by Craig Jones
Pants On Fire Press
Winter Garden Toronto London
Madrid São Paulo New Delhi Tokyo
Secrets of Skerries: Son of Blood
Pants On Fire Press, Winter Garden 34787
Text copyright © 2014 by Craig Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher, Pants On Fire Press. For information contact Pants On Fire Press.
All names, places, incidents, and characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Illustrations and art copyright © 2014 by Pants On Fire Press
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Art by Asharaf E. Shalaby
Book & eBook design by David M. F. Powers
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First edition: 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.
eISBN: 9781625175700
US Softcover ISBN: 978-0692021712
For Kevin
Sorry for killing you
1
Kevin Buckley eased his foot off the accelerator, depressed the clutch and slipped into third gear. Without indicating, he guided the Aston Martin across the oncoming dual highway, empty at this time of night of course, the pitch of the engine rising to a roar as his foot stamped down on the gas and he steered for home. The threatening rain finally arrived and in a single motion he flicked on both the windscreen wipers and the full beam of the headlights. The bright cones of light expanded until the two narrow lanes of black tarmac were illuminated with a glow that spread to the trees, the leaves orange and brown in the light, on either side of the road. The highway in front of him was becoming rapidly slicker from the downpour, and Buckley avoided the various cracks and crevices in the surface by gently nudging the steering wheel side to side.
He loved the car. It was as complete a status symbol as he could wish to hope for. To him it said style. It said James Bond. And most importantly, to the outside world, it said money. It certainly did that in the town of Skerries, which he had called home for the last six months, and he had realized very quickly that such status played a big part in where one stood in Skerries’ pecking order. Although he had a garage, he left the car on the drive as much as possible. Let everyone see how successful he was. He really could not care less if people disliked him for it. He was thriving. Investment banking had its ups and downs, that was for sure, but Buckley was proud that he had pretty much only had to experience the ups. The car and the coastal-view house were just rewards.
Like the few beers after work on a Friday night were rewards. Reward for him, reward for his team. A chance for his secretary to flirt with him just a little bit more. He may have been on the wrong side of forty, but he had looked after himself; he knew he still held some sway over the eyes of younger women, especially those in his employ. And it certainly could have paid dividends tonight when, having bought his staff a final round of drinks and heading for the door, she approached him and offered to escort him home. He had come close to saying yes, but he had that meeting with Connor Mooney at ten the next morning. He definitely did not want her hanging around for that—and there was no way he was going to drive her back to Dublin before the sun had even risen.
Connor Mooney, Buckley thought disdainfully as the sign telling him that he would be in Skerries in five fast kilometers sped behind him in a blur. The self-styled ‘governor of Skerries. Mayor, property tycoon, a finger in every pie in town. Even involved in the damn tennis club when he didn’t even play the game. But of course, that little rodent Flannery had run right to him after the match last week, and now Buckley had been asked to explain his behavior. Why the hell the mayor was bothering with this was beyond reasoning. It was a simple sporting fall out, nothing major. The visiting team, as beaten as they were, had called Buckley’s forehand out. Not a problem, only it had been three inches inside the white line and the fizzing ball had even left a mark on the bright green Astroturf.
Okay, so he shouldn’t have smashed his racket across the top of the net tape, and maybe was not best advised in telling his own captain, Ronan Flannery, to shut up and back off. Because now a Saturday morning telling-off from big old Connor was to ensue.
Buckley smiled as he dropped down a gear and rounded a tight bend in the road, accelerating along the long, even rise that signaled he was nearing home. Connor could be talked around. Buckley knew that first-hand. The mayor had not been too keen on selling the house to him in the first place, but in the end the inflated offer had been too much to ignore. Buckley knew how people like Connor Mooney worked and he knew just how to play him to get himself back onside.
The rain had intensified as he approached the last complex of bends before the final straight that would take him under the old railway bridge and into town. An almost full moon appeared from behind a bank of clouds, its distorted reflection visible momentarily on the wet, black road, and was then swallowed up once more. No street lamps had ever been set on this part of the route to and from Dublin, and the fields around were hidden behind damp curtains. The wind had picked up and the thick, shadowy copse of trees around him rocked.
The wind whipped something, a black refuse sack, across the front of the windscreen and he sharply jabbed the brake, rocking him forward against the seat belt. His eyes trailed off to the left, trying to follow whatever it was but losing it in the darkness and the rain. As he brought his focus to the road in front of him, something impacted upon the roof of the car, drawing an involuntary yelp from Buckley. Until then, the only sound had been the constant thwack-thwack of the wipers.
When the second bang came, he ducked down in his seat as he dragged his eyes up to stare at the ceiling of the car. His hands and feet worked automatically, slowing the car and guiding it out from under the trees, around the final bend and onto the straight home. He dropped into second gear and accelerated hard, glancing into the rear-view mirror as something bounced across the tail of the car, and Buckley cursed himself for getting spooked by twigs, rubbish bags and the wind. If he was scared of those, how was he going to cope with Connor Mooney tomorrow?
He built up the pace as he exited the bend, and then lifted his eyes forward to the route ahead. He started. A boy, pale and thin, stood in the middle of the road, fifty meters ahead, one foot in front of the other, one palm raised as if trying to divert the onrushing automobile.
Buckley rammed the brake, not even realizing that he screamed as he did so. The wheels locked and the Aston Martin began to skid, but did not deviate from its path, and ploughed towards the boy. There were ditches and trees all along the roadside, and Buckley knew if he twisted the steering wheel it would be all over for him. But the rubber tracks, they would show evidence that he had tried to stop, that he had simply been unable to control the car, that no one could have expected there to have been someone just stood in the road. And the trees rushed by on either side, and the headlights fully illuminated the boy, his hair limp across his forehead and his eyes, staring, staring, so close. Buckley and the boy were staring at each other as the car slid closer.
Buckley felt something hit the car underneath his feet. He would have felt the impact through his body had he not been virtually standing up to exert as much pressure onto the brake as was possible. And then the car was airborne, and Buckley watched the boy, still with the one palm raised and one foot in front of the other, lean to the right of the rolling car, untouched and unharmed.
The Aston Martin rotated through the air three and a half times, the seat belt, the forces created by the spin holding Buckley into his seat u
ntil the front of the car hit a combination of the base of a massive oak tree and an open drainage ditch, the huge crunch ripping through the night.
Buckley hung upside-down in the overturned car, his head just inches from the ditch water that was rapidly entering through the broken windows, blood dripping off his jaw and diluting in the filthy brown liquid. The airbags had not deployed—a fact that, had he the opportunity to consider it, would have vexed Buckley grandly. The engine block, having been driven backwards by the impact and into the passenger compartment of the car, had snapped both of his legs, bending his knees in a direction they were not meant to go. He had emptied both his bladder and his bowels, but he knew or felt none of these things as his spine, halfway down his back, had also been severed.
He tried to inhale and found that he couldn’t. It felt like his internal organs had been mashed up into baby food, grated against his ribs and stuffed down into his esophagus, and although he could still hear what was left of the engine hissing, and although he could still hear the rear tires spinning, and although he could still even hear the thwack-thwack of the windshield wipers even though he could not see them, what he heard over everything was the diminishing sound of his pulse in his eardrums. He raised his fingers to his face and realized that he could not see them. His face was a wet mask of broken glass, glass in his cheeks, glass in his forehead, glass in his eyes, and then he thought that, for all the things he could hear, he would give all he had just to hear himself take one more breath, one more gasp filling his lungs, but then he could not hear anything anymore and he then had no more thoughts left to think.
2
Across the narrow band of water, he watched as Skerries came awake. The street lights continued pulsing orange, joined by cars and buses and the train coursing their way through the town, the growing sound of the engines gradually battling against the echo of the tide. Hours earlier, the Guards had left town en masse, lights flashing without sirens; the first person on the scene must have said that the need to rush had long since passed. Now, just hours afterwards, the rest of the people began their day blissfully unaware of the mess that had been cleared up just outside their perfect little town.
Skerries. Na Skeiri, to give it the proper Irish name, a coastal town to the north of Dublin, was indeed considered idyllic to its residents. He watched the town from one of the five islands, one of the Skerries, that dotted its coast in the Irish Sea. He stood on Shenick Island, looking west across about a kilometer of cold sea. The waves weren’t so much crashing against the beach as gently nuzzling the sand below the ice blue sky.
The sun was slowly rising to the east behind him, the light catching on the wave crests and occasionally bouncing back the way it had travelled from house or car windows. Each of these reflections made him squint and cover his eyes. He stood protected in the shadow of the Martello Tower, one of two in Skerries. The other was on the headland, just a kilometer away. The towers were round and built of solid masonry, over ten meters tall and originally constructed to repel cannon fire during the Napoleonic Wars. He should have been cold, stood in the shade of the tower at the crack of dawn, but he felt nothing.
The door to the tower stood open and from inside he could hear the boy carrying out his morning tasks; the bubbling from the pan and the shuffling of his footsteps on the wood floor. The final edges of night were driven away by the sun and he stepped back inside the tower, pulling the door closed behind him. Even though the boy had things to do, habit could not prevent the man from snapping the three heavy padlocks closed, as well as pushing across the two bolts and turning the deadbolt key.
‘Father,’ the boy shouted from deeper within the tower. ‘Father! Come inside now! The sun, it is almost risen.’
‘I am here,’ the man said, entering the rearmost of the two rooms that made up the ground floor, his heavy boots giving off no noise as he slowly strode in. It was the room they used as their kitchen and the boy was heating porridge in the small fireplace built into the far side of the rounded wall. The scouting portal just above the fire was closed over, and also locked from the inside. The room was alive with light, dozens of candles chasing away the shadows. The man crossed the room towards the small table and ruffled the boy’s hair before he sat down.
‘Don’t. Don’t do that,’ the boy said, passing a full bowl of breakfast to the man.
‘What? Ruffle your hair or sneak in quietly?’
This time the boy smiled. ‘Either. Both.’
‘Have you eaten already?’
‘Yes. Yes, while you were outside. You have to be more careful.’
‘I know. I like to watch over them. Have you drunk?’
‘I have, Father,’ the boy answered with a grimace. He wanted to ask the man more questions, but he knew the man would talk when he was ready and not a second before.
‘All of it? You know you need…’
‘Yes, all of it,’ the boy interrupted, and then rapidly changed the subject. ‘Everything is ready for you.’
The man looked across the table as the boy took the seat opposite him. He looked too pale, too thin. His cheekbones were pronounced, his skin almost translucent. But his hair, as loose and floppy as he liked to keep it, was thick and healthy and despite his frame, the man instinctively knew that his son was a strong boy. In that satisfaction, he finished his porridge—despite tasting nothing—and stood up from the table, moving to wash his crockery.
‘I’ll do that.’ The boy smiled. ‘The grey seals are back and I want to watch them today, so I’ll wash up down by the sea.’
The man nodded, placed the bowl back onto the table and ruffled the boy’s hair again.
‘Father!’
‘You are a good boy. I am proud of you. Your mother would be so proud of you.’
The boy’s head dropped, his chin rested upon his chest, his hair hanging down into his eyes.
‘Thank you. I left something for you to drink. Before you sleep.’ He held out the plastic container to his father, who took it from him and drank deeply.
‘’I’m going downstairs,’ said the man, wiping the back of his left hand across his lips. ‘Stay on the island and don’t be outside for too long.’
The man crossed to the back of the room and slid the small rug to one side, crouched to the floor, effortlessly raised the heavy trapdoor hidden underneath and stepped down the stairs into the basement, holding the hatch above his head with his left hand. As he finally lowered the thick wooden door, the last thing the boy saw was the smear of blood across the rear of his father’s hand.
He crossed to the trapdoor and pulled the chains he had taken from behind the door through the copper eyelets until they were tight, then latched three heavy padlocks in place. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and placed each of the keys behind a different loose brick around the room. He slid the rug back into place. If anyone managed to get inside the tower, it would be next to impossible for them to make their way into the basement.
Next, he gathered the dishes, pot and spoons together and left the kitchen through to the other room. The wooden stairs arced up the wall on his left to the first floor, and he grinned when he saw that his father had secured the front door so thoroughly. He placed the dishes on the floor and quickly unlocked the robust door, pushing it outwards. The bright sunshine made him close his eyes and raise a hand in front of his face until his vision adjusted to the glare.
Over the water, the town was now awake. People walked their dogs across the beach, the excited yapping as they chased tennis balls making the boy smile; cars wove their way down the streets; another ordinary day in Skerries.
He couldn’t see the school from the island, but he longed to be going there himself as so many others his age would be. There was no reason why he could not attend, but his father did not approve of him mixing with the townsfolk. Over the years, he had educated his son himself and the boy could hold little resentment towards him. He may have wanted to behave normally but he had to accept that his father wa
s right; he was not the same as the rest of the teenagers in the town. So one of the rooms upstairs in the two-storey tower had been renovated into a classroom, filled with every book anyone in the town could ever have read. His father taught him English language, literature, excelled at educating him in science, and tried his best at mathematics and the boy felt he could not ask for more.
He gathered together the washing up and made his way to the west of the small island that they called home, hoping that the seals were still basking in the morning sunshine.
3
The fire flickered in the breeze that rolled in from the sea and the umbrella of light it cast moved across the sand like a mischievous ghost. The sound of the laughter from the group of teenagers was only occasionally overwhelmed by the intermittent crash of lazy waves onto the beach.
Owen Flannery reached into the plastic bag and withdrew two cans of cheap lager, tilting one towards Frank, and then David, both who shook their heads—they still had to finish their drinks.
‘Ladies?’ he asked the two girls, one dark haired, the other blonde, who also turned him down.
‘More for me then,’ he said, to himself rather than to his friends, and lobbed one of the tins back into the bag, popping the top of the remaining one. He took a long draught of the alcohol and did a good job of hiding his displeasure at the taste of the warm, gassy beer.
Although he was actually the youngest of the group, he considered himself the leader and he was definitely the biggest. At two weeks short of eighteen, he was a shade over six feet tall and had broad, thickset shoulders, vital to his position as captain of the school rugby team. His dark hair, muscled physique and air of confidence made him a point of interest for most of the girls his age and younger in Skerries. Most of the girls.