The Dry Well at Cooper’s Farm

My name is not important, but for the sake of this account, call me Marcus. I never believed in the old stories about Cooper’s Farm, the place my uncle rented for the summer of 2016. The property was a sprawling, sun-bleached stretch of land in the high desert of Nevada, dotted with sagebrush and the skeletal remains of an ancient cottonwood. The farmhouse itself was a boxy, two-story structure with a tin roof that groaned during the day as it expanded in the heat. It was the kind of place that felt forgotten by time, and I was stuck there for three months.

It started with the tapping. Late one evening, as I was reading a dog-eared paperback on the porch, I heard it: a slow, rhythmic tap-tap-tap coming from somewhere in the yard. At first, I chalked it up to a loose shutter or a bird, but the sound was too measured, too deliberate. It would pause for a few seconds, then resume, like someone knocking on a door from far away. I got up and walked toward the sound, which seemed to lead me past the dead cottonwood and toward a rusted, old well that sat near the edge of the property. Uncle Ray had warned me to stay away from it, saying the boards covering it were rotten. But as I approached, the tapping stopped, and I felt a sudden coldness wash over my skin despite the desert heat.

A few nights later, I was in my room, trying to sleep, when I heard a voice right next to my ear, as clear as if someone were lying beside me on the pillow. It was a woman’s voice, soft and almost maternal, and it said, ‘Marcus? Did you hear that?’ I bolted upright, my heart hammering. The room was empty, but the air was thick with the smell of damp earth, like the ground after a rare rain. I turned on every light and didn’t sleep until dawn. When I mentioned it to my cousin Leah the next morning, she laughed nervously and said, ‘This house is full of drafts, that’s all.’ But her eyes told a different story.

The shadow figure came on a sweltering afternoon. I was driving into town with Leah to pick up groceries, and as we passed under a railroad bridge, I saw it out of the corner of my eye: a tall, impossibly thin silhouette standing among the pillars, its head tilted at an angle that made me nauseous. It was pure black, like a hole in the world, and it seemed to be watching the car. I slammed on the brakes, but Leah grabbed my arm and said, ‘Don’t stop. Just keep going.’ She was pale, and I knew she had seen it too. When I looked back in the rearview mirror, it was gone.

That night, I couldn’t shake the image. I lay in bed, the sheet pulled up to my chin, when the tapping started again, but this time it was closer, right outside my window. I gathered my courage and pulled back the curtain. Outside, just at the edge of the porch light’s glow, stood a figure. It was not the shadow from under the bridge; this one was a pale, gaunt shape, like a scarecrow made of ash. It raised one bony hand and tapped the glass three times, and I swear I heard a voice, dry and rasping, say, ‘Come to the well.’

I didn’t sleep that night. By sunrise, I had decided to confront the mystery. I grabbed a flashlight and, with shaking hands, pried off the wooden boards covering the well. Peering into the darkness, I saw not water but a dry, earthen shaft lined with old bricks. At the bottom, something pale glimmered. I lowered a rope with a lantern, and as the light hit the bottom, I saw it: a child’s shoe, a locket, and a notebook, all covered in a fine layer of dust. I managed to hook the notebook with a pole and brought it up. Its pages were brittle, filled with the handwriting of a child. It read: ‘Father says we must never play near the well. But the lady asked me to follow her. She promised me a secret.’

The last entry was dated June 3, 1972, the same day a local girl named Ruth had gone missing, never to be found. They had searched for weeks, but the well was never checked because it was thought to be too deep. As I read the final line, I felt a breath on the back of my neck, and the smell of damp earth filled my nostrils. A whisper, dry and faint, said, ‘You found me.’ I dropped the notebook and ran, not stopping until I was in my car, driving away from Cooper’s Farm. I never looked back, but to this day, whenever I’m alone in the dark, I hear that tapping, and a voice that knows my name, calling me to the well.