The Lost Celt

by Conran, A. E. ;

  “What’s a ford?” Kyler asks.

  I don’t even answer until we get to the park. Leaning back against the boulder where the Celt rested the other night, I breathe in the crisp night air and say, “It’s a shallow part of a river where you can walk across, and for some reason, the Celt thinks this road is one.” I point to the street. “He has to be here. That’s his job. It always has been.”

  Several blocks behind us the VA twinkles like a Christmas tree. Immediately to our right and down the hill, a street teems with people in witches’ hats, gorilla costumes, short skirts, and purple wigs. A little girl in a princess dress runs screaming from a haunted house, three middle school boys in football gear crash into each other as they argue over candy, and an old lady pulls a red wagon loaded with free caramel apples. There’s a good crowd around her.

  “Are you sure about all this?” Kyler crams a peanut butter cup and a mint into his mouth at the same time. I give him a look. “It’s a great combination,” he splutters between brown teeth. But the look I was giving him wasn’t about the candy. It was an “I can’t believe you’re doubting our Celt” look.

  We wait another couple of seconds. “Let’s go,” he says, “or your mom will freak out and totally ban Halloween for next year.”

  I shake my head. That’s one thing Mom will never do. “Three more minutes. He’ll be here. He must have taken a longer route.”

  Kyler gropes around in his pillowcase. “It’s eight thirty,” he says, “and I’ve only got five pieces of candy. This will be the worst Halloween ever, unless we hit the houses hard. Now!”

  “We’re looking for the Celt, Kyler, not candy.”

  Kyler searches through his pillowcase. “It’s Halloween, Mikey! Once a year!”

  “A Celt is once a century, once a lifetime,” I say. “Once ever!” I get so worked up about it that I yell, “Cuchulain!” into the night sky. The stars seem to twinkle more brightly when I do. Kyler laughs and joins me. We climb onto the boulder and shout, “Cuchulain! Cuchulain!” until our cheeks shake and our faces burn.

  A grim reaper dude, a skeleton, and three girls in devil horns and scary high heels wave at us from across the street.

  “They want more candy,” one of the girls says.

  “Yeah. More candy!” the other girls giggle.

  The grim reaper grabs a chocolate bar from his pillowcase and throws it across the road. Then the skeleton does the same thing. The girls egg them on.

  “More candy! More candy!” they shout.

  Kyler howls, “Cuchu-candy! Cuchu-candy!”

  The grim reaper throws a whole handful of hard candies. The skeleton copies, and suddenly we’re in a hail of candy just like the Memorial Day parade.

  “Awesome!” Kyler laughs as a piece of taffy pings his arm and a box of mints bounces off his head.

  “Got him,” the skeleton yells.

  “Aww, poor little guy,” the girls say. “Don’t hit him!”

  “No, keep going,” Kyler begs. “Here, get me here.” He points to his chest.

  So the guys keep at it. Hard candies smash into pieces on the curb in front of us. Chocolate bars thud onto the road. Small boxes explode, scattering gummies like fireworks.

  “Thanks, guys!” Kyler yells.

  “Sooo cute.” The girls coo until they get bored and then totter down the road, waving goodbye. The guys follow, still arguing about which one was most on target.

  Kyler leaps down from our rock, picking up candy like a pecking hen. “This is great!” he says, stuffing his pillowcase. “I’ll be stocked up until Easter!”

  I jump down after him, and I’m just about to snatch a bar from right under his nose when I’m distracted by shouting.

  “Laeg! Laeg, my friend!” the Celt roars as he runs down the bank from the bike path and into the open. “What’s happened? I’ve been asleep. Was I bewitched? I must be ready for the next champion.” He slaps me on the back then points to Kyler. “Who’s that? The boy, who’s the boy?”

  Kyler drops his pillowcase. “Me?” His voice is high and wobbly. He sidles next to me, his shoulder touching mine.

  “It’s OK, Cuchulain. He’s my friend.” The Celt doesn’t correct me when I call him Cuchulain. This is the best night of my life.

  “From the Boys’ House? But where are the others?” he says.

  “You are Cuchulain, aren’t you?” I say because I need to hear him say “yes, you’re right.” And then the world will be more incredible than any book, or movie, or video game I’ve ever played.

  He doesn’t answer. He just looks at the broken candy scattered over the road. “They’re dead,” he says. “All dead! Look how their teeth and bones collect in the ford.” The Celt grips his hands behind his head. “I should’ve been here to stop it!” He rocks backward and forward on his heels, bringing his elbows together in front of his face.

  “He’s stuck in his parallel universe again, Kyler,” I mutter.

  “Mikey,” Kyler whispers. “Let’s go!” He looks scared, not excited.

  I ignore him and make myself think, picturing the pages of The Hound of Ulster, remembering the illustrations. I’ve got it. This is the story of the slaughter of the boys from the Boys’ House. “Cuchulain,” I say, “it’s not your fault that the boys were killed. You were tricked into sleeping. They woke while you slept.”

  “It was Odin,” he says.

  I shake my head, puzzled. How can he make this mistake? “No, it was Lugh—you know, your father. Odin is a Viking god.”

  “No.” The Celt screws up his face like he’s trying to remember something. “Task Force ODIN: Observe, Detect, Identify, and Neutralize. We need them to win back the roads.”

  “Win back the ford you mean?”

  “The roads,” he says. “We need their help to understand what the enemy are planning, who’s involved. It’s air surveillance we need.”

  I can’t even imagine what he means by air surveillance, but this is proof that the Defense Department is talking to him, helping him out in secret, discussing tactics, giving him new English words to use.

  “Otherwise everyday it’s the same. We patrol. We clear. A new one comes,” he says.

  “A new champion?” I’m trying to make sense of what he’s saying, but he’s lost again in his parallel dimension.

  The Celt shakes his head. He wrestles a bottle from his pocket and takes a huge swig. “And then the warrior transformed, and they knew that he was lost to the battle frenzy, hideous and ugly.” The forces of Halloween are really gripping him now. “Even Laeg, his closest friend, knew nothing could be done to save the warrior except to stay clear and let the battle fury run its course.”

  Wow! I’m thinking, even as Kyler pulls me away by the sleeve. “Come on, Mikey.”

  I wrestle him off. “No, Kyler, this is it. The start of the biggest battle ever, when he avenges the death of the boys. He attacks all of Maeve’s forces. If they try to cross now, he’ll defeat them all!”

  Kyler shakes my arm really hard. “We need to go!” He drags me away.

  I push him off. “No, Kyler. We have to see this. This is it! This is the moment!”

  “Every joint in the warrior’s body cracked and shook,” the Celt cries. “He was like a tree in a storm whipped into different shapes until the muscles under his skin rippled, and twisted, and changed places. His feet twisted backward, his knees bent like a dog’s. He sucked in one of his eyes until it was so deep in his skull that it was lost. The other eye rolled from its socket and swung loose across his cheek…”

  The Celt is going berserk now, distorting his body, his voice raw and hoarse. He’s incredible. Some teenagers run down the steps of the nearest house on the corner.

  “Look at this guy!” they yell.

  The Celt is immediately alert. “Stay back.” Then he shouts a command in another language just as a car appears along the street from the left. Rap music spills out of the windows, bass booming. Guys in the back slam into each other with the b
eat. The driver has one hand on the steering wheel. He thumps the other down on the car horn…

  As the Celt runs right into the road.

  As I yell, “Cuchulain! Stop! It’s a car!”

  As Kyler screams.

  There’s a squeal and a smell of burning rubber. The car skids across the road. The Celt leaps to one side. Roaring “Cuchulain,” he slams his forearm down on the back of the trunk as the car skids past. The metal pops where the Celt dents it.

  The car screeches to a stop, so it’s sideways in the road, and the two rap dudes pile out of the backseat. “No one beats up on my car!” the driver shouts, flinging open his door.

  It’s three against one, but the Celt isn’t afraid. He howls his battle cry and faces them. “So Maeve sends three against one. Is that it? To fight the champion?”

  Across the road, parents pick up their children and move away. A man dressed as Count Dracula calls 911. “Police? Police? There’s a fight! Twenty-ninth and Ardee. A homeless man. Maybe drunk. Nearly got hit. He’s trying to stop cars…yes, stop them in the road…and the driver’s retaliating. No, nobody’s armed.”

  I run into the road waving at the rappers and at Count Dracula, shouting, “It’s OK, he’s a Celt,” and even as I say it I hear how crazy it sounds. Then I hear another voice, a boy’s voice.

  “Dad!” he yells. “Dad!”

  A boy runs into the road. He’s wearing an academic gown and has a large bag hanging from his shoulder. It’s not a trick-or-treating bag, but a grocery tote. As he trips down the curb, a container of yogurt drops out and rolls at his feet.

  The rap guys freeze. They look from me, to the Celt, to the boy.

  Dad? I think. Dad?

  Because the boy is Ryan O’Driscoll.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The rappers are totally freaked. “Whoa, it’s OK, dude.” They step back. “Chill!”

  As we stare at Ryan, my first thought is that I can’t believe he’s outsmarted me. He’s faking me out, claiming the Celt is his dad, so he can get to him first. I feel red-raging mad, just for a second, and then realization burns up my throat like barf.

  I remember Ryan in class, his pockets stuffed with food, spilling yogurt on the floor. Ryan falling asleep on the very same mornings that I did at school. Ryan telling me to stay away from the Celt and trying to rip up The Hound of Ulster. Ryan screaming, “You don’t know anything.”

  I didn’t. I didn’t know a thing!

  And that’s when someone sets off more firecrackers down the street. The Celt flinches and then his eyes blaze. He looks directly at Ryan. “He’s the trigger, dammit! Can’t you see? They’re using a boy!”

  The rap dudes take their chance and run back to the car. “Get in,” the driver orders. He revs his engine and takes off, tires squealing on the road, while the teenagers on the sidewalk record everything on their phones.

  But I can’t run away, and Ryan doesn’t run either. He walks slowly toward his dad, his eyes glistening with tears. “Dad,” he whispers. “Dad.” His dad backs away. And there’s the truth, right in front of me. Ryan has been trying to find his father, all this time.

  It’s as if I’ve taken off sunglasses and the world is a different color. This man I’ve been following is not Cuchulain. He’s not a Celt. He’s Ryan’s dad. He’s not in Iraq. He’s a veteran, back at home. And I’ve made up all sorts of stupid crazy stories. Not one was right. Ryan also made up stories, to hide the fact that his dad’s on the street. None of them was the real story.

  I get it now. I get why Ryan beat me up, why he’s hated me all this time. His dad is the big secret. And I nearly blew everything apart, like a bomb.

  “Put the bag down,” the Celt orders as Ryan keeps walking forward. “Put. It. Down. And keep back. Keep back.”

  “It’s food, Dad.” Ryan slowly moves his bag to the front of his body. His hands are shaking. “Just food.”

  “Put the bag down. I’m gonna shoot. Dammit, kid, I have to shoot!”

  A bus labors up the road and, for a second, no one on the other side of the street can see what we see. Ryan’s dad puts his arms up as if he’s holding, not a spear—I see that now—but a gun. He points at Ryan. Ryan screams.

  There’s no gun, but the instinct is the same. I shout, “Not this time!”—the very same words he used in the VA—and in that split second my Celt collapses to his knees.

  “I can’t do it again! I can’t shoot him. He looks like my son,” he sobs.

  Everything slows down. He looks at his hands, stretching them out in front of him. He looks from Ryan, to me, and back to Ryan again. I fall to my knees next to him. “He is your son. It’s Ryan, your son. And you are…you. We’re in California. We’re safe!”

  Ryan draws close to his dad. He wraps around him, as curved as a question mark, and hugs him tight.

  Across the road, as if in another world, people on the sidewalk begin to talk and even laugh. The teenagers wander back down the street staring at their phones. Behind us, the fluorescent lights flicker in the towering VA, and the stars in the night sky glimmer like pin pricks in black construction paper.

  “I’m opening my bag,” Ryan says, stepping back and pulling the tote off his shoulder. “There’s nothing in it, Dad, except food. I’ve been trying to bring you food,” Ryan turns his gaze on me. “For weeks.”

  Ryan’s dad shakes his head. “He looked just like you.” He presses his fingers into his eyelids. Tries to talk again. Stops and waits.

  We wait too. We wait for Ryan’s dad’s story, but he can’t talk and the only words we hear are Kyler’s as he breaks in between us.

  “The police,” he says in a wobbly voice. He points across the road where two cars are driving up the street to the intersection. “We’re in so much trouble.”

  Ryan’s eyes are wide, and he’s shaking. “Oh, no!” He grabs his dad’s hand and pulls. “Come on, Dad! You can’t get arrested. You just can’t. We’ve gotta get out of here.”

  “Wait,” I say to Ryan’s dad.

  “Are you trying to get him arrested?” Ryan shouts.

  “No!” To be honest right now I don’t know what I’m doing. “But you can’t stay on the streets!” The Celt looks at me. “Well, you can’t.”

  The officers get out and look around. Count Dracula approaches. “Over there. The guys in the car drove off.”

  “They’ll take you away, Dad,” Ryan pleads.

  “And if we run, won’t it look worse?” I say.

  Ryan’s dad mutters, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” And I don’t know what they’ll say or do, either. Whatever we’ve done, I can’t help feeling it’s wrong, but running feels wrong too. I’ve never been so scared.

  “No one was hurt,” Count Dracula is saying, “but he was acting really strangely…yes…in the middle of the road, challenging cars. Near kids.”

  Ryan’s dad is a veteran, like Grandpa, not a Celt. The idea comes to me in an instant.

  “Kyler, get Grandpa. Now!”

  Kyler hesitates for a second, looking confused. “He’ll help,” I insist, and Kyler gets it. He runs like the wind toward the monkey bars before the police even realize he’s disappeared.

  “Where’s he going?” Ryan blurts, but I speak directly to his dad.

  “My Grandpa’s at home right now, with his buddies, just down the street. They’re Marines, sir. Veterans. Every single one was in Vietnam. Just wait for them. Please! They’ll understand. They’ll know what to do.”

  “No, Dad,” Ryan urges. But it’s already too late. The officers are walking across the street. One is really tall and strong, the other more wiry and skinny. They both look determined and in control. “Everything OK over there, boys?” they call.

  “Trust me, Ryan.” I take Ryan’s dad’s hand. It’s hot and clammy. I swear I feel his pulse racing. Ryan chews his bottom lip then takes his dad’s other hand.

  The police walk slowly and calmly across the grass to meet us. “Everyone OK?” they ask again.
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  I just have to delay until Grandpa arrives.

  “Yes, sir,” I take a step forward. “We’re all fine. We’re just waiting for Grandpa. Ryan and I are just fine and Ryan’s dad is fine, too. My Grandpa’s coming for us. We only live down the street.”

  The officers look past me. “And you’re OK, son?” they ask Ryan.

  “Yes, sir,” Ryan says.

  “Sir, have you been drinking?” One of the police officers approaches Ryan’s dad. “We hear you were in the road earlier.”

  “I got confused, officers. I’m sorry, but I’m OK now,” he says, quietly.

  “Your name, sir.”

  “O’Driscoll,” Ryan’s father says. “Liam O’Driscoll.”

  “Do you have ID?”

  “My driver’s license, I think.” Liam looks worried as he fumbles through his pockets, swaying slightly. He finds nothing. Searches again. Ryan screws the hem of his shirt in his hand.

  “You all out enjoying Halloween?” the tall officer asks as we wait. And it’s only then that I wonder what we must look like. We look weird it’s true, but not that weird seeing as it’s Halloween. I just have to keep them talking.

  “That’s right,” I say. “Ryan’s dad and I are Celts, you know, those guys who fought the Romans.”

  “Cool,” the tall officer says. Liam’s still pulling stuff out of his pants’ pockets. They’re plaid PJ bottoms. Why didn’t I see that?

  “And Ryan’s Harry Potter. And my friend Kyler was Dumbledore, so…we…like match, in pairs, and my Grandpa and his buddies are wizards. They’ll be here soon,” I add.

  “Here,” Liam says suddenly, handing over a yellowed, curved piece of plastic. “Here it is.”

  The officer nods. “Mind if we check?”

  Come on, Grandpa, I’m thinking. Come on. The tall officer takes the card, walks to his car and radios in. He leans into the open car window with one elbow on the sill as if he’s already tired and knows the evening has only just begun. The radio crackles. He listens, talks, and listens some more.

  Every time a car goes past, Ryan looks at his dad. I look for Grandpa. The skinny officer makes conversation.

  “Have you been to a party, sir? Or are you going to one? You’re not intending to drive?”