{"sf1_id":1710492,"sf2_id":"ve3OxBEe","title":"Once in a lifetime, after the rain is gone","author":"geneseepaws","words":1257,"posted_at":"2021-04-24T23:01:00.000Z","tags":["Eldrich Being","Farm","Ghost","WritingGroupChallenge","harbinger","haunting"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1710492-once-in-a-lifetime-after-the-rain-is-gone","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/ve3OxBEe","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/2c/f0/2cf08192-d5cf-4aa4-93e8-d2e9213d3bcd","description":"#7 of WritingGroupChallenge\n\nWe bought a farm house, in a rural county, out in the waaaayyyy out boondocks. But the house didn't have a well. What?  How can you have a farm and house without a water well.\nSo we started drilling for water. ... it did not go, ... Well.","content":"This Week's Writing Challenge: \"An opportunity like this only comes alongonce in a lifetime.\"\u0026nbsp; Due date is 04/28/2020.\n\n\u0026nbsp;once in a lifetime, after the water's gone...\n\nand you may ask yourself, \"How do I work this?\"\n\n* * *\n\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;If you drill a well you\u0026nbsp;will hit something: rock, clay, fossils,\u0026nbsp;sand, coal, oil, and water and sometimes gases of various types..\u0026nbsp; Sometimes more rock than water, sometimes more water than rock, but if you find anything more than those two things, it could be an adventure.\n\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; We bought a big farm\u0026nbsp;house\u0026nbsp;and the surrounding land, because it was adjacent to her parent's property. \u0026nbsp;Her parents were new to the county, and of course we didn't know anyone in the area either, yet. \u0026nbsp;When they found out which property we were buying\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;the\u0026nbsp;neighbors were,... kinda stand-offish, we didn't know why at the time.\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; Now, the county was not a poor county, there were some drawbacks; there was no cell service, and the local phone company wasn't a real company, it was a guy who\u0026nbsp;did all the installations, ran the wires up to the house, inside the house, installed the phones, satellite link, and hooked everything up, at the other end.\u0026nbsp; It was going to be about four weeks before he could get a contractor out to run the posts, or if we wanted, we could run it underground in a trench.\u0026nbsp;  \n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;Then the other thing was, having the water trucked into the cistern.\u0026nbsp; The people who lived there never bothered with a water well.\u0026nbsp; Sorry, could you think about that for a minute?\u0026nbsp; 157 Acres of land with NO well?\u0026nbsp; How does that even make sense?\u0026nbsp; But wait, the roof was basically built upside down, inverted, so that any rain, snow, hail, any water that fell was collected and stored in the cistern.\n\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; But why no well?\u0026nbsp; Her folks had a well at their spread, what's the problem?\u0026nbsp; Basically most of the property was Sea-Level plus forty meters.\u0026nbsp; That's not even a deep well, that's nearly a surface well.\u0026nbsp; Closing on the property and house happened at the bank, we all shook hands, and the bank had the deed, the sellers got their money,\u0026nbsp;we had the mortgage, and the everyone walked away happy.\n\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; We started moving truck loads of our furniture to the new house.\u0026nbsp; And phoned a drilling company for a well.\n\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; They came out, gave us a good\u0026nbsp;quote\u0026nbsp;and started in on the drilling.\u0026nbsp; It was a Friday, and they said it would take all day, then Monday return and put the curb and the cap on, then pump it clean.\n\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; His crew got to work while he told me horror stories\u0026nbsp;about unmarked graves, hitting oil drilling for water, drilling for oil and getting water instead, and how fracking was wrecking the water table way up in West Virginia and Pennsylvania.\u0026nbsp; That was when the drill bit broke at eight and a half meters. \u0026nbsp;It was ok, they had a spare bit on the truck.\u0026nbsp; They drilled one and a half meters then\u0026nbsp;that one broke too.\n\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; It was supposed to rain over the weekend, and we had the purifier still hooked up that came with the house; at least there'd be clean water, and they'd finish drilling on Monday.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; That night I saw her for the first time.\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; She appeared to be by the foot of the bed, leaning forward, urgently mouthing and gesturing, trying to tell me something.\u0026nbsp; It was like she was very far away, and I was seeing her through a fog, or mist.\u0026nbsp; Her lips moved, but I couldn't hear her make a sound, I heard nothing but the normal sounds of a house cooling off after sundown.\u0026nbsp; One might guess, that I'd wake up -\u0026nbsp;see an apparition -and\u0026nbsp;scream, nor would one be wrong.\u0026nbsp; I screamed like a little boy whose feet slipped off the bike's pedals.\u0026nbsp; Of course my mate screamed because I had scared her with my scream... we didn't get much sleep that night.\u0026nbsp; I explained what I saw, but the \"ghost\" was gone.\u0026nbsp; Saturday's and Sunday's nights went about the same. She'd show up, try to tell me something and fail, I'd scream, she'd leave, rinse repeat.\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; I couldn't wait for Monday, to have them finish the well...\n\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; They came out Monday morning at 7:00 am, laying out rods and pipes.\u0026nbsp; At 7:30 they knocked on the door and shouted up, that they were starting.\u0026nbsp; Well, shouting up that it was their intention to start.\u0026nbsp; But the big diesel motor for the drill rig wouldn't fire-up.\u0026nbsp; They had to call a mechanic out, who spend all day fixing it.\u0026nbsp; He finally got it running 15 minutes before quitting time.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; Monday night she appeared, but while she seemed clearer visually, she was just as animated, and just as soundless.\n\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; Tuesday went better and they cleared the overburden, then the first clay layer, then sandstone layers, and hit the bedrock hard.\u0026nbsp; Hard, as in, \"they took it hard when the pipe casing shattered.\"\u0026nbsp; Of all the things that happed Tuesday, that the casing broke above ground was the only good thing.\u0026nbsp; They removed the broken casing and continued drilling.\u0026nbsp; They made fair progress, almost three meters through solid rock.\u0026nbsp; I went to bed an hour after dinner to try and make up for some lost sleep because; being awakened by a ghostly apparition/spirit/spooky thingy leads to lack of sleep.\u0026nbsp; And as usual, the thing did appear; but this time was articulate, and spoke... er,.. said somethings that I 'heard'.\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; One, I had been expecting it to show up.\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; Two, it's speaking didn't wake my mate.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; And three, it started off so quietly that I couldn't tell what it was saying.\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; When it got loud enough to hear, what it was saying wasn't in a language that I knew, and then it changed over to English at some point - it was still mumbling, still soft spoken, but giving a definitely scary warning: She/it said, in condensed form: \"mumble, mumble, I harbinge for a \"Power of The (long ago) Age.\"\u0026nbsp; \"You,\" she said, pointing at me, \"Stop drilling here, drill anywhere wanted, but not near the house, if\u0026nbsp; you continue to drill here- there are consequences -- of some amorphous but terrible form, involving a \"Power of The Age.\"\u0026nbsp; And although out loud she said, \"Power of a (long passed) Age,\" to me it sounded something like: Late Holocene Soul Devouring Elder Spirit Vengeance.\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; An opportunity like this only comes along once in a lifetime.\u0026nbsp; I mean how many times have you received a warning from a harbinger for an elder god?\u0026nbsp; I smile when I think of it now.\u0026nbsp; \"Power of The (long gone) Age\" doesn't sound evil, scary, eldrich, or threatening, but I swear to you, when she said it, I broke out in a cold sweat, and pictured something like Cthulhu!\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; No kidding!\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; We ended up drilling farther down the hill about a quarter mile away from the house, near a 'sometimes' creek which showed up in only in the rainy seasons.\u0026nbsp; After drilling through five meters of overburden and wet sand, we hit a layer of dense clay one meter thick and then solid limestone for two meters, wet sand and then clay.\u0026nbsp; Then at 39.6 meters we hit a confined aquifer of uncontaminated water, called an artesian saturated layer.\u0026nbsp;\n\nWe didn't even need to buy a pump.\n\n1347 words\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"WritingGroupChallenge","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1709385-the-observation-effect.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1712841-drunk-like-a-skunk.json"}}