The Well.

Aaron and Annie Morrison Always loved the birds that live here on Crows Crossing Road, they would come from as far away as Smithville where they lived some one hundred miles, just to watch the Crows, and sometimes when the rare occasion would arise they would even try to photograph them. On this spring morning they have followed a particular bird into the deep woods, it is unusual looking and the couple have never seen another one like it, its feathers as black as deepest night, adorned with a strip of white or silver feathers trail along the center of its small head all of the way to its tail feathers.


They follow it until it comes to rest in the center of what was once a settlement, they are at first distracted by the ruins, there were several small houses or cabins that once stood here, but now all that remains are the stone foundations of every single structure. Annie Morrison follows the Crow out past the remains and stops when she sees it land on what looks like from a distance a small stone wall, it isn’t until she gets closer that Annie realizes that it isn’t a wall at all but one of the largest old water wells that she has ever seen, and when the young woman hears the first cold distant scream coming from inside of it, it stops her in her tracks.


Blood Ties.




There wasn’t many people left of the original ten families that settled here in the fall of 1901, the Minors in fact were the only ones who could seem to make a living off the land for their young family. Abraham and Celeste, Minor had fallen in love with the isolated setting in the woods, and some four years later they were still there with their daughter Michelle and young mute son Joshua. It was in the spring of 1907 when Abraham Minor first made the acquaintance of a middle aged drifter named Michael Grendel along the dirt trails of Crows Crossing while he was hunting rabbits for the evening meal. Grendel seemed friendly enough, and needed work, so the trusting settler invited him back to his home where Grendel agreed to chop firewood, in exchange for the meal he was to receive. For five weeks he stayed in the settlement with the family building and mending fences, chopping fire wood and tending to the chores while, Celeste Minor schooled the children, and Mr. Minor was away hunting.



It was at the end of the fifth week when Celeste Minor became slightly sick and sent the children out to play in the yard while she rested. It was the same day when young Joshua happened into the woods and found Michael Grendel on top of his naked sixteen year old sister Michelle, startled they both jumped up and tried to tell a scared Joshua to be quiet, but he ran into the woods, with the pair on his trail. When they’d caught up to him they found him lying on the ground with his head on a large rock, the boy in his haste had tripped and fallen, when his head had hit the rock it broke his neck and he died there within seconds. Scared of not only being discovered as lovers, but as the cause of the boys death, the pair make a drastic decision. They dump the young boys body into the water well, and decide to run away together before the father returned from his hunting trip.

The Waiting Woods.







Michelle Minor in all of the time she had been stuck in that settlement had always dreamed of bigger and better things for herself than what the woodland settlement provided her. That along with the fact that helping her father and mother care for younger mute brother wasn’t exactly her idea of fulfillment, was all the help Michael Grendel needed to coax the young beauty away from her family. They were four miles into the woods before they stopped to rest, it was still daylight and the couple knew that the father was still out hunting and the mother was more than likely still resting, it would be hours until suspicions were raised as to their whereabouts. They lay on the ground Michelle was on top of him and the coupled shared a feverish kiss.
Out of the corner of his eye it was the first time that he’s spotted the strange looking crow with the streak of white feathers watching them closely. He stood up and Grendel nervously chased it away.
“Did you see that creepy bird?” he asked of her.
“Never mind that stupid bird get back down here with me.”
He lay back down next to her and they continued kissing. until he looked up again to find the same bird watching them, he jumped up again and chased it away, but watched in silent awe as the bird circled around and landed once again in the same exact spot.


It is then that a spooked Michael Grendel becomes convinced that they had forgotten something.
“Was there blood on that rock where he hit his head?”
The two sit in silence recreating the entire ordeal in their minds.
“If they find blood they will get the law involved, the constable and his men will come looking, if they catch us we will both go to prison.”
They decide to press on, all the while the Crow continues to follow them, now more spooked by the strange bird than ever they find themselves running through the woods Michael Grendel is running a full ten yards ahead of her, until out of nowhere she hears a shot ring out and he falls dead on the ground. Through the clearing in front of her she sees her father appear with his hunting rifle in hand. He had been hunting all day in that area and was following a deer when Michael Grendel had blindly run into the path of a bullet intended for the animal. She kneels sobbing uncontrollably over the body of her deceased lover, while her Father puts his arm around her to console her, as the Crow watches in silence.
“Honey… It was an accident.. Honey?? What.. Are you doing here?”

Scratch.. A.B.T Copyright© 2007.