms. Von Doom. (That’s me, in case you were confused) Every week for the next several weeks (or until I run out of submissions I like) I will be featuring one of you lovely readers short stories. If you have submitted, and your story isn’t chosen this week, fret not, it may still be featured in the future. Interested in submitting? It’s as easy as emailing me a copy of your story to hollyvondoom@horrorsociety.com . Now on with the story. Enjoy…

WELL-BEING
Written by: Alan Ray Rowlands

Did you hear?

Have you seen?

Look!

A man over yonder, weaving through trees in this white, forbidding wilderness.
Observe his unwarranted stealth, crunching through a tangle of frozen undergrowth, icy
wind a whisper in the canopy of evergreen needles above his bobbing head.
Why is this one so anxious? What errand brings him here, so far from his realm of
adjustable warmth and unnatural light?

See that flicker, like a fairie companion that flutters at his side? The man has got an
ax in his hand, catching stray splinters of sunlight as he lurches onward through the
snow. Friendless in a stern assembly of giants the man trudges on, glancing this way
and that, stalking his peculiar prey.

He stops before a short, stout pine tree; nods once and smiles, cheered by the
images in his head; the imminent joy of children who will welcome this tiny green
guest into their home. The Man looks around and sighs. His has little to show his
offspring this season, and came to the wild for just such a prize as this. It will mean so
much to them, and to him.

“help”.

The man freezes; ax aloft.

“Help”.

He wasn’t certain he had heard the shot, but there it is again. The cry of a child. A
faint, frantic echo in his ear, borne on an icy breeze from somewhere deep, deep in the
forest. Deeper than the Man has ever been, or ever cared to go.

“Help! Somebody help!”

Forlorn. All but lost in the vast, howling reaches of the wild. Shrill, high-pitched panic
spurs a father’s heart to action. The Man plunges into the emerald shadows, still
clutching the ax, high-stepping through snowdrifts and brittle foliage; crackling fingers
that slash and jab.

He runs awkwardly, drifting one way and another. And he stalls now, faltering and
confused, slapped to his knees in the pitiless heart of winter. He looks around,
bewildered. He has lost his way; all horizons are tree-lined and anonymous. He holds
his breath, waiting. A moment passes.

“HELP!”

His head whips around, homing in on that distant yelp of terror. The Man gets to his
feet, propped on his ax. He hoists the implement; hugs it close and lopes on toward that
tiny voice.

Swallowed in a chasm of solitude.

“Help! Help!”

The Man charges into a dense assembly of pine and swings his ax, slashing through
a bedlam of skeletal branches. He bursts from the labyrinth into a sudden clearing, a
blight on the land where nothing grows; a barren circle without a blade of grass or patch
of snow.

He stands panting and immobile; bewildered by the pallid, contrary vision before
him. Here is the desperate child, cupping her hands for the next plaintive wail, scrawny
and trembling in a tattered full-length coat, eyes full of fright set in ashen skin.
The Girl lowers her arms, gazing in wonder at the weary newcomer. She takes a few
hurried steps toward the Man, the hem of her shabby frock scuffing the frozen earth.
She turns and motions wildly toward the center of the clearing; to a crumbling mound
of irregular stones; an ancient well, brooding and forgotten in this dead region.

“The well. Mister!”

The Girl bounces frantically, looking from Man to well. The Man starts toward her,
bemused and apprehensive, alert for sudden danger.

“Mister, my Daddy’s down that well!”

The Man is shocked into action. He drops the ax; the iron head clatters on the hard
soil as he moves quickly to the well.

“He won’t talk to me! I need you to help him!”

He plants his forearms on the circled stones and peers over the edge; down into utter
darkness.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

There is no reply. He blinks into the depths, irritated by a faint, fetid scent in the still
air; taunted by an elusive incongruity. Something wrong. Something missing. He waits
in silence for a moment.

“Are you injured? Can you make a sound?”

The Man throws the Girl a fretful glance, then quickly returns his attention to the
silent abyss. The gloom impenetrable; absolute. He wills it to evaporate and reveal the
girl’s hapless father; considers how to prepare a child for the worst news possible. He
briefly imagines scrambling over the edge and dropping into the dark; an absurdly
reckless act for one who cannot see the bottom of the well.

“C’mon, buddy. Give me a sign.”

If there is in fact a bottom.

“HELLO?!”

If this is in fact a well.

The Man is stunned by silence; his bowels tighten with intuitive dread as he realizes
what has been missing: a simple echo. His strident queries, shouted into the depths,
were absorbed without any trace of resonance from stone wall or earthen floor.
Engulfed in a void without clear limits. And there he stands, helpless in the presence of
primordial Mystery, waiting for a sound…

A stirring…

A sign of life in the empty heart of creation. The Man feels sluggish and feeble. He
strains against the vaguely-sensed torpor; turns to address the child; struggling to
contain his despair.

“Honey?”

The Girl hovers nearby, eyes wide. His voice is soft; his words carefully chosen.

“Honey, how long has it been? How long since your Dad fell down there?”

The Girl hesitates. Her mouth drops open; her lips tremble for a grueling, protracted
moment. Ultimately, confoundingly, she says nothing, as if unable to process the dismal
answer to a straightforward query. Her would-be champion turns back to the well in
bewilderment; gapes once again into mocking darkness, still waiting. He is almost calm
now. Patient. Mesmerized in an ecstasy of distress.

Nothing. And then something.

“Hello?”

Does he hear it?

Can he feel it?

A subtle shift; a sly displacement in the stagnant gulf below. The Man holds his
breath, listening. He leans forward, staring. A half-formed picture of quickened chaos
writhes in his mind: The Antediluvian Unknown. Shuddering, heaving, boiling up from
the innermost reaches of racial memory.

A toneless whistle and a belch of noxious vapor and the Man falls back shrieking as
a widening tube of pallid flesh corkscrews into the light, knots of wriggling tentacles
and translucent bulbs and all manner of puckered wounds and scars.

The Man grovels and gapes, paralyzed in the face of streaming madness. His vision
blurs; he feels numb and adrift in space and time as reason retreats from inconceivable
truth. Fear and wonder give way to primal impulse; he rolls instinctively and scrambles
to his feet; one frenetic motion; a spontaneous bid for survival.

He bolts for the trees as smoky, virulent tissue flows from the pit behind him and
juts toward the sky. A slithering shadow overtakes the fleeing figure as a tower of
quaking horror rises to obstruct the sun.

The Man spins for a quick glimpse and leaps to the side; the squealing mass flops to the
ground and squirms with terrible vigor. Obscene tendrils stretch and shiver, sweeping
frozen earth to snare their quarry.

Ruptured pustules splatter the Man with slime as he digs his nails into the ground
and crawls, inch by laborious inch, in a savage snarl of constricting fibers. The
loathsome thing tightens its grip. The Man fights on, bucking and thrashing with all his
ebbing resolve. He strains against a ruthless primordial will, but can crawl no further.

The clutching strands are taut and throbbing with power.

The Man cannot advance.

He cannot resist.

And so, he surrenders. Exhales forcefully; lowers his head in implicit resignation.

His body slumps. His muscles go limp. The ancient abomination yelps in triumph; the
appalling clamor echoes deep within the earth.

And suddenly the man is struggling again; wrenching his arms free from the
slackened tentacles. He scrambles forward with a frantic burst of strength; groping
desperately toward the clearing’s edge; kicking at the thrashing, voracious tendrils;
gaining a few more agonizing inches before the enraged leviathan is upon him.

The tip of its tapering bulk winds around his body with startling speed; wrenches
him backward. The Man is slammed to the ground; stunned. He gulps frigid air and
sobs in confusion, momentarily uncertain of what is happening.

He is skimming rapidly now, face scraping the harsh terrain; arms dangling.
Smothering coils cinch tighter, squeezing the air from his lungs; dragging him toward
the stone-lined aperture that was never a well but a trap, a ruse, a gateway to
unthinkable depths.

Dire impressions; soul-searing images flicker in his mind; assault the waning
strength of his will. He envisions himself gripped not by a worm-like torso fixed to the
interior of that looming portal, but by a single appendage of some titanic subterranean
bulk; a behemoth contained in vast chasms of endless night, seething and craving and
growing through untold eons.

The Man looks to the uncaring blue sky, as if bidding farewell to light and life. He
feels the bracing winter chill on his face; hears the far-away sigh of the wind- and
another, more immediate sound, like the jangle of a make-believe bell. The discordant
clatter of the ax head behind him jolts the Man awake from dark wonder and despair.

He tightens his grip on the sturdy wooden handle, arches his back and howls, calling
out to his woman, his children; to each unwary member of his frail, adolescent tribe as
he is lifted from the ground and borne to the brink of oblivion.

Half-day approaches. Dreary sunlight has crept unnoticed across the clearing and
now spills into the yawning pit. Something swells slowly into view. The raving,
dangling Man glimpses what he somehow recognizes as a Face and all at once, finally,
lets go of lucid thought. Sense and strategy yield to elementary loathing and fury; the
Man swings the ax severs a twitching tendril, earning a bleat of outrage from below.

Swings the ax and opens up the massive sallow stalk that holds him, exposing
spongy yellow viscera. Swings the ax and cuts deeper, piercing tender organs that ooze
malodorous filth as a thunderous groaning reverberates in the underworld.

Lesser appendages rise from the depths and fall away in vaporous shreds as the Man
chops and slices with mounting abandon; a sweating, snarling exaltation of his terrible
will to live.

And now he slips free of the faltering coils, tumbles to the ground and runs,
wobbling and weaving on tingly, rubbery legs. He staggers at the edge of the clearing,
drops the cumbersome tool and plunges ahead into the trees.

He will wander in the wild for a time, bleary and exhausted. His mind will clear; his
fever cool as the substance of his ordeal fades from memory like the scattered
fragments of a dream.

He will return to his people, then, in their domain of construct and comfort, and
resume the common rituals of his life. Unanswered questions will vex his soul through
many restless nights, but he will never come to this place again.

But look, now!

Do you see?

There, in that stark arena the Man has fled and forgotten? A diminuitive figure stands
over an abandoned ax, studying with dismay the tacky, multi-hued juices clinging to its
blade. She turns and hurries to the waiting circle of stones; the portal to fathomless
secrets; the counterfeit well.

“Daddy?”

She pauses, anxious and trembling.

“Father?”

She catches hold of the well’s rim and pulls herself up. Delicate threads of milky
tissue unwind beneath the hem of her coat and quiver with apprehension. Her slender,
boneless form leans into the pit as her brow erupts into a score of pulsating, blood-red
eyes.

“Father, are you gravely wounded? Is it very bad?”

A gust of pungent breath caresses the child’s face; stirs the razor-sharp filaments of
her hair. Muted thunder rumbles from below; a voice like grinding boulders; the echo of
nature’s lament.

“I will heal, little one. I will be whole again.”

“I failed you, Father. I’m sorry.”

“There will be others, Child. Keep trying.”

“Yes, Father.”

Pale tendrils curl up to hide within her coat as the Girl drops to the ground. She turns
from the well, her face congealing into a fresh mask of fragile innocence. She glides to
the edge of the clearing and raises her hands to her mouth.

“Help!”

There had once been whole communities of human folk in these mountains, with
their wooden shelters and four-legged companions. Convenient prey, and plentiful.

“Help! Somebody help!”

But that was a long time ago.

“HELP!”

end

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