The Girl from the Well

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