The Girl from the Well

It is her decision.

Unlike other souls that I have saved, this girl does not glow, does not rise up to the sky. Unlike with other souls, the prolonged violence of her death has warped her into the creature of malice standing before me.

Unlike other souls, she is much like me.

She has not changed. Her skin still bears the marks of the torture she went through in the moments before her death. This is clear in the lacerations on her body, in the ruins of her face. Like me, she has exacted her revenge against her tormentors, but her loss of innocence from such actions ensures that she cannot cross into the light. Like me, she cannot leave and is instead doomed to wait forever on dark shores, straining for glimpses of stars.

She understands this. Still, a smile curves along what is left of her mouth. She bows to me, for even spirits can understand gratitude, and turns to leave, the night soon swallowing her up.

I should not feel sorrow that she chose of her own volition to take the same path I now walk. But I do. I am beginning to understand that there are better things than retribution.

I, too, leave this terrible place, this little apartment of bodies. There are no souls to save here. Anything worth redeeming left this place many, many years ago.

Instead, I wait for the break of dawn. I find an empty shed washed clean from the stink of the living and slip back into hibernation. Briefly, I contemplate returning to Tarquin’s apartment instead, but I do not. For the first time in as long as I can remember I feel unclean. Impure.

Uneasy.

So it is in this little shed in Tokyo that I wait for Callie to arrive.

? ? ?

Tarquin Halloway and his father are there when she steps out into the waiting area of Narita International Airport in Tokyo, and Callie is stunned by how Tarquin looks. She expected him to look sick from their email exchanges where Tarquin recounted his health, sometimes deprecatingly, but nothing prepared her for the hollowness of the tattooed boy’s cheeks or the pallor of his skin or the feverish brightness of his dark eyes. Despite his now-frail condition, there is energy to the teenager still, and he closes the needed distance to exuberantly throw a thinner arm around Callie’s shoulder.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, his smile a mere ghost of what it could have been. “I look fantastic.”

“Oh, Tark!”

He laughs at her fears. “Don’t worry. I’m a lot stronger than I look. But I’m glad you’re here, cuz.”

“He’s been growing worse every day,” his father tells Callie later, as he drives the rented car into the thick of Tokyo. Tarquin is nestled against warm blankets in the backseat of the car, fast asleep. In spite of what he says, his burst of enthusiasm exhausted him quickly. “I’m at my wit’s end what to do. I’ve been to several different doctors and they’ve run two dozen tests, but no one seems to know what’s been making him sick.”

It is the woman in black, Callie knows, but she does not tell the father this.

“I’ve gotten two rooms at the Garden Rose Hotel. The hospital is only a block or so away, so we can be there quickly, in case one of the doctors calls again.”

After unpacking, Callie heads to the room across from hers, where she manages to wake Tarquin long enough to spoon hot chicken soup into him, while his father conducts business with his mobile phone. By the time he is done, Tarquin has drunk most of the nourishing meal, in between halfhearted protests that he could feed himself without her assistance, and fallen back asleep.

“He sleeps most of the time now,” his father says, worried. “They have the results of his most recent blood test, and they still haven’t found anything wrong with him.”