The Marshland Specter’s Lullaby

My name is Dale, and ever since that night at Mossmere Fen, I’ve been unable to shake the feeling that something followed me home. It started last autumn, when my best friend, Kevin, and I decided to skip the town’s annual astronomy night and explore the marshlands instead. We thought we were being adventurous, but we were just two idiots with pool noodles, pretending to be knights in a bog.

The sky was clear, but the moon was hidden behind a veil of clouds, leaving the marsh in near darkness. The air was thick with the smell of rotting vegetation, and the only sounds were the occasional croak of a frog and the distant hum of what I dismissed as crickets. We were laughing and swinging our foam swords when I caught a glimpse of something white among the reeds.

I stopped Kevin and pointed. About thirty feet away, a figure stood at the water’s edge. It was a girl, or at least it looked like one, with long, black hair that fell like a curtain over her face. She wore a tattered wedding dress, the fabric hanging in shreds and dripping with dark water. Her feet were not visible, as if she floated just above the murky surface.

We froze, our laughter dying in our throats. My heart pounded so loud I thought it would betray us. Kevin’s grip on his noodle sword was white-knuckled. The girl began to move, walking slowly along the bank, her steps silent. As she moved, a low thrumming sound started, growing louder, almost like the beating of helicopter blades, but wrong and off-key.

The noise seemed to come from all around us, from the reeds, from the water, from the sky. It wasn’t a helicopter; it was more like a guttural, humming lullaby, a haunting melody that made my skin crawl. It grew louder as the girl turned her head slightly, as if listening, and then she stopped and began to walk directly toward us.

We didn’t dare move. The hum was now a vibration in our bones, and I could see that the girl’s dress was not just white but had a sickly glow, like the light of a dying firefly. She moved as if she were gliding, and in the dim light, I noticed her feet did not touch the ground; they hovered above the mud, leaving no trail.

Time seemed to stretch. We watched for what felt like an eternity, but it was probably only a few minutes. Then, as suddenly as it started, the hum stopped, and the girl vanished, dissolving into the darkness like mist. We didn’t speak; we just turned and ran, not stopping until we were back in the parking lot, gasping for air.

Kevin never spoke about that night again. He moved away a few months later, and I can’t blame him. But I stayed, partly out of stubbornness, partly because I couldn’t shake the memory. And now, a year later, I’m convinced the girl is not finished. I see her in my peripheral vision, standing at the edge of the streetlights, her hair obscuring her face. I hear that hum in my sleep, and when I wake, my window is open, even though I locked it.

Last night, I saw her in my bathroom mirror for a split second, right behind me. When I spun around, there was nothing. But on the mirror, written in condensation, was a single word: ‘Mine.’ I tried to rub it away, but it only smeared, and now I’m writing this from my car in a motel parking lot forty miles away. I thought I could escape, but as I look out the windshield, I see a figure standing at the edge of the lot, in that same tattered dress. And I can hum that melody, even with the windows rolled up.