The Thing in the Well (standard:horror, 1042 words)
Author: kendall thomas	Added: Jan 04 2001	Views/Reads: 4090/2378	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Story based on H. P. Lovecraft's "The Colour out of Space".

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

As there was no longer a passable road to the long since abandoned farm,
I had to leave my car several miles back and climb slowly down the 
ridge, where my uncle and I had hunted, through a tangled mass of brush 
and waist-high weeds.  As I reached the hollowed-eyed, weather-beaten 
house, night seemed to come upon me with an ominous swiftness.  Above 
me cold, sidereal space appeared to loom preternaturally close.  
Nothing grew around me from that dead, gray soil.  Not a sound from any 
natural thing was evident.  I was totally alone among the creeping 
shadows and pale, moted moonbeams.  Soon, I began to feel a sense of 
foreboding. 

After making camp near the house and the stone well, I slowly became
aware of a faint shimmering emanating from the barren trees and a 
subtle motion, even though there wasn’t the slightest breeze.  And my 
sense of unease increased. 

I know now that I should have never gone there.  I should have put more
stock in my uncle’s ramblings.  But it is too late for regrets now. 

Far into that black night, I saw sights and heard sounds no living soul
should ever see or hear. 

While I lay curled in my sleeping bag, I suddenly detected an ominous
splash resonate from the depths of the well, and something bloated and 
glowing slid sluggishly up over the coping and began a gruesome, 
slithering, jerking motion toward me. 

How long I ran blindly through the countryside, tearing my clothes and
ripping my flesh on briers and ragged tree trunks, I couldn’t say.  I 
was informed that when they found me I was babbling incoherently about 
an unearthly color ... about something boring its way into my brain. 

I don’t know. 

Some of it I don’t remember.  And much I wish I did not remember.  An
absolute sense of terror resides within me.  I fear, most of all, even 
a glance into a mirror.  For when I do look into one, I sense something 
hideous leering back at me, and I want to cry out.  Scream.  But I 
cannot. 

~Will 


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