The Morrígan

Every evening at golden hour, the children would run out to play. There were three of them - I assumed that they were siblings, judging by the way they chased and fought with such familiarity.
The eldest seemed to be a young girl with long, dark pigtails. She wore a red dress that fluttered over the gorse bushes like a delicate cloud. Chasing behind her was always a younger, dark haired boy in a shirt and slacks who cheered and yelled whenever he was close to catching her. Toddling far behind them both was an even younger boy - possibly only 4 or 5 - he was dressed like a sailor and his golden curls bobbed as he fought to catch up with them, giggling good-naturedly as he did.
I had not meant to watch them at first, but their joy was enchanting, and I found myself drawn to the window every evening, desperate to observe this piece of unspoiled happiness. I looked on almost lovingly, as if they were my own children, watching their sun-kissed hair and smiling faces as the heather and gorse bushes pulled playfully at their ankles. Their routine became familiar to me as they chased and laughed in the dying light.
I would hear the girl call to her trailing brothers; “You can’t catch me!” 
“Hold up, I can’t breathe!” Her eldest brother would respond, huffing heavily with the effort of running. 
“Don't leave me behind!” The youngest would shriek, giggling breathlessly. “Don’t leave me behind!” 
It was after a few months of this blissful happiness that everything went wrong. Maybe I had missed it in those previous nights, but I swore one day that I saw a presence in the treeline.
A hooded figure, standing half in shadow, was busy at work with something I couldn’t quite see. I was inclined to ignore it, but something about its presence and the mysterious way it held itself just out of my sight made me curious. I pushed open my window and leaned further out until I could see what it was doing. It was washing a piece of clothing in the nearby lake, carefully, almost maternally, soaking it, smoothing it out, and gently hanging it from a tree branch to dry. I could see clearly now, it was a red dress, almost identical to the one the young girl running in the field was wearing. 
I reeled back a little in surprise. My movement must have alerted the figure to my presence because it tilted its hooded head up as if to look at me. I couldn’t see the face beneath the hood, but the disconcerting feeling of being watched washed over me. I blinked, and suddenly the figure had disappeared, leaving a curiously large crow in its place. I started, and looked around for the figure, but it was nowhere to be seen. I was faintly aware of the children’s mother calling them back inside but my eyes were glued to the spot where the figure had been. I was dazed and frozen in place. It felt like hours that I stood there, watching, waiting for the figure to return, but the only thing that remained was the red dress flickering in the light evening breeze.
I awoke the next morning, my arm hanging out of the windowsill, and my neck aching from the strange position I had slept in. I went on about my day with a strange sense of unease, the image of the dress hanging on the tree still sticking in my mind. In the midafternoon, I had to run an errand that took me a few hours out of town and decided to stay with a friend instead of making the return journey throughout the night. I had assumed that my feeling of unease would lessen as I slept away from the moor but on this night I had a nightmare.
In my nightmare, I was on the moor. The children ran around me, not seeing me, as though I were a ghost. I began to stumble forward, my legs moving against my will, and when I looked up ahead, I saw that I was making my way towards the dress, still hanging from the tree, now horrifically broken and gnarled. I wanted to break free, to run, but to no avail. I kept moving at a stumbling, slow pace until I finally reached the dress. Agonisingly slowly, my own hand reached out against my will and…
I woke, sweating and terrified. Although the sun was only just beginning to rise, I dressed quickly and left the house before anyone else awoke, not wanting to explain myself.
The children did not come out to play that night, nor the night after that. In fact, it was months until I saw them again. When they next came out to the moors to play, there were only two. The two young boys walked out of the house, dragging their feet instead of running joyfully. They stumbled around the moor, collecting handfuls of flowers while their mother stood on the porch of the house, watching them with her arms crossed. I wanted to call out to her, but something about her demeanour, about the complete wrongness of the scene, made me stop. After they were done collecting them, the boys wound the flowers into elaborate chains and crowns before carrying them back to their mother. She ruffled their hair and accepted the gifts graciously, her soft muffled voice floating through the air. They went inside shortly after that, with their sister nowhere to be seen.
This strange new routine carried on for several weeks, everyday seeming a copy of the last. Where was the girl in the red dress? Where was the joy I had seen before?
As the days got shorter and colder, the two boys visited the moor less and less frequently. In the dead of winter, they didn’t visit at all, and I missed them desperately. Finally, in the early spring, they reappeared. They ran onto the moor with something close to their original vigour - finally the elder boy cavorted and cartwheeled manically until he fell to the floor breathless and giggling. His younger brother ran over to him, trying to pull him up by his collar “Come on! Get up! Go again!”
“Hold on Charlie, I can’t breathe!” He laughed, wheezing. He pulled his brother down next to him and I watched the two boys lay side by side on the grass looking up at the slowly emerging stars. There was a peace about them that I hadn’t seen in weeks and my heart soared with joy at the sight.
Just as I began to find my own smile, the peace was broken by a chill in the air. The boys didn’t seem to feel it, but I moved to grab a shawl. As I returned to the window, my breath caught in my throat as I saw it again.
The figure stood at the edge of the moore, seated peacefully by the lake. I watched as it reached behind itself and pulled out a checkered shirt and slacks, identical to the ones the eldest boy was wearing as he looked up at the stars in wonder, completely oblivious to the new arrival.
Once again, as it had done before with the girl’s red dress, slowly and carefully, it washed the clothes in the lake before hanging them out to dry on a nearby tree. Its work now done - and this time I watched without blinking - the figure transformed. The hooded figure morphed and changed until it took on the shape of a crow and flew away.
I stood in shock, only brought back to the present by the children getting up to leave. The eldest leapt up and began to walk away, but the youngest was tired and stubborn.
"Don't leave me behind!" He whined, and his brother turned to him and helped him up. The two went back inside and the door closed behind them.
I did not sleep that night. I lay in my bed, shaking in fear. Who was that figure? Had it really transformed into a crow? I knew now that something awful must have happened to the young girl. Was her brother destined to face a similar fate? I felt as though I was losing my mind - it would certainly be a more comforting explanation.
I stumbled through the next day in a daze, barely able to keep my eyes open until the evening. As had become so common in the previous months, no children graced the moors this evening. I was about to turn away from the window and try to sleep when, again, something caught my eye. The figure, small sailor's outfit in hand, was kneeling by the lake, washing it delicately. I had had enough. I slammed my window shut, drew the curtains, and forced myself to fall asleep.
For weeks I did not see the children, and life carried on in its slow, mundane fashion. This was until one day, when I arrived at home to see a crowd gathered around the house next door - the house the children lived in. I felt my heartrate pick up as I made my way towards the crowd and pushed my way to the front. There, at the centre of the crowd knelt the mother, who I had seen from the porch all those nights ago. Her hair was streaked grey, her face was red from sobbing, and when she cried out to the crowd, her voice was hoarse from screaming.
“I didn’t mean it! I only wanted to keep him safe! Please, God, forgive me!”
The crowd stared at her, seething with hatred. I felt desperately suffocated and quickly pushed my way out to the further edges. Still breathing heavily, I found myself standing next to a man in a dark suit who looked at both the crowd and me with the same concern.
“Are you okay?” He asked, sounding genuine. 
“The crowd was too much for me,” I responded, gradually calming down. “What’s going on here?” I asked, gesturing to the crowd and the desperate woman in the centre. 
“Do you not know…?” He looked incredulous. 
“No, I know there were children but I haven’t seen them around recently.” 
“Dear God,” He said, looking sullen. “Come with me, let's get away from this crowd.” 
We walked towards the moor, our silence broken only by introductions and pleasantries. His name was Thomas, he was doing well, thank you for asking. We picked a spot by the side of the lake and sat down in the shade.
“Where do I start?” He asked me. 
“I saw the children, all three of them.” I said. “They used to play here on the moor every evening. One day, they stopped coming. And when they returned, it was just the two boys, the girl had vanished.” 
“Her name was Martha.” He said, refusing to make eye contact. “A few months ago, during the night, she somehow managed to climb onto the roof of the house and suffered a terrible fall. She died in hospital later that day.” 
“You can't catch me!”
I whipped my head around but there was nobody else on the moor with us. I could've sworn I heard a voice. I could've sworn I heard her voice. 
“Are you okay?” Thomas asked me. 
“Yes, thank you. I thought I saw a bumblebee.” 
There was silence for a few seconds. 
“Did you really not know about Martha’s fall?” He asked. 
“No.” I said, thinking back. To the errand, the trip, the nightmare. “I was out of town.” 
“Very well…” 
Thomas continued, “A few weeks ago, the eldest boy, Theodore, went for a walk into the woods alone. After a few hours, his mother was so sick with worry that a search party went out to look for him. They found him by the river. They think he drowned while trying to swim.”
“I can't breathe!”
This voice, this memory from the past, still took me by surprise, but I knew better than to turn around again. 
“And what about the youngest?” Why was that crowd there?”
Thomas sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, and for a moment, I wanted to tell him to forget about it, to leave before I could find out the painful thing he knew.
“Charlie.” He said the name slowly, with reverence. The way you talk about the dead. 
“Almost immediately after they found Theodore, Charlie went missing too. This morning they found his body in a well near the edge of town.” He paused before continuing. “When they told his mother, she broke down. It seems… It seems that she put him there to “keep him safe” as she put it.”
I felt tears slicking my eyes and blurring my vision as a third voice, almost as expected, called behind me:
“Don't leave me behind!”
I broke down at that, and Thomas hesitantly put his arm around me and held me comfortingly. Awkward as it was, I was grateful for his kindness, and we sat there for a while until my vision cleared.
“Thank you.” I said. 
“I’m sorry you had to hear all this at once.” He let go of me and straightened his tie.
Ahead of us, the sun began to set slowly and a chill whispered through the trees. 
“We should go home.” Thomas prompted, standing and offering his hand to me. 
“Thank you, but I’d like to stay here a little longer.”
He bade me farewell and ambled off over the moor, glancing back at me occasionally but eventually disappearing into the distance.
As the sun slipped down behind the skyline, in the half light, I turned to look over the lake, seeing ripples of the dying light reflected on the surface. 
Then, I saw it. I felt my stomach drop as my eyes landed on the figure standing on the other side of the lake. The figure, now close enough for me to see, met my gaze with eyes that were golden and otherworldly. It removed its hood and I saw that I was in the presence of a beautiful young woman with flowing dark hair, intense golden eyes, and a severe manner.
“I saw you!” I called out. “I saw you in this spot, washing those childrens’ clothes! Did you kill them?”
Her response was a smile. Maintaining eye contact with me, she reached behind her, pulled out a pale blue dress with white lace detailing, and lovingly began washing it in the lake between us. I knew that dress. It was currently laid out on my bed, ready for tomorrow’s visit to my family.
I have imagined death many times. I always assumed that I would cry, or fight, or beg for longer. Instead I am calm, empty. If children can witness death and still find enough naivety to make flower crowns, then I can sit by a lake and watch my clothes be washed in preparation for my last day.
I do not know what tomorrow will bring, but I do know that the day after will bring… nothing.
Category:Gods]]
Category:Disappearances
Category:Places