A Year of Stories

Careful Jack's Wishing Well

Wishing Wells are tricky creatures, I tell you this in case you ever have the misfortune of running into one.

It should go without saying, but if a Well starts making you offers – clear as day and in the Queen's English – your best course is to walk away as quickly as you can, and to never mention it again to another soul.

Since you're hearing this, you already know, I'm not very good at following my own advice.

For what it's worth, my Well called itself Gallagher Reynolds, and it had a taste for lies.

Gallagher was small, puny by Well standards. He stood roofless and gray, three feet high and three feet wide, in the back of the old Reynolds estate on the corner of 7th and Vineland.

The house was abandoned, the Reynolds having died variously from Scarlet Fever, mercury poisoning, improperly ingesting a ham bone, and a bullet to the back of the skull.

This wouldn't be so strange, if it hadn't all happened over the course of a single year.

These tragic "accidents" left Gallagher as the last remaining Reynolds, at least that's what he called himself, and there were no more Reynolds around to dispute it.

I met Gallagher when I was older than a boy, but younger than a man. I was looking to make my place in the world, looking for a purpose – a state which left me all the more vulnerable to silver tongues and empty promises.

It was one afternoon on the Reynolds grounds, where I was, trying to earn a few coins.

To call me a burglar would be uncharitable, to call me an honest man would be inaccurate. Let's just say, I was a burgeoning entrepreneur.

I had sneaked into the backyard, and was failing miserably at jimmying a lock, when Gallagher spoke to me for the first time.

"Hello there young man, what do they call you?"

It's not everyday bits of brick and masonry start speaking, so as you might suspect, my attention was his.

"They call me Careful Jack, and who might you be?"

"I am called Gallagher Reynolds, Mr. Gallagher Reynolds – though at other times I've had grander titles. At the moment though, since the rest of my family passed so tragically from this world, you can call me the Caretaker of this place."

"You must find that quite difficult 'Mr. Reynolds', considering from where I'm standing, it looks like you're stuck at the bottom of that Well."

Gallagher made a sound, one that I recognize now as his version of a sigh. It was the same sound the ocean makes when it passes over a broken shore.

"And here I thought I had found someone worthy of me. No Jack, I'm not at the bottom of the Well, I am the Well, and before we forget, you should know that you're trespassing."