by A. L. Knorr
A man rounded the corner of the library and my eyes and thoughts were arrested by him. I had seen him before but it took a moment to come to me. It was Brendan, the man Faith and I ran into on the street on my first day. I narrowed my eyes. He moved just like the man I’d seen on the street the night of the party, and in fact wore the same newsboy cap. He looked ghastly, much worse than when I'd first seen him. He'd lost weight. Dark bags circled his eyes, and patchy beard growth gave him a careless, unwashed appearance. He also looked angry, sort of like an underweight pissed off bear who just woke up to discover he's overslept and starving to death.
Brendan's angry eyes hit on me briefly, but the hatred in his expression turned my blood to ice. There was madness there. He bared his teeth as he passed, shuffling like he had a bad hip. He hadn't had a bad hip when I’d first met him, not that I could recall. I stood still as he passed, not wanting to do anything to poke the bear. Eyes narrowed, I watched him make his way to the intersection. It had to have been him that I saw under the streetlight the night of the party.
As he reached the curb, a pedestrian appeared around the corner of the library and the two smacked into one other with an audible 'oooof' from the pedestrian. He was a large man in his own right, but the impact was a hard one.
It wasn't the collision that made me stumble back and stifle a cry of fear. It was the three dark bat-like creatures that exploded from Brendan's body. They flapped wildly around both men, all sharp edges and trailing spectral smoke. I could see the steeple of the church in the distance as one wispy body passed in front of it. The three dark shapes swirled in the air, looking disoriented, and then disappeared back into Brendan's body as he righted himself and carried on without apology. The pedestrian straightened his hat and jacket, mumbled to himself, and continued on. He had not seen what I'd seen.
I sucked in a breath and stared after Brendan as he crossed the street, watching for the dark creatures, my eyes straining. They had appeared as clear as day to me, but no one else on the busy street seemed to have noticed a thing. Brendan turned the corner. Only then, when he was out of view, did I realize my heart was racing. My mouth was filled with chalk and I was sweating like someone on a gallows, the noose being slipped about their neck. The day was warm but my fingertips had gone ice-cold. Surely those creatures hadn't been real? But fae were real, and I could see them. So what were the nasty looking things using Brendan as a bat-cave?
"Are y'all right, Miss?"
I turned to see a skinny man carrying a bag of groceries in one arm. I don't remember sitting down, but there I was, perched on the edge of a library step, gaping. I shut my mouth.
"I'm okay." I wasn't, though.
"G'day to you then." He tipped a finger to the brim of his cap and moved along.
My phone chirped and I fished it out of my bag. It took me a second to register the name, which was a really bad sign because it was Liz.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back. Patience. Since I'm trying to be honest here, I'll say that I hadn't spared a single thought for Liz since the day of search and destroy. Seeing her name felt like; Who is this? I have a mother? Apparently, even though I hadn't thought of her much, the irritation associated with Liz was right there just below the surface because it sprang out in full force like a spitting cat from a dark alley.
"Hello," I answered, my heart heavy with dread. I didn't want to talk, but we were way beyond due to touch base. If I didn't answer, she'd just call Faith.
"Hi, Poppet!" She sounded so enthusiastic that I pulled the phone away and gawked at it. I put it back to my ear. "How are you? How is your visit going?"
"It's fine." I just saw some horrifying demon-bats fly out of a man. And I can see faeries. Have you ever seen a faerie, Liz? Obviously, I didn't say any of that. And if you think I'm a wise-ass and should respect my mother, you're right, but I wasn't feeling it at the time.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Just running some errands." My voice was cool, clipped. Somehow, I couldn't change my tone, it was stuck in one runner.
"What's Jasher like? Are you getting along?" Her voice also seemed stuck a half-octave higher than normal. Strange.
"He's great. Listen, it's kind of a bad time, I'm just about to bike home."
"Oh."
She was disappointed. Even stranger. Did she have something to tell me? Was it something about dad? "What's going on? Everything okay?"
"Yes, everything is okay. I'll let you go. I just..." There was a pause so long I thought we'd dropped the call. "I just miss you," Liz said.
I blinked. Liz missed me? I couldn't even remember the last time I'd heard those words from her, now they were so unused they sounded like a foreign language. I filled the dead air with what I was supposed to say. "Miss you too, Liz. Gotta run though. Thanks for calling."
"Okay, call when you can. Love you."
I shook my head like a dog trying to oust a high pitched sound. Liz and I hadn't said 'I love you' to one another since...when? We didn't say 'I love you.' I heard 'I love you' more often from my friends. I opened my mouth, but the words backed up in my throat like a person afraid of heights being pushed to jump out of a plane.
There was a click in my ear. She'd hung up. I pulled the phone back and gazed at it.
I put my cell away and memories of the smoky-bats crowded out any more thoughts of Liz. Feeling dazed, I retrieved the yellow townie from the bike rack, threw a leg over it, and pedaled for Sarasborne.
Chapter 20
That afternoon found Jasher and me walking the back of the property. I'd wanted to take a closer look at the bridge, so I'd taken my camera outside to snap some photos. Jasher had pulled into the driveway for his lunch break and I waved to him. He came ambling over the lawn to join me. We hadn't seen each other since the double-helix kiss. My fingers went a little clammy as he approached. Would things be awkward between us now?
He looked relaxed and a touch pink from the sun. "Morning, Georjie," he said. "How did the fae's anointed sleep last night?"
"Ha!" I gave a sarcastic laugh. "Very funny." I had stooped to take a photo of a cluster of crocuses and stood. "Did you build that?" I pointed to the rustic old bridge. It was rough-hewn, with a short arch leading over a shallow burbling stream which ran across the back yard.
"No, that's been here for probably a hundred years," he said as he fell into step beside me. "I'm not sure which one of your ancestors built it, but they did a good job. Maybe not with the finishing of it, but it’s sturdy."
We walked toward the bridge together.
The demon-bat things I had seen had been haunting me nonstop. If anyone might know what they were, it would be Jasher. "Have you ever seen anything besides faeries or ghosts?" I asked.
His head inclined toward me. "Like what?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. Demons, or evil spirits?"
"And if I have?"
I looked at him curiously. He sounded more cagey than usual. Something I'd learned from having Akiko as a friend was that if I wanted her to be vulnerable, I had to be vulnerable first. It didn't always work, but it was always worth a shot. I cleared my throat. "I might have seen something."
He raised his eyebrows. "Such as?"
I told him. He listened quietly, and didn't show any real shock.
"I can't say I've seen anything like that specifically. I've seen some spirits of the dead that seem demonic. They don't fly around like bats but they surely don't look like something that I'd like to immortalize in a sketchbook."
My mind caught on that statement like the fabric of a shirt catches on a bramble. "Why do you draw the faeries?" I asked. "I mean, besides the fact that they're beautiful, and you can't take pictures of them."
A look of surprise crossed his face. "I thought you knew."
"No. Why, should I?" We stepped up onto the bridge and leaned our elbows on the railing. The creek burbled cheerily below us.
"Your family has been drawing the fae for a century and a half. Maybe l
onger. You really didn't know?"
"What?" This was a moment where I once again felt let down by Liz. She had never told me about any such tradition. It made me wonder what else she hadn't told me about our family, and growing up in Ireland. I'm not sure what startled me more - the fact that it had become a tradition and I didn't know about it, or the fact that there were more people in my family that could see the fae.
"Georjie, there’s a cabinet upstairs in the library that is full to bursting with sketchbooks. I can't believe you didn't know that. You've never seen them?"
I shook my head and stood straight. Something had begun to vibrate in the back of my mind, a need to see those sketches. I listened, and my astonishment grew.
“A few years after Faith adopted me,” he said, straightening and turning to lean back against the railing, “I came across the sketchbooks in the library. I asked her about them because I was so surprised to see them. I didn’t think anyone else could see the fae. Faith didn't know that they'd been drawn from life, she just thought it was a quirky collection started a few generations back that those with artistic skill in the family wanted to keep alive. That was when I told her that I could see fae. She believed me because she already knew by that time that I could see ghosts. Your aunt is aptly named,” he chuckled.
I stood frozen to the spot, my mouth open.
"Look at you. You're astonished," Jasher smiled and stepped closer.
I closed my mouth. "A little," I admitted. But I was a lot astonished.
"I can guess what you'll be doing this afternoon." He put his fingertips under my chin and tilted my face up to his. He dropped a soft kiss onto my lips. I kissed him back, but I was distracted by what he'd just told me. He pulled back and dropped his hand. "You'll find them in the old white cabinet, the one with the glass doors and brass knobs."
As we turned to step off the bridge, one of my flip flops caught on a rough patch of wood. My bare foot landed in the grass, leaving my flip flop behind. My foot suddenly felt as though roots had shot out of the bottom my sole and penetrated deep into the earth. The sensation halted my step, and I stumbled and fell. The attachment let go as quickly as it had come, and my foot sprang free from the ground.
"You alright?" Jasher put a hand under my arm to help me up.
I flushed, embarrassed. I covered it with a laugh, but I checked the sole of my foot uneasily. Nothing appeared to be amiss, there were no roots coming out of the bottom. Jasher picked up my shoe and handed it to me.
The sensation had scared me, but by the time we were entering the mudroom, I'd convinced myself that I had imagined it. I had just tripped on something.
After lunch, as Jasher was getting ready to go back to work, he asked, "Who did you see that was plagued by these demons, Georjie? Someone in town?" We were in the mudroom, Jasher was seated on the bench and pulling on his steel toed work boots.
"Yes. A man named Brendan. I actually met him on the first day..." I stopped when I saw his reaction. "What's wrong?"
Jasher had paused with one boot half done up. He looked up at me, and his face lost all color – a tricky thing for such a tanned man to pull off.
I put a hand on his shoulder. "Do you know him?"
"Aye." He bent to tie up the rest of his boot. "Aye, I know him." He stood and put his baseball cap on, pulling it down over his curls, face still pale. "Brendan is my da."
He left without another word. I covered my mouth with my hands, wishing that I had never told him what I had seen.
Chapter 21
The library in the Sheehan house has a feeling of political conversations long past, of readers once toasting their feet in front of the fireplace, with kerosene lamps or perhaps candles on side tables lighting their pages. Bookcases lined with volumes sit between each window as well as either side of the fireplace. Furniture that belongs in an antique store is clustered around the fireplace, and an old snooker table sits beneath an oil painting of my grandparents. A huge old bible sits on an antique wooden pulpit in the corner gathering an impressive layer of dust. A variety of black and white photographs, pressed flowers, framed newspaper clippings, and drawings grace the walls. The Sheehan family tree, drawn by hand probably a half-century ago, hangs over the fireplace.
I went straight to the bookcase Jasher had directed me to, and opened the glass cabinet doors. A long row of spines without titles faced me. The books were all different sizes, and colors, and some were in various states of decay. I chose a random spine, pulled it out, and opened it.
The first image I saw was of a fine-boned yellow faerie with gossamer wings. His limbs were curled over his body and he wore a sleepy expression. The image was beautifully rendered. It was clearly done in Jasher's hand. Every page was filled with a portrait of a freshly hatched faerie, their wings looking damp, their faces sleepy.
The sound of wind picked up and the light coming through the windows dimmed as clouds shifted to cover the sun. I put Jasher’s sketchbook back and inspected the row. The books on the right side looked so old they were spotted and stained by dust, the spines were cracked and the edges frayed. I took another from the middle of the shelf.
My jaw went slack. It too was filled with portraits of fae, but done by a different artist. The inside cover was dated 1943. This artwork was done in watercolor, and the work was not as masterful as Jasher’s. I flipped to the front of the book, searching for the name of the artist. The name Syracuse Sheehan was there, scratched in a messy scrawl. Syracuse was my great-grandad and had passed long before I’d been born. I replaced the book and took another, older one.
I opened it gingerly, and the pages were soft with age. The date on the inside cover was 1928. The artwork here was again different, and done by a monster talent. I flipped to the front page, looking for a name. It was there: Mailís Stiobhard. I’d never heard the name before. Her work was done in pencil only, no color had been added. The shading was so masterful and soft that it seemed early morning sunlight dusted the features of each fae. I took the sketchbook to the sofa near the fireplace and sat down with it open on my lap. I turned through each page, swept away by the beauty of the drawings. Gooseflesh crawled over my scalp. Unlike any of the other sketchbooks, each portrait had a name. Interesting. Why was this Mailís the only one who knew their names?
There were still more sketchbooks that looked older than this one. I opened them all. My wonder and amazement grew with each one. Each artist had their own particular style: pencil, pen and ink, watercolor, chalk. I pulled out the sketchbook farthest to the left, presumably the oldest as they'd been shelved chronologically, and opened it. The inside cover had the year 1867 scrawled in the top right corner.
When I turned to the first drawing in the oldest sketchbook, my dreams came rushing back to me with sudden and crystal clarity. They hit me with all the weight and velocity of a locomotive. My head snapped up and my eyes went wide. My vision blurred out of focus as I remembered, and I gasped.
I'm not sure how long I sat there, recalling the details of the dreams. It was as though that corner of my memory finally had a flashlight shone into it, I had to look around, casting the beam of light on every detail. When the initial shock of remembrance passed, and my vision finally came back to me, I looked more closely at the art.
My heart thudded when I saw the first painting. I flipped through a few more pages, just to be sure. It was these exact sketches I had seen in my dream. Outlined in black and filled in with colored ink, the images leapt from the page like light illuminated a stained glass window. The entire portrait had an elaborate border that reminded me of what I'd seen in very old bibles. These were the oldest sketches, but there were still no names written on these pages - and yet I knew the names anyway.
"Eda", I whispered as I looked at the familiar portrait. Her face seemed so alive. I turned the page but already knew what I would see. 'Po. I continued on. They were all there, and I knew all of them.
Tera. J'al. Mehda.
They were in the same order and exact
ly the way they'd appeared in my dreams.
"Oka. Iri. Bohe. Wenn." I said the last four names out loud, half expecting to feel a breeze, but there was no accompanying wind.
I looked up and scanned the mess of portraits and articles on the wall near the fireplace. My eye found what it was seeking: the family tree - rendered on parchment paper and framed. It was surrounded by a cluster of photographs. I recognized none of the faces on the wall save for my grandparents, who smiled out of a black and white wedding photograph - their cheeks round and soft with youth. Padraig and Roisin. Married in 1946. Aunt Faith hadn't come along until eighteen years later in 1964. Then Liz, in 1967. My grandmother had been forty. I looked for the name of the artist responsible for the drawings I held: Biddy. I found it. Her lifespan was marked as 1822-1892.
I wandered back to the sofa without looking at where I was going, sat, and consumed every drawing again. When I'd finally closed the last book, I didn't move for a very long time. The evidence was clear - my ancestors had been recording the fae for at least 150 years. Unless there were more sketchbooks that had been destroyed or were kept somewhere else, I had dreamed of the oldest fae.
Based on the variety of artistic styles, five different artists had each taken their turn building this...what could I call it?My eyes wandered back to the bookshelf, crammed with years of drawings. The word that came to mind was archive. That's what it was - an archive. Had the fae depicted in these books all hatched on this property? Probably. This house was two hundred years old. So, many of my ancestors had been able to see fae. It was Biddy's artwork I had dreamed about, but only one artist, Mailís, had written their names down. I had to deduce that was because she was the only one who could hear them. Just like I could.