Deep in its dark waters, they waited. For centuries, they drifted, their whiteness a sharp contrast to that sloshing black place.

Occasionally, they would surface, slither up the steep, stone steps to a solid oak door inches thick and, through a small grill, they could see the world beyond; a world that had changed over many decades. In the distance, a forest had now given way to buildings. The sea had shrunk back out of sight. In its place, children played on swings and climbing frames. Parents sat on benches supervising their offspring.

As they watched, they hungered for that outside world; a world denied to them after Sir Simon de Blanche threw their mad, bad and dangerous ancestors into the deep well to drown for various misdemeanours he’d conjured up. But below those still waters, The Maid of Ogmore embraced each drowning man and woman and carried them to her cavernous cave.

There she nurtured those victims on green breast milk but over centuries, despite her care, the outside world was never forgotten as stories of their previous existence was passed down from generation to generation.

Through the ages, no one from the outside world ever dared to break into the well. Not even the bravest would consider venturing down those steep slippery steps. Tales of white beings peeping through the grill became folk lore. Though the scoffers scoffed, even those sceptics resisted breaking in to prove their case.

Then, on a July afternoon, a council worker from the Department of Parks and Leisure, jemmied off the sturdy lock and opened the well door. Len Harding had to assess health and safety issues brought up at a council meeting. To remove the door and block off the entrance was one suggestion. Conservationists argued against such a procedure on an important historic site.

Now Len Harding is peering down those steps that disappear under water. He shivers despite the warmth of the day. ‘What’s it like?’ his assistant shouts.

‘Come and see for yourself,’ Len replies with a shaky laugh and, as he speaks, a mass of rubbery white bodies surge up the steps, knocking him backwards in their haste to escape on masse out from darkness into sunlight.

In horror, parents scream and gather up their children from swings. The grass writhes with bleached forms without limbs. Mouths gape in seal-like faces to emit strangled sounds. The church bell chimes three o’clock as those rubbery skins crack open under the heat of the sun.

Two hours later, at the strike of five o’clock, a digger shovels those bodies back inside the well to tumble down the steps. Loud splashes resonate about damp thick walls. Above the noise of disposal, a woman shrieks can be heard.

When at last the entrance is sealed, her cries cut off, The Maid of Ogmore’s curses will still echo inside those worker’s minds until, at last, they too will succumb to her grief ridden predictions of a painful and premature death.