What the Old Man Found Tasty

Chapter 1: “Keith!”

Keith was twelve years old when the old man in the well first said his name.

It happened on a warm night in late summer, when the fields around the family farm glowed silver beneath a full moon. Keith had stayed outside long after his father told him to come in. He was throwing stones at fence posts, pretending each one was an outlaw trying to cross onto their land.

The farm was small and old. Its wooden fences leaned in places, the barn roof sagged in the middle, and the earth always seemed to smell of dust—even after rain.

Beyond the barn stood an abandoned stone well.

Two weather-beaten beams rose above it, supporting an iron pulley and a rope with a wooden bucket attached. The rope was rough and stained, and the bucket had not carried water in years.

Keith’s father said the well had gone dry before Keith was born.

“Stay away from it,” he had warned him more than once. “Those stones are loose. You fall in, nobody’s getting you out.”

Keith usually obeyed.

That night, however, he wandered close enough to see moonlight resting on the well’s broken rim.

“Keith.”