And then, just ahead, I glimpsed her. A shape, no more than that, a smudge of grey in the whiteness. I almost ran to her. She stood on the edge of the beach, facing the ocean and had let down her hair. As I watched, she began to peel off her clothes, piece by piece – the cardigan, the blouse, the knee-length skirt. My name continued to ring out, a drone now, vague, pitching one way and then the other, sharing the emphasis. In reply, I uttered her name, but my voice reached barely above a whisper and she must not have heard because she didn’t turn, or stop calling. She stepped out of her underwear just as I came to within touching distance, and the mist must have lifted around her, at least a little, because I could make out all the details of her body, the milky skin, the smoothness of her bottom dappled with the moisture of the fog, the way the chill air raised a rash of goosebumps across the flesh of her thighs and hips.
‘Alison,’ I whispered, close enough now that she would have to hear, and started to reach out for her. But instead of turning she moved forward into the tide. Without giving myself time to think I plunged in behind her and, just as she was about to go under, grabbed her arm. She rolled and began to thrash, but I kept hold, and her body twisted in the water, pulling her shoulder back, half-capsizing itself to reveal her right breast and the small puce stone of its rising nipple, and then her hair dropped away from her face and I saw that she was no longer Alison but a young woman, a girl of mid to late teens and almost beautiful. And as I watched, transfixed, her skin began to turn grey and then muddy, and her eyes, staring up at me, sank from a soft sky colour to the slime green of river weed. One temple had been crushed in with something blunt or smashed against rock, and the wound lay open as a treacle blackness hiding pearly yellow secrets deep inside. Stretched out on the water below me, she held my gaze and began to smile and then soundlessly laugh, and water wept from her nostrils and the corners of her mouth in a mixture of the fresh and putrid. And even as my hand loosened its grip, hers, cold and hard as wet stone, found my wrist and clutched me tight enough to hurt. I understood what she meant to do only an instant before it happened, and then she slipped beneath the surface. Manacled, I went under, too.
The coldness numbed me. I opened my eyes to murk, and for a moment, until I tried to breathe, it was not so different from being on land again, caught in that fog. This was heavier, and devoid of light, but the sensations of enclosure and blind confusion were the same. I flailed, causing a little air to escape my lungs, and then, through the flush of bubbles, I began to see blanched faces crowding in from all around. Childlike, the tendrils of their long hair rippling in a slow dance, their eyes wide and dead but somehow seeing, somehow knowing me. I screamed and felt it loud through my chest and throat, but outside of myself there was only the total press of the water, full of whispers. I burned to breathe but it was ocean that flooded in and held me while I kicked and tossed, thrashed to get away, to be above and once more taking in air. I clenched my eyes shut and felt my mind let go and madness start to take hold, but when I returned to the world again I was on my back on the sand, staring up into whiteness. Gradually, sounds closed in, the jerk and laboured breath of crying, not mine but Alison’s, and when I reached out she took my hand and brought herself close for me to see. I let her kiss me and help me up, and we stood together, our clothes wet through, shivering so hard that we could feel the jarring of one another’s bones.
‘What happened to you, Mike? Why were you in the water?’
‘I told you to wait,’ I gasped.
She pulled her hair back from her face, and I saw her cheek smudged with grit or sand and attempted with my thumb to wipe it clean until I realised that it was not dirt at all but a graze.
‘I meant to,’ she said. ‘Though I wasn’t exactly happy at being on my own, even for those few minutes. But someone passed me in the mist. A shape, a shadow. I don’t know. Very close, but without detail. I was certain that it had to be Maggie. Now I’m not sure what I saw. I tried calling out, but she was there and then gone, except for the sound of footsteps brushing through the long grass. So, I followed. What else could I do? And when I got to the beach, a breeze lifted the fog a little, and I saw her. The girl, not Maggie but just like the one you had described seeing. Standing on the rocks, naked, just like you’d said, with her hair down, facing the ocean.’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go back.’
‘Where?’
‘The car. Cork. Dublin. Anywhere, as long as it gets us away from here. Christ, I’m freezing.’
‘But what about Maggie?’
‘Maggie’s gone. Even if she’s all right, she won’t come back here. The house is destroyed. We’ll ask in the village. Maybe they got her out. Hopefully they’ll at least know something.’
‘Why were you in the water, Mike? What did you see?’
‘Didn’t you hear me calling you?’
‘I thought I did. But the fog was so dense. Mike. Please. Tell me. What did you see?’
‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘Let’s just go.’
She took my arm, and we helped one another back up along the path. Evening had come in, the advancing hour causing the light to shift, a thickening of the whiteness that somehow made the fog more pliable. The stench of burnt timber continued to pollute each struggled breath, but we bore the taste and pressed on, keeping strictly to the path and careful of our footing. When the cottage seeped once more into view as a greyness ahead and to our right, we leaned away from it, skirting it in the widest possible sweep. Yet even then the sense of its menace felt absolute. As we passed, Alison tried to get one last look at the place, but I stepped in and prevented her, blocking the view with my body. Because she’d already seen too much. We both had. And because I was afraid. The windows had blown out with the heat of the fire and left dark gaping holes either side of the empty doorway. I kept my gaze averted, certain of what I’d see if I risked casting so much as a glance. Maggie in one window, silent and damaged, bedraggled, smeared with ash, watching us. And in the other, the taller figure of a man, the Master, the one I already knew. I didn’t look because I didn’t need to. Madness lay in that direction, and I’d already had a taste. I knew they were there and that they always would be, just as they’d always in some way be with me. Watching, smiling. Waiting. I tightened my grip on Alison’s arm and quickened our pace, desperate for escape.
*
The darkening fog gave Allihies an otherworldly feel. The day was not yet gone but the windows of shops and houses were already lit and the few street lamps burned, triggered by an obvious need, their fiery orange glow holding like torches above the sloping street. There was nothing to see of the mountains, fields and ocean, no hint of them, even, except in how they held to within the fabric of the place.
Because it was still early, the pub was quiet. A young blonde couple sat at a small round table beside the dead fireplace – German, if the sound of their occasional mutterings was in any way truthful, the young man with a lantern-jawed smirk huddling close while the girl, clearly at ease with being in charge, shuffled her way through a small bundle of photographs. At the end of the counter, on a high stool, an old man in an overcoat and a flat cap perched with arms folded and eyes closed, asleep or else just taking the time to contemplate his half-finished pint of stout and the accompanying drop of something hot. We came in from the doorway and stood in the middle of the lounge, but no one paid us any attention until a third man, a stocky, middle-aged sort, wandered through from a storeroom, carrying a large red plastic crate of bottles. He pushed past, slipped behind the bar and set down the crate, then finally turned to us.
‘What’ll it be?’ he said, his voice heavy with vibration, the sort of voice that probably broke repeatedly over the years but which had come to fit him well. He looked us up and down then, taking his time with Alison. ‘Is it raining again? Christ, there’s just no let-up with this weather.’
‘Can you tell us anything about last night’s fire?’ I asked, and the old man to our left opened his eyes, and I
knew that if I were to turn around I’d find the German couple watching, too.
‘What fire is that?’
‘A couple of miles out the road,’ Alison said. ‘A cottage. It’s–’
‘I know the cottage. But I know nothing about any fire.’
‘Our friend lives there. Maggie Turner. She’s an artist. Maybe you’ve met her. She moved in at the beginning of the summer, had the place completely renovated. But we’ve just been out there and it’s destroyed. The stones are still hot, you can smell the ash on our clothes. We’re worried. We tried searching for her, but the fog is so thick. We’re hoping somebody around here might know something.’
The barman looked from one of us to the other.
‘There was no wind last night. This mist has been in since late yesterday. Thick as well water, too. That’d have kept the smoke down. But I know the girl you’re talking about. That is to say, I’ve seen her. We all have. Not often, mind, and not recently, but for the first couple of months or so after she moved here, she’d often call in for a cup of coffee. I suppose whenever she had shopping to do, or letters to post. Sometimes she’d ask to use the phone. Nice girl. That was my impression anyway. Kept mostly to herself, if I have her right, but friendly enough. The smiling kind. Maggie, you said her name was? That sounds about right. Rings a bell, anyway. She was English. I remember that. The accent. A timid little thing, but fair-looking.’
‘Not that timid, I’d say.’ The old man at the counter muttered the words at his glass. ‘Not if she could bring herself to live in that house.’
I moved towards him. ‘What do you mean?’
He looked up at me and then away, but not before I’d caught the white glint of the collar at his throat. A priest. Hard to put an age to, but a worn sort, with darkish blotches reddening the flesh of his cheeks and a mouth that couldn’t settle even in its silent state.
‘Lonely down there. By the water. And cut off from everything. Not a place for a young woman, I’d have thought. Not a place for anyone, you ask me. The Master’s cottage. Everyone around here knows the stories, and there’s plenty will swear the sweet Jesus down out of Heaven professing to the truth of them. But your friend is not the first to be taken in by the place. And probably won’t be the last. That’s what it can do.’
‘Stories,’ the barman grunted. He winked at the Germans, one of whom mumbled a wisp of laughter. ‘Second best way I know of to pass a wet night. Not that I’m questioning the word of a man of the cloth, like.’
‘Say what you like, Jimmeen.’ The priest’s eyes were fixed hard on his shot glass. ‘But I’ve seen more than my fill over the years. They’d not catch me down there of a night. Not alone. Nor yourself either. Put me right if you want but I’d back good money on that. It’s not all just stories.’
He still hadn’t looked up, but seemed to be waiting for something. Maybe, in his mind, he was reciting a prayer. Then, slowly, he reached out, lifted the whiskey glass to his mouth and drained it. The barman stood, a cold grin stuck to his face, and when the glass returned empty to the counter he found a bottle and refilled it almost to the brim.
After that, the talk fell away. Alison and I drank whiskey too, the glasses pushed on us, with no mention of water and no talk of money. I limited myself to sips, knowing that I had to drive. The alcohol itself had no significant effect on me, but the heat that filled my mouth and throat helped to at least steady my shivering. I tried to explain some of what had happened, but my words came out broken and made little sense beyond the obvious details, and no one in the bar offered anything in the way of encouragement or, after I had finished, met my eye. I know how I must have sounded, but I also know what I saw in the old man’s face, and, though it was slightly better hidden, in the barman’s, when I mentioned the girl on the rocks. Alison and I stood side by side, sipping at our whiskey, our clothes wet through from the ocean, the water dripping from us onto the flagstone floor, and once our glasses were empty I put a sodden note on the bar and we muttered goodbyes and left. There was nothing more to be said, except to one another. Outside, the darkness had properly taken hold, and the village was still and silent. We got into the car, turned up the heater to its highest setting and for several minutes just sat there. I felt like I was trying to wake from a dream that had too tight a hold on me. Then, at last, I started the engine and followed the coast road slowly north-eastwards, back to Castletownbere. Alison remained in the car while I checked in three different pubs until I found a pay phone that worked, and I put a call through to the authorities, gave my name and contact details, and reported both the fire and the missing person.
And that was all.
Back in Dublin, late into the night, we took turns under the hottest shower imaginable before falling exhausted into bed to sleep in one another’s arms. I woke first, some seven hours on, to a frail wash of sun pouring in through the bedroom window. It was neither early nor late, and there’d been no dreams, at least none that I could remember. Alison continued to sleep, an arm and thigh spread across me beneath the duvet. I ran my fingertips down and back up along the gentle curves of her body, feeling the kernels and indentations of her spine, the cool slats of her ribcage, the smooth furled wings of her shoulder blades. Then I kissed her, gently, until she smiled from inside her dreams and kissed me back, and for the couple of hours that followed we let nothing come between us, no unwanted thoughts, nothing to bring down what we were so busily raising up. And when, a few days later, it came time to leave, I didn’t want to go. Alison cried, and I felt like crying too. Something had changed for me in a permanent way.
Part III
That was nine years ago. A long time, in some respects. A lifetime, if we let Hannah, our daughter, be our measure. Weeks, months even, can go by now without me thinking about what happened. As I said at the beginning, life has been good to me, and I am happy. Hannah fills our days, such a beautiful child. Every time she sees me, a light comes into her face, and my heart melts. I know that it probably won’t always be like this, that the way girls are at seven is not the way they will necessarily be at seventeen. But, for now, life is good. I don’t miss the world of art at all, or city living. It seems that for years I existed with a great hole inside me, the sort of emptiness I only became aware of after it had been filled. For that, I owe Alison a great debt. Having what you need as well as what you want, and knowing that you have it, must be the definition of contentment.
There are still moments, though, when the world seems to stop turning for me, usually when that increasingly pressing need of the bathroom, or a glass of water, drags me from bed during the smallest hours of the night, or when I am out walking, trying hard to be obedient to my doctor’s orders, taking a brisk morning stroll into the village and back. When I am alone. And it is then that the memories encroach, and with them, the questions. I no longer look for answers, having accepted that sometimes there are simply none to be found. And nine years is a long time.
Maggie’s body was never recovered. The fire was investigated and foul play quickly ruled out. The signs of infestation made it likely that rats had chewed through cable either in the attic or the walls, and the thatch, especially thatch dried out from a long, good summer, would have been tinder to a flame. This was the most logical scenario, and the one to which all the evidence pointed. According to the experts, the heat would have been immense, the thick stone walls acting like a cauldron, though the temperatures involved would have come nowhere near approaching the sort of numbers necessary for melting bone. A cursory glance made it clear that Maggie had not been in the cottage at the time of the blaze, but five men trained specifically for this kind of work still spent the better part of a working day combing through the dust, obscenely diligent in their search, knowing exactly what to look for, and exactly what meant what. Making certain. What mattered, it seems, was proving it beyond doubt.
Towards the end of the first week following her disappearance, a cardigan was found, sodden, in the grass inside the circle of
standing stones that she had mentioned, which initially raised everyone’s hopes of a positive outcome. Tests were done in the hope of turning up a trace of ash, but the results proved inconclusive, and it was generally agreed that either the garment had been left behind on some earlier visit or else the elements had washed it clean.
I spoke with the Gardaí often, helping them to gain some sense of her state of mind, at least as I had perceived it to be. Half a dozen times over a period of perhaps a couple of weeks, sitting in the canteen with various paired combinations of the same four officers, three men and a woman, sipping bad tea and worse coffee from heavy white mugs lined with the shadows of uncountable refills. Informal and unprompted, with no leading questions or suggestions of anything untoward, no insinuations of guilt or attempts at apportioning blame, but official interviews, nonetheless, with details logged in notebooks, to be transcribed later into ledgers or maybe even onto a computer. I didn’t care. I talked and wanted to talk. I told myself that these people were the law, that they’d know how to filter my ramblings for the few essential facts, and they’d know what to do with those facts, even if I didn’t.
They listened, sitting across from and beside me at the table, the woman particularly attentive, a broad-cheeked type of about thirty, with her country edges showing and her nut-brown hair clipped into a mannish shape that actually benefited from the wearing of a cap. She or one of the men would nod encouragement while I relived my visits to Allihies, and I’d slow my voice when I noticed them trying to jot down some morsel of detail, instinctively wanting to help, but more often I preferred not to look at them when I talked because the least shift in their expression sent me trawling back over what I’d just said, wondering what important words I’d missed and was still missing. When I could lower my eyes, the words flowed more easily, until nobody could have doubted their aimless truth. The thoughts spilt from me, recounting in scatter-shot fashion the house-warming weekend and the fun we’d had until the séance. The good, the bad, the best. Descriptions of my return visit felt jarring against the ease and pleasure of that first trip, but I could feel my audience lean in, sensing that this might be where the clues would lie, and I traced the table’s laminated grain with my fingertips and spoke of the condition into which the cottage had fallen, and the shock I’d felt, the terror, at finding Maggie on the beach in so distant and dishevelled a state. Unaware, except perhaps on some deep-seated level which could later be denied or at least ignored, that this would be the last time I’d see her. I recalled for them our conversations, without checking myself, sure that the words held something of worth, some hint that answered everything. All I kept back were the things that made no sense, the glimpses, the feeling of foreboding.
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