Dolores Claiborne

    He didn't holler, n I guess you know it as well's I do. He screamed like a rabbit with its foot caught in a slipwire. I turned around and seen a big hole in the middle of the cap. Joe's head was stickin out of it, and he was holdin onto one of those smashed boards with all his might. His hands were bleedin, and there was a little thread of blood runnin down his chin from the corner of his mouth. His eyes were the size of doorknobs.

    “Oh Christ, Dolores,” he says. “It's the old well. Help me out, quick, before I fall all the way

    I just stood there, and after a few seconds his eyes changed. I seen the understandin of what it had all been about come into em. I was never so scared as I was then, standin there on the far side of the wellcap n starin at him with that black sun hangin in the sky to the west of us. I had forgot my jeans, and he hadn't fallen right in like he was s'posed to. To me it seemed like everything had started goin wrong.

    “Oh,” he said. “Oh, you bitch. “ Then he started to claw n wriggle his way up.

    I told myself I had to run, but my legs wouldn't move. Where was there to run to, anyway, if he got out? One thing I found out on the day of the eclipse: if you live on an island and you try to kill someone, you better do a good job. If you don't, there's nowhere to run n nowhere to hide.

    I could hear his fingernails scratchin up splinters in that old board as he worked at pullin himself out, hand over hand. That sound is like what I saw when I looked up at the eclipse-somethin that's always been a lot closer to me than I ever wanted it to be. Sometimes I even hear it in my dreams, only in the dreams he gets out n comes after me again, and that ain't what really happened. What happened was the board he was clawin his way along all of a sudden snapped under his weight and he dropped. It happened so fast it was almost like he'd never been there in the first place; all at once there was nothin there but a saggy gray square of wood with a ragged black hole in the middle of it and fireflies zippin back n forth over it.

    He screamed again goin down. It echoed off the sides of the well. That was something else I hadn't figured on-him screamin when he fell. Then there was a thud and he stopped. Just flat stopped. The way a lamp stops shinin if someone yanks the plug outta the wall.

    I knelt on the ground n hugged my arms acrost my middle n waited to see if there was gonna be any more. Some time went by, I don't know how much or how long, but the last of the light went out of the day. The total eclipse had come and it was dark as night. There still wasn't any sound comm from the well, but there was a little breeze comm from it toward me, and I realized I could smell it-you know that smell you sometimes get in water that comes from shallow wells? It's a coppery smell, dank n not very nice. I could smell that, and it made me shiver.

    I saw my slip was hangin down almost on the top of my left shoe. It was all torn n full of rips. I reached under the neck of my dress on the right side n popped that strap, too. Then I pulled the slip down n off. I was bundlin it into a ball beside me n tryin to see the best way to get around the wellcap when all at once I thought of that little girl again, the one I told you about before, and all at once I saw her just as clear as day. She was down on her knees, too, lookin under her bed, and I thought, “She's so unhappy, and she smells that same smell. The one that's like pennies and oysters. Only it didn't come from the well; it has something to do with her father.”

    And then, all at once, it was like she looked around at me, Andy… I think she saw me. And when she did, I understood why she was so unhappy: her father'd been at her somehow, and she was tryin to cover it up. On top of that, she'd all at once realized someone was lookin at her, that a woman God knows how many miles away but still in the path of the eclipse-a woman who'd just killed her husband-was lookin at her.

    She spoke to me, although I didn't hear her voice with my ears; it came from deep in the middle of my head. “Who are you?” she ast.

    I don't know if I would have answered her or not, but before I even had a chance to, a long, waverin scream came out of the well: “Duh-lorrrrr-issss.

    It felt like my blood froze solid inside me, and I know my heart stopped for a second, because when it started again, it had to catch up with three or four beats all crammed together. I'd picked the slip up, but my fingers relaxed when I heard that scream and it fell out of my hand n caught on one of those blackberry bushes.