The Stone Dweller's Curse: A Story of Curses, Madness, Obsession and Love

by Jacqueline Henry

  ‘Yes. She’s a beautiful singer,’ she replied.

  ‘That she is. I’m Dylan,’ he said, changing his half-finished glass of beer to his left hand and extending his right. Deidre shook the offered hand, realising the bar tender was talking to her, his words lost in the chatter of the hall but guessed he was after payment and so offered him a fifty-pound note. Accepting her change, she made to pick up the laden tray wondering if she would make it back to the table with all glasses still upright.

  'Would you like me t’carry that for you?’ Dylan offered and she detected an Irish accent in his raspy voice.

  Deidre glanced at him, wondering what he was after, why he was talking to her. Guys didn’t pick her out in a crowd and introduce themselves to her. Unless he was drunk, really drunk, or really ugly. Or weird. This guy looked alright, attractive even despite his baldness, and he seemed relatively sober. Gay. Then she recalled where she was, the daylight coming in through the tall windows at nine o’clock at night should’ve been reminder enough. Baltasound Hall, situated in one of the most isolated communities on the planet. Desperation, she realised with clarity, was obviously this guy’s problem.

  ‘No its okay,’ she said, ‘I can manage.’ She reached for the tray, her very touch causing foamy heads to slop over the edges of the glasses.

  ‘Here, you hold this,’ Dylan said with authority, pushing his glass into her hand and gently nudging her away from the counter. He deftly picked the tray up and carried it to the table leaving Deidre standing at the bar, his half-finished beer in her hand.

  She followed him, hearing the inhabitants of her table acknowledge him by name, asking how he was and how his croft was going. He placed the tray on the table before bending to give one woman, Katy, a kiss on the cheek and slapping a couple of men on the shoulder in good-natured familiarity. Deidre sat down in her chair, still holding his glass, unsure of what to do with it. She placed it on the table, feeling old Deidre creep back in. She thought she’d managed to shake her off for the night but here she was, tapping her on the shoulder, dragging her bags of insecurities and self-doubt with her.

  ‘So you’ve met Deedree den?’ Vee asked.

  ‘Deidre,’ Dylan acknowledged, standing by Vee’s chair. He looked across at her, smiling. ‘She didn’t tell me her name.’

  They were all looking at her and Deidre felt her face flush. Her behaviour sounded rude and unsociable in front of all these warm, open people.

  ‘She’s stayin’ at Ma’s,’ Stuart offered. Deidre could detect a slur in his voice, his eyes shiny and unfocussed.

  ‘Come on, Owen,’ Malcolm said, motioning to the stage. ‘A couple more reels den we’re done.’

  The man seated at Deidre’s side stood up a little unsteadily and made his way towards the stage. Dylan slipped into the vacated seat.

  ‘Here, you’d better take dis one,’ Katy said, picking up a glass from the tray and placing it in front of Dylan. ‘Owen’s had enough for one night.’

  The music started up again, loud and fast, the players jumping around on the stage, inciting their audience into more clapping, stomping and eeewwing.

  Dylan turned to her. ‘How long have you been on Unst?’ he asked, leaning close. She could smell the faint waft of his aftershave and beer on his breath.

  ‘Since yesterday.’

  ‘Staying long?

  Deidre shook her head, shrugging her shoulders. The Raconteur.

  ‘Not sure yet. I’m booked into Stayne for a few weeks. And you?’ she asked, deflecting.

  ‘I’m here for another couple of weeks or so,’ Dylan said. ‘I’m not sure yet. I’ll see how I go with the roof,’ he muttered as an aside. ‘I come over for a month or so every summer to visit my nephew and sister-in-law.’ He motioned across the table to Katy who was leaning close to Vee, talking in her ear. ‘I’m restoring an old croft up Haroldswick way,’ he added.

  ‘Really?’ Deidre regarded him with sudden interest.

  He nodded, drinking, wiping froth from his upper lip. ‘I’m a carpenter by trade. I love restoring old buildings, and there’s plenty around here. I’m just doing my bit to save a bit of the past.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Deidre remarked holding her glass up and clinking it against Dylan’s. ‘So how do you go about restoring old crofts?’ she asked.

  ‘Well I’ve got Shortcut Kevin helping me as well,’ he said, nodding in the direction of a large man standing at the end of the table engaged in an animated conversation with Stuart. ‘But besides that,’ he said, placing his glass on the table and turning towards her, ‘you need find yourself a lot of time and a big pile of money and just take it from there.’

  Deidre looked at him, an unguarded smile spreading across her lips wondering if there was a reptile beneath that pretty face.

  Dylan

  Dylan smiled back at her, holding her gaze until she broke away, her eyes focussing shyly on the sticky, beer splashed tabletop. Comparing opposites, he ticked them off on his mental list. On the surface, she’s everything Valerie isn’t, he thought, still watching her.

  Deidre.

  She was taller than he was, not by much, but taller, which was okay, it was something he’d learned to accept at this stage of his life. Although Valerie, a petite, pretty little package, had been shorter than him by about a centimetre. She’d made him feel tall and deep down, at some subconscious level, that had been a big attraction for him. Valerie was also quite lovely to look at; long lashed blue eyes, blond wavy hair worn in styles that would change from day to day, skin like velvet. Perfectly manicured, impeccably dressed, feminine, feline and slinky. He could watch Valerie for hours, mesmerised by her like an exotic fish in a bowl, always marvelling at how he’d managed to hook her on his line.

  It was a pity that Valerie had been such a hard-core bitch. His friends, not ‘their’ friends, warned him that she was a narcissistic sociopath and that he needed to wake up, man-up, detach his nuts from her velvety grip, bitch slap her and walk away – before it was too late. Before he did something stupid and started signing his name on marriage licenses and mortgage deeds.

  Seamus and Joe, his oldest, closest friends, friends he’d gone to school with, grown up with, lived a ten minute walk away from, when he was in Dublin, had called her CB for short.

  ‘CB let you off the chain tonight?’ Joe would ask.

  ‘CB still hinting for that ring?’ Seamus would comment.

  ‘CB still making more money that you?’ they’d laugh.

  CB, an acronym for Crazy Bitch. They hated her, hated her, and didn’t bother to hide it, which had made things awkward for him.

  ‘You marry CB boyo and you’ll have to look elsewhere for a best man,’ Joe had warned him when he’d mentioned that Valerie had been angling at an engagement, leaving her glossy magazines lying around their stylish, spacious two-bedroom apartment, decorated in Valerie’s expensive tastes, the magazines left lying open at full page ads for chunky sparkling, pear shaped diamond rings. Not just once or twice but over a period of months, the magazine spine bent back, pressed down, ensuring the pages didn’t flap over and hide the obvious hint. He’d ignored them, Joe’s voice, Seamus’ voice echoing in his head. Crazy Bitch. A piece of shit wrapped up in a pretty box, they’d criticised. You know she’s mad, don’t you? She’s fucking crazy, why can’t you see her for what she is?

  He did. He knew Valerie’s failings. He felt the ice-cold vapours she emanated when she returned home from work in the evening, still revving in full bitch-mode having spent the day empire building and terrorising her subordinates in the IT department of one of the city’s major banks. In the beginning, it had been a running joke the way Valerie changed her assistants as frequently as she changed the colour of her nails, only ever hearing her side of the story. Then he’d started to wonder about so many people who seemed to come and go in Valerie’s working life, always leaving or being sacked because of their failings. Never hers.

  He would sit on their hard leather couch wit
h her at night, Valerie snuggled up against him, thawing, becoming all soft and creamy, warm, purring against him like a kitten, and he would ignore what he felt in his heart the same way he’d been ignoring the glossy magazines.

  But over time, a deep slow burn had started to bubble in the pit of his stomach, unsure of what to do, which way to turn, stuck, agonising, his internal voice repeating the same questions: did he love her the way he should when you were ready to make a lifetime commitment? Could he live the rest of his life with her, with her self-absorbed selfishness, her rigid ambition, her uncompromising expectations of him?

  Architecture, she demanded. He needed to get his degree if he wanted to get anywhere, he couldn’t remain a carpenter for the rest of his life. It just wasn’t good enough. At the very least, he needed to get a business degree if he was to take on his father’s company after he died. She’d already had his dad dead and buried, already making plans for the business after his demise, what they would have to do to turn it into a major player.

  E & D Carpenters was doing just fine as it was. Dylan liked the work he did, he loved being on the tools, making something from nothing, enjoyed working with this father, his time with him precious, aware of how precarious and fragile life was after the sudden death of his brother Colin nine years earlier. At twenty-eight years old, Colin Murphy had died right in front of Dylan. Colin had been mid-sentence, an odd expression on his face as he turned to look at his younger brother, his eyes glazing over, becoming blank, empty, as though a switch had been flicked, the power turned off, before he keeled over like a felled tree, dead from a massive and sudden brain haemorrhage before his head hit the floor. Colin’s new wife, Katy, had been eight months pregnant at the time. Dylan had been the one who had to break the news to her. After that, he’d had to make the phone call from Shetland to Eamonn and Sandra Murphy in Dublin to tell them their eldest son had just died. Still in shock, Dylan had tried to explain to them how one minute Colin had been discussing what type of kitchen bench he planned for the small, two bedroom croft he and Dylan were refitting and that before he had finished his sentence, he was on the floor, his eyes open and vacant, the spark of life extinguished. It had been sudden, extraordinary and inexplicable.

  After Colin’s death, Eamonn Murphy changed the company name from Murphy and Sons to E & D Carpenters, the offspring plural too painful for Eamonn. E & D Carpenters took on only the work they could handle between Eamonn and Dylan and the two other carpenters Eamonn employed. They were doing okay. Dylan didn’t want to be a major player and he began to wonder more and more if he wanted to play with Valerie at all. Then one morning, about nine months ago, he woke up and realised that was it, that somewhere through the dark hours of the night, the pretence he had been living with had calcified and fell away from his conscience like old bark from a tree, exposing his truth, his raw and resolved feelings for her.

  It was over and he wanted to be as far away from Valerie as he could get. This, of course, didn’t fall in line with Valerie’s plans at all. People, in particular people who are in the role of lover, friend, confidant, subordinate did not, did not, walk out on Valerie Smithson. They did not make that kind of decision. She was the one who walked out or gave said person their marching orders and so for him, Dylan Murphy, lowly carpenter who had been graced with the opportunity to share his paltry existence with a goddess who walked amongst mortal beings, to tell her that it was over, opened up multiple portals to hell.

  Her disbelief in the early hours of his announcement had been almost comical – had he been a peripheral player watching on. As it was, her refusal to listen to or believe what he was saying exasperated him, her sheer disregard for how he felt about their relationship was both insulting and demeaning, leaving him feeling as if he was no more than her pet dog which only enforced his need to be free of the CB. That morning, with Valerie screaming in his face, he packed up his essentials in a bag, before walking out and quietly closing the door behind him, leaving her raging within.

  Her assault continued in the days after his departure and lasted for weeks, months. He heard from third party sources of Valerie’s vilification of his character on Facebook. Phone calls at all hours of the day and night, alternating from silent bitterness to vocal rants, what he’d done to her, walking out on her without discussion, without a hint of how he was feeling was cruel and cold-blooded. She loved him, still loved him and wanted him back. She would forgive him.

  She began to leave explicitly sexual voice mails and text messages, sent outrageously provocative nude photos to his phone, a pair of her expensive, black lacy knickers sent to him by courier in an elaborate box. It was the call of the siren, the temptress tempting, trying everything in her wily bag of tricks to get him back, and some nights... some nights he came close.

  But he kept himself busy, denied himself, kept his mind occupied, organised time out, away, escaping to Unst, to his small cottage in Baltasound.

  Dylan had been visiting Unst for over ten years, since Colin had first met Katy in a pub in Dublin. Katy had come over from Shetland on holiday for a week with a cousin of hers. They’d gone out for a drink one night, picking a random pub for one drink before dinner, that one drink changing Colin’s life, and Dylan’s, forever.

  In one meeting, Katy had hit Colin with the impact of a truck against a brick wall, shattering his sensibilities and sending him reeling, eventually tearing him away from his family, from his life in Dublin, from Dylan, marrying Katy and moving across to Unst where they’d bought a small run down croft together.

  Dylan had gone over to help renovate the cottage, immediately falling in love with the isolated isle, with its history and its stark austere beauty, his trips across the sea becoming more frequent and longer, easy to get the time away when his father was his boss.

  They’d been half way through the renovation, Katy eight months pregnant, when Colin died. Dylan had remained on the isle after the funeral, finishing the croft for Katy, for Colin, and for his brother’s fatherless, newborn son.

  He continued to come across after the croft was finished, wanting to keep in touch with Katy, wanting to be a part of his nephew’s life, his frequent weekend trips stretching into weeklong stays, sleeping on the couch in Katy’s tiny two-bedroom cottage.

  Then he found himself looking around for another croft to bring back from the brink. This would not only solve the living arrangements but would also keep him busy while on the isle, and give him more reason to continue his visits.

  A cottage in Baltasound finally came up a year later, having to wait for one on decrofted land, this saving him from having to abide by the crofting regulations and farm the land. His visits were regular over the summer months, often thinking of moving to the isle on a permanent basis if not for his parents. And then he’d met Valerie.

  Valerie had visited the isle once, staying with him at the half-finished Baltasound cottage, which at the time had a roof, windows and a door, and not much more, no running water, no flushing toilets and certainly no central heating. She had never gone back, her disdain of the place made quite clear to him. It was too cold, too windy, too remote, too primitive for her standards and so an understanding was made between them that he would never expect her to go back there again. That suited him just fine, although she made it difficult for him to just pack up and go as he pleased, suggesting that when he finished the croft, he sell it and concentrate on an architecture degree with the view to planning and building their own home – in Dublin.

  Dylan finished the croft and found another one to start on in Haroldswick. Towards the end of their five-year relationship, his little cottage in Baltasound had become his sanctuary, his refuge, his place to run away to, away from Valerie.

  Dylan regarded Deidre, still shyly averting her gaze from him, a demure smile on her face as she swirled her beer around in the glass. She’d come all the way from Australia, he thought, and he’d met her here, in the Baltasound Hall. He became aware suddenly that he was staring at her, the
noise of the hall dimming, the presence of the other people around them dissolving as one of the oddest feelings he’d ever had in his life consumed him. It was a certainty that went beyond reason, a tacit knowledge that this was the person he’d been waiting for all this time, waiting for her to come home.

  Sunday - Alone in the Valley

  Thirst raged in her throat but the thump of her head and the weight in her bones prevented her from sitting upright. She’d tried about an hour ago and had been able to get her legs over the side of the bed and sit up but it hadn’t lasted long, the pull of gravity sucking her back into the pillow; payment for the consumption of five glasses of beer and a shot of whiskey the night before. Deidre remembered singing loud and tuneless along with Stuart in the Baltasound Pub after the hall had closed. She remembered returning to Stayne House and tripping up the stairs on her way to bed. She remembered Dylan.

  Her mind ruminated over last night; the soundtrack of fiddles still playing in her head accompanying Dylan’s softly accented voice. She closed her eyes, his words echoing in her head, listening to the nuances, the faint hint of raspiness like torn lace around the edge of his voice.

  ‘You’re setting yourself up for a fall,’ she whispered, opening her eyes, gazing out at the cloudless sky. But she couldn’t switch it off, couldn’t stop herself thinking about him, going over every detail that she could recall, every word said and the subtleties involved. He’d been by her side for the rest of the night, walking to the pub in that weird night-time daylight after the fiddles had been packed away and the hall doors closed.