The Girl from the Well (7 page)

She looks down at the empress doll in her hand.

A mask stares back at her, and behind it that maimed, hideous face.

The woman says a curious thing.

“
Oneesan
,” she whimpers, beseeching, as ragged nails claw their way up her arms and shoulders, the woman in black extending to her full height. The empress doll falls at the Japanese woman's feet, its head torn off.

The woman screams, but by then it is already too late.

When it is done, the woman in black stares at me. From behind her mask, she smiles.

The night passes quietly enough for the other inmates at Remney's, but when one of the White Shirts comes to check on the woman, that peace is soon shattered. She bursts out of the room in such hysterics that it becomes difficult to distinguish her from her patients.

Someone has cut off the heads of all one hundred and eight dolls, their faces charred by some unknown fire. The room is in disarray with the bed and chair overturned, and faint scorch marks encompass one side of the wall. The headless dolls are lined up in small rows beside the broken bed, which is now drenched in blood.

And underneath this bed they find the one hundred and ninth head.

The air smells like a hundred years of memories. The teacher's assistant reads through articles scrolling on a large computer screen. Piles of dusty newspapers lie strewn on the floor. There are few people in the local library today and fewer still in this small, musty section of the building that many have already forgotten. Old things still flourish here.

The young woman sits hunched over a large table and scrolls through countless sheets of yellowed, preserved paper. In this small room, she logs on to the Internet and spends several minutes assuring her mother that all is right with the world, lying about her lack of injuries and the exaggeration of the media. Then she begins her research and, within an hour, finds a series of reported murders strangely similar to the one she has just lived through:

Mutilated
Body
found
in
Houston, Texas

Bloated
Body
Located
in
Florida
Swamps

Unidentified
Body
in
Mexico

Remains
Found
in
Brazil

Gruesome
Discovery
in
Queensland, Australia

Body
Found
Floating
in
River, Philippines

The list goes on, and the young woman finds the details disturbing. Bodies discovered in the same way: faces bloated and distended as if held underwater indefinitely; the fear in their faces; their eyes rolled back until only the whites show. Of the fifty-eight articles she has found, only twenty-three of the victims have ever been identified. Most were drifters, meeting their deaths in lands far from the countries of their birth. Of the twenty-three identified, thirteen had been arrested on previous charges, many of them sexual offenses. Most have been suspects in other missing persons cases, all of which involved children and teenagers. Five have been posthumously convicted for these crimes.

The young teacher leans back against her chair, thinking.

She tries to look up everything known about Blake Mosses, but has little to show for her efforts. Except for the numerous articles written about his death, no other matches turn up for the dead man at the Holly Oaks apartment. The only telling clue was the police's recent discovery of a hair fiber wedged within his floorboards, and the results will not be determined for many more months.

She types in a different name next: Quintilian Saetern.

Throughout news reports of the Smiling Man's murder, she lay in seclusion, unfettered by the cameras and news reporters attempting to reach her hospital bed for an interview, only to be repulsed by nurses and policemen. The Smiling Man was less taciturn about hiding his name than Blake Mosses had been, and by the time she had healed enough to leave, the reporters had lost interest in her, having discovered the Smiling Man's past through other more conventional means.

She discovers that Quintilian Saetern's real name was Quintilian Densmore, formerly of Massachusetts. A string of juvenile offenses followed him into adulthood, and at twenty years of age he was charged with the attempted rape of a ten-year-old girl and served five years. Two months after his release from jail, he inherited a substantial fortune from his father and began traveling extensively. The reported disappearances of more young women and children over the years bore the marks of his killing spree. His first conviction had taught him one thing: dead people tell no tales.

The police have no suspects in his killing. They have interviewed the teacher's assistant and the tattooed boy, hoping to find more leads, but have so far met with little success. The boy has no recollection of his time in the basement, and the young woman tells them nothing about me or the masked woman.

Though with no further clues, the detectives are of the same opinion as most of the residents in Applegate—that the guilty party deserved neither an arrest nor a prison sentence, but a medal and a commendation from the governor himself, for killing Quintilian Densmore. Still, two murders in so short a time have caused an uneasy ripple in Applegate. Uncertainty has gripped the town, and people no longer feel as safe as they once did.

It is an unfortunate side effect of my work, but one worth the consequences.

Here in this moldy section of the public library, the girl starts again with the basics of what she already knows. For one, two, three, four hours, she scrolls through the microfilm. I lean over her shoulder to read what she has found.

1970—
Mutilated
Body
Found
in
Houston, Texas
. Suspected murderer Gavin Hollencamp found dead at his apartment on September 14. Water found in his lungs, along with his heavily corroded face, suggested death by drowning. Advanced decomposition of his skin indicated at least five days spent underwater, though many witnesses claimed to have seen Hollencamp alive the day before his death. Revenge believed to be the motive for the killing, but as all known suspects have solid alibis, police are left with no leads. Suspected of murdering ten-year-old Lisa Brooks two years before, though eventually acquitted due to a court technicality. Still an open case.

1995—
Bloated
Body
Located
in
Florida
Swamps
. Body identified as a Mathelson Smith from Boise, Idaho. Lower half of corpse believed to have been eaten by alligators. Smith was wanted for questioning in connection with the disappearance of Lydia Small, aged ten, two months earlier after she was last seen in his company. Characteristics of the water found in his lungs suggested groundwater such as that found in artesian wells, indicating that the man had not drowned in the swamps as originally thought. Police suspect possible foul play but possess few leads.

2004—
Gruesome
Discovery
in
Queensland, Australia
. Fully clothed body found washed up on the beach in North Narrabeen, Sydney, and soon identified as a Patrick Neville, fifty-two, local car salesman. According to witnesses, Neville was on a yacht with business associates when he “looked down into the water and gave this bone-chilling scream shortly before falling overboard.” Others claim Neville was yanked into the water—but they could provide no description of what pulled him in. Sharks and other large fish are not known to inhabit this particular coast. The medical examiner could not explain the several days' worth of decay on the deceased's face, despite the accident taking place only hours earlier. Two years before his death, Neville was one of five suspects questioned regarding the disappearances of several children in the northern Sydney area. Police have no leads.

The young woman feels hair brushing against the side of her head and sees from the corner of her eyes tendrils of black, stringy hair and a white face inches beside hers. She whirls around, clutching at the table with her hands for support, but the apparition is gone.

“You're here, aren't you?” she asks the darkness, still breathing hard.

Her eyes fall on several small piles of newspapers and binders, dusty from disuse. Her eyes widen for a moment before her face settles into a bright, almost calculating, expression. She rises from her chair and begins to lug stacks of these newspapers over by her chair. I count them.

One stack, two stacks.

Finished, she returns to her chair, though there is now an air of urgency and nervous excitement about her.

Five stacks, six stacks.

She takes a deep breath and then holds it. Her hands are clenched, and she is biting her lip.

Eight stacks. Nine stacks.

She waits.

Nothing happens. Relief and disappointment fills her, and her hands lower.

And just as suddenly, the ninth stack of newspapers begin to fold in on itself in front of her horrified eyes. Inch after inch it is crushed by unseen, powerful hands, until it is now a third of its previous size, the paper so heavily compacted that removing an individual sheaf becomes impossible.

No

nines.

There is silence in the room, except for the sounds of the young teacher's quiet, panicked breathing, fearful of retribution for her insolence.

And then just outside in the hallway, something lands with a heavy thump.

The young woman jumps, another scream leaving her mouth before she is able to stop herself. But the minutes tick by and nothing untoward happens and so, with shaking feet, she ventures to where the sound came from, out into the long hallway leading back into the library.

There is no one else around. One of the books had fallen from the shelves, landing facedown on the floor.

The girl picks it up, turning it over to see the page it was open to.

The large volume is titled
Popular
Japanese
Destinations
, and the open page shows a picturesque view of a large, rocky wasteland dotted by majestic peaks and yellow hot springs.

“If you're an adventurous traveler with a taste for the strange and the macabre,” the caption begins, “Mount Osore (fondly known as
Osorezan
by the locals) on Aomori, Mutsu province, may be right up your alley. Known for its Bodai Temple and peaceful, if rather desolate surroundings. A small road leads into the mostly uninhabited Yagen Valley, where visitors can enjoy an unusual mixture of uncivilized nature and uncrowded hot springs.”

The young woman looks around. She does not see me but speaks anyway.

“Thank you,” Callie whispers.

• • •

The tattooed boy is hiding.

It is night, and the lights have gone out in other houses. The only sources of illumination are the strange moon looking down at him from the window and the faint artificial glow of the lampposts on the streets below.

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.