Soft, heavenly music drifted up from the ceiling above. 

 

That music.  Coming out of the ceiling….of the well.  From the open windows of the big white house he saw before he fell in.   It was driving him crazy.  A sonata by Mozart, perhaps?   He felt along the walls of the well.  The world became dark down here when he looked straight ahead. 

  

He could not remember a time he ever thought that he was going to die, until now. 

 

Several different emotions ripped through him.  Fear.  Agitation.  Hate.  Sorrow. 

  

Mainly loneliness. 

  

Using his sleeve, Glen Howard wiped drool from the corners of his mouth.  His throat felt like it was closing in on him.  Shaky hands felt heavy as he covered his face.  The armpits of his shirt had darkened.  Sweat beaded upon his brow. 

My mind is playing tricks on me, he thought.  

He swallowing hard, screamed, and looked up the well for the face of his captor.  

  

 

Lizzie paid no attention to the scream coming up from the well.  She walked to the road and took down the sign.   She took it to the barn and retrieved a heavy chain she also kept in there.   

“Tonight will be the night,” Lizzie whispered to no one.  “A blessing.” 

She took the heavy chain and threw it in the back of the truck.  Nightfall was coming, and she needed to hurry.  Lizzie did not tire easily, but her thirst needed quenching.  Walking to the back of the house, she turned the water on.  She grabbed the hose and took a long drink.  She lifted it over her head and let the waterfall on her face and down her back.      

  

The scream came up from the well again.  Lizzie threw the hose down and walked to the edge.   

 

She looked down inside the hole.

 

“If you make me mad, it will be worse for you,” she said.

 

She wiped her dirt-caked hands on the front of her polka dot blouse and overalls.   

 

Satisfied with the whimpers coming up from the well, Lizzie got in the truck and started the ignition.  As her truck gained distance from the well, the screams began again, unheard because she turned the knob of the classical music station louder. She needed items and headed for town.  Lizzie needed towels, bed sheets, and a new bedspread.  She needed a duster, dust polish, some cleaning items, rope, duct tape, and some hooks for the chain in the truck.  

  

Strong enough to lift a human.   

 

 

She parked in the supermarket driveway and got out.  Her appearance usually made the townspeople uneasy.  Now was no an exception.   Most people did not bother Lizzie.  She was a hulking figure of a woman, and her scowl did little for attention.  They would whisper amongst themselves that she was a little peculiar, but no one dared say it aloud.   People moved out of her way as she walked down the aisles.  One woman became so nervous upon seeing her that she dropped an air freshener can she was holding.  The can hit the floor making a metallic sound.  Lizzie walked right past her.

   

Purchasing the items that she needed, she headed back to her home. 

  

Lizzie backed the truck up as close as she could get it to the well.  She looked down it and was satisfied to see everything was okay. 

 

“You’re still alive,” she said, walking away.  “Good.”

  

She went into the house and cleaned   Lizzie burned the sheets, covers, and bedspread from the bedroom she had been sleeping in, replacing them with new ones.  Her house out in the dead of nowhere had three bedrooms.  Lizzie lived alone for the past decade.  No husband, no known family.  Very little was known about her.   Except that you could buy fruits and vegetables here.  

 

 

“I must prepare,” she whispered, as she cleaned.

 

 

Finishing, she walked out the front door.  The sky had gotten darker. 

  

Lizzie dragged the chain from the truck and attached the hooks, then the chain to the truck.  With a face void of any feelings, she lowered the chain down into the well. 

 

She spoke down into it again. 

 

“If you want to live, grab the chain.  If you don’t grab it, you will die down there.”

 

She got in the truck and pulled forward at a slow pace, feeling the weight of the chain getting heavier.  Looking in her driver side mirror she watched the chain pull him up and over the mouth of the well.  Lizzie grabbed the two by four she kept in her truck from the seat.

 

She met Glen as he got to his feet with a crack to the head.  He tumbled forward, out cold…..   

 

************     

 

 

Disoriented, he awoke.  He felt numb.  Drugged.  He can’t speak because his mouth is taped shut.  He realized that his feet and hands are tied and he has been thrown over her shoulder and is being carried to the house. 

 

Glen’s mind raced with questions he asked himself.

 

“Why did he have to walk across that well?  Why didn’t he take notice of the branches and twigs that covered that hole? Why did he **** stop when he saw that sign?”   

 

Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Sold here, he remembered reading.   

 

His body felt weak, defenseless.  Glen had been down in that well over two days.  When he fell inside, twigs and branches battered him severely on the way down.  The hard fall into the water, he wondered if some of his bones were broken.  His ribs felt punctured, his legs felt uneven.     The water was only about five feet. 

 

Glen was scared, more than he could ever remember being in his life.     

 

What am I dealing with here, he thought. 

 

 

Raising his head, he saw two unmarked graves to his right.  He lets out a low moan and Lizzie stopped and turned in that direction. 

 

“Oh, you see my children. Not one survived childbirth.”

  

Lizzie swung the screen door open and entered the house. 

   

She walked down a long hall, headed for the bedroom at the very end.  His eyes tried to take in everything.  Glen noticed her kitchen smelled like rotten vegetation.  The counter and the sink were loaded with vegetables.  There was a table with two chairs.  One chair was turned over on its side; as if someone had been violently pushed or hit, and fallen to the floor.  Her foot stepped on a floorboard that creaked and bowed upward.  When he saw what was under there, that feeling of knowing he was going to die crept through him.  He knew that he was never going to see his family again.

   

Glen’s eyes locked on a human skull.    

As she moved forward, he counted each bedroom door…..one  

 

   

Looking in, he saw a skeleton lying on the bed.   It looked as if it had been there for years.  The head was missing. (The one in the floorboard? he thought).  The arms were still held in restraints to the bedpost.  The body had decomposed.  Dried blood was everywhere, giving the floor and the walls a maroon looking color.  A headstone was propped up between the headboard and the mattress.  He wondered how she came into possession of it.  Probably stole it from the cemetery he passed on his way up here a few miles down the road.  It leaned forward, and Glen could not read the words on it clearly.  Old cobwebs that rested on top of it blew back and forth from a light breeze of air.  Surrounding the body was all types of old, rotten vegetables.  Some were half eaten, fresh looking; some were still whole and mutating a growing mold.  The air coming out of the room smelled old and dry.  Big, hungry rats inhabited the room.  Watching them eat he felt a nauseous lump growing in his throat. 

 

 

 

Two… 

 

 

 

The second bedroom was full of rotten vegetables.  The bed was bare except for a mattress.  He noticed a plate of vegetables on the floor with a glass of water beside it.  A television set played in the background.  Lizzie was sleeping in this room until she found someone to share the third one with to carry out her plan of being a mother. 

 

Three… 

 

 

 

Is clean, spotless.  The bed has brand new sheets, bedspreads.  He notices that this room has fresh cut fruits and vegetables all over the bed, the floor.  Lettuce, tomatoes, apples, grapes, and all types of green leaves were everywhere.  There is incense burning in every corner.  The bedposts have restraints at the headboard and footboard. 

 

“I will not stop until I conceive a child that will live”, she says as she throws him on the bed. 

   

Glen was too weak to fight back.  He watched helplessly as she put his arms and legs in the restraints. 

 

Lizzie sat on the edge of the bed with a handful of grapes.  Her hands are caked with filth.  She leaned toward him, putting the grapes to his horrified mouth as she pulled the tape away.   

 

 

“You are famished, she says.  You must eat.  You will need your strength, to be the harvester….

 

 

….of my living child....

  

Glen uttered the name of the Lord repeatedly. 

 

Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God…OH GODDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!

 

 

Lizzie paid no attention to his hysteria.  She leaned over and held the grapes up to his mouth.

 

....and if you can give me a child that will live, I will give you a peaceful death.” 

 

Lizzie’s eyes drifted to the corner of the room. 

 

“Because to seek and find….”she trailed off. 

 

Glen followed her eyes and saw the headstone in the corner.  She was reading something inscribed on it.  He screamed out the name of the Lord even louder now in terrified spurts.  It was meant for him. 

 

OH GOD, NO! NO! NO!  GOD NOOOO!!!!

 

'To seek and find, is to be lost forever', was the message etched upon the stone.