The Whitest Flower. Brendan Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ heat – gusts of hot steam – enveloped them, drenching them, suffocating them with its stench. The putrid stench of decay that seemed somehow familiar.

      And still the white hands clawed at her, shredding her garments. When they reached her skin she knew she would be ripped to pieces. And then who would save the children? She looked for Michael, but he was nowhere to be seen.

      Ahead, Katie and Patrick had stopped – their hands thrown up in front of them. They were backing away from something. She tried to close the distance between herself and them. The wailing from the skeletons grew louder, reaching a fearsome crescendo against the booming which was now threatening to explode inside her head. And all the while the vile steam surrounded them, sticking to them, melting their skin.

      Without warning, out of the belly of the abyss, a giant horse came charging. A beast so black it shone in the darkness of the pit. Forelegs rippling, it towered over them, pawing the night above their heads. From its nostrils – two great cauldrons – the vapour came beating down on them. From over its fipple there oozed a white froth, threatening to envelop them.

      Ellen’s eyes followed the run of the reins, trying to identify the rider of this mount from hell. It must be the devil himself, she thought, as she looked up at the hollow red rims of his eyes. He was laughing at her, the laughter burning into her heart. It was Pakenham! But he was not alone. In the air above him floated Sheela-na-Sheeoga, pointing at her, singling her out. ‘Ellen … Ellen Rua, deliver the child to me,’ she wailed.

      Ellen clutched the baby to her. ‘Michael!’ she screamed. ‘Michael! Michael! Where are you?’

      ‘Ellen Rua! Ellen Rua!’ Sheela-na-Sheeoga mock-echoed Ellen’s cry for Michael. ‘Hand me back the child I gave you.’

      Ellen felt the claws of the multitude grab her, lacerating her skin, drawing blood. She watched, paralysed with fear, as the old woman’s arm distended and reached out for her baby. Ellen tried in vain to wrench herself free of the soulless ones, but they pinned her on every side while the arm of the wraith prised the baby from her terrified embrace. ‘No! No!’ she cried, watching helplessly as her baby was taken back through the veil of steam, back to the evil womb of Sheela-na-Sheeoga.

      Ellen bolted upright, panic-stricken, her heart pounding in her brain. She was drenched in perspiration. Frantically she reached out in the dark for Michael, exhaling with relief when her hand found his arm. Michael was there, he was all right – sleeping contentedly. She withdrew her shaking hand for fear of waking him.

      And Katie – Mary – Patrick? All safe. All asleep. All here.

      She blessed herself thrice and felt for the baby with both hands – gingerly, tenderly, afraid. She felt the inner pulse stroking and caressing this unknown life within her. Finally, she covered her wildly beating heart with both hands, willing them to calm it.

      And then she cried. She cried for Michael. She cried for her children. The tears flooded down her face, over the brave, quivering lips, rolling down on to her breasts and over the womb which held her unborn baby. Down along her thighs, it flowed, into the straw of her simple bed, cleansing her body, washing away her fear, releasing her from it.

      ‘Mother of Sorrows, have mercy on me.’ Ellen breathed the Litany of Our Lady through her tears. And still the tears came as she sat alone, her knees drawn up, her arms binding them to her, gently rocking herself while all around her slept.

      When her tears had subsided, Ellen sat drained, looking into the dying embers of the fire. She dared not risk sleep lest the nightmare, still vivid in her mind, should return. So she stoked the fire and threw on a few more sods of the black mountain turf. Gradually the heat dried her damp body and restored her. And the smell of the burning turf – the safe world she knew relaxed her.

      She recognized the elements of her dream as grotesque enlargements of her own thoughts and fears. What bothered her most was Michael’s absence. Everybody else was there with her: Patrick, Katie, Mary, even the new baby. But where was Michael?

      The dream had taken its toll on Ellen. Despite her best efforts to remain awake, exhaustion combined with the warmth of the fire to send her into a fitful slumber.

      Once again, nightmarish images began to fill her mind. But before the dream could take hold, Ellen was startled into wakefulness by a high-pitched wailing.

      But the wailing did not stop with the dream. This time the keening was real – she was sure of it. She listened, alert, by the fire. There it was again: a single, solitary voice. For a moment she thought it was the high-pitched cry of the fox, but this was longer, more drawn out. The sound had come from down towards the lake. She moved stealthily to the window and removed the burnt-out shell of the plica.

      The night of All Souls was bright, with a waxing moon riding high across the clouds, seeking openings through which to aim its beams down onto the waters of the Mask. There, they would splash out across the lake’s surface – ripples of pale yellow, reflecting back up to the moon its own watery light.

      As she listened, Ellen could hear the sounds of the valley, the ever-yelping dogs of Derrypark, the lap of the lake-water. And between these sounds she heard the stillnesses of the night, those silken moments she loved, woven with silence, snatched out of wonder.

      For a moment, the moon lost its hide-and-seek game with the clouds, and the lake, deprived of its light, was lost to Ellen’s view. But when the Samhain moon reappeared, the sight which met Ellen’s eyes chilled her to the very core of her being.

      There, hovering over the lake, two or three feet above it, was the outline of a woman, all in white, moving slowly towards her. The woman was not walking, nor was she in flight, nor borne up by anything visible. Instead she glided slowly over the water through the veil of the moonlight, her long white hair tinged by the moon’s yellow hue.

      Ellen’s hand shot to her mouth to stifle the cry. Oh, God – would it never end, this eve of All Souls?

      She looked back into the cabin, identifying the sleeping forms of her family. She was, indeed, awake. And if she was awake, then this was a portent more terrible than any dream could bring. She had no doubt as to the identity of her apparition. Hadn’t she heard her own father tell how the Banshee – the supernatural death messenger – had appeared to him on the three nights before her mother died.

      Ellen was seized by an icy coldness. Whose house was the Banshee visiting this night of souls? She watched the airy figure glide in from the centre of the lake towards the shoreline, her white dress unruffled by the movement, until she reached the place where Ellen had studied her own reflection in the water the day she discovered she was pregnant. Invisible claws tightened on Ellen, cutting off her breathing, constricting the movement of her heart. Then the Banshee floated over the land, the trail of her hemline caressing the stalks above the potato patches. Ellen closed the door, knowing that it went against all the tradition of the night. She would welcome the souls of the dead, but not she who came to call the living. Not the Banshee.

      And still the death messenger moved inexorably towards the village. Who did she come for? Ellen racked her brain for households where there was someone old or infirm – these were the houses the Banshee usually visited. Perhaps it was Ann Paddy Andy – she’d been failing with that croupy cough since St Swithin’s Day. Or Mary an Táilliúra, the Tailor’s wife. Or Peadar Bacach, Old Lame Peter, with that stump of a leg. The long, damp winters were hard on him. It could be any of them. The death messenger, she knew, followed the old Irish families, those whose names began with ‘Mac’ or ‘O’, as if she belonged to them.

      Then СКАЧАТЬ