Read by Carrie Cohen - podcast here (second story)
The elderly sisters Pitt went missing shortly after the loose woman, Ramona Rothchild - known adulteress before she was widowed, and doomsday-bringer to many a philanderer - vanished into the woods and was sure to never be seen again. The wives and clergy rejoiced; the men with wandering hearts performed a perfunctory search of the surrounding hinters as penance. But they would not penetrate the deepest forest for fear of what had long lurked there, slumbering undisturbed until now.
Hunger must have woken it, or else it was Ramona who roused the beast with her wiles and met her rightful end. The Misses Pitt were well past their primes and might have fallen on the path that circled the wood. From there, the beast could have snatched them up unseen and dragged them into its den. Another cursory search was performed, with no intention of treading perilous ground. The gentle ladies had long since lost their bloom, and so the loss of them was hardly felt. They had never been mothers, and so it was the consensus of the village that two lives had already been wasted; there was nothing more to be done.
On the word of the village council, the men built ramparts around their homesteads. The bulwarks were high as hills, to enshrine the maidens who would one day be mothers, and their increate babes lest the losses be great. As the twilit hour tolled, girls were herded home by their fathers, small children by frantic mothers, and the ways-in were bolted and shuttered and barred. The boys knew the knock that would open any door; they returned home when they pleased.
*
Old Lady Hadley was sighted, not a fortnight later, walking the perimeter of the wall with her arms extended and her eyes blank. It was widely known that she had married for money and not for motherhood, and had been the most prodigal of wives; her good husband had died a pauper without the consolation of sons. Her evening stroll was followed by that of Missus Tanner, whom everyone suspected of whipping children who trespassed on her flowerbeds. One child had complained of a ferruling with her cane, and the rumours that sprang from that story grew faster than her roses.
It appeared that the monster had particular appetites, only sated by a certain variety of woman. The villagers wondered in secret whether they should dismantle their walls. But with so many maidens whose virginity was to be vouchsafed, they could not risk the beast becoming less peculiar or precise in its habits. After all, it had lured dear Grandmother Martha, whose offspring were many and whose faults were few. What was to stop it moving from the mere relic of a good woman to the bounty of a virgin maid?
*
The village had already suffered the scourge of a wicked spirit not twelve months afore. Half a dozen children were taken in the night, and the rain washed clean their tracks. Without so much as a footprint to follow, the villagers never located the lair of whatever evil had robbed their cradles and sent women crying into the storm. Three mothers dropped down dead of sorrowed hearts. That was the physician’s esteemed opinion. And so the mothers who remained were all the more frightened of their own sweet infants vanishing. They kept constant vigil, with the aid of their daughters, whilst their sons and husbands slept.
*
Old Man Roth had never admitted to Ramona; but when he wed, he did honorably by his wife with four strapping sons and one legitimate daughter: Marianne, the pride of their marriage bed, whose charms were without parallel, whose virtue was beyond reproach. She would never want for suitors. Half the women of the village plied her with gifts: instruments of torture to maintain her uncommon beauty, proprietary potions concocted in their own kitchens, sage advice on the art of submission, matronly wisdom on the care of babes. At the tender age of three and ten, she was barely more than a babe herself.
The other half of the women despised her, more and more deeply for her undeniable attractions. No husband would spare his wife a glance once womanhood descended upon the unrivaled Marianne. Nevertheless, her disappearance brought tears to the eyes of jealous hags whose youth and usefulness were spent. Ramona was even more comely; but it came at the highest cost. Her surname was not a given one; it was her mother’s warning to Old Man Roth.
It was to his great dismay that she, and not Marianne, emerged from the wood one morning, looking rattled but still of sound body and mind. Abandoning their judgments, the villagers flocked to know of Ramona’s escape from the clutches of the monster.
“It called itself Lifendelich. It rose from the red loch where the ancients submerged their dead. It spirited me away to the watery grave, to baptize me in pagan blood. Twas then I offered an exchange.”
The crowd around her quieted as their collective blood ran cold.
“A ransom of women - the barren and childless, the unwed and aged. Our unwanted ones in trade for those it’s taken.” Ramona observed in many an expression of deepest relief, none deeper than that of Old Man Roth.
The villagers rallied before the council to hear who would be sent. Ramona was designated to escort them: a friend of neither party, an emissary of both.
*
The chill that had filled each woman when her name was uttered lingered as they traversed the dark path. The sun was extinguished by a canopy of trees as dense and as black as a funeral pall. The only light came from Ramona’s torch, and the candles the women were gifted in parting. The mouth of the forest opened unto a sky made green by a sickly moon. It shone on a red lake over which white storks glided: ghosts haunting on heavy wings.
Ramona stopped and motioned to the women, who had congregated in a tight huddle. Before, they had given each other berth enough to walk. Now they stood shoulder to shoulder, clasping the arms of their neighbors, many with eyes streaming. None of them made a sound.
A shadow grew out of the forest, as if it had been seeded there; an outline formed against the backdrop of black shapes. The women held each other. Some shut their eyes, some moaned behind closed mouths, all stood their ground.
The shadow expanded, the outline sharpened; and before them - dimly lit by torchlight - the forms of the missing children and Marianne materialized. From the children's sucking mouths came guttural lullabies; their hands and arms were crusted in blood; the viscera of previous meals hung like stinking garlands around their necks; their heads were haloed in the fog that swam in cold wreaths through the copse. Marianne wore a white frock stained red; her mouth was sullied to match. Ramona made way for the groaning children led by the bloodstained Marianne. The women drew back as one until they met the water’s edge.
“Lifendelich washed them in the loch where they were unborn. They live no more, but feed on those who do.”
The lake boiled and festered, fertile with decay; and from its cauldron-depths ascended a creature only vaguely man, with the jaws of a leech and the eyeless face of a roundworm. The lake burst around him like a pustule and the waters broke backward, giving him up to the shore. He rose from the red slime of the loch, webbed and feathered in the debris of dead things, and towered over the terrified throng of women and Ramona.
“Here is your chattel,” she said of the women. “There are your children,” she said of the unborn. “Leave the village to its own evils. By our bargain, you are banished from it henceforth.”
Lifendelich did not answer her, but spread his arms like a stork’s heavy wings, welcoming his children to feed upon the women who fell back. They fled but did not get far. His spawn had the speed of demons and a hunger hardly pacified by Ramona’s offering. Dirt doused the women’s candles, and the roots emerged to devour their remains. Lifendelich passed Ramona, shepherding his progeny towards the village. She ran hot upon his heels.
“The deal we struck shall stick; you are bound here. You shall sire no more heirs from their suffering.” Ramona blocked his path, brandishing her torch like a fiery blade. “We will relinquish no more souls to sate them. Depart from this place!”
But Lifendelich no more heard than saw. He swept Ramona aside and herded his children to the forest’s edge. Ramona watched in horror as villagers were lured from their beds, past the walls of their fortresses, and into the hinters: all of them unconscious, all of them men. Only one wavered from his trance, and stopped just short of the tree line. He seemed sentient of something wrong. He began to writhe against the tow; and Lifendelich gestured to Marianne.
Marianne crossed the threshold, to bring the straggler in with the tide of men rushing past to meet their un-maker. Only she, not quite woman enough to feed and not quite child enough to be fed, could cross over into the village. She was not in possession of herself, but she was not unborn. Her eyes opened, and she allowed the straggler to pull her instead, away where Lifendelich could not reach them.
Ramona followed, the torch still coruscating in her hand.
“Wake the women who sleep safely still,” Ramona instructed Marianne. “Their minds are yet untouched. Do you know where Old Man Roth keeps his kegs?”
Marianne returned, with the women in whose arms were cradled many kegs of powder and spirits which they positioned along the tree line where they stood as one. Each woman was gifted a candle. Ramona raised her torch like a burning sword, and together they dropped the flames.
Old Man Roth hurried out of his house, swaddled in bedclothes, shielding his face from the smoke. He made haste to Ramona first, for he did not recognize Marianne who stood beside her half-sister in a white frock turned red. Storks blazed across the sky, their feathers charring as they fled. Marianne took Ramona’s hand, and together they walked away, past the ramparts, past the gates, with Old Man Roth staring after them.
Ramona would never tell her lovers the tale of Lifendelich. It was too fantastic a fable, too like a fairy story to be believed; and she was not about to be christened a hysteric. But Marianne would entrust it to just one, and they would tell it to their daughter, who bore the name Ramona; and she would tell it to hers.
(c) Jennifer Gaboury, 2022
Jennifer Gaboury is a speculative fiction writer and creative writing instructor with an MFA in Creative Writing, Fiction and an MA in English Literature. She co-produces a literary podcast (Fantastic Books and How to Write Them) on Youtube, and authors a same-named blog on Wordpress.
Carrie Cohen’s recent theatre work includes Park Bench with SLAMinutes at The Arcola Outside and the role of June in Triggered at The Lion & Unicorn theatre. Her lockdown work included the film Sunday Service and the creation of a Youtube comedy channel What’s That For, From Carrie’s Drawer? Last summer Carrie filmed the role of the eponymous wife’s mother in The Thief, his Wife and the Canoe for ITV. www.carriecohen.co.uk
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