Mrs B C Moore

Jonathan's Children Mrs B C Moore

Tenants living on the banks of the Mersey once spoke humorously, of their `non-paying guests`. Small children, animals seen mostly out the corner of the eye, a shadow on the stairs. Then slowly it changed, not so funny now, their whimpering and scampering about in the dead of the night. The elderly shivered in their beds, they pulled the sheets to cover their face, as they watched the shadowy children, they glared back, with gaunt faces, hardly human. ?Lost souls? the old folk whispered, as they crossed themselves. The hauntings became omens, always followed by terrible events. The tenant?s children were out of control, wicked and angry. The young men in particular, fell into deep depressions, unable to cope with the sightings and sounds when they were alone. They felt unable to confide,who would believe them? Where had they come from? Why had they attached themselves to the riverside dwellings? Who was Jonathan? They heard his name called eerily in the darkness by a young girl. What part of history had landlocked them, or had they always been there? If the tenants had known the battle that was going on to capture their children?s spirits, they would have fled as far as they could, from the murky, haunted, waters of the river.