The Girl from the Well

Immediately the older boy begins to scream and does not stop.

It is only after the lights come back on that the other teachers and students arrive to find Tarquin huddled underneath the sink. The bully’s legs and arms are scattered across two of the bathroom stalls. His head is found in the toilet bowl of the third, face burned and heavily disfigured.

“People started avoiding me after that, pretended like I wasn’t even in the room with them. Everyone thought I had something to do with it, and they were scared. Even the teachers wouldn’t look me in the eye.”

Callie finds she cannot stop shivering.

“I was glad to leave that school. Everyone thought I was a freak long before that happened, anyway. Never really stopped feeling guilty about it, even if I didn’t do the actual killing—like maybe the reason he was dead was because I wanted him dead. And then I started seeing her more often, the woman in black. When McKinley died, bits of the mask she wears start crumbling—not that she has what you would call a face in any normal sense of the word. And when I heard about how Mom died, in almost the same way McKinley did…maybe Mom was right to try and kill me.” The boy shudders.

“Don’t ever look at her directly, Callie. That thing behind the mask…everything wrong about humanity is hiding behind it. And now it’s happened again.”

“What has happened again?”

Once again, Tarquin slowly rolls up his sleeve, exposing the rest of the tattoos. The lines of strange writing running up his arm look bleached and worn, as blanched as the seal on his right wrist. In contrast, the seal on his left wrist had not faded like the others had; translucent one moment, dark in the next.

“There’s more.” Tarquin turns and lifts his shirt partway up. Like the ones on his arms, the other tattoos are also faded, except for one of the two seals at the small of his back that is still an inky black.

“Is it too optimistic to hope that they’ll all disappear soon?”

She has broken many of those seals, Tarquin’s mother had said. And Callie knows that her blood marks the now-sputtering seal on her cousin’s left wrist, remembers the hooded woman staring down at her as she lay helpless on the gurney, that evil, decayed face looking out at her from behind the pristine and porcelain doll-like mask.

“Callie, what’s wrong?” Tarquin asks, studying her face. “You’re as white as a sheet again.”

“I’m just—I’m just a little overwhelmed by all this.”

“I won’t stop you if you don’t want to come near any of us after this, you know. I don’t want to get you into any more trouble.”

“We’re in this together, Tark.” I’m in this, too, she thinks. My blood is on that seal. Even if I stay as far as I can away from them, she’ll still be able to find me. And kill me.

“It doesn’t matter. We’re going back to Japan. Dad’s company wants to send him to Tokyo because he speaks Japanese, and he wants me along. And we’ve still gotta bring Mom’s ashes back to Yagen Valley, wherever that is.”

“I could be going to Japan soon, too.”

The boy turns to look at her, and I know the young woman feels it as well as I can. There is something about the masked woman in black that lurks out of the corner of the boy’s eyes, though he himself does not know.

“Why?” he asks.

“You remember that cultural studies program I applied for? Japan is on the list of countries I can opt for, if it hasn’t filled up already.”

“You’re not sticking around here to teach anymore?”

“Probably not. I’m getting a little sick of being pointed out as ‘the girl in that serial-murderer case.’ Anyway, I’ll be back in time for college applications.”