Deep Water

It's The Sunday Whirl time again, so here is a quick Wordle - a puddle of prose in an ocean of verse!

No one knew where she came from. An elderly woman, in a full length coat and a tattered scarf which partly hid her wrinkled and weather weary features. She just appeared one day. After that she used to visit regularly and sit by the cracking log fire, leaning towards the dancing flames with a pint of beer cradled in her hands. There was always a battered case by her side. Never a smile, never a word to anyone around her. One day someone, I can’t remember who right now, said “hello” to her and sat at an adjoining stool holding out his hands in order to warm them. “Not from round these parts?” he asked “Not seen you in here before”. She turned slowly towards him and looked him straight in the eye. She said nothing, but something about that icy gaze sent a shiver down his spine. After that nobody said anything to her.

One day she muttered a few words, very quietly. Several people stopped talking and looked in her direction. “I’m sorry” said one. “Were you saying something?” She shifted in her chair and stared towards him. “He’s here” she said. “Here in your cosy little village” and with that she spat on the floor. Three or four gathered around her. She pointed a bony finger in the direction of Donald. Her hand shook. “You never knew” she said. Donald said nothing, but sat down next to her, a worried look on his face

.

“Nobody knew” she continued. “They didn't believe me. They said there wasn't a grain of truth in what I told them. One day I reached my limit. There was no other way; I had to escape. I packed case, this case, and crept out in the middle of the night” Donald placed a hand over his open mouth and whispered something. “I walked out of the door, through the gate and down the lane along the east side of Marlow Copse” she said. “Then I heard a sound; a panting sound; a sound I knew only too well. I started running. I could still hear him panting, closer and closer. I rounded Badger Bend and where the lane parts, there he was; facing me. I don’t know where I found the strength from; perhaps it’s what you holy lot call divine intervention, but for the first time in my life I got the better of him”. Sweat started running down Donald’s face; a look of horror filled his eyes. “Our father is still in the village Donald and so am I” she croaked. “You thought we’d left together didn't you Donald. You believed what you wanted to believe. You and the rest of our so-called family thought I’d lied all along” she said. She stared straight at him. “Didn't you Donald!” she screamed. “Didn't you!” She flung her glass on the floor, the fire hissed as the beer splashed into the flames. “They never looked in the deep water in Durling Lake Donald, did they? Well, that’s where our precious father is now brother dear.  At least, what’s left of after the fish had their fill” She let out a chilling laugh.

With that she grabbed her case and swept passed the stunned onlookers and on her way out into the winter’s night beyond, never to be seen again.