Midnight’s Fables

Bloody Bones

You’ve been wandering through Midnight’s Museum for some time now, still thinking on your predicament as well as Midnight’s first tale of Edgar and the Windigo he became. You tried to ask Midnight about the man who got eaten first, the Native American man who the colonists killed and ate. Midnight just shrugged and told you his name wasn’t important to the story. Midnight, it seems, doesn’t care about people. They... she... he... it… it only cares about the stories, about being scary, about the horror and the tragedy. The people that lived through that story, and Midnight assured you it was entirely true, are of no interest or value to the strange silhouette of a figure.

You are trapped in the Museum of a storyteller who cares not for those who live through its stories, only for collecting those stories for it to tell.

In short; a monster. You know now you are trapped in the home of a monster. And it will only set you free so long as you ask it to return you to the moment of your death. You are trapped, living a horror of your own.

Well... might as well pass the time.

“What’s the story behind this one?” you ask, gesturing to a child’s toy, made from straw and scratchy cloth. It rests within a glass box upon a pedestal, its own spotlight shining down upon it from the ceiling far, far above.

“Ah, yes, little Miss Thatcher and the tale of Mabel Eade,” Midnight muses like a wine connoisseur tasting an excellent vintage. “A tragic tale of loss, and a warning for all. The year was 1362, almost four centuries before Edgar’s tale, in the small town of Low Hagg on the northern Yorkshire moors...”

***

“Now Mabel, dear,” Mother said softly, “you know better than to go peeking in places you know you aren’t meant to. You know there’s nothing good or safe under the stairs. If you keep going peeking, it’s only a matter of time before Rawhead and Bloody Bones comes and gets you!”

Mabel nodded earnestly, shaking with fear and silent tears, clutching her doll Miss Thatcher close to her head as she stared up in terror at Mother’s stern expression.

“No, Mama, no!” Mabel wept with fear, trembling so terribly. “No, I don’t want Mister Blood Bones to get me!”

“Then don’t go peeking in silly places,” Mother reiterated. “Not under the house nor under the stairs nor under anywhere you know you oughtn’t be looking!”

“Yes, Mama!” Mabel nodded, her little head bobbing with such fear.

At last Mother’s stern expression broke and she smiled softly at her little girl. “Good girl. Now, go outside and play with your sister.”

Mabel didn’t need to be told twice, and soon she was nothing but a blur of hair and dress as she ran out the door into the yard where her older sister was making daisy chains.

“Bloody Bones?” Father asked as he came into the hallway, woodaxe in hand. “Really? My mother used to tell me of that story when I was a boy. It didn’t stop me and it won’t stop her. You need to tell her the truth. Children too easily dismiss fairytales and monsters. They think magic will save them, or that we will know they are in danger and always be there to protect them. The marl pits are dangerous enough on their own without an invented monster, love. We should tell them the truth. That the town is built on marshlands. That there are pits, like the one under our own house, that may look like puddles or shallow ponds, but are deeper than even I can stand tall. We don’t need them having nightmares about Rawhead and Bloody Bones. We need them to know the dangers of the pits.”

Mabel’s mother sighed and shook her head. “Peace, love. She is too young to understand. We must frighten her with a monster. She cannot conceive of a deep puddle, so we must make up monsters for her to understand. You think that if Bloody Bones did not keep you away, the truth would have stopped you as a boy?”

Father sighed heavily, but offered no argument. There was no point, she was always right.

Outside, Mabel and her sister continued to play, making daisy chains and chasing one another around and around the garden. Abigail was six, a whole year older than her sister, and she made up all the best games, as far as Mabel was concerned. The most recent game she had acquired, was called ‘Jobs’, in which Abigail gave Mabel jobs to do, and the younger sister had to perform them. You might find these so-called-Jobs more akin to dares, but neither of the girls were concerned with such a technicality.

“Jump up and down five times,” might be one such Job, or “find me six acorns and a dock leaf.”

Today, however, Abigail had a new Job in mind. She knew Mabel liked to go exploring in places she shouldn’t, and while she had been outside making daisy chains, she had heard her mother scolding her sister for looking around places she shouldn’t be going.

“Your next Job,” Abigail proudly announced. “Is to knock on the cupboard door under the stairs and say ‘Hello, Mister Rawhead. Would you like to be my friend?’”

Mabel’s face became a mask of shock and horror as she struggled to grasp the task she had been given.

“But... Mama and Dada say I shouldn’t!” the younger sister protested with fright. “They said he’s going to get me!”

“And what will he do if he does?” Abigail taunted. “They didn’t say what because he won’t do anything. He doesn’t exist!”

“He does too exist!” Mabel squealed. “Mama and Dada wouldn’t lie to me!”

“And I would?” Abigail asked in that way only big sisters can. That gave Mabel reason for pause, and she frowned, her little forehead creasing as her little frown covered her face.

“I... I don’t...,” she began, but faltered.

“You don’t want to get in trouble? Boring! Come, see!” Abigail taunted, before turning and running off. She went down the side of the house, where the ground sloped and the wooden beams that the small home was built upon bowed. A long muddy puddle sat here, running along the bottom of the shallow ditch and under the house. Abigail began banging on the wood at the side of the house and loudly said, “knock, knock, knock! Mister Rawhead and Bloody Bones! Hello! Are you there?” Abigail asked loudly, louder perhaps than she had meant to, but all of it for Mabel’s benefit.

The younger sister turned white as a sheet as Abigail kept banging on the wooden boards and shouting to Bloody Bones.

And then she slipped.

And quick as a flash, Abigail was gone. She vanished into the puddle with a great splash and disappeared from view.

Mabel screamed.

“Mabel?!” Mother shouted as she and Father came running around the corner of the house. “Abigail?! What happened? What-...?”

She fell silent as she saw her younger daughter standing alone, the water of the marl pit rippling from the elder sister’s disappearance.

“God Almighty!” Father swore and surged forth, diving into the puddle and vanishing as he chased after his daughter.

There came a great deal of splashing from the puddle for a moment, and though Mother tried to pull Mabel away, the little girl’s eyes remained affixed upon the scene before her.

After a moment, the puddle went still, and there was no sign of Father or Abigail from beneath the water. Mother was crying and looked like she just well may dive in herself, when Father’s head suddenly reappeared above the water, and he held aloft his daughter’s unconscious body.

Mother rushed forth to take the shivering girl from her husband’s hands while the man clambered up and out of the water, dripping wet and himself beginning to shiver with cold.

Mother rushed inside with Abigail and Father took Mabel’s hand and dragged her strongly around the corner and back into the house.

Mother sat Abigail before the fire as the shivering girl began to cough and splutter, water dribbling from her mouth as she choked down big heaving mouthfuls of air.

“Bloody Bones,” she whispered, eyes staring and wild, darting around the room as she twitched and shivered in her mother’s arms. “Bloody... Bones...”

“It’s alright love,” Mother crooned softly, stroking her daughter’s wet hair. “You’re safe now. Johnathan, help me get her clothes off, she needs to be dry to warm properly!”

Mother and Father set to work, and Mabel was sent to retrieve a blanket in which they might wrap up the cold girl to help her contain whatever warmth the fire gave her.

“Bloody Bones...,” the girl whispered once more as her eyes slowly closed and she began to breathe more softly and more easily.

“What happened,” Mother asked, her voice cool and cold, filled with a barely contained rage and panic that she was clearly trying very, very hard not to inflict upon her daughter.

“Abigail told me to go and knock for Bloody Bones. I said I didn’t want to, so she did it. I don’t know what happened, she just... slipped. And fell in,” Mabel stammered with terror, gripping Miss Thatcher tightly in her arms. “Is Abi going to be alright?”

Mother nodded, her breathing calming, and she extended an arm towards her younger daughter, who softly approached and accepted the embrace. “Abi is going to be just fine, my little one, don’t worry. And you didn’t do anything wrong. You aren’t in trouble, and what happened is not your fault, yes?”

Mabel nodded gently as she snuggled into her mother’s warmth.

“Not your fault, my love. But I hope you both now know to stay away from the pits, and well away from Bloody Bones,” Mother insisted, and again her daughter nodded gently.

“Bloody Bones,” Abigail murmured again in her sleep.

***

That night, Mabel could not sleep. Every time she closed her eyes or tried to drift away, she remembered Abigail’s scream as she fell into the marl pit. Remembered the look of terror on her mother’s face upon discovering what had happened to her daughter. Remembered the look of stony determination of her father when he had risen out of the stagnant waters like a God, holding Mabel’s older sister aloft.

“I’m sorry, Abi,” Mabel whispered to her sister, whose blanket lay on the other side of the room.

The girl had stopped shivering, but she hadn’t opened her eyes or spoken another word since being brought into the house, other than to whisper in her sleep, every now and again, the words “Bloody Bones”.

Mabel trembled in her blankets as she tried to withhold tears that would not be stopped. She cried for her sister, and for fear. What had she seen down there? Why did Abi keep whispering the monster’s name? Was he real? Had she seen him under the waters? Had he been the one to grab her and pull her under?

She heard slow, heavy footprints climb the stairs outside. The light of the oil lantern which spilled beneath the door quivered and changed, casting two long dark shadows as a figure came to rest at the top of the stairs, just outside the girls’ bedroom. The two long shadows it cast, as though from the legs of one who stood beyond the threshold, seemed unusually... thin. Father’s legs were broad and cast thick shadows, and even slender Mother’s legs were not as thin as the legs of whoever – or whatever – was stood beyond the door.

“Bloody Bones,” Abi murmured, and all too late, Mabel realised who had come to visit them.

The door began, slowly, to open, a motion that was accompanied by its usual heavy creaking of rusted hinges grinding against one another. The figure beyond the threshold, now stood in the doorway, was impossible to see clearly. Just a shape, just a shadow, but one that was unnaturally tall, unnaturally slender, and whose body contained open spaces through which Mabel could see the landing beyond. An empty chest crisscrossed by broad ribs, which were uncovered and held nothing between them. A body made only of bones.

The skeleton entered the room, with heavy footsteps, and made its way across the room to Abigail’s bed. The creature bent over and Mabel heard it... sniffing? She cried out, unable to contain her terror, as the creature sniffed her sister carefully.

“Leave her alone!” she said in her bravest voice, small though it was.

The creature turned at the sound and began to approach Mabel, its body still almost invisible in the gloom, though she could now make out the colour of its body; crimson red, like fresh raw meat.

A bony hand full of holes reached out and took Mabel by the arm, its fingers gripping her flesh like a vice. The little girl screamed, crying out, calling for her parents, begging for help, but nobody came. Abi did not stir. Mother and Father did not come running. Mabel was all alone, and Bloody Bones was taking her away.

She fought ferociously as she was pulled along, first out from her blankets, then across the room, down the stairs, out the front of the house, and around the corner. She fought and hit him, but it was no use. Its thin, skeletal body which dripped red with blood was as hard as rock, and his strength was absolute. Nothing she could do could stop the creature as it dragged her across the ground and pulled her down into its marl pit.

***

In the morning, when the family awoke, there was no sign of Mabel, or of the struggle that had taken place in the night. Father found Miss Thatcher laying in the mud beside the marl pit, but when he dove down into the waters in search of her body, he could not find her. All he could pull from the mud were old, bloody bones.