“It’s probably nothing, Mr. Donovan,” Tommy said, tapping the screen as Mike squeezed into the only other seat in the tower office. “But I thought you should know.”
Mike peered at the screen. “What am I seeing?”
“This is a tape of last night’s surveillance footage,” Tommy said. “If you look close you can see it. Just there in the woods.”
“Help me out, Tommy,” Mike said gruffly. Bad enough he had to climb up here like some teenager. He wasn’t going to play guessing games.
“It looks like something is shaking the bushes just here. You see?”
The video was grainy but clear enough. It showed the stretch of woods that lined the outside of the north end of the compound. A scraggly line of tall bushes merged into a thick forest of oaks and sycamores behind.
Sure enough, as Mike watched the bushes facing the compound started to shake. The movement increased in intensity until the bushes were agitating frenetically for several seconds before simply stopping.
“What the hell?” Mike said.
“I know,” Tommy said. “Time stamp says it started at three in the morning on the dot. Then the camera swings away and when it pans back ten minutes later, it’s stopped.”
“And you’ve never seen anything like this before?”
“No sir.”
Mike sighed. “Well done, Tommy. Keep an eye on it and let me know if it happens again. I’ll send Gavin out to check the area.”
Was it an animal? If so, the size and ferocity of the bushes’ movement would require it to be as big as a gang of tigers. But bushes didn’t just shake on their own accord.
As Mike made his way back down the ladder he saw Fiona and Sarah walking up the main entrance to the compound. Both women walked quickly and purposefully. His eyes went from his sister’s form to his wife’s. And he grinned. She even walked like an American, he thought. Ready to get right in your face if necessary. Ready to see what was around every corner. She looked up and spotted him and waved.
Ten minutes later, he met them in front of the main campfire at the center of the compound. There was still a large fire going in the center—the gypsies insisted on it—but since Sarah had returned from the States last year with six cookstoves and enough gas to fuel them, most people cooked indoors.
Fi unbuckled her gun belt and let it slide to the ground. Mike picked it up and frowned at her. Ever since she faced down the Gilhooleys last year, she’d had a new confidence that translated into an interest in guns and the compound’s security.
“You need a belt that fits you,” he said before turning to Sarah. “Good trip?”
She looked tired but her eyes sparkled with interest as he regarded her. “As usual,” she said. “Everything okay here?”
He stepped up to her and drew her in with one arm and kissed her. “Now it is.”
“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” Fiona said, pulling her gun belt from Mike’s hand. “Well, I’ll be going to find me own man, now, if you don’t mind. Sarah? Your kitchen or mine?”
Mike ran a hand down Sarah’s back and she smiled, her eyes never leaving his.
“Mine,” she said to Fiona without looking at her. “But not straightaway.”
“Sure you’ll be explaining to three hungry children that supper will be delayed because, please God, Missus Donovan has had to go six whole hours without Himself. I’m sure they’ll understand, demanding little shites that they are.”
“Okay, Fi,” Sarah said, taking Mike by the hand and pulling him in the direction of their cottage. “Five minutes.”
Regardless of what Fiona thought, Sarah didn’t want to jump her handsome six-foot four husband or at least not at the moment. She was footsore, exhausted and hungry herself. She just needed a few minutes wrapped in the sanctuary of the two of them. After their wedding eleven months earlier, they’d both discovered a respite from the worry and uncertainty of the lives they led. Whether in bed, united as closely as a man and woman can be, or standing side by side in the midst of a crowd, when they were together, they were whole.
Their cottage was larger than most of the huts that formed a tight ring around the compound’s center. Behind them was a ring of smaller cottages and behind those the sprawl of tents that housed the gypsies.
Sometimes when Sarah sat in her kitchen drinking a cup of tea and looking out the window that faced the compound’s center, she could almost believe nothing had changed and that it was as it had been—before the bomb had detonated over the Irish Sea in 2011 and for practical purposes flung all of the UK back to the nineteenth century.
She dropped her bag of medicine inside the front door and pulled Mike across the threshold and into her arms. He held her without speaking, his hand on the back of her head, his face buried in her long dark hair. Sarah heard the sounds of the few camp dogs barking in the distance and smelled the singular fragrance of somebody making soap.
“Bad day?” Mike murmured, pulling back to see her face. She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “It’s just…there’s so much misery out there, Mike.”
“I know. But think of the good you’re doing.”
“That’s just it. I don’t think I am. They don’t trust me.”
“It’s only how they are with outsiders.”
“They don’t act that way with Fiona.”
“Aye, but she’s Irish. They’ll get used to you. Or they won’t.” Mike kissed her and went into the kitchen.
They had one of two working refrigerators in the compound. The other was in what they called the processing plant, a small wooden structure between the gypsies’ camp and the last row of cottages. This was where the main storage of the harvest was kept along with any meat caught. Mike poured two glasses of water from a pitcher on the table and brought one to her.
“Did you know they’re calling us New Dublin?” Sarah said as she took the glass from him.
“Beats Daoineville,” he said.
Daoineville was the name given to the compound eighteen months earlier by a man who had taken it by force and who had since left the area in shame and humiliation.
Plus, he’d tried to hang Mike and Fiona’s husband Declan.
“I just think we need to resolve how we work with the people on the outside,” she said.
“I think what we’re doing works fine,” Mike said in his best and-we’ll-hear-no-more-on-the-subject tone. Sarah nearly laughed. Surely he knew her better than that by now?
“They’re like children,” she said. Going to the window, she thought she heard John’s voice and now watched him approach with Gavin. The two boys—both so different from each other—were as close as if they’d been born brothers. Just seeing John, laughing and unaware he was being watched, made Sarah’s heart fill with love and worry.
There wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t wonder if she’d done the right thing by allowing him to join her back in Ireland.
“What makes you say that?” Mike said.
Sarah turned to him and frowned, trying to remember what she’d said. Her face cleared and she set the glass down on a table.
“Fiona said she heard in the village that people are starting to talk about trees that can walk and fairies roaming about.”
Mike’s face darkened. “That’s barking. I don’t believe it.”
“You can ask her at dinner tonight,” Sarah said, patting his shoulder on her way to the kitchen. The front door opened and John and Gavin burst in.
“We’re starving!” John called. “Hey, Da, Tommy said you were looking for us?”
Sarah stood facing them from the door of the kitchen.
“Yeah,” Mike said, dropping his voice. “I need you to check out the area on the outer wall of the—”
“Tommy showed us the tape,” Gavin said. “We already checked it out.”
“What tape?” Sarah asked.
“And?” Mike asked patiently.
“Bunch of broken branches and trampled bushes,” Gavin said.
“Cor, Da,” Gavin laughed. “You think we got a herd of wild water buffalo on the loose?”
“Water buffalo are by definition wild,” John said to Gavin.
“Blimey, you’re right, you little bugger!” Gavin grabbed John and began wrestling with him standing up.
“Gavin,” Mike said tightly.
“There weren’t any footprints,” John said, catching his breath but still in the grip of Gavin’s arm around his throat. “Not animal, not human.”
“Mike, what’s going on?” Sarah said, her hands on her hips. “What bushes? Where?”
“It’s nothing, Sarah,” Mike said, but he frowned in concentration.
“It doesn’t sound like nothing,” she said.
“Just something we’re checking on,” Mike said. “Nothing to worry about, I promise.” He gave her a quick kiss and herded the boys out of the house. “Come on, lads, your Aunt Fiona will be here presently with the bairn. You’ve got time to check on the horses before dinner.”
He turned and gave Sarah a wink and left the cottage. For a brief moment as Sarah watched them go, she felt a chill emanate from the very walls of the cottage and settle gently around her shoulders.
CHAPTER TWO
Sarah loved the bonfire nights the best. They didn’t do it that often, but when they did they gathered the whole compound together around the center cookfire to tell stories—even the gypsies. It helped remind her that this was her family now—these forty odd Irish people, old and young. She grinned at Fiona who sat across the campfire with her husband Declan. While gatherings like this usually involved music, especially when the gypsies were in attendance, storytelling bonfires were quieter affairs. The sleeping toddler in Fiona’s arms, wee Ciara, would be able to enjoy the cradle of her mother’s arms and Fiona could relax knowing the child couldn’t be safer.
Siobhan Murray sat next to her old childhood friend, Margaret Keenan, and the two old ladies giggled and whispered like teenagers. Unlike Siobhan, Margaret had never been a great beauty as a girl. In fact, the stark angular planes of her face matched her sharp tongue. To nobody’s great surprise, Margaret had never married.
Mike sat next to Sarah. As the leader of the compound, he often spoke at these gatherings, even if he didn’t usually tell stories. There were others who did that better. Sarah caught a glimpse of John sitting with Tommy Donaghue. Maybe the bonfire nights didn’t totally take the place of Netflix binging as far as John was concerned, she thought with a smile, but Sarah thanked God her boy had them instead.
John had been disappointed to realize that it wasn’t Halloween they’d be observing tonight, but its precursor Samhain. Mike had explained that Samhain was a high druid holy day observed by the ancient Celts.
All John heard was there would be no candy or reason to wear scary costumes.
Gavin sat a few families away from Fiona, his arm around the girl Regan. You couldn’t live in a community as small as this one and not realize the two had taken to each other but they seemed to have accelerated their attraction in the last couple of days. Sarah glanced at Mike but he was looking at the elderly man standing in front of the fire, who was the first storyteller. Nothing escaped Mike’s notice and Sarah knew he’d observed his son with Regan. She also knew he didn’t approve.
Mickey Quinn held out his hands to prompt silence before he began. The Irish, as master storytellers, had all the confidence in the world that they would get the stage conditions they desired. Old Mickey had been speaking and telling stories for too many years not to know he’d have everyone’s rapt attention before long. He could wait for it.
One by one, everyone around the flickering bonfire became silent. Mickey waited until only the sounds of the horses nickering in their stalls could be heard before he began.
“I’ll be telling you the story of the Horned Witches of Slievenamon,” he intoned, his voice deep and resonating. Mickey had no family in the compound and because he shared little, there was a lot of mystery surrounding why that was. But he was a hard worker and one who would volunteer for the worst jobs—burying the dead, or scraping maggots from carcasses.
Sarah looked at Mike, who was watching Mickey with full concentration. She had to smile. The only thing more serious to an Irishman than telling stories was listening to them.
“One night,” Mickey said in his clear Irish accent, “when her family and servants were asleep a very rich woman sat combing wool when there came a knock at the door. Startled, the woman answered, ‘Who is there?’ ‘I am the Witch of one Horn’ came the answer. Thinking one of her neighbors needed help, the rich woman opened the door, and a woman with a huge horn on her forehead and her hands full of carded wool entered. She sat down by the fire and began to card the wool.
“Then a second knock came to the door. The mistress opened the door, and a second witch entered, with two horns on her forehead, and a spinning wheel. She began to spin, and the door continued to knock until twelve women sat round the fire. Each had one more horn than the one before. The third witch had three horns and the last one twelve.
“As they carded the thread and turned their spinning-wheels, they sang an ancient rhyme. Soon the mistress discovered she could not move nor utter a word, for a spell of the witches was upon her.
“One of them called to her in Irish, demanding that she rise up and make them a cake.”
Sarah’s attention in the story waned and she looked around the audience as Mickey’s words carried clear and strong in the night air. Somehow Gavin and Regan had disappeared. Sarah wondered if Mike had noticed. She looked over Mickey’s head and saw by a flash of lightning heavy rain clouds were moving over the compound.
“…and so the rich woman sat down by the well and wept. Whereupon a voice came upon her and said, ‘Go to the north angle of the house, cry aloud three times and say, The mountain of the Fenian women and the sky over it is all on fire.’
“When she did what the voice told her to do the witches inside the house rushed out with shrieks and fled to Slievenamon, cursing the Spirit of the Well.”
Sarah whispered to Mike under the applause as Mickey took his bows and then his seat, “That is truly the worst ghost story I ever heard.”
“All ghost stories come from Ireland. We invented them.”
“That’s not true and thank God for it. It made no sense.”
Mike laughed and pulled her close to him. Fiona and Declan rose and after a nod to both Sarah and Mike retired for the night.
“Did you notice Gavin and Regan left?”
“I did,” Mike said. “If I have to send out a bleeding search party, I’ll be none too pleased. Are you cold?”
“No, I’m good.” But she shivered. It was a chilly night but it wasn’t the temperature that made her tremble. Something felt wrong. She couldn’t put her finger on what.
John walked over and sat down next to Mike and stretched out his legs in front of him. He was growing. It was hard to believe he was already fourteen years old. Since the bomb, he’d had to do so many things well beyond his years.
“No offense,” he said to Mike. “But that was one crappy ghost story.”
Sarah laughed. “I already told him.”
“What did them having horns have to do with anything?”
“It’s likely that the old stories don’t fit so well in modern times, ”Mike said, picking up his pipe and lighting it. “I think that’s the value of them.”
Many of the other families were leaving with their little ones and the few who were left, moved closer to where Mike sat and pulled out pipes and jugs of poteen and homemade beer.
“What do you mean?” John asked. A movement caught his eye and everyone turned to see Gavin and Regan, hand in hand, coming back to the fire. They sat down to listen.
“Well, the stories stay true for hundreds, nay, thousands of years,” Mike said. Sarah noticed his brogue became stronger
the more whiskey he’d enjoyed.
“How’s that even possible?” John said. “Five hundred years ago did they even write stuff down?”
“Oh, aye,” Mike said, warming to his tale. “In any village, they’d all recite the stories and if someone had a different version, they’d vote to either go with the new version or stay with the old. That way there was always the one story told the same way.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” John said. “But in the States, we dress up as vampires and witches and go from house to house in the dark. It’s really cool.”
“Sure, we do that here, too,” Mike said. “Or, we used to. I imagine they still do back home, eh?”
America had been only marginally affected by the bomb—a bomb they had triggered by their behavior in the Middle East. There was no doubt the average American was still trick-or-treating back home. And everything else. As if nothing had happened.
“You’re too old for that sort of thing anyway,” Sarah said to John with a smile.
“I know.”
“But tonight isn’t about giving away candy and wearing super hero costumes,” Mike said. “Halloween came from Samhain which is a very real, very…scary druid holy day.”
“Tell ‘im, Da,” Gavin said. Sarah could tell he’d been drinking so she knew Mike could tell too.
Mike went on as if he hadn’t noticed.
“Tonight is about fairies and magic,” he said. “The druids believed the very trees and bushes would come to life on Samhain, and the rabbits and the fox would sit in judgment. Have you heard of the Wicker Man, lad?” he said to John.
“Blimey!” Gavin said. “I forgot about him.” He pulled Regan closer to him, his arm draped over her shoulder. Her eyes were glassy as she looked into the fire, as if she’d been drinking too.
“Well, the Wicker Man is a ghoul more than fifteen feet high who rises up from the verra earth to taste the flesh of the living.”
John gulped and glanced at Sarah. She smiled at him.
“But Samhain,” Mike said, reaching for Sarah’s hand, “is also a way to honor the Earth. I think, in the old days, when you got your food from the land, whether that was in crops or the animals that roamed it, you had a stronger sense of gratitude to nature.”
Irish End Games, Books 4-5-6 Page 2