A twenty-five foot hole in the cellar of Winifred Holstrom’s Massachusetts home, which once held groundwater for her late husband’s grandparents, now holds twenty-six year old Marcus, last name long forgotten. The widow Holstrom has only nature to blame for the incipient loneliness she feels and the residual depravity the belated Reverend Richard Holstrom left her. Along with minor debt and a few heirlooms, Marcus is the last remnant of the love that once radiated from two septuagenarians. At seventy-eight, she is slow and tired, recently recovering from near suicide by anorexia following Richard’s quick and futile battle with stomach cancer four years earlier. He was taken swiftly in the night. She remembers well the way the curtains billowed when she was awoken by intuition and soulful connection, her husband’s hand still intertwined with hers, then cold and pale. He was taken for cremation the next day by the local church in which the Reverend Holstrom gave more than forty years in faithful service. The cellar door was locked that day.
Winifred unlocked the door five days later, thirty-six hours after the wailing had ended. Richard had done the feeding every day or so, usually a can of beans opened into a bucket and lowered with a pulley. She hobbled over to the drawer that housed the ancient can-opener – she refused to use a cane now, if she fell and broke a hip, so be it – and reflected on the day Richard brought the seven year old Marcus to their doorstep. They had performed the dance many times, and Winifred knew her role by heart. The boy was catching frogs in Lake Chinquotic, less than half a mile from their house, and the well-known small town preacher invited him for a glass of iced tea and a respite from the summer heat. Winifred would come bearing smiles, sunshine and tea, adrenaline pulsing thickly.
Winifred yelped as she stubbed her toe on one of many splintering floorboards.
“Damn floor” she cursed, the heavy drawl of generations of New England breeding ingrained. “How many times did I tell you, Richard? This place has been goin’ to the junkhouse for thirty years.”
She mumbled a few other obscenities and obscurities as she resumed bringing the bucket from behind the refrigerator to the countertop. The beans hit the bottom with a tinny ‘plump’, not at all anxious to lose their previous cylindrical shape. She hated feeding, always had. The ‘dirty work’ was always Richard’s domain, including removal of… leavings… and dealing with insubordination. Winifred shined in more emotional work.
She sighed as she opened the cellar door. It was never locked anymore, not since the weeks after Richard passed. There were well-wishers for a while, concerned citizens of the church boasting pies and salads, all of which moldered untouched, but her care for privacy was lost and defunct. The pull-switch light bulb needed to be changed, the soundproof insulation had fallen over a year ago, and she knows the rats and mites are encroaching.
The third stair broke under her weight. Rotting on its foundation, the mid-1800s house had been dying since the 1960s and hadn’t seen any improvement in six years. She landed hard on the fifth stair on the center of her right hip, the fragile bone shattering immediately. The pain was piercing, but she managed to stay conscious until her temple came in contact with the eighth stair and all went black.
Marcus woke from steadfast darkness to a gasp, a scream, a series of thuds, several erratic cracks, and a large thud above him. He looked toward the thin streams of light sliding between the loose boards of the well cover. Dust plumed as the beams shook and a small piece of broken stone tumbled down to strike him on his left foot. Nothing ran through his mind as he lowered his head and went back to sleep in his stereotypical fetal position.
A torrent of spinning stones and silhouetted stairs slowed as Winifred regained consciousness. Perplexed and light-headed, she planted one palm on the well’s lip and attempted to stand, but pain thrust her back down to the unkempt cellar floor. Always priding herself on being strong and self-reliant, she took three deep breaths and braced her back against the damp stone. Her left leg was twisted wildly above the knee and her right seemed fully detached at the purpling hip. With a strenuous and excruciating movement she flipped back the lid of the old artisanal well.
Marcus awoke with trained indifference at the sudden movement of air and light. A hand appeared over the circular hole in the darkness, accompanied by a disembodied, strained voice.
“Marcus! Oh sweetie, oh Marcus… honey? I… I’ve… it seems I’ve dropped your beans, Marcus”.
(No answer from below)
“Please sweetheart, won’t you just say something? Don’t you remember I love you?”
(No answer)
Winifred began to lose her cohesion. She felt the harbinger of tears irritate her eyes.
“I… I need help Marcus, I’ve broken my leg. And I think my hip, too… Marcus, do you hear me?”
(Nothing) She laboriously wrapped her hands around the rim of the well and pulled her head over the edge. Marcus was looking at her apathetically, with no sign of study in his worn face.
“Don’t you still love your Winnie, Marcus? You know how well I’ve taken care of you over the years… I still love my little Marty”, she forced a contented smile with the last words. His expression was unfaltering, the spuriousness of her love obvious even to him. She sighed.
“I’ll die here, Marcus… I need your help…” This broke his silence. For the first time in nearly two years, he spoke. For the first time in sixteen years, he yelled.
“I will never help you, my sweet Winnie. I will NEVER HELP YOU! You took me. You and that damn husband of yours! I… I forgot my parents’ names years ago…” He was crying now. Bellowing through tears of anger and anguish. The face above him had already dropped out of sight.
“I remember your name though, my sweet Winnie, oh Winnie, oh how you saved me from hell. I will never forget Winifred and the Devil. Do you hear me? NEVER!”
The bout of shouting exhausted him. He slumped back into sadness, tears flowing. The sound of sliding rope and a clanking bucket preceded the metal offender landing gently between his feet.
“…I tied the rope up here, Marcus. I… I’m sorry Marcus. Richard is gone. I… I’ve wanted to let you out, but… you’re all I have of my love.”
Marcus sat in contemplative silence staring at the rope that could mean freedom from nineteen years of purgatory. An hour passed. Winifred was unconscious again within twenty minutes. A blank Marcus ran the rope through his fingers, debating finalities.
Winifred awoke once more to a decelerating torrent. A shadow backed by the open cellar door fell on her face and chest.
“…Marcus? Marcus is that you? I’m so sorry Marcus…” The last words trailed into whispered nonsense. The figure stood unwaveringly in front of her as Winifred once again fell into oblivion. He kicked her gently until she came around.
“…Richard, I’ve told you so many damn times to fix the kitchen floorboards, I stubbed my toe again this mor-“
Marcus swung the dull hatchet he was holding in a steady downward arc with increasing ferocity, unyielding for two minutes. He made no sound when he dropped the axe unceremoniously and stared vacantly at his handiwork before turning to the stairs.
He walked through the cellar doorway for the second time in his life, knocking over a dust-covered lamp on a small nightstand and taking no notice. He worked his way through the cluttered living area to the bedroom, in search of a small ceramic container that sat upon the fireplace mantle.
Urn in hand, he descended the staircase to the cellar, carefully navigating around the broken step. Standing above the well in which he spent nineteen years, he brusquely tossed the vessel down the twenty-five foot drop, breaking it on the late widow’s mangled body, which lay distorted amid the humid permanent dusk of the well’s depths. He closed the cover without resent and exited the house for the first time.
It was raining outside. The road at the end of the driveway stretched west to east. Marcus ran west unthinkingly. After three miles and every bit of strength he had left, he sat in the mud on the edge of a large barley field. He cradled his head in his hands and let out a tortured cry. It was evening and the moon was breaking the tree line. He saw it once through his incomprehension and melancholy before his eyes closed for the final time. Thirty minutes later the body of what had been Marcus Tenorman ceased breathing and began to descend into the thickening August mud.
Submitted March 15, 2016 at 01:49PM by Doctor_Ham http://ift.tt/1QZG3kN shortstories
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