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.

Abigail stood at the old wooden gate and stared at the farmhouse. Old. Unkempt. Rotting. Like the bodies inside. None of that bothered her. It was the silence. The last good Samaritan had expired so quickly. Was that why the crows and ravens had left? Turning, Abigail started to walk away. She’d only gone a short way down the road when she heard an engine. She ducked behind the tall grass. Her pulse raced and her stomach growled. She had to be sure it wasn’t another annoying townsman. They had tried burning her at the stake at least seventy-five times in three hundred years. And don’t even get her started on the attempted drownings. Rude. Of course, she wasn’t a witch. But they still tried to kill her like she was one. Whatever she was… older. More powerful. The car stopped at the gate. What were they doing? The car backed up slightly and turned down the path. Sighing, she stepped onto the road. Annoyance throbbed behind her left eye. They were going to try to burn down her home again. People were so rude. She marched up the drive, jaw clenched, hands balled into fists. Today was ruined. It would take all her energy to deal with whoever was in the car. No finding a good Samaritan for her playhouse. She smiled briefly. They hadn’t come to die, but die they would and that gave her some joy. Neither of them was going to have the day they planned. **** Madison’s grandmother had always said there were places where the world held its breath. Where evil lived unchecked. She didn’t believe her. Until now. The farmhouse stood exactly where the hand-drawn map promised it would, leaning beneath a sky the color of dirty wool. Every window reflected only gray clouds, though she could have sworn one curtain had just fallen back into place. Her grandmother’s dying request had sent her here. “Your mother’s bones are there. Her soul is tormented. It screams to me, but I’ve always been too weak to go. You’re stronger.” What that meant, Madison had no idea, but she agreed to give the old woman peace of mind. Madison was a person of her word, even if everyone else believed the dying woman had lost her mind. With a final look at the map and the house, Madison shut off the engine. Her grandmother’s spirit would be happy she came. Glancing up in the rearview mirror, she saw a girl. A young girl walked up the muddy track. Her hair hung in muddy clumps. Her nightdress dirty, torn, and fashioned like something from the early 13th century. Jumping out of the car, she ran toward the little girl. “Oh, my dear, are you okay? Let me help you. Is there someone I can call?” Abigail smiled. Her day had improved. “Thank you for your kindness. You are a good Samaritan,” she said, then added under her breath, “And no good deed must go unpunished.”