The Girl from the Well

“Hey, Hiroshi,” he says hesitantly. “I can’t find the body.”


“What?” Shaved Head grabs the light and shines it around. The girl’s corpse is nowhere to be seen. He swears again.

“Who the fuck do you think you guys are, playing pranks on me? Whose fucking idea was it to hide the body?”

“We didn’t do it, Hiroshi!” a boy with glasses protests. “We were with you this whole time.”

“And we were downstairs looking for the saw,” Mohawk adds hastily, for Shaved Head is known for his foul temper. “I swear, Hiro, we never moved the body!”

“Well, I want you all to start looking for it soon, because I’m losing my patience. Where the hell is Jo with the light?” Shaved Head flips the light switch on and off again, then punches his fist into the wall, his frustration apparent.

“Go look for Jo,” he barks out. “And see if the old farts downstairs had anything to do with this.”

His companions rush to carry out his orders, leaving him scowling at the small, smudged mirror in the bathroom. “Idiots,” he mutters, smoothing out his rumpled shirt collar.

And stops. A peculiar dark spot in the mirror is growing slowly in size as he looks on, though the darkness makes it difficult for him to see clearly. Frowning, he scrunches up his eyes and draws closer to the mirror, trying to determine what this is.

The black spot increases, spreading across the mirror’s surface like an ugly paint splotch, until Shaved Head can barely see his own reflection.

“What the hell?”

Two discolored arms shoot out from the mirror, and it is only from reflex that Shaved Head is able to throw himself away from their reach, hitting the wall behind him hard instead. He gapes at the mirror, where a long-haired woman’s head begins to push itself out. From underneath her hair, eyes like twin black holes bore into the now-terrified boy’s face, and from her wide, scarred mouth she gurgles low.

“Shit!” Shaved Head bursts out of the bathroom, skidding across the narrow hallway. “Jo!” he yells. “Shinji, Tetsuo! Where the fuck is everybody?” He runs toward where he last saw the boys, halting beside the room they previously occupied. The room is empty, though the TV still plays. A strange screeching noise makes him stop in his tracks.

A variety show program is on: Japanese comedians on a game show. But the television screen occasionally flickers into a different image—barely more than a few tenths of a second at first, but growing longer each time, until Shaved Head finds himself looking into the face of the murdered girl. Her skin has been warped from burn marks and stretched over her horrific skull.

Blood begins to spill in rivulets down the walls of the room, soaking through the curtains. At the same time, something drops from the ceiling behind him and hits the floor.

They are Purple Mohawk and Tiger Tattoo, both unrecognizable if not for their brightly colored hair. Their legs are twisted behind them, like all bone had been leached from their limbs. Tiger Tattoo is obviously dead. His features are an ashen gray, tongue lolling out. But Mohawk is still dying. Half of his face is bloated and swollen, and he flops helplessly across the wooden carpet, a gutted fish out of water.

“Hlllp,” he croaks. “Hiroshhhhhhi.”

Something

gurgles

by his side. Shaved Head sees me standing on the ceiling for the first time, watching him with my pupil-less eyes and my hollow, open mouth.

Shaved Head flees, ignoring his dying friend’s garbled pleas. He races through the hall. “Tetsuo!” he screams. “Koichi, where the hell are you guys? Fuck!” He shoves open the door leading into a small storage room but steps back, frightened, when two of the other boys come tumbling out.