My grandparents always had a rule: if someone falls down the old well, don't pull them out. (PART 2)

I locked the door. As I went up the stairs, the knocking continued. I felt like I was dreaming.

I reached the top of the stairs and became aware of two facts. One, the knocking had stopped abruptly. Two, my grandparents had been asleep for an awfully long time.

The hallway was fully dark now. I crossed it in a heartbeat, gently pushing open the door to the bedroom. Their room was opposed to mine, and their window led to the other side of the hill. I approached the bed slowly.

"Grandpa? Hey. Hey." I whispered. I was shaking, maybe from the cold, or the tension. Some clock was ticking into my ears and it was driving me crazy. "Grandpa, wake up. Wake the fuck up now." I grabbed his shoulders and turned him to me.

His eyes shot wide open with a gasp. "What? Jesus, Jesus Christ, Ilya. You scared me, you..."

"Someone got out of the well." Tick, tock. Ticktockticktockticktock-

"What do you mean? You got them out?" He gripped my arm with his bony fingers, his face frozen in shock and disbelief. "Ilya, I told you never to-"

"It wasn't me! Some, some tourist was walking by... and the guy is at our door now. Don't worry, I didn't let him in."

I was so cold. Tick tock.

My grandpa's eyes narrowed. He frowned and shook his head in defeat. "Ilya, he doesn't need your fucking permission to come in. He can open a window and make himself at home." It was the first time I'd heard him curse.

"What clock is that? It's so loud-"

We both stopped, listening to the ticking. It was almost like a bomb. My grandpa shook my grandma wide awake. "Someone got out. Willa, someone got out-"

The ticking was inconsistent. What the fuck?

The more I listened, the more it turned into... slapping? Like wet footsteps across wood. The wet slapping of bare feet on the hardwood floor. Yeah, it wasn't ticking. Just someone walking very fast and pacing around the room. Downstairs.

I was so cold.

"I think he got in."

Grandpa shot me a disgusted look, as if I had just stated the obvious. "He opened a window. Or the back door. This is why it's so cold."

I glanced out his bedroom window. The meadow was silent and desolate - not a soul in sight. No one to help.

That fucking pacing went on downstairs, footsteps awfully fast. It was unbelievably strange - he just broke in to pace around the room? Without trying to talk to us?

My grandma motioned to us to follow her. "Grab your gun, Ivan. We need to-"

"Leave," I interrupted. "We're not dealing with that."

Grandpa wiped his face with his hand. "Ilya, we need to kill it or trap it. We need to make sure it doesn't go back to the well to get the others out."

"What, like Dina? She's dead."

"She's not dead." He said it without looking at me. I suddenly got irrationally angry at his lack of communication. If he'd just told me more, I wouldn't be so clueless.

"Did you talk to it?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Okay." He kept opening his mouth to speak, but he had no plan. I felt sorry for him and saw him as he was - an old man facing the unthinkable, scared and restless. I looked at his little, wrinkled face and his trembling hands.

"Grandpa. Listen. You and Grandma lock yourselves here and give me the gun. I'll trap it in the basement. I'll do it. You tell me if there's anything I need to know. If there's anything you left out, now's the time. I'll go downstairs to take care of it."

His eyes tamed down, but he shook his head. "I'm going. You stay here."

"Bullshit. I'm stronger than you and faster. I just need to know what to do. We're losing time."

I was holding the bedroom door shut with one hand, ready to open it and lock it behind me. "I'm not letting you leave."

"Ilya," Grandma began, "we didn't want to scare you. There was no way for us to leave or put a fence around it or fill it up. We, uh... we'd promised not to. We had to stay here. Keep it under control. Those stupid tourists..."

"Your mother is down there." Grandpa blurted out, looking straight through me. "Quit with the keeping it under control bullshit, Willa. Your mother fell down there. A while ago. Your father wanted to get her out. We wouldn't let him. We let our own child starve."

"That wasn't our child anymore, Ivan."

I had never seen them so solemn, so cold. It was as if they were denying themselves any ounce of emotion.

I ran a finger across the barrel of the gun. "You said she left us."

"In a way, she did. That stupid well is a cursed thing. It... it tricks you. It plays with you, shows you things... t-traps you there, makes you think you're looking downhill when you're actually standing on it's rim, r-ready to jump, to jump..."

My grandma had never stuttered so hard before. "We knew about it. The whole village did. I was a y-young girl when my sister tripped and fell, and I didn't tell my parents... I was afraid they'd punish me, so I helped her c-climb out, and never told a soul... and, and, God... Holy Mother of Jesus..." Her lips let out a wail, and she took her head in her hands, her eyes shut. "She came home, my sister, my baby sister... and she was soaking wet and purple... and I went to bed... and I woke up... and, and..."

The ticking continued all around the ground floor.

"... that night, she ate mommy and daddy."

I couldn't believe this was happening.

"And I put a bullet through my baby sister's head."

My grandpa was holding her tight and kissing her temple. "It's okay, Willie, I'm here. Ilya, they don't come back the same. That well is a pit to God knows where. Their souls change. I talked to your mother after she fell. After they got her. I talked to her for years and years, until her voice changed completely. I couldn't cover it up. I needed to still talk to her. I even talked to her yesterday. Told her how you're all grown up." He smiled. "She didn't care, of course. Nothing's left of her anymore. It's just a pit of hungry abominations, who try to trick you. They're dead the minute they hit the ground."

This whole conversation happened in the span of a few minutes: hushed voices, eyes darting from the window to the door, sweaty, trembling hands. I guess that's why I kept nodding without processing, like a drunkard who's wife is telling him she's leaving. I motioned dismissively and turned the knob. "Before I go... do I just shoot him?"

"Yes. Don't let him talk. No matter what he says, don't listen. Don't let him go back to the well."

Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay...

The ticking had stopped. As I opened the door, the sinister silence waited for me, mocking my fear. I darted to my bedroom window and looked outside, to the well.

I saw an abandoned bike, highlighted by the moonlight, and someone laying face down next to it. Yeah, the tourist called a towing company. Was it before or after you pulled his brains out? I thought.

The silence that used to be so calming was now my enemy. I slowly put one foot back, my heel bumping softly into the radiator.

The body by the bike didn’t move.

For a moment, just one cowardly, desperate moment, I thought I’d misunderstood everything. That the pacing, the knocking, the cold had all been panic looking for a shape. That the thing downstairs had already left. That the man outside was just a man who tripped and broke his neck and that this whole night would rot quietly inside me forever.

Then something downstairs inhaled.

The floorboard beneath me creaked.

The sound answered immediately - wet, rapid, delighted footsteps redirecting toward the stairs.

I didn’t think anymore - I moved - my hands were numb, clumsy - turned and ran - the steps were wrong beneath my feet - too loud - the gun felt unreal in my hands - a prop borrowed from someone else’s life - halfway down, I heard it speak -

“Ilya.”

My stomach dropped so hard I nearly fell. I fired, then heard a thud. As if he'd hit the ground with his knees. The wet footsteps resumed.

I reached the bottom of the stairs and swung the gun up with both hands, heart slamming against my ribs like it wanted out. The living room was empty.

The front door stood open.

Cold poured in.

No.

I ran out, gasping. If he was going back to the well - fuck no, fuck no, fuck no...

I missed my mother, but I didn't want to see her right now.

“You always listened better than your sister,” it said. “You always did.”

The pacing sound came from behind me.

I turned and fired.

The recoil nearly knocked me over. The shot deafened me, the echo ripping through the house like it was tearing something loose from the walls. I fired again. And again.

The guy collapsed near the kitchen doorway, limbs folding the wrong way, skin glistening as though it had never fully dried. "You shot- mhm, ah, you shot me in the leg, man." He looked unbelievably normal, wet hair plastered to his forehead, crooked glasses, visibly in pain. "I swear, I didn't wanna trespass, I was just cold..." He started crying.

"You can't fool me."

"You always listened better than Sonya. What if I told you your sister's dead? Would you believe me then? Do you miss Dina, loverboy? Maybe check upstairs. She's vengeful, that one."

"What the fuck do you mean by that?"

“You always were kind,” it continued. “Even when you were cruel. Especially then.”

I reloaded and aimed to his heart, before he could gain back his strength.

"I helped her out."

Don't listen to what he says, whatever that is. He's lying, trying to buy time...

"I helped her out. She's coming for you, man. You let me live and I can help you."

"You're already dead. Fuck you."

"I wouldn't lie about this. She's the only one who got out apart from me, and she's coming for you and your old man. And that Willa bitch too-"

The bang echoed through the house and through my lungs. He lay there, his brains splashed on the wall. I shot him again and again, until I was sure that there was nothing left of him to get up.

I locked the front door for the second time that night, then all the doors, all of the windows. I rushed back upstairs, crying and smelling of blood and rot and stone and moss and mud and-

"Grandpa! You okay?"

I barged into the room and found them, my dear grandparents, alive and well, and a powerful, shattering cry erupted from my chest. I collapsed into their arms, shaking and cursing under my breath, painfully aware of how fragile they were. "I killed him, he said he let out Dina, I don't know if that's true..."

I called Sonya, and she responded. She was alive and well, miles away, in town, as I knew she would be. That fucker was trying to buy himself time by telling me she was dead. By telling me he pulled Dina out.

We inspected the house, the well, the surroundings. Apart from the poor half-eaten biker, I couldn't see anything suspicious. I looked down the well. If I struggled enough, I think I could make out the outline of a face. I didn't know whose it was.

The poor guy's car was down the road, abandoned. To think that a few hours ago he'd been a normal man, travelling. I felt bad for him.

We spent the whole night hunting Dina. Just a precaution. We found nothing.

I'm 99% percent sure that guy was bluffing. That he didn't pull out Dina.

This morning, we covered up the well. My grandparents finally accepted that whatever was down there was not my mother anymore. We poured concrete into it. I silently cursed out my grandpa for allowing a literal portal to the rotten depths of the Earth remain open just because he wanted to still talk to what remained of his daughter. On the other hand... a father's love can be irrational. Your daughter could be a flesh eating monster and yet... you'd still want to hear her voice.

We're planning to move out. I'm gonna use my savings to rent an apartment in the city and move my grandparents there. I told them it's because I want to take care of them away from a place with bad memories, but, in truth, something else has been on my mind.

When I looked out the window and saw the bike and the guy laying face down, he was, well... just a regular guy. I don't know how to explain that better.

When we came back to the well to inspect, he was half-eaten. I don't remember exactly how he looked from my window, and I was pretty stressed out so my memories might not be intact, but he didn't look... mauled.

I know for a fact that the guy didn't have time to go back, eat him, and come to the house by the time I got downstairs. Which means that someone else ate him.

I really wish this will be my last update on the topic. I don't want to have anything else to say about this story.

I'm 99% percent sure that guy was bluffing. That he didn't pull out Dina.