The Dark Sacrament

by David Kiely

  It is perhaps only natural that the Dwyers should draw this conclusion, for the myth of the banshee runs deep in the Irish psyche. In Irish and Scottish folklore, she is a female spirit who attaches herself to families, especially those whose surnames begin with Mac or O. Her wailing is said to presage the death of a member of the family. Irish mythology paints the bean sí, or “fairy woman,” as a beautiful creature with long, flowing hair and eyes reddened from weeping. She is variably dressed in a green or white gown. But, although many claim to have heard her, actual sightings of this elusive creature are rare.

  According to Scottish tradition, the banshee is also known as the bean nighe, or “washerwoman.” The legend runs that she anticipates the violent death of a family member by appearing to wash his blood-stained grave clothes in a river or stream. Unlike her more beautiful counterpart, the bean nighe appears as an ugly, deformed creature that exudes malevolence.

  Shane only half-believed the legend. But he was taking no chances. The horrendous events of the night had convinced him that paranormal forces were arrayed against him and his family. If they’re real, he thought, why not the banshee as well?

  He telephoned his young brother Andy in Australia. Andy had called on Christmas Eve to wish them well, and had told Shane he would be traveling between Adelaide and Sydney on December 27—that very day, allowing for the time difference. He knew he would never forgive himself if Andy were to have an accident because he had failed to warn him. He also called his mother and sister, both of whom lived near Clifden, and persuaded them to come over.

  “There was a need to get others to witness what was happening,” he says, “and so prove that we weren’t going crazy. The puzzling part was the children. They were sleeping, oblivious to the whole thing, which was just incredible, because the noise was deafening. I remember when I was phoning my Mum, she didn’t need much convincing, because she could hear the commotion down the line.”

  Mrs. Dwyer and Maura arrived at 4 a.m. They could tell at once how upset the couple were; Mrs. Dwyer commented on how haggard they looked. No sooner had they crossed the threshold than the wailing began, much to Maura’s consternation. Moya saw her cross herself. Without delay, Mrs. Dwyer suggested that all four say a rosary together in the red room.

  “Why there?” Shane asked.

  “I don’t know, son. Maybe it wouldn’t do any harm to recite it where this thing started.”

  They had to raise their voices to make the prayers heard above the screeching from outside and the almost incessant pounding on the doors, back and front.

  “My mother was a tower of strength,” Shane tells us. “She seemed to take it all in her stride. At one point during the prayers, the Bible was flung again from the top shelf by the fireplace. It came down on the carpet in front of the fireplace, and it fell open at exactly the same place: Isaiah twenty-eight and nine. I don’t think she believed me when I told her about it before, but she did then, that’s for sure.”

  At around 4:30, the howling and banging, which had begun a full six hours earlier, stopped as abruptly as it started.

  “You need to get the priest in,” Mrs. Dwyer said, when they had completed the rosary. “Give him a call first thing.”

  “But it’s Stephen’s Day, Mom.”

  “Sure, don’t worry about that. He’ll come.”

  And he did. Father Dorrity answered the summons promptly, losing no time in coming to bless the house. He could only speculate, but in his considered opinion the root of the problem was “a wandering soul—or souls maybe, more than one.” Perhaps it was Shane’s uncles, the previous inhabitants, he suggested. He urged the family to pray for them.

  The Dwyers felt reassured after the priest’s visit. Mrs. Dwyer and Maura stayed on that day to keep the family company and give support. Maura did the cooking. They left in the early evening, having assured the couple that they would be in touch before the New Year. When Shane and Moya retired for the night, exhausted by the night’s ordeal, they felt that their troubles must surely be at an end.

  Moya checked the children and sprinkled more holy water. She was not in the habit of shutting the bedroom doors, but that night she shut Rory’s, remembering with a shudder the sound of the phantom footfalls entering his room. It was her way of assuring her little son’s safety, even though, in her heart of hearts, she knew that a closed door would offer no resistance to a ghost.

  Tuckered out, the couple fell asleep almost immediately—only to be awakened again after a minute or two by a noise that made their flesh crawl. It was the unmistakable sound of a door opening, and it was coming from across the way.

  “Oh, my God,” whispered Moya, “I shut Rory’s door a few minutes ago and he was fast asleep.”

  “I’ll go,” Shane said.

  He switched on the corridor light. The door to Emma’s room stood open, as expected, as did the door to the bathroom, which was rarely shut. But the door to Rory’s room was open a fraction. Shane’s heartbeat quickened. Moya said she had closed it. Someone had gone in there. It was the only explanation.

  “What is it?” Moya had followed him out. She was standing, shivering, more from fear than from the cold. Shane put a finger to his lips.

  “It must be in Rory’s room.”

  He went cautiously to the door and eased it open. The bedside light in the child’s room was always kept on. It showed clearly that the bed was empty.

  Shane heard a little cry from the corridor and Moya hurrying down the stairs. At the bottom, curled up in a little ball, lay Rory.

  “He’s asleep,” she said. “He’s fast asleep.”

  “I don’t understand. Was he walking in his sleep?”

  “It’s not like him.” She had the child in her arms. He had not woken up. “He’s never done that before.”

  “I know,” said Shane. He also knew that Rory had not opened the door. He had never done that before either; from the time he was a baby he had always slept the night through.

  They carried Rory back to bed and knelt to say a prayer of thanksgiving.

  They had only just made the sign of the cross when, as on the previous night, a loud hammering sounded on the front door. It was followed almost at once by screams at the bedroom window. The haunting had resumed, as though the priest had never come, as though his blessing meant nothing.

  Terrified, they packed up as quickly as they could, bundled the children into the car, and fled the house.

  They spent New Year’s with Shane’s mother. She assured him that they could stay as long as they wished—she appreciated the company. But the couple were keen to return home as soon as possible. It was bad for the children, Moya insisted; they needed the stability.

  “What’s so stable about a home that’s under attack by banshees and God knows what else?” Mrs. Dwyer countered.

  “So what would you suggest we do, Mom?” Shane asked.

  “Have a word with Father Dorrity again.”

  As it happened, the priest had recently attended a talk given by a man who had successfully performed exorcisms in South Africa. Patrick Monroe was a Baptist minister and missionary; he would be in Ireland for some time more, and Father Dorrity promised to get in touch with him right away. The phone call was made, the day decided on. The missionary arrived at the Dwyer house in mid-January. Together with Father Dorrity, he effected a cleansing of each room in the house. Prayers were said in English and Latin.

  It was not a solemn exorcism, but it had the desired effect. A peace descended on the farmhouse in the shadow of the Twelve Pins. The family could return and get on with their lives again. All was well; the ghosts were banished. Or so it seemed.

  “About three weeks later,” Shane says, “it started again. At times like that you just want to say, ‘To hell with it!’ We seriously considered clearing out, putting the house on the market, moving in with my mother until the sale went through.

  “But we didn’t, because it didn’t seem too serious at first. We had the nonsense with the Bi
ble again. It’d fall—or be thrown—and, sure enough, it’d be opened at Isaiah, per usual. We’d find it on the rug in the red room. But we could live with that. So we just ignored it. But then ‘it’ started appearing, and that’s something we couldn’t ignore.”

  The “it” was a manifestation totally new to the sequence of hauntings. One night, Shane awoke to find a tall, hooded figure standing in the corner of the room. A full cowl threw the face into shadow; the arms were crossed over the chest. The creature’s hands were hidden in the deep folds of its garment.

  “I was bloody scared because it was so real,” Shane tells us. “You know—like a solid person. There was no fuzziness or anything ghostly about it. I had to wake Moya, and she nearly had a seizure. We shouted at it to go away, but it wouldn’t budge. It just stood there, even when we’d switched the light on. So we thought, if it’s not going to leave the room, we will. But when we got to the landing, there it was again, standing at the bottom of the bloody stairs.”

  The couple did not know what to do. The safety of the children was uppermost in their minds. They could not leave them unattended while the thing was in the house.

  “Moya got Emma, and I got Rory. We carried them into our room. They never woke up through all this—which was just as well, because I don’t know what we’d have done if they’d seen that thing. It would have given them nightmares for the rest of their lives.”

  They locked their bedroom door. Shane is the first to admit that it was more a psychological measure than a means of keeping the thing out. The hooded entity had demonstrated that doors and walls were no obstacle.

  “We lay awake most of the night,” Shane recalls, “with the kids fast asleep between us in the bed. We were prisoners in our own bedroom, I suppose, because we were too afraid to go downstairs. It was as if the thing didn’t want us to leave the house. But we dozed off eventually.”

  As daylight broke at the window, Shane was the first to awaken. He knew at once that something was wrong. Emma slept soundly at her mother’s side—but little Rory was missing.

  He cursed himself for having fallen asleep. Trembling, he left the bed without rousing Moya. The door was still locked. He hardly dared think about what he might find outside. He refused to accept the possibility that their son could be lost to them. It did not bear thinking about.

  But Rory was safe. As before, the child lay fast asleep, curled up on the stairs. On this occasion, he had been placed halfway down. From then on, the children would sleep at their grandmother’s home.

  It was becoming apparent to the Dwyers that their tormentor was singling out their son for its attentions. Twice, the child had been taken from his bed, yet no harm had come to him. They asked themselves if it might be a warning of some kind, if Rory might, in some way, be linked with the other phenomena—the thrown Bible, the hammering on the doors, the ghostly footsteps, and the eerie wailing of the woman.

  With the coming of the hooded figure, the couple decided it was time to seek the Church’s help again, and Rory was to play a decisive role in uncovering the nature of the hauntings.

  Father Dorrity came to their aid a third time. This time, he visited the house alone. In the red room, he offered a requiem Mass for the repose of those souls “who may be in danger,” as he put it. The service passed off without incident.

  “Everything went well,” Shane tells us, “and by that I mean nothing weird happened during the Mass itself. It was only afterwards that the trouble started. It didn’t even seem like trouble at the time.”

  Rory is a shy little boy, he explains, and certainly not given to talking to visitors. It came as a surprise, therefore, when the boy ventured into the red room while the Dwyers were having tea with Father Dorrity. The priest was preparing to leave and offering the couple some advice. Rory went to him and tugged urgently at his sleeve.

  The priest put aside his cup and saucer and patted Rory’s head. “What a big boy you’re getting to be,” he said.

  “Michael put the bad man in the fire.” The child wore a very serious expression.

  The priest was nonplussed. He smiled. Shane, for his part, was recalling a night, many months before, when he was putting the child to bed. “Michael” had been spoken of then, too.

  “Did Michael put him into that fire?” the priest asked, pointing to the hearth, where a log fire crackled.

  Rory shook his head. “No, the big fire down there.” He bent down and splayed his little fingers on the rug.

  “And how did Michael do that, Rory?” Father Dorrity was looking perplexed.

  “With a big sword,” the child said solemnly. And with that, he left the room.

  “We were all very disturbed,” Shane says, “because he was only three. He’d never seen any pictures of St. Michael the Archangel; we had none in the house. He’d been taught the names Jesus and Mary, and he knew about God because we prayed with the children every night. But that was it. Also, the fact that he went right up to the priest like that while he was speaking very seriously to us. This is a kid who’d hide behind his mother whenever a stranger came to the door. That in itself was very unsettling.”

  Father Dorrity shared Shane’s concern. He took him aside before leaving. “I’ll come again tomorrow and say some special prayers in that room. I don’t have them with me now. To tell you the truth, I’ve never been called on to use them. Until now, that is.” He seemed distracted. “Yes, I think that would be best. You see, Shane, children are very sensitive to things in the ‘other’ world. That’s why I’m rather worried about what the child said.”

  He returned the following day at 6 p.m. and led the Dwyers in a rosary in the red room. That completed, he asked them to remain kneeling. He had with him the set of prayers he had alluded to the day before. They were handwritten, and each sheet bore the heading The Litanies of the Saints.

  “If you both do the responses,” he instructed, “where you see the A’s.” He placed a purple stole about his neck and knelt down beside them. “Now, if anything happens while we’re praying, just try to ignore it and keep going.”

  These were ominous, disquieting words. Before the couple could ask what he meant by them, Father Dorrity had begun.

  “Do not remember, O Lord, our sins or those of our forefathers.”

  “And do not punish us for our offenses,” Shane and Moya answered.

  They then recited the Lord’s Prayer together, and the priest began reading from Psalm 53. “The fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no God—’”

  On the last word, the Bible fell from the topmost shelf of the bookcase and landed, open, on the rug. “Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity….” The priest ignored it and continued reading.

  Shane and Moya could only stare at the book. This time, it had not opened at Isaiah. Before their astonished eyes, the pages began to turn, all by themselves, from right to left, as though invisible fingers were leafing through them.

  “…there is none that doeth good. God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God.” Father Dorrity completed the psalm, ending with the words, “Save Shane and Moya, your servants, O Lord.”

  The Dwyers were late with the response; they were still staring in dreadful fascination at the Bible. As if by sorcery, it was again opened at Isaiah 28 to 29.

  They turned their attention back to the page. “Because we hope in you, my God,” they answered.

  “Be a tower of strength for them, O Lord.”

  “In the face of the Enemy.”

  Father Dorrity paused. He was gazing fixedly at the sofa along the back wall. They could see the page in his hands quiver slightly.

  “Let the Enemy…have no victory…over them.”

  From somewhere beneath the sofa came a deep rumble. The vibration was so powerful that they could feel their legs tremble. It was as though a huge generator had started up. The priest got to his feet and went to stand before the sofa. He motioned for the
Dwyers to continue the responses.

  “And let the Son of Iniquity not succeed in injuring us.”

  The shuddering ceased.

  “Send them…send them help from the Holy…from the Holy Place, Lord.” Father Dorrity’s voice was faltering. He stood with his back to them, head inclined. They knew he was staring at the sofa.

  “And give us Heavenly protection,” the couple answered quickly.

  An atmosphere of menace and threat seemed to pervade the room. The air felt charged. They wanted the prayer to end swiftly and to make a bolt for the door.

  “Lord….” The priest sighed heavily. Another tremor came from the floor beneath the sofa. They saw him sway slightly, then right himself immediately. “Lord…hear my prayer.”

  Shane and Moya glanced at each other. They wondered if they should go to his aid but did not feel they could interrupt the prayers. “And let our cry reach you—”

  They stopped. Father Dorrity was flung backward, as if someone had pushed him in the chest. He fell into an armchair.

  “Are you all right, Father?” Moya asked. He was ashen faced and perspiring. Shane went to assist him.

  “Fine…,” he said, recovering himself. “I’m fine! Just keep kneeling. I need to finish.” He got up and returned to the same spot. There was evidently something there, something dangerous that he had disturbed.

  “…God and Lord of all creation! You gave power to your Apostles to pass through dangers unharmed. Among your commands to do wondrous things, you said: Drive out Evil Spirit. By your strength, Satan fell like…fell like—”

  Once again he was thrust back into the armchair, and once again the Dwyers tried to help, but he checked them with a wave of his hand. They resumed kneeling.

  He got up and continued on from where he had left off. “By your strength, Satan fell like lightning from Heaven. With fear and…and trembling.”

  The couple could see that the priest was indeed trembling. The pages he held were shaking. His voice was cracking.

  “I pray and supplicate…your Holy Name. Give me constant faith and power, so that…so that…armed with the power of your holy strength, I can attack this cruel Evil Spirit—”