The Well

I

The rancorous rapping on Aloysius's front door heralded an end to his peaceful breakfast. He stood to answer with an annoyed grunt, leaving his wife fussing with the coffee pot.  

Aloysius's hard-soled shoes beat a measured tak tak tak on the marble tile, his even stride at odds with the wild pounding. They bounced around the hall and vaulted ceilings, creating a cacophony incompatible with the gentle morning light that filtered through tombstone windows. Carved busts of renowned historians, antique suits of armor, and oil paintings of his ancestors seemed to stare at the front doors in disdain. The thick oak was a bulwark against this intruder, but there was only so much it could do.

Aloysius threw it open. 

The smell of pine-smoke, cooing mourning doves, and scattered, wide-eyed Julius greeted him. His hair was wild about his head, some singed strands smoking. His eyes darted to Aloysius and around, as if he couldn't focus—or, rather, he was trying to locate something unseen. Tremors wracked his hands, the papers and files he carried shaking so heavily that the messy scrawl became illegible blurs. 

Aloysius stood up straighter and he stared down his nose. The boy knew what he would be getting into with this work. He felt no sympathy.

Julius ran his fingers around his tie, hanging loosely around his neck. The motion only brought Aloysius's attention to the coffee stains and blood splatter on his beige shirt, and the fact that the boy was missing a shoe. Aloysius sneered, and Julius's words cut off with a short, gasping breath.

Wait, had Julius been talking this whole time?

Julius took a shallow, shaking breath and continued, gesticulating as he spoke. What needless motion. Youth, and their wasteful energy. "The, The sanguine alarm, sir, you, you know, the one you helped my, my father— Theodore?—create. One was destroyed—exploded! It—something’s wrong, it—Father's notes. About the, the, the, the woods, near the source of the Miskatonic. There's something—I—Sir?"

Aloysius turned away, rubbing his forehead as his brain throbbed dully. Why hadn’t he closed and locked the door already? As something nagged at his consciousness, the soft swish of fabric caught his attention. Aloysius sighed with relief.

“Dawn,” he snapped, waving her over with one sharp motion. “Handle the boy. I’ll be in my study.” Before a contrary word could be spoken, Aloysius left, finding solace behind the closed and locked door of his study. He breathed deep the scent of old books, and sighed heavily. The annoyance melted off him — despite the now muted pleas from Julius — replaced with a soothing calm.

Though, to call it just a study would have been misleading. 

While it held a sturdy mahogany desk and boasted several broad bookcases, the circular room held more than just items dedicated to mundane research. Several suits of armor, each equipped with their own weapon, stood at the ready on either side of the entry. Display cases boasted rare antiques: ritual daggers that still smelled of spilt blood, fur and bones of animals that didn't exist on this plane, masks carved from wood from long extinct trees, and pages of dried flesh that recounted atrocities. First edition volumes sat dust-free and proud on the shelves: Traversing the Dreamlands by Lester and Doe, Silver Keys and their Doors by Carter, Surviving the Rites and Rituals of Ancient Old Ones by the Oak twins, and more, all touching creatures and phenomena esoteric. Complementing these tomes were essays and books that Aloysius himself had written. 

Aloysius allowed himself a flush of pride at his own numerous contributions to the subject; many researchers got careless, stupid, and, ultimately, dead before publishing more than an essay. Theodore at least had the tenacity to become a well-known professor before he succumbed to that which he studied.

So, was this room a study, or something else? A shrine to the supernatural? A museum of the macabre? To some, maybe. But to Aloysius, this room was the attestation of his worth- his accomplishments that far out-sung any researchers at the Miskatonic University or beyond. 

Voices raised from outside of the study. “No, I — I don’t need any coffee!” Julius’s shrill voice raised from downstairs. “There are — There are lives at stake! I can’t — I can’t just—” 

Aloysius sniffed derisively. Flicking a handkerchief out of his pocket, Aloysius dusted a suit of armor, paying careful attention to the ax it held. “You couldn’t have instilled a modicum of decency in that boy, could you, Theodore?” He asked the empty air.

A sigh heaved through Aloysius’s chest and he sat at his desk, the wooden chair creaking quietly. It was neat, with few knick knacks cluttering his space. The only things present were lecture notes he had been revising last night, writing utensils, and framed photos. He reached for one.

It had been their first archeological expedition funded by the Miskatonic University. Theodore's gesticulating hand was a blur, his thick mustache twitched up above a wide grin. Aloysius's image was clear, his poise and dignity captured by his stillness. His weight hadn't settled in his stomach back then, and his hair, now feathery thin and graying, had been thick and brown.

A smile crept up Aloysius’s face as he recalled the expedition. Theodore sneaking into his tent at night to discuss his latest theories, his energy never ceasing. An infectious energy that led them both to branch out further than the others, ask questions no one else thought of, and tackle problems from exciting new angles. Never a dull moment with that man.

There were footsteps outside of his study, quick, heavy, and panicked. Dawn’s strained voice filtered through the door. “Now, Julius, please-”

“This can’t wait! It can’t wait, it — it just can’t! Every second we — we wait, it — it gets worse!”

“Aloysius will see you when he’s ready, dear,” Dawn replied, and Aloysius could see her flighty hands gently guiding Julius away as their voices died down. “Please don’t bother him before then.”

It shouldn’t have surprised Aloysius that Julius was an upstart. Theodore had been an interesting research partner, wicked sharp and insightful. While behest by flights of fancy, Theodore at least had the cognizance to channel it into productivity. Julius, however…

Such flights continued to draw Theodore back into the field, long since Aloysius had moved to the steadier work of lectures and conferences. While Aloysius solidified his position as irreplaceable expert, Theodore's work became incoherent; scattered words scrawled in messy pen accompanied with blood, and other, less appealing, bodily fluids. Perhaps his son was succumbing to the same fate. 

Theodore smiled up at him from the frame, giddy and excited. Memories ebbed at the edge of Aloysius’s mind. Theodore arguing on his behalf for grant money, gesticulating wildly as he pressed his point into their administrator like the tip of a dagger. Warm coffee to keep the sleep at bay as they designed the sanguine alarm long into the night. A dour day never stayed such with Theodore slinging corny joke after joke in response to Aloysius’s own sharp quips.

Aloysius set the frame down. “There’s no way you’ll let me leave this be in good conscience, is there?” He asked the silent photograph. The only response was the quiet ticking of a clock.

A gentle knock pulled him from his musing. It was as if his decision needed the finality of standing and answering. He was set, however reluctantly, when he opened the door to his hesitantly smiling wife. 

Dawn used to encompass her name: bright, energetic, joyful. Time, however, had sunk its nails into her face, dragging down deep rivets of wrinkles and perpetual bags under her eyes. With age came downfall, like the fires that crept up and devoured Rome. No amount of silk dresses could hide her decline.

Pity tinged with disdain had long replaced love for the woman. Aloysius hadn't allowed time to touch himself so recklessly. His mind stayed sharp, his hands didn't shake, and age had chiseled a stout pride along his face instead of mirroring Dawn's dour demeanor. 

“He’s settled down a bit,” Dawn said, tucking a stray gray hair behind her ear. “Whenever you’re ready, dear, he-”

“Yes, yes,” Aloysius replied, stepping past the threshold of his office and closing the door behind him. “I’ll get to him now.” Hopefully, it wouldn’t eat into much of his day.

II

She had given the boy a thrice damned cup of coffee, and his hands quaked around the porcelain cup. The words tumbled out of his mouth in a haphazard jumble, like a child dumping his toys in a pile and calling his playroom clean. The incoherency was the height of frustrating, and it took Aloysius much longer than he would have liked to parse together Julius’s plea.

The sanguine alarm - an elaborate monitoring system that Aloysius and Theodore had developed years ago - had sounded, then self-destructed in a most appallingly violent fashion. The latter was not supposed to happen. 

“What was it monitoring?” Aloysius asked. 

“There’s a well in - in, uh, the Oct- October Forest,” Julius answered.

A frown tugged at ALoysius’s mouth. While it didn’t surprise him that something esoteric was so close to home - wonders and horrors could be found in equal measure all through the world - it did frustrate him that Theodore hadn’t thought to contact him. 

Had Theodore thought Aloysius too removed from fieldwork to be involved any longer? Did he at least contact the Miskatonic University?

It was in the carriage ride over that Julius proved he knew exactly where to look for this one particular horror. He pulled out maps - Theodore’s maps - covered in his own looping scrawl. Notes in the corners, coffee stains, and fingerprints marred the roadways and names, and blurred his old friend’s own. Aloysius felt a vein in his head throb.

“I got my- here. My father’s notes. A-And, I reviewed- where did I put them? They- They were right here just a-” He started, pausing to take a short, gasping breath as he rummaged through a bag.

Aloysius cleared his throat with a disapproving grunt, and his eyes narrowed. “I’ll listen to you once we’re on location.” While he could not avoid the conversation forever, he could at least stall and take the ride in pleasant silence. Or as close to it as he could get with Julius gasping and sighing the whole way.

The late afternoon sun greeted them as they stepped into the October Forest. 

A nipping autumn wind kissed their cheeks and hands, inviting them forward into the looming oaks with their bright, hellishly red leaves. Aloysius moved onward, crunching dead leaves under his sure step. Animals tittered and nagged around them, and the crisp smell of winter tinged the air. As they walked, Julius leading the way, the boy muttered to himself, shuffling his papers in a hopeless attempt to prepare himself.

After abandoning the well beaten path for the overgrown thickets and walking for an hour or so, Julius spoke up. “It- It’s right up, up ahead, sir.”

Aloysius stepped forward, moving from grass to bare dirt abruptly. All animal sounds fell silent. The ground sloped and dipped, curving into a small, unassuming hole squatting below two dead trees. Shadows clung to the branches like dew-spotted cobwebs, and cast themselves writhing along the entrance to the cave. Carefully, he entered.

The air inside was humid. Hot, slimy moisture stuck to him, and he grimaced.  A decaying stench cloyed around his head and assaulted his nostrils. The darkness hung like a curtain and Aloysius was careful to feel the ground with his foot gently before committing to the step. Strong rough stone greeted him.

It was just like being back in the field, all those years ago. He straightened his back, and cast down his doubt.

Julius entered behind him, a lantern held in his trembling hand. The small flickering light pushed the shadows back, where they danced and squirmed over the walls of the cave. The boy clung to his knapsack, face ghost white. His gasping sighs carried loudly in the small cave.

“There,” he whispered. 

Ah, so it was. In the middle of the empty cave stood the well. It was unassuming in appearance; dark gray stone with a few scratches and no roof to hang over it. It was still in a way that a carriage tipped at the crest of a steep hill was still. 

Papers shuffled. “So, ah,” Julius took another little gasp. “About fifteen - or was it twenty? - Ah, some years ago, a lot of gruesome - very gruesome - murders were happening in - in Lenox Dale. The murders were coupled with, ah, bouts of insanity, and many of the perpetrators felt acute regret after their actions. It - It - It was, uh, rather difficult to, uh, get anything co-coherent out of them, but a few said that they, uh, they were elsewhere, fighting in self - self defense. I believe that-”

Aloysius tuned Julius out. He didn’t need the half-baked theories of this upstart youth. What were his credentials to make such claims to him? Aloysius would show him how it was done. As the boy rambled, Aloysius approached the well and examined it. 

Wooden debris - the well cover, Aloysius assumed - littered the ground in large fragments, encircling the well. The sloped limestone at the base of the well had eroded away, grooves running in dizzying spirographic patterns. Strange, how these lines didn’t follow gravity down the slope. It couldn’t have been water dripping from above. He ran his finger along the well to the ground, and found, etched into the stone, a symbol. Brushing away some dirt, he saw another nearby. 

Aloysius turned, taking in the entirety of the dimly lit cave. A circle, another smaller circle, sweeping lines, and many, many symbols lined the cave all around. His brows rose. A sealing ritual. 

Aloysius picked up a large chunk of wood, barely registering Julius’s prattling and the items he pulled from his knapsack while he did. Another symbol had been carved into the well cover. It had been snapped in half from whatever force shattered the wood. 

So the seal extended to the lid itself? How much time would a ritual this complex have taken to create? How much blood had been spilled to keep it powered? Just what was down there?

“-incorporeal, m-most likely, given that, uh, given that… that…” Julius trailed off as Aloysius stood and took up the lantern. “Sir?”

“Hush, boy,” he snapped quietly, holding the lantern over the well. The ritual spiraled down the well to bare ground below. Aloysius frowned when something inched forward, pricked at his mind, then hastily retreated, leaving behind the mental stench of weakness and fear. Adrenaline shot through his veins, as if he were a greyhound catching the scent of a rabbit.

“Can we… Can we seal it back up, s-sir?” Julius asked. “Please?” 

Aloysius glanced back at the boy. He had a carving knife and a new well lid grasped so tightly his knuckles were white. Rope, a tinderbox, chalk, and paperwork had tumbled out of the knapsack and lay strewn haphazardly at his feet. A derisive snort escaped Aloysius. 

“Rituals take time, boy,” Aloysius said, motioning to the lines around him. “Time to properly build and the right materials to execute. And unless you have, or are, a sacrifice-” Julius grimaced, and that answered that “-then we have no way to power the seal.”

Julius stammered, gasping out his questions, but Aloysius ignored him. This was a place for professionals. If Julius wanted to help, he needed to know what to do already. Aloysius had neither the time nor the patience for giving out basic level 1000 lectures to an audience of one. 

Especially when there was more to discover.

Aloysius picked up the rope, and tied it to a sturdy rock. His heart thumped in his chest and his hands eagerly moved to secure the rope. Tossing one end into the well, he said, “I’m going to see what Theodore was fussing about. Wait for me out here.”

"I-" Julius gasped shakily and held up his notes, as if paper could argue for him. Then he sighed. “Yes, sir… Do you want the- the supplies?"

Without saying anything, Aloysius took the knapsack with the chalk, folding knife, tinderbox, and paperwork. Then he descended.

Dropping just under the lip of the well plunged Aloysius into darkness. Even the lantern's flickering light was subdued. He lowered himself slowly, back against the cold stone as his shoes scraped against the opposite wall. Symbols crawled past him, marred and gouged into illegibility by… not a claw. But not water. It honestly reminded Aloysius of a horse that had licked a salt lick in the same area over and over again. 

With a grunt, he hit solid ground. Moist moss squelched under his feet. Aloysius breathed deep through his nose, then grimaced. The smell of cigar smoke filled him, mingling the clove and menthol. Why was this here? His colleague’s disgusting choice in cigars was only marginally better than his stance on ghoul taxonomy. 

"Who else did you ask for help?" Aloysius called up.

"No one!" Julius replied, his voice half an octave higher than normal.

Could corporeal dead be ruled out? No fleshy refuse littered the ground, and the only stench was the dissipating cigar smoke. No rotting stink, no buzzing flies. Incorporeal dead were also unlikely. No temperature drop, mist, or rattling chains. 

Aloysius turned in a circle, running his hand along the wall. The shadows writhed. It was too small for any large altars or effigies, so that ruled out-

Empty air met his fingertips.

The stone wall broke away to a cavernous hallway. Dips, stairs, and arches met him eagerly, a yawning mouth that begged Aloysius to fall into its belly and lose himself in its intestines. The air that drifted past him was hot and moist.

Was the well itself the creature? Perhaps the creature’s maw, and its bulk extended far, far below. It would explain why Theodore thought it so pertinent to tightly contain and observe. 

Slowly, Aloysius took a step forward. Whatever had touched him was meek, though. What was hiding out here? Where, exactly, did it hide within those tunnels? Questions, questions! So many questions! And only one way to get answers. 

Just as Aloysius stepped forward, shoe hovering over hard stone, he stopped himself and chuckled. Such naive excitement was reserved for youths and those who would soon be dead. Given what reached out to him, this entity’s only merit must be its prodigious size. There was no doubt in Aloysius’s mind that whatever cowered down here could swiftly be dealt with. But he did not survive fieldwork by leaping into new excursions ill-prepared. 

Theodore must have more notes on this being than what Julius brought with him. Hopefully, whatever his late friend had compiled was not scribbled over by his overeager son. Then Aloysius could return, thoroughly trounce the entity, and Julius would learn how a professional handled these situations.

"I'm coming back up!" Aloysius called. Climbing was a much more arduous task than descending. His feet inched up while his back scraped against the opposite wall. Soon after beginning, his back and hips burned, and sweat dripped down his face. His arms shook as they pulled and pulled and pulled.

How deep was this damn well?! Going down hadn’t taken nearly as long. When Aloysius glanced up to gauge his climb, all that met him was a solid mass of black, writhing like worms in a fisherman's bucket. Black tendrils shot towards him, cutting his cheek, cutting the rope, and Aloysius’s scream was cut short as he hit the ground.

“Sir?!” Somewhere, muffled, he heard Julius call for him. 

Aloysius stood with a groan. Miraculously, he felt no pain. He rubbed the small of his back when he felt a hand on his shoulder. With a sharp inhale, Aloysius slapped it from him. He heard a shaking gasp, right in his ear, and a black tendril with five finger-like protrusions pulled back. 

So, the thing wanted him to enter? Thought it better to challenge him now, then allow him to prepare properly? Aloysius straightened his back and tugged the collar of his coat. Very well, then. It knew nothing of his abilities. He would be happy to teach it the last lesson of its existence.

Shifting the bag on his shoulder, Aloysius pulled out the chalk. With a practiced stroke, he marked the wall with a symbol. The twisting halls would be nothing with his little ball of yarn marking his way. 

Confidence in his step, lantern held high, Aloysius descended into the darkness.

He didn’t notice the tendrils inching along the wall behind him like worms. They slurped at the chalk, slowly, silently. Flake by flake, the mark was swallowed by the dark.