Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-6822927-20190302175109

This something I've just been ideally working on. It's not finished, again, but reading over what I have written, something just feels off about it. I'd like some input on this.

The night was quiet and cold. The light fog was already lifting, and the road was illuminated by the glaring moonlight.

Rachel Murray snorted and pressed onward, clutching her coat tighter to herself. The chill wasn’t as strong as it often could be, but it was a chill all the same. Her frail, old body had already endured many a sleepless night here in the countryside, muttering to herself in a low voice for company. This was no different.

In the village, Rachel knew that rumors had been made anew by these evening walks of hers. Some young girls would say she went out to visit the farmers in their lonely homes and chuckle to themselves as they imagined what naughty things old people would get up to. Rachel snorted.

Others muttered she was a mad woman, wandering around every night by herself. She’d heard more than one person whisper that she was a danger to herself and others, that eventually something would be done and she’d be taken to the madhouse. More than one person hadn’t whispered that to her. More than once someone had even accused her of being “a thieving gypsy!"

Rachel snorted.

And then there was that ever-persistent rumor that she’d sold her soul to the Devil in exchange for dark powers, partaking in rituals in the woods where she regained her youth by drinking the blood of newborns, changing into a black cat and casting curses on anyone who crossed her.

Rachel didn’t snort. Instead, she spat on the ground.

'''The Murrays hadn’t been welcomed in that village since the days of her grandfather, like all other Travellers, and deadly rumors persisted even today, rumors which simply would not cease. Sometimes Rachel wondered if people just enjoyed being cruel. They’d already driven most of her family out. Her children and grandchildren simply weren’t welcomed around here anymore, no more than she was. The slight looks and whispers of “that old tinker woman” wherever she went had been around in one form or another since she was a wee girl, and would be there once she died.'''

She was so deep in thought she almost didn’t see the small specks of light in front of her, bobbing from side to side along the path. Of course, she wasn’t blind, so it was only natural she would see it when it was but a few feet away. Rachel almost jumped out of her skin, before she calmed down, having seen what a cat’s eyes were like in the dark.

“Ah, hello ya’ beasty,” she told it, bending down. The cat came within arm’s reach, and Rachel got a good look at it. It was a black cat with a white spot on its chest, nothing too unusual. Rather nice fella as well, as Rachel was able to run her wrinkly fingers through his soft fur. He purred like the engine of a new car.

“Whatcha doing all the way out here?” she asked with a disarming smile. “Ack, but who understands what cats do.”

The way his eyes twinkled, Rachel almost thought the cat was trying to smile at her. He pushed his head into her hand, sending vibrations up her arm as it purred. It reminded her of dear old Prim, the tortoiseshell her husband threw out barely a week after the wedding. Rachel still missed the by-now long dead feline. Prim had been but a kitten when they first met on Rachel’s eleventh birthday and had been inseparable for the next six years - until she married, of course.

Her drunk arse of a husband was long since dead, and unmourned. She’d never remarried, despite her father’s insistence, and that was how she liked it. Besides, she has done a fine job raising her weenies. All ten of them, and they were nothing like their cheating bastard of a father.

The rough, slick cat’s tongue tickled the palm of her hand and brought her back to the present. Then, after rubbing his ears against it, the cat gingerly walked around her, brushing against her leg gently before suddenly twisting away and towards the dark woodland. It paused and then turned its head back to Rachel, tilting it curiously.

Rachel stared back into those deep green eyes. They were pools of mischief and strange things she’d never seen in a cat before. She knew the names for them, but couldn’t believe any cat would ever have them.

Yet those very things were part of the cat, and, as Rachel realized, always had been. They were as essential to it as they were to her.

There was a chill going up her spine, and it was whispering to her about things nobody would ever believe. Impossible things, things which if she spoke aloud so that others could hear, would put her deep within the bowels of an asylum. They wouldn’t let her see daylight, breathe in the grassy meadows or feel the sand beneath her feet. She would die there, screaming and alone.

But only if she spoke. So clearly, she mustn’t ever tell anyone these things.

And the cat, staring at her with those eyes of emerald and black, knew it as well.

“What are you?” Rachel asked softly. “What are you, really?”

The cat didn’t answer, it simply yawned and turned around, walking deeper into the woods, tail held as proudly as the Devil himself. The darkness of the wood concealed him from Rachel’s eyes in mere moments, and as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.

Rachel stood up, hand unconsciously moving from her forehead down to her stomach and then her shoulders, the smiling face of Christ all she could conjure in her thoughts. She resumed walking, her pace quickened by adrenaline. She glanced behind her and sighed, relieved, when she saw no glowing green eyes full of human mischief staring back at her. But now she looked first to one side then the other, wondering where that thing had gone. That thing pretending to be a cat. There had been stories of creatures like that, but they were from a simpler time, when her mother could hold between her soft arms and pinch her fat cheeks. Mother had told her such wonderful stories, about what had lived in Ireland long before the people came, and where they had gone.

But they had only been stories, nothing more. There were no tiny men watching her, hidden in the bushes, nor women that cried and washed her bloody clothes or those of her children. They were long since dead.

As Rachel crushed discarded sticks and dead leaves with every hurried step, she mumbled under her breath a prayer that protected all true believers. Saint Patrick himself had made it. And anything made by Saint Patrick was sure protection against the dark forces that lurked in places no person alive had ever been to. As she tried to pray, however, her mumbling was drowned out by a sudden wail, one that startled Rachel so badly her hand shot to her chest. She stopped and took a few breaths, then listened to the wailing. She couldn’t help it, because it was a very familiar sound.

It was the wailing of a baby. And they were coming from just ahead of her.

Rachel crossed herself, frozen stiff. She'd already just met a cat that wasn't a cat. Could this be a baby which wasn't a baby? They could be anything, anything at all. But Rachel was a mother to ten children, and a grandmother to theirs. The longer she listened to those cries, the more she remembered those children, so small they couldn’t walk, crying in her arms before she soothed them. They fell asleep and were settled underneath blankets with tender care, and Rachel had watched over them.

It was no use. No matter how much the old stories insisted there was something bad waiting for her, knowing a helpless baby could be out here with no one to care for them wasn’t something she could never stand.

Rachel began walking again, hands clasped together firmly as she prayed, and she scanned the ground in front of her for anything that might be out of place. For a few feet, nothing was, but the crying got louder and harsher until it was surely right in front of her.

Then she saw something move. Her eyes fixed themselves on it, and, already adjusted to the darkness, they saw a small bundle, wrapped in a blanket. It was squirming and tossing around with every desperate wail it made.

Rachel bent down, reached out her arms and snatched the bundle up. Now she couldn’t just see it moving, but feel arms and legs smaller than any child she'd ever held as they kicked and thrashed against her, all while the baby wailed. Its face was covered by the blanket, and instantly, Rachel drew it back.

She almost dropped the babe and would have, but she’d already seen something unusual that night. She’d known there was something strange about this infant, and now she saw what it was. It had a face unlike anything she’d ever seen. Tears ran down from eyes with far too many pupils. A hand with too many fingers clawed its way out of the cloth and touched her chest, running blindly along her coat as it tried to find something to hold onto. Those fingers clasped together so firmly Rachel swore the babe wouldn't let go of life itself.

Rachel clutched it with her own, and held the baby’s head against her shoulder. Her hand held on tightly to its back as she gently bounced up and down. “It’s okay now,” she whispered, “I’m here, I’ve got you. Don’t cry, lovely, I’ve got you. You’re safe now. Nothing will hurt you.”

It took a few moments, longer than any of her own children or grandchildren, but with small hiccups, the baby’s cries ceased, replaced by shallow gasps for air. “You’re safe, my lovely,” she said, “you’re safe now. Everything will be okay.”

Rachel could feel something wet and sticky against her fingers, oozing through the blanket. She sighed. “You poor thing,” she muttered.

She began walking again, now more anxious than ever to get back home so she could wash the child off and feed it, but, out of the corner of her eyes, something else was hovering in the trees. Rachel took a quick look and saw a light dimly shining in the distance, moving lazily past each tree. She couldn’t make anything else out, but of one thing, Rachel was certain.

The light was getting closer.

With no time to waste, Rachel walked as quickly as she could down that cold, unused, empty road, taking steady breaths each time, ignoring everything save the small body weakly squirming against her. The air tasted strange and her head felt light, but she pressed on, not daring to look back. Though she could feel eyes glaring at her back, their gaze piercing through her and into the babe, she ignored it and pressed on.

Even when she heard humming coming from out in the woods, as deep as the light had been, she ignored it and pressed on. She didn’t care to even try and understand it either, because it meant nothing. Nothing at all. She was just an old Traveller who’d stayed in one town for most of her adult life, and right now, a baby needed to be loved and cared for. There was nothing which could ever entice her from doing just that - not even its face.

Gradually, she heard the humming fade away and looked behind her, only once. She smiled, seeing that light was gone now, to who knows where? As she kept walking, she no longer felt the hateful glare on her back, nor did she feel the presence of something else in those cursed woods with her. Instead, all she felt was hope - hope for this abandoned child.

Her caravan was parked just at the edge of the Travellers’ park, a new thing her son had bought for her. She wouldn’t be using it to leave this town anytime soon, but she did enjoy the comforts it had. And she was sure this baby would as well. She was already planning for how long she’d feed him, how much formula to give him for an empty stomach. Oh, but could a newborn like this even eat formula?

“What’s your name, anyway? Ah, but I doubt your mummy even had time to give you one.”  