by Paul Lynch
She screams at Colly. Why won’t you help me? Why are you being so useless?
Colly says, I can’t—it’s a witch, it is a dead witch you are moving—look at the hairy beard, I won’t help you.
Pulling the sack towards the trees, veering away from the house. She thinks, a witch! Imagine the trouble that could come of it. Can a dead witch haunt you? Trying to speed along and get this thing done but the ground is knotted with roots that bump and then one of the bumps rolls the body face-forward off the sack.
Eooohhh!
She is afraid to look at it.
It’s all your fault, Colly, she shouts. It’s always your fault.
I will have nothing to do with a witch.
Having to spade the body back onto the sack again—Oh! Oh!—not even breathing now, for the smell she knows once inhaled will never leave her body, will corrupt her skin, will eat at her brain, eat her dreaming, this demon witch of an old woman that will live inside her—
Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
The corpse prone on the sack as if asleep. Or just some dead old dog. It’s Blackie you’re dragging! That’s it! That time Mam dragged him, do you remember? Up into the bog to bury him and then she came back down for the shovel and me hanging off your arm, and both of us pretending not to cry. That is what this is and I’m Mam and this is what grown-ups do and we can tidy the house and get it warm with fire and we will sleep the king and queen’s slumber—
Twist and twist and twist of stomach until she bends and brings up mucus. Deeper into the wood now, wood-rot dusted with snow, twigs that crackle and click—Oh! Oh!—through the tops of the trees and how it looks as if the light of the world were coming undone into snow—Oh! Oh! Oh!—and then she can no longer do it, drops the sack down, staggers to the clearway. She falls to her knees heaving emptiness, rubs violently at her nose and her eyes with the back of her hand as if to undo seeing.
The stink. The stink. The stink. That witch’s stink-rot has gotten its corruption inside her.
Colly says, leave it be, muc, it’s in the trees, nobody will find it, nobody has to know but us.
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
She thinks, this is a fine place, this is a fine place, this is a fine place, this is a fine place to live.
Colly says, open the window.
Whatever for?
To let the old woman’s soul fly out, just in case it’s trapped inside with us.
She has forgotten she is cold. The house stinks of death, she knows it, but what can you do? She thinks of Sarah airing Blackmountain, sending the youngers outside, the pair of them scrubbing till their hands grew stiff. She searches about. The place heaped with old rags and bottles that were of no use to anyone and she wonders if the old woman was mad. Beneath the smell of old woman and death there is also a smell of dog. She puts the old woman’s bed tick and blanket to air by the door, leaves the door open to do its work. The last of evening’s light reaching in carries a little snow like breath. She goes to the window. Would you look! Colly says. There are matches on the window shelf. The box is damp like everything else, for the roof drips its leaky snow-water and the walls have a sticky sweat. Three matches. That is all there is in the box.
She goes into another part of the wood and gathers sticks and wood dry enough to burn. Colly says, three matches! You’d better get the first one to light or we’re done for.
The first match comes apart when she strikes it. She takes out another, holds it a minute, steadies her hand. She strikes the match head but it crumbles. The box empty but one.
Colly says, fuckity-fuck them damp matches, you’ll have to dry it out.
How will I dry it without fire?
Later, as she sits shivering in the chair, her knees to her chest for warmth, Colly says, mind what Mam used to say—if you are cold, go out and play on the track, it’s better than nothing.
She leaps about. Works forgetfulness into it. Hurls her limbs about the small cabin. Unsleeves herself into rhythm and chant. A-huh-ya. A-huh-ya. A-huh-ya. Weeee! A-huh-ya. A-huh-ya. A-huh-ya. Weeee! I am the bringer of fire. I am the storm-wind. I am the crow who sits warm in his feathers. Colly clapping and chanting. She jump-scuffs her crown off the low ceiling. Cartwheels into a flop that wallops the wall. Falls over herself laughing. The woman’s dead smell is everywhere around but at least now you are warm.
She sits at the doorstep letting the air do its work. Listens to the wild story of the night. This wait for tiredness. Wishing the smell out of the house. Wishing for nights of summer, when the sky is clear with stars to twinkle some suggestion of heat. In the glen below, the farmhouse winks each window to dark and the world closes around it. A short while later, Colly says, what in heaven is that? She maps the dark until she can see it, some strange orb of light traveling slowly. It has appeared, it seems, from the farmhouse but perhaps not. A yellowing mote that moves steady and in one direction like a cat’s-eye caught by candle. She thinks, it is a walker’s pace. Somebody out to check on animals in the snow. Then the light disappears.
Not a soul to be seen or heard, her mind a wandering stare through the night’s dark. She is trying to unthink everything that has happened, all the trouble of the world reduced to black and stillness.
So this is what freedom is, she thinks. Freedom is when you are free to disappear off the earth without anybody knowing. Freedom is your soul in the emptiness of night. Freedom is this dark that is as great as what holds the stars and everything beneath it and yet how it seems to be nothing, has no beginning, no end, and no center. Daylight tricks you into thinking what you see is the truth, lets you go through life thinking you know everything. But the truth is we are sleepwalkers. We walk through night that is chaos and dark and forever keeps its truth to itself.
The cat’s-eye of light reappears and she watches it bobbling like hope towards the farmhouse below in the glen.
Colly says, he’s a poisoner of horses—that’s what he is.
It could well be a person up to no good.
Maybe it’s not a person at all, maybe it’s another witch and we’re living in the valley of the witches.
Maybe it was the glowing eye of the pooka.
Maybe it is the work of a smuggler, or—hee!
What?
It’s just somebody from that farmhouse gone to the outhouse for a dump.
To sleep now covered in rags that stink with the matchstick in her pocket. She closes her eyes and tries to name the night sounds, Mam’s voice in her ear, for once you name the sound it no longer troubles you.
That is the breeze rattling the window. That is snow dripping through the thatch. That is— Colly, what is it?
Colly whispers, I’ll bet you it’s the witch.
She squeezes her eyes to listen better. Movement outside, the crunch of snow under hoof or foot. She hopes it is an animal.
I tell you, it’s the witch!
So cold and yet she falls into a dreamless sleep that lasts until the old woman visits her. Shadow and then shape and then a voice scratched out of air, the sour breath as the woman leans over her—hey, wee girl, hey, wee girl, wake up—and she is aware of the voice first as her mother’s, and then it is somebody else’s—hey, wee girl, hey, wee girl, wake up—and she tries to wake herself, tries to shake and move her legs but they are still sleeping—wake up, legs!—or perhaps it is the witch lying on top of her, holding her down, and she refuses to open her eyes, wants to run blind out of the house, run into the morning sun and leave all this behind, and the witch’s hand is taking her wrist and the witch is shaking her, saying something she cannot make out—do not look at her face!—but she opens her eyes slowly to see the wrinkled, wind-thin woman standing over her with that bearded smile and coins in the place of her eyes, whispers coming through her green and grinning mouth that sound like some raspy animal—do not listen!—the witch taking Grace by the throat and she cannot breathe and the witch is saying, this is a fine place, this is a fine place, but you must bury me first, you must bury me fi
rst—
She wakes shivering into the softening light.
Her coat is caught around her neck.
So it was a dog—a crazy circle of paw prints in the snow and everything white-carpeted and this supposed to be March, she says. She tries to still her chattering teeth, dreams of fire leaping from that single match, and if it doesn’t, she will rain fire from the sky, scream fire from the trees.
She stops to listen—upon the air comes a distant grinding sound, perhaps the workings of a mill.
Colly says, if there’s a mill nearby there’s also a town, perhaps beyond that glen, could get ourselves some baccy and matches—my mouth is itching for tobacco.
She bundles old rags and builds sticks and wood around it. The match is brought lone from her pocket. She fingers it, says, it’s dry now but I don’t want to do it.
Colly says, this is how it’s done.
The match flares and flames the tinder.
She says, it is a miracle.
He says, no, it is skill.
She ties twigs into a broom and cleans out the cabin. This is a fine place. This is a fine place. Now, Bran and Finbar, you sit down there. And sup on that nettle soup I made you. And don’t move away from the fire. Bran, put that down! And Finbar, stop pulling at his hair. Finbar! Will you quit? Bran, put that down, I said.
Later, she says, what do you think of this place now, Colly? Do you think the smell is gone?
I’d say for the moment it’s livable.
She bundles firewood and finds a hatchet in the snow. Later, a dog comes to the door. It is the strangest-looking creature, half dog and half wolf by the looks of it. The dog watches her without soul in its eyes. She tries to coax the animal but it will not come, its ribby gray coat scuffed and balding. The dog with a funny sideways walk, wary, she thinks, as if it expects you to leap at it. It is then she sees healing upon the dog’s neck a welt made by a knife.
What dreaming she wakes out of—a dream of a body and that she has caused its death, her mind shouting out, murderer!—for she has murdered the old woman and buried the body in the woods and yet for some reason she doesn’t recall any of it until now in this dream, as if some child-self had done the work of killing and forgotten, a casual thought tucked away only to return in the dream as a sick-guilt feeling that haunts and devours her, as if a killing can be so easily forgotten—and now she knows where the body is buried because she can see it in the dream, and now she knows they are coming for her, Boggs-as-wolf hurtling in his anger-light and leading a mob, the roaring of their voices, their slash-hooks agleam in torchlight—and then she sees the rattling of a door, the door being kicked open, and she is in the arms of her mother—she does not know what she sees—sees men coming in, Clackton huge and staring at her dead-eyed, a man who is also her father, and they are all calling her name and they are calling the name of her father and she wants to tell them it was not her fault, that she does not remember, that her present self had no part in this, that it was something to do with her childhood, that it was her childhood self, and then she is running and running and running—
She opens the door. Dawnlight blankets blue the snow like muslin. The awaiting air rushes in honed and alert like an animal.
She thinks, that dream was not real. This is what’s real, the here and now. She inhales and expels dream-guilt in a long hoarse breath. The barren air and the crunch of her boots as she goes to the wood with the hatchet. The snow sullied by dog prints and she can just about see the drag marks from the jute sack, faint now like the memory of what happened, she thinks, how memory layers on top of memory until horror becomes a half-remembered thing and not the horror itself, and perhaps you can pretend to yourself the horror didn’t even happen, put it down to mind trickery.
You can do it. You can do it. And then you will be tormented no longer.
She stops to gag her mouth with her coat. A pair of robins plump with their own blood tick and whistle. She steps through the trees to the place of the body and what she sees is the dog resting its paws lordly like a lion upon the snow-powdered remains. The dog casts her a look of indifference, drops its head and continues eating. She gags and spins, turns and finds herself rushing at the dog with the hatchet high above her head, the dog ignoring her until she reaches it and boots it in the ribs. The dog yowls and flees into the woods.
She cannot look at what—
Cannot look at it.
That the dog would do this.
Colly says, that dog was getting its revenge, the woman tried to eat it, so she did, it is only natural for the dog to feed on her or the other creatures in the wood, for that’s what they do, a dead person is all the same to them.
She hatchets the earth loose and then spades at it. It takes her all morning under a hidden sun while birds chitter around her. She can dig no farther than one foot down, this scrawl of rootwork like some ancient text, she thinks, and what might be written there, that there are ancient laws in every land of what is acceptable and not acceptable and you are trespassing now into some forbidden territory but what can you do, life has led you here.
Dragging without looking the jute sack into the trench.
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
Her eyes closed as she kicks the earth over it.
Colly says, you’ll need to put rocks on top to keep that dog and the others away.
Later, she returns and makes a cross with two sticks. Says to the old woman, you’ll leave me in peace now, won’t you?
Lonely the nights and days that follow and yet she wishes for nothing. The world forgotten, the days a simple pattern of living that hold a kind of truth. Long mornings spent in bed thinking about this dream of a life or sitting at the door talking with Colly, who complains for the want of baccy. Why won’t you go into town? he says. She gathers wood and gleans herbs and takes water from a stream. Finds here and there some strange and bitter tuber she has no name for. Guesses it must be April, for the rains have come to pull color from the earth that will bring forage to live on.
She has never let the fire go out. She has become good with a stone, brings down the occasional wood pigeon, climbs for magpie eggs, two for joy and one for sorrow. Makes tea with chickweed or hawkweed or dandelion roots. Sometimes eats a mushroom. Watches a trio of swans sound through the sky, their huge wingbeats wheezing sorrow.
She keeps to herself. That old woman’s dog has not returned but there are other hounds that come along the track, sometimes a stranger too. She has seen families living in rough camp at the northern side of the woods, spalpeens, no doubt, and sometimes the trees echo with their talk and she hides and listens to them and sometimes she goes to their camp just to hear them, sits until the coming of night, their bodies winnowing into dark.
She dreams she is the dead woman, that she will live here now until her days are over and her younger self discovers her body, that this is her strange punishment. She cuts her hair and studies her face in the piece of looking glass and sees the deepening of her features, you look like some kind of boy-woman now. Holds the mirror to the sky. Sees it is almost summer.
She loosens her hearing like rope. That is a man’s voice coming up the path and that is muffled laughter, a bird whooping in agreement, and then she hears a second man’s voice. Without noise she hinges upright and lets go the hatchet, breaks into a run towards the woodland, crouches behind a holly bush. Shadows through thicket become the shapes of two men. A tall man dressed all over in black like a priest only he’s not, she thinks, for he wears a layman’s hat. The other man frowning, some kind of book or ledger under his arm. A heavy fist rattles the door. In the tree beside her a wood pigeon flutters and coos loudly as if awoken by the men and now it calls to them, look!
She eyes the bird with a shut-up look.
Colly whispers, that bird can be gotten with a stone, it’s that close.
Shush up.
Let’s kill it.
She thinks, my ears might fall off from listening. What will they see? The hatchet on the grass and
the trickle-smoke through the hole in the roof. Perhaps they are rent collectors. A man’s voice shouts out a questioning hello and his voice has a note of foreign in it. Of a sudden the stone flies up and she watches the bird fall through the tree in a horror of slowness. How it falls into a bush and begins to spasm and rattle. I got it! Colly says. The tall man steps by the side of the cabin. He shouts a loud hello.
She holds her breath, though Colly says, holding your breath is as useless in this instance as closing your eyes.
She watches the men go and yet continues to listen for them, watches the dark creep over the house, worries the fire will go out. Those men are gone for sure, Colly says. She reaches into the bush and takes the dead pigeon. Says to Colly, why are you always causing trouble? Do you think those men will come back?
Colly says, who knows what they will think when they see you living in that witch’s house—they will think you killed her.
All night she is awake circling the thought. Just how will you explain it? They’ll hang you in the town. That is what they will do.
Within the dream she is an ageless child trying to speak to Sarah, her mother present and yet not present, then into the dream comes the sound of the latch and she senses the shadow, how it steps into the room, the shadow leaning over her, the dread voice she has been waiting for, finds herself rising as if through water into the room’s confusion and sees the tall man standing over her. Her mind shouts escape but his hand has taken grip of her elbow. The man says, now, now. We’ve only come to help you.
She blinks, wonders if he is going to kill her. The fully open door and the daylight reaching around the figure of another.