LAMASHTU'S CHILD...

This story came from reading Diana Purkiss's rather good book 'Troublesome Things' about fairys and fairytales, and their lineage/links to classical myth.

This came in pretty much one splurge. It was just there. The voice and the story and where it was going. Except for a tweak at the end about a year later. I still keep wanting to make little changes. I'm never quite sure if it works. Or is firing on all cylinders. But re-reading it, I like it. And it kickstarted me to get back to work on screenplays, not least a screenplay for this. Much as the story came in one go pretty much fully formed. So re-reading it, I could see completely how to make it work. What to change to make it work dramatically. I think it's really good. I'm excited for it...


LAMASHTU'S CHILD by Neil Snowdon


My baby lies dead… as blue as beaten lead. It seems only days since he was crimson with my blood, then pink with health.

He screamed until he died. And I screamed over him, bathed his corpse in my tears. But still he did not move, and he did not wake, and the blue of his flesh became darker still, cold and ashen grey.

He would not take my breast when offered. Clawed and wailed to be away from it. His skin then was scarlet and hot to the touch, a coal from out the fire, and I put him down in his cot, and I cooled him with damp cloth and ice… but nothing would soothe him and nothing would stop his burning and his cries.

My mother will not touch him, and wishes for me to burn or bury the child with haste. But I cannot throw him in the fire… I cannot put him in the earth. He is my child, though he has no name, and that, my mother says, was his curse.

She will not say the name to me, but I can read it in her eyes what she is thinking. She will not speak the name of the thing that took my baby… to name it is to give it power, to invoke it is to invite its curse upon you… but its curse is here, in the tainted flesh of my child, my baby, by tiny little boy…

My mother is old, and the people of the island laugh at her as she speaks in riddle and rhyme, of ancient evils and ancient cure… but still I know her truth, and I will not take it light. The cobwebs she applied to my childhood knees healed every scrape and cut, and the herbs and words that nightly she said and wrote, burned in fires or hung by window and threshold, have long kept our home safe and free from fear and harm. The bowls of milk and food left for creatures and peoples that no-one now believes in, still are empty and dry come morning, and our crops and flowers blossom and bloom, unblighted by insect or disease.

I know the name of the thing that took my baby, the name that my mother dare not speak… for she told me the tales in my youth, as a child, as I shivered and shook and pulled the blankets higher in the cold and the quiet of night, when every sound awoke suspicion and terror in me. I hear her as she tells me now, of what it is that I must do… but still the grey blue thing in the cot by my bed is mine, of me… and I cannot bury myself. He is my child, a piece of me, grown of my body and expelled in to life. And he was stolen… by another, who inhabits the dark, and whose lust for my child seduced it from my love.

I want him back. Within me, where he was, in my darkness, inside me, protected… a part of me again. I did not mean to expel him. It was too early, and he did not know… and in confusion, and in his pain, She offered him comfort, and She offered him silence, and She gave him peace.


Mother is sleeping, and the house is very quiet. The weight of night has settled and I can feel the darkness pressing on the house; its silent scream fills my ears, rings inside my bones, tightens my flesh all over. I am staring at my baby… he looks so beautiful still. Though his skin is the colour of a fading bruise, he looks beautiful… but so silent and so sad.

There is but a whisper of hair to his head: a dark, dark brown that looks almost black. It is so soft to the touch that I wonder if I am dreaming. Or if I cannot feel anymore… but I can feel his chill, and the shape of his skull, the soft orbs beneath his eyelids…

‘Lamashtu…’

In the dark, in the quiet, I dare to whisper Her name: She who stole my child from me, and who fed upon his life. She whose name my mother fears, and whose touch is still so common, but so rarely given blame. So few now know her, yet she eats so well. I can see her now, in the corner of my room, in the shadows, watching me, beckoning me… her breasts are full and leaking something viscous and dark. I cannot see her face, but her body is lithe, and at her taloned feet there is an animal… a dog or a pig, in the moonlight I cannot tell which, but it is pawing at her and licking at the fluid that runs from her breasts and down her legs…

I look to my baby, and I whisper again…

‘Lamashtu…’

And he wakes…

He opens his eyes and he looks at me with such longing… such longing…

She is gone now… the room is empty, but for me and my child… my baby… but She beckons from behind his eyes… and I bend to hold him close and kiss his cold flesh with my warm lips. And then I bite deeply and I feast, tearing his flesh and swallowing it down. I can taste Her in his cold meat, Her sweet taint amidst the sourness and the copper of his blood. It swirls in me, in my mouth, and in my guts, in my veins and in my mind, singing to me and soothing my pain, tending the wounds and the scars within me. From deep inside I can feel myself bleeding, feel the blood tickling down my legs… feel my life as was, washing away from me as my child is brought back to me, born again inside me, a part of me again… and She too is with us. She is with me… and in me, and together we love Our child and protect him and nourish him as he does Us… We are his mother now, and We shall never leave him.

I feel filled. My body feels alive. I feel like dancing…

Outside, the night is cold; it caresses me and raises goose-bumps on my skin. I am a cold fire, burning white in the darkness. My pale skin reflects the stars. I am dressed only in moonlight and in shadows as I walk, on the road and on the grass… I can feel the grit and the dirt beneath me, every blade of grass between my toes… the wind is in my hair and my eyes, chilling the blood that still trickles in crimson streams down my legs… and I can hear it talking. There are voices on that wind, blown from distant shores, from distant years and centuries… I can hear them, and they are getting louder.

Our village sits at the foot of a hill, and from the top I can see for miles. Over the twinkling lights of the village and the harbour, over the sea to the mainland, to the city… to the neon lights and the buildings, to the people who know little of me and my Sister and the child we are mother to… and the hunger that is beginning inside us. It is only an itch, distant and deep, but it is building. Strange, how soon We feel unsatisfied, how soon We begin to need once more…

But still, the wind is talking to me, and my eyes are wide and I can see for miles and miles and miles… across centuries of land and people and time… from this island, from atop this hill, I can see forever…

I can see the skeins of worlds, and feel the pulsing of the stars.

And I can hear the children calling; crying out and calling to me… and I will go to them. To each and every one. And I will comfort them, and I will hold them and I will kiss them with my love. My body is beauty, comfort and love. My milk tastes sweet, but is sour with age…

Come drink from me child, I will help you sleep...

Let me nourish you…

Feed me your love and you will live inside me forever…

I can hear the children calling me, crying across the centuries, through nights across Time for my love…

I will attend to you all in time. I will come and suckle you, and hold you in my arms. I will love you more than anyone ever could my child. And I will keep you with me always… your mother is no good for you, only I can sate your cries. Come to me, and dream forever…