The Girl from the Well

by Rin Chupeco

  Tarquin rolls his eyes. “This isn’t Japan, Dad. It’s an American thing now, so the general public will probably take ‘cherry blossom festival’ over a Japanese word they don’t understand.”

  “Maybe I’m just too much of a purist.”

  “I know. Mom probably said the same thing.” There is no longer any anger or fear in his voice when Tarquin refers to his dead mother.

  But the National Cherry Blossom Festival viewing takes a backseat to what they call the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade. Dancers (sixty) litter the streets, holding various symbols and representations of sakura blossoms (sixty) over their heads as they prance down the street. Floats of differing sizes and shapes sail past the onlookers, thirty-nine in all, and giant helium balloons (twenty-eight) soar overhead, blocking out snippets of sky as they pass. Marching bands (fifteen) wail out an accompaniment, one of the many sources of entertainment to the crowds that pack the roads, nearly three thousand on this street alone.

  Callie and the Halloways spend several minutes watching the parade before deciding to slip away. Though the parade is pleasing to the eyes, none of them are comfortable in the thick of crowds, and they retreat to lesser populated areas where vendors (twenty) hawk Japanese delicacies to mark the occasion.

  There are signs here that say “12th Street” and “Pennsylvania Avenue,” and between them lies the Sakura Matsuri, the Japanese Street Festival. The three pay the required fee to enter and wander among the small stalls. Most of the people are watching seven martial arts experts practice their respective disciplines. There are three stages in the six blocks allocated for the festival, which will soon host a vast number of performances by musicians and singers. Tarquin’s father purchases takoyaki balls for them, and for several minutes they stand, watching and chatting and taking in the scenes set before them.

  “We should do stuff like this more often,” Tarquin muses, several hours later. His father had wandered off to haggle with a nearby vendor for a small replica of a samurai sword. Dusk is beginning to settle, but the crowds are as thick as ever, awaiting the fireworks set to begin in another hour’s time.

  “College has been tough,” Callie admits, “but I should be free for the summer.”

  Tarquin makes a face. “Isn’t summer when you college students go to beaches and drink beer and post your little duckface photos on Facebook?”

  Callie knew she should disapprove but laughs instead. “I think someone’s going to need to talk with your father about the kind of things you’ve been watching.”

  Tarquin is about to make another retort but then falls silent as they pass a small stall that sells different varieties of Japanese dolls, from ichimatsu to musha ningyo warrior dolls to small Noh figures. Callie follows his gaze and understands, her fingers idly drifting back to her scar, as still is her habit.

  “Did you ever hear news from Kagura-chan?” Tarquin asks suddenly.

  “She and her aunt moved to Honshu, and they’re running a small inn there. She and Saya go to the Chinsei shrine every now and then to put things in order and clean up. I guess there are too many painful memories there for them to stay long. Has she contacted you?”

  “Once,” Tarquin says. “Dad and I took another trip to Japan a couple of months ago. Even stayed at their bed-and-breakfast for a few weeks.”

  “Really? What—”

  A roar fills the air. Two combatants fight each other with large kendo sticks, their faces encased in odd steel masks. The speed and ferocity in the way they attack, and the agility with which they dodge blows by their opponent, draw hearty applause from nearby onlookers.

  “The dolls will need a lot of tending,” Tarquin says suddenly, after the audience has quieted. “That’s what Kagura says. They say they can’t have any more spirits breaking out.”

  Callie has to smile. “I’m sure they know what they’re doing. Remember Kagura mentioning you would make a fine onmyji if you’d lived in ancient Japan?”

  “I looked that up. I’m not so sure I’d do well with the calendar-making and the astrology part of the job, though. Can you imagine me coming up with horoscopes for the emperor? ‘Today shall be your lucky day, so long as you don’t behead your favorite court onmyji for no reason. Girls might like you better if you had a different face, but remember that patience is a heavenly virtue. Also, don’t forget about the not-beheading thing.’ Maybe I’d like to take a stab at kicking ghosts out of people myself. I’ve been doing a lot of research into those esoteric Japanese rituals.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “Dad always says the more you know about something, the better you can plan and protect yourself. So that’s what I’ve been doing.”

  In the next shop someone is selling ukiyo-e. One of these wall scrolls is of a young girl. Her arms are stretched out in front of her, the wrists dangling loosely, and her face is of a preternatural calmness, touched slightly by sorrow. There is a bluish cast to her skin, and she is slowly rising up from a well.

  “You like this one? This from Thirty-Six Ghosts, one of Tsukiyoka Yoshitoshi’s greatest masterpieces,” the vendor says proudly in broken English.

  “I think I’ll take it,” Tarquin decides.

  He turns to look back into the crowd, and Callie gasps when I raise my head briefly past Tarquin’s to look back at her. Nothing about me has changed, except now I seem to rise up from somewhere below Tarquin’s chest. With my broken neck, it almost appears as if Tarquin and I are two heads sharing one body.

  “Tark!”

  “What?” Tarquin glances back at me, puzzled, and I retreat back into his frame. “What’s wrong, Callie?”

  “You see her, don’t you?” Callie is excited, frightened. She had thought that memories of old ghosts would fade over time rather than linger in the present. In the past year she has seen no abnormalities of the senses, no other ghosts that haunt her vision, and she assumed the worst was over.

  “Okiku?” Tarquin does not seem surprised. On the contrary, he is calm. Accepting.

  “Tark, I know she protected us, but no good can come from keeping her with you. We need to get help—”

  “I don’t really have much of a choice, Callie,” Tarquin says quietly.

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Kagura explained everything to me. Something went wrong in the ritual. With me. I shouldn’t have survived, she said. Not given how it ended. She thought I lived because I had enough spiritual energy inside me to make it through, and some other things I didn’t really understand. And then she tried to cleanse me again, a pretty simple ritual. Just in case, she said.”

  And at this Tarquin pauses.

  “She’s inside me, Callie. She’s been here ever since. There had to be something to fill the void that dead woman left in me, and the alternatives Kagura presented were either my dying or my being possessed by some other spirit who wouldn’t be as nice about all this as Okiku has been. I don’t have the seals anymore, and this is all strictly voluntary on her part—and on mine—so I don’t think I can call this a possession. I know she doesn’t.”

  Too late, Callie finally understands the terrible decision I made on the banks of that unnamed river, while the fireflies glittered in the darkness, dancing up into the light. Now she understands why I did not follow the other souls into appeasement, despite her urging.

  “Okiku and I have had a few talks since then—if you consider conversations with a three-hundred-year-old ghost talking. She doesn’t mind hanging around long enough for me to get my karmic groove back or die of natural causes—whichever comes first.” Tarquin has the audacity to grin.

  “She’s a nice spirit, though. She doesn’t mind that I don’t always clean my room, and she respects my privacy every time I need to go to the bathroom. I’ve spent a good part of my life living with a horrible, terrible ghost, Callie. Living with Okiku is like a reprieve, in compar
ison. For the first time in a long, long time, I’m actually happy. I don’t go to bed afraid anymore. And I’m pretty sure if there are any other spirits around hoping for a free ride, she’d be more than happy to kick their asses for me.”

  “I don’t think this is something you should be trivializing, Tark.”

  He squeezes her hand. “I’ll be okay, Callie. And thank you for being concerned—for always looking out for me. It’s not like I have much choice, but if I had to choose to cohabit with any one spirit in the world, I’d choose her any day.”

  “Tarquin, Callie, it’s getting late,” his father calls out. “Do you guys prefer sushi or okonomiyaki?”

  “How about both?” Tarquin counters. He pays the vendor and accepts the rolled-up scroll. “I think Okiku will appreciate having this on the wall.”

  “Tark…”

  “I don’t want to die, Callie. You understand that, right?”

  The girl nods. “But there has to be another way.”

  Tarquin smiles again, but this time it is the smile of one who made peace with his inner demons long ago. “Come on. Dad’s waiting.”

  The teenager walks on ahead, waving to his father. Behind him, Callie can see the figure of a woman in white, flimsy and transparent at first, but eventually gaining substance and shape, keeping pace beside him. She watches as Tarquin turns toward the apparition and offers her his arm. She watches the figure hesitate before, haltingly, accepting it with a pale, withered hand.

  This same apparition turns her head slightly, and Callie can make out the startling black eyes, the sunken cheeks, and the jagged cut of mouth that curves into hints of a smile as I bow my head gently in her direction before turning away.

  I am the fate that people fear to become. I am what happens to good persons and to bad persons and to everyone in between. I am who I am.

  But when you have resigned yourself to an eternity filled with little else but longing, to sacrifice what lies beyond that eternity for one boy’s lifetime—it is enough.

  Tarquin and I make our way past the shops and past the laughter, leaving Callie standing there alone in the crowd while up above, stars look down from the darkening sky and slowly, as they were born to do, begin to shine.

  Acknowledgments

  This book has gone through the hands of many people who believed in its potential and cheered me on every step of the way. I can never be grateful enough.

  To my parents—thank you for being my first librarians; for the bookshelves in your bedroom filled with the things I was technically too young to read. To Papa, the first writer I know, and to Mama, who tried to point me down the right path and who, for the most part, succeeded.

  For my sister Kim, who talked me into writing her high school English Lit papers, because she had that much faith—thanks for the practice.

  A big thank-you to my cousins—Gin, Dara, Kurt, Timmie, Micah, and Keisha. You were in many ways the Tarquins to my Callie.

  Thanks, Eugene, for the words of encouragement that came with every dinner, and also to Stephanie, who believed before I’d ever written a word. All my love to Sars, Nichole, Rip, Sophie, and Sara, for making it fun.

  For my amazing agents, Rebecca Podos and Nicole LaBombard, who have championed Okiku’s story from day one. Thank you for taking a chance on us, and for loving her as much as I do.

  My deepest gratitude to Leah Hultenschmidt for her infectious enthusiasm, and to my editor, Steve Geck, for his wonderful insights and assistance. I will always be grateful to the amazing team at Sourcebooks for everything they’ve done to make this book a reality. Todd, Cat, Aubrey, Jillian, and everyone else—you all rock.

  And finally—to my husband, Les, who didn’t give up when I nearly did. This one’s for you.

  About the Author

  Rin Chupeco once wrote obscure manuals for complicated computer programs, talked people out of their money at event shows, and did many other terrible things. She now writes about ghosts and fairy tales, but is still sometimes mistaken for a revenant. The Girl from the Well is her first novel. Connect with Rin at rinchupeco.com.