The Girl from the Well

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.