Don't Open The Well (2 page)

Every day, Michael would dread stepping inside the
cold, dark interior of the Crematorium, and every day, his father would make
sure that his son was there by his side, prepping the furnace, moving the
bodies into it, incinerating the remains, cleaning out the ashes, and
depositing them in boxes and urns for the families of the deceased.

Michael was more than proficient at what he was
doing to assist his father, but it didn’t seem to matter how hard he worked, as
his father would always find a way to deride him about something.
“I told you I wanted that furnace clean enough to eat off of,” his father
bellowed. “You stupid little shit!  Ain’t one good thing that you can’t
turn rotten!”
As the days wore on from that first day, Michael would work relentlessly for
his father, and every evening, he would slip off into the woods, follow the
creek to where it bends hard to the right, and find his sycamore – his
haven. 
He’d hoist himself up by the bottom branch, and once he made it to the next
highest branch, he’d nailed a few pieces of wood to the tree where they
couldn’t be seen.  The tree had so many leaves, that it was the perfect
place to hide his little tree house from prying eyes.
One day, after a fairly pleasant day working with his father, a day on which
his father didn’t seem to desire to yell or hit him once, even smiling on
occasion, Michael left that afternoon and headed towards his sanctuary feeling
far happier than usual.
The change in his father was curious and he mistakenly allowed a little hope to
creep into his mind.  He followed the creek, but as he did, he detected
the sweet smell of burning wood. Moving further down the creek, the smell
became stronger, and soon, Michael was running full speed to his sycamore,
fearing the worst, the impossible.
When he arrived, he fell to his knees in front of the charred blackened remains
of his tree.  There was little more than a blackened trunk with a few
large branches still attached, devoid of all life. 
Parts of the blackened trunk were still smoldering, smoke rising lazily into
the air above.  Michael cried for the loss of the last remnants of his
innocence. His one and only safe zone had been snatched from him cruelly by his
deranged father and for once, he felt a growing rage steadily burning inside
him. What had once been fear and subservience all at once became a yearning
need for revenge, upon the man who had beaten and burned everything Michael had
ever known out of him until he was nothing but a shell just like his father.

He wouldn’t be, couldn’t be like him.
That night, Michael arrived to find his father in his recliner, plastered as
always, and grinning like a fool, no doubt pleased with his handy work. But Michael
didn’t say a single word to him.  He didn’t even give his father the
pleasure of showing the slightest hint that his sadistic actions had affected
Michael. His face impassive, betraying no emotion whatsoever, Michael went up
to his room, lay down, and stared at the ceiling until the sun came up.

Inside him, the
beginnings of an unfamiliar feeling were stirring. Beneath the numbness, the
hatred that had lay dormant since the beatings and the mistreatment at the
hands of his father began, was making its way to the surface.
He didn’t sleep that night, nor did he do anything else – not even move, and to
an observer he might have looked like he was day-dreaming.  He was
thinking of life without his father, thinking of the crematorium and how it
could benefit him.

Over the years that followed Michael did as he was
told, seldom uttering more than the words “yes sir” and “no sir.”  

His father had become so smothered in his addiction
to the drink, that he barely even visited the crematorium any more.  This
suited Michael just fine.  He just did what had to be done, and woke up
the next day and did it all over again, an endless repetition of mind numbing
work and school that soon became as routine to him as sleeping, although sleep
wasn’t what it had once been.
One night, just before Michael turned eighteen, he awoke to the sounds of his
father stumbling around the house, more drunk and belligerent than usual. 
It quickly dawned on him why.  It was eight years to the day that his
mother had finally been released from her life of suffering and pain. 
Michael smiled in the darkness as he stood on the landing looking down into the
gloom, seeing nothing.  He couldn’t exactly tell what was going on, but he
didn’t really need to know the details.  His father was suffering and that
was enough. He deserved to suffer for what he had done and if Michael had his
way, he would suffer even more than his mother had years ago.
From downstairs in the darkness, he heard a loud crash as the back door was
slammed shut – his father was going somewhere but where. Going to the window of
his bedroom, he looked out into the night and was pleased to see the stumbling,
crawling figure of his father amongst the weeds of the beaten path that led to
the crematorium, a barely discernible shape in the blackness beyond. As he
watched, a faint smile dancing around his lips, Michael saw that his father was
carrying something under his arm, gripped tightly to his body like a child.

Watching the pitiful figure of his once proud father,
slowly disappear into the darkness; Michael wondered why he would be heading
towards the crematorium at such an hour. It was just past midnight, but it
occurred to him that his father wouldn’t go to the crematorium unless he meant
to burn something – but what?

A part of him wished it would be his father that
would burn within the ever hungry mouth of the incinerator.

The crematorium was ominous in the moonless night,
just a smudge on the dark horizon but Michael no longer feared the crematorium
and what it contained – he had seen hundreds of bodies. In the end they all
looked the same, just like his father had said on that first day – “sacks of
blood and bone.”

Michael slipped into his shoes, and followed his
Father’s tracks, made by his knees digging and dragging through the dirt as he
crawled along the ground.  The tracks ultimately led to the very place
Michael had assumed they would - the crematorium.
As quietly as possible, he pushed open the door to the old, grey building, and
was immediately struck by the acrid stench of smoke, noxious and suffocating,
emanating from within – it was the furnace but what was his father burning?
Michael took his shirt off, and held it over his mouth as he walked deeper into
the crematorium. The lights were off but that didn’t surprise him, his father
had crawled into the building, after all.   When he arrived at the
furnace, he saw the door was wide open, and inside was a pile of clothes. He
immediately recognized his mother’s wedding dress. He hadn’t even been born when
they were married, but she had worn it for him.

She was so beautiful in it, and Michael was struck
by a rush of memories that suddenly filled his mind as the dress, amidst the
other clothes, began to smolder and disappear in the hungry flames. Anger once
again filled his heart and he clenched his teeth, the muscles in his jawline
standing out like cords as he mourned all that had been lost.

Not everything…

At his feet, he was disgusted to find his father lay
prone on the ground, a whiskey bottle just out of reach of his grasping
fingers. He stood watching, until the acrid smoke billowing from the open
incinerator began to burn his throat and eyes, making them water but still, he
smiled, despite the pain.

It was the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to
rid himself of his alcoholic father once and for all.

Michael kicked the whiskey bottle out of reach, he
wouldn’t give his father the comfort of a last drink.  No, he would die in
the dark, alone and suffering just like Michael’s youth had all those years
earlier.

He kicked his father hard in the gut, drawing a gasp
of pain from him before turning and walking off, leaving his father to his
fate.

“Ain’t no good thing you can’t turn rotten, dad….”
Michael pushed open the door to the outside, and immediately took a deep breath
of the fresh night air.  Before leaving, he turned back and stared into
the black smoke filled passageway, half expecting his father to come stumbling
out – but he didn’t.  He watched as the billowing dark clouds lit up with
an angry orange glow from within, the clothes inside steadily disappearing in a
wave of hungry flame.

He closed the door gently before turning and walking
back towards the house, a smile on his face.

The next morning, Michael calmly called the police,
breaking down at the right moment as he explained the discovery of his father’s
blackened body within the incinerator.

It was immediately ruled an accidental death. 
He’d been too inebriated, and due to carelessness on his part, had died of
smoke inhalation from the burning clothes. 

Of course, Michael had told them of his mother’s
death years earlier and how it had broken his father’s heart, turned him into a
raging alcoholic. With a few well-placed sobs here and there, they bought it
hook, line and sinker – why wouldn’t they?

Besides, thought Michael, as he watched the patrol
cars and ambulance pull away from his newly acquired property, he wouldn’t be
missed. For the last two years, his father had barely even set foot in the town
except to purchase more alcohol or cause trouble in the downtown bars.

No, it was over now and Michael couldn’t wait to
consign his father’s body to the hell inside the furnace.

His father’s body was placed in the Coroner’s van,
and the officers sat and consoled the crying young man.  It was a fine
performance, but the show wasn’t over yet.  It was his eighteenth
birthday, and now all the decisions were his to make.  The land, the home,
and even the damned crematorium were now all his. 
The next day, Michael contacted the Coroner’s office, and let him know that he
was going to cremate his father’s remains.  The Coroner asked Michael if
he’d like him to assist, but Michael let him know he’d been running most of the
business over the last few years, and that this was a solemn event that he
needed to do alone.
Michael’s tears fell on cue as the Coroner wheeled his father’s body into the
main furnace room of the Crematorium.  They walked back outside, and the
Coroner gave the young man his business card, immediately followed by a hug. He
told him to be strong, but if for whatever reason he needed help with this, to
call the number on the card.

He needed no help. This was his moment and he alone
would push the button that would burn the hateful man that had stolen his
sanity. 
The Coroner slipped behind the wheel of his vehicle, and Michael watched him
drive away, waving as he did so until the car was out of sight.  The sad
countenance remained on the young man’s face until the Coroner’s van turned the
corner.  Once the vehicle had disappeared from sight, Michael’s face lit
up, and a wide grin spread across his face.

It was time, at last.
He re-entered the Crematorium, unzipped the body bag, and spat into his
father’s dead face.
“Everything I’ve ever loved, you’ve burned away,” Michael said leaning into his
father’s gray and motionless face.  “You burned it all.  My toys, my
clothes, my pictures, my books, my tree house…even my mother – you burned her,”
he said, his voice filled with anger. “Well, old man, now it’s your turn.”
Michael pushed the gurney up to the mouth of the furnace, slid his father’s
corpse feet first into the smooth and recently cleaned chamber, and then leaned
close to his father’s ear, and whispered, “I will burn away everything that you
are, that you were, and that you ever could have been.” 

Michael left the
incinerator’s doors open as he turned the knob, filling the furnace chamber
with white-hot fire.  He stared, unblinking, as his father’s body was
devoured by the growing inferno.  There was a dark pleasure to be found in
those dancing flames, and a smile played upon Michael’s lips as the flesh
blackened and curled on his father’s bones.  Michael’s mouth opened wide,
and he began to laugh.
As the laughter died down, Michael took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and
prayed aloud for the first time in over eight years.
“May the fires of hell burn a million times brighter as they receive your
tainted soul and make you suffer for the sins you committed upon this earth,
you despicable man.”

Chapter 7

A few years went by, and thanks to his dedication,
the business wasn’t just doing well – it was now operating better than ever
before.  Michael had managed to bring in business from funeral homes all
over the tri-state area, and soon, he had so much money stashed away that he
decided to splurge.  He hired a construction company to build an enormous
live-in tree house, high up in the two-hundred year old oak that grew deep in
the wooded and undeveloped part of his property.

He was taking back everything his father took from
him, piece by piece.
The construction wasn’t cheap.  In fact, he had to take out a loan on half
of the cost, but it didn’t matter, as people were always dying and business was
booming. 

Things went quite smoothly for a few more months,
and Michael began to feel almost human again, now that he was rid of his
father.

It didn’t last long though.

One day, the furnace just stopped.

Michael tried to fix it himself, but he couldn’t for
the life of him figure out what had gone wrong.  He brought in a
specialized furnace repairman, and the worst possible scenario unfolded. 
The furnace was so old that there were no replacement parts for it.  He’d
have to buy a completely new unit to meet current standards and regulations. 
This was a problem that would, easily, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to
solve.
Suddenly, Michael felt his life slipping into disarray.  He had three
bodies in the lockers, already paid for in full, the money already spent on his
latest loan payment, and no way to incinerate the corpses.
Michael returned to his tree home, and sat in his new La-Z-Boy recliner,
wracking his mind for a solution to the problem.

It occurred to him that he could bury the bodies
somewhere instead, rather than paying out everything he had to fix the furnace.
How to make this work though? The families of the deceased would be expecting
their ashes once the cremation was complete. He could always burn something
else – make a fire out in the woods and collect a pile of ash for them, after
all, it was just ash right? They wouldn’t ever know the difference. He smiled,
nodding as he stared out at the now useless crematorium through the leafy
canopy of the old oak.

There was still the considerable matter of the
burials. Would he really dig holes each and every day for the several corpses
he received each day? No, that wouldn’t do. It was too time-consuming, there
had to be another way.

Staring out of the window, Michael thought hard
about how he could dispose of these poor sacks of flesh and bone.  Soon it
became apparent that the answer was literally staring him in the face – the old
well. He could see it from where he sat; a small circular dot in the distance –
perfectly placed out in the woods away from prying eyes. He remembered the day
he had dropped a penny into it, before making a wish. Such foolish
superstitions had been all but beaten out of him since then, but he remembered
and the memory served him well because he had heard the clink of the coin as it
hit a stony bottom.

It had been dry for years. An ideal spot for what he
had in mind.