The Dolocher

by Caroline Barry

  There was a rap on the shop door.

  Janey Mack froze, her bread suspended before her lips. She stopped chewing, a big wodge of bread bulging in her cheeks. She blinked her huge eyes, her heart pounding hard against her thin ribs. Was this it? Was everything going to come tumbling down? Was it the orphanage? A beadle? Had Hoppy John double-crossed her in some way?

  Merriment wiped her hands and stood in the doorway, looking across the shuttered shop.

  ‘I’ll get that.’

  Janey Mack scarpered from her chair and with a wild instinct for self-preservation hid behind a large ceramic jar over near the back door. She heard the bolt on the shop door slide back. Voices. Female voices. They came in. They were coming towards the anteroom.

  ‘Had to drag her in here,’ a girl said. ‘Would you look at her, her eyes popping out of her head like her face might burst. Come on, Stella, for God’s sake.’

  It was Anne MacCarrick. Janey Mack dashed from her hiding place and was standing at her chair eating her bread when Merriment led the two girls in.

  Anne looked about the dark room and sniffed.

  ‘You work in a bit of a dungeon there, Misses O’Grady. Well, look at this.’

  She stepped toward Janey Mack and flung her gloved hands onto her hips.

  ‘By God, that’s not little Janey, is it?’

  ‘It’s meself.’ Janey Mack straightened up.

  ‘Don’t you polish up neat as a shiny new penny? And hasn’t she the softest hair? I wouldn’t have recognised you.’ She spun round to Stella. ‘She was mucked up to the eyes yesterday, like something you’d find at the bottom of a cookin’ pan, and now look at her, pretty as a dove.’

  Janey Mack nodded, feeling she deserved every compliment thrown her way, all because rose-scented soap and Merriment O’Grady possessed some kind of transformative magic. She had been dusted with fairy dust and had come up sparkling.

  ‘I’m gettin’ a new dress,’ she announced.

  ‘Lucky sausage.’

  Anne sat down and laughed at Stella standing petrified in the doorway ready to run if the occasion required.

  ‘Would you look at her, Misses O’Grady, shaking in her boots. She’s terrified, so she is.’

  ‘Did you get a fright, love?’ Janey Mack asked.

  That made Anne laugh louder. She pointed her thumb at Janey Mack and said to the others, ‘She’s like a little aul’ one, isn’t she?’

  ‘Can I offer you two girls some blueberry cordial?’ Merriment took a huge glass bottle from a shelf and poured the dark purple liquid into four cups.

  ‘That’s very nice of you.’ Anne removed her soft grey gloves carefully, bobbed her cup in the air and made a swift toast.

  ‘Bottoms up.’ She took a long glug and smacked her lips together. ‘Now,’ she said, getting down to business. ‘Stella, come in, for God’s sake. You’re not going to go to hell.’ Anne looked up at Merriment. ‘She’s convinced that my suggestion, what I was chattin’ to yous yesterday about, is a sin and that she’ll be damned to roast in Satan’s fires if she so much as tries to calm her father down.’

  ‘He’s . . .’ Stella stuttered. She had long dark curls and a sombre, pale face, a large nose and thin lips and when she frowned a deep line shaped like a Y cut into her forehead.

  ‘He’s a blackguard, Stella, plain and simple, and he needs his wings clipped.’

  Janey Mack leaned onto the arm of the chair. ‘Does his piddle smell funny?’ she asked.

  Merriment pressed her lips between her teeth but the smile danced in her eyes. Janey Mack was a quick learner. Stella looked east and west.

  ‘Well . . .’ She seemed confused. Anne waved her hand.

  ‘You’ve looked in his pisspot, Stella, you’re the only one to clean it. Tell them.’

  ‘It stinks to high heaven.’ The words burst from Stella and all her pent-up reservation escaped on a tide of full disclosure. ‘He’s very bad-tempered, Misses O’Grady. Thinks everyone is again’ him. Men. Women he’s only bumped into. He’s convinced they’ve insulted and slighted him by a look, never mind a word. And if he takes a skunners against someone, that’s it, he’ll think bad of them for life. He’s suspicious of everyone and everything. He hates me, ’cause I’m “as bad as the rest of them”, he says. He’s very selfish, wouldn’t share the crust of his bread with me, never mind the dog. And then there’s his rages. They come sudden and out of nowhere.’

  ‘Her nerves are gone,’ Anne chimed in. ‘Sure, look at her, she’s destroyed with nervous exhaustion. Wouldn’t you say so, Misses O’Grady?’

  ‘Does he complain of ulcers in the mouth?’ Merriment asked, pulling out her large red ledger.

  Stella’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

  ‘He does.’

  ‘And does he get sharp stabbing pains?’

  ‘All the time.’ Stella was amazed.

  ‘Piles?’

  ‘Never shuts up about them.’

  ‘Acid in the stomach?’

  ‘Worse after he has had milk.’

  Merriment put on a large pair of thick leather gloves, tied a scarf over her mouth and took a small vial down off a shelf. She undid the cork carefully, holding the jar out at arms-length. Stella and Anne stepped back to stand beside Janey Mack.

  ‘One sniff will kill ya,’ the little girl whispered.

  Merriment nodded and Janey Mack retreated towards the back door.

  ‘I don’t want to do him in,’ Stella whimpered.

  Merriment squeezed out ten drops of shiny liquid into an empty jar. Everyone watched the procedure in a reverential silence. She fetched a thick syrup from the press and mixed it into the drops. She re-corked the dangerous vial, removed her scarf and kept stirring the jug.

  ‘You’re not going to kill him, Stella. It’s just that raw nitricum acidum, or aqua fortis, is extremely corrosive. The fumes are choking and if truth be told one whiff and your heart would stop. This’ – she patted the syrupy edge of the jar – ‘is an extremely diluted portion. I’ve mixed it with molasses and I want you to give a spoon of it each morning to your father mixed in warm water. Tell him it is for his gut complaint and to ease the piles. You’ll notice a change in his outlook and demeanour in a week, he’ll have improved health and disposition in three weeks. We’ll reduce the dosage over time.’

  She sealed the jar and held it up for Stella to take. Stella stood tall and uncertain, the candlelight falling in a slant across the chequered pattern of her woollen shawl. She couldn’t move.

  ‘She’s not helpin’ ye to murder yer father,’ Janey Mack blurted. ‘Sure she’d be flung into the Black Dog for that. It’s a cure.’

  Spurned by Janey Mack’s reassurance Stella tentatively took the jar.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘Two and nine,’ Merriment said, scribbling in the ledger. ‘You can pay me one and four now, one and five when you have it.’

  Stella sighed, relieved. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘There now.’ Anne finished up her cordial and changed the subject. ‘The widow Byrne woke up in a great mood this morning. She came down to breakfast singing the praises of your chilblain cure.’

  Someone knocked firmly on the shop door.

  ‘Busy this morning,’ Anne said, watching Merriment leave to answer it.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asked Janey Mack.

  ‘Do I look like I can see through walls?’ But the minute she heard his voice, she recognised it.

  ‘It’s the lodger,’ she whispered hurriedly. ‘Didn’t come back last night, probably off galavantin’ with the ladies. He’s new to town. Likes cards and writes broadsheets.’

  The two girls drank up the information.

  ‘Very handsome,’ Janey Mack told them and they both instinctively touched their hair.

  ‘I was all night in the hospital,’ Solomon said as he stepped into the room. He halted, his eyebrows rising quizzically. Anne’s long hair and casual manner caught his attention. Stella retreated half hidden
into the shadows.

  ‘Ladies,’ he bowed politely. Merriment stepped in behind him and introduced everyone.

  ‘Mister Fish tells me he has a great story.’

  ‘Please, no formalities. Call me Solomon.’ Solomon left his bag on the floor, perched on the edge of the table, crossed his legs and folded his arms, confident and happy to be in female company. He looked pale, his features drawn, but his eyes were smiling. He shook his head and scratched it.

  ‘It’s the damnedest thing,’ he said. ‘The damnedest thing. I went over to the Black Dog to interview one of the guards, a man named Boxty, to enquire after Olocher. Get a bit of information on how he killed himself, what he was like, that kind of thing.’

  Solomon’s captive audience nodded. Merriment quietly mixed and stirred and wondered how in the space of two days her laboratory had become so cluttered. Solomon started by describing the nunnery.

  ‘Dank and cold as the grave, and Olocher’s cell was still knee deep in blood.’

  He told them all how unsettled he had felt, how Boxty quaked in the torchlight saying that Olocher used to sit and mumble to the devil, whispering like he was listening to something instructing him. He told them of the way Boxty’s gullet swallowed down lumps of fear and how his eyes shifted nervously.

  ‘So I left him. Told him I’d be back to interview Martin Coffey, the other turnkey, and I headed off.’

  ‘Janey Mack, the poor man. I wouldn’t like that job.’ The little girl looked at the poker resting against the fender, thinking it would be handy to defend herself with if a robber broke in.

  ‘That’s not the crux of the story.’

  Solomon waved his index finger from side to side. His hands were stained with black ink. The girls were rigid with attention, their faces locked in an expression of intense concentration, intrigued by the fact that there was a crux. He strode to the fire, lifted the tails of his jacket and warmed his cheeks, his hands behind his back.

  ‘I lost my way out and ended up back at the nunnery. I thought to myself, Boxty will have to show me out. So I opened the door and what did I see at the bottom of the steps?’

  There was a faint pause. Anne shifted to the edge of her seat. Stella emerged from the shadows. Janey Mack stepped forward.

  ‘Boxty was crawling towards me covered in stale blood.’

  There were three loud gasps. Only Merriment didn’t react. She listened as she worked, methodically weighing out fine powders, fascinated that Solomon could saunter in and within minutes have everyone hanging on his every word.

  Wouldn’t last a wet week at sea, she thought to herself. No sailor would put up with his palaver.

  Solomon stood tall and, keeping his right side erect, he collapsed his left arm and leg as he described Boxty’s grotesque condition the night before.

  ‘He dragged himself across the floor, crying out, “Don’t leave me here, don’t leave me here.” Then . . .’

  Solomon paused for effect.

  ‘What he said next beggars belief.’

  Everyone strained to hear.

  Solomon whispered, ‘Dolocher’s back.’

  No one took a breath. No one moved. Seconds passed, until unable to bear the burden of the widening silence, Anne hoarsely said, ‘Dolocher?’ her eyes popping wide mixed with a frisson of terror and excitement.

  ‘That’s what Boxty said: he couldn’t speak properly. He’d had a fit. Something frightened him so bad that he’d been paralysed down one side of his body.’ Solomon craned forward and very slowly and deliberately announced what had happened.

  ‘He’d seen Olocher’s ghost.’

  There was a communal intake of breath, swift glances exchanged and the word ‘never’ whispered incredulously.

  Solomon nodded. ‘Worse than that, Olocher’s ghost was half man, half black pig.’

  Janey Mack shook her head and swallowed.

  ‘How? Why?’ she shivered.

  Solomon shrugged, ‘That’s the mystery. The chilling mystery. Boxty said he heard a noise in Olocher’s cell, crept in slowly, with his musket ready when out from behind the door jumped the malignant ghost of Olocher, a grunting black pig with hands and legs and the strength of the devil.’

  ‘Holy God.’ Janey Mack’s right hand clutched at the back of the chair, her knuckles white. ‘Is it true? Is Olocher back? From the grave?’

  Solomon licked his lower lip. ‘All I can tell you is what Boxty told me and what I saw with my own eyes. I went with him to the hospital and he spent the whole night fretting, staring at his own shadow flickering on the wall, howling that “the Dolocher” had come to fetch him down to hell.’

  ‘Mother of divine . . .’ Anne breathed. Stella reached down and held Anne’s hand.

  ‘That’s not the worst of it.’ Solomon moved to one side, out of the direct heat of the fire and leaned on the mantle, looking a moment into the flames.

  ‘The nurse said he was bruised peculiarly. I mean, I saw the bruises myself, ugly big things on his ribs and arms.’

  When Solomon looked up, he frowned like he didn’t believe he was going to say what he was going to say next. He glanced at Merriment. She caught the look, unsure of how to read it. Was he afraid? Perplexed? Guilty, maybe, of telling tall tales?

  ‘Boxty told me he had proof that Olocher’s savage spirit was after him.’

  Merriment tapped a little box and crimson powder snowed into a tiny brass pan, yet despite appearances she was just as interested as everyone else to find out how you prove that the dead have come back to life.

  ‘He said he ripped something off Olocher’s ghost, something belonging to him.’ Solomon stroked his forehead and spoke a little slower, like he was working out some mathematical problem that needed to be articulated with caution in case a stray digit got lost in the mess.

  ‘What did he mean?’ Janey Mack stood near Anne, instinctively taking her other hand.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Solomon said quietly. ‘He kept telling me to go and look behind the red door. So this morning I went down to the Black Dog and the guard that was on last night gave me a candle and let me into Olocher’s cell.’

  Solomon looked over at Merriment. She had stopped working and was standing with scales in one hand and a tiny weight in the other, waiting with the others to hear what was worse than a demon with a pig’s head.

  ‘I found it in a corner under the bench.’ Solomon shoved his hands into his pockets, not sure how to formulate his discovery.

  ‘It was a lump of flesh, torn from Olocher’s throat.’

  The girls gasped. Merriment raised an incredulous eyebrow. Solomon smiled, faintly embarrassed by the implications of his story. But as the girls babbled with intense excitement, overwhelmed with the idea that some preternatural creature had returned to exact a grisly revenge on its captors, Solomon perked up.

  ‘That is shockin’, so it is. Janey Mack, shockin’.’ Janey Mack looked up at Merriment, swallowing back the terror. ‘Up from the dead.’ She panicked a little. ‘Walked off the surgeon’s table with a new head and went to find his jailors.’

  Anne patted her face, holding her fingers by her lips, shielding her eyes a little as she peeked at Janey Mack, watching the little girl’s outburst.

  ‘His flesh falling off, decomposing.’

  ‘Exactly what I wrote.’ Solomon grabbed his bag, pulled out a leaflet and handed it to Anne.

  ‘What’s it say?’ Janey Mack rushed to her side.

  Stella read the words.

  ‘ “Olocher’s Ghost Returns to Haunt the Black Dog – The Dolocher.” ’

  ‘I wrote it while I sat with Boxty last night,’ Solomon said proudly. ‘Took his name for Olocher’s phantasm: the Dolocher. I thought it compounded the idea that what attacked him was neither a living nor a dead thing. Had to pay over the odds to get the printer to print me two thousand copies so I could have it out at this morning’s market. He’ll have the full batch ready in an hour.’

  ‘She sold Ringsend oysters,’ Stel
la announced, the cream leaflet shivering in her hands. Anne and Janey Mack both asked, ‘Who?’

  ‘Jo-Jo Jacobs. They think that’s how Olocher met her first. He bought oysters off her.’

  ‘Holy God.’ Anne shook her head. ‘How much is this, Mister Fish?’

  ‘A penny to you, Anne.’

  Anne rummaged in her pocket. ‘The widow Byrne will want to hear about this. She’s done nothing but curse Olocher from one end of the week to the other. She knew Jo-Jo’s mammy.’

  ‘And I’ll have one.’ Stella timidly handed Solomon a penny.

  He pocketed the money. ‘I’ve to hurry along and get the stall organised. It’s a chastening story, isn’t it, ladies?’

  ‘If you could believe the half of it,’ Merriment said brightly.

  ‘Sure, he saw the lump of flesh himself.’ Janey Mack’s eyes blinked, defending Solomon. ‘And he sat the night with the lad in the hospital fighting off the huge shadows on the wall.’

  ‘The man was raving,’ Merriment said confidently. ‘It’s one of the preliminary symptoms of apoplexy. The burst of blood to the brain causes the person to experience intense fear. They imagine all sorts, even demons.’

  ‘How do you explain the bruising?’ Solomon asked.

  ‘He fell down the stairs.’

  ‘And the lump of flesh?’

  Merriment paused. ‘I’m sure there’s a rational explanation.’

  ‘It slid off Olocher’s dead bones,’ Janey Mack said. ‘That’s the rational explanation.’ Her face looked gaunt and troubled. ‘His flesh melted off him, stinkin’.’

  Solomon gave a short, bright laugh and pulled his shoulders back. ‘She’s a great turn of phrase, hasn’t she?’ He cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. ‘Did someone dip you in a bit of water?’

  Janey Mack nodded vigorously, confused by being half frightened and half delighted at the same time.

  ‘You look very civilised, amazing to see the improvement a splash of water can make to an ugly face.’

  Janey Mack’s jaw dropped. The girls giggled.

  ‘Yer own noggin is nothing to write home about.’