They did start with a candle.  There was a little tealight in the idle of the picnic table on the patio, and after they’d cleared away their dinner things, they lit it and got out the marshmallows. 

They’d been the last customers in the chip shop before it closed.  By the time their food was halfway done, the staff had already begun to stack the chairs and turn off the machines.

“They used to say that there was something evil in the air at night,” said Denny, “I don’t know the details, but they thought night air was different from day air, somehow.  There was something corrupting in it.”

Rosalyn nodded.  “Night air definitely smells different to day air.  It’s sharper.  I don’t know how else to describe it.”           

“Things cooling down, I think,” said Judith, turning her marshmallow around on the end of a cocktail stick, “After the sun’s gone.”

The moon was full, or nearly there.  It shone through the trees and onto the stream nearby, giving everything a silver tint.  There weren’t any electric lights here, except the ones in the cottage, so the stars looked close enough to touch.

“I saw an advert for a bat walk, while we were in town,” said Judith, “I wonder if we’ll see any out here?”  She looked backwards at the trees, scrutinising them for any wildlife.

The moonlight shone through the trees, lighting up occasional bits of bark and branch, but beyond that, it was dark.  It was the huge, black forest you read about in fairy tales, hiding all manner of wolves, witches and trolls.  Hiding all manner of crimes.  Enter it and you might never come out at all.

“Do you know any good ghost stories?” Rosalyn asked Judith.  It seemed like the night for them.

“Hmm.  Ghost stories around the campfire?”  An angular smile appeared on Judith’s face.  “They used to tell a lot of them at school, but I expect you’ve heard most of them…”  She made a humming sound.  “What about the story of the chimney?”

Rosalyn shook her head.  “I don’t know that one.”

“Me neither,” said Denny.

“Well,” said Judith, “Once upon a time, a man married his daughter off to his apprentice.  He wouldn’t have been her first choice, but her father insisted.”  She held the cocktail stick between her hands, as if she was trying to decide what to do with it.  “The apprentice then spent his life navigating between what the father wanted and what the daughter wanted.  They were both strong-willed people- stronger-willed than him, anyway- and they rarely agreed with each other.  The apprentice was constantly on the wrong side of one or the other.  And that was probably why he was so receptive when the father began to drip poison into his ear.”

The woods were quiet.  A rustle here and there, but that was it- nocturnal animals didn’t seem to make as much noise as diurnal ones.  Or maybe they just had enough sense to avoid humans.

“The father told him there was something wrong with his daughter.  It wasn’t natural for a woman to be so angry all the time.  It wasn’t natural for her to take such glee in causing strife for her husband and children.  He suspected she was under a curse, or maybe even possessed by an evil spirit.  And his apprentice looked at him with wide eyes, and he asked what they should do.”

*

(From ‘On the Trail of Kelpie and Silkie’ by Rosalyn Pepper, published 2012)

There are other supernatural creatures associated with the water.  For instance, there are the rusalki (plural of ‘rusalka’), which sounds enough like ‘silkie’ to get my attention.  These are the vengeful spirits of abused or jilted women who drown themselves in Norwegian lakes.  Maybe in the Coney Park lake, too, if the man in the antique shop was to be believed.

There are sirens, who lure sailors to their doom.  There’s Peg Powler, who drags children into the river, and the shellycoat, which tricks people into getting lost.  There are the grindylows, which might be related to Grendel from Beowulf, and the nixies, who will teach you to play the violin if you drop three drops of blood into their pond.

June Shepherd, at the tourist information centre, said that there had been three people drowned in the lake within the last hundred years.  Siobhan McCluskey in 1958, Alison Winters in 1972, and Bernard French in 1993.

Alison Winters’ case was more straightforward than the other two, just because there were so many witnesses.  She and some friends were on a rowing boar, and they went out further than they were supposed to.  Somehow, the boat overbalanced and tipped everyone into the water.  Luckily there were people on hand to go and rescue them, but Alison hit her head on the side of the boat as it tipped over, and she was knocked unconscious and trapped underwater.  By the time the rescuers got to her, it was too late.

Siobhan McCluskey was ruled a suicide.  By all accounts, she was a lonely young woman, new to the town, who had no friends or family that anybody knew of.  She’d been seen walking along the banks of the lake for several nights before her body was found.  Apparently she’d lost her job in a haberdashery a few weeks previously.  I couldn’t help but think about the man in the antiques shop again.

Bernard French was the most recent, and the most complicated.  Neighbours said he’d been having violent arguments with his wife and teenage daughter for weeks beforehand.  They finally moved out of town on the morning before his body was found, and were never seen again.  Which would suggest another suicide, if not for the fact that, according to pathologists, Bernard’s body had been in the lake for more than twenty-four hours when it was found.

As I said, Bernard French’s wife and daughter were never seen again.  They were sought for questioning, but they’d completely vanished.  Apparently, one of the things they’d argued about was a boy the daughter had been seen with, but no-one was able to track him down, either.

Maybe it was a suicide.  Maybe the people who said they’d seen Bernard’s wife and daughter leave were mistaken, and Bernard just weighed their bodies down a lot more completely than he did his own.  But maybe not.  Maybe they’re still around.

*

In the woods, about twenty minutes’ walk from their cottage, there was a little wooden bridge.  It was in a neatly-carved semicircle over the stream, like an illustration in a children’s book.

“Did you ever play Pooh Sticks when you were a kid?” asked Rosalyn, looking over the side.

Denny shrugged.  “I suppose I must have done.  I don’t really remember doing it, though.”

“My dad would get my brother and me to play it whenever we went to Chelmsford.”  She let go of the railing and caught up with him.  “The trouble was, the bridge was too high for us to be able to tell the sticks apart when they came out the other side, so Dad always said he’d won, and we could never prove he hadn’t.” 

Denny had been quite young when his father had died, but he managed to summon up a memory or two.  “My dad used to quiz me on the Kings and Queens of England since 1066.  I can still manage Henry the Seventh to George the Fourth, but anything before or after that is a bit hazy.”  He looked around at the trees and bushes around the path.  A few days ago, they’d seen a monkjack bounce across the path in front of them, and there was always the hope that they’d see one again.

It was a hot summer day, the kind where your clothes got damp after two minutes of walking, and it was a relief to have the trees around casting shadows for miles around.  Rosalyn had heard there was a café around the edges of the wood, somewhere they could have cold drinks on the benches outside.  No matter what they did, there would be a voice in Denny’s head telling him that it was just a pointless distraction from unpleasant truths, but sometimes he ended up enjoying himself anyway. 

Judith was wearing a skirt that looked as if it had been made out of a massive sail.  Every time a breeze blew, it fluttered in the wind and seemed to grow bigger and bigger.  “My uncle used to make us memorise poetry.  I have no idea why.”

Rosalyn slowed down and nodded backwards.  “Do you want to go back to the stream and dip our feet in for a bit?”

Denny thought about it.  “Is it alright if we do that on the way back?  I’m looking forward to getting to this café.”

“Fair enough,” said Rosalyn.  She kicked a pebble a little way up the road.  She was wearing neat brown shoes that looked as if they were made out of leather straps, a sort of cross between sandals and ballet flats. The toes didn’t look as if they’d provide much protection if one of the pebbles turned out to be bigger than expected.  “Wait, can you hear that?”

Denny listened out.  Somewhere in the distance, there was music playing.  Three, six, nine, the goose drank wine… 

“That’ll be the café, won’t it?” he asked.

“Probably, yeah.  Which way is it coming from?”

Denny had a mental image of them getting hold of a dowsing stick and following it in the direction of the music.  Instead, he just listened for a bit, and pointed vaguely northwest.  “Over there, I think.”

(To be continued)