In These Dark Places

by Stephen Duffy

  ‘Here come’s Father Festering,’ she would say when she saw him come up our garden path, which was quite a regular occurrence as he was a frequent visitor to our house, him being on such close terms with my grandfather, who was by mutual consensus, his most ardently devout parishioner.

  Granddad was extreme in his devotion to the faith. Fish on Fridays, Wednesdays too. The Holy Rosary twice a day. First at noon and then again, pointlessly, at six in the evening. Fasting was a regular occurrence as were the litany of bible quotes, there’s one for every occasion folks, Catechism lessons and the endless adornment of blessed medals to the lapels of our coats.

  Priests were not men in my Grandfather’s eyes, they were more than that. Much more. They were emissaries of the most Holy Himself and they were to be fawned over as befitting their rank in the religious scheme of things. Their authority on all subjects, be it politics, religion, philosophy, child-rearing, was absolute. Their decrees on these matters were beyond reproach, their advice was to be taken verbatim, to be followed blindly and without question or second guessing.

  Given that he was held in such high regard by Granddad, to whom could I have turned to in my family after the peculiar incident with the Curate in the Teacher’s Room? If word had gotten to Granddad that I was attempting to besmirch the gleaming white robes of the Clergy with such salacious drivel it might have killed him, or worse, he might have killed me. Besides, what could I have said to anyone about it. On the face of it there was nothing untoward in the matter, they would say that it was nothing more than an innocuous, humdrum interaction to which I was over re-acting. And it was! It really was. All he had done was ask me whether or not I would be interested in signing up for the parish football team, of which he was patron and coach. How might that have sounded to anyone to whom I might confide my misgivings? A child I may have been, but I was far from stupid. I knew enough to know that to lay such a groundless aspersion at the foot of the clergy would do nothing but bring trouble down on my own head and no one else. So I kept it to myself.

  There were a couple of times over the following days that I thought to tell my sister. I’d play the scene out in my head and always reach the same conclusion. It sounded ridiculous. When it was actually spoken aloud, no matter which way I put it, no matter the words I chose to try and articulate just how uncomfortable he had made me, I always came up short. Add to that the questions Saoirse was no doubt bound to ask me upon my delivering this titbit of juvenile fantasy, questions to which I had no definitive and concrete answers, and the whole thing fell apart. Nothing more than the silly conjuring’s of a child’s overactive imagination. The litmus test, the event which would settle how I moved on with things would be our next encounter and how Jessop might behave around me at that time. Given that he was such a regular visitor to our house, I didn’t have to wait too long. Less than two weeks after the incident at school I opened our hall door to him. There he stood in the pouring rain, rivulets of water streaming down his gaunt face, a grin stretching from ear to ear, which when he saw me, faltered for no more than a heartbeat, almost imperceptible, but it wavered just the same. He stood up onto the porch and shook the water from his trench coat before he stepping into the hall. His grin had widened to a beaming smile, a smile that still didn’t reach his eyes although I could see that he was doing his best to achieve that.

  ‘Ah, young Gabriel, it’s yourself. Tell your Granddad I’m here would you?’ he said as he tussled my hair with a familiar neutrality perfectly in keeping with such a scene. Yet still my hackles were up, and I couldn’t but notice my slight but involuntary flinch away from him as he reached out to me. I set off down the hall towards Granddad’s parlour. ‘And, Gabriel, be a good lad and get a soaking man a towel would you?’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ I called back to him as I slipped through the kitchen door.

  And that was that. Jessop’s relaxed demeanour and the fact that he had called to my home so soon after the day of the school bazaar was enough to convince me, as a naive eight year old boy, that the whole thing had been blown way out of proportion by my extremely overactive imagination. Had Peter never said to me that he thought Jessop was a bad man, that he didn’t like him, I would have never given the matter a second thought. So I let it be, and as such things do, it soon faded from my memory entirely, well, almost.

  One lazy Sunday morning the following spring, Peter and I had gone dabbing for trout out by Blackmore’s Field, where the Fola was wide and shallow as it cut a great ox-bow swathe through the lush green grass. Having no luck we soon gave up and took to skimming stones across the surface of the river. As we sat there with our bare feet dipped in the cool water I broached the subject of the Curate with him one final time.

  ‘I know why you don’t like Jessop,’ I said. ‘Well, I think I do.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ he replied as he tossed a stone out across the river. It skipped along the surface of the water making it all the way to the other bank where it clattered against the brown and water stained granite. ‘You can’t know the reason because there isn’t one. I just don’t like him, that’s all!’

  ‘No, it’s not just that and you know it. And now I know it too.’ He looked at me with a side long glance but he said nothing. ‘He tried, well, at least I think he tried, to get me to…’

  ‘Get you to what?’ Peter asked as he turned to face me.

  ‘I don’t know, really. All I know is that it was weird. And I think he’s tried the same thing with you too…’

  ‘Did he get you to pose?’

  ‘Pose? No. What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Nothing, I was just asking,’ he replied as he went back to skimming stones.

  ‘What do you mean by that? Pose? What’s that mean? Why did you ask me that?’

  ‘No reason at all, I was just wondering.’ He got to his feet, dusted the dirt from the seat of his pants and took up his shoes and socks. ‘I have to go, I’ll be late for Sunday dinner. My Da will kill me if I am, he roasted a whole shoulder of pork and he’s doing roasties too. See you around.’

  ‘Peter, wait. I’ll come with you. Tell me, what did you mean by that?’ But he was already gone, walking back across the field in his bare feet. By the time I’d managed to pull my socks and shoes back on he was gone.

  I walked home alone that afternoon, Earl Jessop at the forefront of my mind. Something was wrong with the man, something didn’t fit. Whatever had passed between us in the Teacher’s room hadn’t been imagined after all. There was something wrong there, I knew that for certain now, and so did Peter.

  ‘Did he get you to pose?’ What did that even mean? I didn’t know, I didn’t want to. I thought it best to keep as far away from the man as I could.

  9

  With Ellie’s hand firmly clasped in mine I dragged her through the woods. Through thickets. Over hillocks, down into ditches, over streams, we stumbled in the darkness trying our utmost to shake the chase of Dan Maguire. His hoarse and angry screams echoed through the forest. If he were to catch up with us I was a dead man, I knew that for certain. I’ve put in some long nights in my time. Nights passed worrying about debts, about lost love. Dark hours haunted by my own demons and fuelled by drink. I’ve spent many an hour staring into the inky black of a darkened room praying for sleep but fearing the dreams that it might bring. I tell you now, that night in those woods with Ellie, was one of the longest of them all. Well, at least until the night The Fola burst her banks.

  Big and slow as Maguire may have been he was relentless in his pursuit, his knowledge of those woods was complete. He seemed to know every trail and trek, every rat run and every hiding place which we might have used and to begin with, no matter how fast we ran, he would pop up off to our left or right some three or four hundred yards distant and we’d be forced to set off again. After running for over half an hour through the woods I was full sure that we had left him far behind. I pulled up by a fallen tree at the base of a large mound of scree for a breather, Ellie’s hand still
in mine. Our hot breath rising in cold blue columns in the chill night air.

  ‘He’s tenacious, I’ll give him that.’

  ‘Do you think we lost him?’ she asked me.

  ‘I hope so, I can’t keep this up.’

  ‘What will we do now?’

  ‘We can’t go back to town, that’s too risky. He could be waiting for us back there. We’ll make our way to Inch, get the first bus back to Dublin.’

  ‘Inch? That’s miles away. Besides…’

  The sharp snap of a twig cut her short. Ellie squeezed my hand tighter. Another loud crack rang out in the darkness followed by the scuff of boots on gravel. We crouched into the shadow of the mound and held our breath. Small rocks spilled down the sides on top of us as Maguire mounted the crest of the rock pile and stood there panting for breath. In the scattered light of the moon I could see Ellie’s eyes widen with fear and tears welled up to the brim but didn’t spill. Once more she pressed tighter on my hand and shook her head. I rubbed her forearm and put my finger to her lips. If she made a sound, a single whimper, we were done. Maguire’s voice splintered the silence. Ellie winced noticeably and began to tremble.

  ‘I know you’re out there!’ he roared. ‘And I’m not going home till I get you! Run all you want, Skinny, I’ve all the time in the world.’ He was sobering up, his words weren’t as slurred as they had been back at the car. That was a bad thing. ‘And as for you, Blondie,’ he went on, ‘Just you wait till I get my hands on you!’

  In her panic Ellie made to run and I had to grab her around the waist to hold her back. With Maguire right on top of us, there would be no shaking him off this time, no advantage of a head start. If she had broken cover right then he’d be on us in a heartbeat and for me the game would be over. I would never come out of those woods. Above us, Maguire slumped down onto a rock, a moment later an empty cigarette packet landed by my feet. Then came the strike of a match, the fizz of it flaring into life, a sphere of butter yellow light hung in the darkness at the top of the mound. The faint smell of tobacco smoke drifted down to us. I can still recall how very much I wanted to ask him for a drag of that smoke, absurd as that may seem. I hadn’t a butt to my name that night and the demon of addiction was goading me. All thoughts of getting a blast of that cigarette dissipated instantly when Maguire flicked the still burning match down into the scrub by our feet. Tinder dry after weeks without rain, the fire took immediately. In a matter of seconds the flames were three feet high and spreading towards us. Ellie screamed. The jig was over.

  ‘Well, well, look who we have here.’ Maguire was standing at the top of the mound glaring down at us, the deadly chair leg propped on his shoulder. The grin of a madman lit by the flicker of the fire. He started down towards us. The loose scree beneath his feet gave way and he stumbled. It was enough of a break for us to get to our feet and make to leave. The flames were higher now and the breeze coming from the coast was pushing the fire closer to us.

  ‘Come on,’ I said as I dragged Ellie towards the fire.

  ‘No! I can’t! We can’t go that way!’

  ‘We can’t go that way now can we?’ I shouted as I jabbed my thumb toward the mound. ‘Ellie, he’s going to kill me, God knows what he’ll do to you after that! Now come on!’ I pushed her towards the flames but she dug her feet into the scree and refused to budge. Her fear of the fire was greater than that of Maguire and it had frozen her mind and her muscles to the danger coming from behind us. Maguire was back on his feet and he was closing in on us with a frightening speed. For the second time that night I fumbled in the darkness for a rock and came up the winner. A piece of basalt, flat on a side and with razor sharp edges, its weight in my hand lent an assurance of power over the situation. I had one shot. I took it.

  The rock hit Maguire square on the forehead. There was no drama. No scream, no flailing of the arms. His legs folded and he collapsed unconscious on the side of the mound, the nail spiked chair leg rolling down the scree and into the flames. Thank God for small mercies.

  ‘Come on, now’s our chance,’ I said to Ellie as I pulled her back towards the knoll. With Maguire out of the picture, at least for a short while, we could make our way back to the road and get ourselves out of town as quick as we could.

  ‘What about him?’ Ellie asked when we had reached the top of the hill. She pulled her hand away from me and stood looking down at Maguire.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Will he be alright? With the fire I mean…’

  ‘Yeah, he’ll be fine. He’s on the scree, there’s nothing around him that can burn… besides he’s probably going to wake up in a few minutes. And when he does we’d better be as far away from him as we can be…’

  ‘What if he doesn’t wake up? What if we leave him here and the fire…’

  ‘He’ll wake up, trust me, he will and like I said we need to be nowhere near him when he does.’

  ‘What if he’s dead?’

  ‘He’s not dead!’ I snapped. ‘Look at him, he’s breathing. I knocked him out that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s breathing. I can’t see his chest moving at all!’

  ‘For God’s sake! Do you really care whether or not a piece of shit like him is dead or alive? He was going to kill me, Ellie!’

  ‘I don’t care about him, not at all,’ she said as she took my hand gently in hers. ‘But I do care about you. Could you live with yourself, could you carry that with you for the rest of your life? Knowing that he’s alive right now and you left him here to die when you could have done something to save him. Leaving him down there is murder…’

  ‘This is ridiculous, Ellie. He’s going to wake up any minute now and when he does…’

  ‘How can you be so sure? You hit him pretty hard with that rock. What if he doesn’t wake up and the fire takes him? That’s murder.’

  ‘Jesus, Ellie, this is crazy! What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Move him. Out of harm’s way.’

  ‘He’s safe where he is for God’s sake! There’s nothing around him to burn, he’s on a pile of rocks and…’

  ‘He’s too close to the fire, his clothes could catch light just from the heat. He’d be much safer up here. Go on, drag him up to here and then we can go.’

  ‘Ellie, this is crazy. We need to get out of here right now.’ She placed her hands on my cheeks and looked me square in the eyes.

  ‘Please, Gabriel, do it for me. We’re not bad people, are we?’

  ‘No, we’re not. Far from it.’

  ‘Well then, you know as well as I do that we can’t leave him down there.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ I said as I pulled away from her touch and made my way back down the slope.

  The heat was immense, it grew with every step I took towards Maguire. Ellie was right, to leave him there was to leave him to his death. I felt the skin on my face tighten as I drew closer to the fire. The hot air burned my throat, the smoke seared my eyes. Maguire lay flat on his back. His eyes were closed, his mouth wide open. Above the crackle and din of the blaze I could hear a low, rumbling gurgle coming from him. He was still alive. There was a deep gash on his forehead where the rock had hit him. The blood around it was congealing in the heat. An oily sheen of sweat coated his face, flakes of ash peppered his skin. The soles of his shoes had begun to smoulder, tendrils of blue smoke curled upwards from them bringing the acrid smell of burning rubber to my nose. We were in a cathedral of fire. Bright orange flames licked the trunks of the trees, now blazing pillars in a great hall of destruction. Columns of sparks and smoke climbed skyward, curling and twisting in the updraft like giant snakes fleeing the danger of the fire. A symphony of crackling and popping filled the wood as the fire laid waste to branch and root, bushes and grass. Muted by the din of the fire but no less haunting for that, the plaintive song of birds as they took wing to escape their peril punctuated the sound of the devastation.

  I straddled Maguire, planting my feet firmly on either side of his chest and hooke
d my hands under arms. I tried to lift him but it was next to impossible. He was three hundred pounds of dead weight. I didn’t stand a chance of moving him alone.

  ‘I can’t move him, he’s too heavy. I’ll have to leave him here. There’s no way I’m going to get him up there.’ I shouted to Ellie.

  ‘Gabriel, you have to, you can’t just leave him there. I’ll come help…’ She started back down the hill sending a stream of rocks and dust down on me.

  ‘No!’ I roared. ‘Stay there, I’ll try again.’

  I turned back to Maguire to make a second attempt to move him. His eyes were open. The mad man grin was pasted once more across his face. A flash of cold blue light exploded behind my eyes when his first punch landed. The force behind it was colossal. I stumbled away from him and landed prostrate at the foot of the hill, my head only inches from the blaze. I hadn’t even begun to make sense of the situation when the second blow came. A granite fist smashed my nose to pulp, blood sprayed into the air, crimson jewels by the light of the fire. Dizzy, dazed, I tried to sit up. The pain was immense. My mind swam, waves of darkness lapped up on the shore of consciousness and I knew that the third blow would be the closer. Maguire shoved me back down onto the ground and straddled my chest, his weight forcing the air from my lungs. His hands clasped my throat and he squeezed with superhuman pressure. I struggled to break free, I batted at his forearms with my fists, I may as well have been punching steel beams. As the pressure in my head grew to agonizing levels, when my oxygen starved brain began to shut down, I surrendered to my fate, there was no escaping him. He had me good and proper. It could only end one way. As my consciousness rippled and faded, what I had believed to be my final thoughts were of Ellie. I hoped she had had the good sense to run, to get as far away from him as possible. I had no doubt that she would meet the same fate as me, having first endured the most violent and demeaning of assaults at Maguire’s hands. The heat of the fire faded and the smell of smoke and ash dissipated as a darkness rushed in from my peripheral vision. The world went black. I was in a silent, lightless void, my only connection to the former world was the pressure of Maguire’s hands around my throat. And then, that too was gone.