No older than thirty and with eyes so pale they looked as though he had no eyes at all, the Pale Man took a step forward and the larger, more powerfully built McMaster retreated two steps.
The Pale Man smiled, but rather than softening his sharp features, it only made him look sinister. “McMaster, I have purposes and you may be assured they are not your purposes at all. Your purpose is to serve me. I do hope I will not have to make this clear to you again.”
McMaster recoiled as if from a blow. “No, sor. No need for you to make it any clearer.”
“Good. If that is all you have, you can go.” The slender man turned his back to Liam McMaster and bent over the maps and books again. “McMaster,” the Pale Man asked over his shoulder. “Do you remember Donny Pearce? His head exploded not a dozen meters from where you stand now. I did that once. I can assure you, I can do it again. Remember that, won’t you?”
“Yes, sor,” McMaster said and ran from the room.
The Pale Man smiled. He had a gift for inspiring fear in others.
***
These were early fall days, days of morning ground fog when softly veiled wisps would steal along the valley to inhabit the low areas. The mornings were thick, quiet, and intimate, and Julian enjoyed them immensely.
He would rise early, dress and with a mug of hot tea sit outside and watch the fog, listening for the bark of a dog in the distance or the clop of a dog cart as it trundled up the main road.
He sat and he listened and watched as the fog swirled around the village houses and shops.
There, on the road in front of him stood the Hagan. He was sure she hadn’t been there a moment ago and he hadn’t seen her coming. The fog wasn’t so thick that he wouldn’t have seen her. Yet, there she stood looking at him. She said, “Walk with me.”
Julian set his mug down and walked down the flagstone path to the roadway. Wordlessly, she took his arm and walked him out of town and through the thick forest that surrounded Cappel Vale.
She led him along a narrow path skirting peat bogs and outcrops of rocks, up a small hill and across a flat pasture until they stood looking down into an adjacent valley. The Hagan relaxed visibly, let out a contented sigh and smiled lazily. “Have a look. That is the Ireland I’ve loved so much for so long.
“The pasture land and the lovely shade of the lake along with that glen on the far side of the valley with its army of trees that have endured for a century or more – all of it blends together seamlessly, naturally,” the Hagan said and sighed again.
Julian saw a small, still lake that sat at the bottom of the valley. Pastureland had encroached and left the edges of the lake in soft focus. Cows grazed nearby and in the distance a thick stand of trees stood tall and straight. Sheep could be seen just beyond that.
The fog continued to hug the sides of the hills and obscure and soften the valley below. The bleat of sheep could be heard hushed in the distance. Moira Hagan looked into the valley and then took in the near horizon. She sat on top of a broken low, thick stone wall and indicated Julian should join her.
This was a different woman then the one he first met or the one with whom he conspired to persuade Sean Maher to become the Village Constable. Perhaps it was the time of day, perhaps it was the fog, but something had softened her features.
She stared at him frankly and smiled. Reading his thoughts she said, “I come here daily and it is the place I am most alive.”
“You’re her, aren’t you,” Julian sad flatly.
“You know I am. You’ve known from the first.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I thought there was some God awful hurry.”
“Keep in mind, laddie, I needn’t explain myself to you – or to anyone. I will on this occasion only so that you will know how wonderful a person I am,” she sneered.
“I wanted to watch you. You aren’t interesting enough to study, but you are worth observing. We’re short on entertainment here in the country so your comic value alone was worth watching.”
Julian wasn’t pleased, neither was he in a position to do or say anything. “So you are supposed to be my teacher and I am to be your student. Cozy.”
She let the sarcasm slide off easily and asked him, “Disappointed are you?”
“No, of course not. Doesn’t matter to me in the least. However, I should point out…” Julian tried to sound matter-of-fact.
“Liar,” she interrupted. “You are indeed disappointed. You wanted someone who would speak softly to you and answer all your questions patiently. If your teacher turned out to be someone as winsome as the good and pure Dr. Dwyer well, money for jam, eh?”
The Hagan held up her hand. “Don’t bore me with your pathetic bleating. And don’t lie to me anymore – or yourself. I know the truth of it and you know I know.”
“My mentor or sponsor or friend or whatever, said you would be different from her. However, I…” the Hagan cut him off again.
“Well, then you are lucky a wise woman found you. Often we don’t get what we want, boyo, but what we need. Believe me, I am what you need,” the Hagan said.
Julian was insistent. “As I’ve been trying to say, I have to tell you, as I told my friend, I’m not sold on any of this yet.”
Julian’s companion let the last sentence hang heavy in the air. “May I ask you a question?”
Julian smirked and answered, “Would it matter if I said no?”
“Not a bit. I would pretend I didn’t hear you and ask my question anyway. Perhaps I wouldn’t even bother to pretend. In any case I will ask and you will answer, because, you’ll never let no-answer answer for you.”
“Then I suppose you should ask. I’m ready when you are,” Julian said while he chuckled.
“It may seem an easy question, but don’t be fooled. I ask few easy questions.”
Julian smiled broadly, “I stand warned.”
“Warned you may be, but ready you are not,” she smiled and continued. “Do you believe in what you cannot see?”
The question wasn’t difficult on the surface, but it wasn’t what he had bargained for. He needed time to think. “I suppose I do,” Julian answered tentatively.
“You don’t know? Don’t be daft, of course you know.”
“Alright, I do believe in things I can’t see. I’m here and I can’t see the Empire State Building, but I know it’s there.”
Moira Hagan shook her head slowly. “Nothing gets by you, now does it. Do you have any more of those? I certainly hope you won’t continue to spout off about the sorrowfully obvious. In any case, I’m not talkin’ about the physical, but the incorporeal.
“So we’ve established two things thus far. The first is that you do believe in what you can’t see. So much so that you gave up the safety and security of your way of life to find your way. You, son, are committed to finding the things you cannot see in the hope they will change you for the better. The second thing we know for certain is that you’re an eejit.”
“Thanks awfully.”
“It is my pleasure. Now let’s see if you are willing to understand what you can’t rationally explain.
“The supernatural, the unexplained, do you believe in those? Do you believe in things that seem like a dream but are not? The mysterious, the miraculous, the magical, are those on your list of beliefs? You have been living an illusionary life. Are you willing to believe in an extraordinary life with a truer sense of reality?”
Julian sat looking into the valley below. The pastureland was a ribbon of deep green stretching up the valley. The stand of trees drew his eye. The abundance of trees and their variety matched the profusion and range of his thoughts.
Moira Hagan snapped her fingers in front of Julian’s face. “Did you forget I asked you a question? Are you going to be all day thinkin’ up some feeble answer? I’ll take my answer now if you please.”
“That my life was an illusion I can’t really accept. It was all too real. Still it never felt genuine somehow. It never felt like it was the life
I deserved or the one I was meant for. It’s true, I believe in and want a life that gives me more than I have, that will make me more than I am.”
“Stop right there before you compound your stupidity. There is a life waiting for you that will do nearly what you describe if you are willing to not only believe but also take hold of it.
“I say, nearly what you describe, because nothing will ever make you more than what you are. The object is to be all that you are. To an eejit like you that may seem to be a difference without a distinction, but it isn’t, so follow along and see if you can learn something useful,” the Hagan said and Julian snorted.
“Don’t think to get cheeky with me, Blessing. You can’t afford to know what I can do when I receive sass from the likes of you – little man.
“We, you and I, are in the knowing business,” she continued. “Part of what you’re required to know is the reality of reality. The mysterious, the miraculous, the magical if you will, are all real to be sure, but for you, separating reality and unreality is what you need to learn.”
She continued. “But for now, you must believe. For now, you need to disregard your senses. Close your eyes on what you know. Those senses and the knowledge you brought with you from your old life will do you no good here. Distrust them for they will distract you. The only sense you need is your sense of self. Trust, but not the man you used to be. Trust the man you want to be, need to be, will be.
“You have a task and it is an important one, this I know. How you handle this challenge will have far reaching… What is it you find so humorous, eejit?” the Hagan snapped.
Julian shook his head and chuckled. “Well, this has all been very pleasant – if a bit odd – but you will have to deal me out. I’m not in need of any sort of paranormal supernatural mumbo jumbo. Not today. You need somebody to fight a dragon, but that someone isn’t me. You need a knight-errant to find what must be found? Well, you‘ll have to find someone crazier then me.
“Granted that won’t be easy given the way I feel just now, but maybe you can place an ad in the newspaper. I’m sorry, that was flippant and uncalled for. You take this seriously and I must respect you for it.
“Mrs. Hagan, if this is a disappointment to you, I am sorry. I am sure you are very good at whatever it is you do. The woman who brought me into all of this, well, I hate to disappoint her. She really is a lovely lady. Still, I’m not the guy for either of you.
“Been great talking to you, but I’ve got to go.” Julian said.
Moira Hagan let the moment dangle. “Where?” she asked mildly and looked bored.
“Pardon?” Julian asked.
“I asked where you planned to go. ’Tis a simple enough question, surely.”
Julian was silent.
“No answer? Oh well, be that as it may, I can see by the look of you that you are tired. Best we are going. Why don’t you lead the way?” Julian looked into the dense forest and the dark lake below with its lush pastureland framing the scene.
“I’ll miss this,” Julian thought. “It really is very beautiful, restful somehow but this isn’t the place for me.” Submerged in his own thoughts he turned and started back to the village of Cappel Vale. The Hagen followed, a small smile touched her eyes and lips.
As they approached the village Julian felt rather than heard a whisper. His had reached a point at which whispers brought only bad tidings, but he had become resigned to them.
“Go back and look. Go back to where we sat just now and look again. Look at what you saw, or thought you saw.”
Julian turned. The Hagan’s cool gray eyes were penetrating and locked on to his. Her smile was crooked and cunning.
“I won’t delay you further, but go back and look hard at what you see.” He heard it as clearly as if she had whispered it into his ear. Her smile turned kind and she swept past him toward the village. “Hush. Quiet your thoughts. Go back and look. You’ll understand – at least you’ll begin to understand. We’ll talk again.” With that, she left him in her wake.
***
Julian stood at the stone wall. He stared into the valley below. None of what he now saw made sense. Then he heard it. The Hagan’s voice was unmistakable and not a whisper this time. “We don’t really need you to prattle on about what you do and don’t believe in and what is and isn’t real, do we? You can save your protests and your puny notions. I said we were in the knowing business. I think we’ve established a simple fact – you don’t know anything.
“Until you do know something, let’s play it this way. If I tell you a thing – take it as read. If I say there are dragons, there are dragons. If I tell you, you have a task, then a task you have. If I mention warlocks, magicians, soothsayers, alchemists, sorcerers or, yes, knights-errant – not likely I would of course – but you are to believe. If I tell you Brian Boru and the Queen of England popped in to see you while you were away, you will only say, ‘Oh, what did they want?’ Do we have an understanding?”
Julian didn’t understand, but she was right. He had made a start at understanding. Stretched out across the valley were plots of farmland separated by low stone walls. Sturdy men in each field harvested their crops.
It was all farmland from one side of the valley to the other and from end to end. It had been this way for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.
There was no lake, no pastureland, no cattle or sheep, no stand of trees.
There never had been.
Chapter Eleven
The days in Cappel Vale settled into a pleasant routine. The weather remained clement and the people of the village, with some trepidation, accepted Sean Maher and Julian Blessing as their police force.
There was the Case of the Missing Sheep, but that turned out to be nothing more than a drunken shepherd and his lazy dogs allowing the flock of sheep to wonder into the rocky, thickly forested area just north of Cappel Vale.
O’Gavagan’s Fight began as an interesting case, but quickly evaporated when Sean Maher arrived, hung up his coat, stood in the middle of the pub and wordlessly started to roll up his shirt sleeves as he whistled a happy tune. Everyone suddenly became the best of friends and remained that way for the remainder of the evening.
The Digging had to be put into the unsolved case file though. It was the thing everyone in the valley and the village talked about in whispers.
A local farmer, George Sullivan, had sent for Julian and Sean. George had given them some Wellington boots and walked them to a field some distance from the farm buildings. The land rose sharply on each side of the field leaving a rich level bowl of land in the center.
On one side of the field, behind a small stand of ancient trees where the land arched away from the level plain, the hillside had been deeply scarred. There was evidence of heavy boots in the soft ground and pick and shovel marks gouged deeply into the hillside.
The area wasn’t large, perhaps only twenty feet long, but it sheared the hillside showing clearly the different strata of earth that had settled over millennia.
Julian and Sean were not the first on the scene. The farmer had found the dig and notified Father Fahey. He and Sister Eugenia had looked over the site and came to no conclusion. Next, Dr. Dwyer had been called. She too declared the unexplained digging a mystery suggesting it might just be children having some harmless fun, but even she didn’t believe that. That pretty much took care of Cappel Vale’s intelligentsia. Farmer Sullivan thought there would be no harm in calling in the two new policemen to stomp around the crime scene.
“Digging peat to sell in the village?” Julian asked Sean.
“Don’t be daft.”
“Why dig like this then?” Julian asked.
“It makes no sense,” Sean said. Still, there had to be a reason. The problem niggled at Julian and, reminiscent of his dog-with-a-bone days in New York, he knew he wouldn’t let it go.
They all made their way back to George Sullivan’s barn and choked down a jar of home brewed poitin.
Sean and the farmer had a
lively discussion where each called into question the ancestry of the other. They moved on to a debate about whether the product was “Potcheen,” “Poteen” or “Poitin.” They were able to agree on a number of basic facts. First of all, they all needed another jar. Secondly, the product was at least 90 proof.
Next, poitin had been outlawed since the 16th century which was a slight against God perpetrated by the Godless British and, finally, that this discussion should be taken up again when they had more time to devote to the scholarly study of strong drink.
Julian declared they could have his share as the concoction had singed the hair out of his nose, burned his throat and landed with a thud, the concussion from which promised turn him inside out. Potent stuff was George Sullivan’s poitin.
After very little thought, it was decided Sean and the farmer should reconvene soon and that Julian would be excused. The motion carried unanimously and the meeting was adjourned. The farmer came away from the encounter with the thought that the police were not such bad sorts. Sean had developed a deep and abiding brotherliness for all men and Julian knew that, although momentarily happy, if he didn’t lay down soon he would probably die standing up which could be awkward.
On the edge of a farmer’s field behind a stand of ancient oaks a scar still exposed the earth and no one was any nearer to finding out why.
***
Returning to the police station, Julian found Brendan Maher and Timothy Dwyer sitting on the front stoop. Between them sat a very tired young dog.
“Well, gentlemen, what kind of animal do we have here?”
Brendan stuttered, “She’s a d-d-dog” and smiled. Timothy explained Brendan had traded one of the local cattlemen a week’s labor for one of the farmer’s dogs and Timothy had brokered the deal. Having just come from the farmer, the boys and the dog were tired.
Julian went inside and invited the boys and their companion to follow. He sat them down around the big desk and laid out some Irish tea cookies one of the local women had baked, and gave the boys large tumblers of milk.
Echoes Through the Mist: A Paranormal Mystery (The Echoes Quartet Book 1) Page 10