Little Girls(74)
The ladder went down into the hole, the legs sinking a few inches into the fetid sludge at the bottom. Due to the narrowness of the well, the ladder stood almost vertically. Ted jockeyed it into the most secure position he could find, wedging it between two dimpled niches in the stone. He had equipped himself with a flashlight, a plastic garbage bag, a pair of bright yellow rubber dishwashing gloves, a broken broom handle nearly three feet long, and a wire coat hanger stretched into an approximate hoop covered in a pair of Laurie’s nylons, which Ted thought looked like a makeshift pool skimmer. He had fashioned a plastic shopping bag around each of his sneakers, and they were held in place just below the knees with several rubber bands.
“Just keep the ladder steady against the stones,” he instructed Laurie before descending. “Hold on to it. I don’t want the damn thing wobbling all over the place.”
Laurie gripped the extended legs of the ladder, one in each hand. “Be careful.”
“Be careful, Daddy,” Susan repeated, glancing almost forlornly at him and then down into the pitch-black hole in the earth. “Watch out for that snake.”
He swung his right leg down into the well and set his foot on the second rung down from the top. He felt the ladder sink lower into the muck another couple of inches. Gripping the sides of the well with both hands—he had tucked the flashlight, rubber gloves, the broom handle, and makeshift skimmer into the rear waistband of his jeans—he slowly lowered himself until his left foot came down on the rung just below his right foot. The ladder sank down another inch or two, and he waited for it to settle before continuing his descent.
It was like sinking into a grave. The smell was no better—a putrid, eye-watering stench that came at him in a nearly solid cloud. Small flies and gnats dive-bombed his head; he swatted the larger ones away while still keeping a strong grip with his other hand on the rung just above his head. He imagined their tiny pinprick corpses stuck in the sweat on his forehead. Halfway down, he glanced up and saw the faces of his wife and daughter gazing down at him. They looked impossibly far away, as did the opening of the well itself, as if it had shrunk to the size of a softball while he wasn’t looking.
Two rungs up from the bottom, he stopped. The well was just slightly roomier than a manhole, and it was with some contortion that he was able to reach behind him, select the broom handle, and withdraw it from his waistband. He crouched as best he could, propping one foot flat against the wall of the well while the other balanced on the rung of the ladder, and drove the broom handle down into the peaty black sludge. It sank down several inches before it struck what felt like solid stone underneath. He felt some relief. That’s not as bad as I’d thought. For all he knew, it could have been a bottomless chasm that dropped straight to hell.
Releasing his grip on the broom handle, it remained standing straight up out of the muck. I claim this land in the name of Ted. He reached around his back again and felt for the flashlight, grabbed it, switched it on, and cast its harsh white beam down on the floor. He caught sight of the black snake retreating into a crevice between two stones, where the mortar had worn away. There were other critters down here as well—mostly bugs. Fat black beetles trundled through mossy, dark green strands of what looked like sea grass while spotted slugs appeared to respire—expanding, then deflating—each time the flashlight’s beam passed over them. Earthworms as thick as fingers squirmed and sought solace deeper into the mud. Whitish grubs wriggled up from a tarry swath of black slime; he could hear their collective movements, a sound grotesquely similar to squeezing a handful of wet noodles. There were other critters down here aside from the bugs, but these were all dead and in varying stages of decay—several water-bloated mice and a decomposed bird were among the ones he was able to identify.
With the flashlight propped under his left armpit, he grabbed the broom handle again and, like a witch stirring a cauldron, drew tracks through the muck. Before he stepped down into that mess he wanted to make perfectly sure there weren’t any other critters hiding beneath the mud. Particularly critters with teeth.
He realized pretty quickly that he would not be able to bend down with the ladder in the well with him. There just wasn’t enough room. Plus, it was slowly sinking into the mud, causing him to wonder just how deep into the earth the well went. He stepped down into the sludge and felt his plastic bag–wrapped sneakers sink into it.
“Hey,” he called up the channel, his voice reverberating till it made no sense to his own ears. The opening at the surface was no bigger than a dime now. “Pull the ladder up!”
Laurie didn’t respond, though her silhouette was still framed in the tiny lighted hole directly above his head. So was Susan’s. He was about to repeat the order when the ladder rose up out of the muck with a sucking, squelching sound, and began to ascend back up the throat of the well.
“Shit,” he grumbled, quickly swiping at his face and hair as bits of gunk rained down on him. Didn’t think that part through. Once the ladder was lifted out of his way and the gunk had ceased dripping down on him, he directed his attention to the muddy heap in which he stood. Again, something sparkled as it caught the beam of the flashlight. It was partially covered in mud, so Ted crouched down, tugged on the rubber dishwashing gloves, and picked it up. It was a solid gold wristwatch.
Chapter 24
The items Ted found in the well included approximately seventeen dollars in loose change, a man’s gold wristwatch with a cracked crystal face, a single diamond earring (he had located only the one), a woman’s brooch that sprouted calcified tumors that looked like dried toothpaste, a few similarly calcified keys, what appeared to be the metal clasp from a girl’s barrette, a simple platinum band that looked almost identical to Ted’s wedding ring—and was in surprisingly good condition—though it was not Laurie’s, a tie clip, a money clip, and various bits of cheaper jewelry that had been reduced to reddish bits of rust. Yet the most unsettling thing was a child’s plastic baby doll, its pink body reduced to a curdled tallow hue marbled with bluish veins of rot, its features faded into nothingness from its submergence for God knew how long in that swampy, fetid water. Ted had found other things while sifting through the gunk, straining the muddy water through the coat hanger with the pantyhose stretched across it like a miner panning for gold—countless buttons, bottle caps, the rubber sole of a shoe, and other bits of garbage, all of which he left down below.