The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Wet Woman
by Elaine Pascale

“This was the day your father lost his mind,” Rose’s mother said as she pulled the photo from the box. They had been going through memories, discarding duplicates and pausing on the ones that elicited gut punches of emotions.

This comment made no sense. The picture in question was of Rose’s father as a young boy, maybe eight or nine, posing with his father while visiting the Everglades. Her grandfather’s face was obscured by a large sun hat; her father squinted at the camera, posing in front of thick fronds. How could he have lost his mind then, when he was just recently diagnosed with dementia?

Rose asked her mother that exact question.

“Both things are true, Rose Marie,” her mother chided. “He lost his mind then as a boy, and he is losing his mind now as an old man.” Rose’s mother frowned at the photo. “Let’s discard it.”

“Wait.” Rose snatched the picture from her mother. “I might want it.”

Rose’s mother clicked her tongue. “You want a reminder of nonsense? That’s when he thought he saw ‘The Wet Woman.’”

It was Rose’s turn to scold. “The Wet Woman? Dad just made her up to scare us kids. Keep us from getting too close to the water.”

Her mother shook her head sadly. “I wish.” She pointed to the room where Rose’s father was resting. “He’s always believed she was real. Very real.” Her mother smiled sardonically. “She’s almost ‘the other woman’ in our marriage.”

Rose was beginning to worry that her mother was disassociating from reality, too, and that she would have to take care of them both.

“He loses more and more every day.” Her mother said. “I just hope…”

“He doesn’t forget us?”

The older woman nodded.

Rose did not need any more of an impetus to spend time with her father. She wanted to talk to him while she still could. Mostly, she wanted to listen.

Her father sat on his recliner in her parent’s bedroom and looked to the window. He didn’t turn when Rose entered; she assumed he didn’t hear her. He became animated when she put the photo in his sights.

He nodded before saying, “That was it…that was the trip. We were there with my Uncle Ron.”

Rose couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I didn’t know you had an Uncle. Grandpa had a brother?”

He nodded sadly. “We were never to discuss him. While we were taking that picture, Uncle Ron was starting a fire for our dinner. He was moving around in the fronds when…he saw her.”

“The Wet Woman?”

He met Rose’s eyes; he looked both perplexed and relieved that someone was hearing what he was saying. “She was sitting in the water, half of her beneath the surface. The part that was showing…that was all woman. The part below…lord only knows.”

Rose nodded, encouraging him to continue.

“She was struggling with something, we couldn’t see what, but she was pleading for help. Uncle Ron, he went over and put a hand on her shoulder…” The old man paused, shuddering. “He stuck to her.”

“His hand was stuck?” Rose asked.

“Like glue. He couldn’t free himself and she dragged him into the water with her. She pulled him beneath the surface.”

“Then what, dad? What did you do?”

He shrugged. “I did nothing. I was just a kid, but your grandpa tried to find him. The water was dark, murky. He couldn’t…he couldn’t find him. Uncle Ron was gone. We reported it, of course, but no one would listen.” His voice trembled in a way that verified the story.

“My grandparents blamed my dad. They didn’t believe the story either, but they felt he had something to do with Uncle Ron’s disappearance. Dad never got over it.” He shut his eyes for a moment before saying, “No one ever believed us.”

Her father’s frustration and sorrow were finally apparent to Rose. She regretted that she and her siblings had made fun of the Wet Woman, turning her into some slumber party game. “I’m sorry that no one took you seriously.”

He shrugged again. “It’s the hand I was dealt. I’ll go to my grave with it.” He gave a doleful chuckle. “That’ll happen sooner rather than later, now.”

Rose took the photo from him and examined it closely. She could make out something dark in the fronds, a shadow. When she looked back at him, she saw a clarity in his eyes that had been missing lately.

“I want to keep this,” she told him, “I want to remember that this happened to you.” She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “And I believe you.”

.

Fiction © Copyright Elaine Pascale
Image courtesy of Pixaby.com

More from Elaine Pascale:

The Kitchen Witches

The women of Cape Cod have a story that is dying to be told. If only they could live long enough to tell it.

When Fiona Walker is contracted to write about a party attended by her social circle, her friends begin dying. She captures the competition and misery of the women around her through three different stories.

In Wishes, Melanie Voss discovers a Time Between Time where nothing that happens counts. Initially, Time Between Time is a welcome escape from a life spent watching the clock while doing chores for her family. But something sinister is in the Time Between Time and it is headed straight for Melanie.

Death and Taxes tells the story of Nashville DeCota, the Cape Capo. Nash swears that she is not the Island Impaler, nor the Tooth Snatcher, but she has just as many skeletons in her closet. When her husband, Derrick, is kidnapped, she has to come clean about her crimes if she ever wants to see him again.

Fiona tells her own story in Hazing, where she finds that the real source of evil behind the deaths of her friends is worse than she could have ever imagined.

Available on Amazon!