The Well

Anyone living in the town of New Westwood could tell you several tales of the strange happenings there. Most of them are untrue of course, only meant to draw in tourists in a desperate attempt to revive the once vibrant tourism industry. You see, Westwood used to be a bustling town full of exiting things to do for locals and tourists alike. Nowadays, it is little more than a husk of its former self. All thanks to the one story that happened to be true.

The tale of the Well

One day, give or take 10 years ago, 3 children were playing in the forest on the outskirts of town when they found it. A lone Well in the middle of a clearing. The kids immediately did exactly what you would think kids would do in this situation and began to throw rocks into it. Curiously, they all noted that there was no sound when you would expect the rock to have hit the bottom of the Well. Just silence.

The children eventually went home and told their parents, one of whom happened to be a sitting member of the town council. When that parent reported back to the rest of the council, they were very intrigued. All construction of groundwater wells had to be approved by the Westwood Water Board, and this well had not a single record to its name. No groundwater extraction permits, no requests to construct, not even a vague mention at a board meeting.

The Water Board send over a demolitions team to remove the Well, as they would normally do with any unlicensed construction project. The demolition was expected to be finished by the afternoon, but when nobody working on the demolition reported back to the board by midnight, the police were sent over to make sure things were proceeding smoothly.

When the cops arrived, they found a panicking construction team, who had somehow managed to completely total their bulldozer. When asked what in gods name was happening, the foreman of the demolitions team stated that nothing they could do would have any effect on the Well. The bulldozer was destroyed in a high-speed collision after the driver attempted to run the well down. The team at this point gave up and left the well standing.

The Water Board sent more demolition teams, all of them failing to destroy the well. After 3 months of trying, the Board gave up, and allowed the Well to remain under the condition that nobody would use it as their source of water. This arrangement worked well, and all was calm.

Until things started coming out of it.

It started small. Terrence, the owner of the land that the well sat on, was walking around his property when he was suddenly hit in the head by a small stone. He at first thought it was a band of hooligans playing a prank, until happened to look over in the direction of the Well at the perfect time, and saw another pebble launched out of its opening. Terrence was terrified! Someone had obviously fell into the well and was calling for help! 911 was called and the fire department quickly dispatched a truck to retrieve the poor soul. They lowered a fireman down the Well, but they realized something was wrong when they unspooled every inch of the 500 feet of rope and still could not find the bottom. In fact, the fireman who was sent down the Well reported that there didn’t seem to even be a bottom! The fireman was brought back up, and the findings were reported to the police and the town council.

More things kept coming out of the well. Rocks, twigs, leaves, even a broken cell phone! Scientists were brought in to witness this strange phenomenon, and none had an explanation. There were arguments on what the well actually was. A portal between worlds? An anti-gravity anomaly? Just some coincidence nobody could explain? Eventually, an idea was presented: why don’t we try sending a camera down the Well? This idea was met with universal praise, and the go-ahead was given. At this point, the Well had become something of a legend, and the whole town gathered around their TVs as the live feed from the camera was being broadcast on the public news station. Then the moment came, the camera was dropped, and for a time there was only darkness.

Then came footage of the other side.

A land with a deep blue, green grass, and a yellow sun came into view. For the brief moment that the camera was in the air, forests of odd-looking trees were visible in all directions. The landscape was completely alien. The camera landed on the ground and remained there for about a minute before we found out who lived on the other side.

A figure slowly walked into view. Wearing a black cloak, the figure seemed to be wearing a mask which was connected to several tubes leading to its back. It walked up to the camera, picked it up, and then set it back down. A scratching noise was heard before the camera was picked back up and tossed back down the Well. 5 minutes later, the camera reappeared on our side of the well, and it seemed the creature from the other side had sent us a present. A note was attached to the camera, written in perfect English. On it was a chilling message.

“PREPARE”

Those who were nearby the Well barely had any time to ponder the note’s meaning before a fireball erupted out of the well. The fire spread rapidly, consuming the surrounding forest, and most of the scientists who were present for the camera experiment. The whole town watched in horror as the raging inferno destroyed the local forest.

But that was only the beginning.

After the fire subsided, 3 creatures very similar to the one caught on camera emerged from the well, and they did not seem intent on diplomacy. 56 people died at the hands of these invaders and their strange weaponry. The guns they wielded could vaporize any matter, their swords were so sharp they cut through even tungsten.

We stood no chance.

We did not know what these things were, and we did not know why they were here, only that there were many, and they all came from the other side. Whole legions of alien soldiers came out of the Well, and with them they brought technology which we had never even seen. Aircraft armed with bombs stronger than even our most powerful nuclear weapons, teleportation devices which could transport thousands of beings in the blink of an eye, lasers that turned entire beaches into glass. We were powerless to fight against them.

For a brief moment the whole world was united against this threat. Issued like racism, xenophobia, border disputes, etc., all vanished overnight as humanity combined their strength to push back the invasion. It was a futile effort. Countries fell left and right to this insurmountable force. But when it seemed like all hope was lost, it was revealed that the invaders had made a critical mistake.

They launched their attack during flu season.

While the last remnants of the Chinese army held their ground in Beijing, surrounded on all sides, they witnessed a strange sight, one never before seen throughout the whole invasion. The invaders were retreating. Keep in mind, the army stood no chance, the invaders were mere moments away from crushing them, but still the ran from the battlefield. When the soldiers triumphantly charged after them, they also noticed something strange.

The invaders were all dropping dead. No bullets were fired, no blows were exchanged, but the invaders fell all the same. While they were fleeing, the Chinese forces giving chase took the time to recover some of the bodies for examination. Autopsies preformed discovered completely alien biology, save for one thing.

Every single dead invader was suffering from a severe infection of the common flu. The sickness spread rapidly in their cells, destroying them one by one until their bodies couldn’t keep up. From the invader’s corpses the Chinese army also recovered several communications devices, which were then used to tap into the invaders radio network. It was complete pandemonium. All of their communications were in perfect English, and all spoke of a deadly “blood plague” sweeping their forces. The invaders made a full retreat out of the Asian continent, and when all was safe, the Chinese army informed the rest of the world what they had found.

Soon, military forces all over the world began utilizing the flu as a weapon. And it was effective. Very effective. The invaders were pushed all the way back to where they started.

The Well.

The last forces of the invaders put up a valiant fight, but soon succumbed to the flu-based bio weapons being launched at them. And just like that, humanity had won. But our world had lost. The invaders had decimated our home world, the once vibrant green deserts had been reduced to seas of glass. The fields of red grass burnt and destroyed. The oceans dried up. All that remained was a wasteland, watched over by the black star our now dead planet orbited around. We had nowhere to go. Nowhere to rebuild.

Until we remembered the Well.

Where once we had been the conquered, we became the conquerors. We launched our own invasion into the invader’s world. Our bio weapons decimated their population while leaving their ecosystem intact, and soon they were all extinct. Now humanity had a chance. A place to rebuild. 100 thousand humans, the last of our species, dove into the well and came out on the other side, the first colonists of an alien world.

The colonists named this new planet “Earth” for its beautiful green environments, wondrous blue skies, and the bright yellow sun watching over it. They named the first settlement on this new world “New Westwood”, in honor of those who died when the invaders arrived in Westwood. Slowly, humanity established its presence. We rebuilt. We survived.

But some were upset with the methods which we used to acquire this newfound home. They believed our genocide of the invaders was unjust, and perhaps it was, but we had no other choice. Our world was dead, theirs wasn’t. We had to take it to survive. But this view that we were in the wrong for what we had done spread like wildfire, and most agreed. So, it was decided that for the future, our history would… leave out our atrocities. We would spare our future generations of living with our sins.

Of course, this coverup was difficult, but at the time I’m writing this, it is almost nearly complete. Our children will know nothing of our home world, and nothing of our horrific crimes. Some say it is better this way. I say they are wrong. We must remember what we have done, or we will have learned nothing. We must keep the memory of those we lost in the invasion alive. Which is why I am writing this right now. Hopefully it will be recovered in the future, and humanity will be forced to reconcile with the sins of their past.

After I hide these papers, I’m going to jump back into the Well. The new world governments tried to destroy it but seems like this side’s Well is just as indestructible as the one in Westwood. Someone must remain behind in our old world. Someone has to remember.

We can’t forget out past, or we will not know how to proceed in our future.

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On 10/20/2021, this document was recovered from within an unexplored section of the ruins of Machu-Pichu. Carbon dating processes have placed the age of the document at around 8 thousand years old. Its validity is still under question.