The Girl from the Well

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.