The Girl from the Well

The human eye is not built to follow the movements of the dead, and all Callie views is a series of blurs between the woman in white and the woman in black. But while I pass easily through the salted mirror, the dead miko does not. The glass slams into her, and the earth reels from the force, strong enough to send more of the roof tumbling down. The reflected surface with its sea salt prevents her from leaving, a restriction determined by the ritual long before she appeared, and it does not apply to me.

But Callie has not been stagnant throughout this fight. She is crawling back into the main room. She ignores the injured and the dead, and hunts instead for the ritual dolls lying strewn about.

“One.” She gasps out, finding one doll and setting it down nearby, within easy reach. “Two.” She picks up another, sets it down beside the first.

The salt from the mirror has burned into the dead miko’s eyes. She is snarling, and her rage makes her even more dangerous. When I emerge from the floorboards, she is on me in an instant, tearing into me again, and the

pain

from her

hands

is overwhelming. I fight back, grabbing at her feet, and she falls. Immediately, I am on her, my fingernails burrowing into the hollows of her eyes. She is screaming and no longer in triumph.

“Seven!” By now there are dolls lined neatly along the floor, a disturbing contrast to the carnage and blood nearby. And still Callie painfully crawls on to the eighth, which has been thrown outside the shrine, caught in the low branches of a nearby tree. Grabbing onto some tall shrubs, she lifts herself up, hobbling on one foot and attempting to reach up for the doll.

Another scream echoes through the air, and it makes me pause. Tarquin is awake and in pain. He is pawing at his eyes, hands contorted in agony. I remember that his ties to the dead miko remain, and that the sufferings I inflict on her body that she can endure may also be those that he cannot.

The dead miko takes the opportunity to strike back, as I hesitate in my indecision. With surprising strength, she sends me hurtling into the opposite wall, the wood actually tearing from the brutality.

“Please please please.” It is Callie. She is tiptoeing as far as her injuries allow her to, but her fingertips only brush against the sole of the doll’s foot, still out of reach. “Oh please oh please oh please oh please…”

Sharp hurt burns in the calves of her legs. The dead miko has latched onto Callie’s foot. I can hear the girl screaming. The woman relishes the cries. The doll falls to the ground, jarred free by the violent motions, but the girl has been dragged away, pressed against the shrine well with the dead miko looming over her. Black bile pours from the gouges I have made in her eyes, now burning in triumph. She pulls her hand back, nails razor-sharp, prepared to deliver the final, killing blow.

“No!”

It is Tarquin. He is awake and has taken hold of the stone knife, its bloody tip set against his neck.

“You thought of killing me once, before Okiku stopped you,” he pants. “But you couldn’t risk it, could you? That’s what they do at the Obon festival—they burn the possessed dolls. To ‘kill’ them. That’s why Mom’s been trying to kill me for the last several years. If I die now, I can at least take you to hell with me.”

“Tark,” Callie chokes. “No!”

The dead miko twitches in his direction.

“Shut up, Callie. Let me handle this.” The boy’s grip firms, and the knife begins to slice through his skin.

No!

Something knocks his hand away, the knife skittering to the floor.

From inside the well, arms come up to wrap protectively around Callie at the last instant, shielding her when the dead miko strikes. When the ghost makes another attempt, I catch her hand easily with my own, and crush it. The hand disintegrates, crumbling into ashes, and she falls back. I move, placing myself between Callie and the spirit, as pure water falls around my form. The dead miko is a creature of fire, and it is with fire that she is at her deadliest. But I am a creature of

water, of the movement and

flow of

tides and rivers, the

depths of stagnant pools. I,