The Well Of Regret---My New Book

 

Part 1

I begin to write the story that haunts me. It’s a story that I must tell, because it is a burden I can no longer carry alone. And though I’m a novice at storytelling, I will do my best to recount what happened. It might sound extremely unconvincing or made up, and if no one believed it, it would be perfectly fine. I feel I have to tell it anyway.

My name is Henry Sadlinger. I am an artist, and my art enabled me not only to thrive creatively but also to achieve significant financial success. Between 1971 and 1981, I worked relentlessly to establish my reputation as an artist. My persistent efforts paid off, and I eventually achieved worldwide recognition. 

Some time in 1981, I consciously chose to step back from my life and find a more tranquil setting. My studio, once a refuge, had become like a cage, and every canvas was a new expectation. The weight of outdoing myself grew until it was suffocating. 

I craved the silence of a place where the only sound was the wind, and the only thought was my own. I was determined to withdraw from society and find a quiet place in the country, somewhere away from all that I knew, where the roads were empty, the towns were distant, and my only neighbors were the whispering trees. 

I found it in the deep woods of Canada. It was the silence that led me there, a profound hush that settled over a remote Canadian landscape. 

It was a very curious thing, though, that the man who owned the property had the same name as me–Henry Sadlinger. I was surprised by this given that my last name is not that common, and the fact that his first name was the same as mine was unusual as well. 

On the phone, he sounded like someone in his eighties, and his physical appearance confirmed it when we met. A minute into our conversation, and he told me that he was eighty. Curiously, he asked me if we had met before. His voice held a note of uncertainty, but his gaze was fixed on me with a strange, searching recognition. I told him we hadn’t, but there was something about his face that felt like a distant memory. We both stood there in the sudden silence for a moment, caught in the unnerving sense that we had known each other a long, long time ago. 

The property was quite impressive. There was a cabin there, and it was hemmed in by the surrounding forest, creating a profound sense of seclusion.

The cabin was unexpectedly modern. It was a stunning vision of glass and timber against the backdrop of the forest, and it felt very inviting. It was a two story building with a loft overlooking the second floor. That was appealing to me, because I could use it to paint when the mood struck. But looking over the quiet house and property, I felt the pull of its tranquility–a deeper urge to simply get lost in its solitude rather than to paint.

It felt as though the back porch had been created specifically for that. Comfortable wood rocking chairs waited on the porch, and the railing was perfect for propping feet. The fans overhead spun lazily as if a gentle breeze moved their blades and not the motor. As they turned, I questioned their purpose, given the cool air that was always present in this part of the world. 

  It was a comfortable, cool evening. Fall was arriving, and all I wanted was to be on that back porch, breathing in the fresh air and taking in the peaceful scenery while the world outside fell quiet. 

As I admired the backyard, a cool breeze drifted past, and I heard the gentle rustle of the leaves in the trees. I couldn’t help but think how peaceful the sound was and how the trees looked as the wind gently blew their leaves.

There was a small path that went from the porch through the middle of the backyard. The yard sloped down toward the end of the property, and there was a stone well there. The path continued beyond that. 

The backyard was a deliberate tangle of vibrant wildflowers and dense shrubs, like an old-fashioned English cottage garden. It had a very informal feel to it, and it made the place seem more unhurried and relaxed, which I liked. 

  After looking over the property, my thoughts drifted back to the well. Up close, it was a sturdy, old-world structure, hewn from rough gray stone with heavy timber beams supporting a peaked wooden roof. A rusted metal rod for the rope-crank sat silent. I wondered if it was simply that old-world beauty that attracted me to it—a quiet, stone sentinel that seemed to belong to the forest as much as it did to the cabin. 

But something felt peculiar. The well had begun to claim my attention in a way that made it seem as if it were calling to me. A faint whisper seemed to rise from its depths, shivering through the air. I tried to tell myself it was just a trick of the wind caught in the stones. I didn’t realize then how completely my world was about to change because of it. 

Mr. Sadlinger took me inside the cabin. The living room was an impressive expanse, and I was overwhelmed by its grandeur. The windows reached from the floor to the ceiling, and the sunlight poured in through them illuminating every corner. 

The walls were white and had landscape paintings hanging on them in various places. Above, the vaulted ceiling stretched with heavy wood beams, and there was an assortment of comfortable furnishings beneath it. 

A fireplace filled one wall, its imposing mantel a single, rough-hewn beam. The knots and grain of the ancient timber were still apparent. Across it there was a collection of plants, candles and ornately decorated plates in plate stands. 

The kitchen was spacious and inviting, the kind of room that belonged in the glossy spreads of my grandmother’s home and garden magazines. My eyes were drawn to the massive stainless steel refrigerator; it stood as a gleaming pillar of modern luxury, its brushed metal surface lending the room a sophisticated, high-tech edge. Yet, that cool efficiency was softened by a vibrant ceramic rooster on the counter, whose bright colors and country charm anchored the kitchen with a sense of cozy warmth.

 Powder-white linen curtains framed the large window above a stainless steel sink, and the window looked out onto groves of beautiful maple trees in the front yard. It was that time of year when their leaves became a canvas of warm orange, yellow and red. 

The centerpiece of the main room was a wide, quarter-turn staircase that seemed to pull the light from the windows and hold it. Its expansive railings and treads were finished in a honey-colored stain that glowed against the crisp white of the risers. A succession of slender white spindles rose toward the balcony like perfect, vertical lines, allowing the light to pass through them effortlessly.  Standing in the middle of the cabin, the structure felt airy and intentional—a bright geometric path that led up to a spacious balcony, where the sun spilled over the railing from the bedroom hallway above. 

After looking over most of the house, Mr. Sadlinger led me down the hall to the dining room. While in the hallway, I noticed a painting hanging on the wall. It was of a woman with auburn hair styled in a pompadour. Her entire look was reminiscent of the Gibson Girl illustrations from the 1890s. The painting, I thought, must have been done sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s. She looked to be in her early thirties, and she was very beautiful. My attention was immediately drawn to the unmistakable undercurrent of sadness in her face, though. What impressed me was that the artist was able to capture it. Something else interesting about it was how much it resembled my style of painting. 

Mr. Sadlinger told me that it was a painting of his mother and that it was painted by his father. I asked what her name was, and he told me that it was Athalie. The name was fascinating. It was truly unique, and one that was utterly new to my ears. 

Then, at the mention of his mother’s name, Mr. Sadlinger’s jaw tightened, and he bent over clutching at his chest. I asked him if he was alright, and he assured me that he would be okay but that his heart was in poor condition. 

I helped him to the living room where he sat down on one of the sofas. After a moment, he assured me he was fine and asked me what I thought about the place. I told him I would be very happy to take it and all of its property.

  After I moved in, I felt it was one of the best decisions I had ever made. I felt at peace here, something I had never really felt before. 

It was the back porch where I spent most of my days. I’d bring a radio and settle into a rocker, rocking away the hours. There, I would take in the surrounding beauty, eat my meals, and often drift off to sleep.

One day, I settled into a porch rocker and drifted off. Some time later, I was awakened by the sound of voices coming from somewhere on the path beyond the well. As I watched, I saw two girls coming up the path and heading toward the well. They were laughing and talking and seemed to be content and somewhat oblivious to their surroundings. There was something peculiar about them, though. They were clad in the stiff, formal fashion of a century past, one that evoked thoughts of gaslit streets and horse-drawn carriages, the late 19th century or early 20th century in particular. 

The girl on the left wore a blue ankle-length dress, topped with puffed sleeves. They gave her a stately refined presence, yet the simple white apron over her skirt kept her grounded. The high lace collar seemed to cast a gentle light over her face, making her features appear softer and more delicate than any modern woman I had ever known, and even the sturdy black boots and white apron couldn't hide the delicate grace that moved within them.

Her auburn hair, styled in a pompadour, made me think of the beautiful woman in the portrait hanging in the hall of the cabin. The portrait was still hanging there. I asked Mr. Sadlinger if he wanted to take it with him, and he said no and that it belonged to the cabin. 

The other girl was a striking contrast, with a tumble of flowing, raven-black hair. Her bangs were swept back and secured with a careful precision, allowing the rest of her dark tresses to fall down her back. 

She wore a dress of deep, vibrant red—the kind of rich hue that suggested a family of means. Intricate lace scrolled across her chest and wrapped around her shoulders in an elegant mantle, reappearing in a fine line at the hem of her skirt. Like her companion, she wore sturdy black high-top boots, yet even those seemed to carry a certain polished, 'well-to-do' authority as she walked. The other girl was carrying a bucket, and she seemed entirely unburdened, swinging the bucket at her side with a carefree momentum that matched the energy of their conversation. 

  They arrived at the well, and the girl with the bucket filled it with water. They then went back up the path. What was even more peculiar about it all was that they didn’t notice me and didn’t say anything at all to me. I thought about this for a while then went inside for the rest of that day. 

The one thing I couldn't get out of my mind, though, was how much one of the girls resembled the woman in the portrait hanging in the hallway. I was haunted by the uncanny likeness. 

I went to the portrait later on to see if there really was a resemblance between the girl at the well and the portrait, and I was convinced that there was.

The feeling the next day was very relaxed, just like the days before. The chairs on the porch always seemed to be calling to me, and I contentedly settled into one. There was something unsettling that day, though, because the two girls came again, and the previous day’s events were an exact replication with disturbing precision. They laughed and talked in the same unvarying manner, repeating the previous day's conversation word for word. They wore the precise clothes from the day before. They walked in perfect synchronized monotony, as if stuck in a loop. This time, I waved and said hello. No reaction whatsoever, and then, they were gone. 

The recent events swirled in my mind, as I sat there in what I had hoped would be the tranquility of the cabin and the property around me. But after all that had transpired in recent days, I began to wonder. After a while, I fell asleep, as usual. 

Later on, after waking up, I went inside, and got in bed. But it offered no rest. My mind raced with what to do about those girls. So, I thought, maybe tomorrow, I would go down to the well and present myself to them, if they came back. If we stood face to face, they would have to acknowledge me.

The next day, I went to the porch and sat in my rocking chair. It was a beautiful day, but dark clouds soon gathered, lightning flashed, and thunder began to rumble in the distance. The air felt heavy with the promise of rain, but as I sat there, the clouds only lingered, and it remained dry. 

And then, there they were. The two girls came down the path toward the well in what was an uncanny replay of days before. I waved and said hello, but again, I received the same lack of reaction as then. Acting on the previous night’s plan, I got up and went down there. As I approached the well, they remained utterly lost in their own concerns, oblivious to everything else. I said hello again, but it was met with the same indifference. They filled their bucket with water then turned around and walked off. 

 I went as far as the other side of the well, where a truly bizarre and unsettling event occurred. As I got to the other side of it, a sharp, small flash of light seared my vision, and a wave of nausea buckled my knees. I don’t know what it was, but I felt something profoundly and utterly foreign. It was as if words couldn’t adequately express the depths of the experience. It was just a moment, but it felt like an eternity of emotion compressed into a single instant. 

My throat felt raw, forcing a short, dry cough. The girls were just ahead of me. A moment before, their laughter had drifted back to me. Then it stopped abruptly. I was only a few yards behind them when they spun around simultaneously. There was a look of shock on their faces, and the color drained from them. 

The auburn-haired girl said that I startled them and that they didn’t hear me coming. After I pulled myself together, I said I was sorry. A look of apprehension crossed their faces, and they moved away from me. I asked them why they hadn’t said anything when I called out to them those times before. The words came out sharper than intended. It seemed they hung in the air between us. Their faces showed complete confusion. 

I told them I lived in the cabin behind me and that the well was mine. I told them I was curious as to why they didn’t ask my permission to use it. A fresh wave of confusion washed over their faces. 

I turned around and pointed at my cabin. When I did, the breath rushed out of me. This couldn’t be real! This isn’t real! A cold shiver ran down my back. I could only stare, rooted to the spot. The cabin was gone! There was nothing there but tangled wilderness and a path going through where the cabin should have been. 

I turned back to the girls, and the auburn-haired girl asked me if I was alright. I said no. I said maybe I was lost, that I went too far down the path. But I couldn’t have. I was only a few feet away from the well. I turned around and looked again. Panic seized me this time, and a rush of heat washed over me. Sweat ran down my face, and I began to tremble.

I walked toward the well, and then I turned back to the girls. They had gone far up the path and were almost out of view. Up ahead of them, where the path steepened, there was a clearing that I hadn’t noticed before. 

I then realized another strange thing: the sky was completely clear, and there was no rumbling or flashes of lightning. When I reached the well, I slumped against the cold stone, exhausted. After some time, I got to my feet and walked past the well. The strange sensations I had felt earlier occurred again. And, there it was–the cabin! It had materialized in an instant, a sudden, startling presence. The atmosphere that I left was there again–the thunder, the gray sky, the lightning. 

Exhausted, I went to the porch and dropped myself into my rocker and fell asleep.

Later on in bed, the events of the day swirled in my thoughts. A strange thought hit me: the well was a gateway, a portal. When I walked past it, it sent me back to another time. But a time portal…here? And why did it present itself to me? And there was something else I couldn’t make sense of. The girls' daily arrival was like a perpetual first time. It was an exact repeat of the day before as if they had never come until that day.

Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that it was a time portal and one that was stuck on repeat. I thought about the plots in those time traveling movies I’d seen and the intricate rules of time travel in the books I had read. I always wondered how difficult it would be for the characters in those books or movies to make sense of what was happening. If the transition to understanding what happened didn’t seem smooth enough, it wouldn’t be as convincing, I thought. But the thought came so sudden that I wasn’t as convinced as I thought I might be. 

But it had to be. It was a time portal. It seemed intriguing; another time was opening up to me. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to experience it, to uncover a world utterly removed from my own. 

I made up my mind to go. If this was what was being presented to me, I was going to go and see what it was like there, who those girls were, what I could do there, if I could survive there.

The next day, on the porch, I reconsidered my thoughts from the night before. I again doubted the reality of what happened the day before. I was haunted by the suspicion that the day’s events were purely imaginary. Maybe that was it. I must have imagined it. Things like this don’t really happen. 

But every day, I saw them. They came down the path, an inevitable return, and I sat there, a fixed point in their loop. Then, a thought came to me—-why not just go beyond the well and follow them, in an unobtrusive way?  

The next day, I set my plan in motion. Strangely enough, it was a grim mirror of the first day I had gone beyond the well. The clouds swarmed in, turning the sky gray and bringing the distant rumble of a storm. 

I saw them coming. They went to the well, got their water, and then turned to go back up the path. When they got halfway up, I ran out to the well. Once there, I waited until I saw them go into the clearing, and then I slowly crossed to the other side. A small flash of light flared once more, followed by that familiar wave of unease and a scratch in my throat. I held back, trying very hard not to make a sound. 

  I crept to the clearing’s edge, searching for a place to hide within the tangled mess of vines and leaves. I concealed myself behind one of the towering trees that rose from the brush along the path. I could see the girls again as they hurried toward the back of a large and quaint white clapboard farmhouse. It was beautiful. It was like one of those places in a movie or a book about days long gone and a time that seemed simpler than my own. It looked like a house that the two girls belonged to.

I still see the house and property, an exquisite fixture etched in my memory—it was two stories with a roof of green slate shingles. It had an elevated porch that wrapped around the back and one side of the house. Steps led up to it with an entrance positioned between the railings. A line of rocking chairs furnished the porch with a table set between two of them. Bushes of vibrant red blossoms lined the edge which blew gently in the wind. 

  Towering maple trees, their leaves turning colors, crowded around the house and gave plenty of shade. The lawn was well kept except for an overgrown garden overflowing with vibrant colors.

Everything around this property contributed to a profound sense of calm. It felt like a place where you could spend time sitting in one of those rocking chairs enjoying that charming and atmospheric setting. It reminded me of the tranquility and comfort of my cabin except that the property was well kept. I fell in love with it at that very moment. 

On the porch, a woman waited, her smile as comforting as the house seemed to be. She had a similar appearance to the girls in that she had on a dress with puff sleeves and a high lace collar; only hers was entirely white. Her hair was also styled like the auburn-haired girl. 

She waved and called out to the girls. She asked if they had gotten the water, and the auburn-haired girl answered yes, and called her grandma. The grandmother, sounding impatient, told them that they should hurry. She also said that Diana’s mother said she could stay and go into town with them after grandpa finished plowing the field. My eyes then fell on the girl with the black hair. That was Diana.

 Beyond the house, a man, with a field stretched out before him, steered a horse-drawn plow. Grandpa, I thought. I wasn’t too far away that I couldn’t smell the earthy scent of the turned soil.

I remained concealed and watched them for a while. After some time, the man came in from the field with the horse and hitched it to a wagon. The grandfather, the grandmother, and the two girls got in and headed down the road until they were out of sight. I waited several moments, and then I walked back down the path trying to process this earth-shattering experience that I just had. A flash of light, a sudden disorientation, and then, the unmistakable comfort of the cabin. I was back in my world. 

The next day, I went into town. It was a rural town, predictable, quiet and peaceful. I assumed it was the same town that the grandparents and the girls had gone to the day before, though I couldn’t be sure. I wondered if it had changed much since then. 

I had been buying my groceries in the small family-run grocery store there. The man at the counter and his wife were the main employees of the store, with their children helping out once in a while. The elderly couple were likely in their seventies. It was probable that they knew the area well. 

I started a conversation with the man as I was checking out, and I asked him about the white house I had seen the day before. He gave me a perplexed look and said there hadn’t been a house there since sometime in the forties. He told me of the destruction of the house and a little of its history. 

He said the woman who had been living there at the time of its destruction had gone insane. She set the house on fire and died in it. He said she had lost her mind after her husband had disappeared some thirty years before the house was destroyed. She locked herself away in it, never seeing anyone, not even her children. I asked what her name was, and he said it was hard to remember, but he thought it was Athalie—Athalie Sadlinger.

This is the first chapter of my new book The Well Of Regret. If you'd like to read the whole book, you can buy a copy with the link below. Thanks!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GRPB1HLM