The Girl from the Well (2 page)

The city wakes to the rhythm of daylight.

They first arrive in ones and twos. Lone boys with bicycles and newspapers, waging war against doorsteps. I count them: four, five, six. Men and women running down streets, singing aloud to music no one else hears. I count them: seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. A portly official thrusting important papers and packages into every other mailbox. I count him: one.

Then they arrive by the dozens. Men and women hurrying down sidewalks, a few in dark business suits, but the majority dressed simply in plaid or jeans. Some glance down at their wrists with an impatient air before boarding the horseless carriages they call buses or the smaller ones they call cars. (Twenty-seven.) Others saunter down the road with less urgency, with dogs of various breeds and sizes scampering ahead, restrained only by the collars around their necks. (Fourteen.)

A few dogs see me and growl, baring their teeth. I bare my own teeth and immediately they are off, tearing down the street in fright like hell has come nipping at their tails, their masters helpless in their pursuit. I have little regard for animals, and I imagine the feeling is mutual. Their leashes remind me of my own. Collars are as much a form of slavery whether they encircle necks or wrists, whether they are as heavy as lead or as light as a ropestring.

Finally, they come in droves. People in rich suits and richer tastes hurrying along, their minds immersed in the petty affairs that consume their lives (thirty-eight). Children squabbling in cars on their way to school, mothers and fathers behind the wheel (sixteen). They have no reason to see me—an unavenged spirit, a nothing-more. I am not a part of their world, as much as they are no longer a part of mine. They have the rest of their lives before them, and I do not.

I often spend the passage of days in a strange haze. When there is little to attract my vengeance, I lie in unusual states of hibernation.

Some days I curl up in attics and abandoned sheds. I do not sleep, so instead I exist in a period of dreamlessness, a series of finite instances where I think little of things and dwell on the wonders of nothing. It lasts for hours or days or years, or the time it takes for a bird to flap its wings, or the time it takes for a deep breath. But soon the rage curls again, the quiet places inside me that

whisper, whisper whispering find more find more

and so I rise, driven to seek out, to

devour, to make to break to take.

I have ridden on ships and sails. I have taken to the air on steel wings. I have schooled myself in the languages of those I hunt, their culture of contradictions. I have burrowed into the skins of those who know the dark ways, those who welcome the trespass of body. I have crawled out from the thickness of blood, from the salt of the dying.

I can possess, however briefly, those close to death, or those who have known death intimately and escaped. I have learned to move among people in a hundred different ways, to linger in numerous places at once and still keep my sense of being. But today I am drifting, aimless in this moment, basking in the afterglow of the night before.

And when there is nothing else, I count.

I allow the whim to carry me farther down the street, where a lone peddler sells food from a metal stand (one). A cat on the other side of the road (one) arches its back and hisses at me, yowling its temerity, though its tail quivers and the hairs along its back bristle. People walk past, eating and tossing empty wrappers into bins. I count them: thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

A young man in a tan suit stops in mid-bite to stare directly at me. Slices of bread slide unnoticed to the ground, and he begins to tremble. I move, retreating as a group of students run past (seven), laughing and giggling, and flicker out of his vision. I am occasionally seen by those cursed with a peculiar sight they themselves are rarely aware of, but I have grown skilled at evading their scrutiny once discovered. I have no quarrel with the young man, who dashes away pale and frightened, though I am sorry he sees more than he ought.

But something else commands my awareness. It is a teenage boy in a car driving past this intersection of roads. He is of average countenance, perhaps fifteen years old, with bright blue eyes and straight black hair that shoots out unnaturally from his head like spikes. He is staring out the window with a surly demeanor I have found common in many boys of this time.

But neither his features nor his behavior arrest my attention. There is something that throbs and moves from inside his clothes, restless movements both repugnant and familiar. An unnatural glow sets around him. And in his mind I taste the sweetness of home, the land of my once-birth, thousands of miles away.

The boy does not notice all this. His eyes look out on the world and pass over me, unseeing, as the car turns a corner into a smaller lane.

It stops in front of a large house where several men are moving furniture out of a large truck that says “Picking's Movers” on its side. Tables and chairs and many more items litter the yard outside the house (sixteen). Some of these men (ten, a perfect number) are moving more in: two wooden beds, one vanity stand, sixteen assortments of electric devices, and many boxes. One mirror.

The boy gets out of the car, still scowling, with an older man of the same blue eyes, though his hair is a dirty yellow. They watch as the men move their furniture inside. I count the boxes: one, two.

“What do you think, Tark?” the older man finally asks.

The boy doesn't answer. Ten, eleven.

“It's nicer than our old house in Maine, don't you think?” the man continues, ignoring the silence. “You'll get your own room, of course—bigger, with more windows. We've got enough space to put up a rec room, maybe a swimming pool in the backyard once we're done settling in. It's only two blocks from Callie's place, too.” Seventeen, eighteen.

Still the boy does not answer. He continues to watch the movers. The strange light persists around him, a queer dimness that radiates more than it shines.

“And we can go visit Mom next week. Dr. Aachman says she's been feeling a lot better than the last time, and that we can go to the hospital whenever we're ready. And now that we're only twenty minutes from Remney's, we can visit as often as you want.” Twenty-five, twenty-six.

A peculiar shift crosses the boy's face, and I see emotion in him for the first time. The jaws tighten, the eyes harden, the mouth curves down. He folds his arms across his chest and a sleeve rides up, exposing a black tattoo on his forearm. Thirty-three boxes.

It is curious for a boy his age to possess tattoos of any kind.

Someone made a curious choice in the design of the tattoo on his arm. It is of two circles, the larger encompassing the smaller sphere and covered in meticulous writing, but of a language I do not understand. More symbols mark the length of his arms, climbing up to disappear, hiding under the folds of his shirt. These tattoos cause him to glow with that strange light as they hum and throb against his skin. As if suddenly aware of my scrutiny, he pulls the sleeve down.

“Dad, I'm not sure I should be visiting Mom at all,” he says.

“Don't say that, Tark. I know she misses you.”

“Trying to scratch my eyes out is a strange way of showing just how much she misses me.” The bitterness is apparent in his voice.

“Dr. Aachman says that's not going to happen anymore,” his father says firmly. “She'd been given the wrong kind of medication, that's all. We'll visit her right after your session with Miss Creswell on Wednesday. Okay?”

The boy only shrugs, though the anger in his eyes does not go away. Neither does the fear.

I pass into the house. Some of the inner rooms are bare, while the movers are gradually filling others with boxes and crates. I move upstairs into more empty rooms and, perhaps out of habit, drift to the ceiling. The previous owners left nothing of themselves here: no happiness, no grief, no pain. It is the best anyone can wish for in a place to stay.

Down below, the movers continue their work while the older man supervises. The boy sidles away to seek solace under the shade of a tree, shielding his eyes to glance up at this new house. Then his eyes widen.

“Hey! Hey, you!”

He runs into the house before anyone can stop him, and after trading startled looks with some of the movers, his father follows suit, confused by the boy's excitement, his sudden animation. By the time he catches up, the boy is standing by the window, unable to explain the room's emptiness.

“Didn't you see her? There was someone in here!”

“I don't see anyone, Tark,” his father says after a pause.

“It was a woman!” The boy prowls the room, then moves into the next, still hunting for a presence and finding nothing. The father follows. “She had long hair, and she was dressed all in white!”

His father places a hand on his son's shoulder in a manner I believe is meant to offer comfort, but not belief. “It's been a long trip. Why not take a little nap in the car? I'll wake you up as soon as they get most of the things inside.”

A pause, then the boy nods, having little of either evidence or alternatives. They walk back outside, but rather than getting in the car, the boy remains outside by the gardens. He continues to watch the house, seeking something to prove himself right and his father wrong. But I am careful, and he sees nothing but an empty house where spirits do not wander.

But someone else watches him. Another car is parked two houses away, a white one, small compared to the many others that roam these streets. Its driver observes the boy, and I know this because I can feel his hunger reaching out like a web of invisible malice. From the direction of this small, white car, I hear sounds of weeping, and I recognize these noises all too well.

I leave the house and steal across the street. I slip into the man's backseat and study him with the mirror that dangles over his dashboard. Unlike the Stained Shirt Man, he is clean-shaven and handsome. His suit is dark and very well-pressed. He has green eyes and brown hair. Other people might say he looks “friendly” and also “kindly” and “well-mannered.” He is smiling, but there is nothing in his eyes.

There are dead children strapped to his back.

(One girl, two girls, three.)

They fill the car with cries and lamentations. I see the familiar pieces of rope on their wrists, all affixed to the man's forearms. But like the others, the smiling man takes no notice and continues to watch the tattooed boy.

(Four girls, five, six.)

They are blondes and redheads and brunettes. They are blue-eyed and dark-eyed and brown-eyed and green-eyed. They are pale and freckled, and dark and brown. They are six years old and eight years old and twelve years old and fifteen years old.

(Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.)

Some of these children have been tied to him for almost twenty years, others only since the month before.

(Twelve. One boy, two boys, three, four, five.)

He smiles now, this smiling man. It is how he sets his bait, how he entices. And his smile this time is for the boy with the tattoos.

I could take him

take
take
him
take
him

now. I could take his smiling, putrid little head and crush it

crush
it
crush

in my mouth. I could make him suffer. I could make him scream

scream
scream
scream
SCREAM
SCREAM

for me. Daylight holds no power over spirits such as me.

But I prefer the thrill of night. I prefer the same enclosed spaces in which these people do their work, where they feel themselves at their most powerful. It is a greater pleasure to kill in darker pastures, that much I know. It is not much of a vanity, but that is all that remains with me.

The Smiling Man

take
him
crush
him

starts his car. The dead children watch me as I watch him drive away, and I know I will see him again. I quell the hungers, the quiet places, and they retreat, for now.

The boy, too, intrigues me—for the first time in as long as I can remember—and that is a long, long time. His strange tattoos intrigue me. What lies moving underneath them intrigues me. There is something inside the boy that calls and repulses. There is something strange and malevolent hiding inside him, though I know not what, or why.

There is something inside him that reminds me of home.

I want to know the language of his strange tattoos. And time is one of the few things I have left to spend.

And when the Smiling Man

take
him

makes his move—as I know he will—I will be there. Waiting for him.

Until then, I can keep my own vigil.

For in this new house, there also is an attic.

Few things of note pass during the nights at this new house, despite what finds residence in the empty room upstairs.

The lethargy finds me again, and by the time I become aware, several days in the tattooed boy's lifetime must have passed. The furniture has been unwrapped and assembled, and the rooms no longer look abandoned. The man inspects the attic only once but quickly leaves again, unsure why he is repelled by its strange emptiness.

It is morning. The tattooed boy is sitting at a table, and his father is cooking, steam lifting from various metal pots and pans. The boy does not look happy. He is wearing dark pants and a long-sleeved shirt he keeps pulling down over his arms. The tattoos that so fascinate me only seem to anger him. He does his best to cover them up so no one else sees, though there is nobody present but his father, who has seen them many times.

“School blows,” he says by way of greeting. I count the plates in the kitchen. Eleven.

The father sighs like he has heard this all before. “I know it's going to take some time for you to get used to a new city and a new school, Tark, but you have got to meet me halfway on this one. Applegate has a lot of friendly people. Even my boss is nice, which is about as rare a thing as you can imagine.” He is attempting to be funny, but nobody laughs.

“Not really.” The boy bites into his bread with admirable ferocity, tearing a good chunk of it out with his teeth. I count glasses. Six.

“I'm sure things will be better today,” his father says encouragingly. The boy looks unconvinced and shrugs again. It appears to be his favorite habit. I count the spice racks that line the walls. Eight.

In the time it takes them to finish, I have counted the flower patterns on their wallpaper, the lights overhead, the knots in the ceiling, the kitchen tiles. I follow them into the car, where there is very little conversation. The tattooed boy fidgets uneasily on occasion and often glances over at his right, like something out of the corner of his eye puzzles him. But when he looks my way, all he sees is the window where other cars pass them by, swift glimpses of pedestrians, and other ordinary sights.

The car stops before a large building that says Perry Hills High. Beside it is another with a sign proclaiming it is Perry Hills Elementary. A series of corridors and walkways connect one to the other. A blond girl stands outside the main doors of the elementary school, a troubled look on her face. At eighteen, she is younger than she looks, though her manner and actions are those of an adult. Children stream past her to enter, but she ignores them, waving at both the boy and his father.

“Uncle Doug! Tark!” She is smiling, but the worry in her brown eyes does not match the curve of her mouth. “Tark, you're going to be late for class!”

The boy groans but accepts her hug willingly enough. “I'm not one of your fourth-graders, Callie.”

“Sorry,” the young woman says, not sounding sorry at all, “but that doesn't change the fact it's already two minutes to eight.”

“Ah, crap. I'm out of here. See you later, Dad, Callie.” He hitches his backpack, and a tattoo briefly slips out again from underneath his shirt as he turns to leave. The young woman sees it but is unsurprised, though the worry on her face grows.

“How's my favorite niece?” the man asks with a grin. “I must say—I expected the teachers here to be older. Why didn't you tell us you were working for the faculty?”

The young woman blushes. “I'm a teacher's assistant—not a full-fledged teacher yet. For now, I mostly get by with tutoring and babysitting, but Mom insisted on paying the rent 'til I leave for college next year.”

“Good to hear. And speaking of Linda, how is she?”

“Mom's still with Doctors Without Borders. Still fighting malnutrition in Africa—and winning, if you believe the last email she sent me. She'll be back just in time for Christmas.”

The young woman pauses, glancing behind her to ensure her cousin is out of earshot. “I'm worried about Tark,” she says, lowering her voice as if fearful others might hear. “I didn't want to mention it in front of him. I had a feeling he was a little touchy on the subject. But it's those…those strange tattoos on his arms.”

“I did my best to explain them to Mr. Kelsey, if that's what you mean,” the man begins, but the young woman shakes her head adamantly, nervously tucking wisps of wheat-yellow hair behind her ear.

“All the principal told the other teachers—and all Mom told me, for that matter—was that his mother gave him those when he was only five years old. I never really knew Aunt Yoko, and I don't want to hurt Tark any further and pry, but—something about those tattoos scares me. A couple of times I've looked over at him, and I could have sworn…”

“Could have sworn what?”

That
his
tattoos
were
moving
is what she wants to tell her uncle, but she does not. She does not tell him that the boy feels
wrong
. She does not tell him that she cannot shake off the feeling that there is someone else in the room, watching, when he is there. She does not tell her uncle because she believes it to be a figment of her imagination, a mockery of her senses. It is the permanent ink staining her cousin's skin, she tells herself, spreading across the canvas of her imagination. All these thoughts she keeps to herself and does not say aloud. What she says instead is this:

“I just want to know if I can do anything to help. He doesn't seem to want any friends, and he always keeps to himself. Nobody's been going out of their way to bully him or anything like that, but few people go out of their way to befriend him, either.”

“Tark's been doing pretty well at home, considering,” the man says. “He stays in his room a lot, but he doesn't listen to death metal or write about suicide or anything of that sort, thank God. Your cousin's a good kid. I don't want to pressure him into doing anything he's not comfortable with yet. And for the record—he wasn't abused by his mother. Not in the way you… He wasn't abused. It's a little complicated.”

He tries to smile again. “Thank you for being concerned, Callie. I was worried you wanted to talk because his teachers told you Tark was being disruptive in class or getting into fights with the other students. He's been seeing a therapist, and he's still a little moody around other people, but he's improving.”

The young woman nods. “Okay. I just—I just wanted to be sure.”

“I would appreciate it if you could keep an eye on him whenever you can, though. Moving here was a little tough on Tark, and he could use a friend.”

“Or an overbearingly fastidious older cousin to boss him into having a social life,” the young woman finishes. The man laughs at this, but as he walks away after one last hug, I can see that his brows are drawn together and his eyes are tired.

After he leaves, the young woman stands there for a few more minutes until a bell rings and rouses her from her trance. She wraps both arms around herself and shivers before turning to enter, pulling the large doors closed behind her.

• • •

I spend the rest of the day counting. There are two janitors roaming the school grounds. There are sixteen rooms in the building. There are thirty students in the tattooed boy's class, and most ignore Tarquin in the same way Tarquin ignores them. Once, a girl beside him asks for notes from Mr. Spengler's history class from the day before, and he looks at her in a way that makes her uneasy. Still, she persists.

“Your name's Tarquin, right? That's an odd name.”

“It's the name of some Roman emperor everyone's pretty much forgotten,” the boy says, hoping she will take the hint.

She does not. “My name's Susan. Where are you from?”

“I'm from Texas,” the boy lies. “Home to beloved exports like
The
Texas
Chainsaw
Massacre
, mad cow disease, and bullets. I collect mannequin legs and spider bites. A race of super-ferrets live inside my hair. They hate water so I shower with an umbrella. I eat bugs because I'm allergic to fruit. I wash my hands in the toilet because sinks are too mainstream. Anything else you want to know about me?”

The girl gapes at him. Her friend nudges her away. “Just ignore him, Nat,” the girl whispers. “He's weird.”

Nobody else bothers him for the rest of his classes. The boy prefers it this way.

There are thirty-two students in one of the elementary-school classrooms next door. Of these thirty-two, one giggles when she spots me.

“Is there something funny you would like to share with the class, Sandra?” The teacher does not sound happy.

“There's a pretty girl at the back of the room, just standing there,” the girl objects, pointing straight at me. It is the other students' turn to laugh.

“Don't make up stories, Sandra. Pay attention,” the teacher says, and the girl obeys, though she cranes her head to look in my direction whenever the woman doesn't see, still grinning at me.

Soon the teacher leaves, and the yellow-haired, eighteen-year-old girl from before takes her place. As part of the lesson, she wheels in a large cart.

“Mrs. Donahue's still out on maternity leave, so it looks like you guys will be stuck with me for another week,” she says with a grin. “I promised last time we'll be conducting our own experiments in static electricity, right?” The students sit up, interested.

The tattooed boy is done with his own classes for the day, and at that moment he is passing through the hallway, where he stops to watch his cousin at work. The young woman sees him and smiles, and the boy lifts a hand in greeting. She gestures at him to enter the classroom.

The little girl, Sandra, is the first to see the tattooed boy. The smile slowly slides off her face.

“This is my cousin, Tarquin Halloway. Say hi to Tarquin.” A chorus of “Hi, Tarquin's” echoes around the classroom. “He'll be assisting me in this experiment.” Tarquin shakes his head, waving his hands to show just how terrible he thinks the idea is. “Don't be shy, Tarquin. Class, would you like Tarquin to help out today?”

Another choruses of yeses from the class, and a whimpered “no” from the girl called Sandra, whom no one hears.

The boy does not know which is worse: social activity, however brief, or turning his cousin down and losing face in a classroom full of ten-year-olds. In the end, he sighs and opts for the former.

The young teacher brings out several lightbulbs and dozens of combs. The boy places his backpack on her desk.

“I've wrapped all the bulbs in transparent tape because I know some of you are all thumbs—yes, Bradley, that means you.” More students laugh. “I don't have enough lightbulbs for everyone, but I do have enough combs, so I'll be dividing you all into groups of four.”

The students troop up to take the lightbulbs from the cart, until only one remains on the teacher's table. The teacher's assistant gives each student a plain silver comb. “Now, we're going to need absolute darkness. Shut all the windows while I turn off the lights.”

This is done promptly, and from inside the dark there are whispers and giggles, until a flashlight switches on. The young teacher sets it at the edge of the table, light trained up at the ceiling. I begin to count. One bulb, two.

“This is the best part. Bend your head my way, Tark.” She picks up a comb and runs it briskly through Tarquin's hair. The boy looks resigned to his fate. The students giggle again.

“You can rub the comb against your sweater or anything fuzzy if you'd like, but make sure to do it for as long as you can and let it charge up.” Some of the students copy her movements; others all but scrub their combs against their shirts, switching hands when the first one grows tired. Three, four.

“Ta-da!” the young woman says, and taps her comb against the lightbulb. There is a faint sputter, and inside the bulb, little lights begin to dance briefly at its center before winking out, like small handmade fireflies. Five, six.

There are several oohs and aahs, and more bulbs begin to spark and twitch around the room as students press their combs closer. Seven, eight.

Nine.

Nine

bulbs, all bearing strange little fireflies.

“That's how normal electricity works, too, but to a much greater extent, of course. Otherwise, you'll have to keep brushing your hair thousands of times just to watch a half-hour episode of your favorite show.”

No

nines.

Not-nine,

Nevernine.

The girl named Sandra eyes me strangely.

“Whenever you do things like comb through dry hair, or wear socks and shuffle your feet along a really fuzzy carpet, you generate what's called static. Remember what we talked about last time, about electrons? One way to move electrons from one location to another is by—”

NO

NINES!

The teacher's table rattles, like something has taken hold of its legs and is knocking them hard against the floor.

No nines

no nines never

nines NO

NINES NO

NINES

NO NINES!

The lightbulb on the young woman's table ex

plodes

without warning.

At the same time, the flashlight trained on the ceiling catches on a face there, a woman hanging upside down. Tarquin jumps back, mouth open.

There are gasps and cries of surprise, of fear. Somebody switches on the lights.

It is the young woman. She stares down at the misshapen bulb on her table, the glass irrevocably and inexplicably crushed, the tape still wrapped around what remains of its shape.

Though the air is warm, the tattooed boy is white and shivering, trying to pull more of his shirt around himself. The glow around him grows marked, and the tattoos hiding underneath his clothes ripple. It is almost like a shadow is rising out from them, snaking past his chest and neck.