The Mouth of the Well

In the forgotten village of Dunridge, nestled between sodden moors and wind-warped trees, stood an ancient well that no one used. It had no bucket, no rope—only a lip of black stone so smooth it reflected the moonlight like glass. The villagers called it "The Mouth", though no one could say why.

No maps marked Dunridge. It was a place you found when lost, and forgot as soon as you left. Its population had dwindled over generations, and by the year 1984, only eleven people remained. Eleven, until Thomas Calloway arrived.

Thomas, a doctoral student in anthropology, came chasing folklore. His thesis focused on pre-Christian mythologies that survived modernity. The Mouth of Dunridge, he believed, was the last echo of an ancient, unnamed god.

He arrived by bus, then hitchhiked down the cracked road. The sky over Dunridge was always the same: ash-grey and low, like the heavens had sagged under the weight of something too vast to name.

The villagers met him with suspicion. Faces weathered like bark. No one spoke unless spoken to, and even then, withered syllables dropped like cold stones.

He rented a room above the pub from a woman named Mags. Her face was all folds and soft whiskers, like an old cat. She offered no welcome, only a key.

On the first night, Thomas visited the well.

It stood in the town square, surrounded by moss-covered cobbles and crooked houses with hollow windows. The well had no inscription, no signs of construction—just a circle of black stone too perfect for any mason's hand.

He leaned over. No sound came from its depths. No echo, no drip of water. Only a smell: salt and rust. Like blood soaking old iron.

Then he heard it.

A whisper. Faint. Too faint to be words. More like the suggestion of a voice. A presence without shape.

He stepped back, heart racing. The air around the well felt... wrong. Pressurized, like deep sea or high altitude. He stumbled back to the pub.

That night, he dreamed of spirals.

Black spirals etched into pale stone. A sky of teeth. A maw stretching over a landscape of bone.

He woke gasping, hands clenched, his nails drawing blood from his palms.

---

Thomas stayed, convinced he'd found something monumental. Each day he asked villagers questions. Each day he was turned away.

Except for one.

An old man named Caleb invited him inside after sundown. His cottage smelled of peat and mildew. On the walls hung faded icons, not of saints or angels, but of wheels, eyes, and tides.

"They called it Ylva-thuun once," Caleb croaked, voice rasping like wind through reeds. "The Eater-in-Stone. The Unquestioned Tongue."

Thomas's pen froze mid-note.

"They say it was here before the village. Before men had names. Before even the moon."

Caleb poured a tea as dark as pitch.

"We don't pray to it. Not anymore. We watch it. Because if we stop watching, it opens."

"Opens?" Thomas asked.

"The well," Caleb said. "It's not a well. It's a mouth. When the stars align and no one watches, it feeds."

Thomas tried to press for more, but Caleb wouldn't speak further. He only whispered, "Don't dream too long," and turned his face to the wall.

---

Days passed. Thomas documented carvings on stones near the woods—spirals and concentric circles. Always spirals. He began to find them in his room, scratched into the walls, drawn onto the fogged mirror, etched into the dust on his boots.

His dreams deepened.

He walked corridors of flesh. Mountains pulsed like hearts. A voice whispered his name from every direction, but never from above.

"You are part of Me," it said. "I have not forgotten your shape."

Each morning he woke weaker. Paler. The village dogs refused to come near him.

On the seventh day, Mags refused rent.

"Leave," she told him flatly. "While your skin's still yours."

---

Thomas returned to the well.

He came at dusk, when the sky bruised purple and the village shrank into silence. This time, he brought a recorder, a flashlight, and a rope.

He tied the rope to the square's iron lamppost and lowered himself in.

The black stone of the shaft gave way to a deeper dark, one his flashlight couldn't penetrate. Feet first, inch by inch, he descended.

At forty feet, the air turned wet and thick. Not humid—viscous, like he was breathing through syrup.

At sixty feet, the walls began to pulse.

He thought it was a trick of light, but the stone beat like a slow, hidden drum. Then came the voice.

Clearer now. Not a whisper.

A chant.

Not in English. Not in anything with grammar or tense. It was syllables wrapped around silence, sounds that curled in on themselves.

Then he felt it.

Not with skin, but with something else. A pressure against the self, a caress of thought that wasn't his. A reaching.

Thomas screamed and climbed, rope burning his palms, mind flailing against whatever touched him down there.

He burst from the well just as the lamppost flickered out. The square was empty. The village doors shut. The wind didn't move.

The sky above him was wrong.

No stars.

Just a shape.

A spiral of darkness that turned the world with it.

---

Thomas tried to leave Dunridge the next day, but the road never ended. He walked for hours and returned to the same forked tree. Cars never came. Planes never passed.

He tried to burn the well, but flame wouldn't catch.

He smashed the recorder. It still whispered.

He tore out pages of his notes, but the spirals returned, sketched in his sleep.

He began to lose time.

Once, he woke up beside the well, hands covered in dirt, his fingernails cracked and filled with black dust. He'd been digging into the stone with his hands.

Another time, he woke up naked in the woods, the trees bent away from him, bark peeled back like skin.

Then the villagers stopped watching.

One by one, they vanished.

Mags disappeared from the pub. Her room was filled with feathers—hundreds of grey, eyeless feathers covering the walls like mold.

Caleb was found kneeling by the well, mouth wide open, eyes plucked from his skull. He hadn't screamed. His tongue was missing.

Thomas became the last.

He kept watch.

He sat by the well for hours each day, notebook in lap, pen shaking.

He dared not blink too long.

But it wasn't enough.

The well opened on the thirtieth night.

---

He saw it unfold—not like petals, but like jaws. The stone ring cracked outward with a sound like a heartbeat reversing. The air folded in on itself. Sound died.

Something rose.

Not a creature.

A presence. It had limbs, yes—limbs like columns, etched in glyphs that changed when he looked directly. But it also had wings, or what might have once been wings, now flensed down to concept and shadow.

Its "face" was a mass of mouths within mouths, none of them moving yet all of them speaking. Spiral eyes blinked sideways.

Thomas couldn't move.

Couldn't breathe.

"You have fed Me well," it said.

Thomas fell to his knees, sobbing.

"You remembered."

---

They found Thomas Calloway's journal in 1996. Hikers stumbled into Dunridge after a storm.

The town was empty.

The houses collapsed inward. The well gone—replaced by a smooth, black crater that led nowhere.

Thomas's journal ended in a single page, scrawled in handwriting like tangled roots:

> "There is no bottom. There never was.

It looks like a mouth because that's the only shape we can understand.

But it's not eating.

It's learning how to speak.

And it almost knows your name."

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