The Girl from the Well (6 page)

“Wakey, wakey, sleeping beauty.”

This is the first thing the teacher's assistant hears as she struggles back to consciousness. A light shines from somewhere above and distorts her vision. She shakes her head, attempting to dispel this hurt, and finds that she cannot move. Someone has lashed a series of ropes around her legs and arms, imprisoning her against a hard bed. She can do nothing more than move her head a few degrees in either direction.

A man moves into her line of vision. He is the same one she saw driving the white car with the drowsing teenager in his passenger seat.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” the Smiling Man says. “Though I am sorry to say you won't be staying here very long.”

The girl tries to sit up, struggling in terror against her bonds, but the Smiling Man has done this many times before, and they hold fast. She opens her mouth to scream, but the man merely laughs as her cries bounce off the walls. “Nobody's going to hear you this far down, sweetheart. I made sure of it.” He grins in a disarming way, but his eyes remain blank and hooded, unable to absorb so much as a glimmer of light.

“I called the police,” the girl gasps out, unwilling to surrender. “They'll be here soon, and they'll catch you.”

The Smiling Man

take
him, take him now

shrugs this off, like it is of little importance to him.

“It's quite a drive from the nearest police station, especially with the rush hour. There aren't many police in this town anymore, not after the recession. And besides”—he leans in close so she could smell his light, delicate perfume, the strong decay of eggs in his breath—“by the time they get here I will be gone,” he whispers. “And you will still be dead.”

He moves toward the boy and strokes his head fondly. “You're a little too old for me,” he tells the teaching assistant. “Too old. I like them young. The younger, the prettier, the better. This one's older than I'm used to, but he's got such a pretty face.” His fingers find a trail down the side of the boy's jawline.

“But what to do with you?” He throws the covers off one table, revealing an assortment of knives, of strange and twisted surgical instruments. The girl's struggles increase in earnest, and she screams again. “Never had anyone as old as you before. Not my type. Doesn't mean we can't have some fun, though, right?” He selects one of the larger knives and advances toward the now-terrified young woman, still smiling as kindly as a choirboy.

“I think I'll start with you first. I like to take my time when it comes to my toys, and I won't have that as long as I'm in the house, thanks to you. By the time they arrive and find your body, I'll be far away with my little boy, and no one will ever find us.”

Something rustles at the corner of his eye, and a faint gurgling reaches his ears. The Smiling Man

crushhimscreamcrushhim

turns his head, frowning at the distraction. But the boy continues to slumber atop the bed, and there is no one else present. Satisfied, he turns back.

He seizes the young woman's wrist, ignoring how she cries out, how she tries to push him away. “Maybe I should take a little bit of you as a souvenir,” he says, thoughtfully. “A keepsake for the short time we had together, if you'd like. So a part of you will always be with my—Tarquin, didn't you say his name was?—my Tarquin here. It's the least I can do for you.”

The tattooed boy is still sleeping on the cot, unmoving. His feet are shackled, and his face is worn. Neither the girl nor the Smiling Man

crushkillcrushkillKILLKILL

sees the small blanket of black that rises around his form, though in the small trickle of light it seems larger somehow, like it gains its strength from places such as these.

The knife blade sinks into the young woman's finger. Her screams grow louder.

Just as suddenly, the light above their heads breaks off, shattering. Over the sound of the young woman's wailing, the Smiling Man is cursing. He fumbles for a lighter that he has set down on the table, a small spark of flame igniting as the burning flint meets a candle. He holds this aloft, raising it up over his head to survey the bulb on the ceiling. He finds nothing wrong with it, except that it will no longer work.

He lowers the candle. He sees the faint outline of the boy on the bed and is satisfied. He starts to turn back toward the young woman, who is still struggling to free herself from her restraints.

Something else blocks his vision.

The Smiling Man finds himself looking at a

woman

on the ceiling. The glow of candlelight catches only her face, her long hair hanging down, and her bright black eyes. She is only inches away, and she

gurgles.

It is the Smiling Man's turn to scream, and the brief light is suddenly extinguished.

The young woman freezes as noises begin to erupt all around her, the sounds of frantic combat. She can hear the Smiling Man yelling at something to get away, threatening the unseen with death and worse. A table is overturned, and she hears the sound of several metallic objects hitting the floor, scattering. Blows rain down against one wall.

And then there is silence again. The young woman strains to hear more, fearful of the outcome.

Something moves along the floor; more muttered cursing. Another light flickers on, revealing the Smiling Man holding a flashlight he has found inside one of the shelves. His clothes look ripped in several places, and thin, bloody trails mark his chest and upper arms, which he has scraped against his own knives and surgical equipment. He is no longer smiling. He is still sprawled on the floor beside the cot, panting and, for the first time since the young woman entered the tiny basement, afraid and no longer in control.

“What the hell was that?” he snarls. His face is twisting, the mask coming away so that the murderer underneath that gentle, genial facade is finally looking out. “Where are you, you bitch? I'm gonna kill you!” He swings the flashlight around the room, but other than the young woman, still trapped and whimpering, and the motionless tattooed boy, everything is silent. He swings the light up toward the ceiling, but there is no longer anyone there.

There is a cracking sound behind him, and something touches his foot. He looks back.

I am underneath the boy's cot, watching him with wide, unblinking

eyes.

Shouting, the Smiling Man lunges forward, kicking desperately with his legs, but he continues to be pulled inexorably back despite his best efforts. He lands hard on his stomach and tries to crawl away, but his fingernails only carve deep grooves into the floor, leaving long scratches as he fights, shrill and squealing, and as he is yanked in quick, sporadic jerks underneath the bed, where I

kill
him

am waiting

for

him.

The light goes out a second time.

The young woman does not know how long she lies in the darkness, waiting. The Smiling Man has stopped screaming, and silence now takes his place. All she can hear is the house settling around her and the absence of anything else alive in the room.

Her finger stings. She can feel the blood trickling down her hand from the wound. Yet she grits her teeth, muffling her cries as best she can, as she tugs again at the ropes binding her.

The overhead bulb flickers back to life, light filling the room for the third time, and the young woman starts, blinking her eyes at the unexpected glare.

The tattooed boy has risen from the cot. His eyes are open, and he is crouching with his back toward his cousin, looking under the bed where the remains of the Smiling Man have been wedged into the small space, so small that it is not likely the body would have fit by natural methods. The dead man's mouth is still open, like he has not yet finished screaming, but his face is bloodless and bloated and grotesque. The tattooed boy does not react to the sight, but the young woman squeezes her eyes shut, not wanting to look at the corpse any further.

When she opens her eyes again, the boy is standing over her.

“Tarquin,” she whispers, relieved that he is unharmed. “Tark, you have to help me. Cut me loose from these ropes. We need to call the police as soon as we can…”

The boy does not say anything. He continues to look down at her, and only then does the girl realize that there is a strangeness in his manner that has not been there in the past. He has a peculiar smile on his face, but an expression of aberrant emptiness. There is no expression in his eyes, and he gives no indication he recognizes her.

“Tark?…”

The boy's attention is riveted on her wound, the red dripping down her mangled finger. He moves farther up the gurney. His sleeves are rolled up almost to his shoulders.

Now the young woman sees the boy's tattoos up close. Several more lines of obscure writing ride up the length of his arm, beginning at the strange seals that mark each of his wrists.

There is blood on one of the seals, at the back of his right hand. As she watches, this blood disappears quickly into his skin as the seal pulses like it is alive. The ink fades in and out of view, matching the cadence and the rhythm of the shadow that continues to surround him, wrapping around in the air like it is a living, breathing creature all on its own.

The boy takes his cousin's wounded hand. His touch is dry and clammy, as cold as death. He turns her palm down, and they both watch as the blood oozes out of her fingers and splatters against the seal on his left wrist.

This blood also is soon absorbed into the boy's flesh, the seal lapping up all traces of it. The seal now throbs and ripples across his skin, just like its counterpart on his other arm.

The shadow behind the boy further expands, and the teacher's assistant finally sees the face that emerges from within its confines. It is another woman, this time one garbed in black. The strangeness of her face is caused by a round porcelain mask—eerily similar to the faces of the dolls in the room sheltering the boy's mother—that hides most of her features. But parts of it have crumbled away. Ruined skin and a drooping eye stare out from behind the mask, repulsive and hideous.

The young woman screams again, but the boy does not see the woman. He moves and jerks about like a puppet. Both seals continue to crawl and twist like live snakes underneath the boy's flesh. The woman in black reaches out for the teacher's assistant, horrible triumph etched in her ruined eye.

But she rears back when she sees

me

standing behind the teaching assistant, who cries out as she, too, spots me.

I meet the masked woman's livid gaze—for what feels like a few seconds, for what feels like a millennium—before the shadow takes a step back, and her face is soon swallowed up by the fog that hovers around the boy for several more seconds and then disappears abruptly with little warning. When she is gone, the boy collapses.

“Who are you?” The young woman whimpers, but that is not a question I can easily answer. I look down at her again, and I see her jerk in surprise.

For I no longer stand before her as a

ruined

horror; now she sees me as a girl; young, my hair coiled up around my head like I often wore it, with brown eyes and skin a pale white from the absence of sun rather than a mark of the long dead. I look at her looking back at the girl I once was, and the ghosts of the little dead children, freed from the Smiling Man's taint, gather around me glowing.

The young woman faints.

She recalls very little of what happens in the interim, only rousing herself when she hears shouts and cries from outside the room. She holds her breath at first, fearful, and knows no greater relief than when the voices become more distinct, drumming down the stairs.

“Tarquin Halloway! Callie Starr! This is the police! Can you hear us? Call out to us if you can!”

“I'm here!” the young woman screams, voice hoarse. “I'm here! Help us! Please, help us!”

For a moment, she is afraid that her pleas will go unheard, but after several more minutes, the door to the basement opens, and beams of light stream into the room.

“Miss Callie Starr? Stay calm, miss, we're going to help you. Are you hurt anywhere?”

“My hand…” the teacher's assistant whispers. “And Tarquin…”

“Don't worry about it, ma'am. The medics are here. We're going to get you out as soon as we can.”

“He's okay.” Another of the men reports, checking the fallen teenager. “Pulse is normal, no signs of injury on him.”

The young woman feels like laughing, and she does, startling her rescuers. No signs of injury on Tarquin! And yet the tattoos on his arms! The seals thriving like little creatures, feasting on his skin!

“Oh my God,” she hears another of the men say. They shine their light on the other bed, revealing the Smiling Man, except his head is now missing. Shuddering, she turns away.

Just before her strength fails again, she imagines she can see me as before, the woman in white with long hair and an ashen face, now standing in a darker corner of the room. I am surrounded by strange little lights, bobbing up and down as if they sit on an unseen river that flows around my frame. One by one, they move against the air, like shooting stars that rise up instead of falling down. I say nothing, only watching as they float into the refuge of darkness.

Callie Starr closes her eyes and does not open them again for some time.

The teacher's assistant has never been here before, although it is every bit as frightening as she had imagined it to be. People in loose robes (sixteen) stare coldly at her as she walks past, suspicious of how she is free to leave this place whenever she wishes to, when they cannot. Some people ignore her completely, bursting into shrill, hysterical laughter at voices no one else can hear (twelve). Others prefer the company of their closets or their potted plants, conducting animated conversations with the imaginary things that live within (ten).

People call this place the Remney Psychiatric Institute.

The teacher's assistant looks tired. The bruises marring her face are lighter than two weeks ago, enough that they are easily hidden under a thin layer of makeup. The little finger on her right hand remains heavily bandaged, and she moves her arm with stiffness that suggests a midpoint between hurting and recovery. While sensitive to the touch, the small wound on the side of her head no longer requires dressing. She is pale, and the bright fluorescent lights overhead do nothing to hide her pain.

She has been released from the hospital with her doctor's permission, avoiding the well-wishes and well-intentioned worry of visitors and friends as she did. But she cannot rest, not just yet. There is something else she must do first.

The White Shirt is nervous, and understandably so. He has agreed with extreme reluctance to allow the young assistant visiting rights, despite Remney's stern rules restricting this to immediate family members only. But because the tattooed boy's father personally requests this, the White Shirt unlocks the door leading into the Japanese woman's room and steps back to allow the young woman entry.

The shoji screens are gone, but the dolls are still in their wooden stands, and like many others before her, this sight makes the young woman very uncomfortable. The Japanese woman sits on a chair at the center of the room, staring at nothing. She makes no sound, gives no signal that she is aware of the young woman's presence. Nervous, the young woman hovers uncertainly a few feet away, torn between advancing and retreating.

“Mrs. Halloway? Aunt Yoko?”

The woman rocks back and forth, eyes glued to the wall before her, staring at the large carpeted stand filled with imperial dolls.

The teacher's assistant tries again. “Aunt Yoko? My name is Calliope Starr. I'm Doug Halloway's niece. Tarquin's cousin.”

A faint ghost of a smile curves along the older woman's mouth. “Tarquin?”

“Yes,” the young woman says, encouraged. “Your son, Tarquin?”

“He's a very lovely boy,” the woman says. “He was a beautiful baby. So sweet. So very innocent. That's what's wrong with him, you know. If there had been more cruelty in his nature, like normal boys have, he would not be suffering as he does now. Still—such a beautiful baby boy. Has something happened to him?” Alarm flickers in the woman's eyes, and she attempts to stand. The White Shirt guarding the door stiffens, prepared to summon for assistance if necessary. “Has something happened to my Tarquin?”

“Nothing's happened to him,” the teacher's assistant says hurriedly. “Tarquin's all right. He's safe.”

“Liar!” The woman shakes her head. “Tarquin isn't safe. And it's all my fault. My fault, my fault…”

“Aunt Yoko, it isn't your fault—”

“It's all my fault! I had no choice!” The woman sinks back into her chair, but her rocking motions grow more frantic and agitated. “He had to be sacrificed! I had no choice! She would have killed more!”

“Aunt Yoko!” The teaching assistant takes hold of the woman's shoulders, steadying her. Pain travels up her injured shoulder, but she does not let go until the woman ceases her violent thrashing, her voice now reduced to soft whimpers. The White Shirt relaxes, though still alert. “Aunt Yoko, who would have killed more?”

“I had to,” the woman whispers. “I had to stop her.”

“Who? The woman in black?”

A shudder racks the woman's body, and she moans.

“I think that's enough, Miss Starr,” the White Shirt says disapprovingly.

“No! No. She has to know. Do you have a mother, my dear?”

“Yes. Linda Starr, Uncle Doug's sister.”

“I see it now. There is something of Douglas in your eyes. Tarquin was always too young to remember the mother I once was with him—the mother I should have been. How is it that you can see her? Why do you see the woman with the mask?”

“I…I don't know.”

“I looked up to her, you know. She was the best of us all. Chiyo had always been perfect, could do no wrong. But even she could not prevent such hate from taking hold of her. I tried, but the sealing was incomplete. The ritual had not been performed in such a long time, and none of us knew how well it would work, if it even would. But we had to try. Poor, poor Chiyo. And my Tarquin…” Her face crumples, and she ducks her head, long hair streaming down her face.

“Did you send
her
as well?” she asks, head still lowered. “The white ghost?”

“The white ghost?” the teacher's assistant repeats, taken aback.

“The
yuurei
—a spirit that cannot rest. The lady in white. The lady with the broken neck. The woman who cannot rest. Did you send her to help my son?”

“I…I don't…”

“I saw her,” the frail woman insists. “I saw her on the ceiling, hanging down. I thought she meant to harm my husband and my son, but now I know she is here for a much different purpose. The binding seals on my son attract her, as they do all
yuurei
. But the woman in black repels even her. Even now I see the woman in white, standing behind you.”

The young woman swallows hard and, trembling, turns—but sees nothing.

“Seals?” she asks. “The tattoos on your son's body…they're binding seals?”

“Five seals, arranged in a star pattern. Here, and here…” The woman touches her chest, then the backs of her hands. Finally, her fingers drift down her sides to rest on the rise of her hips. “And here. But the ritual has only partly succeeded. Little by little, the masked woman is breaking free of the chains that bind her to my Tarquin. I know she has broken many of those seals. She knows she is close.”

The woman grips the teaching assistant's arm. “Promise me you will protect my son. Promise me you will tell my husband that he must return to where it all began, to lift the curse. He will not believe you. He will not understand. But you must convince him.”

“Return to where?”

But something else distracts the woman. She rises from her chair, stepping toward the platform, and lifts an empress doll off its stand. Taking a tiny pearl comb from her dresser, she returns to her seat with the doll settled on her lap. Now she combs its hair, a doting mother.

“Have you ever been to the
Hina-matsuri
?” Her voice is calm once more, placid. “It is a time-honored festival, celebrated throughout Japan. My father was a celebrated dollmaker, and my sister and I grew up surrounded by his creations. People would buy his dolls and bring them out for luck during the
Hina-matsuri
. But dolls are useful in other ways, as well. One can, for instance, use dolls as a sacrifice—a way to capture evil spirits and keep them trapped within their bodies for as long as it takes to exorcise their malice. Did you know what dolls like these are called in Japan?
Ningyo
. ‘One of human shape.'”

She pauses, staring off into the distance, while her hand continues to stroke the empress's hair.

“But there also exist spirits so powerful that mere dolls cannot contain them. For this, another type of sacrifice must be used—a living human being, an innocent.

“For many long years, Chiyo had endured as such a sacrifice. But then the spirits took over, transforming her into the revenant she is now. To overcome her ghost, I was forced to create a new sacrifice…

“Was it wrong for a mother to sacrifice her son to protect the lives of others around me, those who looked to me for protection? I do not know. I was so sure of myself back then, so sure I could cleanse him from her taint eventually. But I could not.”

She smiles then, sadly. “Tarquin must have told you how I have tried to kill him many times. I thought it was the only choice I had left. But there is one more thing I can do for him. After tonight, my son will no longer suffer from my mistakes. This will end, one way or another.” She places the empress on her bed, rises to select another doll, and begins the same painstaking process all over again. “But if I fail, he must return.”

“Return to where?” The teacher's assistant could easily dismiss the woman's words as nothing more than ramblings. Even the White Shirt lounging by the door is no longer listening, now that the threat of violence has passed.

But the young teacher has seen the woman in black. She has seen the woman in white and is now aware of how strange things may lurk, unseen to the eye. She has seen the Smiling Man's corpse. She has seen her cousin's face, as blank and as paper-white as all the dolls in this room, and her own blood curdling against the seals on his skin.

The woman looks back at her, and for the first time, there is clarity in her gaze. “Yagen Valley,” she says. “They must return to the little dolls of Yagen Valley, to my sisters. To the fear, where it all began.”

The young woman leaves several minutes later with more questions, rather than the answers she seeks. The woman is alone. She selects another doll, running the small comb through its glossy black hair. Once this is completed to her satisfaction, she lifts the doll to the light, gazing into its face. She must like what she sees, for she sets the doll down—not in its usual place on the stands, but on the floor next to her chair.

She takes another doll and does the same thing, placing it down on the ground once she is done and reaching for yet another—until finally, eight dolls surround her in a circle, all facing inward. Their blank faces bore into the woman's, awaiting her next move.

It is foolish, this thing that she attempts.

“It may be so,” she says to me, as I stand in the corner of the darkened room and watch her, “but it must be done.”

There is a knock at the door. One of the White Shirts arrives with dinner and her medication. In exchange, the woman hands him a small letter and asks him to post it on her behalf as quickly as possible. When he leaves, she carefully spits the tablets back into her hand and hides them in a tiny space between the wall and the dresser where several other pills gather dust.

From behind several dolls, she extracts four slim candles and a box of matches, taken when the White Shirts were distracted elsewhere. She lights one of the candles and tilts it to allow the tallow to drip onto the floor. She moves slowly, and when the flames flicker briefly against her fingers she gives no cry of pain, making little sound at all. She does not stop until a perfect circle of dried wax surrounds all eight dolls.

She now lights the other candles in turn, setting them down in all four directions outside the circle. Lastly, she steps inside the ring with the empress doll, seating herself at its center. She closes her eyes and begins to chant softly, once again in that obscure, melodic language.

Nothing happens. Not at first.

There are no windows in the room, yet a breeze picks up. A noiseless wind begins to whip at the hair of the dolls on their shelves, wrapping around their faces and blindfolding their eyes with their own dark locks. The wooden stands splinter, seemingly on their own. The bed behind the woman, though bolted down, lifts up once, then crashes back down against the floor.

This does not frighten the woman, who continues her chanting. Something takes umbrage at her impertinence. The shaking grows louder, more agitated. Dolls rain down as shelves dislodge themselves from the screws in the walls. The room itself seems gripped in the throes of an earthquake that grows fiercer with every minute that passes. Claw marks appear against grooves in the ceiling, long deep scratches raking down.

And still the woman chants. The eight dolls remain upright despite this terrible haunting, and the candles sputter and wink out briefly, but just as quickly resume their light.

The black fog appears just outside of the wax circle. Unlike during her previous appearances, the woman in black seems tangible, solid. Her face emerges from the writhing darkness, a ruin of skin and clot. More of the mask she wears has fallen, and now two staring sockets look out from a hideously disfigured face, flecked and mottled.

The woman called Yoko lifts the empress. The doll stares serenely back at the black abomination with its blank, colorless eyes.

“Begone!” the Japanese woman cries, and for the first time she is alive, more animated than I have ever seen her. “Leave us alone!” More sutras flow from her lips.

The woman in black hovers in the air, motionless. Then she lifts a hand as if to ward off an invisible blow, but against her will, she is slowly pulled toward the empress doll. The other woman does not budge. She is unmoving, triumphant.

The woman in black lifts her head again, and all the hate is in her eyes. Then the wind dies. The candle's flame flickers out briefly, and when it returns, only the Japanese woman and I remain inside the room. The woman in black is gone.

The Japanese woman waits for a few moments, panting heavily. When all is finally quiet, she lowers the doll and looks at its upturned face. Its eyes are now a solid, unending black.

The woman begins to laugh—silently, then hysterically—relieved it is now over. With the empress doll still in hand, she takes a step outside of the wax circle, moving back toward the doll's stand.

Behind her, one of the dolls in the circle slowly leans over and topples forward to land face-first on the floor.

The woman turns, shocked. As she watches, the other seven dolls follow, sinking to land on their faces, one after the other in the same manner as the first.