And she smelled bad?
Aoife still hadn’t reappeared, nor Killian, nor Maeve.
Secretively, Carla sniffed at her own shoulders. She’d showered only yesterday, and was wearing clean clothes. Perhaps she’d just got used to her own rotten sweaty body odour. Yet her parents hadn’t said anything to her. Ugh. Maybe they’d got used to it as well. Grown immune to their stinking, unloveable daughter.
Incredible, how life just kept relentlessly getting worse.
Now Father Leahy was urging the congregation to offer each other the sign of peace. No way. She wasn’t touching anyone, not if they were going to recoil from her stench. She shook her parents’ hands carefully and left it at that.
A moment later there came a touch on her shoulder. Cringing, she glanced back. Aoife’s father was holding out his own hand to her – a warm smile crinkling up his big brown eyes, behind his black-rimmed glasses. After a long hesitation she held out her own. He gripped it and said, ‘Peace be with you,’ in a very kind, deliberate way, like he really meant it. Clearly, he wanted to convey that he still liked her, whatever the trouble was between her and Aoife (and however badly Carla stank). How nice of him.
Eyes welling with tears, Carla pulled her hand out of his and hunched down again in her seat. She missed James O’Connor. He’d been her ‘other dad’ since she was four years old, just as Aoife had been her ‘sister’. Ugh, don’t think about it. She shouldn’t dwell on the train wreck that was her life.
When Mass ended, James patted her shoulder as he moved out of the pew behind her. Carla was pleased to see her own father stand up to follow him. Noel and James had always been friendly in the past, but relations had apparently been strained between them since the running-away thing. Zoe climbed over Carla and her mother to go rushing after Eva, and Dianne followed her youngest daughter with an annoyed sigh.
Carla still hung back – she didn’t want to bump into Jessica and Aisling, who had just passed her with sympathetic glances. Or Sinead and Lois, who were openly grinning and holding their noses.
Less than two minutes later she was left alone in the church – apart from Joseph Doherty and Father Leahy, who were standing to one side of the altar, deep in conversation. Carla rested her arms on the pew in front and her head on her arms. Waiting just a little longer before she risked leaving.
Father Leahy was saying in a firm voice, ‘It was an urgent problem of subsidence, Joseph. The cold snap must have cracked the stones. I was worried it would collapse.’
The builder’s voice boomed angrily in the empty church: ‘Then you should have asked me to fix it myself, Father – not gone to John McCarthy, who knows nothing about building work.’
‘I’m sure John did a fine job, Joseph.’
‘He filled the whole thing with concrete, Father! If I hadn’t happened to notice that ugly padlock and asked him what was going on, I wouldn’t have known anything about it until I was dead and trying to be buried in the family tomb!’
Despite her misery, Carla suddenly found herself listening. Hadn’t her grandmother told her that the priest had told her that Joseph Doherty had filled in his parents’ grave himself?
The priest said evasively, ‘But surely you’re not planning to be buried any time soon, Joseph.’
‘That’s not the point!’ boomed the stocky builder. ‘And it’s not just the concrete that’s the problem! Do you know what the old fool told me when I asked him why he’d done it?’
Carla lifted her head, and the priest shot an anxious, surprised glance in her direction. Not pleased to find an audience. ‘I wouldn’t pay any attention to anything John McCarthy says to you, Joseph – the poor old man is getting a little vague in his old age.’
‘Vague? He’s an out-and-out lunatic and has been all his life! Do you know what he told me? That you made him do it because you saw a demon! A demon living in my own parents’ holy grave, when both of them had the bishop himself at their funerals! I told the old fool that if he says one more thing like that, he’ll be getting a letter from my solicitor.’
Carla was on her feet, staring …
The priest – white-faced and agitated – cast another wild glance in her direction, while babbling, ‘Poor John has a head full of wild ideas. Sure, he says his own nephew’s wife is a lenanshee sucking him dry with her grá, even though we all know the poor lad has multiple sclerosis. Joseph, come into the vestry with me and we’ll talk in private.’
The builder was still ranting as he followed the priest down the stone passageway: ‘I don’t care what he says about his own family, Father! But I won’t have him blackguarding mine!’
Before Carla could go after them, she felt a tug on her elbow. Her mother had come back for her. ‘Carla, come on, we have to go. The dinner’s on and it will spoil.’
‘Hang on, Mam. I just have to talk to Father Leahy about—’
‘About what?’
Good question. If the priest had seen anything, it was clear from the way he had spoken first to Teresa and now to the builder that he was in serious denial. So maybe she should ask the man himself.
As they reached the car, she asked, ‘Mam, can I pop into McCarthy’s to get ice cream for dessert?’
Her mother frowned, opening the driver’s door of the Toyota. ‘Actually, I’ve made a lovely, healthy fruit salad.’
But Noel Heffernan – who had a sweet tooth – thrust a fiver at Carla, with a wink. It was the most relaxed and normal he’d behaved with her since finding her climbing back in through the window. Maybe talking to his old friend James had made a difference. ‘Go on – get chocolate chip.’
The post-Mass rush was over already, and old John McCarthy – who often helped out at his nephew’s shop, now that Andrew McCarthy was ill most of the time, and his wife uninterested in hard work – was alone at the till.
Carla slammed the tub of ice cream on the counter. ‘Did Father Leahy see a demon in the Doherty grave?’
The old man flinched in guilty astonishment. ‘How did you—?’ Then hastily snatched the fiver, and turned to the till. ‘No, of course he didn’t!’
Carla said fiercely, ‘Look, tell me right now why Father Leahy asked you to fill in the grave, or I’m going to tell Joseph Doherty that you told me it wasn’t only one demon but a horde of them and they were holding wild parties in the Doherty grave because his parents were awful heathens.’
John McCarthy shot her a filthy look as he slapped her change down on the counter. ‘Grand. I’ll tell you then.’
‘Good.’
‘Father Leahy saw a huge hairy demon with red eyes at the back of the church …’
‘What?’
‘… and he took a bit of a fright, though he didn’t say anything so as not to scare his parishioners. But as luck would have it, that was the one day in January we had snow, and he traced the demon’s tracks to the Doherty grave and discovered the way down to the fairy world, so we put an iron cross over the steps, then poured in tonnes and tonnes of concrete. And then we filled the tomb with more concrete and iron for good measure. And then we buried poor Mary Barrett, who the demon had eaten.’
Carla felt like someone had just hit her sideways over the head. ‘You … what?’
The old man said hastily, ‘I didn’t tell any of that last part to Joseph now, so if it gets out I’ll know exactly who can’t keep their mouth shut.’
‘You buried Mary Barrett?’
He tucked the ice cream into a paper bag, saying with a sigh, ‘It’s a weight off to talk about it actually.’
‘You buried Mary Barrett?’
‘Yes, for the hundredth time. What part of “buried” and “Barrett” don’t you understand?’
Carla said faintly, ‘In the concrete?’
‘Not a bit of it – in Johnny Forkin’s grave. It wasn’t a big job, because her hands and feet were all that was left of her – I only found them when the snow melted the next day, along with her hat and coat. Father Leahy blessed her remains, and in the middle of the night we du
g a little hole and popped them into Johnny’s grave. She’ll be happy there until the Day of Judgement, though I’m not sure we can say the same about him – he’s probably lying there horrified.’
All the way home, Carla sat staring out of the car in stunned silence. Even the sight of balloons tied to Killian’s front gate, and the local DJ’s van parked outside the house with two men carrying in equipment, only managed to distract her very briefly –
(So Killian was having his sixteenth-birthday party tonight?)
– from John McCarthy’s wildly insane claim that Father Leahy had buried an old woman’s hands and feet in the middle of the night without telling the guards. Yet as impossible as that sounded, the even more terrifying thing was that all the rest of the story added up. There was an entrance to the fairy world through the Doherty tomb, which led down into a ruined city underground. And there were demons in that city. Pookas.
As soon as she got home, Carla raced upstairs.
‘Carla! Dinner!’
‘Washing my hands, Mam!’
In her bedroom she grabbed the Comprehensive Catalogue and peeled open the pages marked P.
POOKA: Takes on the shape of the victim’s loved one, to lure them close enough to swallow the head.
The illustration was of a huge, hairy creature with curved claws and horns …
Bright red eyes.
Oh God.
Father Leahy had seen a pooka.
The whole town was in danger! The war had started!
Stop. Don’t panic. The pooka might just be a coincidence. There had been a spell on the door which Aoife had broken, and so the way had been left open and a random pooka might have found its way to the surface – and then back down again. After eating poor Mary Barrett. And Father Leahy had traced its tracks to the Doherty tomb, and the two old men had filled in the stairway with several tonnes of concrete, reinforced by iron.
So, no more pookas …
Feeling a little better (but still horribly shocked about Mary Barrett), Carla went back downstairs for her Sunday dinner, which she did her best to eat. As she forced down a mouthful of roast potato, she suddenly remembered what had been troubling her so badly before it had been knocked out of her head by the pooka. ‘Mam, do I smell bad?’
Noel said cheerfully, ‘Repulsive, darling!’
‘Noel!’ Dianne frowned warningly at him. ‘Teenage girls worry about this sort of thing. Carla, you’re fine and we love you, and I know Aoife ran out of the church shouting about a smell, but she didn’t mean you.’
‘Yes she did, she sniffed at you,’ said Zoe gleefully. ‘Sniff, sniff, sniff! Like you stank!’
‘That girl’s a monster,’ said Noel, with a friendly wink at Carla.
Zoe squealed indignantly, ‘No, she’s a fairy!’
‘All right, pet – she’s a fairy. Is it time for that ice cream?’
Dianne said grimly, clearing away dirty dishes, ‘Whatever Aoife is, she’s certainly a very troubled girl. And I wish her parents could see that about her and stop acting like everything she does is fine by them.’
Noel said, ‘Actually, I was having a little chat to James and he is a bit worried. He says ever since Aoife came back, she’s not been herself at all …’
‘Then he should set her some firmer boundaries,’ snapped Dianne, stalking out into the kitchen.
Carla sat staring at her father. A weird, cold feeling was spreading through her stomach. ‘Dad?’
‘Mm?’
‘The day Aoife came back? Was that the same day Mary Barrett disappeared?’
He looked surprised. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I just … something someone said.’
Raising his voice, Noel called towards the kitchen. ‘When did that Mary Barrett disappear, Dianne? The lonely one, who always wore a red hat?’
Dianne reappeared with a bowl of fruit salad. ‘She hasn’t been seen since three Sundays ago. Remember, we noticed her in the graveyard on the way to Mass?’
‘Are we having ice cream with that?’ asked Noel hopefully.
‘Go and get it yourself if you want it.’ Dianne began ladling out bowls of fruit. ‘Poor old Mary. She was putting a little bunch of snowdrops on that Johnny Forkin’s grave as she always did – every year on his birthday, the silly love-sick old dear. I remember thinking she was going to get cold out there in the snow …’
‘That’s right,’ said Noel, suddenly turning in the kitchen doorway. ‘It was the same day that Aoife came back. James said Aoife followed them out of the graveyard in the snow, and hugged them all like nothing had happened.’
Sitting on her bed, Carla stared at the old Nokia in her hand. She felt sick. She was trembling. She had to call someone. Her first thought was her grandmother, who hadn’t been at Mass because Carla had asked her to take cuttings from the tree down the Clonbarra road – the one which had mistletoe as well as hawthorn, which according to the Comprehensive Catalogue made it twice as sacred.
But Teresa Gilvarry didn’t answer Carla’s text. No doubt she was already back home in bed where the reception was non-existent, resting her poor knees.
Carla’s next thought was that she had to tell the O’Connors that Aoife might be a pooka. Yet it seemed impossible to tell them they could be sharing their lives with a shape-shifting demon when she had no actual proof.
Killian! She had to warn Killian!
Yeah, right. Tell Killian his new girlfriend was an actual monster. She could imagine how that was going to go down. In a couple of hours he’d be having his party – slow-dancing with Aoife all evening. Kissing her, as Sinead and Lois looked on approvingly. Picturing the scene, jealous rage flooded through Carla’s veins …
OK. Stop. Wake-up call.
Her mixed-up emotions were clouding her brain. Clearly, she was just so angry with Aoife’s behaviour that she really, really wanted to believe that her ex-best friend was a real, actual monster.
OK.
Think logically, not emotionally.
What actual proof did she have, if any?
Aoife had come back the day Mary Barrett had disappeared. But that could easily be a coincidence.
Then there was that stuff about wild parties and Sheila Cunningham. The pooka could have absorbed that information from Mary Barrett’s mind, and used it later when she needed to come up with an excuse about where Carla had been.
Not good enough. The real Aoife could have just heard that gossip in school, as Carla had originally assumed.
Then there were those weird changes to Aoife’s bedroom – the sort of changes a really fake teenage girl might make. But maybe being in love with Killian had melted Aoife’s brains, just like Carla’s brains always turned to candyfloss in his presence …
Picturing those sickly photos of Aoife and Killian on Aoife’s corkboard, another memory came rushing back. The casement window, open to the cold wind.
Carla’s scalp prickled painfully.
Had Aoife even been in her bed? She’d been too upset to look – she’d just run out of the room and down the stairs and out of the house and up the lane. Where a huge black creature had gone thundering past her on the far side of the hedge, roaring like a demented bull …
Was that the pooka?
It was beyond terrifying to think that if she’d stayed any longer in Aoife’s bedroom, then the demon could have burst through the window in its natural form … She wouldn’t have lasted two seconds before getting her head ripped off!
No, the only way to kill the pooka would be to creep up behind it while it was safely in Aoife-form and quickly cut its throat …
Instantly, Carla felt physically sick.
Cut Aoife’s throat?
What was she thinking?
She really was going mad, like old John McCarthy. She should hand herself in to be sectioned. Take the bed next to Auntie Ellie, before she went psycho altogether.
While she sat there in horror, the little mobile in her hand beeped suddenly. Carla stared at the screen, st
omach tightening.
Aoife.
With weak fingers, not knowing what on earth to expect, she opened the text:
Hi Carla, I’m so sorry about what happened in church today. I was so upset by seeing you. Such a shock! It felt like my whole life stank. I’ve been so horrible to you lately, and I’m really sorry. I’d love to see you, to explain everything. Come to this party tonight? Maybe we can find a quiet place and talk things over? Plus I have a special love potion which can make things right again between you and Killian! Love ya! ☺☺☺☺☺☺xxxxxxxxxx
To calm her whirling brain, Carla had a hot shower while her family watched the Sunday afternoon film downstairs.
Aoife wanted to be friends again and to make things right between her and Killian? With a love potion?
Back in her bedroom, she climbed into her old sheep onesie for the comfort of it, even though it was ragged and a bit too small.
Then she read Aoife’s text again – twice.
A love potion?
Yet still she didn’t reply.
Instead, she took off the onesie and got fully dressed again. T-shirt, tracksuit bottoms, fluffy socks and a hoodie, and a pair of old, serviceable trainers. Then she went to stand at her window. Darkness was already gathering. The rain was coming and going, in short rattling bursts.
At least the weather around here was good protection against pookas; water melted them like acid. Which was another good rational reason to dismiss the idea that any pooka would freely choose to hang around in north Mayo.
(An image popped into Carla’s head from those awful photos on the corkboard. Aoife with Killian in the rain – Aoife wearing a head-to-toe pink waterproof, yet still hogging the brolly.)
The crystal on its silver chain was lying on the windowsill. Carla looped it around her neck. May work against some dark fairies, if believed in. Well, at least the feel of it was comforting.
Leaving her room, she turned on the light of Zoe’s bedroom. And nearly didn’t bother. To sift through all the toys, clothes and rubbish on the floor would take hours. But then she spotted the charmstone dangling from a teddy bear’s ear.
Downstairs in the living room, Zoe was stretched out on the sofa in her pyjamas, watching the Disney Channel. Leaning over the back of the sofa, Carla hung the crystal around her little sister’s neck. Zoe looked pleased, feeling for it with one hand, even though she didn’t look up. Dianne was sunk in the matching blue leather armchair, reading the Sunday newspapers.
The Hawthorn Crown Page 7