Black Water

Discovery I

"Well, I got to say that this is quite unprecedented."

It was 7:33 AM, the temperature was a good 63 degrees. Dennis and Jared were standing in front of the well - behind them, Jenny was also watching, her eyes frightened. The water was still in the well - it was perfectly still, the surface flat and unmoving. "Is this a normal occurrence?" asked Jared, after a few seconds of staring, "I mean, I've never seen black water before."

"Neither have I." Dennis walked forward, "have you tried taking samples of the water? It might just be dirt, or silt."

"If it was just dirt, then the water would be brown, not black," murmured Jared, "this is something else. It almost looks like ink."

"Yeah, and it's really still..." Dennis poked the water with his index finger - a single ripple went outwards, slower spreading across the surface of that cold, black liquid, until terminating at the edge of the structure. Jared looked at his hand, and saw a small black droplet of that stuff slowly cascade down, and onto the dirt below his feet.

"Yeah, that's not dirt..." Dennis frowned, "I can't account for the color. Whatever mineral is causing it, it's very dense - you can't even see a millimeter through the surface. But that shouldn't be the problem - how did the water even get here? I know that it rained a lot yesterday, but it didn't-"

"That's another problem." Jared shifted a little as he spoke, "the water just appeared here. And there's no sign of a spill, or anything like that. The rain stopped as soon as the well was perfectly full. And that's a lot of water as well - that a ton of water in there. Its depth was at least thirty feet."

"Maybe a pipe goes through it?" Dennis glanced up at Jared, "maybe it just had a leak, and all of this is just-"

"I'm pretty sure normal water isn't black."

"Yeah, but that would explain how it got here, at least." Dennis frowned, "this is too weird for me to understand," he muttered, "you should get the plumbing companies over here. They would have an answer for this."

"Is this even a plumbing issue?"

"What else would it be?"

"I mean, if it's a plumbing issue, then it fixed itself as soon as it hit the top of the well," muttered Jared, "it just doesn't seem natural, you know what I mean? I don't like the look of it at all."

"Yeah, I get that, but it's the only cause that I can think of right now. Unless you're suggesting that some idiot came into your backyard with a truckload of black water, and dumped it into your well as a prank."

"Is that actually a possibility?"

"Well..." Dennis shrugged, "it's always a possibility, but you live in a pretty isolated part of the woods. Albion in general is a pretty isolated city. I doubt that anyone would do something of this...magnitude."

"Well, that leaves me with very few options..." Jared glanced back at Jenny, "what do you think?" he asked - at this point, he was simply trying to get as many inputs as possible. But, to his dismay, Jenny simply shook her head and said, "I don't know...it seems like a plumbing issue, but the black water is...unnatural."

Unnatural indeed. A few minutes later saw the three of them stepping back into the warmth of the lodge. Jenny breathed a sigh of relief at the oak-wood interior, and at the smell of sofas and air fresheners. But to Jared, coming back inside only seemed to make him more stressed. "I'm going to call plumbing," he muttered, walking over to the phone and dialing a number in - a second later, and he had hung up, "they're coming," he announced, "they said that they're sending a team of four people to make an assessment of the issue."