The Girl from the Well

“Chiyo,” Callie echoes, remembering. “Mrs. Halloway mentioned her once.”


“She was our sister, a kuchiyose like us,” Amaya says, Kagura translating quickly. “But she was Yoko-chan’s biological older sister, her true oneesan. You must wonder how we are able to support ourselves, living in such a lonely place where few people pass through.” Callie nods. “We make medicine from the herbs we keep in our garden, and Kagura goes into town to sell them. But there are also many who still believe in the old ways, and there are those who are still afflicted by the old curses. When people become possessed by the demons and spirits that abound, they come to us.”

“What do you mean by ‘possessed’?”

“The Japanese believe that everything has a spirit.” Kagura takes up the tale. “Mountains, trees, even the smallest of stones. When funeral rites are performed poorly, the spirits are unable to move on into the afterlife. They return to the family and loved ones they left behind, often to haunt them. Sometimes the deceased takes possession of a favorite item of theirs during their lifetime, and sometimes they can even possess a family member or a close friend. Sometimes they can physically harm a person or, in rare instances, kill. All onryuu are capable of this, though their methods may vary. When this happens, their victims come to us. We expel the spirits and transfer these demons into our dolls as a substitute.”

Callie stares at her. “Do you mean to say,” she asks slowly, “that the dolls in the shrine all possess spirits?”

Kagura is reassuring. “Not all spirits we exorcise are necessarily evil. Many are simply lost souls, confused by their deaths and unable to move on, and we help guide them on their way. The Obon is a festival celebrated every October to honor our ancestors, and at this time every year, we cleanse the possessed dolls by burning them through another special rite. By doing so, we release their spirits back into the underworld. Until then, we serve as their caretakers.”

“But…but the spirit haunting Tarquin…”

“Yes,” Kagura says sadly. “Her name was Chiyo Takeda. Among us miko, she was the most powerful. Her specialty lay in exorcising the most vindictive of ghosts—the evil spirits who have come specifically to do harm to the living. But sometimes dolls cannot contain the fury of the worst of these demons. So she began using her own body as a sacrifice.

“For years she was successful. Her own spirit was strong enough that she was able to house these ghosts within her without suffering the consequences until Obon, where she would then successfully purify herself of them. But she grew too proud, Chiyo-sama did. She boasted that she could trap even the King of the Underworld himself. Obaasan tried to talk her out of saying such foolishness, but she was unrepentant. She thought herself capable of handling anything.”

Kagura closes her eyes. “And then the nightmares began. She had them almost every night, and she became prone to sleepwalking. She nearly walked into the Ohata rapids once and would have died, had Yoko not followed her out and saved her. Her personality began to change, too. Chiyo-sama had always been very gentle and compassionate. Now an uglier side of her surfaced. She would abuse many of the younger mikos and physically hurt them.

“When Obaasan found her cutting the heads off some of the small squirrels and birds around for sport—the Chiyo we knew loved all living things and would have died before she allowed them to come to harm—she knew that they could not wait for the Obon festival for Chiyo to be purified. I was only nine years old when it happened, and still I remember it clearly. I remember her madness.” Kagura shudders.

“There was Chiyo, squatting in the dirt over some poor eviscerated pigeon. She cared very little for her appearance by then, and her hair hung in tangles around her face, her eyes starting out from her head. She was like a demon herself.”