The Girl from the Well

Tarquin had been sketching all throughout the train ride, his papers filling with small scenes of rural life. Fishermen hauling in the day’s wages and the busy and noisy throng of markets are captured in strokes of his pencil. Rather than become fatigued by the train rides and the constant switching of stations, the teenager appears more energized than when he was in Tokyo, and he takes shorter, quicker naps each time.

“You’re really good at this, Tark,” Callie says, going through his works. “Oh. Is this…?” She holds one up, where he has drawn a simple sketch of a dark-haired, solemn-looking girl, wearing a kimono dotted with fireflies.

“Did that one this morning.” Tarquin flashes her a sheepish grin. “I’m not obsessed with her or anything like that. But when you told me about that geisha with the butterfly kimono, and then that dream I had—I couldn’t get the image out of my head.”

They spend half an hour stretching their legs and pay for packed obento lunches from a nearby convenience store. Inside, the clerk is watching television, turned to an English-speaking news channel. Callie does not listen at first until she realizes there is something unusual about the day’s report.

“We’ve received word that police discovered four bodies this morning in the San’ya ward of Tokyo in what they describe as ‘horrific’ deaths by persons currently unknown. Police have confirmed earlier reports of the victims appearing to have both been drowned and also severely mutilated, making it one of the worst murders in Japan in the last several years.

“All four were students at a local high school. Authorities are searching for two other students last seen with the victims and still missing. No other details have been forthcoming, but we will provide updates as soon as we receive official statements from the police superintendent.”

The victims appear to have both been drowned and also severely mutilated.

The obento store owner sighs. “Youths nowadays,” she says sadly in heavily accented Japanese. “Not what they used to be.”

Trembling, Callie can only nod.

They switch trains and board the Aoimori Railway, which Tarquin’s father explains will take them to Noheji next, an even smaller town than Hachinohe. Winters here are long, broken only by short, cool summers, and a faint chill blankets the area, though it has yet to snow. From here they take one final train ride to Shimokita. Callie balks at the exorbitant fees Tarquin’s father pays each time, but the man is unconcerned by the expense and assures her she owes him nothing. As the train leaves the station, Tarquin persuades his father to explore the train further with him. Invigorated by the new sights, the boy has color returning to his cheeks.

Callie declines the invitation. She is unused to the constant motion of modern locomotives and wishes to remain in her seat to recuperate. As they leave, Callie stares out the window as the scenery changes from woodland to green space to farmland and back again, watching people work at their fields harvesting rice (fifty-eight) or herds of cattle grazing at will (seventy-nine). From a distance, the diminutive shapes of small fishing boats pass (forty), silhouetted against the sparkling waters of the bay.

She turns her head and sees me on the seat before her.

I have never been to the northern part of Japan, but something in the rustic countryside, the sway of thatched roofs, and the endless fields is more familiar to me than the gray stone skyscrapers and the artifice of color in Tokyo. This reminds me of

(home)

the life I once led.

Perhaps because of this sense of calm, I do not appear to her as a dreadful onryuu, a massless thing of hair, of torn cotton and skin. Instead, I look out the window from my seat as a young girl in a simple homespun kimono. My hair is coiled in a bun, and the darks of my eyes are now a soft brown, the whiteness of my face now a palette of pink flesh. There is a marked contrast between the hideous appearance of an apparition that I have worn for so long and the simple normalcy of the girl I once was and whose shape I have now resumed, however briefly. I say nothing for the moment and continue to watch trees and rice paddies pass as the train hurtles on, waiting for her to make the first move.

“Your name is Okiku, isn’t it?”

Without looking back at her, I nod slightly.

“The same Okiku from Himeji Castle?”