The speaker stepped into the sliver of light. Colm heard the girls’ breath catch in their throat.
A short, elderly woman stood before them. She leaned on a stick that seemed to serve as a cane. She held it with one gnarled, arthritic hand as she rested the other on her hip. Tight sleeves came past her elbows and a loose skirt and wide apron swirled about her legs as she hobbled about. A light shawl was draped around her shoulders. A bonnet hid her hair, its large bow nestled under her chin. Details of her face were hard to make out, but Colm sensed dark, bright eyes and tight, narrow lips below what might have been described as a perky nose in the woman’s youth. Deep lines creased her face.
“So, you come to disturb an old woman on this fine, fine night,” she complained, looking at each of the boys in the chapel in turn. “’Tis boys like you that most often come disturb an old woman’s rest, but not always. Not always. Sometimes it is older men, grown men that ought to know their manners better. Or even grown women, women who have no sympathy for kindred such as I, a woman already what they are likely to be someday. But each and every one of them—boys, men, women—are surprised to discover that they are disturbing me. They expect to find someone else here, and they all demand to know who I am and what I am doing here.” She chuckled and the malicious undertone of it froze Colm’s blood.
She stepped closer to the boys, carefully skirting the gravestone with its small cairn of cobblestones. “Was it you that asked my name, young man?” she asked Donal, who still seemed unsure how to answer her. She peered at the other boys. Noticing Colm sitting on the ground behind the others, she shook her cane at him. “Was it you?”
“Aye, ’twas me that asked that.” Colm struggled to keep a feckin’ or two from his answer.
“And ’tis not an unreasonable question,” the old woman conceded, turning her back on the boys and taking a few labored steps toward the grave before she turned and continued. “Not an unreasonable question and one that deserves an answer.”
“Then tell us plain,” Donal snapped at last. “Who are you?”
“Well, well!” she laughed quietly again. “The young man finds his voice at last!” She looked past him to Colm. “A polite boy, one that asks a reasonable question and treats an old woman with respect, now that boy deserves an answer.”
Colm held his breath, waiting for the old woman to continue.
“My name is Eva, Eva Brownestown, so it is and named I was for my cousin Eva, her that was ta’en and pilloried for serving in the coven of Dame Alice Kyteler, not so far from here, up in Kilkenny, in the year of our most gracious Lord 1324.” The old woman bobbed her head several times in rapid succession as if agreeing with her own memories. “Ta’en she was in 1324 and I was born in 1650, the year that Cromwell’s army—bah!—took Waterford from the Irish for them hateful Englishmen!” She spat on the ground.
“There’s been an Eva in our family in every generation,” she explained after calming herself, “an Eva named in honor of my cousin and ’twas that Eva in every generation that was taught the secrets and the skills which that first Eva was taught by Dame Alice herself. Skills and secrets best used for the defending of the Irish against them hateful English”— she spat on the ground again—“and for the defending of innocent women against the hateful men that persecute us so, that have no appreciation of a woman or manners to treat her as her fair and gentle sex deserves.”
“What’s she talkin’ about?” Eamonn asked, just loud enough for Colm to hear. “Who’s this feckin’ Dame Alice and what skills and secrets is she talkin’ of?”
“I… I think Dame Alice was a famous witch that Grandad used to tell us about,” Donal whispered back. “But she ran off to England, he always said, and left her maid to be punished in her place.”
“Bah!” The old woman whirled towards Donal, having heard his explanation, and spat at his feet. “That is the lie that be always told by the men that tells the tale of ol’ Dame Alice!” she barked. “What they don’t be sayin’ in their lyin’ words is that Dame Alice was hunted and persecuted so unfair, she was, by that hateful Englishman, the bishop Richard de Ledrede, so they called him. He hunted her and persecuted her and drove her to England finally, so he did, and then—because she had to flee in haste and could’na take her faithful coven members with her, he turned and persecuted them, so he did! He burned and pilloried and tortured and hung and did all manner of dreadful things to them poor innocents, so he did, before he finally learned his lessons, so he did, and died in disgrace and poverty, that hateful English bishop did!”
Michael stepped toward the woman. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, reaching as if to take her arm. “But you say yourself that Dame Alice and Eva lived in 1324 and that you were born in 1650. Clearly you haven’t been feeling well, and staying out in this night air cannot be good for you. Let us take you home and get you inside where there’ll be folks to take good care of you.”
Eva whirled at him and shook her fist. “Do not believe me, do you, young man? Don’t believe that poor old Eva here is who she says she is, do you? Just because you and your silly friends don’t expect to meet me, you think I must be daft and not know who I am. Well, you roused me and now the consequences must be faced!”
“Well, I’m sure we’re sorry to have disturbed—roused—you here, but hiding in the corner of a ruined church is no place for an old woman like yourself,” Michael protested. “But we had no idea that you would be sleeping here in the shadows. There must be folks that care for you and worry for your sake—even if they do let you go on about your long-dead ancestors and such. Let us take you back to them.” He closed his hand around her free arm, the hand resting on her hip.
“Long-dead ancestors? Them’s that care and worry for my sake?” she snapped, smacking his knuckles with the cane in her other hand. He cried out and dropped her arm, sucking on his knuckles and stepping back. “Them’s that care and worry for my sake are long dead themselves, boy! It’s the dead that you came here to deal with, is it not, and the long dead that you have disturbed, with your building a cairn on my grave and all!” She thrust her face and shoulders at him as if about to lunge at him. Michael stumbled back, away from her.
“That’s what you came for, tell me true!” she ordered the rest, turning to look at them now. “You came here and built a cairn on the grave, thinking you would drive the Dearg-due back into her grave and pin her in the earth again, did you not?”
“Y-yes, it was,” confessed Donal. “But how did you know that… ma’am?”
“Because I am part of her story and because of that, my grave is mista’en for hers by some, and so they come to build a cairn on my grave thinkin’ that they be buildin’ a cairn on hers, and the rumble and the noise of the cairn buildin’ disturbs my rest, and so instead of driving the Dearg-due back into her grave, what they do instead is rouse me up from mine. And I, an old and frail woman, a woman who deserves her rest, a woman who resents bein’ disturbed, so I do, am not happy to see those who come disturbin’ me,” she barked. “No more than I take kindly to those who would drive my Elizabeth back into her grave, where she deserves not to be!” She spat at Donal.
“H-how is it that you are part of the story of the Dearg-due?” Donal asked.
“How is it that I am a part of my Elizabeth’s story? Is that what you be wantin’ to know now, is it?” She leaned closer to him. “Because I made her to be the Dearg-due!”
Colm and his friends were dumbstruck. This was not part of any story Colm and his brother had ever heard from their grandfather or uncle. He looked at Michael, who had known something about the Dearg-due, to see if he was familiar with the old woman’s claim.
“What do you mean, made her to be the Dearg-due?” Michael wanted to know. “No one made her to be the Dearg-due. She just is the Dearg-due!”
“Thinking that she was born that way, are you?” Old Eva shook her fist at Michael as she hobbled around the gravestone in the dirt. “No, she was born a fair young thing, but destroyed sh
e was by her wicked father who gave her to that hateful Englishman of a husband, so he did!” She swung her cane at the cairn of stones they had erected on the gravestone, knocking the top one off the others. “Killed her, killed that sweet young Elizabeth he did, that husband of hers! So I gave her the chance to avenge herself against him and her father!”
She turned to peer at them again from the other side of the gravestone. “It took all the skills and secrets passed down from one Eva in my family to the next, so it did! E’en so, I needed help, so I did. So I called on the great power of the queens of the Otherworld. The queens I called on as I stood there at Elizabeth’s grave—Morríghan, Nemain and Badb, she who guides and guards the folk of Waterford in particular—all great queens of the Otherworld, so they are, came and shared their power with me, with old Eva, in order to raise that poor, downtrod girl and give her the means of avenging herself against the men—against all men—that ha’ destroyed her and ta’en her life from her.”
Eva stood and smiled, apparently relishing the memory of remaking Elizabeth into the creature that would come to be known as the Dearg-due. “And so,” the old witch continued, “I do not look kindly on those who attempt to drive my poor Elizabeth back into the earth, and when they come and wake me instead, I stop them, so I do! I stop them from punishing my poor Elizabeth and stop them from ever causing harm to gentle girls again!”
Eva raised her free hand toward the boys and the night breeze stirred again, ruffling the boys’ hair. Her outstretched hand, palm up, was pale in the sliver of moonlight, which was extinguished as the moon vanished again behind a bank of clouds.
“The queens of the Otherworld came to share their power, so they thought, for the making of Elizabeth’s vengeance,” smirked Eva in the near-dark. “But I tricked them, so I did! Just as all the Sidhe and faerie folk come to earth for naught but the destruction and trickery of mortals, so I called on them and tricked them, so I did! The queens lent me their power and then—not expecting poor old Eva to be so clever, no they were not!—their power was forever bound to me, their power tied up with me and with my will for as long as moons shall wax and wane or tides shall rise and fall or men do battle with one another upon the field. The queens’ power is my power, and I have no need of tools and suchlike now to avenge myself against those who disturb my rest while seekin’ to imprison Elizabeth within her grave!”
The boys standing before her looked at each other, and seemingly with a single thought, turned to run back toward the windowsill where the girls still watched and listened. Donal grabbed Colm’s hand as he passed his brother still sitting on the ground. He wrenched Colm up onto his feet and Colm cried out with pain, unable to put any weight at all on his injured foot. Michael and Eamonn reached the wall and scrabbled at the rocks with their feet, their hands wrapped around the wrought-iron window guards as they tried to pull themselves over the iron rods and out of the chapel ruins.
“Try to run away from poor old Eva, do you?” Her voice rang out in the darkness behind them. “Try to run, but never escape me, so you shall! Try to put Elizabeth back into the grave, did you? So rest forever in your own graves, you shall, bound to serve at the beck and call of the Otherworld queens—and poor old Eva, as well!” She rapped her cane on her gravestone. “Beir orthu! Seize them! Seize them all and hold them with you!”
The earth beneath their feet shook and rocked, clods of earth pushed aside and shaken off as wraiths and shadows of men clambered out and over each other in their haste to escape whatever torments held them below. Skeletal fingers and hands covered with little more than shards of flesh grasped Donal’s feet so forcefully that he and Colm were instantly yanked to a stop. Arms and torsos rose and wrapped themselves around Eamonn and Michael, who were halfway to the windowsill. The screams of the boys inside the chapel and the screams of the girls outside—pushing their hands through the window guards and trying to hold onto Eamonn and Michael—mingled in the air with the hacking cough-like laughter of Eva. Large black crows swooped out of the night sky over the girls, their sharp beaks snapping at both the girls in the yard and the boys on the other side of the windows. Colm was sure some of the crows flew up from the ground beside him, attacking Donal as well as Eamonn’s and Michael’s backsides.
Donal dropped his brother’s hand, clutching at his own face to protect himself from the attack of the crows. Colm fell back onto the ground, helpless as the crows darted and snapped at his brother’s face and shoulders and the shadow figures clutching Donal’s legs and feet grew more substantial and seemingly stronger. With a powerful tug, they pulled Donal onto the ground, and he screamed and cried as he fell.
The wraiths grasping at Eamonn and Michael seemed to congeal into more substantial form, too. The figures wrapped around Eamonn pulled him back into the chapel, and he screamed as the crows pecked at his face. Daria grabbed at Michael’s pants and managed to hold him for an instant before he also toppled from the window back into the chapel.
The fallen boys flailed wildly, kicking at their attackers as they continued to shield their faces from the crows’ rampage. More crows flew in and struck Colm’s face while Annabel and Daria were forced to swing their arms to drive away the crows striking the back of their heads. Shadowy hands reached through the stonework of the windows, attempting to grab hold of the girls. More wraiths pulled themselves up from the earth and threw themselves toward Colm, who began to kick at them as the other boys were.
As the wraiths touched Colm, though, they screamed and scrambled to extricate themselves from the tangled mass of attackers falling on Colm’s torso. The shadow figures seizing the girls also screamed as if in great pain, dropping the girls’ arms and falling back into the chapel with the boys. The crows, as if on cue, swirled up and away from the girls and over the ruins’ walls to join the attack on the three boys trapped by the specters. The crows darting at Colm also abandoned that effort, some flying into the night and others circling back toward Eva.
“Beir orthu! Beir orthu! Seize them!” she repeated, striking her cane repeatedly on the gravestone, knocking askew the remaining two cobblestones of the cairn the boys had built.
More attackers threw themselves at Colm and the girls, shrieking and falling back away from them even as the teens screamed and struck at their attackers. Colm swung around and kicked at the shadow men attacking Donal, and the shadows he kicked cried out and tried to scramble out of his reach while not losing their grasp of Donal.
Unable to understand what he were seeing, Colm watched the forms of Eamonn and Michael fade and seemingly grow more wraithlike even as the wraiths continued to seemingly grow more solid. The boys’ voices faded, and suddenly their attackers slipped back beneath the earth, dragging the boys with them. Eamonn’s and Michael’s voices were cut off, replaced by a momentary choking and gasping, as if earth were falling into their mouths, in turn replaced by horrific silence.
Donal’s voice likewise faded as his form become more indistinct in the night. The same terrible choking sounds came from his throat that had come from Eamonn and Michael as Donal also seemed to sink into the earth under the weight of his attackers. Colm, his eyes stinging with tears and his ankle in more pain than he could have imagined, screamed and kicked again at the ghostly thugs. He managed to pull himself around and threw himself at Donal in one last attempt to hold his brother and save him. But Colm fell through empty air, landing where he had seen Donal an instant before, his breath knocked out of his lungs.
Eva hobbled over to Colm’s gasping, crying figure. She prodded his shoulder with her cane and peered down at the boy.
“Ah, your jacket’s turned inside out,” she snarled. She looked up at the girls. “An’ no doubt yours are turned out as well, young ladies,” she chided them harshly, shaking a bony finger in their direction. “Jackets turned inside out is a precaution few have thought of when they came to disturb poor Eva or build the cairn on Elizabeth’s grave. Clever boy!” she congratulated Colm, her voice dripping sarcasm and fury, p
rodding his shoulder again with her walking stick.
With a ferocious, thunderous cry, Colm rolled over and threw himself at Eva, intending to seize her and torment her as the wraiths had been tormented by his touch, a mere boy with the inside-out clothing. But for the second time that night, he found himself lunging through empty air, his arms wrapped only around himself and not around the witch, who had faded from sight as quickly as Colm could move. He sobbed, huddled on the floor of the chapel ruins.
The girls at the window who had watched that concluding act of the night’s horror in shocked silence finally reacted to their experience. Unending shrieks burst from their throats, over and over, as they shook the stone window frames, as if by pulling them down, the girls could restore their friends to the world of the living.
The banshee-like screams of the girls finally came to the attention of the people across the street and around the chapel. Light flooded the area at last as people poured toward the Lady Chapel, no doubt thinking to drive off a gang of thugs attacking the screaming girls. Instead, they found the two girls clutching the stone wall of the Lady Chapel while Colm continued to sob uncontrollably on the ground inside.
Sophia was still leaning, trembling and out of breath, against a building across from where the Charles Bridge met the Old Town when her husband, Theo, Sean, and Victoria found her.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 88
