The Girl from the Well

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.

“How—how—” The young teacher stutters, then remembers the sea of inquiring faces before her. She checks the ruined bulb hastily and seems relieved that none of the glass has flown out of the tape. “This is why you mustn’t try this at home without any parental supervision,” the young woman finishes, but it is clear that she herself is distressed over what has happened, though she fights hard not to let it show.

The boy’s shivering has also passed. Color returns to his face, but he, too, is unnerved. The peculiar shadow seeking to fold itself around him has disappeared.

“Experiment’s over for now! Who can tell me what the difference is between a positively charged atom and a negatively charged one? Brian?”

The lessons continue until the bell rings again and the children file out of the classroom, eager to be off. “I want everyone to leave the room through the back door!” the young woman warns. “Just to be on the safe side, in case there’s glass on the floor that needs sweeping up!”

“I’m sorry,” she tells the boy after most of the students have left. “I have no idea how that happened.” The boy’s backpack has fallen off the table, some of its contents spilling out: one binder, three books, and two sharpened pencils. The young woman bends to pick them up.

“Oh, these are good, Tark!” She holds up the binder, now opened to pages of quick sketches and rough drawings: landscapes, animals, miscellaneous people.

The boy snatches it back. “Thanks,” he says, more embarrassed than angry. He stuffs it back into his bag. “I really gotta go, Callie. There’s a shrink waiting to see if I meet her minimum requirements of crazy.”

“Stop that,” the young woman says with a natural firmness that she often adopts with her charges. “You’re not crazy, so stop saying you are.”

The boy grins at her. Something unnatural lurks at the corner of his eyes, something not even he seems aware of. “Sometimes I wish I could believe that, Callie. But my own mother’s batshit crazy, and I’ve seen so much other strange crap in my life that there’s no doubt I’ll be following in her footsteps soon enough.” He glances up at the ceiling again, but there is nobody there. “I don’t think your attempts at immersing me in the sanity of the general population’s hive-mind are going to work here, but thanks anyway.”

“Tark!” But the boy has already walked out of the room, a hand raised in farewell.

The young woman sighs, sinking into her chair. She picks up the broken bulb and turns it sideways. There is no doubt that the glass inside has been smashed, like a hammer has been violently taken to it. A shield of tape still holds some of the shards in place.

“What happened to you?” she whispers, her tone wondering. She lifts it to get a better view and sees her own slightly distorted image on the surface, tiny and unfocused.

As she watches, another reflection within the bulb moves beside her own.

She gasps, whirling around.

“Miss Starr?”

It is the girl called Sandra. The young teacher’s heart is pounding. “Sandra! You startled me…”

“She’s really sorry,” the child says sincerely.