The Troubles Read online

  There are no signs of life on the cliff face as dusk looms leaving whatever semblance of visibility I had within the lens of the storm to nothing but gaping black holes where caves are drawn. With deliberate movements, I begin an odyssey, down slippery, wet, yellowed grass, but within just a ten-foot decline, my feet misstep and I land with a sickening thud on my bottom. I scream as pain immediately radiates up my spine and down my legs again. I have no time to recover and assess the injury because my body is torpedoing down the cliff. Large shards of rock pierce the sea beneath the grassy ledge and if I fall onto these boulders I will die before I drown.

  My hands claw at clumps of red clay as I frantically paw at any earthly perch while still on my pained posterior, but my coat’s rubber coating has turned into a sled and I am accelerating with a deadly accuracy downward. The rocks beneath metamorphose into gargantuan homicidal pillars and their intimidating prowess above the slapping waves nauseates me as I plunge, petrified to my executioner.

  CHAPTER 48: Is leir don saol e an firinne (Everybody knows the truth.)

  Kiera Taggart…Drip, drip drip…Water is cascading down from the ceiling of a cavern. I feel numb as my limbs are partially paralyzed. I am in a conscious state and my innards seem to be screaming in agony causing me to double over and clench into a half crescent form on the damp, fetid cavern floor. Warily, I am able to scan the shadowy space before me but my temples are thudding, causing what little vision I have to strain with the incapacitated strength of raw, sore eyes. I drearily ascertain that I must be in a cave of abnormal height. The oblong sarcophagus is unlit and saturated in a damp murkiness, in spite of a flicker of burnt orange fire in a furthermost reach of the dark, granite grotto. A hooded, outlandishly large shadow looms in the glow of the firelight and I shiver as a spoon of dread envelops my dry tongue. I pull my gaze away pleading with my mind for this to be a delusion and I will soon awaken in a soft down filled coverlet with the man I love snoring softly beside me as his arm is wrapped protectively over my hip and his fingers caress his infant’s refuge.

  Large, unstable mercurial overcasts have replaced the commonplace eye sockets where Lanary’s eyes once resided, the flesh earning a death gray pallor. He now presents himself mad within the dance of light and dark, illuminating his mocking grin, one of which in the five years I have known him as a mentor, I have yet to have seen. I am terror stricken by the man who is a few feet from me. I would never have been afraid of him who was my aging history teacher, albeit there is no semblance of his previous self to be seen in the spine-tingling expression he now bears.

  “Ar chodail tu go maith?” My mind appears to be wrestling with the words as I digest his question. Why is he asking me if I slept well? The asshole poisoned me! Continue with this farce my mind whispers to me for I am regaining my wits with each breath of pure oxygen.

  “Aye s’pose I did, Lanary. When did I fall asleep?” I wiggle a toe, the pins and needles signaling the resurgence of life in my extremities. I need to test my strength if I am to make an escape.

  “Glad ya did, me child. Tis a cold house without a woman.”

  I laugh awkwardly as I sit up propping myself on weak, shaky arms. “Not exactly a castle is it.” In my light, lucid state it appears Lanary has leapt with reptilian agility from his safe distance to be close enough for me to smell the rancid tobacco that has encased itself in each strand of his filthy beard.

  “De reir a cheile a thogtar na caisleain.” The old proverb rolls bitterly off his tongue and hits me with its spiteful anger.

  “Aye, didn’t mean much by it. I know it takes time to build castles,” I stammer. In the dim light his eyes look like two pools of poisoned water, murky and shimmering from the stain of his tears. “Are ya all right?” I phrase my question to sound compassionate but mostly I just want to gage this man’s delusions.

  CHAPTER 49: Is minic cuma aingeal ar an Diabhal fein. (There’s often the look of an angel on the devil himself.)

  Alastar Taggart…My throbbing behind stings with pangs of sharp nerve pain as I stand with shaking uncertainty. Groaning whilst I cleave to the mudslide above me, I turn around unsteadily putting my back to the frothing sea below, decamping the jutted ledge that a moment ago might have torpedoed me to a gnarly demise. I have tears falling down my face fusing cohesively with the substantial ocean spray. My pain has brought on the visceral reaction though to my chagrin I am sobbing out of frustration. With one breath in and one breath out, counting the rhythm allows me to meditate on even this most exhausting feat. I fear my feet slipping on this wet cliff face but with tenuously precise movements I maneuver up the steep shield. There is a more accessible route to the right and with a gingered footstep I lower myself further down the vertical angle and closer to the bank. The night’s dark tenacity has now fully realized itself and the downpour has slowed, absent of my knowledge while being preoccupied with my perilous plunge. There is a crest of moonlight gleaming now, through the cover of dissipating clouds on the horizon. The pale light bares a supernatural countenance onto the weathered land and the caves which have been layered like mismatched mausoleums, some large enough to accommodate a family, others so in descript, a child would scantily fit within, remain hidden.

  I can hear an ensemble of voices tear through the brutal affront of the waves and I stunt my scramble eager to assess the direction and quality of the sound. Am I hallucinating from the day’s exhaustive deluge of bodily stresses? Could the malevolent sirens of the sea be beckoning me to just give up and fall to a watery grave? The sounds are there again, light and lovely, humanistic and mortal. A singular voice is pleading with me, the tone high and fraught with panic. Oh God no! It is Kiera and she her voice is uncommonly anxious in lilt.

  I am filled with fear that Lanary might have maimed her or he is in the process of doing so. Adrenaline jolts through my flagging musculature and I can feel nothing but my heart pounding, each beat resonating through my chest like buckshot from a hunting barrel. I careen through the jagged maze before me with celestial confidence with Quinn paramount on my mind and for the first time since his death, I no longer associate his memory with fear, for I now feel his other worldly strength as though my teenage brother is carrying me weight upon his trim, stunted shoulders.

  The North Channel seems to have been quieted by the elements of sea and sky working in tandem. In the temperamental light of the falcate moon I distinguish a figure, lone and statuesque, upon the black granite irregular boulders that eclipse the hidden caves secluded and shut off from the brunt of nature’s fury.

  Stepping light-footed, I once again hear a voice and although the pitch is delicate, the color if from youth and it is not one of a female. “Tis the man before ya. He is yer hunter.” My brother’s spirit is right, for Lanary has been hunting me and now I must stalk my hunter. This stream of consciousness increases its veracity and I feel my brother’s urgent, sorrowful message, so penetratingly, it is as though he has burrowed his spirit into my body and our two souls are comingling with ease.

  “Tell me what to do, Quinn. How am I to get Kiera away from such great a foe?” I am now about twenty feet from the old man and although he is facing the infinite sea before him like the giant Finn McCool, I am threatened with a desire to rush and shove him off the ledge.

  “Aye, no Alastar. What ‘bout yer wife? The lass was kind to me and she may be hidden. Ya need to keep him alive to save her.” I breathe in deep, allowing Quinn’s words to radiate through me and also allowing oxygen to invigorate me with strength as well as relax my nervous energy. I take final steps before my maker and with responsiveness so quick it feels anomalous, Lanary Sloan, pirouettes and faces me; his wild eyes to face off against my startled ones.

  “Good evening, Alastar. Bout ye?” His relaxed candor takes me off guard as he nonchalantly continues his stream of consciousness. “Ya know, me Da had come from across the North Channel leaving behind his pauper kin in Scotland. I don’t know why he’d have wished me to fight for a land that wasn’
t his by birthright?”

  “Lanary, I know now ya’d had a rough run in life and much wasn’t fair, but please, if ya’d ever been me mate, don’t ruin me life as well,” I beg him.

  “Rough life? Ya think that fightin’ the damn anti-Semites is why I’m so bloody fucked up?” The timbre to his voice cracks and I can feel the raw emotion behind the confession to come. “I never did tell ya that I loved a girl once when I was just a lad. Unfortunately, with the mighty swoop of the Ireland’s bending down and kissing the crown’s arse, did it all disappear and then I vanished along with it.”

  “Ya seemed very much alive, when ya saw me potential, not as just another schoolteacher had, but as me mate. Ya were me scholar for all that is true and native to our land.” I have now engaged myself in a permeating, seeping discussion, one whose direction feels like quicksand. How can he omit that he has commandeered one of his previous students and how can he forget that there is a fragile life growing within her?

  A weak voice sputters in the darkness, “Alastar, is that ya? I’m so sorry I left ya.” The frail words shatter the tension with a desperate emotion. Behind the shadows of the amorphous appearance of the mouth of a cave tumbles out my woman in extreme duress with her auburn hair knotted and slackened to her face and dirt, sleet and nervous sticky sweat covering her.

  My protective instincts erupting into violent aggression emerge with the debut of Kiera’s decrepitude. The few feet between us is little distance as rushing towards me, my bedraggled bride surrenders into my arms with her limp body yielding all will as she thrusts her fate onto me. Lanary stands stoic and unaffected by our embrace, stone cold like one of the grand pillars that circle the cliffs upon which we dance our dangerous promenade.

  “An bhfuil pian ort me love?” I ask. Her chin wags up and down signaling, yes, she is in pain. I try to scan the surface of her gray mask attempting to identify what the psychopath before me has done to the most virtuous woman I have ever met.

  “What tha hell have ya done? What tha fuck is wrong with ya? She’s good mate! She’s a good girl!” A tear threatens to breach my furious bearing as I grit teeth and stare up at the aloof killer whilst cursing under my breath. “Whatever in yer sick mind made ya want to harm me woman, ya didn’t succeed!” I look down at my loves pale face, marred with bluish red blotches around her pretty mouth, in great concern, but to my relief, her breathing appears steady and strong.

  “She’s alive ya bastard. Ya failed and now ya’ll spend yer life in the maximum security Portlaoise prison for nil,” I croak out in a rasp. There is silence on the shelf above the sea as the old man digests my rage and with a slow burn he begins an ominous cackle.

  “Ya always been me best student but now I think I’d fail ya. Did ya really believe the Protestants had murdered Quinn?” I loosen my grasp on Kiera and as though in a dream watch myself slope awkwardly onto the cumbrous mantle. In a rapid procession of memories my suspicion unfolds like a book cracking its cover to reveal the story within. Oh my God! It really was his plan for me to join the IRA when he had devised this collateral kill as reason for my fight. How could anyone be so calloused? A gust of wind slams the face of the cliff upon which we all are merciful to and I shake violently from the brute chill of it.

  “Why Lanary, did ya do all of that? Why did ya wish me to join those bastards? How can ya be so cruel?” My rationalization for continuing in the fight was that it would have been better to die for a noble cause than to exist as an empty vessel within a family devoid of Quinn. Living for the other siblings had felt selfish and disloyal to the memory of his death which I had been certain was at the hand of an enemy. I look down at my young bride whose typically bright almond eyes smile up at me but whose tears are shining like diamonds in the moonlight. I am struck by an epiphany as clear as my love for this woman that if I lost my zeal for any brute force within myself, she would sweep me into a land of crushing love; the antitheses to the breaking of bones which had been the prelude to our first encounter. Night upon night of intimacy has replaced it all. Infringing upon this poignant reunion, our common enemy begins to speak as I incredulously await what plausible excuse he possibly could have for the breadth of his depravity.

  “Do ya think that all predators feel remorse for keeping the ecosystem in balance, Alastar? Does the wolf mourn killing deer? What do ya believe, then as a pagan, if not for the wondrous symbiotic nature of death and rebirth?” He heaves in a resonant breath of cool ocean air as his chest swells. “Smell that, the ocean and the sky comingled as one, yet they obliterate each other upon impact.”

  “So then killing children, is how ya worship? Yer a sicker fuckin’ bloke than I thought.’’

  “It’s about survival mate. All we have to do is pit the Christians against one another and watch. Do ya think that maybe I sped it up by taking a kid’s life every once in a while? Aye I do!” He does not hesitate for my response but just continues on with his senile manifesto. “It’s about our kind, Alastar! The pagan kind. We do not build boats to cross the sea and sink into the oceans. We only touch the ocean gently and with a preemptive prayer. We do not build smoke stacks and send children into the pits of fire to clean our mess. Nay, I have seen what man has done under Christian garb and it has been unbalanced and perverse. Alastar, ya have been on the winning side of an extinction and ya should be proud of yer effort and aye, I am truly sorry Quinn was collateral in a brutal war.” He looks west and gestures a gangly limb. “He’s in the otherworld now Son.”

  CHAPTER 50: Ceard a dheanfadh mac an chait ach luch a mharu. (What would the cat’s son do but kill the mouse.)

  Kiera Taggart…Though I rest languidly in Alastar’s sturdy grasp, I am alert and vigilant to the disturbing discourse that is transpiring between the two closest men in my fragile world. Lanary had already confessed his sins to me with the relief of a sinner at a confessional. I told him in my effort to simply survive that all was forgiven. When doubt of my clemency had gleamed heatedly through the electrified molecules in the cave, he had aggressively reminded me that if I did not have lenity for him, there would never be amnesty for my husband’s trespass. Here and now, nuzzled against the warm and heaving chest of my husband in my weary and hormonal condition, my mind quarrels with competing thoughts. Lanary is standing on the edge of a cliff, so confident and cavalier, it makes him even more reprehensible. My husband assumes a crouched position, looking tenderly and ever slightly compassionate at me. How can they be the same type of man, guilty of the same sin? The stupor of arsenic has worn off finally and I am surly and infuriated at them both. The life force in my hands has rejuvenated, as I fumble for support with my right hand clasping Alastar’s leg. With dumb, incredible luck, I feel a pistol shaped object jutting out of his boot’s heel. With a quick motion I snatch the cold firearm as I begin my ascent teetering like a drunkard haste on taking a piss but too inebriated for any certain accuracy.

  “Ya are both scumbags,” I scream into the wind. “Alastar, how can ya state ya are superior?” I careen unsteadily on the collision course of the uneven landing, the gun brandished with an unschooled clumsiness. Impulsive crowing erupts from Lanary, as I have interrupted his narcissistic prattle mid-sentence.

  “I’m banjaxed ya would say such a thing Kiera, after all I have done fer ya.”

  Alastar genuinely looks confused and hurt as his weapon lurches in my clutch and I aim its barrel in his direction. His arms go up in resolute appeasement. “Ya’ve been drugged by this man and yer nothin’ but bate and confused.” Screaming with such anguish from the previous few days, I continue to push and face down my love as he steps further back and closer to Lanary’s location.

  “Don’t lie to me anymore, Alastar. I forgive ya but only if ya tell the truth and repent because ya took away me roots. Me only kin!”

  “What are ya on about woman? I gave ya yer roots!” As my head lulls forward from both sadness and exhaustion, a glint of silver glimmers vividly as though through the darkness as though a spotlight has s
hone upon a precious stone. The next few moments are confused and chaotic as Alastar collapses prematurely with a sick thud and as if in an intense delirious nightmare, I double check the gun to assure my hand did not release a bullet.

  “No! No! No!” There is a rushing quake of crimson blood that has pooled violently, forming an ever-expanding ring around the crumpled figure of my husband lying supine before a ruthless, looming shadow. A silver alloy blade embedded in his back reveals itself as the murder weapon. Lanary’s treachery has been unveiled. His clammy fingers clings to the ruinous blade like black winged dead Irish sinners hover above a montage or vultures in the slate, gray sky patiently await their feast.

  “Goddamn yer soul to hell, Lanery!” My throat sears raw and painfully as wails of sorrow gain in pitch and volume. I have rushed forward to be close to my love as the peculiar light of dawn appears to shroud him. The black of his hair shines like a sapphire in this light although, oddly, framing his ear lobes are streaks of silver and I question suddenly why I had not noticed the obvious sign of stress. He is but twenty-three and his skin looks polished like marble, with his normally taught and tense, jaw, restful in peace. There is neither sign of duress nor any attribute of the graveness displayed on his handsome face, but only a delicate drool of bright, red blood drizzled on his pale lips. I reach down to kiss my one heart’s desire, telling myself this will be my last romantic embrace for the remainder of my life on earth. I am certain if I am to survive this night I will alone raise my child and abide my time until we meet again in the Otherworld.