by Tom O'Neill
DEDICATION
For my family, present and away
First published in 2013 by
HeroicRealm.com
All rights © 2013 Tom O’Neill
Paperback
ISBN: 978 1 909483 279
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The right of Tom O’Neill to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events featured in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead, organisation or event, is purely coincidental. Any mistakes are the author’s own.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Paula continued liking my yarns when it was neither popular nor profitable. Without her, the characters who here lurk would have had a spade taken to them.
You will detect strains of other voices. I have known many who can tell stories so well that my best imitation hardly flatters them. So too do I borrow stealthily from the treasure of words archived by our dedicated nineteenth century folklorists. Them, you can thank for talking birds, noble ladies, and the nature of fear.
Helen Falconer provided redemptive structural guidance and insightful editing. Bernard Voges patiently captured the characters revealed on the internal plates and in the cover art. Andrew Brown produced the cover. Vanessa and Chenile at Kazoo brought this book together through a most professional and friendly process.
Siobhán and Elaina at Little Island got me going by publishing my first book.
These are the people to blame.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 Buried Trove
Chapter 1a The Black Pony
Chapter 2 Bite Marks
Chapter 2a The Spotty Woman
Chapter 3 Staying in the Rath
Chapter 3a Delighted Thieves and Disappointing Warriors
Chapter 4 A Robbery
Chapter 4a The Broom Peddler
Chapter 5 An Enchanted Rat
Chapter 5a Fionn’s Defeat
Chapter 6 Crooked Chimneys
Chapter 6a The Interesting Stones
Chapter 7 Duck Eggs
Chapter 7a The Ancient Circle of Wisdom
Chapter 8 Trapped
Chapter 8a Valley of Regrets
Chapter 9 Suspicions of Witchcraft
Chapter 9a Blood Spilled
Chapter 10 The Ratcrap Kiss
Help with names and words
Chapter 1
BURIED TROVE
The trouble started that day in the Kill bog, five miles east of Mullet town, a place that appears on no map. There were three people carefully picking their way across the spongy surface, steering well clear of the rath.
A laugh came from one of them: Connie McLean, a large man with a wild black beard. It echoed across the valley. He had been driving a metal spike into the soggy ground at various places. Now he was convinced he had hit something, because the spike had stopped about a metre down. He tapped it a couple more times with his lump hammer. Dark McLean, nearly as tall as Connie even though he was only fifteen, stood beside him listening for the cavernous sound he knew his uncle hoped to elicit from beneath their feet. Dark was shaking his head; he didn’t want to hear that sound.
Dark’s friend, Kevin Dowd – short, and clearly in some discomfort – didn’t care at all what kind of sound the spike made. He was only visiting, and dragging his wellingtons through a marsh for two days had not been part of the deal. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly are you expecting to find?’
It was a fair question. ‘A missing stone,’ said Connie vaguely, not doing anything to allay Kevin’s obvious fear that he was being implicated in an illegal act of some sort. Not such an unreasonable fear. After all, it was known that Dark’s uncle had done time. Connie suddenly shouted, as if for the benefit of eavesdroppers: ‘There will be great disruptions if the people who wander this route at dusk get sent astray because of the missing plinth!’
‘What is he on about?’ whispered Kevin to Dark. ‘The rumours about your uncle being stone mad seem pretty much on the money.’
Dark was inclined to reply that ‘stone mad’ was quite right, but he kept quiet out of loyalty to his uncle. Connie was mad about rocks: stone circles; standing stones; stones with markings so faint that no normal person would consider them markings at all, let alone ogham codes. And most recently, this thing about the ‘missing’ stone. They were looking for a standing stone that was no longer even standing.
Dark himself was sceptical about Connie’s secret theory about the missing stone.1 He knew that his uncle was not just looking for the missing megalith for its own sake. According to Connie, the no-longer-standing stone was just a marker. What he was really looking for was a chamber that had been built at the base of the formerly-standing stone, in which some man, a ‘friend’ of Connie’s, had allegedly entombed his cherished possessions for safe-keeping during a time of trouble. An awkward detail: the evening on which the ‘friend’ had taken this precaution had been nearly two thousand years ago. It was all supposed to remain a secret between Connie and Dark. No fear on that score. He would not be considered ‘stone mad’ by Kevin or anyone else.
Dark did not pay much attention to any of his uncle’s ideas these days. He had decided that events that took place thousands of years ago were not relevant to his own life. Dark knew that Connie meant it literally when he said, ‘They walk among us.’ Dark didn’t believe any of that. Not really. Not anymore. He didn’t care to. He knew that none of his friends would listen for a minute to stories like that. So, nor would he.
‘Anyway, what’s that?’ asked Kevin.
‘What?’
‘That thing you’re holding in your fist?’
Dark opened it to show him the shard of brown pottery.
‘It’s just broken crockery,’ said Kevin, examining it. ‘Why are you always collecting junk?’
‘It’s not junk,’ said Dark. It was true that Dark collected things. His room was full of boxes and bags of stuff. And this was about the least remarkable thing he had found in a while. He had spotted it earlier in the mud next to a drainage trench at the side of the bog. It had once been a piece of a cup or maybe a small bowl. Even Connie hadn’t looked at it twice: ‘Bric a brac.’ For a former archaeologist, the kinds of ancient things that interested him were surprisingly limited. Still, Dark was not able to throw his piece of bowl away. Later, with it buried in the inner pock
et of his parka, he found himself still wondering who might have owned it once.
The kinds of ancient things that Connie definitely was interested in? Aside from stones, it was mainly weapons. Connie was convinced that the secret chamber contained weapons as well as certain other personal valuables which he would not specify. The reason he wanted to dig them up now was not to sell them or to donate them to some museum. It was just that he was certain that their hiding place was in jeopardy. Someone, an unnamed someone, had returned to steal them. They had to be moved, like the other hard cold things he had found before: relocated to a secret place that only Dark and he knew about. Dark still had to figure out how to explain those other things away.
A long-legged grey bird rose up slowly from the river beyond the rath and flapped along surveying the water for the ripples and silver flashes of fish. Connie stood gazing at the heron.2
‘And why do you go along with his delusions about standing stones or whatever?’ asked Kevin, nodding at Connie. ‘I don’t get it. You said we’d spend the holidays quad biking and stuff.’ He seemed to need reassurance about Dark’s own grip on reality.
‘Right,’ said Dark. ‘Sorry. I’ll make an excuse and we can head back to the house. We won’t come with him tomorrow.’ He shuddered.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked Kevin.
‘Don’t know.’ Dark looked all around and then he knew. The evening sun was creating a long thin shadow that reached down to the river from the middle of the grassy field on the far bank. The source of the shadow was a thin man, the only neighbour who never called into the McLean house. Trevor Saltee. His gold rings glinted as he lifted the unnecessary binoculars to inspect what they were doing. He was no more than two hundred metres away.
Saltee lived in Greystone Manor, a dilapidated mansion just across the Brown River, surrounded by a rookery and walled gardens. Connie sometimes talked about the previous resident of the manor, an old man called Jack Curtis. Apparently not long after his nephew Saltee had arrived, the old man had been found decomposing face down in the river.3
Dark took out his phone, for some reason thinking he ought to check the time. But the hours had gone missing from the display since entering the bog. It was twelve minutes and thirteen seconds past nothing.
‘Who is that?’ asked Kevin.
Connie removed the spike hastily and made busy putting it down in another spot, right next to a quagmire. He shouted as if he’d found something there. His decoy was not very convincing. He had never been a good liar.
‘Just a neighbour,’ said Dark. ‘He doesn’t worry me.’
‘Why do you say that? Why would he worry you?’ said Kevin.
Dark was not a good liar either. Saltee worried Dark a lot, but this had nothing to do with local suspicions about the death of some old man he had never known. Soon after he and his mother had moved here Dark had met him in town. Saltee had stepped in front of him on the footpath, looking him up and down silently. Then he had said in a dancing voice as if he were reciting a poem, ‘Well now, well now! What is he, a sissy? Flowing hair, rook black. Long eyelashes over angry eyes. Spawn of Seán, it’s true. How long will the soft slender boy last I wonder? Have they not told him? No McLean has a future in this place.’ The dancing voice had stayed in Dark’s head since that day.
In the four years since then, Dark had got bigger and not afraid of most people. But he still crossed the street whenever he saw Saltee. And Saltee would still stare right through him. It made him scared and angry at the same time. But he wouldn’t tell anyone. Not his mother, in case she went back to not coping very well. Not Connie, because of what Connie might do. If his uncle knew that Saltee had spoken in that way about Seán, Dark’s father, and about all of the McLeans – especially Dark and Helen – there would be strong words and spilling anger. Saltee would lose the battle. But he would win the war. Connie would end up in front of the same judge as before. And he’d be put away again. Then everything would fall apart.
Dark shook himself. ‘In fact you might know him,’ he said to Kevin, trying to sound casual. ‘As well as farming he runs some businesses in town. You know Kaizer’s Emporium?’
Everyone in school knew the Emporium, as it was the only pub that accepted photoshopped IDs.
‘Okay, gotcha – Trev S?’ said Kevin. ‘He also runs the herbal shop, right? Yeah, some of the other lads told me about that.’
People at Mullet Community School talked about Trev’s herbal shop. Since the head shops had been closed it was the only place you could still get the legal high stuff. One Kelly fellow in sixth year had caused a big fuss by going bonkers and attacking his mother with a tomahawk. His father had then gone bonkers trying to beat Saltee with his walking stick. Saltee had gone on local radio and laughed about it, saying the lad was not a customer, that nobody else had complained about his bath salts, that he could take the blame neither for bad parenting nor bad genes.
Dark watched as Saltee gave a slight nod. No sooner had he turned to walk away than there came a high-pitched yell from the other side of the bog, the McLean side. There stood a very short, stocky man. He had a large red afro that dwarfed his angry little head. Even though there was a harsh wind blowing from across the river, he wore only a t-shirt and Bermudas; he had white gloves up to his thick elbows.
Kevin paled; his eyes widened and his mouth opened but nothing came out.
‘Hey!’ shrieked the short man in an even higher pitch. He pointed at Kevin: ‘What you gawkin’ at, fool?’ This was The Red, Connie’s friend. Recently, for some reason that nobody asked, he had decided to style himself on Mr T. He was Connie’s right hand man, except when there was work to be done. Or if they were on the bog, which he was genuinely afraid of. ‘Beware of the bog,’ he shouted, clearly pleased by Kevin’s fear of him. ‘One wrong step and she’ll suck you to her cold wet heart.’
‘We’ve spent too much time here,’ said Connie, reading the situation with Kevin a day too late. ‘I’m sure you two have loads of other stuff you’d rather be doing.’
‘What did Saltee want?’ asked Dark of Connie, as they walked ahead of Kevin.
‘What does he always want?’ answered Connie.
Dark knew Connie’s answer to his rhetorical question. ‘The land and all that goes with it,’ recited Dark dryly. ‘Whatever he might imagine that to be. And now he thinks he’s seen something? He thinks you’ve discovered something.’
‘Right,’ said Connie. ‘But don’t worry a bit about him.’ That was Connie’s problem: he worried too little.4
When they reached the edge of the bog, they stood with The Red for a minute looking back. Saltee was gone.
‘Just remember,’ said The Red to Connie, ‘if you find any little old bit of red stone when you’re scratching in them bad lands, give it to me. That’s all I ask.’
Connie laughed.
‘You don’t believe they exist?’ said The Red. The Red had a theory that there were things he called ‘red emeralds’ to be found in the Kill bog. He wanted to get his hands on one. But not badly enough to overcome his fear of sinking.
‘No, I do not,’ said Connie, somehow unconvincingly. ‘I’ve told you often. There’s no basis to that old tale.’
‘What kind of red stones?’ asked Kevin.
The problem with Connie was that he worried too little.
‘What you talkin’ about, fool?’ The Red emitted a mirthless laugh. ‘We don’t need no lawyers snuffling around in our business.’
The Red had not been introduced to Kevin. How he knew Kevin’s father was the Mullet solicitor was not clear. He expertly arced a spit three metres out onto a sundew leaf.
Connie patted Kevin on the back reassuringly, almost knocking him into the ditch. ‘Pay no attention to that mouldy cur.’
As they walked through the two grass fields back to the house, Connie went ahead with The Red trotting beside him cursing about something or other as usual.
‘It’s not normally like this you know,’ said D
ark. ‘Tomorrow we can play racquet ball in the empty silo.’
Kevin nodded.
‘And take out the quad bike if you like.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ said Kevin flatly.
Dark decided it was not the time to ask the main thing he wanted to ask. He wanted Kevin to talk to Ciara about coming out to the farm so the three of them could get started on the band they’d still only talked about. At Connie’s suggestion, Dark already had his drums and amps set up in the old stone barn. Connie claimed he had been in a band in college. Only a head-banger band but still he was right about the acoustics in the barn. After he had helped Dark to clear and wire the place, Dark had to admit that the sound in the thick walled cavern was pretty amazing. He had put up some posters and his mam had donated the black leather sofa. He was planning for it to be a surprise for Ciara and Kevin. He couldn’t ask Ciara directly about coming here. But Kevin grew up in the same street as her and was easy talking to her. He could pass on the message.
Back in the farmyard, The Red climbed up into the cab of his large orange truck; rolled down the window as his wheels were already spewing dust from the lane. ‘Later fools!’ As to where he was going in such a hurry, as usual no information was asked or offered.
The other three were welcomed by the dogs as they entered the flag-stoned kitchen. The sheepdogs Psycho and Georgina stood against Connie’s thighs competing for his attention. Two red hens cawed casually as they walked out. Dark’s whippet Pumpkin went back to huddle next to the Aga.