Original | The Girl Child
They normally took tea at 5pm. During the summer they sat out doors as the shadows lengthened and the birds started to be silent as if they knew it was no longer their time. But in the winter they took it in the lounge with the candles lit, although this did little for the morbid darkness and unfriendliness of the room.
Tea was late today though. Thomas had been on his way back from Nottingham when the horse had cast a shoe.
"Thomas? What is wrong?" asked the woman, a frown wrinkling her delicate forehead as she saw him move his food around the plate but hardly touch anything. He looked at her with panicked eyes, as if he was the prey and she was the hunter.
He did not answer and as the evening progressed she found herself becoming more and more ill at ease. When she rose to go to bed his silence echoed through the room, as if it was not silence but a noise beyond silence.
She implored him over and over. "Thomas, Thomas, why will you not speak? It is as if you are under a spell or a charm! Thomas please!" But she received no answer and went to bed with a heavy heart. The next day the icy sunshine gleamed on the ivy creeping up the house as it coiled its snake-like branches around the tall chimney stacks, and the blackbirds called to one another from the stark bare oak tree as the night's worries seemed to rush away. The woman smiled as Thomas came down to breakfast.
She blinked suddenly, freezing, as she heard laughter ringing in the frosty air outside the window. She glanced at Thomas apprehensively, wondering if he knew the cause of the sound. They had no children, and indeed neither did any servants they employed. His eyes were haunted by the same look that had worried her last night, and his mouth was open in a gasp.
She turned back to the window, and her face became puzzled as she saw a wild haired child dancing on the perfectly kept lawn as one of her servants watched and smiled.
Her mouth set firmly as she strode out to the girl, and addressed her in tones of absolute authority, "What are you doing here? Don't you know this place is private property?" She was about to turn to the man standing nearby, to demand who let her in, but was arrested by the child's gaze.
He eyes were as black as obsidian, and her wild curly hair was spread over her shoulders like the black wings of a raven. The woman felt strangely uncomfortable as if she was violating some unknown, but unbreakable, rule.
"Begging your pardon, but the Master asked us to take her in. We found her just where the horse cast his shoe yesterday," he added speculatively in his lilting Welsh accent. He pushed his hat away from his head politely and turned his gaze onto the child. "I think,"
He was about to say more but the sound seemed to be stuck in his throat. His eyes were fixed on the child, and his eyes took on the hunted look that Thomas had had.
She turned to the child again, wonderingly gazing as the young girl's steadfast stare towards the man never wavered. The girl then glanced towards the woman, and raised her head proudly, as if she had done something important.
"So could she stay with us Ma'am? She'd be no problem and we'd keep her out the way." The man asked, but although his voice was pleading it was as if he had rehearsed it over and over. The emotion sounded added to a wooden monologue.
She looked at the girl, and those black eyes turned to hers. "Yes," she said curtly, turning away. "she may, as long as she stays away from Thomas and myself."
He nodded slowly, and took the child away.
Winter turned to spring, and the woman heard little about the child, but one day she felt compelled to invite the man and his family to dinner one evening, and see how the child was developing.
The dinner was a magnificent one, even the girl-child with her hair brushed and tied in a ribbon that matched her dress looked less wild than she had, but the woman dared not to glance into those dark eyes. Then Thomas opened the newspaper and began to read.
At first the news was not at all interesting and the girl sat, her head raised proudly, looking out of the window with longing in her eyes. Then Thomas spoke excitedly and the girl sat up and looked at him with her piercing obsidian eyes as if she could making him go faster just by looking at him.
"Tomorrow evening there will be a total lunar eclipse of the moon, and, as I hope you are aware, it is a full moon tomorrow night." Thomas carried on speaking and then slowed down when he realised no one was listening any more, they were all gazing at the radiant face of the child. The woman looked with wonderment and beumusement onto the face of the girl as she smiled and laughed. She wondered what the girl was thinking, as the shadows of the candles made the laughter seem out of place and simply wrong.
The next day the child looked as if she was shining. The woman watched her go out across the fields to a hill, just outside the town where she lived. The child was gone all day, but no one was worried. "She has been gone before," the servant hastened to say when the woman asked where the girl was.
As the shadows lengthened and the moon shone down, the girl has still not returned, and as the eclipse started the woman asked Thomas to go out and look for the child, but he refused, and when she looked puzzled he just shook his head and replied adroitly, '"she'll be fine, people like that usually are." She asked him was 'that' meant, but he wouldn't answer. His eyes were glazed as if he was under a spell.
At the moment when the eclipse was at its pinnacle and the world was hushed and still, the woman saw a light lit on the hill she had seen the girl go to that day. "Thomas, please, go and find the child, I fear for her, please!" begged the woman, but Thomas pushed her away, as if hypnotised by the fire.
As the shadow of the Earth started to move away from the moon, the fire started to die down, and Thomas spoke softly to her, "See, you had nothing to worry about. The girl will be safe."
"But how do you know Thomas? How do we know?" sobbed the woman.
"We'll go to the hill tomorrow, she'll be there."
But as they climbed the hill there was nothing there, only the remains of a fire and a body of a young baby boy. The woman screamed as she saw the body, and ran up to it, trying impossibly to bring it back to life. Thomas wrapped his arms around her as she backed away, sobbing quietly in hysteria. He did not need to ask why, he had seen the babe too.
Blanche and Thomas stayed in the town, but became recluses, and never went back to that hill, and the house fell into disrepair as the servants left, and it was said the house was haunted.
They never did tell anyone about the babe's neck, and no one ever found out as they buried the boy quickly in a nearby grove of trees.
The neck had the marks of human teeth on one side, and the marks of impossibly long fangs on the other.
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© Clare Selley 2009
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