The Elder’s mouth closed tight, the girl’s spittle still poison on his tongue as Enid cursed the Woebegones, valley-side, mountain-side; cursed their children, cursed the bridge. He brought the blade back to her throat. Before he could cast her into the river she called to the men on its east and west banks, capturing them all with her gaze.
“I carry your child, and yours. All here in my womb, together. I take your future into death. You will all suffer my pain.”
***
“Power’s out again.”
Curtis slammed his keys on the kitchen worktop. Third day in a row it had cut out; half the staff sent home from the store without pay. The freezers were fucked.
Sarah stroked her belly; they couldn’t afford for him to lose wages. The baby was already overdue; so was the rent.
“What do you think’s causing it?”
“That new unit Mervin put in. They’re saying he’s fiddled with the supply down at the bridge, diverted it.”
The baby kicked. Sarah belched.
“What an idiot. Of all the things to screw with . . . ”
Everyone steered clear of the River Need. It ebbed and flowed with enough ferocity to claim a half dozen fisherman a year where the water eddied and sucked. Sarah’s brother had drowned there the previous winter. No fisherman, Shaun had died of a broken heart, a love letter still in his pocket. The last conversation Sarah had shared with him was of despair; he was in love with a girl from the valley over the bridge. Sarah questioned who even lived out there anymore, and Shaun agreed; said whenever he went looking for her he never found her. But she always found him.
And only after begging for her name had she finally told him, “Call me Enid, like the river.”
“I’ve never met anyone like her,” Shaun had said. “She’s like some forest spirit, dancing one minute, climbing trees the next.”
Sarah hadn’t wanted to hear about the sex but he’d told her anyway. It was unique, utter bliss. Shaun had made an art of his carnal skills, getting in trouble over it, running away from it. This Enid must truly be something else. But after they found Shaun’s body swinging from the Need Bridge, from a rope of his own intestines, the girl—and any evidence she even existed—was nowhere to be found.
Sarah was right. The valley houses were long gone, torn down after decades of dereliction. Settlers had occupied the site for almost four hundred years, but settled they weren’t. The area was bad news. It regularly flooded. Cholera had wiped out whole communities if they weren’t already poisoned by the arsenic which naturally occurred in the earth, permeating their crops, crippling their immunity.
After Shaun’s death Sarah started crossing the Need Bridge on an almost daily basis, looking for the girl no-one else had heard of and had certainly never seen. No easy conquest; Enid was the real thing. Shaun had kept her to himself.
“The cops are useless, Curt,” Sarah told her husband. “They’ve given up. But she killed him—I know it.”
Curt didn’t believe it; he thought Shaun had needed help, mental health-type help. It was all imagined. But then he wasn’t an expert in such things. He was a warehouseman in a store owned by a thief.
He watched his wife slink into a top that no longer fit. Her belly button protruded against the thin fabric. It repulsed him. Guilt spread through his wiry veins, but it didn’t change how he felt. He flipped his back to Sarah.
“Going out again?”
“Uh huh.”
They hardly spoke these days.
“You know what?” said Sarah. “Why don’t you come with me to the bridge?” Curtis flinched. “No worries then. I’m going to the library first anyway. You stay here and reheat the brisket from yesterday.”
Choke on it.
Curt nodded but didn’t look at her, not even when he kissed her goodbye.
The road to the library was as long as the road to the bridge. Once ensconced, Sarah studied a series of booklets covering the valley’s history—fact and myth. Recent excavations showed the area had been inhabited on and off for millennia, but in the 1640s a community of English settlers constructed the first known bridge over the river from stone and wood. Over time, dozens of badly built bridges replaced the first. The current characterless 1970s beast was already riddled with cracks and had been decaying for years. With no local investment in infrastructure, the bridge was maintained by the town’s utilities supplier instead—for a profit.
Sarah read further pamphlets about the strange Woebegone community, borrowed a few more, then set off to the Need Bridge. Halfway across, the skies turned a bruised yellow. Gusts roared through the trees on either side of the river. Heading toward the protection of the valley, Sarah clutched her pregnant bulk. The camber was deeper than she’d realised; the bridge less solid. She slipped and stumbled, tripping in sneakers with holes in the soles. Freezing rain stabbed her back; vicious ice daggers. Cursing the tempest with words swallowed by the wind she slid sideways as a gush of warm water filled her shoes. Cruel contractions immediately clenched her womb—no gentle ease into childbirth. She bit down against the pain, bit her cheek, bit her tongue. Her mouth filled with blood.
Respite.
She stood again as a new bout of rain hit the bridge. Laced with sleet, it whipped up to slice her face. The River Need below churned against the foundations. Grit and earth slid from its banks, muddying the waters, easing the river’s flood path onto the land. With sudden clarity, Sarah realised she had to get off the bridge or risk giving birth on a fluid median between valleys. Not a religious woman, deeper intuition told her there was something intrinsically dangerous for a life delivered over violent water. This was no twinkly birthing pool. In response, her womb spasmed again, stealing her breath away.
“Let me help you.”
The contraction eased.
Sarah squinted toward the valley. There, beneath the umbrella of a towering tree stood a girl. Tall, lithe, her mouth formed words Sarah couldn’t hear. The young woman’s tattered dress fluttered heavily around her as though made of leather. She raised an arm and beckoned, thin fingers unfurled like skeletal ferns, curling again, unfurling.
Enid.
Sarah gripped the trembling bridge wall; waves thundered against old brick, matching the pulsing pressure at her groin. When it next subsided the girl had reached the bridge. Bare toes pointed at the tarmac, she withdrew her foot as though unable to tread farther.
“Come,” she said, her voice a leaf on the wind. “I can save your child.”
Am I losing the baby?
Sarah clasped her arms around her belly; all she knew of this girl, this ghost—all the rumours, the slaughter, the breaking of her brother’s heart—meant she should turn and run without looking back, yet when she raised her head she saw not madness or revenge in Enid’s eyes, only hope.
She hesitated, then stumbled on toward the final curve.
Enid reached out her hand once more. Sarah took it.
***
The bracken camp was barely visible for what it was. On the slow journey through the woods Sarah had given it no regard. It resembled the rest of the wild, unmanaged forest, a mossy mess of fallen branches and leaves, wrapped around with killer brambles. Enid deftly avoided the spines as she tugged on a twine of ivy. A door of vegetable matter, just large enough for a pregnant woman to crawl through, opened to reveal a shelter. Enid scuttled in.
“Come, come.”
On hands and knees, Sarah entered the organic cave, collapsing onto sweet-smelling rushes as the most violent of contractions clenched.
What the hell was she thinking? She needed drugs. She needed a fucking epidural.
Sarah opened her eyes; skeletal fingers probed between her legs.
“Hey—what are you doing?”
“Feeling. From your posture, I feared the babe breached.” Enid ran her other hand over Sarah’s belly, pressing hard. “He has turned,” she said. “He is ready.”
Ignoring Enid’s assumption it would be a boy, Sarah rolled onto he
r back and raised her legs, as recommended by the town’s elderly midwife.
“No!” Enid flipped her over and up into a squat, baby bulk weighing heavy against Sarah’s thighs. “You people give birth like you fuck, on your back. You need to shit this baby out.”
There was no time to argue. Though the baby was ready, Sarah’s body was not. Enid massaged and washed her; somehow, somewhere boiling up water to douse her with. In the still moments, Enid held a wooden cup to Sarah’s mouth, instructing her to sip, not gulp. The noxious liquid dulled the pain yet increased her strength. Ripped and bleeding, Sarah gave one last push. Curtis’s child slipped into the waiting hands of a living ghost.
With the baby clutched to her breast, Enid bent to bite the cord. Sarah fell onto her side, exhausted, exhilarated. Enid moved away, wiping the blood from the wiggling baby’s skin but not from her own mouth. Her lips bubbled red as she sang a soft lullaby in a strange tongue. When the baby let forth its first cry, she threw back her head and howled. Sarah held out her arms, the sound of Enid’s primal call piercing her soul just as the icy rain outside had stabbed her shoulders.
“Give me my child, Enid.”
Sarah pulled herself up on weak legs. She shuddered as the drug she’d been given began to withdraw.
“I thank you for carrying him, Sarah. You do your brother’s work well. I am grateful.”
The ground, so solid as she’d lain there, became fluid beneath Sarah’s feet. She tripped.
“Give me my son.”
Enid rushed at her, wedging the baby in between them. The leather skins slapped against Sarah’s thighs, her arms. Nose to nose, Sarah stared deep into Enid’s eyes. There she saw wandering, fertility . . . strife. Deeper still, tribal men, white men, women, children.
“They hurt me.”
Enid trod backward, caressing the baby boy in her arms. Sarah remained still.
“Who are you?”
“I am of this place. I wasn’t born—I became.”
The girl’s insane.
“How long have you been here?”
Enid glanced at Sarah’s rucksack. It had tumbled over to release the library books, the pamphlets; Shaun’s letter.
“For all time,” she said. “I am the daughter of the River Need, of her banks, her swells and her tides. I welcomed many incomers to this land, saved and guided them. In return they tortured and cast me out.”
Sarah edged forward, her baby’s screaming breath within tasting distance.
“I’ve read about you,” she said, dismissing her former belief that Shaun’s Enid was nothing more than a disenchanted girl obsessed with local legends. “What was the name of the Englishman that condemned you?”
Enid withdrew, snatching the baby out of sight.
“Obadiah Borthwick,” she spat. “A grandfather of yours.”
The name jarred—everyone was allegedly descended from the Borthwicks around these parts, in legitimate or other ways. A cult, neither Pilgrim nor Puritan, Sarah hadn’t realised the extent of the Woebegone brothers’ tyranny until she read the full history that afternoon. It wasn’t the sanitised version townsfolk were taught in school.
She shifted forward.
“I’m so sorry they hurt you.”
Enid’s neck click, click, clicked in a half circle. She looked at Sarah, her body facing a different direction.
“They hurt, but I do not die, Sarah,” she said. “I fail to live for a while because of this or because of that. And so I sleep.” She turned and handed the baby over to his birth mother. The child immediately opened his mouth in search of Sarah’s tit for sustenance and comfort. Sarah fell back with the ecstasy of his suckling, only vaguely conscious of the longing in Enid’s eyes.
“Thank you.”
“You must name him for your brother.”
“I will,” Sarah said. She stroked the baby’s fine golden hair—like hers, like Curtis’ thinning curls; like Shaun’s. “I’m so sorry you couldn’t meet your uncle, little one. He would have loved you.”
“Loved him?”
Enid roared toward her and snatched the baby. Kicking Sarah as she tried to crawl on lazy legs, Enid backed out of the shelter, Sarah’s son wailing for America.
“No.” Sarah reached the makeshift door and shouted through the gap into the darkness of the woodland. “Bring my baby back. Please.”
The morning’s storm raged higher now, bending the treetops. Branches and leaves snapped and flew, obscuring any path Enid might have taken. Sarah moved faster, blood and oxygen working again but with it, post-partum pain. She winced. Rapid, shallow breaths abated the agony as she fought through. The river was close; she could hear it and then . . . a primal howl matched by her baby’s cries permeated the air. Sarah knew exactly where her son was.
Enid stood by the bridge; calm, smiling up at the sky. The water raged at her back. Fluid fingers stretched toward then fell away from her, not daring to touch. She had her thumb in the baby’s mouth. He sucked greedily one moment and screamed out his frustration the next; sucked again. Screamed.
“Let me help,” Sarah echoed Enid’s earlier offer.
The girl’s head turned sharply.
“I ask you again,” she said. “Loved him? This is not your brother’s nephew to be fawned over and failed by a community that knows nothing of love, of humanity.”
“No, no—you’re right. Our town isn’t the best place to bring up a child.” Old fashioned, poor facilities, a plummeting population. Maybe it was time for her and Curtis to give up on tainted pioneer pride and move somewhere more progressive.
Enid’s thick eyebrows frowned. “You misunderstand,” she said. “I repeat, this is not your brother’s nephew. It is your brother, it is Shaun.” Enid turned her back on Sarah, still talking, and ran onto the bridge.
You couldn’t walk there before.
“ . . . not your baby.”
“What?” Sarah moved toward the bridge, reached for the rail and quickly withdrew her hand.
“Like diving into mud, isn’t it?” Enid shouted. “It looks real then when you touch it, touch the bridge, it ripples like water. Try to cross, and it repels you.”
“I . . . I don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand, Sarah. Shaun gave his life to be reborn after I lost our own child.” She rubbed her hand over her belly, where it lingered. Sarah struggled to deal with the news; she’d had no idea. “It could only be you; your family blood, my spirit. I’ve been watching over you since you fell pregnant, the day Shaun died.”
Sarah recalled the initial 24-hour guttural expulsion, which kept her in bed with a bucket at her side. She’d put it down to grief and a hangover. Weeks and weeks of it later, when her breasts hurt so bad, she’d finally caught on. She and Curtis hardly ever did it anymore, but thinking back, the night before the sickness started had ended with a tearful, drunken fumble for them both. As far as Sarah was concerned, she’d fallen asleep; Curtis couldn’t even remember going to bed.
Enid grinned, hearing Sarah’s thoughts.
“We were all there, Sarah. You, me . . . Shaun working his seed into that worm of a prick your man is so proud of.”
“That’s ridiculous. Shaun was dead.”
“Who’s to say what magic happens in those hours after our hearts stop beating? Don’t trust your scientists’ lies.”
Enid edged closer to the bridge wall, the baby held out before her. “What of me—am I dead? How do you explain what I am?” She tucked the baby under her arm, its head nestled into her armpit. She leapt up onto the wall.
“No!”
Sarah lurched forward, going nowhere. Her scream faded into the violent winds which in turn carried the warped clang of nuts and bolts, the twist of metal and the crack of tarmac. The entire bridge shifted. Enid clung on with bare feet then threw herself, baby and all, into the raging river that bore her name.
Sarah looked on, unable to move or speak until finally the bridge gave way. She scrambled backwards, feet slip
ping in the spreading mud.
At Enid’s tree, Sarah slowed her pace and reached out to steady herself on the gnarled trunk which groaned with creeping ivy. Her fingers, caught in the warp and weft of nature’s weave were tangled in strips of paper-thin skin, a sinuous twine of flesh-like string. The childless mother threw back her head to keen, arms raised to the sky, arms that were covered in tattered-edged sleeves of hide which hung down from her shoulders.
Wings of leather, they fluttered heavily in the breeze.
BIOGRAPHY: Lily Childs has an unhealthy obsession with misunderstood demons. They make her write bad things about real people, people who think they deserve better. With over sixty published tales from the darkest Gothic horror to twisted British crime, morbid fairy tales to savage ghost stories, Lily has just finished her first novel—a terrifying supernatural asylum thriller set in the south of England, where she lives with her artist husband, daughter and black cat, Scarlet.
THE CRUEL
Harper Hull
The first time it happened was the day David Smith fell over his own feet on the way out of chemistry class. Mark Holland was right behind him and, as David tumbled over and landed hard on his left shoulder, Mark made a sound. It was a horrible, whining drone of a sound, somewhere between an old air raid siren and an angry goat. Mark stood over the fallen boy making the ugly noise, gradually getting louder, until Mrs. the chemistry came over, put a hand on his shoulder and, with a quite exasperated look on her face, told him to stop. Mark went quiet and walked away down the corridor as the teacher helped David get to his feet.
The next day David and Mark were both present during lunch break when the school bully Francis White decided to smash up a lower year kid, Gary Barnshaw, for beating him at marbles. It was out amongst the trees at the rear of the school, a veritable marbling assault course of roots and muddy channels. Francis had the smaller, younger lad in a headlock and, after easily taking him to ground, began punching him in the face with his free hand. Marbles spilled from Gary’s blazer pockets as he struggled to get free and rolled in all directions.
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