Boy Falls into Grandpa’s Dry Well and Finds Secret Door on the Bottom – Story of the Day

An adventurous young boy goes in search of treasure, only to fall into an abandoned dry well in his grandfather's backyard. While the police search for him desperately, the boy uncovers a terrible secret lurking down there in a hidden bunker.

Ricky stared up at the circle of fading light far above him at the top of the well. The aching in his ankle was nothing compared to the fear and desperation that gnawed at his insides.

He'd been alone and terrified at the bottom of this dark, damp pit for hours. As he grappled with the stony walls of the well, trying to pull himself up, he thought of his grandfather's by-now worried face.

"Grandpa! Grandpa!" Ricky shouted, his voice echoing up the walls of the well, but there was no response. No one could hear his cries for help.

I can't give up! He thought to himself. I have to find a way out of here. And so, he continued to dig and scrape at the walls.

Finally, he was able to dig out one of the small stones making up the walls: A foothold! he thought. He was determined to climb to safety.

***

In the ramshackle house fronting the plot, Old Tom was growing frantic. It had been hours since he'd seen Ricky playing in the huge, overgrown backyard, strewn with car wrecks and other hunks of discarded machinery.

Ricky was a very curious and adventurous boy with a vivid imagination. He would play alone as a pirate, cowboy, or Indiana Jones for hours in Grandpa Tom's backyard; it was a boy's dream playground.

The tight-knit community in which they lived had faced its fair share of hardship and poverty, but now something sinister was haunting the quiet, unkempt streets.

Someone had been terrorizing the town, kidnapping its children. The faces of the missing kids were pinned on every public space available.

In their collective despair, the townspeople, along with the local police force, had raised a substantial reward for anyone who came forward with information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrator, or perpetrators, and the return of the children. Hopefully.

Times had been tough, and Ricky felt a profound responsibility to help his grandfather get by. He had become much obsessed of late with dreams of discovering a hidden treasure that would deliver this grandfather and him from poverty.

It was this and Ricky's natural curiosity that had led him to the edge of their property, where, beneath the watchful eye of the aging oak trees, lay an old, dry well. Its surface, worn by time and neglect, had been concealed beneath a makeshift tomb of rotting wooden boards.

With each nail Ricky had managed to pry out with his grandfather's claw hammer, the mystery of the well beckoned him further. His fingers worked diligently at the ancient boards one by one.

Ricky had found he couldn't lever out any more nails, and the hole wasn't wide enough to look into. So, he'd decided to stamp on the boards and see if he could break his way through.

Suddenly, with an awful crack, the boards beneath him had given way, sending Ricky plummeting into the abyss of the well.

***

The twilight hours turned into a disheartening night. However, Ricky's determination remained unbroken, so he continued to scrape at the walls, seeking to carve a ladder of footholds that might offer a means of escape.

Ricky's absence weighed heavily on his grandfather as the night pressed on. "He's been gone too long. I have to call the cops," Old Tom whispered to himself.

With a heavy heart, Ricky's grandfather dialed the number for the local police station.

The station's fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as Sergeant Malone—a friend of Old Tom's, a friend to all who knew him in the town, and a seasoned officer with a heart as kind as it was weathered—listened intently to the worried man's words.

"Malone," Old Tom croaked. "It's Ricky; he's been gone all night. I fear the worst. Please, help me find him."

Sergeant Malone's heart sank. Not another one, he thought. "Okay, Tom, we'll do everything we can. I'm coming over myself right now to take all the details from you. We'll launch a manhunt right away. Hang in there; we're on the way."

"Thanks, Malone. Get here fast, I'm waiting," came Old Tom's desperate reply.

***

During the long hours of the night, Ricky had managed to dislodge only two stones. He had tried to stand and see if he could step from the first hole to the second, but the pain in his ankle was excruciating.

However, in the hours of silence and solitude, Ricky's determination remained undiminished. He kept working the third rock out of the wall, and it came away in a cascade of dirt.

Ricky reached into the new hole and was surprised when his fingers bumped against a smooth surface. He formed a fist and rapped on it with his knuckles. "Wood!" Ricky said to himself.

Frantic with hope, Ricky clawed at the rocks and dirt around the hole, and they began to give way easily, falling at his feet in a pile he was able to stand on and keep clearing away around the wooden board.

Soon, he had exposed its outlines. "There's a wooden board in there!" Ricky said. "Maybe the only way out is through it."

The board was about three feet by three feet in size and badly rotted by the wet dirt it had been in contact with.

Balancing carefully and painfully on his damaged leg and the pile of rocks beneath him, Ricky managed to use his good foot and give the board a solid kick.

He felt the board give a little, so he kicked and kicked again. And just as he thought he couldn't stand for one more kick, the board gave way with a crunch and disappeared into the darkness beyond it.

Ricky pulled the top half of his body through the hole and leaned into the darkness. He couldn't see a thing, but going on all his other senses, he hauled himself further in.

Suddenly, his body came out of the hole, and he fell again. But this time, it was only about three feet, and he was able to break his fall with his hands.

"Oooff!" he exhaled as he landed. "At least I didn't land on my foot again," he told himself.

He felt a cold concrete floor beneath him, and he began to crawl inch by inch along the wall he'd fallen through.

He'd gone about six feet when his head struck an upright surface. He felt his way up the surface.

"Feels like a desk," he said, putting his hands on the tabletop and pulling himself into a standing position.

Feeling around the top, he discovered piles of paper, what felt like electronic equipment, and rectangular plastic blocks.

"VHS tapes?" he said quietly. "Where am I? What is this place?" He was suddenly gripped by terror and felt frozen to the spot.

"Is there anyone in here?" he whispered hoarsely. Nothing but silence answered him.

And then, his hand brushed a desk lamp. He felt along the cord for the switch, and clicking it on, he was blinded by the sudden light. He closed his eyes in shock, waiting for them to adjust.

When he opened his eyes, he found he was in a small underground bunker of sorts. There in front of him was the dusty, cluttered desk.

And now he could see that the electronics were two VHS machines stacked alongside an old TV, while the paper collection he'd felt was a pack of newspaper clippings.

He began to discern a sinister pattern as he flipped through the faded articles. The clippings detailed the cases of the missing children in the town, painting a chilling picture of the kidnapper's deeds.

Ricky's heart raced as realization dawned upon him. The newspaper clippings linked the bunker to the town's mystery.

***

As the day dawned, the town's relentless pursuit of the missing children continued. The community refused to lose hope, and the search for answers remained steadfast.

An army of volunteers combed slowly through the outlying woods behind Old Tom's place. The FBI was now on the case, sweeping area-wide with a sniffer dog unit. A helicopter thundered overhead above the trees.

Perched sadly on his porch, Old Tom watched the search party fan out in the woods. His face lit up with an idea, and he retreated into the house and picked up the telephone.

"Sergeant?" he barked into the receiver when Malone answered. "How soon can you get a team back to the house? I don't know why I didn't think of it before," Old Tom went on.

"The old well at the end of the yard, the kid was fascinated with the thing. He used to ask me about it all the time. We need to check it out right away. There's an old bunker down there too. We boarded it up a long time ago, but maybe there's another way in. Sergeant, we're gonna need a rescue team if he's down there."

"Okay, maybe," Malone said. "But, Tom, we're in an active kidnapping situation right now. The first twelve hours are critical in these situations. Precedent tells us that if you don't find the victim within the first twelve hours, the chances of finding them at all diminish exponentially."

"Yeah, okay," Old Tom replied, "I understand. The well could be a wild goose chase; maybe we should leave it then."

"It's just that we might be wasting resources there when we need everything focused on the kidnapping," Sergeant Malone said. "Oh, Tom, we've had some descriptions of a suspect come in. Old guy, white beard, driving a battered, blue Dodge van; know anyone meets that description?"

"Blue van, you say?" Old Tom echoed in alarm.

***

Down in the bunker, Ricky worked his way around the walls, his mind occupied with the information he had uncovered from the newspapers. Unexpectedly, he came across a closed door.

He tried the handle. It was locked, and he rattled it hard in frustration, torn between the desperate need to get out of there and a chilling guess as to who just might be on the other side of the door.

Then he heard a faint knocking on the door. Were those voices? he thought. The voices were very soft and high. Ricky knocked back on the door gently.

"Hello?" he ventured quietly. "Hello, is there someone there?"

"Help us, please!" came the unmistakable reply. "Help! Let us out, let us out!"

"Who's there?" Ricky asked, certain now that the voices were children's.

"It's Simon," came the voice of a young boy about his age, Ricky guessed. "He's locked us in here. It's horrible. Please get us out, please!"

"Who else is in there?" Ricky asked. "Tina," the boy, Simon, said. "He's making us do stuff. Bad stuff. Please get us out."

"The door is locked," Ricky said. "Is there a key or something on that side?"

"No," Simon replied. "He comes in through the other door here in the basement. He hasn't used this door. The doors are always locked. Can you get us out?"

"I don't know," Ricky said. "I'll look for a key. But there's no way back out of here. The well is too deep. I can't climb up it."

"Just get us out, please," Simon begged.

"Hold on, I'll look around," Ricky said.

Ricky moved over to the desk and riffled through the drawers. He found a rusty bunch of keys and, returning to the door, he tried them one by one, his hopes fading with each that failed to turn.

Then, the last one he tried worked! He slung the door open and was shocked by what he saw.

In the dingy, damp dungeon of a basement stood Simon, pale, emaciated, his clothes filthy and stained, his eyes darting around like those of a frightened rabbit.

Behind him, sitting on a thread-bare mattress, sat Tina in nothing but white cotton underwear. She stared up at Ricky with dull eyes, her long blonde hair bedraggled, and the tracks of tears apparent on her dirty cheeks.

"You... you have to get us out of here," Simon pleaded.

"The man here... he's dangerous. He said we were going to be his 'special friends' forever. He's been filming us," Tina said. "There were two others with us, also a boy and girl, but he took them away yesterday."

From behind the other door to the basement, there was the sudden thumping of heavily-booted feet approaching.

"He's coming!" Simon stammered in terror. "There's a long tunnel back there. It must lead to his house. Quick, hide! Go back through the door. If he finds you here, he'll do this to you too. We'll have no chance of getting out."

Ricky nodded and slipped back behind the door, closing it quietly just as he heard the other door bang open and a voice boom: "Who are you kids talking to down here?" the voice said. It sounded vaguely familiar to Ricky.

"No one, sir," Simon said meekly. "We were just talking to ourselves."

"Yourselves? What the hell you talking to yourselves for like crazy people? Shut up and get some sleep. I'm coming back down in an hour and we gonna have some more fun," the voice snarled.

"Please, sir," Simon begged, "we don't want to do this anymore. Just let us go."

"I'll let you go when I'm good and ready," the voice said. "Or maybe I won't," it added, evilly. "Oh, yeah, while I'm down here, might as well get a new tape."

Ricky could hear footsteps clumping towards the door in front of him. There was no time to get back through the hole he'd made to get in. He panicked and froze in fear. I'm done for, he thought.

He heard the rattling of keys and then one clanking into the door lock and clattering as it turned. But then came a blood-curdling scream and the loud crash of a body bashing against the door.

"What the hell!" the man's voice yelled. "What do you think you're doing running into me like that? Get off me, girl, get off me!" Ricky could hear bumps against the door as two bodies struggled against each other.

"Get off!" yelled the man again, and then he screamed in pain. There came the sound of a hand hitting a head, a thump as a body fell to the floor, and then silence.

"Bit me! You bitch!" the evil voice yelled. "You're gonna pay for this as soon as I bandage this up. Just you wait!"

Ricky heard the outer door slam closed again, and he knew they didn't have much time. He limped quickly back through the door back into the basement, his ankle throbbing in pain but his body buoyed by adrenaline.

Simon was trying to help Tina up; she was groggy from the blow she'd received.

"We'll get back up through the well," Ricky said.

Simon nodded. "Help Tina," he said. Ricky moved over and took one of Tina's arms around his shoulders while Simon took the other.

They lifted her and shuffled through the door Ricky had unlocked. "Hold on," Ricky said when they were in the bunker. He took the bunch of keys he'd found and locked the door behind them.

***

Old Tom was on the line to Sergeant Malone: "My neighbor, Ted, drives a blue Dodge van. It's sitting in his driveway right now as we speak."

"You sure?" Malone asked.

"Sure as day," Old Tom confirmed. "And, what's more, the guy has a white beard."

"Alright, Tom, I'm getting on the radio right now. Hang tight; some of my boys will be right over. We'll check the well while we're at it."

"Okay, hurry," Old Tom said and hung up.

Within minutes two patrol cars came wailing down Old Tom's road and screeched to a halt in front of Ted's drive, blocking the Dodge van.

Old Tom took off across the backyard and was met by a sniffer dog team and a group of community volunteers. They converged on the well.

Old Tom peered in while a policeman shone his bright flashlight down into the well.

A dirt-smeared face appeared in the beam. It was Ricky. He was standing on Simon's shoulders and working on prising another rock out of the wall.

"Grandpa!" Ricky shouted up excitedly.

"Ricky! My boy! You just hang in there; we are going to get you out!" Old Tom yelled back, elated to see his grandson alive and safe.

Alerted by the commotion, some townspeople gathered in the street. Shocked and disbelieving, they witnessed the miscreant Ted being manhandled out of his front door and thrown with all the contempt he deserved into the back of a patrol car.

The evidence Ricky had uncovered in the bunker came down on Ted's head like a ton of bricks, and he was handed down a life sentence for his crimes. Ricky's efforts also helped the FBI bring down a child trafficking ring they had been pursuing for years that Ted was tied to.

Simon and Tina were reunited with their families and began a long journey to recovery as friends for life.

The reward money, once the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, was presented to Ricky, the hero who had risked everything to save others.

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If you enjoyed this story, you might like this one about a poor dad who saves a stray dog from euthanasia, and it leads him to a cave holding a treasure of gold.

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