Eternally Vigilant

We all watched the tiny figure cling to the overhead light fixture. It was black as tar except for the jewels on its mask. "So it doesn't try to attack you or anything?"

"No. It just... stares." Chet had lost a lot of weight. His hair stuck out at odd angles, as if he'd been tying it in knots.

"That's not so bad, then. Small price for violating that ancient burial ground, right?"

"I want to die," Chet said.

Reggie shrugged. "So do it."

"I tried!" Chet glanced over his shoulder and shuddered. "I think it called the paramedics."

Ends Well

...always there, now, the rotten wood and clutching weeds, the smell of frogspawn and stagnant water. The tiny knothole in the slime-blacked cover! A hole. A hole into darkness, a hole into the hole in the pit in the shadow in the wet and muck...

I smell it. It won't be long now.

That is how his diary ends. I would believe he was unbalanced, except that I was there when we three first found the well as children. Even now I can hear the soft croaking of the frogs and smell the first hints of mildew on the wind...