Patricia Wentworth - Lonesome Road

His left arm came round her.

“You’re just frightening yourself. Why should she think about the well?”

Her voice came to him, hesitating and stumbling.

“I-don’t know-it-came to me. I didn’t frighten myself-it frightened me. Why should I have thought about the well-suddenly-like that-unless someone- someone else-was thinking about it? And-and Caroline- the well-it always frightened her.”

She was held in a strong clasp.

“That doesn’t sound like sense to me.”

“It’s not sense,” said Rachel desperately. “The things that have been happening aren’t sense at all. They’re like the things in a bad dream-they’re nonsense. But oh, Gale, they’re horrible nonsense-wicked, horrible nonsense.”

“Steady, Rachel! You’ve got to keep to sense, and so have I. Do we go straight on here, or is there a turn?”

“We keep straight on. If that was the turn to Linford, we’re nearly there-another two miles at most.”

“That’s better. Does your cousin come down here much?”

“Cosmo? He lives here most of the summer. He hasn’t been down since the end of September. He doesn’t care about it in the winter.”

“And Caroline?”

“She doesn’t care about it at all.”

“Then I don’t see-”

She steadied her voice carefully.

“She-she’s in bad trouble. I don’t know what it is. That’s my fault-I ought to have made it my business to know. I didn’t like to interfere between her and Richard, but I oughtn’t to have let it go on-so long. Only-” she stopped and looked round at him in a bewildered way- “it-it isn’t really so long, you know. It isn’t really long at all-it’s just that this week has seemed like a year.”

“Well, it’s nearly over now, honey,” said Gale Brandon.

The car came to a standstill with the fog thick about it and the last of the light no more than a memory.

“Did you say this was a corner?” said Gale. “Because it’s asking for trouble to leave the car on a corner in this fog. The first thing anyone would know about the lights is where they’d hit them.”

“Yes, it’s a corner. If you turn up the lane, there’s a gate into a field. You can run the car in there.”

It was easier said than done. Astonishingly difficult to find the gate and, when found, to back the car in. A narrow lane; deep ruts; a bramble that scratched her cheek; a smell of straw and cows; the glare of an electric torch reflected back from an impenetrable wall of fog but shining suddenly right into Gale’s eyes as he blundered into her-these things made up Rachel’s picture of the next few minutes. Gale’s eyes-startling and strange to see them like that-looking out of the dark, looking for her.

When the car was in the field, they linked arms and began a search for the wicket gate which led to the house. The ruts were really deep. There was a ditch on one side of the lane, and a holly hedge on the other. They groped their way by the hedge, and found it a safe but uncomfortable guide. At last the gate clicked and let them in upon a paved stone path with rose bushes, wild and unpruned, all their summer growth upon them to fling a spray of damp against the cheek or catch at the groping hand. Rachel discovered that you may know a place quite well and yet feel lost in a fog like this. She knew that they must skirt the house, but they blundered into soft earth on the one hand and a very hard wall on the other before they succeeded in doing it. The torch was extraordinarily little help. It showed the path and nothing much besides, but when they had felt for and found the tool-shed it did pick out the key for them, hanging from a nail in the wall, all rusty-a big, old-fashioned key on a loop of tarry string.

The back door next, and a good deal of fumbling to get the key into the lock. And all the time Rachel keeping back her own fear with the insistent thought, “There’s nobody here. No car. No light. No sound. No anything.” The key went home, and turned easily enough for all its rusty look. The door swung in. Rachel put out her hand for the torch, missed it in the dark, and heard it drop between them on the flagged step. She said “Oh!” on a quick breath, and Gale exclaimed. Their hands met, and she left the picking up to him. But the torch might just as well have been left lying on the step, since prod, poke or push as he would, Gale Brandon could get no spark out of it.

“If I was a smoker, I’d have matches,” he said ruefully. “I’ve never fancied it somehow, but here’s where it would have come in useful.”

“There’ll be matches on the dresser,” said Rachel- “and a candle. Stay where you are and I’ll find them. I know just where they are.” She took a step from the door and stopped, hands stretched out before her, eyes straining against the dark, ears straining too. But there was no need to strain for the sound which had stopped her. It filled the empty room-the homeliest, most comfortable sound in the world, the ticking of a clock.

Rachel stood where she was without moving and listened to it. She knew the clock quite well-a cheap shiny anachronism which lived on the scullery dresser and gained a steady five minutes a day. She turned her head and said in a strained voice,

“Gale-the clock-it’s ticking.”

He laughed behind her in the dark.

“That’s just a way they have.”

She drew in her breath sharply.

“Not when they haven’t been wound for a month. It’s an eight-day clock. Cosmo hasn’t been down here since the end of September. He said so yesterday-he said he hadn’t been down. But the clock’s ticking.”

“Well, honey, anyone could get in with that key. Let’s get those matches.”

He moved to pass her, but she caught his arm.

“Wait! Gale, please wait. I don’t like it. I won’t go on without a light. Have you got matches in the car?”

“Not a match. But there’s another torch-a small one I keep for a spare. Do you want me to get it? It’s a long way back to that field.”

Rachel hesitated. To go stumbling and groping back to the car, with matches a couple of yards away on the dresser? Not reasonable. She said “No-” in a hesitating tone and took a half step forward. And then, in a rush of terror, reason was suspended.

With that suspense what asserted itself was the oldest fear in the world-the trap, the snare, the abyss, the pit, the terror that lurks unknown in the dark. She went back, and as Gale Brandon moved to pass her, she caught him and held him.

“I won’t go on without a light. There’s something-”

She heard him laugh.

“What’s wrong with this place is the damp. It smells like the inside of a well.”

And with that Rachel knew. She said,

“Will you stop here-quite still? Will you promise me not to move-at all?”

“What’s this?”

“Will you promise, Gate-will you promise?”

“If you want me to.”

She let go of his arm and began to feel her way round the edge of the room. First to the corner by the sink, and then to the larder door. Then to the dresser, feeling, always feeling, with her left hand on the wall and her right hand at arm’s length to grope in the empty dark.

She came to the dresser, felt her way along it until her fingers touched the matches, and struck one. The tiny spirt of light dazzled and sputtered out, but it had shown her an old brass candlestick, the candle half burned down. With her back to the door she struck another match, and this time reached the candle wick. There was a moment whilst the flame took hold, and another when it flagged and failed. Then the wax melted and fed it, and the flame rose bright and clear. She turned with the candle in her hand and held it up. A yard from her feet on the one side, a yard from Gale’s feet on the other, was the open mouth of the well, three feet across. If she had taken the second step where she had taken the first, it would have taken her over the edge. The well was two hundred feet deep. There was twenty feet of water in it all the three years when half the wells in the country failed and dried out. There it was, as black as death, between her and Gale-the old well of the Well Corner, dug four, five, six hundred years ago for the refreshment of man and beast. Her thought stood still, and could not move from the well.