Content warning. May contain spoilers.

suicidal thoughts

a short story by Jule Heyen

There’s an old story, they whisper it on the coast, that tells the tale of the woman in grey. She stands on the sands of cold beaches, on cloudy days, her dress as dark as the sea and the sky minutes before a storm. She stands there, waiting. Waiting for what? No one could ever tell me. She leaves with the sun and returns with the storm, the wind moving her dress as if pulled by invisible hands.

She’s a spirit, they say. Fragile as a seashell, and just as common. She won’t hurt you, unless you hurt her first.

How would I hurt her if she’s a spirt? The children ask.

With cruel words and broken promises.

The elders use the story as a cautionary tale, a lesson to teach children not to gossip and lie. But they don’t really believe in her, so neither do their children.

These children later make up their own stories, their own explanations. She’s a ghost, they say. A woman who drowned. A tragic accident, one says, murder, the other. A suicide, they finally agree. They joke around. But none of them ever dares to go up to her.

You ask her, one says. I dare you. 

She’s scary. I want to go home.

Fine, I’ll do it then.

That child was never seen again.

She’s a curse, the parents later tell me. She drags you out there, faster than you can swim. As if your legs are tied to the ocean floor. Hopeless. They start believing in her, then.

They cry and scream and beg and curse, but their child doesn’t return.

She was already there back in my day, when I first visited, my father would tell me as a child. A warning of the sea and its cold, cruel arms. He always looked sad when he talked about her. Years later, I find out why.

She took your mother, too. Faster than your eyes could follow. One minute there, gone the next. Dragged to the bottom of the sea, never to be seen again. Well, she… He pauses. He doesn’t want to talk about it, he says.

I ask him again, weeks later.

Well, she was seen again. That was the worst part. The tides take and the tides return. A beautiful woman in a beautiful dress.

I never knew much about my mother. She died long before I could remember her. But I know she believed in the woman, so I do, too.

She was there the first time I ever saw the northern sea. The dark grey of her dress almost blending into the waves, her hair blowing in the wind. Just as described. She wasn’t looking at me, had her back turned. Instead, she stared out at the sea. Watching. Waiting.

Waiting for what? I later ask.

The men and women that went away and never returned, the elders say. She warns you not to journey out too far, not to test your limits. To respect the sea.

I don’t quite believe their stories, but I do believe in her.

When I finally see her again, after weeks of sunshine, she is looking back at me. Something inside me seems to recognise her. Grey dress, grey sky, grey sea. She smiles and turns and walks away. Out into the sand flats.

I know I’m not supposed to go, the water’s coming, any minute now.

I follow her, regardless.

They weren’t entirely wrong, the elders and the children and my father. She does tell you of the sea. But she is no warning. She’s a lure. She pulls you in, slowly, invisibly. Before you notice it’s much too late.

I feel the cold water soaking though my shoes. And yet I keep walking. I see her there, in the distance, always just out of reach. Just a little further, I think. And then I realise that I can’t see the land anymore.

See, they warn you of the tides. But they never say just how tempting it is to stay just a little longer and go just a little further. They don’t warn you how you’ll feel in control until you’re drowning. They didn’t tell me she was waiting for me.

And, just like my mother before me, I sink.