We tell our children not to go near the forest at night because people do drugs there and it isn't safe. We tell them it's only called Ghost Woods because of the sound the wind makes when it blows through the tree branches. We tell them they can't play hide-and-seek in there because they might get abducted.
We should have just told them the truth.
They should have been told about all the other children whose souls can't find any peace. They've been there since the first mothers threw their unwanted babies into the pond to be swept away down, deep deep down the underground river that runs through the entire town.
Those poor little children wait for their mothers to come back but they get so bored. They ask our children, our living breathing children, to come down to the pond to play with them. Most aren't seen again but my sister was one of the unlucky ones who managed to claw her way back out.
The mothers stay inside - too guilty to rest, too loyal to leave and all too eager to point out unruly behaviour that could be so easily corrected by a quick trip to the woods and back... back alone. It's like they sometimes forget that they're murderers and that their children have never stopped looking for them.
I saw a reunion once.
A mother who finally found her child again by the fountain in the town centre. The water comes from the same underground river that carries their little souls all over the place and the council have just finished building a walkway above it for tourists.
The mother leapt out of an open window, rushing towards her child.
Her child did not move.
All the others began to swarm.
We should have just told them the truth.
They should have been told about all the other children whose souls can't find any peace. They've been there since the first mothers threw their unwanted babies into the pond to be swept away down, deep deep down the underground river that runs through the entire town.
Those poor little children wait for their mothers to come back but they get so bored. They ask our children, our living breathing children, to come down to the pond to play with them. Most aren't seen again but my sister was one of the unlucky ones who managed to claw her way back out.
The mothers stay inside - too guilty to rest, too loyal to leave and all too eager to point out unruly behaviour that could be so easily corrected by a quick trip to the woods and back... back alone. It's like they sometimes forget that they're murderers and that their children have never stopped looking for them.
I saw a reunion once.
A mother who finally found her child again by the fountain in the town centre. The water comes from the same underground river that carries their little souls all over the place and the council have just finished building a walkway above it for tourists.
The mother leapt out of an open window, rushing towards her child.
Her child did not move.
All the others began to swarm.
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