by A. A. Glynn
“I do for sure,” said Heffernan.
“Don’t be telling me—I’ll tell you. The dark bit near the trees on the quiet road where a man suddenly sees the old uncle whose funeral he was at when he was a mere child standing in the shadows and looking at him sorrowfully, then disappearing entirely. The twisty bit of an old boreen lane, which half the village will avoid at dusk for fear of being chased by one of the worst of fairy manifestations, a black pig. The spot from which a mother will keep her baby at all costs, lest the fairies snatch the child away forever. I know them all—and let me tell you that the old piseog yarns are not to be scorned. There’s often a deep truth going right back to the beginning of Celtic times lying at the bottom of them, no matter how its been twisted down the centuries.”
Shannassy paused and swept a hand towards the grimy mullioned window. “Take this location for instance. There’s hardly a more desperate bad spot in all Ireland than this place—that bend in the road out yonder has been notorious since the drying of the Flood. Dark tales were told of this edge of the ocean centuries ago, some of ’em concerned with battle, murder, and sudden death, and some, much more chilling, from beyond the misty curtains of the Celtic past. The place has attracted tragedy persistently. Only recently, in the troubled times, the big house belonging to the Mountcarrolls who owned the domain for centuries was burned down by one side or the other. Then, the local rebel flying column lay in ambush on the land above the bend and put paid to a convoy of Black and Tans as they came roaring down the road. A couple of years later, in the Civil War, with Irishman fighting Irishman, Mick Collins’s new National Army played the same trick, surprising a squad of Republican irregulars. Some dreadful things have taken place hereabouts, and it was the reputation of the place that made me settle here when I heard the old gatehouse still stood and was for sale.”
“You mean you came to live here in spite of the reputation of the place?” asked Heffernan.
“Indeed I did. Out of the pursuit of scholarship and because I was deeply interested in old Lord Maurice Mountcarroll, who ruled the roost here in the early nineteenth century.
“He was different from the usual run of hunting and boozing Mountcarrolls, a decent landlord to his tenants and a scholar, deeply interested in the old legends and traditions of the people. He was forever searching for the relics of the old Celtic world. History more or less forgot him, but I found a yarn saying he discovered something of importance here on this very land.” Shannassy leaned forward and dropped his voice to a near-conspiratorial whisper.
“Something from the old times it was—something sinister and downright dangerous. For years, just under the surface of the folk-memories of the local population, there was a belief that old Lord Maurice found this horrifying secret thing in the woods climbing up above this old ruin of a house, and took great pains to conceal it from view, hoping it would never be found. It was so shocking he labored with his own hands to bury it deep, instead of having any of his tenants do the job. Somehow, however, word of it got out, and so this region’s already established reputation as a bad spot was intensified. I can tell you the piseog surrounding this place is one to beat them all.”
Heffeenan’s pulse quickened. Now, it looked as if he was about to capture his story. Surely, the old eccentric was going to reveal something about this remote edge of the land which would give him the core of a piece which would be eye-catching on the features page.
“That was what brought me here,” continued Shannassy in his dramatic whisper. “There was nothing concrete at first, just the old tale, but I began to search as soon as I settled here and, though it took months—I found it!”
Heffernan reached for the pencil in the top pocket of his jacket but Shannassy held up a cautioning hand. “Not so fast. I can’t have you spreading this secret all over the world. It could cause a wild panic. At the same time, I’m the only mortal creature who knows the truth of it, and I’m on the edge of the grave so I have to pass it on to someone—but, if I reveal it to you, for God’s sake don’t print it.”
Heffeenan frowned. He was being forced into a corner. He was here to find a story and it looked as if he had succeeded, but this old eccentric was laying down conditions he could not accept. Young though he was, he had absorbed the journalistic dictum that he should never allow any censorship or doctoring of his material except by his editorial superiors. However, old Shannassy pressed on, not allowing him an opportunity to object.
“Come on outside and I’ll show you something that’ll make your hair stand—but don’t reveal a word of it, particularly to the so-called academic and archaeological crowd up in Dublin. They’d be down here like a cloud of locusts.”
As if powered by the chance of at last unburdening himself of a long-held secret, Shannassy made for the door with Heffernan in his wake. Outside, the salty breeze swept up from the ocean, rustling the trees, which hemmed in the small gatehouse and clothed the rise of land above it. Heffernan shuddered, and not wholly because of the breeze. Shannassy tramped up an ill-defined track through the trees with remarkable alacrity for an old man.
“Don’t the trees themselves tell you this place is odd?” he asked. “They’re clue enough that things are not right here—that it’s a bad spot.”
“The trees?” queried Heffernan, bewildered.
“The very fact that they are here,” growled the old man. “There’s devil a tree to be found all along this section of the coast. How could there be, with some of the worst gales in Europe sweeping it regularly for century on century, giving no tree a chance to flourish in peace? Yet here, in this peculiar spot, we have a virtual forest cloaking the land—as if nature herself is intent on concealing something and defying her own rules to do it. And that was the truth of it, Mr. Heffernan—until old Lord Maurice Mountcarroll found what was being concealed.”
Old Shannassy led the way deeper into the trees until they came to a small clearing, in the center of which there reared a hump of earth covered in wild grass. “And here,” he said, “is the same terrifying thing that old Mountcarroll found.”
He dropped to his knees in front of the mound and yanked away several loose sods of turf that concealed a large stone slab. Heffernan bent to look closer, and saw that letters and curious symbols were carved into the stone. The handiwork was obviously ancient and, while there was a familiarity about the letters, he could make out only one or two. The language was vaguely Irish, but he could not decipher any meaning.
He heard Shannassy chuckle behind him: “It might just as well be Greek to you, eh?
“That’s because it’s not the Gaelic League kind of Irish they gave you in school. It’s a damn’ sight older than that. It’s ancient Irish, out of a distant time, and you’ll be unfamiliar with the alphabet. But, look, this symbol is an ‘f’ and this one an ‘i’, so what would you make of the whole word?”
“It looks like ‘Formorii’,” pronounced Heffernan.
“Exactly. And did you ever hear of the Formorii?”
“Some kind of legendary folk, I think,” ventured Heffernan. “Didn’t they go to live underground and become the Little People—the fairies?”
“You’re confused, but near the mark,” said Shannassy. “It was the Tuatha De Danaan who went to dwell in glittering underground palaces to become the fairies of popular legend. They were the last race of magical gods to rule ancient Ireland. The Formorii were monstrously ill-shapen and cruel sea-creatures who battled the Tuatha De Danaan and were defeated by their superior magic. The Tuatha De Danaan, remember, were dab hands at magical underground engineering, and they created a tunnel through which they banished the Formorii into the ocean. Magically, this tunnel was the only link between the world of the Formorii and that of us mortals. It was the only means by which they could be sent from the land—and the only means by which they could return to it.
“For there was the usual Achilles heel factor, you see. The magic formula of the Tuatha De Danaan lacked a safeguard against the sea mon
sters using it as a way back, though it was securely sealed. Down the ages, the place was known as the very site of the tunnel and, long after the disappearance of the Tuatha De Danaan, when a written language was in being, precautions were taken to post a warning. The seal was reinforced and marked by this stone.”
“And what does this lettering say?” asked Heffernan.
“It says—‘Through this tunnel were driven the Formorii, the unclean things of the ocean into the waves which created them. Let it remain sealed for ever for fear of their using this, their only gateway, to emerge again and imperil the people of the land.’ ”
“So is there really a tunnel behind the stone?” asked Heffernan.
“That’s what old Lord Maurice believed and I believe it, too,” confirmed Shannassy. “So far as I can decipher these other symbols, they tell of the place being sealed with ceremonies by the old druidical priests who flourished before the arrival of St. Patrick. I hope to high heaven that the tunnel remains corked up for all time. If someone shifts this slab—uncorking the tunnel, so to speak—the Formorii could swarm ashore again and perpetrate who knows what horrors. It’s a secret I’ve kept for years, and I admit I’m relieved to have shared it. I’ve placed a big burden on you, young fellow. Be careful what you do with it. I’m trusting you won’t be the means of bringing the academic crowd and the gawping tourists down on me.”
Heffernan left Ballyquin in a dilemma. His brief was to return with a pen-portrait of the man who wrote his paper’s column on Irish folklore, but he had scarcely interviewed Shannassy and he was returning with quite different data. As the old man had said, he had been burdened with quite a responsibility when informed of the ancient stone and the terrible secret it guarded. Shannassy did not want the wider world to know about this outlet for the monstrous Formorii, and Heffernan found he liked the eccentric old recluse and he had no desire to betray his trust. But what was he to do with the knowledge imparted to him? He was, after all, a newspaperman, and he had a story of shattering importance if one shared old Shannassy’s belief in the potency of the old legends. Should he give it to the world or should he hush it up and manufacture some sort of word profile of old “Professor” Shannassy to suit the needs of the feature page?
It was not a day when the youngest of reporters on Irish papers had the luxury of chasing assignments in cars, and Heffernan had reached this remote corner of County Mayo by tram and an infrequent local bus. Heading back to Dublin by the same means, he cudgeled his brains as to the course he should take. Throughout the journey, he sat deep in thought and did not even while away the time with a book or newspaper. By the time his train steamed into Westland Row station, he was still at a loss as to how he should handle the material he had gathered. He had, however, reached a conclusion concerning the tunnel ‘corked up’ by the stone bearing its dire warning. The whole thing, of course, was a complete fraud.
Old Shannassy, with his total faith in the ancient tales, might believe it to be authentic, but it was quite likely simply an elaborate device to keep unwanted intruders such as poachers off the Mountcarroll lands. Lord Maurice Mountcarroll was probably as fiercely intent as any other landlord of his time on keeping his domain and its game private. Shannassy might accept him as a genuine scholar of the old lore, but it was quite conceivable that he had set up the stone himself and created the legend of some sinister mystery hidden in the woodland. Knowing that the local peasantry held a generations-old piseog about the locality and had it marked as ‘a bad spot’, he probably set on foot a new legend to ward off unwanted intruders.
Yes, thought Heffernan, that was doubtless the whole truth of the matter. But, as he mounted the steps of the office, he was still in a dilemma as to what he was going to write.
Tash Burke met him in the corridor. “About time you showed up!” he roared. “Get into the reference library and dig up two columns of background stuff on modern Poland and I want it quick.”
“But I’ve just come back from seeing old Shannassy in Mayo…,” began Heffernan.
“Forget about that hogwash. You can spike it for all time, so far as I’m concerned,” growled Burke. “Dammit, man haven’t you seen a paper or heard the news? The country is in a sweat about whether De Valera will join the British in a full-scale war or remain neutral. Hitler has massed his troops on the Polish border and is about to invade at any minute!”
* * * *
Heffernan’s head cleared to some degree. He was lying on the carpet of his flat and an urgent voice was issuing from the television set: “…no clear picture as to what is happening has yet emerged, and we are awaiting a government statement. It has been confirmed however, that a large contingent of troops has been sent to Mayo, and all police leave has been cancelled. We understand the British government and those of other European nations are being kept constantly informed of events at Ballyquin.…”
“Ballyquin,” muttered Heffernan, picking himself up. “My God! Ballyquin—the bad spot!”
Tangled thoughts raced through his mind: the recollection of what the television had revealed before he passed out—something about work on building a new complex of flats—startling reports of strange creatures seen in the woods, things which might have resembled fish, frogs, or men, and of bodies being found—and the memory of a story he tackled long ago concerning an eccentric old recluse with outlandish theories—a story which was overwhelmed by the pressing urgencies of another day, and which became forgotten then disappeared with the years of his youth.
The television set was still jabbering: “…we keep receiving rumors of yet more sightings of the creatures along the west coast. There are also reports of yet more killings, but we emphasize that these are only rumors, and the authorities are stressing the need to keep calm.…”
Heffernan staggered towards the door and held on to the jamb to catch his breath. Now, he began to see the pattern of events. There was a building boom in holiday homes along the west coast these days. Some company had acquired the Ballyquin land, the ‘bad spot’, the bend in the road overlooking the Atlantic, an ideal site for a set of luxury flats. They must have moved in with diggers to clear the woodland and.…
“Great God!” he panted. “I have to warn them about the tunnel…the Formorii…they’ll be coming into the land in droves.…”
He remembered the Civic Guard station only a short distance away and hastened into the street. Immediately, the cold air hit him and induced further wooziness because of the evening’s heavy intake of alcohol. He stumbled along the pavement and caught sight of a uniformed man ahead of him, walking briskly in the same direction. It looked like the new young peeler, Sullivan, whom he had seen earlier in the pub. “Garda Sullivan!” he mouthed slurringly. “Tell ’em to cork it up! They have to hurry and cork it up!”
The policeman turned briefly with a puzzled look and continued walking.
“D’you hear me?” persisted Heffernan. “I have something important to tell you.”
“Behave yourself and go home,” retorted Sullivan over his shoulder. “I haven’t time to listen to you now.” He continued his quick walk with Heffernan tagging behind shouting some hardly coherent message.
Other uniformed figures were making their way into the door of the station, and Sergeant O’Cathal, whom Sullivan had so recently seen enjoying his evening off, was now standing in the doorway, also in uniform and looking agitated.
“What’s happening?” asked Sullivan. “I got a phone call at home telling me to report for duty and quick.”
“Cork it up!” wailed the voice of Heffernan in the background. “They have to cork it up!”
“All hell is let loose in the west,” said the sergeant. “You and a crowd of the younger men are being flown down to Mayo at once. Matter of keeping public order and helping the army out. Everybody who can be rounded up is being sent there. I never knew the like of it.”
Again, Heffernan’s warning rang on the night air: “Cork it up! Cork it up!”
“What th
e hell is your man blathering about?” asked the sergeant. “Sure, for years ‘Don’t cork it up!’ has been his watchword when he’s in the vicinity of the whiskey bottle, and now he’s yelling for it to be corked up. I suppose the gargle has at last driven him around the bend entirely.”
Frowning, he watched Heffernan grab the shoulder of one of the officers who was hastening into the station and begin hooting his message. Then, frustrated, O’Cathal pushed forward and clutched Heffernan’s arm.
“I’ve heard enough from you,” he growled. “We’re in the thick of the damnedest crisis ever known, and you’re obstructing officers in the exercise of their duties. I’m jugging you for the night!”
Heffernan found himself propelled into the station charge room and up to the desk of the duty sergeant. Sullivan followed on their heels.
“Put him in the guest room until he sobers up, Paddy,” O’Cathal instructed the duty sergeant. “And he’s lucky I’m not charging him.”
Heffernan’s unheeded plea to ‘Tell them to cork it up!’ was sounding thinly from the cell as Sullivan persisted in his questioning of O’Cathal: “But what’s going on in Mayo? Television is giving out something about mutilated corpses being found, and a sound like wild animals rampaging all over the place.”
O’Cathal shoved him into a quiet corner of the charge room. “That’s not even the half of it, Tom,” he murmured with a shudder. “There’s a whisper from headquarters that—though God knows why they should target the butt-end of Mayo—we’re being invaded by the Martians!”
FIR GORTA
“The Yank is coming back in a couple of weeks,” announced Dotie Clenahan across the bar as she drew a pint of stout for Tommy Lynch. “Staying for quite a while, too.”
“The Yank? Mr. Criswell is it?” sniffed Lynch, reaching for the glass. “I never liked him.”
“Oh, is that so?” hooted Mick O’Carroll who had been at odds with Lynch ever since they were youngsters in the village school fifty years before. “Well, when he was here last year and stood a round in this very pub, I noticed you were the first to get your snout around what was on offer.”