The Justice Pool

The dead still want justice

Image by Bgmarketing0582 on Pixabay

FOLKLORE | HORROR

I was in the middle of writing this story when I realised it fitted with the current prompt, It Wasn’t Me, in Redemption Magazine, which I edit on Medium. Use this free link to read the latest Redemption Newsletter and see more details of the prompt.

The Justice Pool

The pub door burst open. The constable shook the rain off his cloak and turned off his lamp but did not remove his helmet. “A woman has gone missing near the river, I need men to search for her,” he addressed the half empty room.

“I’ll come,” Hugh, my host, stood up from our table. Three other men wearing scruffy tweed jackets, flat caps and the heavy boots of farmworkers downed their pints and turned from the bar.

“I’ll help,” I said standing.

“It’s treacherous down by the river,” Hugh looked at me.

“I’ve been fishing there most of the day. I’ll stick close to you and surely another pair of eyes would help.”

The constable looked across at a sullen man sitting in the corner with a half-finished beer on the table in front of him. “What about you?”

The man rose slowly to his feet as if it was an effort. “I’m not from around here,” he grumbled.

“Stick with us,” I said. “Hugh knows the river like the back of his hand. He’ll make sure you’re OK.”

Donning our coats we all traipsed out into the night. The warmth of the day had evaporated and a fine rain misted across us.

“We think she went into the river when she was trying to cross by the pool.” The constable said.

“I was fishing there earlier, and I didn’t see anyone,” I said. The fishing was the reason I had come to this remote hamlet; more a cluster of cottages, one of which doubled as a pub. Hugh’s lodge was the only larger house and stood on the edge of the village. He rented a room to devotees of the sport as the salmon in the river were large and plentiful.

The pool was an area of slack water where the gorge that the river ran through widened. The fish gathered there before trying to make it upstream. The black water ploughed through the rest of the gorge with a force that left it foaming and sparkling as it surged over the rocks.

Rounded boulders, that had dropped into the river after being carved free from the surrounding land lay dotted in the water. There was a path across the stones that led to a rickety footbridge over the widest flow, that the locals used as a shortcut to the next village. The path was treacherous, made slippery by the spray.

“Surely if she went in there she will have drowned,” I added.

“We may well be looking for a body,” the constable said. But we have to try.”

We trudged the short distance to the edge of the gorge. The water was roaring in the darkness. I knew from my fishing trip earlier that, on the far side of the river it pounded past sheer basalt rocks that rose up into an impenetrable wall. Below us was a steep path that led down to a narrow shingle beach beside the dark, slack pool.

“You three go down and search the beach,” the constable said. “The rest of us will go and look downstream.

Gingerly the three of us clambered down the track. Hugh led, the swarthy man in the centre and I followed behind. The moon was bright and we were quickly able to search the beach and between the rocks. Peering into the water we could see nothing but darkness.

“She’s not here,” the sullen man grunted.

“Keep looking until the constable comes back,” Hugh said.

“That could take ages,” the man grumbled.

Our search seemed complete and we stood around in the moonlight and waited. Clouds had started to well up in the sky and as they passed across the moon the light dimmed.

“Anything?” a voice shouted from the top of the gorge.

“She’s there?” another voice echoed from behind the policeman.

I looked towards the water. A light glowed in the pool as if a sunken lamp was rising from the depths. Then something broke the surface. At first it looked as if a small, weak fountain was welling up. Then it became a face surrounded by straight blonde hair; water streaming from it as it emerged.

I gasped; was it the body floating to the surface? It continued to rise vertically from the pool until it revealed itself as the form of a woman clad only in a wet shift that clung to her body. The apparition glowed with an internal light and the hair and the shift seemed to flow around her. It was difficult to tell whether she was solid or composed of the water itself.

“You,” she stretched out an arm pointing toward where I was standing on the shore. “Murderer.”

I stepped back, stumbling on the rough stones. “It wasn’t…” I managed to stutter, my mouth dry with fear. Then I realised her accusing finger and outstretched arm were tracking to my right. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the swarthy man fleeing across the beach. He glanced up at the path we had slithered down. The constable and the other men were grouped at the summit.

When I looked back at the apparition she was gliding closer to the shore. The man ran to the end of the beach and then seemed to hesitate. Boulders, slippery with algae and water jutted out of the surging river and seemed to offer an escape to the far shore. Once there he would have to scale the sheer basalt cliff.

The woman glided towards him in a slow relentless pursuit. Fear flashed across his face and he climbed onto the first rock. Measuring his jump carefully he made it to the second boulder closer to the centre of the river. The apparition was now close behind him and, in a panic he leapt for the third, slipped and, in a second, disappeared beneath the fast moving water.

The spirit, ghost or whatever it was vanished.

My legs felt like jelly and I sat down heavily on the stones.

Hugh offered me his hand and pulled me to my feet. “What just happened?” I asked.

“The murderer tried to escape and fell into the river,” Hugh said matter of factually.

“Yes, but the…?” I pointed at the water.

“Many of the old spirits still live in the countryside.” He rested his hand on my shoulder. “Many tales cast them as evil, but they often have a greater sense of justice than we do.”

“You brought me and him,” I waved my hand at the river, “down here to face justice because we were the only two strangers in the village. Did you think it was me?” I asked incredulously.

“Not for a moment, old chap,” Hugh said. “But we had to be sure.”

“And what if it hadn’t been either of us?”

“Then she would have stayed silent.” He began to climb up the path and looked over his shoulder.” We’ll look for the body in the morning but I doubt we will find it.”

One of my subscribers suggested I read Damnable Tales, A Folklore Horror Anthology edited by Richard Wells to gain some inspiration for more supernatural stories based on English folklore. This story owes some of its creation to Gavon’s Eve by E. F. Benson first published in The London Illustrated News in 1906. The setting and the idea of the woman rising out of the water are similar but the narrative is completely new.