What Do You Do When the Wishing Well Eats Your Sister?

“What the hell was that?” Isabel screamed, the great claws of the well long lost along with their youngest sister. The world had spun from last they’d seen, sick and hungerless as high noon marched on.

To their vision, between the two it was madness, Claudia playing like children do before one running joke ended in horror.

They held fast together, still reeling from that harrowing moment, neither could move for loss of balance, the terror of it.

“Get off,” Isabel moved from Alina’s tight hold. No matter how high the sun was now, Izzy wasn’t having it, she pulled herself up holding the tree to keep steady. She could barely breathe.

She knew full well the unseemliness of her gate but worry still made her think it, follow her, go fast be quick. Jump into the wishing well and prove this penny priced life.

“Stop, you’ll only break your neck.” Alina pulls on her arm and weight. That little size difference was all it took.

Whatever rush she’d had left her and she was soon trapped, a wretched thing, gagging on her shame. She is alive and her sister isn’t.

She knows it to spite every good thought she could’ve had in her head. Alina saved her life, and whatever they decided to call that great horrible thing, Claudia was gone.

And no matter how hard she tries to catch it, her breath is gone also. “Why me?” she asks, tight and scared, and sad, like her sister had even had a chance to choose between the two. The youngest and the closest.

Alina rubs her back in small circles, they face away from the well that chose that day to ruin their lives.

What were they doing, three girls wandering a forest in the morning light?

“Alina, Claudia! Izzy!” she hears their cousin, he isn’t very far from them. He won’t be expecting to see them like this. Without Claudia, still and crying.

“Alex,” she hears Alina, calling to him, they were late back. Of course he was looking for them.

“what’re you doing so far out?”, he asks like it had been, they weren’t that far away. She tries to hear the forest but it’s stagnant and broad, and horrible. “Where’s Claudia?”

“Where’s Claudia?” he repeats when Alina doesn’t answer, too busy holding Isabel together to even think of Alex, and his confusion.

It simply doesn’t make sense when Alina says, “She’s gone.”

“What do you mean?” he’s as terrified as they are, at the moment it was said.

“She’s gone.” she repeats, Alina is as shell shocked as Izzy.

“What-”

Isabel interrupts, “She’s gone in the Well!” 

“She fell-”

“She was pulled in! There was something in it that pulled her in. She’s gone.” She says finally, she knows that there’s nothing more. The thing that grabbed her didn’t need teeth to eat her up.

“I should go get mom. Wait here.” he looks back toward home, where aunt Gillian would be waiting. For all four of them. He ran off, the shift as quick as any rodent that neglected the trees around the wellspring. They should’ve-

“Why didn’t I see it? Why couldn’t I see it?!”, she screams, as perceptive as anything and the oddity of her path hadn’t tipped her off. She was a fool. 

“Why didn’t you?”, she asks in anger, they were stuck left in the forest where they’d lost everything. What could they even do?

Alina doesn’t respond, as they wait for Alex and their Aunt.

They can’t even look at each other, at least Isabel can’t. They didn’t realize where they were, and Claudia was paying for it. They’d been meant to know, but for everything their parents taught them, they lost her. She’d seen the claws of the hand that fed itself, the great roots of a horrible place, crawling with the eyes of its hollow and all she could do was scream. What kind of sister was she?

“I don’t know-” 

“I don’t know why I couldn’t see it,” she finally hears her sister. Her only sister. Isabel can’t even look at what she’d said, what she thought. 

Alina doesn’t have a voice to continue, but it hardly matters, as the hour wanes and Aunt Gillian appears.

At first she just stands there, like the gravity had taken the power from her bones, she’d near raised Claudia and if nothing else she had just as much right to rage at them for what happened.

But she didn’t, instead she’d brought out a thermos to share, and a wary gaze toward the well. They drank while she collected herself.

When she finally did she spoke calmly, “Alex described what he saw, and what you said, I need you to be honest. What did it look like?”

“Hands, Claws. It was bigger than her.” was how Alina described it. Izzy could say nothing, she’d only seen a flash of it. And Alina had it as close as she could remember.

“How did it move?”

“Like a snake, it was a little stiff too.”

“Did it seem to know where it was going?”

“Somewhat,” Alina kept a keen eye on the well, “what was it? Aunt Gillian, what could it be?”

“I don’t know dear,” Aunt Gillian certainly had a feeling but didn’t seem sure yet, “You’ve witnessed something horrible. You both have.”

“Why’re you so sure it happened?” Isabel thought out loud. It wasn’t something she could forget, the nipped off struggle.

“I’m not completely ignorant Izzy, there’s always been more to the world than most could realize,” she answered, “and beyond that, it doesn’t surprise me that something like you’ve been describing could be lurking inside an abandoned well.”

Alina saw it first, she’s sure of that.

“I’m still not sure of what I saw.” and with that, Aunt Gillian led her from the tree she was leaned on to the well she’d been staring daggers at.

Her Aunt touched the well with no fear of what had happened there, “do you see blood? Do you see visera? Do you even smell anything strange?”

“No, not really.”

“What do you think that means?” she heard her Aunt, she could only look in, pleading with the foul water in the deep pit beneath.

When she finally looks up she sees Alina, right across from her, carrying the faith of fools. They would find little Claudia, this is what her only sister decided.

And still Isabel knew, she was gone.

What is it to find oneself, and be lacking?