Frightful Fairy Tales Read Free Page A

lives,” Dulcet said. “It cannot be wise to jump into it. If you want to go, though, go ahead and drown yourself.”
     
    Dorret was angry and impatient. “You are frightened and weak,” she said, “but I’m not. And when I climb out of the well with all my pearls, just you see if I share any with you!”
     
    Then Dorret tied one end of the line to the remains of the well’s ragged rope with an adept knot, as any good farm girl could. She wrapped the new line around the arch that spanned the opening for good measure and began to lower herself into the black mouth of the well. She was frightened, of course, but determined not to let her older sister see.
     
    After a while Dorret looked up and was shocked at how far she had descended. The mouth of the well was a small blue hole, her sister’s worried form a tiny silhouette. Then she looked down and saw nothing but darkness; the voice of the damsel grew louder, ever louder. In the narrow shaft of sunlight, Dorret saw something glinting far below.
     
    What a smart little girl.
    I long to see.
    Come more quickly,
    come join me!
    Join me,
    join me,
    join me.
     
    Dorret reached the slimy black bottom of the well and looked eagerly around for the pearls. When she took a step forward, her shoe nearly sank and she heard a crunching sound beneath the mud.
     
    As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Dorret saw that broken skeletons surrounded her. She lifted her foot to reveal a crushed skull. Her heart raced and she seized hold of the rope, anxious now to return to her sister. But she saw something gleaming white-could it be the pearls? At that moment the damsel stepped out of the shadow. In her outstretched palm she held a pile of teeth.
     
    “So many pearls…,” said the damsel, her laughter making the grating sound of an old hinge.
     
    As the damsel drew near, Dorret saw that the woman’s pale flesh was decomposed in patches, her dark blue veins stitching the skin together crudely. Unlike the beautiful countenance Dorret saw in her dream, the damsel was missing pieces of her ears and the entirety of her nose. The specter’s thin hair hung like spider webs, revealing the shape of her skull. Her bones had broken through the skin at the elbow and wrist. The only thing similar to Dorret’s previous vision was the dress the damsel wore. Now the cold air of the well grew colder still and a smell of drowned, dead things, things rotting away in darkness and the damp permeated the air.
     
    “How old are you, my dear?” asked the damsel, hungrily.
     
    “I’m eleven,” said Dorret, frozen in place by fear.
     
    “I am a two-thousand-year-old spirit, my dear, and I have no body but those I can steal. I stole your grandmother’s fifty years ago but her body is almost worn out. Now I must have yours!”
     

    Dorret leapt for the rope and screamed to Dulcet to pull her up. The damsel clutched Dorret’s right shoe, her grip terrible. Dorret screamed and tried to kick the damsel’s hand away. Though the blows tore loose more of the damsel’s skin, the fiend did not relinquish her grip. At the mouth of the well, Dulcet pulled at the rope with all her might to no avail. Just when Dorret thought she could not pull herself away from the damsel, an idea came to her. She dug the toe of her left shoe into the heel of the shoe the damsel clutched and pried it off her foot. Dorret scrambled up the rope, leaving the damsel clutching her shoe. When she reached the top, Dorret rushed to embrace her sister.
     
    Dulcet and Dorret vowed never to tell their parents about the damsel in the well. The damsel visited Dorret for the rest of her life but only in nightmares. For the evil spirit could not leave the well unless she found a new body, and to this day she has not found one.
     
    And the moral of this story is “Intelligent girls escape the troubles wise girls avoid.”
     

 
     
     
    THE BLACK RIVER
     
     
    Ivy sauntered along the pathway in the woods; she cooled