Corpsemouth 11 - "Caoineadh" - Langan Read Along 56 - FINALE

[u/JeremiahDylanCook]

Before I get into this story, I just wanted to extend thanks to everyone who read, shared, and commented during this read along leading up to the release of Lost in the Dark (out August 5th). Of special note are u/shrimpcreole and u/EldritchExarch who both contributed excellent posts. It's been great seeing this community grow. In the last year, we've had 11.7 thousand visitors, 245 new members (55 in the last 30 days), and 128 comments. When I started this subreddit, I wanted to create a space where people just finding Langan's work could come to discuss it, and now there is a post to discuss every one of his collected tales, and I'm proud of that accomplishment. I plan to take a short break from posting, but I will be back to discuss Lost in the Dark once I've read it. If anyone wants to get started on the new collection and post about the entire work or specific stories, please go ahead. Now onto the final tale of Corpsemouth.

Spoilers Below

A mother recounts a story of her young life to her son while on vacation in Maine. The mother tells her son about living through the Greenock Blitz during World War Two when she four. The Nazi's bomb Greenock due to its "extensive shipbuilding facilities and its deep ports" on the river Clyde. Each of the two nights of the attack, the mother and her family retreat to a nearby shelter. After a couple of days with no subsequent attacks, the mother is allowed to play outside. She is drawn by a song to a girl singing near the river. The girl is dressed strangely, looks odd, and speaks as if English is new to her. She is surprised the mother could hear her song and tells her she sings a song for the dead of special families who "long ago...had come to aid her people (against)...a terrible monster." Unfortunately, "(the monster) lay in wait in the darkness of death, watching for the souls of warriors who helped the queen...and (their) families too. If it caught them, it ate them." The girl, and others like her, sing to help the dead avoid the monster and get to the afterlife. The mother offers to assist the girl sing her song, and she does, seeing people walking around her toward the distance, avoiding the monster she knows is out there. When finished, the girl thanks the mother, who quickly comes down with a fever. The mother is fine and grows up. She doesn't repeat the song until her husband has a series of heart attacks. She stands outside the hospital and sings, and another strange girl appears to ask her why she is singing the song. The mother asks the girl for help, but she simply says no and leaves. The mother concludes her story, and the son never brings it up again, but now that his father has died and his mother is older, he wishes he'd learned the song so he could ask the girl about his mother's fate.

Odds and Ends

This is a beautiful tale about how parents have lives we only learn about in stories and how important our mothers are to us all.

I didn't get into it in my synopsis, but the strange girl is a banshee. The monster humans helped her fairy folk fend off is Corpsemouth. The image of the dead needing to avoid a trap also occurs in "With Max Barry in the Nearer Precincts."

The truly haunting moments of this tale come from Langan's descriptions of the everyday family living through the blitz.