She pulled me up the rest of the way and I collapsed on the ground. When the sun hit my cold face it was painful and good. I’d missed it.
“Get up,” Sikes barked. “Almost there, then you can rest.”
“It hurts. It’s been...I don’t know how many days since I’ve seen Caleb. I can’t. It hurts too much.”
I didn’t want to cry anymore but after the exertion, it was ferociously painful and pronounced. My head pounded so hard that my vision bounced when I tried to focus on something.
“I can’t help you. I don’t want to taint you with an offense mark until we’ve tried every other avenue in our experiment first. Come on, just a little further.”
His wife looked displeased as she helped me from the ground.
If we hadn’t been married for as many years as we have, I swear...
I wanted to look over and laugh at her but my body would absolutely not have cooperated with that. Sikes’ wife was practically dragging me behind him as we made our way through a wooded area that was really grassy and overgrown. The grass was so tall it was up to my thighs, which made sludging along that much harder and the blades were scratching and itching my feet.
I felt like I’d collapse again but we came upon a well. I could see the cliff just beyond it and knew exactly where I was. Did they know that Marla had told me that story? That she told me about the well behind their house? I knew where I was! If I only could tell Caleb.
I looked at Sikes. I tried to push into his mind just like Caleb had pushed into mine that first day. Focusing and honing in on him, picturing his mind. It didn’t take much of a push and I was in. It was the strangest thing I’d ever experienced. It wasn’t like Caleb’s mind at all.
Sikes’ mind was murky and I could feel his anger and bitterness like slime on my skin. It consumed him. I realized I wasn’t just reading his thoughts, I was looking into his mind; all of it, every corner. I could sort through and look at things he had planned or thought and done before this. I saw what he was planning for me and this well.
And I wanted no part of it.
We stopped and I looked around to see Marcus and about five other guys had joined us there, big burly dark guys. Their thoughts were all different and I discovered, just like Sikes’ wife, not everybody was thrilled to be here.
“Oh, man, I’m so ready to be done with this.”
“We can’t even call ourselves human beings after this. Sikes is crazy.”
“I wonder what mom’s cooking for dinner. Hurry up, Sikes’. I’m ready for some fried chicken.”
“Why are other clans always so much hotter than ours? I’d pay a lot for ten minutes with this one.”
“So stupid. It’s not even gonna work. All this wasted time, torturing some teenage girl. Ridiculous.”
I felt the onslaught crushing over me but staved off the collapse of my control with focus. I could control this but I hated hearing what people said. Well, these people anyway, so I shut them out.
“All right, Maggie,” Sikes stated suddenly, “let’s get you in.”
“Please, no. Please don’t put me down there,” I begged and tried to pull from Sikes’ wife, but she held me tight.
“Don’t start. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll send Marcus to Caleb’s house right now and we can see first hand what happens when an imprinted Ace dies.”
“No!” I yelled and collapsed to my knees. The pain in my stomach at just thinking about it was insufferable. “Please, don’t.”
“You see,” he said conversationally, “this well is supposedly what started it all. Over three hundred years ago, my ancestor fell down this well. The legend says he was betrothed to a beautiful girl and was in the well for four days. He thought she’d be worried sick about him and prayed to God, made every promise he could think of, to help him. He became so enraged when no one came to his aid, that on the fourth day he started to scream and beat his fists on the walls. His blood from his hands and arms mixed with the water in the well and it started to glow. He was scared but then he saw a face over the well. Someone had come to rescue him. He was pulled out and was eager to see his beloved, but when he came up, she was not among the ones waiting for him. You see, she thought he had cold feet and had left, decided not to marry her, so she married another. He was heartbroken and went to the church where they were to be married to pray. There in the cemetery in the church yard, he met a girl, placing flowers on her father’s grave. When he helped her stand and they touched, that was the first imprint. He was relieved of the pain from the woman he loved and immediately loved another. Within a few days he and his significant both ascended. By then others had started to imprint in the village as well. A village occupied by mostly Watsons. Then they ascended just as my ancestor had and it started it all. No one in the village was married again without an imprint and their abilities helped them to conquer and fend off their enemies. You see, when he bled into the well, in his rage, legend had said that’s what started it all. He eventually told everyone that the water had started to glow and it must have meant something. And it was the village well, so everyone consumed this water. Now, you see why I want to test the theory of the well water. Now. Get on the platform,” he said evenly and I heard Marcus chuckling behind me.
Sikes’ wife helped me to stand and moved me towards the board attached to rope on all corners over the well opening. I couldn’t fight, I just moved where she moved me. She placed me on it and I curled up in a ball and tried to hide my fear from them. I didn’t look at them or speak to them as they lowered me down. I heard Sikes’ wife muttering in her mind but she kept right on doing what he wanted.And Sikes, he wanted to see if the water would reverse the imprint or break it since it had given it to someone who had none. As for Marcus’s mind, I couldn’t even look into it without being sick. All the vile and horrible things he thought about me, about the Jacobsons, about Caleb. It physically hurt me to look in his mind with its gray fog and thick barrier of pure hatred.
So I let them lower me until I felt water come over the edge of the board and I sat up. I didn’t know if I’d have the strength to swim and I started to panic, but felt no increased heart rate to go along with it.
When the water reached my stomach the pulley stopped and I looked up to see Sikes leaning over the edge.
“We’ll be back to get you in a couple days, Maggie.”
I felt my breath rush in and out in panic.
“Please don’t leave me down here. I’m scared,” I called up.
“That’s the idea,” he yelled back and moved away.
Chapter Twenty Five
I felt my stomach bunch and cramp. So this must be the third or fourth day away from Caleb and they were going to let me sit in a well for days, testing a theory. And what would they do with me if it did break the imprint? Should I fake a broken imprint? Could they tell?
I sat for a long time, trying not to shake and jerk my muscles in pain because the sloshing of the water was driving me insane.
I listened to see if someone was up there waiting for me. I listened for their thoughts but got none. I tried to call Caleb but got nothing from him. After a few hours my teeth chattered so much that my jaw ached and I bit my tongue several times. I had an idea.
I spit my blood into the water around me and waited and waited. No glowing apparitions, nothing. I scolded myself for buying into his lame story and wanted to lay down so bad I could barely think. I couldn’t lean back on the wall because the platform started to buckle.
Eventually, I gave in and began to cry again. All day, I sat there. I watched and felt the sun making its way across the sky, but the water was so cold that I couldn’t feel any warmth from it. Then the darkness came. I heard awful noises out there, animals yelling and howling, birds hooting and chirping, breaking twigs, crickets. It was excruciating. I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t lie down. My eyes kept closing against my control and I rested my head on my knees, but I fell over several times into the water, splashing it everywhere and wetting me more, making me colder so I eventually stopped trying.
Then morning came. The sun starting making it’s was across the sky. In the light I could see the bricks were out of alignment in the well wall. I stood wobbly, holding the pulley rope for leverage and tried to set my foot on them and climb. I got a little footing but it was all so slimy and lined with algae that I never made it more than a step before I slid back down and scrambled to not fall further in the well. The last time I was reaching for a brick with one foot and slipped, slicing my arm on the hard, dirty rocks.
My blood, once again dripped into the water beside me and I watched it in anticipation, grimaced at it. It was stupid to believe maniacs.
I tried yelling again. I tried reaching Caleb. I was so exhausted, I could barely think. When it was almost so dark and I could barely see, I heard voices.
I hoped and prayed they were the voices I wanted, the Jacobson’s, Caleb, but they weren’t. I saw Marcus’s face above me as he smiled.
“Dead yet?”
I slumped in defeat and wanted to scream as they began to pull me up. Two days. Two days they’d left me down here. All the water left me and I thought the warm air would help but it didn’t, it made it worse. My skin burned and shivered at the same time. Whoever was pulling was jerking and pulling so forcefully that the board was banging on the walls, jabbing my muscles with the force. It felt like my bones were hitting against each other. I heard myself scream and whimper. My chest hurt with it. I screamed Caleb’s name and thought it, begged for him to hear me.