The Need Fairy

Easter Day

After the last incident, the attic became suddenly out of bounds and even the topic of it was now strangely taboo. Tony and Cleo had to quietly live with the fact that their precious house was possibly haunted; they also felt that if the attic hatch remained securely shut then the unquiet spirit would not disturb their everyday lives. The long Easter weekend was a chance to get back to some sort of domestic stability. They had gone out for the day on Good Friday, visiting an out of town garden centre in the day and going out to dinner in a country pub on their way home.

Friday night they lay in bed, tired but happy. The moonlight shone onto Cleo's side of the bed, it was gone midnight and she was wide awake. She glanced across enviously at Tony's bulky form, which was breathing deeply and steadily on his side.

She was chillingly aware that the sound she dreaded to hear was back. There it was now, the sobbing; gentle, far away, persistent; and then, Cleo shivered. The sobbing was not far away, it was near, very near, at the foot of the bed.

Cleo peered over the covers and saw something that stunned her. A grey, luminous girl, almost silver, stood wide-eyed and forlorn in front of the sash windows, lit up by moonlight. She was dressed in rags and clutching a threadbare teddy. When the girl spoke, a sparkling soft, melancholy sound emanated from her.

'Why won't you come and visit me anymore? I get so lonely on my own all day. I used to like it when you came up to the attic. I could hear you rustling about and singing to yourself. Didn't you like the things I found for you? Look I brought you One Eye.' The girl held up her raggedy, one-eyed teddy bear, 'Why don't you come back? I can not hurt you.'

'What are you?' Cleo said at last, with a great deal of effort.

'I don't know. I don't know what has become of me.' The girl shook her head, then stopped and looked intensely at the spellbound Cleo. 'I could be your need fairy. I can give you what you most want in the world.'

'And what do I most want?' Cleo enquired.

'Let me be your child. I need a mother. A mother like you.' The little girl pleaded.

'Any mother should be pleased to have a daughter like you.' Cleo said, warmly but sadly, remembering the pitiful story in the local paper. 'What's your name?'

'Julia.'

'Come here Julia. Would you like me to hug you?'

'No one can hug me. It is too late for that.'

'Can I kiss you then?'

'You can not hug me or kiss me. You can only remember me with love.'

Tony stirred and Cleo turned quickly in his direction and then back towards the window.

'Oh she's gone,' Cleo exclaimed.

'What's wrong?' said Tony, sleepily.

'Nothing's wrong. I love you.'

'I love you too,' murmured Tony, reaching out to take hold of his wife.

From that night on, Cleo felt that Julia had found a new home, not in the house any more, but inside her and by the middle of the following winter a new reality had arrived.

issHf\s