Village Witch

Enid has come to rest on the steps of an abandoned house. The house is large, with two storeys and windows in the attic. The forest is in the process of reclaiming the building. Branches scratch at the walls and windows, the shingled roof is thick with moss and the trunks of well established trees grow from the footings, their roots upheaving and twisting the walls. A tree has rooted beneath the veranda, its branches have pierced the roof above.

Enid senses a presence here. Something unquiet and spiteful presence. Something that needs cleansing. There is something else. This place seems familiar. Enid’s fingertips dig between the blades of grass at the foot of the steps. It seems to Enid that this soil is known to her. Could it be that it was once worked by her own hand? Memories are so difficult now but she has a feeling that she has knew this place once before.

Enid sits in the weak spring afternoon sunshine. She cannot recall why she is travelling or where she is going, perhaps this is her destination, it seems as if it was once home of a kind. Her feet and legs hurt and she is very tired. She will rest here for now. Eventually she can no longe itr ignore the hostile presence that provokes her attention, and she rises and opens the front door.

The house is still dry inside. From the hall Enid looks up the staircase. There is nothing up there that Enid need trouble her knees to climb those stairs for she shuffles around the ground floor, nothing is familiar. She walks through a kitchen, a scullery, a dining room. The furniture is mostly missing but there a a few large pieces, a huge dresser in the kitchen, a large table in the dining room. 

As she enters the drawing room there is a howl and a raging spirit swirls in the air. Enid watches impassively as this pestilence gathers form, drawing in dust and spore and webs and dead skin and empty cocoons and fragments of long dead insects. This thing takes form, filling the air with the odour of long closed up rooms, stale air and dust. It becomes a roiling, malevolent cloud of the desiccated remains of what once lived. It fills the air above Enid, extending tendrils, exploring the space around her and closing in.

Enid fixes the heart of this thing with her watery eyes. They are usually cloudy but now she sees with clarity. “This is not your place, go so that we can both have peace”. The thing retreats but now churns with more fury, its appendages overturning furniture and slamming doors. Enid speaks again, this time fearsome and irresistible, she slams her walking stick down on the floorboards and it is banished. The thing withdraws, from the room and the house and out into the forest. 

The exertion has been exhausting, Enid sits down on a mildewed chair and her head droops into her hands. The house breathes quietly, the trees scrape at the roof, doors creak, walls crack, adjusting to the absence of something that filled the dusty gaps and the voids of this building for so long.

Another spirit, faint, almost invisible approaches Enid. She is indistinct, the suggestion of a white nightgown or a servants uniform. She rests an arm on Enid’s shoulders while the old witch recovers enough strength to make up a bed for the night.