Bull Running For Girlsl

by Allyson Bird

  “That’s a sad loss to us all, Tilda. He was a well respected man.”

  Tilda moved on a little too quickly for Dewy’s liking:

  “Look, here’s another cure for the cholera too: “Chalk mixture, six ounce; tincture of Catechu, four drachms; Glycerin of kino, four drachms; opium, one half drachm. One tablespoon of the above tincture to be taken after each discharge from the bowels. In case of the diarrhoea being obstinate, let the chalk mixture be made of decoction of logwood.”

  “Another cure. I’m real glad that your ma taught you to read.”

  “You wouldn’t be so whippy with your tongue if you had cholera and we had to nurse you. I’m thinking I’d just put you on the other side of them iron gates and let you fend for yourself.”

  “Now you wouldn’t do that to yer Dewy—would ye?”

  “I might not, but the lady is convinced if we touch someone who has it we’re done for.”

  Tilda and Dewy had always been close but had never become lovers. They were both in their late thirties, with unusually, no history of marriage, or even a hint of a romance with anyone else. With a sigh Tilda threw down the newspaper and carried on making the dinner. The house was filled with the smell of herbs and roast chicken, which made them both forget about cholera. After all, were they not safe from the cholera or anything else in the Halifax house?

  The heat of the day turned into the heat of the night. Even for August it was unusually hot. Not that Sligo, settled between the coastland hills, suffered from heavy downpours, for the island off the bay caught most of the rain. They did suffer terrible storms in the winter though.

  Now, the older children of the house were ten years of age. A boy named George, and a girl called Geraldine. Albino twins they were, pink-eyed with moon-white hair. Their looks made a few people wary of them but that didn’t matter to the cook and the gardener. They simply had no liking for the children, as they thought them to be rude and churlish. George would pull up plants that had been tended with loving care by Dewy, and Tilda had caught Geraldine more than once sticking her grubby little fingers into pies, puddings and cakes in the pantry, spoiling them for the dinner table. George was far too fond of finding a hollow reed, catching a frog, sticking it in its backside and blowing it up to overwhelming proportions. Dewy, who would not harm any creature (unless ordered to by the mistress of the house), had often wondered if he could cure George of his zealous nature. He had been working on an idea for over a month now, but had yet to put a plan into action.

  Unknown to all, the children had taken to midnight ramblings and had escaped Holland Park, bound for the house called Elsinore on Rosses Point where their cousin Alex lived. They had found a way out that even Dewy hadn’t reckoned on. It was behind the laurel bushes where no gardening was ever done and there was a small hole in the stonework of the ten-foot-high wall. There was just enough room for a ten-year-old child to get through, and if Geraldine had picked at any more pastries in Tilda’s pantry it would have been a tight squeeze.

  The children had put a great deal of thought into their nighttime excursions. During the day they wore white cotton clothes to keep cool. But on these trips they toned down the colour and wore their winter greys and blacks. They made their way past the enormous, brooding gargoyle that had once adorned the prow of the San Juan de Silicia, wrecked at Streedagh on the coast close by.

  Alex was to meet them on the beach below Rosses Point to play with the things that they had found there and had kept hidden for the last year in a cave. Again the entrance was only big enough for a child to enter.

  Over the years many ships had run aground on Perch Rock, near Rosses Point, on their way past Coney Island and a formidable structure had been erected on the rock to warn the mariners. Upon a fifteen-foot limestone base stood a twelve-foot metal man, dressed in the garb of a Royal Navy sailor in a Petty Officer’s uniform. The effect of moonlight on the statue created an eerie sight, reflecting off the metal man, as one arm pointed to the safest part of the channel to pass through.

  Alex was sitting on a rock waiting for her cousins. She had, by nature, been given the correct colouring of the Halifax family, following the male line of descent, and had coppery hair and apple-green eyes. The twins ran across the silver sand to greet her.

  “And about time too. I don’t like sitting here with the metal man staring at me like that. He gives me the willies.”

  “Why would you be scared of that? I’d have thought you would have been more afraid of the fairy folk coming for to carry you off. You’re always talking about them—you’ll draw them to you, you will,” said George.

  “No, the fairy folk are gentle, kind in their ways.” Alex smiled and then frowned as she looked out apprehensively at the metal man.

  “It’s all shite anyway.” George had brought a lantern with him and was trying to light it.

  “Says you who looks under the bed every night and checks the closets. Hey, don’t light that yet, wait till we get to the entrance. We don’t want anyone to see it,” replied Geraldine.

  “The only person to see this dim bugger would be the metal man. Come on, let’s get in.”

  Once in through the narrow entrance, the children found some candles and lit them. They had quite a place there. Alex had, before the cholera, begged for the thrown away things that her parents were going to get rid of and between herself and her cousins had brought them down to the cave. George had to dismantle a large chair to get it through the entrance, but with a few nails and a hammer had done a reasonable job of putting it back together on the other side. Of course, no one except him was allowed to sit in it. There was a box of old wooden toys that Alex had rescued and an old, Indian rug, which the girls sat on to hear George tell his tall stories.

  “What’s it to be tonight, George? Pirates, ogres with great hammers, water spirits?”

  “The only watery spirits we will have tonight are those that belong in that bottle,” he laughed as he pointed to a bottle of rum he had taken from his father’s cellar two weeks ago.

  “For your enjoyment tonight, my audience, it shall be your very own tale, Alex, the one you have heard so very often but love so very much.”

  Alex raised her eyebrows and smiled.

  “Get the skull,” said George as he cocked one leg over the side of the chair, smoothed his white hair away from his pink eyes and tried to make himself comfortable, shifting about on the damp, blue cushion.

  Both girls in unison chanted. “Oh no, not the skull—”

  They scrambled over to the corner of the cave and came back with a round object wrapped in a green paisley shawl.

  “You do it, Geraldine; you know how I don’t like to touch it.”

  “Why should I?” asked Geraldine, edging away from the object that lay in between them, within the tattered shawl.

  “Fannies,” exclaimed George and tugged at the edge of the bundle.

  The skull tumbled from it and barely touched the edge of Alex’s dress. It was a recent skull, not yet stripped of the base gristle that clung to its chaps and mottled head.

  Alex screamed and that made the twins laugh.

  “I don’t see what’s funny. Get on with the story George.” Alex took a deep breath and settled as far away from the skull as she could, but not too close to the dark corners of the cave with its half-shadows. The sea usually never came into the cave and only in the worst winter storms was the interior blasted by the driven sea.

  “On—nay, mostly on the foggiest of nights when the cold sea lay dead off the point, the smugglers would come along the pathway that went up to Elsinore to store their ill-gotten gains far below the house. The previous owner had built passageways that tunnelled deep under the very house you live in, Alex. Underneath the very kitchen you eat your breakfast in. Underneath the very floor where you sleep in your warm, comfortable bed.”

  Alex moved closer to Geraldine and shivered. A shadow loomed upon the cave wall behind George. Alex shivered even more and Geraldine took hold of he
r hand.

  “In those passageways, the pirates led by Rove Maloney, hid the spoils of their wrecking. Along with Pen Willy, Craven Blackstock and Gin McCarthy it is said that they brought with them more than treasure, but human prisoners whom they tortured and ate in some terrible ritual. All this happened in the very passageways that lie under these hills, perhaps in the very cave we’re sitting in now.”

  Alex was staring into the flame of the lantern and then at the back of the wall behind George where the shadow seemed to be growing larger with each uttered word.

  “Rove Maloney, Pen Willy, Craven Blackstock and Gin McCarthy.”

  The shadow seemed to grow larger and ripple slightly.

  “Rove Maloney, Pen Willy, Craven Blackstock and Gin McCarthy. Rove Maloney, Pen Willy, Craven Blackstock and Gin McCarthy. ”

  With the names sounding like some incantation the shadow suddenly split into five distinct outlines, one being George and the others looking like grotesque shapes, shifting and lurching around the wall of the cave, seeking some prey to take down.

  Alex screamed and tried to bolt out of the cave. Geraldine caught her and tried to hold her still. “Alex. It’s only a story, don’t scream, someone might hear.”

  Alex began to cry inconsolably. “No it isn’t, they’re here. With George saying their names and three times and all—they’re here.”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s only George firing up your imagination, that’s all.”

  Alex insisted on leaving and began to make her way up the side of the hill back to Elsinore. The twins mooched around for a while and then decided to go home, as the mood had been thoroughly spoilt by Alex going off.

  Tilda heard the back door bolt and wondered what the children had been up to in the garden. Anne Halifax heard nothing but the cries of her little mewling daughter.

  The next night the twins left with a lantern, with the shutter a little way open to guide the way, so that they would not be discovered. The looming, wormwood shapes of the ships’ figureheads guarded each walkway, and more than once Geraldine looked over her shoulder to see if they would follow. Once a little way from the house and out of the walled garden, they opened the shutter of the lantern a little more and made their descent down to the shore.

  Alex was once again waiting for them.

  “I didn’t think that you would show up tonight,” said George.

  “No thanks to you, George. I really think you shouldn’t call names up like that, made up or otherwise.”

  “I didn’t make them up; old Griff told the story to me. It’s true—all of it.”

  The three of them sat on the shore with the lanterns carefully positioned so that the light shone inwards towards the land and not out to sea. They didn’t want to confuse some foreign captain and cause a shipwreck. Many a ship in the past had fallen foul of pirate wreckers with lanterns, leading them astray and onto the rocks.

  “What do you want to do now?”

  “I never did finish the story.”

  “No thanks.” Alex took a deep breath. “We could go up to Elsinore and play in the old shed. That would make a good den as no one goes there or into the cellar. There is a room off the main cellar corridor. I have a key to it.”

  The night was warm but an eerie green mist hung low to the ground, weaving its way around the rocks, searching with dead man’s fingers into each slight crevice and swirling around the boulders. The pathway around the point and up the hill was rocky and a little unnerving in the darkness. The children had been told by so many adults never to let lantern light drift out to sea, so as cautious as ever, they kept the light shining inland. The path undulated and as they went over the next rise they were surprised to see the flames of a large bonfire on the beach. As they drew closer they could see quite clearly the figures of four men sitting by the fire, staring out to sea.

  “What fools—light from this point would guide anyone into the shallows,” said George. “The sailors will read everything wrong. The lights from here and the other two islands will confuse them,” said George. He shouted at the men. “Hey, put that fire out!”

  The figures turned slowly around to look at the children but did not call back. Their clothes seemed odd but the children were used to the foreign fashions of sailors so took no heed. The evening began to change around them and it grew suddenly cold, heralding the wind, which changed direction as if winter had fallen. The sea became rougher and the rain began to fall, cold with a bitter sting to it.

  George made as if to go down the rough track that left the main pathway down towards the beach. Alex grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t, George—I don’t like the look of them.”

  “The fire, they can’t light a fire.”

  “I think that they know that, George. I really think that they do. The rain will put the fire out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pirates. They’re the pirate wreckers, George.”

  George stepped back and turned to Geraldine.

  “Where’s the light from the metal man, the warning light should have been lit by now?”

  And then the wreckers moved. Slowly at first they lumbered towards the children through the softer sand of the lower banking. By the light of the fire Alex could see their hollow, cadaverous faces and the limp way that they held their arms. She screamed and turned to run. The other two ran in front of her, scrambling up the banking towards Elsinore, away from the creatures that the incantation had brought forward. Once there, they banged on the front door and screamed for help.

  Candles were lit and there came a crashing from within the house as master and servants stumbled into one another in the near darkness. Alex’s father shouted and wanted to know just who was at the door.

  “Let us in, let us in!” cried Alex. “Father—let us in!”

  Through the darkness the children could see the fearful wreckers coming closer with muffled voices. Even in the darkness they could see their milky, filmed eyes. And yet still the large oak door would not yield.

  Alex started to scream once more as she pounded on the door until her hands began to ache. All three of them were attacking the door now, kicking and crying out for refuge.

  “Father! Father!” Alex put her back to the door and started to sob into her hands, knowing that the foul wreckers were almost on top of them.

  Suddenly the door gave way. The children were hauled inside and the great door bolted behind them.

  Alex hid behind her father, begged him to get the guns and to keep well away from the door.

  It was Alex that jolted George out of the desperate state he was in.

  “Say the names! Say the names again!” she screamed.

  George was breathing heavily but started to mutter the incantation again. He said the names twice and then a third time.

  “Rove Maloney, Pen Willy, Craven Blackstock and Gin McCarthy—be gone.”

  The dreadful wreckers turned away from the solid oak door and made their way clumsily back down to the shoreline to the tiny cave where the skull was lying half buried in the sand.

  There was no sleep that night in Elsinore and there was a great commotion back at Holland Park after hearing the news about what the children had been up to. Anne Halifax had no qualms about sending the children to boarding school in England. Alex was left to live with her father in Elsinore, forever dreading a pounding at the door, her nightmares terrifying. In these nightmares she could smell rotting flesh and would wake in a fearful state.

  All had thought that George had banished the wreckers but on wild stormy nights in winter, when the ships came too close to shore, they fell afoul of the dreadful creatures. The wreckers stood their ground and fed upon the poor sailors as they were washed ashore.

  But the dead left the children alone—except in those nightmares.

  Pirate wreckers—wreckers that George had brought back, in some foul form from beyond the grave.

  Geraldine never went back to Sligo. She finished school, and before the decad
e was out, she was quickly married off to a master silk weaver in London. However, George did come back and whenever he was allowed to see Alex, at a wedding or other such family occasion, she was carefully chaperoned and was never far from her father’s admonition.

  Sometimes, there were a few years between sightings of the wreckers and then there would be reports from sailors, that strange, mysterious lights had almost led them aground on Rosses Point and, those that had not perished on the rocks as a result of them, told of how they had nearly come to grief. Burnt out fires were occasionally found on the beach at Rosses Point and no one ever found the culprits who made them. Fathers, sons and brothers were lost to the sea and local people, who at one time deep within their family history might have spawned a wrecker or two, knew that none of them were the cause of the calamities.

  When Alex’s father died and was buried at Drumcliffe there was no wake, and on returning home Alex shuttered Elsinore House and would not let anyone come close to her, except for Tilda Florence and Dewy, who had come across from Holland Park some years before. They had fallen out of favour with Anne Halifax on account of the fact that they had not kept an eye on the children when she was recovering from childbirth, on that awful night so many years ago. The only other person that Alex would see was George and they could often be found deep in conversation with furrowed brows and earnest exchanges.

  George was the company agent for Donovan’s shipping in Sligo. On the last day of October he was on his way home from business in Glasgow aboard the ship The Iris. A day or two later Alex and George planned to announce their engagement.

  Alex stood at the drawing room window, watching the sun go down and the sky turn blue-black. The sky looked bruised that evening and as the cold, winter sun backed down Alex thought she could see streaks of blood on the shoreline, and began to think back to that terrible night all those years before. The sun disappeared and she was left apprehensive and in brooding spirits.

  The wind started to howl around Elsinore and she sought out some comfort in the kitchen. There had always been little formality between them and Tilda called Alex by her Christian name, although Alex was now mistress of the house. Tilda wouldn’t dream of calling her anything else and Alex liked it that way. Tilda was baking and Alex was moving things about that didn’t need to be moved and generally getting in the way.