The Girl from the Well

by Rin Chupeco

  Something is in the room with him. This much he knows, and that is why he hides. Shadows steal across the ceiling; boards creak and groan as the house settles down for the night; and he is hiding.

  It starts with the mirror, where he can see a small reflection of himself beside his bed, huddled in the corner of the room and whispering “oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap” in quiet staccato.

  From inside this mirror, a long, spindly hand reaches out, and something forbidding and black forces its way through the surface and climbs out. The boy’s breathing grows ragged, his heart racing.

  Just as suddenly, the lampposts outside die out one by one in rapid succession. Only one directly across the street from the house remains, sputtering in and out, casting darkness one moment and then fleeting, rudimentary light in the next.

  A figure steps out of the mirror. It does not crawl or stagger. Its movements are fluid, though what passes for its feet never touch the floor. It is draped in a shapeless cloak of fluttering dark, and rising above it is a blank, staring face. Its mask is now even more deteriorated, a manifestation of its crumbling prison walls.

  From behind the mask, something looks out.

  It sees the boy, but not with eyes.

  From behind its mask it is smiling, but it has no mouth.

  It moves to the tattooed boy, who flattens himself against the wall, grim and trembling, the baseball bat in his hands a futile gesture. For if he is to die this night, at the very least he will not die a coward, though he is very much afraid.

  But death does not come for him tonight.

  Instead,

  I do.

  The black figure stops when I step forward, blocking her path to the cowering boy. A hissing noise fills the air, containing all her impotent rage. She is strong, the strongest she has been in many years. She has mistaken my inability to prevent Yoko Taneda’s death as weakness. Yet she herself has not completely broken free of her seals, and I hold more power over the fate of children.

  She snarls, and in her mind I can touch madness. But I have endured my share of insanity, and I stand fast. The towering blackness surrounds me, threatens me, but I force it away with my presence, my will. She did not expect me to be this strong.

  For a long time she stands, unable to proceed, and a silent unseen war wages between us. Then she leaps forward, attempting to brush past me to get at the boy. But for all her quickness, I catch her wrist easily with one hand, and

  crush

  it in my grip.

  She shrieks in pain. I hear a startled gasp behind me.

  The masked woman knows then that she is not ready.

  Not while I am here, defying her at every turn for reasons creatures like her would never understand.

  On the teenager’s body three seals have been broken; one other seal, stained in Callie’s blood, has not yet succumbed. But there is one tattoo still sealed, and this is her flaw.

  And so she retreats, step by painstaking step, forced to relinquish ground. She gnashes her teeth at me one last time, and then she disappears.

  I believe that I could have destroyed her right then. But the stifled sounds of pain coming from the boy are the reason I do not.

  The boy is cradling his wrist, in the same spot I injured the woman. He stares at me, fearful that I, too, have come for vengeance.

  Instead, I sit on the floor several feet away from where he still cowers, legs folded underneath me and hands on my lap. I watch him. My physical appearance does very little to redeem my intentions, but it does not take long for the boy to realize I mean him no harm.

  “Thank you,” he manages to say, still rubbing his wrist, which has begun to swell slightly.

  I say

  nothing.

  Tentatively, he emerges from his hiding place and walks toward where I am kneeling. He hesitates for one long moment and then, with the clumsy fingers of his uninjured hand, reaches out to touch my hair, to convince himself of my corporeality. I let him, though he soon retreats, afraid such action would merit him some offense.

  “Why?” he asks.

  His is a question ripe with possibilities.

  Why, indeed?

  For so long I thought that wreaking my vengeance upon murderers and killers was the only path I had left to take, my mind closed to other alternatives. Only now, I discover that preventing the deaths of children has as much potency as avenging them.

  For three hundred years, I have rescued countless souls. But I never bothered to learn their names, to understand their hopes and their dreams, to know who they were and what they might have become. To me they have always been nothing more than fireflies that give me brief moments of comfort.

  It was never in my nature to be interested in the living before.

  I take his hand and examine the wound I inflicted there. It is not in my nature to heal, so instead I press the tips of my fingers along the base of the wound, a quiet apology. I do what he is afraid to do on his own, and lift his palms and let him touch my cold, clammy face. The lamppost continues its solitary flickering, winking at us like a fiery eye. With each flare, my features change abruptly, from young girl

  to dreadful spirit

  and back again.

  Then the light disappears for several seconds, leaving us in darkness. When it finally returns, no longer quivering but shining strongly, I have settled into my former human shape. When I was alive, I had shining dark hair and brown eyes and skin light enough to be considered delicate by some. This is what he sees now.

  I am not always a monster.

  And when he sees this for the first time, I hear his breath catch in his throat.

  “You look…you don’t look anything like what I expected.”

  There is little to say to that statement, and I wait for him to calm down, to break the next bout of silence. He slides to the floor beside me, glancing back at me every so often to assure himself that I do not mind.

  “You’re a ghost, aren’t you?” Then he answers his own question. “Well, of course, Tark. Stupid question. Nothing in the movies ever mentioned anything like this—” The sudden, stricken look on his face quickly tells me he regrets sounding so cocky, still fearful I may not comprehend how he hides his uncertainties behind his banter. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound… I’ve always been told I’m a smartass.”

  But I know now that his habit of sarcasm is a part of his nature, just as my malice is of my own, and for the first time in centuries I smile so very slightly.

  “My name is Tarquin,” he says after another hesitant pause, though emboldened by my reaction. “Tark.”

  It has been so long since I have heard anyone speak my name or have allowed it to pass through my own lips. In a moment of weakness, I find myself replying, my unused voice issuing from cracked, unmoving lips, my own name tripping on my tongue from disuse.

  Okiku.

  Oki-ku.

  O

  ki

  ku.

  “Okiku,” I whisper.

  “Okiku. That’s a nice name—”

  He looks up again, only to realize he is sitting alone on the floor of his room with nothing remaining for company except the moon looking in through the windows, shining and bright.

  • • •

  I have always striven for detachment, a disinterest in the living. Their preoccupation with each breath of air, the brevity of their lifetimes, and their numerous flaws do not inspire sympathy in me. I can plumb their minds and wander the places they frequent, but they hold little significance.

  I do not care to remember names. I do not care to recognize faces.

  But this one is called Tarquin Halloway.

  He has a cousin named Callie Starr.

  His eyes are very bright blue.

  He is lonely.

  It is not in my nature to be interested in
the living.

  But there are many things, I have found, that defy nature.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Funeral

  Funerals are strange things.

  Perhaps it is because I have not had one of my own that their importance eludes me. Ashes fall to ashes, and dust falls to dust whether bodies are buried with full honors underneath the earth or thrown onto the wayside and left to rot. Funerals seem less about comforting the souls of these dearly departed than about comforting the people they leave behind.

  Yoko Taneda’s funeral does not bring much comfort to the Halloways. The rites are finally concluded on a rainy Sunday morning. The coffin bearing the woman’s body is placed inside a large incinerator, and the fires underneath are lit. The emotions on the older man’s face are easy to decipher: bewilderment and shock and grief. Tarquin is harder to read. His face is gaunt from exhaustion and trauma that should not have endured in so young a face. His eyes are unusually blank, deep pools of black that stare at the burning coffin and yet also at nothing.

  Few people attend the cremation services. Few people in this part of the world knew the woman, and few are willing to look into those flames and be reminded of their own fragility. But the teacher’s assistant

  no, not the teacher’s assistant—

  Callie; her name is Callie—

  is among those who have come to mourn. She stands apart from the unfortunate family, biding her time to approach. She glances up sharply, sensing she is being watched, and sees me. I am standing several yards away at the other end of the room, the skirts of my dress fluttering in a faint breeze that comes from no clear source. My head hangs low. I do nothing but watch the boy as the coffin continues to burn, and she senses in an obscure way that I, too, have come to pay my respects. A man in front of her takes a step to one side and blocks her view, but once he moves away again, I am no longer there.

  When the ritual concludes, people file past the bereaved family to offer small words of comfort. After several minutes of this, the boy becomes discomfited by all the sympathy and finally wanders off, away from the dank soot of the crematorium and out into the foggy day. The girl waits until the crowd around her uncle has thinned, before approaching him.

  “I am so sorry, Uncle Doug. How are you two holding up?”

  The man accepts her embrace. “Thanks, Callie,” he says and tries to smile, though it comes out as a grimace. “Tark’s okay—surprisingly, after everything he’s been through these last few weeks. The therapist says he’s taking things a lot better than…”

  He pauses and takes a deep breath. “We’re going to take her ashes back to Japan. She grew up in Aomori. Her will asks that Tark and I take her ashes to a small shrine there.” His brow creases, and Callie understands his confusion over this unusual request.

  “Will Tark be going?”

  “We both will be. I’m going to take him out of school for a while. This year’s been disruptive enough as it is. We both need a little time to heal. I think that, at this point, it’s for the best.”

  “I’m sorry to hear you’re both leaving. I wish there was something more I could do.”

  “You’ve done more than enough. I don’t think I can ever repay you for saving Tarquin. I…” The man pauses, his face crumpling for a few seconds before remembering himself. “I know you saw her shortly before she…she died. Did she say anything to you? Anything that might be important?”

  The young woman hesitates, unsure of what she should say, unsure of how much the man really knew of his wife. “She said that you and Tark must return to the little dolls of Yagen Valley. To her sisters.”

  The man shakes his head in bewilderment. “I met her when we were both students at Tokyo University, and I know she was born in Mutsu province, where I believe Yagen Valley is located. But I don’t know what she means by ‘little dolls.’ Yoko had a sister, but I’m told she died many years ago. All Mr. Bedingfield—our lawyer—could tell me was that she had some relations in Mutsu, but all he had to go by was an address.”

  Remembering the news accounts of the crime, the descriptions of the body, and the strewn dolls in that tiny room is enough to send another shudder through his niece. “Do you think it has anything to do with her doll collection?”

  The man lifts his hands, helpless. “I don’t know. It sounds preposterous. Collecting Japanese dolls is a hobby of hers, but that’s not an unusual pastime. I still don’t understand.” Anger laces through his voice, anger and grief and an inability to refer to his wife in the past tense. “The police aren’t being any help at all. They say there was no evidence that anyone was…that anyone was inside with her. The last person to see her alive was the attendant who brought her dinner.” His voice breaks. “Why would anyone even want to kill Yoko? Why would anyone do that to her? It must have been one of the other patients at Remney’s.”

  “Uncle Doug,” the young woman says timidly, suddenly formal. “Have you ever seen anything unusual around Aunt Yoko? Or with Tark?”

  “Unusual? I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  “Have you ever seen…well, strange women around Tark?”

  The man stares at her blankly, and Callie realizes that her uncle is ignorant and unaffected by the things that had haunted his son and his wife for so long. “Strange women? Other than the man who tried to kidnap Tarquin, I haven’t heard of any other strangers. Did Yoko say something about a strange woman?”

  But the young woman is already shaking her head. “No, no, I just thought…it’s nothing. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do. Mom sent an email. She says she’s sorry she couldn’t be here in time.”

  “She has nothing to apologize for. Send her all my love.”

  The young woman hugs him one last time, stepping back to allow others the chance to offer their own condolences. She drifts toward the incinerator and watches glimpses of orange fire flickering cheerfully along the outlines of the vault door that separates her from the intense heat inside. What should I do? she silently asks herself. What do I do?

  She does not expect an answer. But from inside the incinerator, where the dead woman’s body lies within the flames, come the distinctive sounds of thumping.

  The young woman steps back in alarm and glances toward the crowd of mourners. No one else seems to hear the noise.

  The thumping begins again, and with it comes a peculiar scratching.

  Like something is raking its nails on the other side of the vault door.

  Like something is inside with the burning corpse, trying to claw its way out.

  The young woman turns and runs, not stopping until she is finally outside the funeral parlor, the light rain falling all around her. She stares back at the building, shivering, afraid that something might have followed her out.

  “Callie?”

  Despite the wet, the boy sits in some tall grass several feet away, looking quizzically at her. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Tark!” she bursts out, unable to respond to his question. “I…I don’t know. There was—I thought there was a—something was scratching at the—I think I’m going crazy.”

  “Welcome to my world.” The boy does not sound surprised. He points at the empty spot to his left and indicates that she should join him there. His right wrist is heavily bandaged. “I’m not going back inside, anyway. Too stuffy.”

  Still trembling, the girl sits.

  “You sure you’re okay?” he asks.

  “I…yes. I should be the one asking you that question. What happened to your wrist?”

  “Accident. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Oh, I’m peachy,” the boy says, a bitter smile on his lips.

  “I’m so sorry, Tark.”

  “Don’t be. You’re in this mess because of me. I should be the one
apologizing. If not for you, it could have been my funeral everyone’d be attending now.”

  “That wasn’t your fault, either, and you know it.”

  “I know. She did it.” The teenager said it so softly that she almost missed the words.

  “The…the masked woman?”

  “Yeah, the…” The boy blinks back at her, surprised. “How did you know?”

  “I’ve seen her, too. There is a woman in black I’ve seen around you before, back at the…” She pauses, decides it would not be prudent to bring up the unpleasantries of the past, and attempts a different approach. “And there is another woman in white.”

  The boy nods his agreement, still looking surprised. “Thought I was the only one who could see them both. I was half convinced I was going insane, like Mom.”

  “Aunt Yoko…I know it sounds odd to say after everything that’s happened, but I think she really did love you, despite everything.”

  “I know that. I just wished she loved me the way a normal mother would have. Like making me cookies or grounding me. Not giving me these.”

  The teenager stares down at his arms. As before, his long sleeves obstruct the tattoos curling into his skin. In a spontaneous display of trust, he tugs one up to let her see them briefly. The seal no longer moves and twists, and the ink here seems lighter now, half faded into flesh.

  “I’ve been seeing that masked woman since I was a little kid. And I’ve had these for as long as I can remember. Everyone says Mom did it, but I don’t really remember how I got them. It’s like all my childhood memories before I was five years old had been completely erased.

  “I hated these tattoos. I was always picked on by the other kids, and their parents thought I was a freak. Kids would either bully or ignore me, and on the rare instance someone would try to make friends with me…well, weird shit happened. You remember all those dead birds crashing into the cafeteria? That’s happened before, in Maine.

  “There were other things, too, like decaying smells that come out of nowhere, strong enough that the school had to be evacuated a couple of times. I found a hundred dissected frogs, some still hopping, in fifth-period math once. And there were small earthquakes that only extended out a couple of meters, and nobody could explain that, either. Once at my old school, a piece of plaster crumbled and a host of dead rats came tumbling out, all with their heads cut off.