The Mysterious Well

Winter in Alabama somewhere.

“C’mon Anna, it’s not safe!” Lana whined, pulling her thin coat tighter around her bony shoulders. The winter wind whipped as she stood on the back porch of her family's home, begging her twin sister to come inside.

Winter had been especially hard for the Greenleaf family this year. They had spent the whole year working hard in their family's fruit orchard. Harvesting, seeding, and planting all year until they had sold every last piece of fruit. It was backbreaking work for the twins, but their mother assured them that all their hard work would pay off when they had new coats to wear and the holes in their boots would get patched up. Their mother had even promised them a feast for Christmas dinner this year.

But the problems came when they discovered that their father had gambled nearly all their money away, leaving their mother and the twins, Anna and Lana, without much else left to spare. There would be no new coats and no Christmas feast this year.

But Anna was running around in the backyard without a care in the world, feeling the fresh winter snow fall on her cheery, pink face. She could barely feel the cold snow seeping through her thin boots.

“You’ll catch your death of cold!” Lana whimpered from the safety of the porch.

“Go on inside then if you’re so cold!” Anna laughed, spinning around and trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue. The snow was crisp and cold and sent shivers down her spine as she tried to catch it in her hands.

“You’re such a pain sometimes,” Lana said, stomping stubbornly through the deep snow towards her sister. They might have been twins, but Lana and Anna couldn’t have been more different. Anna was always considered the family beauty. With golden curls and green eyes like the evergreen trees, Anna was their mother’s darling. Lana more favored their father in looks, with pin straight blonde hair and crystal blue eyes.

“C’mon Lana, bet you can’t keep up!” Anna teased, heading towards the thick tree line that bordered their family’s property.

Lana hated the cold; she was frozen all the way to the tips of her toes. But the only thing she hated more than being cold was letting her twin sister have all the fun.

“Anna, get back here!” Lana called. "We're not supposed to go that far!"

“Try and keep up, little sis!” Anna teased some more.

“You’re only older by two minutes!” Lana said, angrily stamping her feet in the snow and balling her fists. She hated being called the little sister, and Anna knew it.

Anna had reached the edge of the forest. Bare, brittle trees stretched out before her, their limbs long since void of leaves. There was also a lot of perfect, untrodden snow. It was too tempting to resist. Anna couldn’t help herself and ran right into it.

“Annaaaa!” Lana called. “We’re not allowed to go in there! It’s not safe!”

But Anna was walking farther and farther away. Lana had no choice but to hike up her dress to her knees and march into the forest after her headstrong sister. The cold, deep snow numbed her feet.

“Try and catch me Lana! Bet you can’t!” Anna teased again, darting between trees like a pretty, golden snow hare. Her blue dress was a stark contrast against the fresh white snow underneath.

"Anna! Cut it out, I'm freezing!" Lana said.

The girls ventured deeper and deeper into the woods until they had lost all sight of their home behind them.

Lana looked around at the bare trees that all looked the same and the forest that stretched out all around her and she tried not to panic. “I think we should go back…” she said.

But Anna was not listening. She had found something very interesting hidden beneath dead leaves and piles of sticks, half buried in the snow. It was a ring of stones, about five feet in diameter.

“What do you think it is?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know,” Lana said through chattering teeth. “But can we please turn around and go home now? I can’t feel my feet!”

“Where’s you’re sense of adventure, Lana?” Anna said, brushing away snow and unburying more and more of the structure. “Don’t you want to know what this is? Aren’t you curious?”

Lana stayed silent this time as Anna revealed what they quickly determined to be an old well.

“Great. It’s just an old well! Can we go home now?” Lana whined some more.

“Wait, it’s not just a well.” Anna said. “Look at it. Don’t those look like stairs to you?”

She was right. There were unmistakable stone steps carved into the inside of the well, descending down into the earth.

Lana read her sister’s excited expression. It was the face she always made when she was thinking of a brilliant idea. “No. No, no, absolutely not! I’ll tell mother on you, you’re crazy! You’ll fall and break your neck!” Lana said.

“I just want to see where it goes,” Anna said, testing her weight carefully on the first step.

“Anna, you stop that!” Lana said.

Anna descended one, two, three steps down into the well. In the years to come, when she would think back on this day, she would wonder what it was that was pulling her to the bottom of the well. Was it a voice? A sound? Something was compelling her to walk deeper and deeper down into the well until the light of the entrance above her was no bigger than the palm her hand. Anna could see Lana's worried face peering down at her over the edge of the well.

Lana had to make a choice. She could run all the way back to the house and get their mother, she could try (probably unsuccessfully) to lure Anna back up to safety, or she could summon up some courage and go after her. The braver twin stepped carefully down into the well.