Bill Pronzini - Bindlestiff

One of the bodies brushed against my leg, and I shuddered and backed up until my hips touched the wall. The water came to just above my waist. Something cold and clammy was pressed to my lower jaw; when I realized that and pawed it off I saw that it was a decay-blackened oak leaf. I tilted my head back. There was still nothing in the circular opening above except sky and the overhanging tree branches.

Quiet up there, too. Even the birds had quit their chattering. The person who had left me to drown or die of starvation would be headed off the property by now-the same person who had killed Hannah Peterson and Lester Raymond and dumped their bodies down here. Returned to the scene of the crime, probably to do something about Hannah’s Toyota back there by the collapsed building. Spotted me, hid in the woods until I climbed down inside here, and then slipped up and grabbed the ladder. Dead men tell no tales. But I wasn’t dead yet, and when I got out of here I would tell plenty of tales because I had a pretty good idea who that person had to be.

If I got out of here…

The back of my head had begun to throb and burn; some of the stagnant water had got in under the bandage and irritated the wound. I was shivering, too, from the chill of the water and the dank air. Move, I thought, keep moving. There’s got to be a way out.

I waded toward the far side. The stones were obscured by shadow, so that I couldn’t see if there were any handholds or footholds that would let me climb up; the moss coating them had a sleek, ugly look, like the body of a slug. I remembered the flashlight. It was still in my pocket, but when I dragged it out and pressed the switch, nothing happened. Water had got inside the battery casing and made the thing useless.

I dropped it and began to ease along the stones to my left, searching for a foothold. There were a few knobs and projections like the one I’d braced my foot on earlier, but that was all. You couldn’t climb up a vertical wall on little knobs and projections, for Christ’s sake. A frigging mountaineer couldn’t climb out of a stone well that way.

But I kept moving along the wall, pawing at it. My leg bumped against one of the bodies again; it seemed to bob away like a bundle of something heavy and discarded. Bundle. Two bundles, not one. Two stiffs in a well. Bundle-stiffs. Bindlestiffs…

Cut it out!

I got a fresh grip on my control and hung on. I was going to get out of here, by God. I was going to find a way out of here.

And I found one-the length of two-by-two.

I was looking right at it, partially submerged with the upper end cocked against the stones in front of me. About five feet long, that piece of wood. The diameter of the well was no more than four feet. Twelve feet from the surface of the water to the wooden lip up there; three feet of water; fifteen feet overall from the bottom to the lip. And I was six feet tall, with a vertical reach of maybe three feet. Mathematics. Sure, that was the answer. Mathematics and that good heavy chunk of board.

I started to reach out for it. Then I thought: No, no, find a place to anchor it first. Again I groped sideways along the stones. I had to go half way around before I located a place-a moss-filled declivity formed by knobs on two stones laid atop each other, like a tiny recessed shelf, that was on a level with my wrists. I clawed at the moss, broke a nail and scraped my fingertips raw; but I got the indentation cleared out. By the feel of it, it was maybe a couple of inches wide and the same distance high-just about the size of the two-by-two.

The board was over on my right; I caught hold of it in both hands and slid it up at an angle against the opposite wall. Then I brought the bottom part over and pushed it into the slot between the two stones. It went in all right, stayed in without slipping. I wiggled the board until the other end looked to be resting at a point directly across from the slot, its length bisecting the well at an upward angle.

So far, so good. With my arms extended over my head, I waded out under the piece of wood until I could just touch it with my fingertips. Then I bent my knees, set myself, and jumped up and wrapped both hands around it and kicked my legs over against the facing wall. There was a tearing sensation in my left shoulder, an eruption of pain. But I managed to hang on, monkeylike, jouncing my body so my weight would pull the upper end of the board down tighter into the stones, wedge it there the way the lower end was wedged. I tried to keep most of the strain on my right hand and arm, but the left arm gave out anyway after four or five seconds and I had to let go. I kicked off the wall just in time, so that when I dropped my feet went straight down and I stayed upright and my head stayed out of that damned foul water.

Panting and shivering, I waded backward and reached up to test the two-by-two. The upper end was still a little loose; if I tried climbing onto it now, it was liable to slip and I’d have to do the whole thing over again. I could not afford to take that chance. The chill water was a constant drain on my strength, and there was that weakness in my left shoulder and arm. When I went up on that board it had to be one time only, one concentrated effort and no mistakes.

I stood for two or three minutes, massaging my left arm, going through some of the exercises the therapist had given me. The pain began to ease. I moved out under the two-by-two and jumped up again, using only my right hand; but that way I was only able to hang on for a second or two. I tried it again with the same results, but the third time I managed to stay suspended long enough to wrench downward violently on the top part of the board. When I waded back to test it this time it was wedged in tight between the walls: I couldn’t move it at all.

I realized one of the corpses was lying against my leg and nudged it away. I could hear my teeth clacking together like old bones. The fingers on my left hand were stiffening up again from the cold. I needed that hand and arm-I could not make the climb otherwise-and I massaged them furiously from fingertips to armpit, exercised them, kept them out of the water. I did that for a good five minutes, not thinking about anything except getting out, getting out, feeling the sun on my body again.

Some of the cramping went away finally; I could flex the fingers almost enough to make a fist. I was as ready as I would ever be.

I squatted down until the water was just under my chin, so I could grope along the submerged part of the wall under the board’s lower end. It had a slimy, repulsive feel. But some twelve inches below the surface I found a jutting corner that seemed large enough to use for a toehold. I rubbed at it, stripping away some of the slick growth to make it less slippery. Then I got the edge of my shoe braced on the jutting corner, reached up and took a two-handed grip on the two-by-two, dragged in a deep breath, and shoved and hauled myself upward, grunting with the effort.

The board seemed to move slightly under me. I felt the panic again-and then I was out of the water and draped over the wood with my right shoulder pressed against the wall. There was no more shift in the two-by-two-I might have imagined it-but I lay still anyway for a time. The strain on my left arm had turned it numb in places, as if parts of it were no longer attached; I wanted to rest a while before I had to use it again. But my abdomen was supporting all my weight and the two-by-two was cutting into it and making it difficult for me to breathe. I had to move right away.

I pushed back from the wall, turning my body so that my head was toward the stones and inching backward up the angle of the board. Still no shift in the length of wood; it had to be wedged in pretty tight. I kept moving until I was stretched out along it from crotch to chin, then slowly swung my left leg over. And eased myself into an upright position, straddling the board like a kid facing the wrong way on a narrow seesaw.