Page 27 of Heart of the Wren
“How did he get in touch with you? Don’t tell me your van has a phone?”
“Wouldn’t that be nice? No, I met him in Dublin, he was over for work. We got to talking, then we got to kissing, then we got to… well, not talking, you know how it is.” He chuckled a bit. “Afterwards, he told me his ghost problem and I told him I might be able to help. He brought me home with him the next day.”
“Aw, like a little lost kitten he found in the road.”
He held his hands together like paws and laughed.
“And?” I asked. “Did you see the ghost?”
“I felt it,” Dara said. “But unfortunately I couldn’t help it move on.”
”You don’t seem to have much luck with this sort of thing.”
His grin widened. “I can only do so much. I know how to do magic but it doesn’t mean the whole world bends to my whim. The ghost was stuck in a pattern and patterns can be very hard to break. They often have to play out to the end and if you don’t get in at just the right time, there’s nothing you can do. They’ll start all over again.”
“What sort of pattern?” I asked.
“Ghosts can repeat the same actions, over and over again. Over the course of seconds, or years, or even longer. You need to be in the right place at the right time to catch them. This particular ghost didn’t interact with people at all. It was caught in a loop but there didn’t seem to be any rhyme nor reason to when it would appear. The fella lived in this gorgeous big country estate, loads of fancy gardens and it even had a butler. His family lore said a nun would walk down a hallway on the ground floor, stop to light a candle, then walk through a solid wall.
“I did some digging and found the site the house stood on what used to be a convent in the 15th or 16th century and there was a door where the wall is now. I cleansed the area, did a banishing, tried to talk to the ghost but nothing worked. She was stuck in the same pattern. Over and over. For centuries.” He stopped tapping the door. “I don’t know what it’s like to be a ghost but I hope it’s like dreaming. You’re not really aware of what’s happening around you. You’re not even really you. You’re just…”
“A record,” I said. “A memory.”
“England has its problems but it was nice to be somewhere I didn’t have to worry about being fined or locked up for being with another man,” he said.
“I know what you mean. It’s always in the back of my mind, y’know? The fear of being found out.”
“I love this time of year.” He changed the subject quicker than I changed lanes. “When all the shades of green gets replaced with white snow, grey clouds, and black trees.”
“And brown slush.” The sides of the road were lined with the stuff. “I thought you'd hate all this desolation.”
“Oh, it's not desolate. The world is sleeping. Dreaming. Rejuvenating. What would be the point of spring without a winter to compare it to?”
???
All the snow had turned the road to Ross Castle into a muddy mess. Patches of ice clung in the lowest puddles and resilient snow filled the surrounding fields. Standing on the edge of Lough Leane, the castle itself was a ruin — a single, gaunt stone tower surrounded by high walls.
I parked as close as I dared without getting the tires stuck. “I used to love coming here with Dad. He’d take us a couple of times a year. I think Mam had to force him, otherwise he’d never leave the farm. This is probably where I got my love of history. He knew everything about it and he’d tell us stories.” I paused for a second. “Of course, I never once saw him reading a book so there’s every chance he was making them all up.”
A set of locked gates blocked our path. “This is our heritage,” I said. “They’ve no right to lock us out.” I clambered over the gates and dropped down to the other side, grabbing my knee as I landed. “It never used to hurt.”
Dara followed my lead, although it took longer. I wasn’t exactly nimble but he had more bulk to manoeuvre. He stumbled when he landed but I reached out and caught him.
“Are you alright?”
He smiled. “Fine. I’m fine.”
We hadn’t talked about our kiss in the kitchen. There had been a lot to do, what with the window being smashed and the sick sheep to care for. I’d been dog tired and fell asleep in my chair after dinner. “Hardly anyone comes here,” I said.
“It’s an awful shame the castle has been left to rot like this.” He lay his hands on the trunk of a huge yew tree, one of six around the tower. “But at least there’s some life here.” Being an evergreen, the tree still had its foliage, each branch topped with snow.
“Now don’t get your hopes up about this place.” Entering the forlorn tower, I explained how the main roof had long since collapsed, and the floors rotted away until nothing but a shell remained. Sheltered from the outside, deep snow covered the ground, stubbornly refusing to melt. We gazed up to the slate sky and with the walls rising around us I imagined being stuck at the bottom of a well.
“Imagine what it must have been like,” I said. “Back when this was new, back in the 15th century. It’s said to have been built by the chieftain O’Donoghue Mór and they say he still slumbers at the bottom of the lake.” I stretched my hand out to the waters beyond the slender and vacant window. “Every seven years, on the first morning in May, he rises on a magnificent white horse and if you see him you’ll have good fortune for the rest of yourdays.”
“Patterns,” Dara said. “Once you start to notice them, you see them everywhere.”
“You’re not going to try and banish him, are you?”
