Dark River

fictionspawn Aak, , , ,

Rowing Hand Aak fictionspawn

He set out on the water. She would be back today. He couldn’t wait to see her. He wish he had gone with her that day two weeks ago. There had been no way.

They say he can be seen on dark nights. They say he swore he would look for her every day, and he’s incapable of breaking his promise.

He arrived at the other shore. She should come soon, he was waiting for the glorious moment she would come running towards him from the edge of the forest.

Why didn’t she come?

He waited. For hours and hours he waited. Eternal moments went by. No one came. Rain started falling.

Darkness fell. He needed to get back. He was wet and cold, and she probably wouldn’t come today. Tears ran down his cheeks as he set the boat out. He could feel the wind rise.

She was held back, the old man said, looking out on the water. The river ran wide and deep on these parts.

That’s sad. The boy looked at his grandfather. What happened to him?

The little boat was thrown back and forth. He tried to row, he tried to keep it straight. He lost sight of the orientation point on the shore. The place he had promised to meet her.

The storm took him. Caught him by surprise. The wind rises fast sometimes.

So he’s hoping she’ll come back some day…

That’s what he’s hoping, young one. But she won’t. Her bones are buried deep in the forest somewhere. Somewhere long forgotten.

His tears mixed with the cold water. The strong stream pulled him down. He had promised he would be there to meet her. He would row back tomorrow. Tomorrow and the days to come.

http://www.americanfolklore.net/spooky-stories.html

http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/features/heritage/old-belfast-ghost-stories

Letters

Published by fictionspawn Aak

Norwegian trilingual writer and illustrator. Contact information in my Gallery.

31 Comments

    1. Thank you. Sometimes I look at pictures in search engines to get an idea of how things are in reality. In this one I needed to have a look at some water in movement for the part in front of the boat, but I always have to adapt it to the drawing. The rest in this one is drawn from memory and imagination.

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        1. Hard to say, it depends. On this one I spent the evening thursday, and had the story written and the pencil part of the drawing finished. Yesterday I was busy doing other things, and I started with the ink at… maybe one thirty PM CET, and had the post published at four thirty more or less. So about three hours inking, editing and publishing. So… maybe six hours all in all, I guess.

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        2. Thanks for the answer. I’m trying to reconcile the obvious professional nature of your work with the time spent vis-a-vis the common conception that a “blog” is a part time thing. Now, I’m trying to make no assumptions here, but it would seem that 3-6 hours of concerted work would not qualify as “part-time”. Is that safe to say in your case? You needn’t answer if I wander into realms unwelcome.

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  12. Sad and very striking ending with this line: “Her bones are buried deep in the forest somewhere.”

    minor suggestion — add a semicolon after “come soon” to correct a comma splice.

    I’m not sure if the three short sentences in the opening paragraph create good sentence flow. I found it a bit jarring. You might correct it by deleting the fifth sentence. Just my opinion.

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