The Girl from the Well

“Maybe it’s not as serious as it looks,” Callie says, trying to be encouraging, though she knows the deceit of her own words.

“I hope so.” The man sinks into a nearby armchair. “God, I’m tired myself. I’ve been running around Tokyo all day, settling Yoko’s affairs and trying to finish the rest of my work in between talking to doctors. I’ve got several meetings with Mitsubishi and Itochu in the next few weeks. I don’t think I’ve had more than a few hours’ sleep since arriving here.”

“Maybe a rest in the countryside would help both of you,” Callie suggests.

“Yes. Whenever he feels better, Tarquin pores through every guidebook and map of Aomori we can find. I think it’ll be good for him, too. Thank you again for coming with us. Tarquin’s been looking forward to the trip.”

“Did Aunt Yoko have family there?”

“I’m a little fuzzy on that myself. Yoko never talked much about any relatives she might have had. I know that her parents died before we’d even met, but if she had any other siblings or cousins, other than the older sister she mentioned, I’m as much in the dark as you are. She never liked talking about her past, insisting that she was done with that part of her life.”

The man gestures, and Callie sees with a start that the urn bearing the ashes of Tarquin’s mother stands atop one of the room’s dressers.

“Yoko mentioned in her will that she wanted her ashes scattered at the Chinsei shrine near Osorezan. I’ve never heard of the place. I’ve asked a couple of people, but the closest thing to a temple that they are aware of is the Bodai Temple on the Osore grounds. I suppose we can always ask some of the locals at Mutsu once we get there.”

The man’s phone rings and he excuses himself to answer. As he talks, Callie steals across the room to gaze down at the small urn on the dresser. She wonders briefly how Tarquin must feel, traveling with his mother in this macabre manner.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she tells it softly. “I don’t know what I can possibly do. But I promise to do whatever I can to help protect Tark.”

She turns away, back toward the room.

Something rattles behind her.

Callie looks back just in time to see the lid slide off the urn, dropping with a noisy thump onto the carpeted floor. From inside, a jumble of hair rises out of the opening, inch by slow, protruding inch. As she watches, horrified, a drooping eye emerges from underneath that matted hair, and then next, a gaping mouth. It is

Yoko Halloway’s head

peering up, and Callie claps a hand over her mouth, stifling the urge to scream. But the dead woman’s eyes seem every inch as pleading, a peculiar desperation in that bloodied face. Her torn lips move wordlessly with an entreaty that Callie neither hears nor understands, before the head falls out of the urn and hits the floor, rolling toward her.

“Callie?”

The girl jerks back into the reality of the room, only to find Tarquin’s father peering down at her anxiously. “Are you all right?”

In the older man’s presence, there is nothing out of the ordinary. The seals on the urn’s lid remain perfectly in place. Yoko Halloway’s head does not stare up at her from the floor.

“Are you all right?” the boy’s father asks again.

No, Callie thinks. No. I am not all right.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


    Mutsu


The journey to Osorezan comes in stages.

From the Tokyo station, they take the Shinkansen train to a place called Hachinohe. After the hustle and bustle of Tokyo, a certain kind of quaintness seems to settle around this little city. The faintest smell of brine permeates the air.