Leshy

Part Two

This is part two of a multipart short.  For part one, click here.

     Ayrno Githblid, a strange called man indeed, had produced for his impoverished family fine fish dinners for weeks, plucked from a location evidently untapped.  To be sure, this fishing spot of poor man Ayrno was nearly a mile from the Gibb church ruins.  Most dared not to get so close, but his family’s health charged his actions.  As no harm had chanced him and he had seen nothing evil, good man Githblid indulged his twins’ wish to tag along on one particular morning.

     Todd and Mary were each seven and had a playful disposition, which enlivened their family’s ever unfortunate reality.  But now, Ayrno’s fish stores were turning things around.  And so out they went at day’s first light.  To keep track of the playful children, Ayrno gave Mary her mother’s tambourine and beckoned the twins to stay close and play it lest he lose track of them.

     Two large trout were secured in not even an hour and during that time Todd and Mary made quite the distance into the swamp.  Neither feared the misty wood until Todd hid from his sister to produce a startling fright.

     “Gotcha!”

     That moment buried the seed of the chilling unfamiliar within Mary’s juvenile heart, the aromatic qualities of which beguiled to her tambourine’s melody the Leshy.

     Ayrno Githblid arose for a stretch and harkened to his children.  He had long forgotten his task to keep the tambourine’s song near.  Nevertheless, as he stood, the faint jingles tickled his ears into a smile, reassured of his children’s safety.

     But then . . . nothing.  The children’s father peered into the descending fog but could decipher nothing.

     “Mary!  Todd!  Come here children!”

     Nothing.

     Ayrno dropped his rod and charged into the mist.  “Mary . . . Todd!”  He stopped cold amid the frozen shrieks of his daughter.  “Mary!”

     As Ayrno bounded to her, Todd came running to him in a deathly pale and breathless.  He collapsed in his father’s arms.  “It got her . . . the monster.  I saw it, he . . .  ate her.  Mary . . . she’s gone.”

     The man rose to give chase to what beast dared violate his family, but found nothing.  Even the fog diminished into midday sunshine.

     Ayrno Githblid understandingly only ever blamed himself for the loss of his daughter and he soon turned to consumption.  Amid these treacherous bouts of chemical inebriation, Ayrno would venture to the old Gibb church and call to his daughter.  He recalled seeing the ghostly shadow of a woman moving about the fog.  But when he would call to her, the woman would vanish deep into the bog.

     Even after recovering from bitter mourning, the bereaved father fearlessly ventured into the wood in search for a glimmer of hope.  But not even young Mary’s tambourine was ever recovered.

     It was at Githblid’s request that the perceptible border of the Leshy’s realm was rightly marked in longstanding inks of red and yellow, foreboding adventurous thrill seekers to stay their quests.

     For sixty-three years did those stark alarms keep locals at bay.  And then, following the conclusion of our great rebellion, three of good Washington’s, ‘alayhi as-salām, youthful revolutionary musicians, hoping to hasten home, swifted through the woodland, caring not for the faded flamboyant markers harkening their cautionary steps.

     They became quickly misplaced in the dark of Leshy’s wood and soon enough the tones of the damned resounded upon them.  The ground began to slip and the moonlit swamp produced the silhouettes of shaded faces aghast for empathetic submission.  Then faint giggles and the ringing of paired jingles danced playfully around them.

     The three lads quickened to a sloggish amble, finding St. Gibb’s before the infernal grabbing of felled men’s hands could abduct them.  There, aloft chunks of chapel bricks, the boys awaited dawn’s arrival.

     But a sad sung song amid the fog assured their party’s unlikely survival.  Nevertheless, they peered from behind the tattered church to glimpse the eerie voice.

     “There, do you see.”  The drummer boy pointed into the haze at the pale figure of a woman gently stepping from the tree line.

     “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” the woman sang.

     The boys continued to watch as the woman moved toward them.

     “The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.”

     “That’s the ghost of Berkeley Monck!” whispered the piper.  “We must be at Saint Gibb’s.”

     “They say she ran off with her lover to marry here, but he abandoned her in the marsh.”

     “I heard the sheriff killed them both and dumped their bodies in the swamp.”

      “Quickly, let us move.  This place is wrought with dread.”

     But as they turned to flee, the boys froze in terror before the ghost of Berkeley Monck drifting beneath the archway, her melancholy gaze upon them, and little Mary Githblid prancing tambourine beside; and they brought with them the swamp, which engulfed the chapel and filled its walls with sludge.  The boys attempted to clamber, but were seized by the mudmen who’d accompanied the flood.  As the swamp retreated, whisking away the poor lads, Berkeley Monck blew a kiss and vanished into the night with little dancing Mary.

     Along once meager channels, the swampy mud-slip thrashed the boys to the mouth of a small cave.  There they were tendered to the Leshy.  He plucked them from his minions and descended his earthly lair, caring none for their youthful pleas.  Great horrors befell the little soldiers as a tasty night’s delight for the guardian of the bog—the Leshy.

 

Copyright © 2016 Matthew Bell. All Rights Reserved.

Title quote by Opeth.