OLD LAKE JOHNSON ROAD

“Don’t look down in the well.”

The Ozarks gripped the night like a drunk clutching his last bottle of Mad Dog grape-flavored wine, mean and unyielding. Out here, the hills didn’t just resist progress… they chewed it up, spat it out, and buried it under roots older than God.

We didn’t have 911 out here. Hell, we barely had working plumbing. No GPS, no fancy radios, just an old rotary phone, a party-line switchboard that rang like a funeral bell, and a country sheriff’s office reeking of stale Folgers, cigarette ash, and the faint tang of despair. Two deputies with secondhand revolvers patrolling a county where the moonshine still flowed thicker than the law. I was twenty-two, a dishonorably discharged Army grunt. I still smelled of gun oil… my head still screaming with the ghosts of jungle mud, burning villages, and buddies who never made it back. Kicked out for slugging an officer who deserved it, I came home to nothing… no prospects, no family willing to claim me, just a debt to my mother’s older brother for keeping me out of jail. He called in a favor with the sheriff, and now I was chained to a desk, five nights a week, as the night-shift dispatcher and jailer, a job that paid in coffee and contempt. I was on my third night of county duty. I was limping along with another dispatcher and two deputies on weekend patrol, their radios spitting static and small-town gripes until the bars vomited their drunks at midnight.

But tonight, the air was wrong… thick, heavy, like the second before a bayonet finds your gut. The phone hadn’t rung, but the silence was a liar, and out of Old Johnson Lake Road, something was crawling toward us, hungry and mean.

I slumped in a creaky chair, nursing a lukewarm mug of country-issued sludge, out of the communal pot—black as tar, bitter as my discharge papers—looking at nothing when the phone shattered the quiet. Second ring, I snatched it up, expecting a bar fight or a coon in someone’s henhouse.

“Sheriff’s Department, what’s your problem?” My voice was flat, already bored.

A scream ripped through the line. A woman’s, raw and jagged, not begging for help but clawing for survival, like she knew help was a fairy tale. “Help me!” she shrieked, the words breaking into sobs. “It’s gonna kill me!”

I bolted upright, coffee sloshing over my hand. “Ma’am, slow down. Tell me what’s happening.”

Her breath came in gasps, punctuated by crashes… wood splintering, glass shattering… and a groan, deep and wet, not human. “It’s in the house!” she screamed. “Please, God, help me!”

“Ma’am, you need to slow down…” I sat up, my gut tightening. “Tell me what’s—”

“It’s going to kill me!” she cried. Panic cracked through the line like lightning on dry timber. “Please! Please! Help me!”

I sat up in my chair a little straighter and leaned forward slightly, like it would help me hear her a little clearer. “Ma’am, listen to me,” I said, forcing calm into my voice, though my pulse hammered like mortar fire. “Where are you? What’s going on?”

Her breath now came in ragged bursts. I could hear more chaos over the phone… crashing sounds, groaning, screaming. Something primal. Agonized.

Her voice filled with fear. “It’s in the house!” she screamed. “It’s going to kill us!”

“Ma’am, you need to tell me where you are and what is going on. What’s your location?” I asked once again, trying to stay calm.

She pushed forward, her words tumbling out, more frantic, tripping over each other. “Me and my boyfriend… we were at the lake swimming. We walked back up to the cabin. He build a small fire just off the porch, near the well. We were cooking hot dogs when it… it came up on us.”

“It came up on you?” With my free hand, I pressed the earbud tighter into my ear. “From where?”

A pause, then a whisper, like she was afraid it could hear her. “It came out of the well.”

My gut twisted. “What came out of the well?”

She didn’t answer, just continued talking. “We both ran inside,” she added, ignoring me. “The lights were on and my boyfriend slammed and bolted the door. He told me to get in the bedroom and hide. Just as I turned to run in the bedroom, it began breaking down the front door. My boyfriend, he told me to run. I ran for the bedroom as it broke through the front door. I hid myself in the closet.”

“Which bedroom? Can you describe it?” I asked, scribbling notes on a legal pad, my handwriting shaky.

There was a moment of clarity in her voice. “There is only one bedroom,” she said, her voice sharpening for a moment, grounded by terror. “Please, it’s gonna find me.”

“All right. Stay on the line,” I said, my mouth dry. “I’m getting your help. What is your address?”

“I am… please… it’s going to kill me.”

Silence.

“Ma’am? Can you hear me? I need an address.”

A faint whisper: “It is in the bedroom.”

I froze. “It’s in there with you?”

Sobbing. Then, breathless: “Please help me. Please help me. It’s in the bedroom.”

“Where are you calling from?” I pressed. “Give me an address,” I asked once more.

“We’re in a fishing cabin… Old Johnson Lake Road…” Her voice cracked, fading.

I slapped the emergency alert button on the switchboard. A piercing tone blared through the emergency radios. “Any unit near the fishing cabins on Old Johnson Lake Road, be advised: female caller is hiding in a bedroom closet. Caller claims an unknown assailant is inside. Possible violent situation. No cabin number. Stand by for further information.”

More crashing noises came through the phone. Wood splitting. A scream… male, maybe her boyfriend, raw and final. Dying. Then that groan again, low and guttural, like something dragging itself up from hell… deep, wet, inhuman.

“It came from the well!” she whimpered, her voice barely audible.

I hit the mic again, my voice sharp, slicing through the static. “All units: possible 10-56, homicide in progress. Female caller in immediate danger. Unknown intruder. All available units respond code three.”

Unit 16 crackled back, voice tight. “Three miles from the old gate, en route.”

Unit 23: “Southbound on Mount Ida, ten minutes out.”

“10-4.” I snapped, turning back to the phone. “Ma’am? Are you still there?”

Nothing. Just the hum of a dead line.

Reba Jean, the other dispatcher, looked up from her panel, her face pale under her helmet of permed hair, frozen in a 1958 beehive. She was a tough old broad, chain-smoking Marlboros and spitting curses that’d make a sailor blush, but now her hands trembled. “Did she say Old Johnson Lake Road?”

“Yeah,” I said, my throat tight.

She frowned, stubbing out her cigarette in an ashtray overflowing with butts. “Hell, that road ain’t seen a county crew since Eisenhower. It’s closed off. Big-ass sign just off the highway, warning folks to stay out. Ain’t no cabins out there anybody’s lived in for years.”

She hollered down the hallway, her chair groaning as she leaned back. “Leon!”

Leon shuffled in, mop in one hand, his face blank, but his eyes sharp. Leon was the courthouse janitor. Black, old as dirt, with a rap sheet longer than the Mississippi. He’d run moonshine ’til the judge caught him, then got hired to mop floors and take care of the courthouse instead of doing time. That way he could be home nights and on most weekends. Everyone knew he still brewed shine up on the mountain. The judge looked the other way. It was common knowledge that Leon had been mean once. Snake-bite mean, but age and a bad hip had dulled him. Mostly.

“Yes’sum?” he drawled, leaning on the doorframe.

“Leon, you know any fishing cabins out on Old Johnson Lake Road?” Reba asked.

He squinted, scratching his stubbled chin. “Yes’m,” he drawled. “Used to be a few shacks out there, back when the lake was stocked. Folks fished, drank, fought, swam. But the county let the road go to seed. Nobody goes out much anymore. You can swim, boat, fish or get in the water. Place is cursed, folks say.” Leon’s eyes met mine, steady and unblinking. “Folks say peoples, up and gone missin’ out there, son. Some said it was the lake. Others said it was the well. It’s an old one, hand-dug deep, before the county had records. Said somethin’ lived in ’em. Somethin’ that don’t like company.”

Reba snorted, but it was forced. “Old wives’ tales, Leon. Don’t scare the kid.”

I wasn’t scared. Not yet. But my skin prickled, like the jungle when you knew Charlie was watching. My chair squeaked as I turned and looked over at Reba. “The woman on the phone. She said it came out of the well,” I muttered.

Leon didn’t change expression, but his grip tightened on the mop. “Then you best pray them deputies get there quick.”

I pressed the emergency alert button on the switchboard. “Stay on the phone with me.”

“Leon, are there any of those old fishing cabins or hunting lodges out on Old Johnson Lake Road anymore?”

“Yes’um,” Leon’s voice grated. “Maybe one or two.”

“Tell us about it,” Reba Jean asked.

“Most of them have rotted and fallen down. We’s used’ta fish up there on that lake some twenty or thirty years ago. That was before they found that chemical stuff in it.”

“Are there any cabins out there anymore?”

Leon looked down, then raised his head. “Yes’sum, they may be one or two, but most have fallen down or been burnt by homeless and kids.” He smiled, thinking about the lake. “We used to fish there, ‘fore the state found them chemicals in the lake.”

“What kind of chemicals?” I asked.

“PCB,” Reba said automatically. “Transformer fluid. Off them high-line wires. Cancer in a bottle, they say.”

Leon glanced at me. “Yes’sir, that’s what it was, PCB. It was all in that lake, it was in them fish. The state made it illegal to swim in the lake. Ya’alls couldn’t even fish or eat any of them fishes. The owner of the lodge, he went bankrupt and he got sued by the folks that had bought land and was gonna build houses there. His wife was much younger than him and she got to messing around with this’har preacher fellow here in town. Seems old man Johnson caught his young wife and the preacher man one night up there swimming. They was plumb naked. Didn’t have no clothes on at all.” He paused and smiled. “Old Mister Johnson, well, he went home to get a shotgun. Folks said he went crazy. When he got back, they was cookin’ wieners out by the front porch. He up and shot ’em both in the head, with that ther’ double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun, and throwed ’em down that well… out front of his cabin.”

STALE AIR AND BAD DECISIONS

The sheriff’s office was a damn pressure cooker, the kind of place where the walls sweat regret and the air tasted like stale coffee and bad decisions. I sat at the dispatcher’s desk, staring at the radio, my guts twisting like a bayonet in a pig. The call had come in about thirty-eight minutes ago. A woman, her voice shredded with panic, screaming about it coming from the well. Her boyfriend’s howl cut through the static, raw and wet, then a crash like the cabin was caving in. I’d smelled smoke through the line. It was acrid, biting. I heard the floorboards groan like they were begging for mercy. Then nothing. Dead air. A gut-punch that left me choking on the silence.

Reba Jean stood by the coffee pot, her arms crossed, her face a road map of hard years. She wasn’t just a co-dispatcher, she was the damn spine of this outfit, a widow who’d buried her logger husband after a snapped cable took his head clean off. Then her son after a bar stool cracked his skull in ’68. The Ozarks had chewed her up and spat her out, but she’d learned to bite back.

Her eyes caught mine. “What the fuck was that, Caleb?” she rasped, looking at me. Her voice was a gravel pit from chain-smoking. “You hearin’ ghosts now?”

“Ghosts don’t scream like that,” I shot back, my tone sharp enough to cut glass. “That was real. Too fuckin’ real.”

Leon lingered by the door, mop in hand, but he wasn’t just the janitor. He was a relic. An old bootlegger, the kind who’d run shine with killers and lived to tell it. His eyes, cloudy with yellow cataracts, held secrets the hills wouldn’t cough up. “Old Johnson Lake Road, huh?” he grated, voice like rusted wire. “Ain’t been right since they poisoned that lake.”

I leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “That is the second time you’ve mentioned poisoning the lake. Spill it, Leon. Fishing cabin, hunting lodge… what is out there?”

He scratched his stubble, smirking like he was tasting a memory. “Like I said, we’s used to fish that lake, ’bout thirty years back. Bass big as your arm. Like Miss Reba said, the state found that transformer oil in the water. They said it causes cancer. Shut it all down. Couldn’t swim, couldn’t eat no fish. Old Man Johnson had a lodge out there, went bust when the lawsuits hit. His wife… hell, she was half his age. She started screwin’ some slick preacher. One of them strange churches that dance, played music, kissed snakes. Crazy damn white folks, I always thought. Well, like I said, the old man caught ’em one night. They was wrapped up like a couple of water snakes, buck-naked in the lake. He up and grabbed his 12-gauge, come back, and painted the porch with their brains. The sheriff back then said the old man dumped them bodies down in that old well out front. That’s what folks said.”

Reba snorted, but it was hollow. “Romantic old bastard. That it?”

Leon’s grin faded. “Folks say he went nuts after that. The well swallowed ’em both, but it didn’t stay quiet. Dynamited it shut a year later, but them old wells… they all over these here hills. Folks used to call ’em artesian wells. But them old wells… sometimes they tap somethin’ deep. Underground rivers, and them caves twistin’ for miles. You don’t bury that kinda hate.”

Reba swore under her breath. “You and your hillbilly ghost stories. I ain’t buyin’ it.”

“Then explain the call,” I snapped, rage starting to simmer under my brow. “She said it came from the well. Boyfriend’s screamin’, and now they’re gone. You wanna sit here and knit while that shit festers?”

Before she could answer, the radio crackled.

Leon’s story was interrupted by a police call over the radio. “Base, this is Sixteen. I am at the cabin. The front door has been torn off. There seems to be some kinda bones scattered in the front room. Human lookin’. They look old as hell. You might want to contact the sheriff and see what he thinks about getting some of the Arkansas State Crime Lab people to take a look-see. And while we wait on them, get ahold of Doc Newton. They need Doc to come take a look.”

I snatched the mic, my knuckles white. “Sixteen, what about the woman in the closet?” I asked.

“Well, there is some remains in the closet, and they may be female.”

“Remains? You’re saying she is dead?” I asked.

“Well, she’s dead, all right. I am just guessing it is a woman.” A pause, then: “Got remains in there. Skeleton, small frame. A thin cotton print dress, half-rotted. Long blond hair on the skull. No flesh, just bones.”

My stomach dropped. “She’s dead? She just called.”

“She’s been dead, Base. Years, maybe decades. Ain’t nobody fresh here ‘cept the stink.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nope! Base, there ain’t nobody here besides bones in the closet and bones in the front room.”

Reba’s eyes met mine, wide with a flicker of doubt. She cocked her head. “What the hell, Caleb?”

“We’ve secured the area, Base. Any orders?”

I looked over at Reba and keyed the microphone. “Sixteen,” I said, voice steady as I could fake it, “check the well.”

“Already did,” came the reply. “It’s covered with a slab of concrete. It cracked, but it’s solid.”

Leon answered quickly. “Theys’ ain’t no well,” Leon was quick to say. “Theys’ dynamited it years ago. I told’ja, theys’ filled that old well in back after that old man killed them folks and threw their bodies in it. He got out on bail, poured a concrete slab over that old well. He then blowed his head plum off with another shotgun he had hid somewhere.” Leon said, shaking his head slowly. A thin grin came over his face. “Told ya. What’s down there don’t need no door.”

I clicked on the mic. “Stand by, Sixteen,” I said, dropping the mic. I looked at Reba, then Leon.

“Bodies still in the well?”

“No’sar,” Leon said. “Seems that when they dug that old water well back in them real early days, they hit some underground river. Some kind of a big cave underground. Once time, some gover’mint people came down here from the University up at Fayetteville and said that river flows underground for hundreds of miles. Them gover’mint people said the river took ’em. My old grandmammy said some of them wells were here over a hundred miles long. She said they be deep and dark, runnin’ under them hills like veins. You never get out if you go in.”

“Base, this is Sixteen?”

“Go ahead, Sixteen,” I answered.

“Base, we found the phone. It was under the woman’s bones and her dress. It was still in her hand. Just bones holding it. This thing is old. The battery has corroded and split open on the back from the leaking acid.”

“An old telephone?” I asked.

“Yes, it looks like an old-time Motorola. It has to be the size of a couple of bricks with an antenna.”

Reba’s face hardened. “Then who the fuck called us?”

The room went quiet, the kind of quiet that presses on your chest. I stood, grabbing my coat and the keys to the spare cruiser. “I’m goin’ out there.”

Reba lunged, blocking the door. “Like hell you are, Caleb! You’re a dispatcher, not a fuckin’ deputy. You’ll get your ass canned. Or killed.”

“Move,” I growled, my hand twitching for the shotgun on the rack. “She called me. I ain’t sittin’ here jerkin’ off while somethin’… whatever it is… laughs in our faces.”

She glared, maternal worry flashing behind her stare. Her widowhood and loss grounded her skepticism and worry for Caleb. “You’re a dumbass, you know that. I ain’t buryin’ another one.”

“Then don’t,” I said, shoving past. “Leon, watch her.”

Leon’s voice trailed me. “Mind the dark, boy. It’s got teeth.”

OLD LAKE JOHNSON ROAD

The cruiser chewed up the road, tires spitting gravel as the Ozarks swallowed me whole. Trees loomed like gallows, their branches clawing the sky, mist curling thick as smoke. My headlights stabbed the dark, but it fought back, a living thing that hated being seen. Every mile was a step deeper into the pit, and my mind, fuck, it wouldn’t stay put.

Vietnam hit me like a mortar round. Jungle nights, black as pitch, the air heavy with death. I’d lain in mud, rifle slick with sweat, listening to Charlie creep closer. The snap of a twig, the glint of a knife, the scream of a kid who’d never see Da Nang again. I’d clawed out of that hell, but it stuck to me, a second skin I couldn’t shed. Now the hills were pulling the same trick, watching me, waiting.

A coyote bolted across the road, eyes like hellfire. I swerved, the wheel jerking in my hands. Reba grabbed the dash and stomped the floorboard on her side of the car.

“Son of a bitch!” I snarled, pulse hammering. “Keep it together.” But the past was a leech, sucking me dry.

The cabin squatted at the end of the road, a rotting corpse of wood and memory. The deputies’ cruisers flashed blue and red, painting the night bloody. I parked, grabbed the shotgun, and stepped out, boots crunching on dirt. The air reeked… wet rot, old death. Something sour stung my nose.

Deputy Mike Harlan met me, his face tight. “Caleb, you’re outta line comin’ here.”

“Save it,” I said, racking the shotgun. “Show me the bones.”

He cursed but waved me and Reba into the cabin. “Where is Lester?” I asked, looking for the officer in Unit 16.

“He was outside looking around with a flashlight, just a minute ago.”

We stepped inside the front room. It was a butcher’s dream, bones strewn like trash. Yellowed and brittle. A rib cage lay open, a femur snapped clean, a skull with a hole in the middle of its face, big enough to throw a baseball through. “Old,” Mike said, kicking a tibia. “Johnson’s leftovers, maybe.”

I crouched by the skull, bile rising. “He was a busy bastard.”

Mike nodded toward the bedroom. “Closet’s worse.”

The door hung crooked, splinters jagged as teeth. Inside, the skeleton lay crumpled on its back. Small, most likely a female, dress clinging to bleached bones like a shroud. Blond hair draped the skull, tangled and dull. An old dial, push-button-type phone lay next to her, its plastic case cracked like an egg.

It looked to have been stomped and burst open. “She didn’t call from this,” I said, voice low. I looked around. “There’s no phone jack in this room,” I said, standing and scanning the room. The air was wrong. Thick. Dead. “She said it came from the well.”

I walked into the front room. There was a single antique phone jack screwed onto the wall. A length of phone cord that looked to have been severed with a knife lay next to it. “Well, that was the landline.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, pointing toward the front door. “Come on, look at this over here.”

We headed out the door, our flashlights searching the dark. Mike pointed to the ground off the porch. The dirt was torn up. Something had been dragged through here.

“Show me where it goes,” I said, gripping the shotgun.

We followed the drag marks to the well. It was a scar. Stone rim crumbling, concrete slab split open like a busted lip. The ground around it was clawed, dirt churned, and there on the concrete… blood, flesh, crimson and black, smeared toward the woods. I bent down and touched it, finger sticky. “Still wet,” I said in a low voice.

I stood and looked toward the woods.

A branch snapped, loud as a gunshot. We spun, weapons up.

“Coons,” Mike muttered, but his hands shook.

Another snap, closer. Then a groan. Low, wet, dragging sound from the trees. The stink drifted over the ground like grave rot, rancid meat, death on the move.

“Mike,” I whispered, safety off, “that ain’t no coon.”

The groan rose, guttural and hungry, and the dark came alive.

The night was a living thing, oppressive and damp, wrapping around us like a fever dream gone sour. Mike’s voice cracked the silence, low and shaky. “Lester? You out there?”

Nothing answered but the wind, a thin, mocking whistle through the pines and blackjack trees.

“Com’on,” I said, slapping at Mike’s arm. “We need to fall back… now!” I added as I started walking backward toward the cabin. Mike ran past me.

Then the groan hit again, a deep, twisting, guttural groan, closer, ripping through the trees like a dying animal’s last gasp. My breath caught, shotgun slippery in my sweaty palms. The mist was choking now, so damn thick I could taste the rot. Wet earth, decay, and something sour, like death itself had crawled up from the grave. I moved closer, bumping up against the front fender of Lester’s police unit. I glanced over. Mike stood by the grille, the muzzle of his revolver shaking like a cornered mutt.

I started to move closer to him. “Mike, it’s me. Comin’ in,” I whispered, bumping around the front fender.

“What the hell was that?” he whispered, his voice cracking like dry twigs.

I didn’t answer. I made a shushing sound with my mouth and moved closer to the front grille where Mike stood. My eyes were glued to the treeline, heart hammering. Shadows twisted in the mist, every rustling leaf a jab to the nerves. The dark pressed in, heavy and alive, and I felt it. Vietnam all over again. The jungle’s stink, the snap of branches, the glint of steel before it tore into flesh. I shook it off, but my hands trembled anyway.

A crash boomed from the well, loud as a mortar round. We whipped around, weapons up, pulses racing. “Stay here,” I growled, forcing my voice steady. “I’ll check it.”

Mike nodded, his face white as a skull. I crept toward the well, boots crunching gravel, the mist peeling back just enough to show the cracked concrete slab. The slab was twice as wide open now as it was a few minutes ago.

Reba came out onto the front porch of the cabin. “What’s going on?” she shouted, spotting my flashlight beam over the slab.

“Get back in the cabin, Reba,” I shouted.

I thought I saw something in the beam of Reba’s flashlight. I shined my light on the slab. And there, sprawled next to it, was a body. Fresh, not like the old bones inside. A man, throat shredded, blood pooling black in the dirt. It wasn’t there three minutes ago. I recognized what was left of Lester from his deputy’s sheriff’s uniform.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, stomach lurching. His eyes stared up, locked in horror, mouth gaping mid-scream. I glanced back at Mike, still clueless, now standing by the porch of the cabin. Before I could yell, another groan directly behind me. I spun, shotgun raised, but the mist mocked me, empty. Then movement. Fast, too fast, darting between trees. My blood ran cold, finger twitching on the trigger.

“Mike!” I roared. “Get to the cruiser! Now!”

Too late. The thing burst from the mist. A hulking shadow with eyes black. Dead like the darkness. It roared, a sound that seemed to split my skull, and charged Mike like a fucking mad bull.

Mike screamed, firing wild. Bullets flew uselessly, and the creature hit him. Claws flashed, a wet crunch as it ripped his chest open. Mike’s flashlight dropped to the ground. Blood sprayed, hot and red, splattering across the cabin’s front porch.

I didn’t think. Pumped the shotgun and fired, the blast ringing in my ears. The thing staggered, black ooze leaking from its side, but it didn’t drop. It turned, its black eyes now seeming to burn into me. Pure hate.

I fired again.

Again.

Each shot pushed it back, but it kept coming. Relentless. Like the VC in the dark, shrugging off bullets like drops of rain. My mind screamed. Charlie ain’t stopping. Charlie wants to die. It was as if I were back there. Mud on my boots. Blood in my mouth. Rage took over. I charged, slamming the shotgun’s butt into its face. It howled, reeling, and I thought, It feels pain. Maybe I’ve hurt it.

Then it grabbed me. Claws dug into my shoulders, lifting me off the ground. Pain exploded, white-hot, and its breath hit me. Grave-rot stench, bloody, ancient and evil. I thrashed, but it was like fighting a tank.

A flash. Blinding white. An ear-splitting explosion. The creature screeched, dropping me. I hit the dirt hard. My vision blurry, but I could see Reba, flare gun smoking in her hand.

“Get up, dumbass!” she yelled, her voice cutting through the haze. “We’re gone!”

I scrambled up, snagging the shotgun, and we bolted for the cruiser. The creature’s roar faded behind us, wounded but alive. Reba floored it, tires spitting gravel. I looked back. The mist swallowed the cabin, hiding whatever was left.

“What the fuck was that?” Reba panted, gripping the wheel.

I didn’t answer. My head was a mess. Mike’s blood, those eyes, the jungle bleeding into the hills. One thing I knew: this wasn’t done.

SHERIFF’S OFFICE

We stumbled into the dispatch office, Reba cursing, while sitting me in my chair, half-dead at my desk. Leon was still there. He began mopping my blood up that was dripping on the floor. His face was like carved stone. “You see’d it,” he said, flat.

“Somethun’,” I grunted, collapsing into a chair. “Mike and Lester are both dead. Torn to pieces.”

“What the fuck was that?” Reba asked, slamming the flare gun down on her desk. “We need the National Guard, not campfire tales.” She pulled a 1911 out of her desk drawer and began slamming .45 rounds into a clip.

Leon’s eyes didn’t flinch. “Ain’t no guard stoppin’ what’s in that well.” He shook his head slowly and made a tsking sound with his tongue. “It be older than these hills, meaner than hell,” he mumbled. He stopped mopping. “It may be hell for all wee’uns know,” he uttered before going back to mopping.

“Bullshit,” Reba snapped, but her voice wavered. “If it breathes, eats, and shits… then it can be killed. I don’t buy this boogeyman talk.”

My eyes snapped on her. “Then what killed Mike?” I said, staring her down. “What grabbed me? You saw it.”

She looked away, jaw clenched. “Somethin’. Not supernatural. Maybe a bear.”

“I see’d ‘um once. Bear’s don’t move like that,” Leon cut in. “Bear’s don’t hate like that.”

I touched my shoulder, claw marks throbbing. “It’s the well. Johnson’s mess. Somethin’ woke up.”

The door opened and Doc Newton, our resident veterinarian, walked through the door. His eyes widened seeing my shirt soaked, bloody. “We need to get you to a hospital,” he said, drawing back.

“Well, that’s an hour or so away, any direction we go. Springfield, Little Rock or Fayetteville,” Reba spat.

“Just fix me up, Doc,” I ordered. “I got shit to do.”

Doc snapped his head in a curt nod. “Okay,” he said, pulling out a syringe that had to be five inches long with a huge needle.

“Damn, Doc,” Reba said. Her face pale. “That looks like a horse needle.”

“It is, but it’s all I got.”

I actually felt faint seeing the size of it.

“Don’t worry, I sterilized it,” he said, poking the needle into the rubber top on a vial of clear liquid. “This’ll keep down any infection. It’s an antibiotic called oxytetracycline. It’s similar to penicillin.”

He pushed the needle into my arm. It hurt so bad that I wanted to scream.

“Holy cow, Doc!”

Leon broke the tension. “Mistar Caleb. Ya won’t have to worry ’bout no strangles, rain rot, or colic now,” he said, chuckling aloud.

Reba shot Leon a look.

Again, I toughed it out as the veterinarian, Doc Newton, wrapped my shoulders in clean bandages.

I looked over at Leon. “It’s the well. Johnson’s mess. Somethin’ woke up.”

“Yes’sum!” Leon nodded slow. “Old Man Johnson didn’t just kill his wife and her lover. He fed them folks to it. Made a deal. Power for blood. Deals like that don’t die quiet.”

Reba paled. “You’re saying he summoned it?”

“I’es saying that old man was mean. He opened a door,” Leon replied. “And just because he’s dead don’t mean it not still open.”

I stood, wincing… “Then we close it. Figure out what Johnson did, and how to end it.”

Reba reached for me. “You’re bleedin’. Sit,” she said, pushing me back into the seat.

“I’m fine,” I lied, shaking her off.

I tried to stand again. Doc Newton pushed me down. “Just sit there for a moment more while I fix that other shoulder.” He removed a bottle of purple powder from his bag.

“What is that, Doc?” I asked suspiciously.

“This ain’t gonna hurt. It’s blood stop. I use it stop bleed’en on cattle when we’re dehorning cattle, cuttin’ calves or pigs… castrating ’em, you know.”

I winced at the thought.

Leon laughed, all the time leaning on the mop handle still. “They be an old journal… Johnson’s notes he writ’ in it. Town library, locked up. Cursed, they say, but it might tell you’en somethin’.”

I looked at the Doc. “You through, Doc?”

He nodded and was putting his horse tools in his bag.

“Then we get it,” I said, standing. A slight shadow came over my mind. I felt weak. I snagged the keys. “Now.”

Reba swore. “You’ll get us killed, Caleb.”

I glanced over at Leon, then back at her. “Maybe,” I said. “But I ain’t waitin’ for it to come knockin’.”

THE LIBRARY

The county library was old, smelled of homeless sweat, unwashed pits, dirty butts, and mildew. Reba said we needed to go to the basement for the older historical records. We walked down the stairs. The freight elevator wasn’t working. At the bottom of the stairs was a locked room. I used the key kept in the sheriff’s office to open the door. I figured that was better than kicking it down, splintering the door frame, or worse.

I smiled at Reba, turned, and opened the door. She walked in first. Found the light switch and flipped on a single 60-watt bulb hanging from a frayed electrical cable from the ceiling. The damn county commissioners are some tight asses, it seems.

The basement area was a tomb, dark and musty, the kind of place where secrets fester, and black mold had sex orgies.

“You’re a real asshole,” she said.

I grinned. “Yeah!” I began scanning the shelves. “We need to find the history section?”

“Hey, asshole,” Reba said, pointing to a dusty set of shelves on the back wall, dust thick enough you could write your name on the covers.

I shoved past her and began looking at items on the shelves. I found a glass case, full of old books, papers, and there on the bottom shelf, an old leather journal, yellowed, old, brittle, tied shut with what looked to be hay-bale string. “That’s it,” Reba said.

I used my boot. Smashed the glass and grabbed it.

Reba flinched. “Careful, damn it. You’re going to get us arrested.”

I laid it on a librarian’s table. Cut the string with a piece of broken glass. I flipped it open, pages crumbling. Johnson’s scrawl was manic:

September 12, 1951: She betrayed me. Him too. I’ll make ’em pay. The well… it speaks. It offered me power, and immortality. It wants blood.

September 15: Done. They’re gone. It’s hungry still. More.

October 3: Well’s alive. Groans at night. I’m next.

Last entry, October 10: It’s coming. God help me.

Reba read over me, her face grim. “How do we stop it?”

I didn’t answer right off. I sat thinking. “Seal the well,” I said.

Reba parroted my words. It was more of a question. “Seal the well?”

I glanced over at her. “Yeah! We seal the well,” I answered.

“It was sealed. Someone concreted over the top and it still got out.”

I smiled. It was almost a smirk, maybe just a snarl, as only part of my upper lip curled. “Fire!” I said, Leon’s words echoed: “Doors don’t shut easy. So, we seal it with fire… We burn that motherfucker.”

I turned to see Reba looking at me. “Will that work?”

I let out my breath. “Well, I faced worse. ‘Nam taught me that, and like you said, if it bleeds, ya’ can kill it. An’ we know it bleeds.”

BACK TO THE CABIN

We loaded up a county pickup parked out back of the jail. Shotguns, flares, gasoline. Reba drove, silent, a Marlboro hung from her lip, ash never falling even when she spoke. I sat, silent, clutching the journal, pain pulsing. The cabin loomed, shrouded in claws of mist. Reba stopped on the road next to the cabin. I stepped out of the pickup, grabbed two five-gallon cans of gasoline, sloshing toward the well, shotgun slung over my shoulder. Each step dug the sling into my wound. Yeah… it hurt.

“We burn the well. We seal it,” I said.

Reba nodded, flare gun up. She caught me looking at her. “Just in case it come back?”

“Damn tootin’, Sparky,” I smiled. It never reached my eyes. I pumped the 12-gauge’s slide and handed it to Reba.

Standing at the well, I could see dirt stained by Mike and Lester’s blood. The creature’s roar was faint, deep down, waiting. I poured three five-gallon cans of gasoline into the well, followed by three more unopened. Reba tossed me the shotgun and lit a couple of flares. She hissed a smirky comment. “Last chance to run.”

“Nope,” I said.

“Fire in the hole!” she shouted as she tossed the two flares into the well. We both ran. A massive clap, a whooshing blast shook the ground. The air around the well erupted in a concussion, a sucking explosion as flames roared upward.

Then a scream. It was hollow, wrong, and came from deep within the well. The ground shook twice more as the five-gallon containers of gasoline exploded. The concrete slab split even more. Something tried clawing its way out of the darkness. Its eyes black and dead.

I fired, shotgun kicking. I fired over and over, until it only clicked. It shrieked, charging through the flames. Reba pulled the trigger on her flare gun. The round hit, bright and brutal. The darkness slashed at me. I flipped the empty shotgun up, catching the barrel. I dodged, swung the 12-gauge like a Louisville Slugger, cracking its skull with the stock of the shotgun. It stumbled. I threw another full can of gasoline into the well. It exploded deep inside. Flames, and a flare of heat shot into the sky. The blast was hellfire, swallowing the creature standing at the edge of the crack in a fireball. I dove, ash and dirt raining down. When I looked, the well was a smoking pit. The thing was gone. Reba pulled me up. I was sooty, and slightly singed.

“Done?” she asked.

I was silent for a long minute. “Maybe,” I croaked in a dry whisper, staring at the ruins.

“Hills don’t forget.”

Reba looked at me. “What?” she asked.

I turned and faced her. “Leon,” I said.

“What about Leon?”

“Leon said the hills don’t forget.”

We both turned and gazed at the smoldering hole in the ground.

“Yeah,” she said.

THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE

Making it back to the sheriff’s office, Reba was able to get a message to the sheriff and the Arkansas Highway Patrol. Both seemed to descend on the little office in the courthouse at the same time. Outside, it looked to be a beautiful morning. Birds chirped, people were greeting each other, exchanging smiles. Inside the sheriff’s office, the sheriff screamed, threatened, and threw shit at the walls. Two state troopers stood watching, adding the occasional remark, wanting to know if we had been drinking or smokin’ weed.

This fiasco, as he called it, could cost him the upcoming election. I was beginning to wonder if the elections were more important to him than the deaths of two officers and the near death of two more officers. Getting reelected seemed to be of more concern to the sheriff. But again, he was a damn politician.

The sheriff’s office overall smelled like despair, burnt coffee, and singed hair, but it was a damn sanctuary compared to the hell we’d just crawled away from. I slumped against the desk, the sheriff department’s shotgun lying on the desk, the stock busted plum off. My shoulder throbbed where that thing had clawed me, blood once more beginning to soak through my shirt, sticky and warm. Reba sat across from me. Her eyes were glassy, staring at nothing, like she was still seeing those burning coals in the dark.

Between the ass-eatin’ from the sheriff and the state troopers that had now weighed in… Reba Jean was on a slow burn. Finally, she’d taken all she was going to take. She slammed her open hand down on top of the desk, and, standing, put her hands on her hips. Her beehive trembling with barely contained fury.

“You dumb sons of bitches,” she snapped. Her voice like a whip crack. “What the hell do you think we were doing out there, runnin’ around like some cowboy movie? Lester’s gone, Mike’s gone, and Caleb near dead.” She said, slapping me on the shoulder. I almost vomited as the pain shot through me. “Sorry,” she whispered. “Hell, this boy’s bleedin’ all over the floor! So, save the sermon,” she growled. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see it.”

“See what?” the sheriff shot back, his tone wavering slightly. “A bear? A drunk with a knife? What, Reba? Caleb?”

I met his eyes, my jaw tight. “It wasn’t a bear. It wasn’t human. It came from the well… same as the woman said on the phone. It wasn’t an animal. Too fast. Eyes black like a shark’s. It smelled like death… like somethin’ crawled out of a grave.”

Reba’s face hardened, but she didn’t interrupt. Leon, leaning on his mop, stood in the corner. He hadn’t said a word since we’d stumbled in. His silence was heavier than the room’s.

I turned. “Leon,” I said, voice low. “You talked about that well. Johnson’s murders. What the hell came up from under the ground?”

He straightened, slow, like the weight of years was pressing him down. “Ain’t just Johnson’s doin’, boy. That well’s old. Maybe older than the hills. It was dug deep, too deep, back when folks didn’t ask what they were tappin’ into. Underground rivers, caves that twist for miles, and maybe somethin’ else. Somethin’ that don’t belong.”

The sheriff snorted, but it was forced. “You’re talkin’ fairy tales, old man. Wells don’t spit out monsters.”

Leon’s gaze didn’t waver. “Then what took Mister Lester and Mister Mike? What left their jackets in pieces, blood all over them slabs like Mister Caleb and Ms. Reba Jean saw’d? I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Sheriff, but there are things out there that I’d seed… things out there that ain’t got names. You’s wrong this time, Sheriff.”

I rubbed my face, the jungle creeping back. Vietnam. The dark. The screams. “Johnson fed it. Maybe unknowingly. Maybe he woke it up. Maybe he asked for it with the blood of his wife and the preacher. Maybe it promised him power, like he said. The question is, what is it? A demon? Some hillbilly curse?”

“What kind of bullshit is this?” the sheriff asked, standing up and moving around.

“Sheriff,” I said. “It wasn’t just evil. It was hungry. Like it wanted more than our blood. It wanted us.”

Leon’s lips twitched, not quite a smile. “Call it what you want. Demon, spirit, somethin’ older. The hills got memories, Mister Caleb. Blood soaks deep, and that well… it’s a mouth. Old man Johnson didn’t make it, but he done just woke it up. He gave it a taste.”

The sheriff paced, his boots scuffing the linoleum. “Bullshit. I don’t buy no damn boogeymen. Maybe it’s some freak… maybe some meth head livin’ out there. Maybe someone messed up on shine or drugs. Maybe someone drank that lake water. It is full of chemicals. Maybe it got in his blood. Maybe them chemicals made him a lunatic. It doesn’t have to be supernatural for him to be fucked up.”

“Then explain the phone call,” I said, my voice sharp. “Woman screamin’, dead for years, usin’ a live phone line that has been dead for years as well. It wasn’t even hooked up. The receiver itself was crushed, destroyed. Explain Lester and Mike’s jackets, the blood… you’ve seen the wounds on Caleb’s arms and shoulder. You tell me a man did that?”

Caleb’s voice broke the tension, barely a whisper. “It spoke. Not words, not really. But when it had me down, I felt it. In my head. Like… it was promisin’ somethin’. Power… maybe. Like it promised Johnson.”

One of the state troopers spoke. “Promising what, Deputy?”

I shook my head, my eyes distant. Seeing nothing. “Don’t know. Didn’t wanna know. Just wanted me to give in.”

Leon nodded, slow and grim. “That’s how it works. Feeds on blood, but it’s yo’ soul him wants. Always has.” Leon’s voice cut through the tension, soft but heavy. “Mind yourself, boy. That thing’s still out there. It’s watching.”

The sheriff now softened to reason, looked up, his face haunted. “What if it’s not just the well? What if it’s everywhere? In the hills, the rivers… what if we can’t stop it?”

“Then we die trying’,” I said. “Better than livin’ scared.”

An Original Short Story from the Feral Mind of Newt Livesay

(c) 2022

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I truly appreciate it.

So, what was the evil from the well? I deliberately undefined the ‘evil’ to maintain some suspense throughout the story. Was it a primal, ancient force… neither fully demon nor beast, but something that exists in the liminal space between? It’s tied to the land, the superstitions, the Ozarks’ deep caves and rivers, like Bigfoot. The evil or fear feeds on blood and despair, amplified by Johnson’s murders. It’s not just “evil” in a moral sense; it’s a predatory hunger, possibly a forgotten entity or a manifestation of the hills’ buried wrath, awakened by human violence. Its promises of power suggest a sentient malice, but its physicality… claws, speed, maybe the ichor seeping from a wound inflicted on the earth. Ground in visceral reality. I think it’s a blend of folklore and cosmic horror, like a Native American spirit twisted by industrial poison (PCB) and human sin, or a Lovecraftian remnant bound to the earth’s veins. It is less a “thing” than a force… a hunger given form, using the well as a conduit. Leon sees it as an old, nameless power; Reba Jean clings to a rational explanation, while Caleb feels its seductive pull. He fights it like a soldier, not caring what it is.

So, I hope you enjoyed the story.

Newt

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