My great-grandfather was a doctor. He was a man with true nerves of steel and a lion’s heart. He had gone to London and learnt medicine, coming back to his rural extremely backwater to practice and give back to the community.
He had many great stories to tell. This was one of them.
He had gone to attend a call from a patient in a very remote village, further away from his own. It had gotten very late, and he was worried if he would be able to make it in time for the last train. After he left the house, he noticed a lady, dressed in clothes that were almost rags, following him. After a while of her following him, he turned around and confronted her.
“Can I help you? Why are you following me?”
The lady broke down in tears, summarily saying , “Sir, please you must help my son! He has taken very ill. Please sir, I beg of you!”
My great-grandfather was moved and decided to follow the woman. He was led to a small house beside a pond, wherein lay a young boy, no more than 12 years old, on a dismal bed of a sheet draped over hay. The boy had indeed taken quite gravely ill.
My great-grandfather gave him a little medicine to bring down his fever, and took out what little medicines he had in his case to give to the mother. Turning around, he saw the woman standing very near him, with an alarmingly odd look in her eyes. Chalking it up to her desperate concern for her child, he handed her the medicines and said “I’m sorry, but this is all I have at hand now. Please give them to him at 2 hour intervals. I will bring back more tomorrow.” He noticed that odd look fade from her eyes a little, confirming to him that it was indeed simply concern for her sick child.
However, she looked back at him and the eerie gaze seemed to have returned twofold “I can not pay you for this…” she trailed off. He replied “I require no payment. It is my duty to live in the service of people. You just need to steer me to the train station.” The woman looked at him, but now the strange gaze had become most normal. She have him the directions to the closest station after leading him back onto the path, thanked him and left.
He came just in time; as the train was starting to leave the station. He raced up to it and managed to climb onto the last compartment.
He returned the next day, carrying more than adequate medicine for the poor boy. However, no matter how much he looked he couldn’t find neither the woman nor the house. It was then he decided to ask the villagers for their whereabouts. However, whenever he did, the person who he talked who look very alarmed and promptly go away from him, telling him they knew of no such woman or child or house. Ultimately, after the fifth person he asked tried to do the same thing, he refused to let go of the man and pressured him to spill the truth. Not wanting to get on the bad side of a not only renowned, but also very charitable doctor, the man opened up about what the matter was.
Long ago, long before my great-grandfather was even born, there lived that woman and her son. Widowed at a young age, she barely made ends meet, doing all sorts of odd jobs around the village just to keep her baby boy fed. But there aren’t a lot of jobs in a village for a young widow, so things got worse every day. Things turned grim when her son fell ill. She would ‘serve’ passing men at the station to earn a few coins just so the boy’s life would drag to the next day. One day, the man, she was serving turned out to be some fancy doctor. She begged and begged for him to just take a look, but that doctor stormed off, without even paying her, telling her that he was disgusted and his night was ruined.
The boy died that very night. And his mother drowned herself in the pond beside their house.
The place had since been avoided by other villagers. Some had seen her ghost from a distance, late at night, and left, spending the night in any house that was nearby, figuring they had better chances of surviving at a stranger’s place than meeting with her. And for good cause too. She would lure the unknowing to her house, grab them when their back was turned and then drown them in the pond. It was said that her wrath was terrible specially for doctors. Such had been the situation that most doctor circles warned peers not to attend calls in that village, and if they did, not to pay attention to any beautiful women asking for help after following them to the station.
The man even led my great-grandfather to a place near the infamous site, close enough to see but far enough to be safe. To his disbelief, he saw the pond was practically a swamp and the house was but a broken down, abandoned shack that looked like the next storm could raze it to the ground. The path that he had so clearly walked just last night had such thick and dense overgrowth that a horse, let alone a man, wouldn’t be able to pass through it.
As my great-grandfather stood there in shock, the man remarked, “Maybe it was because you said you live in the service of people, that you truly managed to live. No other person, not to mention a doctor, has met her vengeful spirit and lived to tell the tale. We and the police usually have to fish the drowned bodies out of the swamp after they are reported missing.”