The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories

by Brian J. Showers

  The fact that Liebl, Kendes and Ensine had been attacked and killed by rats caught the attention of the Health and Safety Authority, who promptly acted. Health inspectors determined that the fair, along with the houses numbered 40, 42 and 44 which the market's proprietor also owned and had packed full with detritus, had become a breeding ground for hundreds if not thousands of rats and other vermin. There has not been a major rat infestation in the city since the early eighteenth century, and there is no excuse for a preventable epidemic to exist in the modem day - not even in Dublin. The market did not open that weekend and the courts saw to it that it never opened again. The time of the ghost-hunters' demise was judged to be between 9.24 p.m. (the time stamp on the last photograph) and 10.30 p.m. The coroner decided that ‘Exsanguination secondary to multiple wounds inflicted by the common rat (Rattus rattus)' was the easiest way to catalogue the deaths of three otherwise healthy young men. But the old wives of Rathmines knew better: the Blackberry Man was to blame.

  I was introduced to a fellow by the name of Osborne Brocas one evening at Slattery's pub. Unlike those who believe in the Blackberry Man only as a local spook story, Brocas has witnessed the phantom with his own eyes. Although I had never met him until that night, I had seen him around town and in Slattery's, so I knew of his reputation. Brocas is a painter of no small skill. One of his paintings even hangs in the Hugh Lane Municipal Art Gallery. He specialises in Dublin street scenes and cityscapes, past and present, realistic and fantastic. Until the Blackberry Fair closed, he sold his work there from a small and cluttered gallery that he and his wife ran at weekends. When my companion told Brocas that I was interested in the Blackberry Man, his smile straightened and he nodded solemnly. No, he did not mind talking about the night in question, but preferred to do it from the privacy of the snug. It's not the sort of thing a man wants overheard in common company,’ he said.

  I bought a Smithwick’s for myself and an orange juice for Brocas, who had told me, ‘I never indulge’. And then he began:

  ‘It was late summer. The market closed at six and sunset wasn’t for a while. The market’s always in shadow because of the dome, so it’s always hard to tell what time of day it is. Everyone else had left, but I was allowed to stay a bit longer so long as I locked up when I’d finished. I was searching through my canvases that night for a painting I did called Judgement on Aungier Street. A collector in Lisbon had seen it listed in a catalogue and wanted to buy it.

  ‘Sure I’d heard of the Blackberry Man. Who hasn’t? I think my aunt told me about him. She was a real ghost-stoiyaddict, so it was probably her. I didn’t believe in him though, not even at that age, and when I signed the lease for the gallery I just accepted the dawn ’til dusk thing as a superstition. Superstitions die hard around here. Of course a clause isn’t necessary. The Blackberry Fair after hours is enough to prickle anyone’s nerves. There was always something off about the place, even before that night. It's not the sort of place I make a habit of visiting alone. But that night was different. I had to post that painting by the next morning.

  ‘The time must have got away from me. Like I said, the dome blots out the sun, and unless you stop and listen for them, the town hall bells get blotted out too. Every so often I would look across the courtyard. It was always the same - the fewer people in the market, the more rats you’d see scurrying about.

  'After a while I stopped to take a smoke break and heat the kettle. As I smoked I could see the Virgin, with her hands folded and eyes closed. I got the feeling that maybe she was praying for my sake. As I looked at her, a plump rat scurried right up the folds of her robe. I’d never seen anything like it. I’ll bet those things could climb straight up a wall if they wanted to. It climbed all the way to the top of her stone head and sat on its hind legs. It twitched and watched me with those expressionless little eyes like tiny black marbles.

  'That was when I sensed the presence near the wall by the church. At first I thought it was the silhouette of some old rubbish. Maybe a dusty old rug that someone had rolled up and leaned against the wall. But it wasn't a rug. It was a man. My eyes must have gradually adjusted with the evening. I hadn’t noticed it was long past dusk. My first thought was that it was the proprietor come to turn me out. But instead the man just stood there.

  ‘He was about fifteen or twenty yards away. His back was to me. He wore a long garment, like a Prince Albert frock that went down past his knees. And I think he was wearing a bowler. I’ve seen old photos of people from just before the First World War - my grandfather used to dress the same way when he was a young man. But this thing, it wasn't human at all. It was stiff like a coat rack and twitched like a rat. I remember how I didn't want it to turn around.

  ‘Then three loud bangs, like gunshots, echoed through the market. I ducked behind a pile of canvases leaning against the wall. When I stood up, I saw the figure was doubled over on the ground. Its face was still turned away from me. Then it moved, contorting and pushing itself up with its arms. It twisted its torso at the waist. It turned and looked at me.’

  Brocas closed his eyes. It takes resolve to conjure up and relive a frightful memory, even if only in the mind's eye. Brocas' voice trembled as he described what he saw behind his eyelids.

  ‘Its face - it's horrible. I've tried to paint it since, but I can never seem to capture on canvas what's so vivid in my nightmares. Its face is like a blob of white oil paint polluted with streaks of grease and it glistens like melting wax. The eyes are deep hollows of nothing. It's sniffing at the air, but it has no nose. Its mouth is a drooping triangle, and it's dropping open, wider than any human mouth ever should. I can almost hear the hollow shriek pouring from its lipless mouth. It's dropped on all fours. It’s crawling towards me.’

  Brocas opened his eyes. His muscles were tense and he gripped the bar, his arms ramrod straight, pushing his body against the wall. A piece of melting ice shifted and clinked in his glass.

  ‘I didn’t scream. I wanted to, of course, but I couldn’t. Instead the instinct for survival welled up from deep within me. I knew I had to run. If I allowed that thing to get near, if it reached out with one of its pallid hands and clutched my ankle, I knew it would never let me leave the market.

  ‘There were even more rats now, perched on every surface. Not a single comer was free from trembling whiskers and multiple pairs of evil eyes. And they were all fixed on me.’

  Brocas knew how fantastic his story sounded, but before I could say a word, he propped his foot on a stool, rolled up his pant leg and pushed down his sock. His entire ankle and lower calf were covered with ragged scars where the rats had chewed through his trouser leg and nipped at his flesh.

  ‘My other ankle’s the same,’ he told me. ‘Luckily the front gate was unlocked and I got through it in no time at all. I’d hate to think what would have happened if I had to stop and find my keys. They probably would have nibbled clean through my tendon. I certainly wouldn’t be here having this drink with you.’

  The barman hammered the small brass bell above the bar and flipped the lights off and on as if trying to settle a classroom full of rowdy children. It was last orders, and people either bought another pint (sometimes two) or started to clear out.

  ‘Have you talked to Molly Crowe yet?’ asked Brocas, as he stood to leave. ‘She’s seen him too. After she met the Blackberry Man though, she left the market and refused to set foot in it ever again. Her spiritual awareness is - how can I put this? - more delicate than most people's. Last I heard she’d moved her stall to Blackrock. Molly knows a lot about Rathmines; she grew up here. I think she still works one night a week at the coffee shop down the road. You might catch her there.'

  The next Thursday I made my way to the coffee shop. A poster taped to the wall near the door read:

  MOLLY CROWE, PSYCHIC. PALMISTRY - TAROT - DIVINATION - €20

  I found Molly seated at a secluded table in the far corner. My first thought on seeing her was of Maria Ouspenskaya, the fortune-teller mother of Bela
Lugosi in The Wolf-Man. Molly looked the part. She wore lavender robes with a matching headscarf. From her ears dangled Egyptian scarabs, and a green knitted shawl hung around her shoulders. From an old carpet bag she removed the tools of her trade and arranged them on the table: crystals of all colours, a tarot deck and a crystal ball the size of a mans fist, which she placed on a yellow satin pillow.

  I introduced myself. Without looking up she set the tarot cards in front of me. ‘Cut the deck with your left hand'

  I did as she said.

  ‘Now - what do you wish to know?’

  I explained that Osborne Brocas had referred me to her, that I was conducting private research on Rathmines, and about my interest in the Blackberry Man. Settling back into her wicker chair with a creak, she flipped over the top card. It was the Tower.

  ‘The Blackberry Man?’ She stared at me for a moment, perhaps deciding what she would or would not tell me next. ‘I can see you’re a healer. A true healer understands not only what he sees, but also what he hears.

  ‘The fair' she went on, ‘always gave me a bad feeling, even as a girl when my mother used to take me there. It's a spiritually turbulent place. I wouldn’t have rented a stall there, but times are hard and it was one of the few places where I could get one cheap.

  I set up my stall next to Brocas’ gallery at the end of the row. I had a nice view of the courtyard from there. I remember it was a cold afternoon in late February of 2001 when I saw the Blackberry Man. He appeared to me clear as I am to you. I had no walk-ins or appointments that afternoon, so I passed the time with a crossword puzzle. ‘Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II was the clue. Six letters. It's funny how you remember insignificant details like that. ‘Brando’ wasn’t the answer, and I was about to go ask Madeleine Brocas for help when I saw a man hunched over near the Holy Mother. He had his back to me, but I could see he was digging in the earth with his bare hands like an animal. The market was mostly empty, and those who were walking about didn’t seem to notice him.

  ‘I watched for a few seconds before he rose from his knees. His arms hung at his sides. He wore a long coat and one of those hats that gentlemen used to wear. But this man was far from a gentleman. He sensed me, like an animal senses a threat. When he turned around I saw his horrible, thin-cheeked face. It was filled with contempt and rage. He grinned into my soul with his horrible hate-filled eyes. He pointed at me with a bony finger. I felt a burning sensation in my chest. I've had spirits enter my body before. It's like being mildly seasick. What entered me on that day made me feel violently ill.

  ‘Then he started tracing letters on the air. As he wrote, I felt my own hand, the one holding the pencil, start moving about on top of the newspaper. I was writing what he was writing. When he finished he just stood there sneering. Then he turned and walked down the lane. I tried to watch him as long as I could, but something was wrong.

  I felt my clothes rustle. I looked down. My entire gown was alive, shifting and fluttering. Ropey tails whipped my body and a hundred tiny claws dug into my skin. “Get them off!” I screamed. I ran from the stall and tore the robe off, throwing it to the ground. I waited for streams of vermin to pour from my robe, but it only lay on the ground like a discarded rag.

  ‘Madeleine Brocas rushed to help me. She was always a generous soul. She must have thought I was crazy, shouting and screaming the way I was. She helped me back to my stall and suggested I go home for the evening. I followed her advice, only not just for the evening. I knew I was never coming back to the Blackberry Fair.

  ‘After she left, I lifted my shirt. I could still feel where the vermin had clawed me. I've never told anyone that before now. But I can sense you re a healer. My stomach, it was red and covered with scratches. There's also this...

  Molly removed a battered notebook from her bag. Paper-clipped to one of the pages was a folded piece of newspaper. When she unfolded it I saw it was a half-finished crossword puzzle. Scribbled on top in heavy capital letters were the words ‘quis separabit’.

  Its Latin,’ she said. ‘I showed it to one of the curates at the church. He said its from the Vulgate Bible. It means, “Who will separate us?”’

  She handed me the notebook. On the same page that the crossword puzzle was clipped to was writtenRomans 8:35. Quis nos separabit a caritate Christi? And below that: ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?’

  Molly closed her trembling eyelids and put her hand to her forehead, which was now beaded with sweat. Her other hand blindly found the deck, turned over another card, and placed it beside the first. The Moon. Without even looking at it, she spoke: ‘My advice to you is to stay away from the Blackberry Fair. Do your research, but do it from a safe distance. Any more questions? No? Twenty euro, please.'

  A newspaper report, a painter and a psychic - what are we to make of their stories? We have a hat, so to speak, but no peg on which to hang it. These encounters with the supernatural might have remained incidental if not for an unexpected accident that drew them together.

  The Rathmines library is not an uncommon place to find me. In fact, I conduct most of my research in the first-floor reading room. One particularly late evening, a helpful librarian brought me a stack of titles I had asked for about the Hell-fire Club. Somehow a book I had not enquired after wormed its way into the pile. The title was an interesting one, and since the librarian did not immediately come back to retrieve it for another patron, I figured there would be no harm in flipping through its pages.

  The book in question was about the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels in 1907, a crime that sparks perennial interest here in Ireland, largely because it remains unsolved to this day. The aftermath of the theft, with its many accusations and dead-end investigations, is a confusing one. What I read was an admirable examination of the verifiable truths concerning this singular misdeed. I will do my best to distil for you the relevant details of the case. We depart Rathmines for the moment to visit the scene of the crime: Dublin Castle.

  In 1831 King William IV bequeathed the Crown Jewels to the Illustrious Order of St Patrick, a chivalric organisation equivalent to Scotland's Order of the Thistle or England's Garter and Bath. Williams father, the ever-unpopular George III, had founded the Order in 1783 in an attempt to reinforce the often wobbly relationship between Ireland and Great Britain. King George, however, failed to bestow ceremonial regalia to the fledgling order. Williams gift of the Crown Jewels forty-eight years later resolved this oversight.

  The Crown Jewels were composed of two individual ornaments: the Grand Masters Diamond Star, a sort of brooch, and the Diamond Badge, which was fixed to a decorative collar by two tiny screws (remember that) and worn around the neck. To give you an idea of their magnificence, the Badge is described on a reward poster as being: ‘3 x 2Vi inches set in silver, with a shamrock of emeralds on a ruby cross, surrounded by a sky blue enamelled circle - with their motto “Quis Separabit md-CCLXXXHIW in rose diamonds, surrounded by a wreath of shamrocks — the whole surmounted by a circle of large single Brazilian stones, surmounted by a crowned harp in diamonds.’The Diamond Star is similarly described, and together they were valued at £30,000. This is considered a conservative estimate. Still, I dare not think what they would be worth today.28

  The royally appointed custodian of the jewels at the time of their disappearance was Sir Arthur Vicars, head genealogist of the Office of Arms. Caring for the jewels was a duty of which Vicars was inordinately proud, and he was known to display them to the Office's visitors, particularly impressionable ladies. Until 1903, Vicars stored the jewels in a wooden wall safe in the damp and rat-infested Bermingham Tower in the castles lower yard. When the Office of Arms moved to the Bedford Tower just beside the Cork Hill Gate, Vicars took the opportunity to have a new strongroom constructed to house the Orders valuables. The jewels were to be stored in the strongroom within a ‘Ratner Patent Thief Resisting Safe'. However, due to a bureaucratic miscommunication, when the safe arrived the strongroom doorway was found to be too nar
row for the bulky safe to pass through — or the safe was too wide, depending on which side you believed. A series of memos raced between the Office of Arms and the Board of Works, each side seeking to place the blame with the other. The problem was irreconcilable and eventually the safe - and its valuable contents - were discreetly placed in the Office of Arms* ground-floor library, near the comer window.

  On the morning of 6 July 1907, Vicars lent his keys to the office messenger, William Stivey, so that Stivey might place some account books into the safe. This action was unprecedented. Never before had Vicars lent his keys to anyone, let alone the office messenger. He always removed items from or deposited them in the safe himself. Being only a messenger, and not wishing to invoke Vicars’ stem treatment, Stivey did not question the task Stivey fitted the key into the safe's lock and twisted it. It refused to budge. He then turned the key the opposite direction and heard the latch click When he tried to open the safe he found that, rather than unlocking it, he had instead locked it - that it had already been unlocked when he initially inserted the key. Stivey rushed to notify Vicars immediately. When Vicars arrived, he dropped

  to his knees and inspected the contents of the safe. He grabbed for the lock box that held the Crown Jewels. A look of utter alarm must have flashed across his face when he saw that the lid of the box was ajar. ‘My God,' he shouted, ‘they are gone! The jewels are gone!'