A Penny Down the Well: A Short Story Collection of Horrifying Events (19 page)

Jacob wasted no time.
“Harry, you need to get out of the house! You need to leave right
now! Barker and Crater are on there and they’re going to burn the
place down with you in it!” He shouted, word after word, already
running down the street.

“
They’re what?!” Harry
exclaimed. “I need to tell my parents!” And he began up.

“
No! No, don’t Harry!
Listen, I have an idea. Go outside and get their attention. Get
them to follow you to the highway where you shoved Barker!” Jacob
instructed, hoping that Harry would accept. He was worried he
wouldn’t, knowing Harry’s anxiety, fearing he would be
brash.

“
Shouldn’t I call the
cops?!” Harry already moved out of his room and toward the front
door, peering out the windows to hope to get a look of the
boys.

“
It’ll be too late by the
time they arrive, Harry! Get them away from your house before it’s
too late! Meet me there, Harry! Get them to follow you!” And Jacob
hung up, rushing toward the rendezvous spot.

Harry moved around
nervously before pulling his shoes on. “I should call the cops.
This is dumb. This is how people end up dead.” Harry said to
himself, dealing with a long day that was just getting longer. He
went out the door quietly and searched carefully around the house.
It didn’t take long before Harry found the culprits.

Both Crater and Barker
stood between the homes, in the same place where Brain had been
caught alone, Crater already pouring gasoline beneath one of the
living room’s windows. Barker slapped Crater at the sight of
Harry.

“
Hey! It’s him!” Barker
shouted to Crater. “Out a little late, buddy! You’re going to miss
the fireworks. This is what you get for killing Pete and Caitlin,
you sick fuck!”

Harry shook his head.
“Well...” He looked over his shoulder, trying to survey the roads
and which direction he would run to meet Jacob beside the highway.
“...I’m not going to even be in the house! So you’re wasting your
time!” And with the last statement, he took a couple of steps back,
preparing to flee.

Barker smirked and pulled
a pocket knife, flipping the keen blade out threateningly. “Then
I’ll gut you in the street!” Barker looked back to Crater,
whispering out of earshot of Harry. “Finish the job here. I’ll get
this fucktard.” And Barker started after Harry, whom was already
beginning in the direction of the highway and the forest beside
it.

Crater was there alone,
feeling less inspired to commit the act and also knowing that he
was going to burn down the home with only Harry’s parents in it.
The gasoline was lugged to Harry’s home in a large, rubber 3 gallon
bucket, open on the top. Crater looked down to what was about half
of the potential volume left, reconsidering what he was doing, even
saying to himself, “I don’t think I can do this.”

“
I can.” The voice came
from behind, as fingers curled over Crater’s acne-ridden head,
fingers which were long enough to grip almost the entirety of it,
like a ball, shoved Crater’s face down into the bucket and held him
in the volatile liquid.

Crater shook and screamed,
but only could do so into the highly toxic fluid. Not a single
scream left him in a way to rouse neighbors and instead channeled
into unsympathetic bubbles rising in the small spaces on both sides
of his drowning face. Binkman continued to hold him under with a
smile.

“
Where you’re going,
little one, the fires rage forever.” And he cackled, pressing with
all of his force until Crater stopped fighting and gave in to
death. Another was delivered.

Doctor Binkman looked to
the house, becoming visibly saddened that such an effort had been
made for vengeance, yet it hadn’t come to fruition quite as the
heathens had hoped. Fire, as Binkman knew, was the best means of
destroying evidence and obscuring blame. Binkman lifted the
sopping, drowned boy from the shallow pool of gasoline and shoved
him against the house, like kindling for a fire. Binkman searched
Crater’s pockets until he found matches, as he did on
Gassy.

“
Children should learn that fire is
not
a toy.” And he smirked, proud of
himself. He struck the match and tossed it to the boy’s head, which
was saturated in the heavy gasoline, and the entire base of the
house began ablaze, following the pattern which the boys had
outlined around it.

Harry ran for what seemed
like forever. Barker followed after him, adrenaline and anger
pushing him threateningly forward, with only one plan: Kill Harry
and make him pay for what he did. This time there was nothing that
was going to stop him. The time for games, for mere hurt, were
over, expressed even more so by Barker’s command that Crater finish
the job back at his house. Barker wanted everything in ashes once
and for all.

Harry eventually reached
Jacob, who was waiting near the road. Cars and semis flew by,
seemingly careless of the running children. At that speed, nothing
mattered. Jacob waved for Harry to follow him into the forest.
Barker was only a short distance behind them as the two turned
jointly and headed back into the forest Jacob had fled through to
escape Barker the first time. Harry was naturally faster than
Jacob, but he paced himself to Jacob’s lead, shouting occasionally,
“He’s getting closer! We need to move faster! Where are we going?!”
The urgency in Harry’s voice decried both fear of Barker, fear that
Crater wasn’t with him, and immense worry for his family. He hoped
Crater was just further behind. Of course, Harry didn’t know the
truth of the matter: his parents were set ablaze in their sleep,
helpless to escape, now being doused by a very busy fire
department.

Jacob rushed as quickly as
he could, trying to remember the direction he ran in before. Little
landmarks were seen here and there, revealed by the grace of the
night which seemed to allow the evening’s full moon to shine
occasionally through the high canopy above. Deeper and deeper they
went until Harry started to give out. “I can’t! I can’t keep
running!” And he was slowing down, though Barker was
not.

“
Move, Harry! Move! We’re
almost there!” Jacob only hoped that was the case, but it proved to
be true as the ravine and the stone well came into view. “There!”
Jacob pointed.

Jacob and Harry rushed
beside the well and waited. Barker arrived only a moment later.
Harry simply stood there, unsure of what was going to happen now,
or what it was Jacob had in mind.

Huffing and puffing,
trying to catch his breath, Barker watched the two boys in rage.
“Give up, huh? Decide there’s no chance? I’m going to carve you two
fuckers up so bad they won’t ever find you!” And he smiled
sinisterly. However, it was the smile that appeared behind him,
first a sort of floating, Cheshire grin that spread behind Barker’s
ears. Jacob’s eyes widened and Harry backed slightly toward the
well as Binkman’s image faded into view to fill the space around
the floating smile. A second later, Barker’s approach was stifled
by the stiff latching of Binkman’s arms to his body, wrapping
around him once, then twice, as if his arms were fluid tentacles
instead of arms and Binkman wobbled his awkward, destroyed body
toward the well.

Harry rushed back, seeing
Binkman for the first time, the one thing responsible for the
violent screams and murder back at the school’s pool house. He
couldn’t believe his eyes. Jacob, however, watched in a mixed awe,
feeling both terrible and resolved, knowing he would live another
day. It wasn’t over.

The doctor continued forth
until he reached the open well, arms untangling from the screaming
boy, who’d by now dropped the knife with his surprising
detainment.

“
Let me go! Let me go!”
Barker screamed, over and over again, kicking his legs and
squirming as violently as he could.

The doctor firmly gripped
the back of Barker’s neck and held him over the opening of the
well. Barker’s legs did all that they could to try and spread in a
way that would prevent him from falling, should Binkman let go, but
the doctor lowered him into the well in such a way that his feet
would only contact the inner walls of the stony prison, offering no
chance to stop the inevitable.

“
Bad boys go all the way
to hell. Enjoy the ride, little one.” Binkman whispered, shoving
Barker down violently. Barker spread himself, gripping what stones
he could as he was pushed at, hands being cut and damaged with each
shove and attempt at surviving. Binkman was relentless, arms moving
up and down from the hole like machine pistons, pushing, punching,
and shoving Barker down. Jacob and Harry moved near to each other
as they watched the horrible event and heard the haunting screams.
Binkman’s work looked like a desperate person trying to overfill a
garbage bag, or someone trying to stuff too much food down a
garbage disposal. Eventually, Barker could hold on no longer and
his strength gave. He fell endlessly into the well, only able to
see the dark, terrifying face of the doctor as he went down, down
into the stone prison.

Jacob whispered something
to Harry then as Binkman leaned over the well, dusting his hands as
he stared down into it.

“
Now, only to finish my
job with the one from at the hospital, boys. I should have killed
him when I had the chance!” Binkman turned slowly, speaking of
Brain. However, when Binkman turned only halfway, both Jacob and
Harry rushed forward and shoved the large, corrupted figure with
all of their might.

Binkman’s eyes shot wide
and his terrible maw consumed his entire face as he screamed aloud.
He fell back, losing his balance, still entirely unused to his ever
changing body, and tripped over the edge of the stone well.
Binkman’s hand shot out to grip the stone edge, but the one place
to which he reached was the same place from which the stone had
fallen in Jacob’s first visit. Binkman met no helping-hand as
gravity took a hold of him as it had Barker moments prior, shoving
him less violently into the pit from which he escaped, down into
the darkness of the well and back from where he’d originally
came.

Suddenly, there was an
immense silence. It was as if the entire forest stopped for a
moment: every creature, every jostling bit of brush just stopped in
the single swift moment that the doctor fell into the well. The
world itself moved in a sort of slow motion, being manipulated by
confusion, anxiety, relief, fear and a multitude of other consuming
emotions. Harry looked to Jacob and Jacob back to Harry. Harry was
unsure of what had happened, with it all so swift, so sudden and so
unexpected. He didn’t know what that thing was that they shoved
down the well, but he was aware of its malevolence from the moment
it appeared. He, too, was happy Binkman was gone. Unfortunately,
Harry remained unaware of the work that the doctor finished for
Barker and Crater, so relief was permissible, vowing, eventually,
to yield to extreme sorrow. Harry could have considered getting his
parents out, as he suggested to begin with, but who was to say that
things wouldn’t have turned out as badly? None. It was over
now.

Jacob’s whisper to Harry
before pushing Binkman was a simple, “We need to shove him into the
well. Trust me.” Jacob knew that Binkman had to go. The doctor
desired only to kill the children and it was his violence that
created an escalatory spiral that twisted on and on out of control,
demanding vengeance from both parties. He could not be allowed to
remain, to finish off Brain who’d already been in a state of
horrifying shock and left in the hospital. He couldn’t be allowed
to be “free” in this world, with his capacity. Jacob assumed he’d
only seen a small percentage of what Doctor Binkman was actually
capable of and he cared not to see the rest. The silence, the
slowness, all broke as Harry looked over into the deep, dark well,
to the chasm that seemed to go on forever. He turned and spoke,
questioningly, as he usually had with Jacob.

“
What now?” Was Harry’s
question.

Jacob quirked a bit of a
smile and shrugged. It was the first smile he’d shown in some time.
That moment of happiness was sapped away the moment he saw the
image that rose behind Harry, who was still standing by the well,
oblivious of it.

Jacob shouted, pointing,
“Harry! Look out!”

The figure that rose was
Binkman, his long, disproportioned, reaching arm slipping over
Harry’s shoulder. Harry turned beneath it to see the grotesque
creature, sopping wet with blood and a sort of thick, viscous
slime. Harry screamed and tried to pull away, but it was too late.
The doctor, who was a complete monster at this point, totally
consumed by the evilness of the mask he donned, dragged Harry down
into the well and into the dark eternity. Jacob began to approach
as Harry fell away, but stopped when he was gone, knowing a similar
danger existed for himself.

In utter shock and
disbelief, Jacob stepped back and away from the well. He was too
lost for tears. His heart was too broken for words. He was
absolutely alone. Binkman took his best friend into that dark
prison with him, leaving Jacob to answer for the terrible events.
There was nothing left. Jacob collapsed to his knees in the brush
beyond the well. He bathed in the light of the unforgiving moon. He
thought he could hear the whispers of the terrible doctor deep
within his mind, perhaps echoing from the prison below, deathly
voice repelling from tree to tree.