“Chase! Where are you going?” “It’s over Dixon - you’re such a loser!” “Wait for me!” “I have waited - for too long - I not waiting anymore!” “I can’t keep up, Chase!” “Exactly!” She laughed with glee at her pathetic - Ex-boyfriend… She knew he was no good and now she had Jack. He was in town with his family. They rocked in on bikes and in trucks. They didn’t plan to hang around - just what Chase needed - a fling and be damned with the consequences. Chase had run straight from church and went to meet Jack at the old Damson house - no one lived there now, not since Flick Damson had gone missing… - ten years ago. Jack. Stood At The Door Chase ran to him. He smelled of cigarettes and bike oil. He kissed her, not like Dixon ever had - Jack felt hungry. He kicked the door open behind him. They were not alone. All of the travellers were there, including one wearing Flick Damson’s famous summer dress. But this was not her this was an old woman, all wrinkles and teeth. Sharp.Teeth. Fangs. “That’s Flick Damson’s coat!” Chase said pointlessly. “Nothing is ever wasted. My sister likes your shoes.” Jack took her and bit down hard with his own fangs - before the rest joined the feast.

There are places on the Somerset Levels where the mist refuses to lift. Even at noon, when the sun burns bright beyond the hills, there are hollows where the light never settles. The old people used to say the land was remembering itself. Now they simply avoid those paths altogether. Beyond one such hollow stands a forgotten farmhouse, half-swallowed by willow and blackthorn. The roof has long since fallen. The well has filled with rainwater the colour of old iron. No map gives the house a name anymore. Yet every generation speaks of the little girl. She walks the drove road barefoot after dusk, her white shift stained brown with peat and marsh water. Her hair hangs across her face as though the wind itself refuses to look upon her. She never calls out. She simply watches anyone foolish enough to cross the moor after dark. The oldest records claim she disappeared during the winter of 1816—the Year Without Summer—when crops failed across Somerset and cattle died where they stood. That is only half the truth. When the hunger came, the people of the hamlet returned to customs their grandparents had sworn were buried beneath the church floor generations before. They spoke again of the Old Keeping. Before every village had a church... before Burrow Mump carried a tower... before the bells rang over the Levels... there were families whose duty was to keep certain places asleep. Every generation offered a Keeper. Not a sacrifice. A promise. A child born beneath a black moon would remain upon the land until death, tending forgotten boundaries where the living were never meant to wander. So long as the Keeper remained willingly, the marsh kept its dead beneath the water. For centuries, the covenant held. Until one winter, fear proved stronger than duty. The girl's parents fled. Rather than allowing their daughter to choose the burden that had belonged to their bloodline for hundreds of years, they abandoned her upon the moor and barred the farmhouse door against her cries. By dawn, she was gone. When the villagers returned, they found only her footprints circling the house. Hundreds of them. Small bare feet. Round and round. Never leading away. The boundary had broken. Something beneath the peat had awakened—not a creature, nor a devil, but the ancient memory of every forgotten death the marsh had ever swallowed. The bogs began yielding their dead. Lantern lights wandered where no hands carried them. Entire flocks vanished into pools no deeper than a man's boot. The family disappeared within a fortnight. Some say they drowned in six inches of water. Others insist they are still walking somewhere beyond the reeds, forever searching for the daughter they refused to claim. As for the girl... She remains. She cannot cross running water. She cannot enter a churchyard. When strangers ask her the way, she only points back toward the ruined farmhouse. If they follow, they find nothing. If they refuse... The mist follows them home. Old folk still leave a small rushlight burning in their windows on Samhain and Midwinter's Eve—not to guide lost travellers... ...but so the little girl remembers that someone, at last, kept their promise. Because the greatest lie ever told about the Somerset moors is that they bury their dead. They do not. They keep them.

The twilight was early, and Nicola swept towards the simple structure. A wooden slatted bucolic farmhouse typical of this part of state. Some thought it old, but it wasn’t, it had only been there for about sixty years at the most. It was, nonetheless, abandoned and perfect for her scheme. Its raised veranda looked twee even to Nicola’s eye, and she had tried to gaze upon it favourably; though she was the last person who would. Tonight it began. Everyone wondered how the tales of creepy houses and urban legends began. Nicola was going to start her own, here in the woods beyond Arkham. Here she would chant and sing blasphemous oaths to the old gods of beyond. She knew that this was the night that the old Miskatonic University bus would pass the house, just before it hit the caltrops in the road. The students would find no comfort here, though drawn by the voice. They would all live to tell the tale, of course, that was the point, but only after they found the dessicated remains of Professor Grove in the basement. Nicola would slip away, having witnessed the terror of her prey, and cackle from her seat in the woods. The legend begins.