Chapter 3: 03: the uninvited guest

Maude MacNeill, according to the archived newspapers Maggie read the next day at the local library, had gone missing on July 17th, 1932, when she was merely twenty-one years old.

The pretty milkmaid with her fiery red curls had last been seen by her brother, leaving the local chapel with a group of fellow attendees. They'd enjoyed lunch together before splitting off their separate ways, with Maude opting for a stroll along the cliffs near Geadais Cottage. She'd never returned home.

Naturally, the possibility that she'd fallen to her untimely demise was the first thing that had crossed the village's collective minds but there was no trace of her. Maggie noted that several of the old newspapers made mention of baobhan sith - legends of beautiful women that lured men to their deaths. Apparently, a mere week before Maude's disappearance, a local farm boy had been slaughtered. Maggie gave it no thought: after all, the folklore stated these bloodsucking fey were only after men. If Maude had encountered one, it would have killed her; not whisked her away to some faerie realm. So where had Maude gone?

Maggie was fairly certain she'd found the answer, buried underneath the old barn in Geadais Cottage. At least, Maggie assumed it was her - there was no way to be sure but the locket lying on the floor and the way Uncle Francis had requested the area be left undisturbed told her all she needed to know. Maggie had cleaned up her locket and sat it out on the table in the drawing room but as she sat in front of the roaring flames that cold autumn night, she began to wonder.

Did Great Uncle Francis have a hand in her demise?

After all, why wouldn't he have told the police about her body? Given the family some closure, at least? And what exactly had happened to the poor girl? Maybe he'd entrusted the farm to his sole living relative because he thought she would leave the place alone, as per his wishes. Maggie had hoped Geadais Cottage would be a fresh start for her but now, she felt like she was caught up in a murder investigation. She was going to inform the authorities: that much was certain.

Night came and Maggie doused the fire before retiring to bed. There was a storm brewing outside - she could hear the wind moaning outside the cottage but there was no distant rattling tonight. With a sigh, she pulled the mountain of duvets over herself and closed her eyes.

It happened around 2am. A great bang roused her from her slumber as an ice-cold wind howled through the cottage. Frustrated, she got out of bed, swinging her feet into her slippers as she threw open the door, expecting to find one of the boarded-up windows with the planks blown off. Instead, she stopped in her tracks.

There, in the hallway, illuminated by the sickly pale glow of the autumn moon as it streamed in from behind the open front door, stood a woman. The grotesque figure was doubled over, leering, its head hanging loosely to one side as though there were no muscles or bones in its neck. A ripped and stained nightgown flapped in the wind as Maggie felt her heart crash through the floor like steel. Maggie was speechless: she'd locked the doors and windows and yet somehow, an intruder stood in her new home.

Suddenly, the figure began to approach. Its movements were slow, strained and it stumbled clumsily through the cottage. Its arms and legs were barely recognisable - bones jutted out strapped with dried skin pulled tightly against the limbs - but the face... Oh, God, the face.

Empty sockets hung low in the face, framed by some scraggly red curls, still attached to what little remained of the scalp. A raspy, unearthly rattle came from decayed lungs, or what little remained of them, as the abhorrent thing tried to make its way through the cottage, towards Maggie. It tilted its head up and she caught a glimpse of gleaming fangs, glittering like unholy crystals in the moonlight.

As she stared in disgust, her jaw agape, and eyes unblinking in terror, she realised with great dread that the metal debris through the coffin was not, in fact, a piece of metal that had fallen.

It was a metal stake.

It had been driven through the torso but missed the heart that now pulsed with unholy energies as the shuffling horror crept through the house. She realised why she'd been warned to leave the cellar alone: the iron chain. The rattling in the night air wasn't the wind: it was...it was Maude. And Maggie knew from childhood tales that the fey despise iron. Oh God, what had she done?

Something took over Maggie: it was a frenzied madness, a need to escape, a deep, primordial urge to flee and never look back, to escape this dark, unholy creature of undeath. She turned on her heel and fled, bursting through the backdoor leading out of the kitchen and ran into the freezing, black night.

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