The Girl from the Well

“That’s a sad story,” the brunette murmurs.

“But true,” Callie says, so softly that no one else hears her. She knows that I have gone far beyond the boundaries of my well and have long since sought the greener pastures of other countries, wreaking my vengeance on men still within my reach, those who could serve in the cruel retainer’s stead.

Her friend looks down the well and makes a face. “Well, it’s too dark to see anything. Let’s go take a peek inside the Suicide Tower instead.”

She moves away. Before she turns to follow, Callie looks into the well herself—

—and sees a lone woman lying at its bottom, her body twisted and broken from a fatal fall.

Someone hurt her really, really badly, and they put her down someplace that was dark and smelly, like a big hole. Her head went in the hole first before her feet and she died like that, so she got used to seeing everything upside down.

But I am not the Okiku she is familiar with.

This Okiku is clawing at her own face, black bile bubbling up from the wounds scored into her skin. Her mouth is wide and black and hollow, and she is screaming soundlessly, horrid gurgles at the base of her mangled throat, where bone protrudes.

But the most frightening thing about this Okiku are her eyes, as they contain nothing but hollow sockets teeming with black leech-like maggots and look nothing at all like eyes.

It was this Okiku that drowned in this well three hundred years ago, the Okiku I was when I first began my existence as a dreadful spirit, as a nothing-more. This Okiku only remembered

pain

suffering

hate

vengeance.

Time had taught me to temper the malice within. But for a long,

long

time, I was a great and terrible thing. I was a creature that found pleasure in the ripping. In the tearing.

I am no longer that monster. But memories of that creature still lurk within this well. There are some things that never fully die.

And now, still gurgling, this Okiku begins to climb.

Limbs twisted, ragged strips of kimono fluttering behind her like broken wings, she climbs. She slithers up the wall, brittle bones snapping, she

climbs. Her skin stretches and breaks, hanging down at unnatural angles as her head tilts, loose flesh clinging to the folds of what remains of her neck, and she

climbs. Before Callie has time to react, this Okiku has climbed to the top of the well, reaching out for her with rotting hands, leaping for her with jaws agape.

The young woman turns to run and nearly crashes into her friend.

“Hey, hey, slow down!” The woman laughs. “What’s the hurry? We’ve still got lots of time to sight-see!”

Callie cranes her neck to look behind her, but nothing comes out of the well.

“Mori-san says we’re going to see the gardens next. ‘You’ve seen one garden, you’ve seen them all’ is pretty much my motto, but since it’s already been paid for, I don’t see how we have much of a choice. You ready?”

“Y–yes, I’ll be right with you.” This time Callie sees the Okiku she is more accustomed to, looking down into the depths of the well myself. Perhaps some of the sorrow and regret is evident on my face when I look back at her, my head bowed in apology.

I am sorry that she sees more than she ought.

I disappear from her view. Callie risks one last look inside the well but this time sees nothing but darkness and hears nothing but the sound of water and the clattering of small stones.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


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