The Backward Walker

I was seven that autumn, the year the canal froze early and the reeds turned to brittle spears along the water’s edge. My grandfather, a stooped man with a voice like gravel, had taken me to the village of Ashwick to visit his sister. Ashwick was a place of narrow lanes and leaning houses, where the fog rolled in off the fens and never quite left. We were walking back from the pub, the only light a dim lantern my grandfather carried, its flame sputtering against the damp. It was past midnight, and the village was silent, save for the creak of a sign and the distant bark of a dog.

Then I saw her. A woman standing at the end of the lane, half hidden in the mist. She wore a long, white nightgown that clung to her as if wet. Her hair was long and tangled, hanging over her face like a curtain. I tugged at my grandfather’s sleeve, pointing. He stiffened, his hand tightening on the lantern. ‘Don’t look,’ he said, but I was already looking. She began to walk toward us, and I saw her feet. They were turned backwards, the heels facing us, the toes pointing away. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold.

My grandfather grabbed my hand and we ran, our footsteps echoing on the cobbles. When we dared to look back, the lane was empty. But as we turned a corner, there she was again, closer now, blocking our path. This time she wore a long black dress that seemed to absorb the light. My grandfather, brave as he was, stepped forward and asked, ‘What do you want?’ She did not answer. She simply stood there, and Icould see her face beneath the hair. Her eyes were white, like marbles, and her mouth was a thin line. Then she was gone, as if she had never been.

For the next year, we saw her often. Sometimes she would appear at the edge of a field, or at the foot of our garden. Once, I woke to find her standing at the foot of my bed, her head tilted at an impossible angle. My grandfather said she was a ‘backward walker,’ a spirit that had died in the water and was cursed to walk the earth seeking something it could never find. He tried to communicate with her, to ask what she wanted, but she never spoke. She only watched, her backward feet leaving no prints in the mud.

Then one night, my grandfather had a dream. In it, she pointed to a spot by the canal, where an old willow tree leaned over the water. He woke and took me there. Beneath the tree, half buried in the silt, we found a small, rotten wooden box. Inside was a child’s shoe, a tiny, tarnished silver locket, and a piece of paper, so faded we could barely make out the words. It was a name: Eliza Mayhew, born 1850, drowned in the canal on her seventh birthday. We buried the box in the churchyard, and we never saw her again, though sometimes, at night, I still feel the cold of her gaze, and I know that the backward walker still lingers at the edge of the world, waiting for someone to walk with her.