Sadly, things never go the way he wants to. The summer shower had turned into a full-blown thunderstorm and Arthur realized the entrance was on the opposite side of what looked like the park surrounding the Temple. It would take him a few more minutes to get there so he ran some more. With his surroundings drowned in the darkness of the thick clouds and heavy rain and all the sounds being overwhelmed by the loud thunder, Arthur felt like he was running for hours and that the night had already fallen.

Not only did his skin felt prickly and cold but his feet had started to burn and ache, too. Where could the entrance be?! Surely he should have already reached it. The shape of the streets looked unfamiliar but he kept going. He had memorized the path so he couldn’t have been wrong unless he made a mistake along the way. Arthur was panting, feeling like his whole body was engulfed in an icy fire.

A loud rumble.

The lightning stroke, calling thunders so loud and bright it had both blinded and deafened Arthur for a long second. That’s when he realized it. He really had lost his way. Just an instant before the his vision had turned white from the light, the streets were illuminated and nothing was like what he had seen on G**gle Street view the day before, when he was taking notes for today’s trip.

He stopped for a moment. He analyzed the streets, tried to see if he could go into any building to either ask for the right way or give up and stay there until the rain stops but every door seemed to be close and it was difficult for him to see if there were any opened businesses. Nobody seemed to be there. They had already all found a place to hide from this thunderstorm.

At least that’s what he had thought until he heard a loud voice.

A yell. Screams that seemed to be close. Arthur turned around but he couldn’t tell where the voice came from. Maybe someone was in danger, maybe something fell down from the wind and rain and they got hurt. He hoped it wasn’t that, but given the current situation, there were a lot of chances that it would be the case, especially since the trees’ branches were shaking so strongly.

Another lighting hit down in a loud rumble—it echoed in unison with that haunting scream. Startled, Arthur stepped back and twisted his ankle. The sharp pain and shock had him lose his balance and trip over what felt like a low fence made of stone.

The fear started to blur his mind when he realized that he didn’t touch the ground: his fall is much deeper than what he was expecting. Everything went blank. His ears were deafened by his own terror and the loud whistling of the wind turned into a shrill, numbing echo. The shaking leaves and menacing sky slowly disappeared as Arthur’s vision shrank in a circular shape all the while water kept pouring down until he felt the air knocked out of his lungs.

He should have been more careful, he knew it but now it was too late. There was no way he would die here, right? He shut his eyes tight, wishing that his trip, no—his life wouldn’t end here, because that would be pretty lame. He finally managed to do something exciting, surely his fate wasn’t to die here!

Little did he know, that he had lost his breath due to the heavy rain and the shock of the fall—there wasn’t any water down. Maybe the rain had stopped but, as he coughed a few times and wiped the water off his face with the back of his hand, he could only feel the sticky mud sitting underneath. The whistling ringing in his ears had softened as well, leaving only a low buzz. Arthur thinks he should be relieved the rain had stopped pouring but it was abnormally cold now that everything was soaked wet and he was surrounded by what looked to be mossy and dirty stone.

It was dark, so dark. The thunderstorm might have passed but the clouds were still covering the sky. Arthur looked up. He had fallen into a dry well.

It wasn’t so dry now, though.

The sound of flowing water could still be heard, as well as some voices that either were far away or whispering very quietly. Arthur was dizzy. Both his head and his ankle hurt, so it must have been quite a bad fall. How could he get back up, now? Sure, he could climb since the walls looked quite rough and irregular but not when it was covered in wet most; it would be way too slippery. If his ankle was hurt, it might not be the best idea to try something that would risk him to fall again as well.

“When they said the rain could be unexpected, they weren’t joking”, he thought. It wasn’t quite the time to look back on his friends’ anecdotes and comments but there wasn’t much he could focus on at the moment. All the stress and energy he had spent during the day had quite a toll on his mental state, his migraine not helping the situation.

He noticed a spot in the mud that was glistening in a peculiar way. He stared at it for a bit but the reflected light seemed to make his headache much worse. For a moment, his vision had blacked out in throbbing pain and he once again wondered if he had sustained any grave injury. When he regained consciousness, he still couldn’t see quite clearly but the whistling of the wind had come back.

This time, it felt particularly scary. Maybe it was the darkness, maybe it was the difficulty he had to think or breathe that made it much more terrifying—his mind was buzzing with all sorts of incoherent thoughts.

It shone again. The small spot in the mud. He tried to focus on it, maybe it’d make him stay awake. Somehow, he felt like he had to, that he couldn’t fall asleep or it might be over for him, nobody would find him and his body will be left to rot in the bottom of the well. He couldn’t let that happen so he focused on the shivering light reflecting in the mud while he gathered his strength.

Its faint glimmer is pretty. Like the shimmer of the sunlight on the surface of the pond I had seen earlier.

Looking closely, it looked like a piece of smooth stone. Not quite the type that carved the walls of the well, but rather like a small gem. Arthur shifted and looked up again but his vision remained quite blurry and unstable. He reached out to touch its surface; brushing away some of the dirt that covered it. It was a small, curved and thin piece of milky white stone with a greenish gleam to it. Colored glass, perhaps.

As Arthur dug his fingertips in the thick mud, someone grabbed his wrist. He quickly retrieved his hand and backed off, looking up hoping to see who came to save him from the well he had fallen into—but there was no one.

The grip was still on his wrist though.

It came from underneath, not up.

His blood turned cold. His body stiffens as if his limbs were slowly turning into ice. From the mud, a hand was firmly holding onto his wrist. Slowly an arm appeared, then a shoulder, until the whole head and torso had risen from the dark and wet dirt from beneath. For a moment, Arthur thought it was a person but it wasn’t—at least not a living one.

Perhaps was it the darkness and the thickness of the clay-like mud that made it look this way at first, but the figure in front of him clearly was lacking any kind of flesh or skin. Arthur might have hit his head or have really bad eyesight, but he was pretty sure he could see each bone stuck to the rib cage and the missing teeth of an opened mouth.

Sure, it had a few cracks and it may be a very starved and thin person but the rain dripping down the collarbones and dropping behind the ribs aren’t an hallucination, are they?

For a short while, the buzzing and whistling had stopped. Everything did. In Arthur’s eyes, time had stopped. Even the fear and pain were gone—there was just nothing. A freezing emptiness that got shaken up when a voice echoed.

“Why?”

The figure in front of him spoke. Arthur straightened up and looked at it, like a child being scolded.

“Who was it that let my body decay?”

It was quiet and the questions were whispered like it was the sound of the wind, but the words were recognizable. Why was it that, he couldn’t figure out how the voice sounded like but he could understand what it said?

“Was I killed? Did I die? Why?”

Those three questions were repeatedly asked in such a low and airy sound that it almost seemed like it was a strange, morbid tune. The repetition of why, why slowly faded away as Arthur’s last bit of consciousness left his body.

Now, there was only darkness.