The Girl from the Well (8 page)

“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.

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.

“And every time, I black out. Every time I come to, I'm somewhere else from where I recall being. It's happened frequently enough whenever I'm around that people started connecting me to all these weird incidents and staying away. Dad doesn't believe that, naturally, being dear, old logical Dad. And word soon got around school that I had a mom in a mental institution, a mom who attacks me before I can even get in a ‘hello.' Not exactly the best way to climb up the social ladder.”

“But that's awful!” Callie is appalled. “Why didn't you or Uncle Doug ever tell us about this?”

Tarquin snorts. “What, Dad telling you and Aunt Linda I was crazy, or me telling you both I was being haunted by an eyeless woman with a mask, or that I was responsible for my old school almost closing for failing to reach local sanitation standards? If you hadn't told me you could see her, too, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.”

“This isn't something you should be going through alone, Tark. I won't let you!”

Tarquin flashes her a swift, grateful smile. “You're treating me like one of your fourth-graders again, Callie.”

“Half my fourth-graders think ghosts are people running around in a white sheet, and the other half think they're some kind of Pokémon.”

“Well, she tried to come after me last night. Don't worry,” he adds, spotting Callie's stricken expression. “Okiku saved me.”

“Okiku?”

“The other ghost. The girl in white. We…she's all right.” An odd note enters the boy's voice. “I don't know how much you've seen of her, but she's… Sometimes she wanders around looking like she'd been floating in a river for days, but that night she was… She can actually look kind of
pretty
, you know? Don't know why she doesn't look like that all the time. Maybe it's some unspoken rule about being dead that I'm not aware of.”

“Tark, I'm not sure you should be sympathizing with someone like her just because she saved your life,” Callie says, uneasy at the remembrance of my dead face, my broken neck. “She might have some other ulterior motive.”

“Like what?”

“You've heard about the murder at Holly Oaks, right? They say the victim's face was bloated—exactly like that man who kidnapped you and nearly killed me! I've been doing a lot of research. I've read newspaper clippings dating back dozens of years about men who'd been killed in the same way, and how no one has ever found out who's responsible. They've all been suspected of murdering children themselves, but many of them have never been arrested or convicted for a number of reasons. I think—I think it's
her
, Tark. She's been traveling all around the world, looking for people like them to kill.”

Tark merely shrugs at that, and Callie does not like the quick manner with which he dismisses her fears. “Then I'll have to make sure not to go around molesting teenagers of both the handsome and tattooed persuasions, so she won't want to murder me, too, right?”

“That doesn't mean she still isn't dangerous!”

“I don't know. It doesn't feel like that at all. I mean, she saved my life. She saved yours, too! It feels like she genuinely wants to help. And with her around, maybe I can finally stop accidentally killing off people.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“There's something else Dad and I neglected to tell you and Aunt Linda. Before we came to Applegate, there was this other boy…” The boy stares down at shoes dug deeply into the damp soil, the dirt obscuring the whites of his laces.