Echoes Through the Mist: A Paranormal Mystery (The Echoes Quartet Book 1)

by K. Francis Ryan

  “Do you have any questions.” It wasn’t a question.

  “In Cappel Vale, that witch, the Hagan,” McMaster said, “’tis she who protects the village. Muckin’ about with witches, Sor, is bad business.”

  The Pale Man let out a noisy breath. “I would point out three things only. Business, bad or otherwise, is my business not yours. Next, I’ve worked a little something of my own. The witch isn’t able to protect herself right now let alone anyone else.”

  The Pale Man walked slowly across the room and faced his employees. “The last thing is something I urge you never to forget. Mention that woman’s name in my presence again and, well, let’s just say, you will beg to die. Either of you or both of you – it makes no difference to me. But know I will kill you.” The pale man walked to the window turning his back on his visitors. “You understand all of this?”

  “Aye.” Lynch felt his employer would not hesitate to try to kill whatever got in his way. He had done it before, he would do it again. He thought over the word that made all the difference. Try. The man smiled, turned and walked toward the door.

  McMaster reached the door first, pulled it open as he repeated the Pale Man’s words. “Kill anything that gets in me way. I understand perfectly, Sor.” He collected his son who looked cunning and sullen. Tom Lynch slapped the back of Liam’s head causing him to stumble into his son on their way out the front door.

  “What the…?”

  “Do not speak to me, McMaster. You are as thick as shite and not even half as useful.” Lynch snarled and left the manor house. McMaster slapped his son hard for laughing.

  The interview was complete. The Pale Man, his colorless complexion restored, returned to the maps spread out on his massive desk. He rubbed the coin in his pocket and plotted the next dig site. The idea of murder calmed him.

  ***

  The thin, Pale Man sat before a cold hearth and relished the hatred inside him. The room was cold, but he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel anything beyond anger, hatred and the need for revenge. The drapes were pulled and he didn’t see anything but the target of his rage.

  He closed his eyes and cast his mind into the darkness.

  ***

  In the pasture beyond the grove of trees, Julian stood and tried to pierce the veil of the reality he knew for the other reality he knew was out there. It was early morning, well before sunrise and the time he found it easiest to focus.

  Suddenly the ground seemed to shift beneath him and he felt dizzy. He looked to the grove where Moira was sitting to see if she felt it.

  His teacher’s face was ashen and she was trembling. Her right arm and shoulder twitched violently. He ran to her, took her hand and then did what he had no reason to do, no way of knowing he could do or should do.

  He closed his eyes and relaxed. He opened his mind and gave Moira Hagan a place to hide. He tried to construct a barrier between her and whatever was gnawing at her, clutching at her, attacking her.

  He could feel a violent, malicious, consciousness leaching Moira’s abilities, draining her. Julian’s hands began to shake uncontrollably with the effort to hold back the attack. His fingers began to tingle.

  He took a deep breath and suddenly his mind focused. The world went painfully white and intense. Everything went quiet. Reality shifted, but only slightly. Then he saw it, felt it. He was there at the source of the blackness.

  A reed-thin man with an unnatural pallor sat in a chair in a darkened room. Julian could sense him, sense his loathing, his malice and the horror his spirit had become.

  To be successful required more energy and skill than Julian knew he possessed, but he turned all his power to protecting his teacher. He relaxed again and opened himself to all the resources true reality could offer. He concentrated his thoughts, narrowed the intensity to a single spot, to a single moment in time. He waited. He waited for the slightest opportunity, the smallest chance.

  It was there. He could feel it approach. The Thin Man paused to gather his thoughts for what Julian felt would be a final onslaught. Julian attacked with all the ferocity he could manage. To save his teacher he had to stop this man. The student remembered his teacher’s words, “People get hurt when we get it wrong.” Julian’s world went whiter still.

  The man in the chair began to shake. His body went into spasm, his face contorted, he shrieked in pain and then went slack and sat panting. His eyes were unfocused, unseeing. His mouth was slack and open. His breath came in short sharp gasps.

  Julian was back in the glade. He took up maintenance of the shield, but no further attack materialized. The breeze felt cool. His arms and legs were suddenly heavy. Each breath was an effort, every movement painfully slow. Moira watched as his eyes fluttered open. He tried to speak, but she held up her hand to stop him.

  For an eternity, they remained frozen in time and space - an eternity in a moment. Slowly, Julian stood, lost his balance and fell to his knees. He tried again, swayed but remained upright.

  He looked at Moira, smiled the best he could and thought to her, “I’ll go get Sean. He can carry you to the doctor’s. I would do it, but I’m not feeling quite myself.” He chuckled and Moira Hagan smiled her appreciation of his concern if not his plan.

  She had lost the capability of transmitting her thoughts so she said aloud, “Julian Blessing, you go get that ox, Maher. You just do that, boyo. If he lays hands on me, it will go very badly for the pair of you. I don’t have much left, but I’ll wager I can make life unpleasant for you both.

  She chuckled. “Indeed, the very idea. I’ll not be manhandled through the streets of the village. This experience has left you more than a little addled! Come here you great bloody fool. Help an old woman up,” she said not unkindly. Julian smiled and did as he was told.

  “What happened?” Julian thought to his teacher. The effort needed for speech was beyond him.

  “It is too much for you to absorb, too much for either of us. Tomorrow night or the day after maybe,” she said. “We need to digest this.” Julian understood completely and didn’t understand at all why or how things were changing so quickly for him.

  ***

  “Sean Maher, the Squire would be after sending me to get you.” Sean recognized the boy before him as belonging to the family who tended the Squire’s flocks of sheep. It was getting light. The sun would be up soon spreading light but no heat. Sean shivered slightly and indicated with a nod that he would be ready to go with the boy in a few moments.

  While many others would be ablaze with questions, Sean Maher’s mind was unfettered by what might be and concentrated instead on what was right in front of him. Right in front of him right then was a pale, blond boy who led the way to the Squire’s home and did so with a dreadful state of glee plastered on his face.

  The walk was a brisk one and terminated at the side door that led into the squire’s large brick house through the kitchen. Sean deposited coin with his young guide and smiled benignly.

  The messenger peered into his palm in stark disbelief and then looked upon Sean Maher, Protector of the Right. “Oooh, all for me? Sure you can afford it, m’lord?” the boy said, his voice soaked in sarcasm.

  Sean looked confused, but then the fog of incomprehension lifted and he was able to beam a smile of unimaginable brightness onto his little friend. Reaching his large paw down with lightening speed he snatched up the coin.

  “Hey! Whatcha do that fer?” the young man shouted.

  With remarkable cheerfulness Maher said, “See, me boyo, first you had me thanks and a lovely coin. Now you have me thanks, but unless you take yourself off right now, you’ll have me boot up yor buttocks.”

  Sean sighed deeply and thanked God for being born a poor country fellow. He was secure in the knowledge that his young guide would receive a flea in his ear from his father for having lost the coin through cheekiness.

  Sean chuckled to himself and entered the Squire’s mudroom leading to the kitchen. “Good day to ya, Cook. ’Tis the master wishes to see
me on a matter of grave importance,” he bellowed.

  “Speak up, you eejit. Did you say ‘matters of importance?’ With the likes of you, Sean Maher? The Squire may be in his dotage, but he would never be such a fool as to talk to you about anything of value,” she shouted.

  “Ah, your kind words warm me soul as only a lovely woman such as your fine and upstanding self or a jar of poitin can. Although Oi believes Oi’ll take the poitin first, the better to look upon yourself. Oi do thank ye and will be seeing myself into the presence of his Lordship.”

  “Bahhhhh!” the cook said. “The devil take you for all Oi care.”

  Sean followed the dark hallway from the kitchen into the formal dining room and from there into the house’s foyer. Sean was faced with three sets of closed doors and a wide sweeping stairway leading off to the right to the upper reaches of the house. Light drifted from under one of the doors and it was this door Sean opened.

  The Squire was pulling shut a black drape over a picture that hung above the large fireplace. A boisterous turf fire warmed the room and cast a limited radiance in a half moon around the hearth.

  “Maher, come in. It is good to see you or as good as it can possibly be to see a large ugly creature like yourself,” the Squire said with a smile. “Pour yourself a brandy to warm your bones and come sit by the fire. It is conspiracy and treason we’ll be talkin’.”

  Although the day was undeniably underway, it was still undeniably too early to be drinking. Still, Sean figured, it was at the behest of the Squire who was simply offering his brandy for medicinal purposes.

  “Since ’tis you what asks, Squire, and since me poor old bones do have the rheumatics, I’ll do them a kindness.”

  “That’s a good fellow. Now sit yourself by the fire.

  “You are a direct fellow, Maher. I like and respect that so I’ll waste neither your time nor mine and so come to the point. Your partner, Mr. Blessing, has been busy.”

  “Now, Squire, there was just that one incident when he became a little tetched in the head and said a lot of nonsense to a lot of people…”

  “No, not that. Truth be told, his nonsense made more sense than anything I’ve heard in a long time. It is a discussion for another time of course, but it escapes me entirely how a man like Blessing can be so bright while not having the sense God gave a duck.”

  The squire continued. “As I say, that is for another time. For now it has to do with his handbills.”

  “Handbills – aye, the drawing of the wee white truck.”

  “The very one. Well, little escapes me as you know and as I explained to Mr. Blessing, he made me a proposition and I accepted. I would keep my antenna out for information and in return he would talk that boy of yours into training those filthy beasts of mine.” At this the Squire pointed toward the shadows at the side of the fireplace. His two dogs lay on a neatly folded blanket alert and alive to any word from their master.

  “That son of yours is a wonder. He worked but for a short time with my dogs and now they will hardly draw breath unless I give them leave. And where I would have tried to accomplish the same by laying a birch switch liberally about their hind quarters until my arm fell off, what does your boy do? He simply looked or whispered a word and those animals turn to liquid. Speaking of liquid, will you have another?” the Squire asked.

  Swelled with pride, Sean shook his head and said, “Thank ye, but no, Squire.”

  “Well then you won’t mind getting me another. I’ve not yet warmed my bones sufficient to the task of getting up.”

  Sean smiled, took the Squire’s tumbler and refilled it from the sideboard.

  “Thank ye, Maher. Now to the matter. I don’t have anything firm yet, but your white truck has been seen frequently on the furthest edge of County Louth right on our shared border with Meath. It is only a matter of time until I get the exact location from my spies.

  “I want you and Mr. Blessing to know something. Those handbills don’t come without risk or cost. You are meddling in the affairs of others and they’ll not thank you for your thoughtfulness.

  “Sadly, Ireland is a nation of heroes, poets and spies,” the squire said. “Thanks be to God we’ve always had more of the two former than the latter. It’s the spies who will run a copy of your handbill directly to the – what should we call them – culprits? I warn you to have a care Sean and to pass along the warning to your Mr. Blessing. Mark my words, there’ll be ugly and violent business before this is over.”

  “It’s a mystery to be solved, Squire, and laws to be upheld,” Sean Maher said.

  “True, true, but be careful how you go. I’ll contact you when I have more information. Thank you for coming.”

  The audience was at an end. Sean rose from his chair and asked, “Should I be freshening that for ya?” indicating the Squire’s drink.

  “It’s a good man you are, Sean, but no. Sadly my bones are now warm enough to take me through another day.” The Squire smiled, but not fully. Sean nodded his good bye. The big man was headed toward the kitchen when the sound of the Squire’s voice reached him.

  “Yes, Squire?” Sean said sticking his head back into the library.

  “Maher, it is by the front door that you will enter and leave this house,” the Squire said.

  Sean raised both eyebrows and stood for a moment in stunned silence.

  “Sean, boyeen, you are the law in this tiny bit of Ireland. It’s not as a tradesman or tinker you are pulling your forelock and asking to see the Squire at the kitchen door. The law is not a handmaiden who slinks in by the servants’ entrance. The law is a handmaiden to no one.”

  “Ahh, sure the Squire has the learnin’ on him and words to do his bidding while Oi am but a poor Irishman. Still, sor, ’tis a slight disagreement Oi will have to make with ye.”

  The Squire’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  “It is the front door Oi will use and wish you to know that you honor me greatly. Still, the law is a handmaiden to justice, yor Worship,” Sean ended with a flourish and a smile.

  “Is that from your unaided wit or from over much association with Julian Blessing? In either case, it is as I said, Maher, ‘heroes, poets and spies’. Pick your poison. But take some advice, don’t you and Mr. Blessing make heroes of yourselves. Ireland has enough dead heroes, eh?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  An hour after breakfast, Sean approached the police station to meet with his friend. This was a ritual; it was something they did every day of the week except Sunday. Sunday was a day for other rituals and St Michael’s Church supplied most of those.

  As Sean advanced on the flagstone walkway leading to the station, the front door snapped open and Julian seemed irritated, “What’s kept you? You’re five minutes late. Not like you.”

  The men arranged themselves before the station’s fireplace with their mugs of tea. The turf fire’s soft warmth was comforting. Julian asked, “Sean, how was your interview with the Squire?”

  The big man’s eyes narrowed and he answered with a reserved, “Foine.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it? Leave nothing out. I wish to know everything,” Julian smiled. He had discovered another ability.

  He had watched the scene unfold in his mind. It happened after he left Moira at her home to rest after the assault. The scene had happened as he saw it happen. He didn’t need proof. He didn’t need it – he wanted it.

  Sean gave a brief recital of the morning events at the Squire’s home.

  “Haven’t you missed something?” Julian asked.

  Sean shook his head knowing there were small pieces that had been intentionally left out in the retelling.

  “Really, Sean, nothing else?”

  Again, Sean shook his head and looked at Julian even more narrowly.

  “How about being forbidden the kitchen entrance to the manor house? You’re to use the front door according to the Squire. I believe that is what he said. Anything else now?”

  A visible shiver ran through Sean Maher
and the big man wrung his hands and said slowly, “No, nothing else, Julian. You’ve got it all.”

  Julian left the warmth of the fire and looked out the front window for a moment. He turned, stared into his friend’s face and said softly, with kindness, “Sean, how about heroes, poets and spies?”

  Sean Maher, with his skin crawling and his mouth hanging limply open, said the only thing left to say, “Holy Mother of God protect us all.” He closed his eyes tightly and crossed himself. There were two witches in Cappel Vale and his friend was one of them.

  ***

  Sean and Julian walked the streets of Cappel Vale. The big man was deep in thought and it was a painful thing to behold. He was afraid for his friend and so needed to devise a clever way to warn him of the dangers one faces when dealing with things otherworldly.

  Sean realized Julian was a cultured and sensitive man whom it was necessary to handle with more than a little care. One had to use diplomacy and tact to explain a matter of this gravity.

  Julian and Sean came to rest on the remnants of an ancient holy well in a clearing leading to the sea. The wind was down, but the air was crisp and cool. The well was one of the thousands that dotted the Celtic world. Each was situated to foster tranquility and contemplation.

  Sean turned to his friend and with all the fellow feelings, all the tact and diplomacy he could muster, grabbed Julian by the shirtfront and shouted, “Julian, you are a feekin’ eejit!”

  “Do you mean just on general principal or is there something specific that prompted this observation?” Julian remarked with a smile as he hung in the big man’s hands like a rag doll.

  “It isn’t unkindly that Oi say this,” Sean answered unhanding his friend. “That witch has you muckin’ about with things that, well, shouldn’t be mucked about with; unnatural things, ungodly things.”

  “Sean, I am touched by your concern, really I am, but I don’t think you have anything to be concerned about.”