I hit my everything on the way down. My head bumps on stones. My legs scrape against bricks. My fingernails snag on rocks. I’m sure to die when I hit the ground if not before then. My breath has left my body. My mouth is wide open. My scream has no sound, though. There’s no air left for it. Just the whoosh of my body hurtling. The light from outside dims as I fall. The sky is covered in shadows. There’s a scrape as one of the shadows pulls the thick cover across the lip of the well. A loud click as they clamp it shut and even from here, the hammering of the nails.
I thought I’d be praying in my last moments of life. That I’d list my wrongdoings and beg for forgiveness. But I can’t think of one prayer that feels right. Not one saying that will save me except If I should die before I wake. If this is how I die, I hope it’s quick and painless. Without being Moved On there’s no telling where my soul will end up. My death won’t be in service to Curdle Creek. What a waste. I’ll be aimless, I just know it. Damned to wander for eternity.
I’m scared to die this way. Truth be told, the more I think on it, the more afraid I am to die at all. I just don’t want to. Not for a bountiful harvest. Not for a prosperous spring. Not to keep the town safe for another year. I just want to see my sweet girls and my dear boy. And I want to be alive when I do.
When I hit the ground it is unexpected. The air returns to my body and I’m gulping and gasping at the rush of it. My neck is bent at an ungodly angle. My body is sore but I’m not dead. At least. I get up, shake the soot and lime from my dress, brush off my shoes. The bottom of the well is dank. The walls are slimy, dripping with gunk. There are leaves and slugs and living things down here. I slip on them when I walk. Beneath my foot, one shoe is long gone, I slide on what’s left of folds of paper. There are mounds and mounds of them. The discarded. These must be the slips with the names of those who were nominated but not called. At least one of them is sure to have my name on it. They are stuck together by slime. I leave them. If my name is down here, I couldn’t see it anyway.
It’s still dark so I feel my way around. I light a match to see. I’m surrounded by bones, bones and more bones. Some are just skeletons, naked. Others still wear swaths of gingham dresses, patches of denim overalls, frays of cotton blouses. My hands are clammy. It’s cold. My teeth are chattering, click-clacking like footsteps. Something drips, plunk, plunking behind me. I hope it’s water. The match flickers and I stumble. My foot slips. I fall next to a little clump of nothing but bones. I catch myself before it starts. Swallow the wailing. I can hear Mother Opal. It’s the living that you have to watch out for. The dead ain’t nothing to be feared. I wonder if she’d feel that way now, what with her being one of them.
I don’t want to disturb whatever peace the dead have found. I pray that their final moments on this earth weren’t painful, though I suspect they were. I make piles of the bones. I can’t be sure but some of them are old. They could be the remains of the ancestors. There are no markers. There’s no way to be sure, but it feels like the grave of the absconded.