The Girl from the Well

by Rin Chupeco

  “I think you’re worrying too much about things that shouldn’t be your problem, family or not. Know what my solution is? A boyfriend. I know this really cute guy a couple of years older than you. His name’s Everett. Works part-time at the gym, planning on being a rocket scientist, literally. Aerospace engineering major. Has this sort of Jake Gyllenhaal vibe going…”

  The blonde makes a face. “I’m serious, Jen. I don’t like this.”

  “Neither do I, but we don’t get to pick the kids they give us to teach, either, and we still have to like it. If we could, maybe I wouldn’t have to read book reports that start: ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow begins when Johnny Depp goes into this weird town and gets chased by some guy with no head.’”

  Both women laugh. “I have to go,” the older one says. “Speaking of the hypothetically questionable upbringing of family members, I’m already running late. Jackson’s working ’til eight, so it’s my turn to pick Sean up from day care. I have no idea how they’re both going to manage things here without me.”

  “So you’re really set on going on that cultural studies program?”

  “Absolutely!” Jen grins, excited. “Practically a month in France, all expenses paid—what’s not to like? Well, most expenses paid. I don’t think any planned shopping trips will count as research. Jackson’s not happy about me not spending the summer here, but he agreed I shouldn’t pass this up. You were accepted, too, weren’t you?”

  “I was—but I haven’t decided on a country yet. Spain, Australia, India…they all sound tempting. I just feel a little guilty about leaving here before the school term officially ends.”

  “Well, it’s not like a teacher’s assistant is such a glamorous, well-paying job. Felicia Donahue’s coming back in two weeks, anyway, so you won’t have anything pressing to do. Think about going to France with me, instead. Just imagine—reclining with cups of café noisette at a gorgeous little café, you being serenaded by a group of cute French boys while I’m waited on hand and foot by a charming waiter who looks suspiciously like Jean Reno…”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll at least think about it. Now stop daydreaming about inappropriately aged men and get out of here! Don’t keep Sean waiting.” The girl shoos away her friend, who walks on after one last wave. Only when she is finally out of sight does the teacher’s assistant sigh, her face troubled.

  It is then that she notices Sandra by the swings, singing softly to herself.

  • • •

  “And what makes you think she won’t believe you?”

  The boy snorts. “Some days I wish I didn’t believe me, either.”

  “Would you like to tell me all about it?” the psychotherapist asks. The boy glares at her with a suspicious eye. One hundred and twelve, one hundred and thirteen.

  “And what’s going to stop you from putting me in the crazy bin if I do?” he accuses.

  “I’ll believe that it’s something you believe,” the woman says, and believes her own lie. “And if you’re worried about me telling anyone else, I won’t. Everything you say in this room will be strictly confidential. Not even your father has to know. The only reason for me to divulge information to anyone is if I have reason to believe that you are a danger to yourself or to the community, and I believe you are not a threat.”

  The boy considers this for a few minutes, then laughs. It is not a humorous sound.

  “Sometimes when I look in mirrors, I see a strange lady.”

  To her credit, the woman does not blink.

  “She’s in a black dress, and she wears a mask. All she does is watch me, and not with that I’ve-got-a-crush-on-you kind of stare. Less infatuated, more homicidal. I always get this feeling like she’s waiting for something, but I don’t know what that is. She pops up in places I don’t expect—mirrors, usually. She’s fond of mirrors, unfortunately. If that makes me crazy, then you better have a straitjacket ready, because that’s the truth.”

  “I see.” The woman’s voice does not change. She picks up her cup again. “How long have you been seeing this lady?”

  “I don’t know. For as long as I can remember, I guess. Maybe since I was five, six years old. Sometimes I don’t see her for months at a time, but now I see her almost every day, especially after moving here. It’s—have you ever had the sensation of feeling eyes looking at you, except you know they’re not really eyes?”

  Even the woman’s detachedness hesitates at such a description. “And you’ve never told anyone about this?”

  “Dad’s got some fuzzy notion about what’s been getting my goat, but he doesn’t believe me. He never does. He thinks I’m imagining things. It’s hard to talk to him about anything, really.” The boy’s tone is surly. One hundred and twenty-eight, one hundred and twenty-nine.

  “Has anyone else ever seen her?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”

  “What about Callie?”

  “Sometimes Callie looks at me funny, like she knows there’s something wrong. But she’s never said anything. And I don’t want her knowing, anyway. Whatever this is, I want her out of it.”

  • • •

  “Hello, Sandra,” the teacher’s assistant says.

  The girl smiles back at her but says nothing. The young woman takes the swing beside hers.

  “I was wondering about this woman you told me about. The woman standing behind Tarquin.”

  “Oh, that woman,” the girl says. She stops swinging. “The lady with the funny mask.”

  “A mask?”

  “I thought it was a face at first, but it’s not. It has holes instead of eyes.”

  “Why don’t you like her?”

  “Because she’s in prison. And she’s been trying to get out.”

  This does not make much sense to the young teacher, so she tries again. “When did you first see this woman?”

  “When Mister Tarquin came to class. He doesn’t like her, either.”

  “Why don’t you like her?”

  “Because she wants to hurt Mister Tarquin. She wants to hurt me. She wants to hurt everybody. Except she can’t. Not while she’s still in prison.”

  “Sandra,” the young woman says. She pauses, trying to frame the question right. “Sandra, where is this prison?”

  Bright green eyes look back at her. “Mister Tarquin,” the girl says. “Mister Tarquin’s the prison.”

  • • •

  “Let’s talk a little bit about when you were younger, Tarquin,” the therapist says. “What do you remember about your childhood?”

  “Not a lot. Dad used to tell me stories about when I was little, though. Like I once nearly fell into a manhole, and I used to have a pet dog named Scruffy. But I don’t remember anything. It’s like the stories happened to someone else, not to me. You’d think I would have at least remembered the dog.”

  “What is the earliest memory you can recall?”

  Another pause. “My mother,” the boy says, and his voice is quiet and vulnerable. “I remember that she used to sing to me before I went to sleep.”

  “Was it a lullaby?”

  “I don’t know the song’s name.” The boy hums a little, and the melody is a strange, haunting one. One hundred and forty-three, one hundred and forty-four.

  “I’m afraid I’m not quite familiar with that song,” says the woman who specializes in caring for children and knows exactly one hundred and thirty different lullabies in her head.

  “It’s the first thing that I really remember,” the boy said. “And then my mom had to… Well, she went bonkers, excuse the political correctness. Dad had her checked into Remney’s. And shortly after they took her away, I started seeing that…that.”

  “I see,” the therapist says. This, too, is a lie; she does not truly see.

  “Your son is an exceptionally bright boy,” she tells his father later, once the sessi
on is over. The boy is leafing through a small stack of magazines while the man and the therapist conduct a hushed conversation behind the door. “Much more intelligent than an average teenager his age, but he tends to express this through sarcasm and self-deprecation. It’s a better outlet than other forms of rebelling I know of, but still not something I would like to encourage. He also suffers from a very deep-seated psychosis, very similar to post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “Was it because of the McKinley boy’s death?” his father asks, troubled.

  “It doesn’t seem likely. His hallucinations have nothing to do with any kind of flashbacks from the incident, which I find puzzling. I believe this may stem from feelings of abandonment caused by his mother leaving, though his symptoms are still quite peculiar. He exhibits no aggressive behaviors, as far as I can determine.”

  “Will he be all right?” the man asks.

  “I’m not comfortable with administering strong antidepressants to someone so young. I suggest that he comes back for several more sessions so I can monitor his progress and let you know of any improvements. I recommend not putting him in any more stressful situations than he’s already in.”

  “We’re going to be visiting his mother in an hour’s time.”

  The therapist frowns. “I’m not sure that would be healthy at this stage, Mr. Halloway, especially after the last time…”

  “His mother’s been asking for him,” the father insists. “And I know that whatever he says, he misses his mother and wants to see her, too. We’re taking very careful steps this time. Nothing is going to happen.”

  The therapist looks reluctant, but the father is resolute. The boy abandons the magazines, staring instead at a lone mirror on the wall.

  • • •

  “What about the other woman you mentioned?”

  “She wears a white dress, not like the lady in black. It’s really dirty, but that isn’t her fault. Not really.”

  “Does she stand behind Tarquin, too?”

  “Nope. She likes to stand upside down on the ceiling sometimes.”

  The young woman feels a decided chill. “How do you know all these things, Sandra?”

  “I don’t know,” the girl says, puzzled herself. “I just see them, and then I do.”

  “Why doesn’t she like the number nine?”

  “She had ten things a long time ago, but then she lost one of them so now she only has nine, and she got hurt because of it. She doesn’t like being reminded.”

  “Why does she like standing on the ceiling?”

  “Sometimes she stands the right way like us, but she got used to ceilings, too. Someone hurt her really, really badly, and they put her down someplace that was dark and smelly, like a big hole. Her head went in the hole first before her feet and she died like that, so she got used to seeing everything upside down.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The girl swivels in her swing seat. She grasps the sides of the swing with both hands and tips herself over backward so that her hair grazes the ground and she is looking over at the teaching assistant from the wrong way up.

  “Like this,” she says. “She died looking at everything like this.”

  • • •

  The father and the boy finally leave, and the therapist returns to the solitude of her office, back to the one hundred and sixty-three volumes on her bookcase. She picks up the small device she uses to record conversations with patients and presses a few buttons.

  “My mother.” The boy’s voice comes from it, low and tinny. “I remember that she used to sing to me before I went to sleep.”

  “Was it a lullaby?” she hears her own voice ask.

  “I don’t know the song’s name.” The boy begins to hum.

  Within the tape, something else begins humming in light counterpoint.

  The therapist gasps and shuts the recorder quickly. She hesitates, steeling herself, and switches it on again. The boy’s humming continues, but this time there is no other accompaniment.

  Melinda Creswell, psychotherapist, looks around the empty room with growing unease, but by then I am long gone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Madwoman

  The boy and his father enter a different building next, this one a dollhouse of white decay. The walls and floors are white. The doors are painted white and the ceiling is painted white and the windows are painted white, and whenever there are curtains, they are also white.

  There are two kinds of dolls here. The first kind wears white shirts and pants. They hurry down corridors pushing white carts and carrying white towels, stacks of white paper, and white trays. They carry about themselves an air of forced joviality, though they know very well there are few things to smile about in these halls.

  And then there are the broken dolls. They are pushed around in wheelchairs and fed, drooling, from plastic cups. Sometimes they are dragged, fighting and screaming, by the White Shirts into white beds inside white rooms. Needles are jabbed into their arms to keep them calm, but they are never truly cured. The broken dolls cry and laugh and shout and sing, and often they sound much more alive than the White Shirts.

  The boy and his father follow one of the White Shirts down a long corridor where many broken dolls live. One doll is banging her head repeatedly against the wall, over and over, until another White Shirt comes to take her away. Another has soiled himself, a stream running down his leg even as he meows and swipes at his own head with a curled arm, oblivious.

  Still another steps out of her room and sees them. “I curse thee!” she shrieks, lifting a spindly finger to point at a spot behind the boy. “I curse thee, foul abomination! In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, I abjure thee! Begone, foul spirit, begone, begone, begone!”

  A Shirt takes her arm but she shakes him off, still spewing curses at nothing. More arrive, seven in all, to subdue the little woman, and she fights madly, like a crazed tiger struggling with its last breath to hurt one last time. “I abjure thee!” she wails. “For I am the Sword of God, and I order you to be gone, demon, begone begone begonebegonebegone—!”

  She is dragged into another room, but the screaming continues.

  The boy is unsettled, and so is the father, though he tries to hide it. “I’m sorry,” the White Shirt tells them apologetically. “That’s Wilma. She’s been quiet the last several weeks. I don’t know what’s come over her today.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” the father asks.

  “She thinks she’s the archangel Gabriel.”

  “Who was she talking to?” But the Shirt only shrugs, because it is not their job to know, only to help.

  The room they seek is located at the end of the hall, on the far left. “We set up some Japanese sliding doors in her room, like you asked,” the Shirt says. “She seems to like it, and she’s been considerably calmer since they were installed. Says it reminds her of home.” He pauses, shooting the tattooed boy a significant look. “She’s under a heavy dose of medication right now, but I’m not sure she should see you just yet. You’ll have to stay behind the screen until we’re sure she won’t react as badly as she did before.”

  The boy nods, though reluctant about this suggestion. The father squeezes his arm. The Shirt knocks quietly at the door.

  “Looks who’s come to visit again, Mrs. Halloway.”

  Inside, a woman sits on a white lounge chair. She is a beautiful lady: no longer youthful, but far from the old age the white streaks peppering her long, black hair imply. Her brown eyes are unfocused. In contrast to the whiteness of the dollhouse, a wooden shoji screen splits the room in half and prevents her from seeing those who stand beyond the door. But the screen is not what makes this room different from all the others in this building.

  Unlike the people outside, the dolls filling this room are real. They occupy rows of wooden stands that mark every wall. A la
rge platform stands beside the woman’s bed, covered in heavy red carpeting, where a set of dolls have been carefully arranged—a likeness of the Japanese imperial family and their court, presiding over a roomful of subjects.

  The dolls that surround the walls are of a different design. While the imperial dolls are smaller and more triangular in shape, the others are carefully proportioned ichimatsu dolls with faces that might at times pass for real children, if not for their affected stillness. Despite these differences, all the dolls in the room bear milky, porcelain-white skin. They are dressed in heavy robes and kimonos, colorful ornaments woven into their hair. Their eyes are colorless. All gaze down at the visitors with expressionless faces, draped in the silence that often comes before the passing of judgment.

  “Who is it?” the woman asks. Though her smile is genuine, her words are slow to come, thick with unnatural lethargy. One doll, two dolls, three.

  “Yoko?” At the Shirt’s nod, the father enters the room. He slides part of the shoji to one side so he can step in and kneel by the woman. He is used to the presence of these dolls and thinks little of them, but the boy is not yet acclimatized. He does not follow, remaining hidden behind the partition. His eyes wander from doll face to doll face with nervous misgiving.

  The man takes the woman’s hand in his. “It’s me, Yoko,” he says gently, and all the love and worry are in his eyes. “It’s Doug.”

  “Doug,” the woman repeats. She smiles warmly at him. “It’s been so long since you last visited, anata. I was so worried something had happened. It’s been…It’s been…” She falters, unable to remember. Nineteen dolls, twenty dolls, twenty-one.

  “We’ll be visiting more often,” the man promises. “And Tarquin is here,” he adds, though he now says this slowly and deliberately, watching her face anxiously for any signs of distress. The boy standing behind the screen waits, his back rigid. From his position, all he can see of his mother is her shadow, stooping behind the screen.