It was 20 May 2024, and a third dead child was discovered. Another girl.

This time, down at the River Kelvin, near the art galleries. Like the two before, the body had been found at the verges. DC Helena Hamilton had no doubt that this poor wee soul’s demise would mirror the two innocents before: she had been drowned.

Looking at the wretched, doll-like body which had once been a glorious little life, Helena could see bruising around the shoulders. She had been forced into the water and held down. Helena peered along the river, contemplating how a person could destroy young life like this. It was the face of her own daughter which reflected back from those dark waters, urging her to find the killer. I have to stop this.

The first girl, Anna Li, had been found at the White Cart, on 20 May 2022. Her death was put down to misadventure; the child had escaped her father’s notice and wandered off. But then, on 20 May 2023, JoJo Murphy, all of three years old, had been discovered on the banks of the Clyde. Helena had gone to see JoJo on the mortuary slab; and she saw her own daughter’s face stare back at her from the cold metal. This could be my Emily; I have to stop this.

The police initially put the date down to coincidence, but with JoJo, there had been a witness. A man known to the police, working through several addictions, claimed to have seen a “river hag” near where the body was found. He said the hag had been washing her hands in the river; moaning the same word over and over. Jenny.

The witness was far from credible, out of his wits, but the press got hold of him and soon enough social media sleuths had presented the city with a folk devil to fear: Jenny Greenteeth. For as long as the rivers had flowed, there had been tales of her. Jenny Greenteeth was a malevolent water spirit, a dark fairy, who would trap unwary children and drag them to a watery demise. The police were taken aback by how much the myth gripped the city anew, inspired by conspiracy stokers and devoured by the susceptible.

Soon enough, gangs of young kids patrolled the rivers using their smartphone torches to search for Jenny Greenteeth, posting scare-vids on TikTok. Jenny Greenteeth was no longer an old Brittonic myth; she was alive and stalking the riverbanks of Glasgow for children to drown. On one occasion a group of teenagers attacked an unfortunate woman who had taken to sleeping rough. The kids were in fever, convinced they had found the hag.

Now, it was Helena’s job to put this green genie back in the bottle, and get the city focused on what was needed: to dispense with the mass hypnosis, and help the police track a child killer.

Helena looked at the corpse before her, and as she shuddered with the senselessness of it, she heard a rustle from the embankment. There was a low, unnatural moaning noise. She shouted at the scene officers to flash their torches.

And then, behind a line of trees, she caught sight of a figure which would terrify her forever. Can this be real? Crouched like a panther about to pounce on its prey, a distinctly female figure was gnashing her teeth and scratching her fingers down her face. Christ, it was awful.

Helena took chase; the figure bounded through the trees into Kelvingrove Park. The creature was filthy, with a mass of black, awful hair around its head, bare feet and legs covered in cuts and bruises. Helena was chasing a ghoul.

She continued her pursuit, and all round her the trees seemed to creak in fear, and the flow of the river seemed to howl a warning. Her senses told her to flee, to leave the supernatural to the elements. But then, she thought of those little bodies; those lost innocents. She saw Emily’s face again. What if it were Emily? She has to be stopped. Helena, renewed, bounded through the wood, but the figure had disappeared as if a figment.

Two officers rushed behind her with torches. Helena ordered them round in a pincer, to flush out their quarry. They moved off, Helena was alone, her rationality receding in the dark.

Then: an aching scream. The ghoul dropped from a tree; scratching and gouging. Helena was quick, throwing her attacker to the dirt. As soon as she gripped it, her senses returned. If she could feel it, it was real. This was no spirit.

Helena grabbed the figure by the shoulders and looked into her face; it was a terrible face. But it was the face of a woman. A woman driven mad; a woman who had lost herself.

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They found out later her name was Peggy Hewlett. She had a daughter, Jenny, taken from her by cancer, and in her awful grief Peggy had lost her job, her marriage, her home, her sanity. She became a wraith; and then, a revenant. She had tried to snatch other girls on the date of her daughter’s birthday, to somehow take the place of her Jenny, and drowned them. She was the broken mother of a dead daughter. Now, three other daughters were dead; three other mothers were broken.

Even these days, Helena thought, there is power in fable; people had been so quick to believe in fairy tales when the truth was more heartbreaking. Here, there had been no Jenny Greenteeth, no imp or dark fairy dragging young girls to watery graves. No, the truth was that of a grieving mother, twisted into something inhuman. When Helena had looked into the dreadful eyes of the ghoul which Peggy had become; she had seen herself. She could be me. I could be her.

And that, she thought with a shudder, was worse than any nefarious water spirit.

It was much worse.

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JS Apsley is a mystery and noir author based in Glasgow, Scotland. He won the Ringwood Short Story Prize 2024 and has placed over 30 short stories in publications around the world in 2025. See www.jsapsley.com.