The Forgotten Girl

The turbulent days of my youth are not something I take great pleasure in remembering, but memories have a tendency of weaving themselves into your conscious state, without any real consent. And so on icy winter days like this, with a warm cup of tea gently resting in between my hands, I remember. I remember flaming leaves descending from the tree tops like rain. I remember the comforting smell of oil and grease relentlessly clinging to me, despite my mother’s best efforts to scrub me clean. I remember loud and harsh voices, leaking through my thin floorboards and chasing the glimmering silhouette of the sandman away. When I think of my youth I remember this, and an unidentifiable ache courses through my body until I hurriedly chase the wispy memories away.

But today I cannot help but remember, remember golden hair, youthful fumbling hands and the silent press of two bodies against one another.  The thoughts of her plague my dreams, and I wake most nights in cold sweat thinking off her delicate dainty lips and the redness of her cheeks. 

I met her  during that awkward adolescent transition period , where your arms and legs feel too gangly and long and the female form captivates you more so then ever before. Naturally such thoughts were expressly forbidden in our small town so deeply imbedded within the church, one hardly ever found occasion to escape it. We prayed more than we did anything else really. An image of my much younger self with his eyes tightly shut, his head angled towards the heavens and hands clasped, is one that frequently floats through the recess of my mind. Ironically enough it was only in the church that I could study the female form, taking care not to let my eager eyes linger too long on the pleated skirts and slim curvy bodies. The cumbersome drone of the pastor’s voice in the background only served as background noise to my degenerate watching.

I am proud to say I became quite good at this and my skill developed over the years , so anyone who happened to glance my way would see nothing but an innocent, blue eyed ,sixteen year old boy eagerly listening to the word of God.  I became quite perceptive. My watchful eyes began to notice other things aside from the youthful bodies of the girls around me. Like how Mr Easley our local shopkeeper, shook like an unstable house under strong wind whenever the commandments were mentioned, or how Mrs Magpie always sat closer to her husband’s brother during the services.

Of course I never mentioned this to anyone. I was unusually quiet for a boy my age and as a result not many people took notice of me. Which I much preferred over the alternative, I had often had nightmares about bright lights and a million unforgiving eyes staring back at me.  I did not like being watched which was a tad hypocritical of me I suppose.

I was engaging in my favourite pastime, as my parents exchanged cold pleasantries with my school teacher. Something about my pleasing results and how I would go very far in life indeed. I’m not entirely sure, I wasn’t listening. 

I felt a hand come to rest on my shoulder and jerked in surprise. I spun around to find blue eyes that may have rivalled my own scrutinising me like some wacky science experiment. I knew her vaguely, she was the daughter of a neighbouring farmer, and was attractive enough that my eyes had studied her before, but never had she spoken to me and neither I to her. I narrowed my eyes in questioning and she smiled at me in a way that made my heart thud violently against my ribcage.

“You’re always watching, Sam.” She said. It was more of a statement than an accusation but I was mortified. Someone had seen me, someone knew about what I did.  I could hear my heat pumping inside my ears like a big bass drum and my vision begin to blur.

She smiled again and gracefully turned around , possibly to join her parents. Blond hair streaming behind her like something out of a fairy-tale.

I ran the encounter over and over in my head on the way home, trying to figure out how she knew. No one knew, no one had ever said anything. Perhaps I wasn’t as tactful as I’d previously assumed and this unbalanced me more than I cared to admit.

I avoided her like the plague, not that our paths crossed often though. I made sure that I sat on the opposite side of the church and fled to the backseat of our car the minute it was over. This careful evasion was beginning to become unnerving, and I fought hard to keep my eyes form wandering along the contours of the people’s faces around me, fought to keep silly little questions and answers about them out of my head.

There was a river not very far from where we lived, a great big twisting monster of a thing that ran along the back of the town towards the ocean . It was an unforgiving river that swallowed up unsuspecting boats like a carnivorous beast.  Its murky depths had always been of great mystery and there we legends of vengeful spirits and large black dogs with gleaming red eyes that had been passed down from generation to generation about the river.  Sometimes you would hear voices from the river, hardly audible miserable sounds that drifted into our bedrooms like smoky tendrils. We convinced ourselves that it was just the wind and over the years the lies slowly evolved into truths and the ghosts of the river became nothing more than a story to discourage our children from playing there and possibly drowning. You’d be surprised how often it happened.

Naturally I loved the river and thought myself too clever to be dissuaded by such childish horror stories. It was a refuge for me, a place to ponder the mysteries of life and more importantly, the lives of the people around me. I thought myself better than them. I despised their hypocritical preaching of morality and sin while their evils were the worst of them all. I knew things that would ruin them and this warmed my insides and brought smiles of glee to my lips.

It was there where I sat and thought of the girl, thought of her eyes and her cheeky grin. Thought of how much I hated her, and sometimes entertained thought of humiliating her as she had me. The voices which weren’t voices seemed to spur on my dark thoughts so they would become darker and darker….

It did not come as a big surprise when she found me there. The air was cold and bitter that day and the clouds lay dark and menacing above me. Rain would be coming soon, I knew and I wisely decided that it was time to return home. It was then when I saw a figure, all in white and standing in the shallow portion of the water, close to the bank.  It was her, the girl. Her golden hair was wet and clinging to her like a new born baby, her eyes were a lighter shade than what I’d remembered. They looked almost white and something inside my head told me that this was quite impossible. She was smiling again, and I felt a fear like I’ve never known consume me. I couldn’t move. It was like her soulless eyes kept me rooted. It occurred to me to ask her what she wanted, why she was standing in the river when it was so cold, why she was looking at me like that. Why she wouldn’t leave me alone.

“You’re always watching Sam , clever clever boy.”’ She said and then extended her arms out towards me.

She laughed then, her gleeful giggles soundung like jingling bells . I wanted to run.

“ Wha- what do you want?”

She seemed amused and began to move towards me in slow disjointed steps.

“Clever clever boy , always watching always judging , come to me Sam , come.”

Her voice was melodic and her words seemed to float in the air like mist before me. I felt like I was looking at Lucifer himself, she was so beautiful, I’d never seen anything so beautiful. I wanted to go to her, I wanted it more than anything I had ever wanted in my life, and so I did. My trainers sunk into the muddy bank as I walked , and I felt the wetness seep into my socks , I knew my mother would scold me when I returned home , I wondered if I’d ever be going home. I couldn’t think. I tried to remind myself that I hated her but this seemed to do nothing to stop my steady journey towards her.

We met where the river met the bank and I felt her cold hands embrace me. She felt soft and willing against me as she laced her fingers through my hair. I was still scared but her gentle touch comforted me and I seemed to melt into her.  It was so terribly surreal and also the closest I’d ever been to a woman, and I felt my body respond accordingly. I wanted to brush her hair back and kiss her, slip my hands under her flimsy white dress and do a manner of other things that any boy my age wanted to.

But I stood still and felt the gently rise and fall of her chest against me. And then she pushed me down onto the ground, so her body was resting above mine. Her eyes were even more terrifying up close and her smile was surely something that had ascended straight out of hell. She pressed her cold lips against mine and I stopped thinking after that.

I pondered what had transpired in bed that night, my hands sometimes tracing the icy paths she had left on my skin. I couldn’t believe what I’d done, and I stared at my ceiling for a long time after that in silent awe, wondering if I’d be going to hell for this.

Days passed which soon turned into weeks which soon turned into months. I tried my hardest to forget that encounter with the girl. My eyes stopped wondering as they used to and when they did come to rest on the famine curves of a girl, my heart would fill with dread and I’d look away in shame. I never saw her not even at church, I wondered if she’d moved away or if she was hiding from me.  I never went to the river. in fact I avoided it as I had her.

In a fleeting moment of idiocy I asked my mother about a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes and when she asked me for a name, I was horrified to find that I could not give her one.

 My parents died in a freak car accident a few years after that and the house and farm was left to me. People attempted their condolences but none really knew what to say because none really knew me. It was at that point in my life that I realised I had no real friends. I had been too busy watching life from a far, to really partake in it.

Time passed and I forgot, I forgot about cold hands and cold kisses against my skin. I married a woman named Freda and had two sons with her. For a long time I was content, going through the motions of life and hearing the delighted squealing of my children through our old house. I thought myself happy, and told my wife I loved her every day but at night I would be haunted with dreams of grey eyes and awake with no recollection of my dream, just this deep unwavering terror.

For reasons unknown to me I did not stray from my house and near the river , when my wife told stories to my boys , stories of ghouls and monsters that prowled the banks of the river , I would listen , and uncomfortably shift in my seat and block out the sound of her voice.

One of my sons went missing when I turned thirty. It was Mathew, the quiet one. He was as quiet and observant as I’d been in my youth, and this did not please me at all. We searched the house frantically, and called everyone one we could think off. One of them suggested that he may have wandered to the river and this made us even more afraid. I tossed aside my reservation and ran into the night like a boy half my age. I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t see him anywhere. All there was was and endless mass of water and whispering voices reminding me other things I’d rather forget.

“Sam never came back, never came back Sam.” 

I turned and I gazed at the face of the forgotten girl, she had not aged a day and a part of me wasn’t surprised by this at all, her dress was white and spotless and seemed to shine in the moonlight. She seemed saddened somehow, and what happened that day flooded my memory like a dam wall breaking open. She was holding the hands of a small child with golden hair and eyes like the ocean, he was impossibly beautiful and as I looked at him my heart began to race within my chest. He looked up at me with his soulless eyes and childish curiosity  and a slow grin broke out on his tiny face.

He was mine I knew it. He looked just like Mathew had at his age. I felt sixteen again, cold and fearful and nauseated. They began to move towards me in slow precise steps and I knew they meant to kill me, I knew that if I did not run now I would not live to see another day.

“Stay Sam, stay. “She said smiling up at me with her grey eyes.

I ran screaming like a child, tears streaming down the sides of my face and fear coursing through my veins like blood. Her angry howl echoed through the night behind me and it has haunted me to this day.

Mathew never came back home, the police said it was like he’d vanished into thin air, there was no sign of him. I moved my family from the wretched house of my childhood and the evilness of that river and swore never to return again.

I never speak of what happened that night, or the forgotten girl and that child.  I never speak of the voices I hear in the wake of my dreams or the cold hands that grip me, I never speak of the figure that stands outside our house on rainy days. Eyes grey and vengeful, voice urging me to come to her.