The Ivory and the Horn

nightmare of pale flesh clad in the remains of a tattered green dress, hair matted and tangled, the color of dried blood, the eyes burning so that looking at them is like looking into the belly of a furnace.

She's what's been haunting me, I realize. She's the curse of the well. It's not her granting wishes that makes her so terrible, but that she steals your vitality as a vampire would. She sucks all the spirit out of you and then drags your body down into the bottom of the well where you lie with all the other bodies of her victims.

I can see the mound of them in the water, a mass of drowned flesh spotted with the coins that have been dropped on top of them. I know that's where I'm going, too.

She steps up to me, clawed hands reaching out. I try to scream but it's as though my mouth's full of water. And then she touches me. Her flesh is so cold it's like a frost burn. Her claws dig into my shoulders, cutting easily through the skin like sharp knives. She starts to haul me up toward her in an awful embrace and finally I can scream.

But it's too late, I know.

That's all I can think as she drags my face up toward her own. It's too late.

She's got jaws like a snake's. Her mouth opens wider than is humanly possible— but she's not human, is she? She's going to swallow me whole... but suddenly I'm confused. I feel like I'm standing on the edge of the wishing well and it's the mouth of the well that's going to swallow me, not the rusalka, except they're one and the same and all I can do is scream, and even that comes out like a jagged whisper of sound because I've got no strength in me, no strength left at all.

24

'That was it!' Jilly cried as Jim drove by a small gas bar and store on the right side of the highway. 'You went right by it.'

Jim pulled over to the side of the road. He waited until there was a break in the traffic, then made a U-turn and took them back into the parking lot. The name of the store was written out in tiny letters compared to the enormous GAS sign above it. The building itself was functional rather than quaint— cinderblock walls with a flat shingled roof. All that added a picturesque element was the long wooden porch running along the front length of the building. It was simply furnished, with a pair of plastic lawn chairs, newspaper racks for both The Newford Star and The Daily Journal, and an ancient Coca-Cola machine belonging to an older time when the soft drink was sold only in its classic short bottles.

Jim parked in front of the store, away from the pumps, and killed the engine. Peering through the windshield, they could see an old woman at the store's counter.

'I'll go talk to her,' Jilly said. 'Old people always seem to like me.'

'Everybody likes you,' Wendy said with a laugh.

Jilly gave a 'can I help it' shrug before she opened her door and stepped out onto the asphalt.

'I'm coming,' Wendy added, sliding over across the seat.

In the end they all trooped inside. The store lived up to its name, selling everything from dried and canned goods and fresh produce to fishing gear, flannel shirts, hardware and the like. The goods were displayed on shelves that stood taller than either Jilly or Wendy, separated by narrow aisles. It was dim inside as well— the light seeming almost nonexistent compared to the bright sunlight outside.

The old woman behind the counter— she must be Ada, Jilly decided— looked up and smiled as they came in. She was grey-haired and on the thin side, dressed in rather tasteless orange polyester pants and a blouse that was either an off white or a very pale yellow— Jilly couldn't quite decide which. Her hair was done up in a handkerchief from which stray strands protruded like so many dangling vines.

'I wish I could be of more help,' Ada said when Jilly showed her the photograph of Brenda that she'd brought along, 'but I've never seen her before. She's very pretty, isn't she?'

Jilly nodded. 'Are there any motels or bed-and-breakfasts nearby?' she asked.

'The closest would be Pine Mountain Cabins up by Sumac Lake,' Ada told her. 'But that's another fifteen or so miles up the highway.'

'Nothing closer?'

'Afraid not. Pine Mountain is certainly the closest— other than The Wishing Well, of course, but that's been boarded up ever since the early seventies when the bank foreclosed on Ellie Carter.'

'That's the place where Brenda goes on her Sunday drives,' Wendy put in.

Jilly nodded. She could remember Brenda having spoken of the place before. 'And she's got a newspaper clipping of it up above her desk in her apartments,' she added.

'I doubt your friend would be staying there,' Ada said. 'The place is a shambles.'

'Let's try it anyway,' Jilly said. 'We've got nothing to lose. Thank you,' she added to Ada as she headed for the door with Jim in tow.

Wendy stopped long enough to buy a chocolate bar, before following them to the car. Jilly had already slid in beside Jim so this time Wendy got the window seat.

'What would Brenda be doing at an abandoned motel?' Wendy asked as Jim started up the car.

'Who knows?' he said.

'Besides,' Jilly said, 'with the way this idea panned out, our only other option is to go back home.'

The motel was easy to find. They followed the long curve of the highway as it led away from the store and came upon it almost immediately as the road straightened once more.

'I don't see a car,' Jim said.

He parked close to the highway and they all piled out of his car again. The soles of their shoes scuffed on the buckling pavement as they approached the motel proper. The tumbled-down structure looked worse the closer they came to it.

'Maybe she parked it around back,' Jilly said, 'Out of sight of the highway.'

She was trying to sound hopeful, but the place didn't look encouraging— at least not in terms of finding Brenda. It was so frustrating. She kicked at a discarded soda can and watched it skid across the parking lot until it was brought up short by a clump of weeds growing through the asphalt.

'God, it's so creepy-looking,' Wendy said. 'Way abandoned.'

It did have a forlorn air about it, but Jilly rather liked it— maybe because of that. She'd always had a soft spot in her heart for the abandoned and unwanted.

'I think it's great,' she said.

'Oh, please.'

'No, really. I've got to come back here and do some paintings. Look at the way that shed's almost leaning right into the field. The angle's perfect. It's like it's pointing back at the motel sign. And the lattice work on that roofline— over there. It's just—'

'What's that weird sound?' Jim broke in.

Jilly fell silent and then both she and Wendy both heard it as well— an eerie mix of a high-pitched moan and a broken whisper. It was so quiet that it disappeared completely when a car passed on the highway behind them. Once the car was gone, though, they could hear it again.

'It... it must be some kind of animal,' Wendy said. 'Caught in a trap or something.'

Jilly nodded and set off around the side of the motel at a run, quickly followed by the other two.

'Oh, shit,' Wendy said. 'That's Brenda's car.'

Jilly had recognized it as well, but she didn't bother replying. She had a bad feeling about all of this— the motel, Brenda's car, that sound. Worry formed a knot in the pit of her stomach, but she ignored the discomfort as best she could. Head cocked, she tried to place where the sound originated. It made her shiver, crawling up her spine like a hundred little clawed feet.

'It's coming from over there,' Jim said, pointing toward a thick tangle of rose bushes.

'That's where Brenda said the well is,' Wendy said.

But Jilly wasn't listening. She'd already taken the lead again and so it was she who, after pushing her way through a worn path in the rose bush tangle, first found Brenda.

Jilly almost didn't recognize her. Brenda was wasted to the point of emaciation— a gaunt scarecrow version of the woman Jilly had known. Her clothes hung on her as though they were a few sizes too large, her hair seemed to have lost its vibrancy and was matted against her scalp and neck. She was leaning over a crumbling stone wall, head and shoulders in the well, thin arms pushing on the stones as though something was dragging her down. But there was nothing there. Only Brenda and the terrible soft keening sound she was making.