Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman Read Free Book Online Page A

Henningsson? That they’d done that at least twice?
    Had she known that when she married him? Was there something deep down in sweet little Gudrun, with her courses in English and natural dyes, that liked all that? In the dark of the night? He felt sick. Maybe it wasn’t right to think in that way. But all the same, it was her fault he was down a well.
    The light didn’t reach down here. It was up above. He could see it. But it had no effect down here. The well shaft was too deep. Someone had dug and dug, confidently hopeful at first because the divining rod had turned down just there, then in sheer rage. Eventually, he must have dug on from sheer pigheadedness, whoever it was. Not Alda’s husband. It must have been whoever had cleared the forest and built the cottage. He would have returned from the forest for a meal, saying nothing, taken his cap and gone out again. And if he had sons, they had to haul up the rubble. When at last he reached water, he had proved that he couldn’t have been wrong. Then the wall was built with shale, thoroughly, first-class work.
    But the water had retreated.
    Johan sat down with the eel. He couldn’t do that for long because he soon froze, but he found it almost as cold when he stood up. The seat of his trousers was soaking wet. He dozed off with his head against the sharp slabs of shale, a kind of sleep, although he knew all the time where he was, and that he had to rest and keep moving alternately until they came to get him out.
     
    He woke thinking someone was touching his hand, but the hand and arm had gone numb. He was sitting heavily on one side with his arm underneath him and could no longer feel the cold. His body was stiff and chilled through and through. When he tried to ease himself up, his legs refused to obey.
    Then he remembered the eel and was more frightened than he had been before. Not of the eel, but of what might happen. His thoughts had touched on that occasionally. That anything could happen. And that things didn’t always go well. They could go badly. It’ll be too late.
    The worst thing could happen. The kind no one can think to a conclusion.
    Old man Annersa had lain dead in his cottage for five weeks, his horse dying of thirst in the stable.
    The goldeneye with a hook through its beak, and its soaking wet, semi-rotten feathers.
    The Enoksson boy sawing straight through his thigh with a chainsaw. How? No one knew. Things just went badly.
    I must get up. The eel woke me.
    He started moving his toes and fingers, and slowly feeling came back even into in his calves and lower arms. In the end, he heaved himself up with his back to the wall, feeling like a collapsed hay-drying rack that had to be raised. He hooked his fingers in the protruding shale slabs and hoisted himself into an upright position, at last succeeding and stamping again to get warm. Then it struck him, like an electric shock.
    Shale protruded from the wall, probably all the way up. The well had settled. Get the toe of his boot in far enough for support. Dig out the moss further up with the knife if he couldn’t find a bit of shale far enough out. Climb.
    Bloody hell! Heave himself up step by step. Dig out. Prop his backside against the wall and hoist himself on up.
    He started at once and soon found a foothold for his boot, then another, which was not so good but enough if he pressed his back hard against the wall. He was no longer standing in water.
    Suddenly he remembered the eel. He knew it was a kind of madness, recklessness anyhow, but he did it all the same. He climbed down again and squatted down to rummage round in the water and muddy leaves until he got hold of the strong, slippery body skulking among the stones.
    It was a bloody big eel! It twisted and turned in his grip. He fumbled for his knife, but then thought perhaps the eel was a hundred years old. Over fifty anyway. For Alda’s husband had probably not been the well digger.
    If only he had something to put it in. He tore off his