Hello All:
I have to remark that I'm not too fond of the ending of this story. If you've been around for a while, and "know me", you'll understand why when you get to the end. It's just not my style. But there's a reason I'm leaving the ending as-is and so tragic. It's to illustrate how dangerous hauntings can actually be. Very few people understand this.
We are fascinated with hauntings and often wish we can go to a place and witness a ghost or some peculiar phenomenon that's reported by others. But then there are paranormal environments that are hazardous. They can cause damage to physical and mental health. There are a few ghost documentaries out there that reveal this. A haunted environment can turn someone into a completely different person, and cause them to make poor decisions.
The wind that scoured the peak of Mount Cinder always smelled like wet granite and pine needles, but lately, Caleb noticed a different, metallic tang—like old pennies left out in the rain. He’d inherited his grandmother’s isolated cabin, perched on a jutting lip of the mountain, a place she’d always called a “land of hunger.” She hadn’t meant it romantically.
Caleb was a creature of habit, and his daily ritual was simple: coffee at dawn, work on his dissertation, and a long walk before sunset. The routine was sacred, a defense against the suffocating silence of the wilderness. Today, the walk led him past the root cellar and toward the northern perimeter, a place he usually avoided. That’s where he found it: a circle of blackened, moss-covered stones enclosing a low, crumbling wall of fieldstone. It was a well, sealed with a heavy, rusted iron plate and secured by four thick chains, padlocked tightly.
His grandmother, Agnes, had warned him about the well when he was a boy, her voice low and serrated like a saw. "Don't you ever, not for a drop of water or a dare, touch the Seal, Caleb. It ain't water down there. It's a thirst."
He kicked at the iron plate. It clanged with a hollow, resonant sound, like a bell rung underwater. It was heavy, far too heavy for one man to move, yet the locks looked frail, eaten away by a century of mountain rain. Curiosity, the oldest and deadliest poison, began to drip into his veins.
That evening, the thirst began. It wasn't the kind cured by a glass of cold water. Caleb drank four pints straight from the tap, the water tasteless and unsatisfying. It felt like his esophagus was lined with sand. He found himself pacing, running his tongue over dry lips, the metallic scent from the mountain air now seeming to emanate from his own skin.
He tried to sleep, but the thirst kept him awake, a constant, low-frequency hum behind his eyes. Then came the whispers. They were too soft to be words, like dry leaves skittering across pavement, or a thousand faint breaths drawn in unison. They seemed to come from below the floorboards, from the very foundation of the mountain.
The next morning, driven by a primal need, he found a pair of heavy bolt-cutters in the shed. He hiked back to the well, the sun already burning through the pines. The chains snapped with alarming ease, the metal protesting only briefly before yielding. The locks crumbled into rust dust in his hand.
He didn't touch the iron plate. He didn't need to. As soon as the chains were gone, the plate began to vibrate, slowly, then faster, until it lifted just a fraction of an inch, supported by an unseen force beneath. A smell rushed out, a wave of stale air, wet soil, and something sickly sweet, like decaying flowers. The whispers immediately intensified, no longer a hum, but a chorus, a thousand hungry voices, none of them human, all of them echoing a single word he couldn’t quite make out, but which resonated deep in his bones as “More.”
Caleb stumbled backward, dropping the bolt-cutters. He scrambled back to the cabin, slamming the door and locking it. He spent the day barricaded, trying to write, trying to read, but the whispers now seemed to flow through the very walls, a constant, desperate pleading for release.
The thirst became intolerable. He found himself drawn to the well, but a terrible, instinctual dread held him back. Instead, he stared at his own reflection in the windowpane. His eyes looked hollow, the pupils dilated, consuming the irises. He looked hollow inside.
On the third night, he dreamed of Agnes. She was standing by the well, looking down. “I told you, Caleb. It ain’t water. It’s hunger.” In the dream, she turned, and he saw her face: dry, cracked, her lips pulled back from her teeth, her eyes enormous black pools of consuming need.
He woke up screaming, his throat raw. He went to the kitchen and stared at the knives, then at his own hand. He couldn't shake the idea that the well didn't need water. It needed moisture. It needed life.
He went back to the well, but this time he brought a shovel. The iron plate was lifted higher now, rocking gently on the edge of the stone lip. The chorus of whispers was almost deafening, a palpable physical force pressing against his eardrums. He didn't look down. He couldn't.
Instead, he began to dig. He dug a shallow grave near the perimeter fence, the soil loose and dark. He knew the well was a parasite, an ancient, elemental hunger that had infected his grandmother’s mind, forcing her to seal it, but only after it had taken its toll. He knew what he had to do to stop the thirst, to stop the whispers, and to stop himself from giving the well what it truly craved.
The metallic smell was overwhelming now. He dropped the shovel, turned, and saw the iron plate rise fully off the stone lip, floating a few inches above the well's black mouth. The whispers roared with victory, the sound like a subterranean avalanche.
Caleb turned back to the grave he had dug. He saw the shovel lying in the loose, dark soil. He took a deep, shuddering breath of the cold, mountain air, bracing himself against the terrible, consuming thirst. Then, he raised the shovel, not to fill the hole, but to strike the back of his own head, hard and quick, hoping that his sudden, silent collapse would give the earth exactly what it demanded, and leave the Seal unbroken, for the next one to find.
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