In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)

by Cindy Brandner

  There was no one there, not even a trick of the dark. He looked about wildly, but there was no sign of the man anywhere. Something moved just then right at the edge of the pine wood. It was low to the ground and fast. He walked toward it carefully and it froze under a gorse bush. It was too small to be a badger and not streamlined enough to be a stoat. He hunkered down after casting another glance over his shoulder.

  “Jaysus Murphy,” he exclaimed when he saw what sat in the bush, glaring up at him. It was a cat—a thoroughly disreputable looking cat with one eye swollen shut and bald patches where it was missing fur.

  “What in the name of all that’s holy are ye doin’ up here?” he asked. The cat looked at him solemnly from one huge amber eye. It attempted to meow but all that came out was a nearly inaudible squeak. He reached a hand toward it carefully, not wanting to startle it. He got his fingers in under its belly and scooped it up just as it bit him sharply on his index finger.

  “Ouch, ye wee bastard,” he exclaimed, almost dropping it. The cat hissed at him.

  He tucked the cat under his arm and strode off to the hut. When he reached it he turned back to survey the area one last time, his eyes sweeping from the curving side of the hill to the snow-laden scrim of trees. He shut the door behind him and bolted it immediately. He closed the shutters, glad that he had built them on the inside for he wouldn’t have wanted to stay outside long enough to shut them all.

  He set the cat down and then put a few more pieces of pine on the fire. He warmed a bit of milk over the flames and poured it into a bowl for the cat. It set to drinking without hesitation. He wondered how the poor wee thing had ended up here high in the mountains. Had the man he’d seen at the end of the trail dropped it there? And if so, why?

  He opened a tin of sardines and mashed up a couple, making certain to remove the few bones he could find and then set it down before the cat. It ate swiftly, looking up at him every few seconds as though it expected the food to be snatched away.

  “Ye needn’t worry, I’ll not steal yer dinner.”

  He looked the cat over. The poor creature was more than just a bit ragged-arsed looking and appeared to be on the verge of starvation. That might be expected, what with it living rough on a mountain top. He wasn’t the one to be passing judgement mind you, being that he knew he looked a perfect wild man with his beard unshaved and his hair uncut for months now.

  “Ye’re a bit in the way of bein’ a cat melodeon, aren’t ye? Ye’ve taken the phrase literally, an’ decided to embody it, have ye?”

  The cat looked up from where it was now delicately washing a filthy paw and gave him a look which in a human would have been considered less than complimentary.

  “Aye, it’s a big word, it only means to be in a terrible state—it was a word my daddy used to use when I’d make a grand mess of things.”

  The words struck him seconds after he said them—he knew the word because his father had taught it to him. The thought had risen naturally within him, as though he did, indeed, somewhere inside remember the man who had been his father. He felt for a moment like he was choking and had to make a concerted effort to get in a decent breath.

  He made his own supper then with the cat watching his every move. Once the food was ready he found he had little appetite. He was aware of his heart thumping hard beneath his ribs, though whether it was having an actual memory or seeing a man who had inexplicably disappeared which caused his agitation, he couldn’t have said.

  He settled into his bed shortly after he cleaned up the dishes and the cat came and curled up in the crook of his arm, purring loudly. He didn’t have the heart to shoo it off the bed; he would just have to hope it wasn’t hopping with fleas. He liked the sound of its purring, like a small motor chugging away in reassurance. It was comforting to have the small warm body curled up next to his. It pushed away a little of the fear which had sprung up in him at the sight of the man on the trail. It wasn’t the man’s presence there that worried him so much, people got lost in the mountains and people were foolish enough to set off hiking even in foul weather. No it wasn’t that at all, for even though the man had unnerved him with his unnatural stillness even that might be explained away. What couldn’t be explained was the complete and total lack of footprints in the snow where the man had been standing.

  Chapter Sixty-three

  The House of the Dead

  HE STUMBLED UPON the building near twilight on a raw spring day. It reared up in bits and pieces—the remnants of stones in the outlying area, stones that had been shaped and carved for the purpose of building. He knelt down and ran a hand over one. It was well covered with moss and ivy, but the shape was still unmistakable. He knew what it was in his very cells to cut stone, to form it beneath your hand so that it retained its beauty and at the same time release it to another purpose. He stood then, the pain in his knee terrible but a pale echo compared to the agony in his head. He would have to stay here tonight, for he knew he couldn’t go much further before the pain had him fast in its clutches.

  He had driven north two days before. Instinct and common sense had told him not to try to cross the border at any of the official checkpoints. He had parked his truck at the end of a deserted country lane in County Monaghan and crossed the border on foot into South Armagh via a field where cows popped their heads up at him in curiosity, but no other living being was around to see or hear him. He’d roamed the area with care, he might not remember everything but he knew enough to be wary in an area bristling with British Army personnel and PIRA members, both of whom were likely to shoot first and ask questions of your cold corpse later. He had stayed to the wooded areas when he could and kept away from the towns and clusters of farms. He’d brought enough food to last him so that he wouldn’t need to venture into a village. He truly was behaving like a wolf, lurking about the edges of the places where people gathered.

  He let instinct guide his rambles. He wanted to see if the cell memory which seemed to play out in other parts of his life could help him here too, with the land and where his place upon it had been. He took in the area around him—all the tidy farms and well-kept stone walls, the small wooded areas scattered here and there across the landscape of well-worn squares of green. There was a heightened tension around here that he could feel all along his body.

  He had changed during his winter sojourn—his senses, so accustomed to life on the mountain, were overwhelmed here amongst people and things—cars, machinery, domestic animals and just the sheer noise of civilization. His sense of smell had been sharpened by living outdoors so much and he was used to the dark aromas of the forest—the sharp perfume of the evergreens, the stygian scent of the forest floor, and the smell of other animals—scat and nests and food and danger. His eyes had become accustomed to the subtleties of life far from civilization, had learned to see small details—the delicate orchid that grew only in the rot of a fallen tree trunk, the dappled umber flash that was a deer’s pelt flying on the hoof, the overspun spider web that meant high winds were on the way. This altered perception of the world made it hard to adjust to the rampant noise of humans going about their daily business. It also meant that he heard the big vehicle long before he saw it. It was rumbling up the narrow lane he walked, and he felt a ripple of visceral alarm from the root of his spine to the top of his scalp. He clambered up over the stone wall which bordered the road he walked. In his haste, he came down at a bad angle for his knee. He bit his tongue to keep from cursing out loud just as the truck rolled past.

  He took a few breaths and chanced a peek over the wall. It was an army truck. He couldn’t afford to get caught without identification, there would be far too many questions for which he did not have answers. He would cut across this bit of land he was now on and hope he didn’t run into an indignant farmer who took exception to scruffy-looking trespassers.

  He paused for breath a few minutes later. He needed to orient himself so he knew in which direction to head. It was then that he saw the little house. It was su
ch a part of the landscape around it that had he not stopped to catch his breath he likely would have walked right past it.

  It was a house for the fairies, he thought. The lines of it emerged from the woods around it—sticks and bark, stone and moss, feather and root. He was frozen to the spot just looking at it as one of those bells went off loudly in his head. So loudly he wished he could make it stop. He even put his hands over his ears, though of course it didn’t do anything to stop the buzzing in his head.

  He stepped toward it, not really understanding what he was doing, but allowing instinct to guide him. He reached forward and touched the bits of furniture—the little birch bark stove, the walnut shell cradle, the bits of leaf and lunaria which made up bed canopies and blankets. He touched a gentle finger to the small bits and bobs and slowly his hand floated up to the room which was a library, judging by the shelves and wee books made from leaves and flower-threaded paper.

  His hand was suddenly shaking so hard he could barely move it into the tiny room. He pushed gently on one of the small bookshelves and it popped open under the pressure. He swallowed in an attempt to get his emotions under control and reached into the small space behind the shelf. The hollow was surprisingly deep. He reached down and felt paper, a solid wad of it. He grasped it and pulled it up. He held the paper in his hands for a moment, feeling guilty. This was someone’s private hidey-hole and here he was pulling things out of it.

  He dug in his pocket wondering if he had something he could leave behind. It didn’t feel right to take the papers without leaving something in exchange. His fingers encountered a smooth warm object. It was an especially fine agate he’d found that very morning, glimmering like a solid bit of sun from the crevice of a stone wall. It fit perfectly in the little kitchen sink which was made from a seashell. He tucked the papers in his pocket, feeling slightly guilty about taking them and yet he had no compulsion to put them back.

  He looked around. The sun was starting down the sky and he realized he’d lingered longer than he should have. He needed to move along before someone found him. His headache started while he was walking toward the back of the property. It was one of those intense ones that came out of nowhere and blurred his vision and made him feel sick to his stomach. He sat down, the ground damp beneath him but reassuring. He was a good distance from the house now and it should be fine to stop for a bit until he could quell the nausea and get back on his feet. He looked around him. He was under a huge blooming hawthorn which had small bits of faded cloth tied to it. It was a beautiful bit of land, well-treed and with a small stream cutting across one corner. He fished a pain pill out of his shirt pocket, hoping it would take the edge off his headache so that he could collect his wits and get moving again.

  Something on the ground caught his eye—a small clutch of plants, or the skeleton of them at least, tied together with a bit of thread. It was an abandoned posy left here under this tree. He wondered if it had been an offering to the fairies as hawthorns had long been known as the ‘fairy tree’. Curious, he picked it up, and that was when the pain slammed down like an anvil on him, and the branches and snow-white blossoms of the tree whirled round and round as he clutched the skeleton of an ancient posy in his hand, thorns pricking his palm.

  He felt like the roots of the tree had grown up through him and were tangling in his brain. Surely his skull must split apart with this sort of pain. The scent of the hawthorn blooms was overwhelming, sickening him even further. He leaned over and retched, his entire body heaving with pain and nausea. There was little more than bile in his stomach as he hadn’t eaten since morning and then it had only been a bit of bread and cheese. He hadn’t felt this sick since he’d drunk the ayahuasca tea. Finally the sickness receded enough that he dared to roll over onto his back and gulp at the air. He lay there for a few moments, the blooms of the hawthorn white and thick above his head. The smell of them was still overpowering, but he could manage it now. There was still a strange thrumming fear in his bones—fear that smelled like blood and pain and violence.

  He dragged himself to his feet and started walking. He was tired but needed to get clear of this bit of land before the dark of it reached up through the soil and grabbed him.

  He walked a good two hours before he literally stumbled into the building. His foot hit a block of stone well hidden amongst the grass and low shrubs and he almost tumbled over onto the ground beyond. He looked up and saw the building through the trees which grew thick and tall right up against it.

  It had once been large; his eye had always been able to see the outlines of a structure’s original form. This place was buried so deep in the woods it felt like he had stepped through a portal in time and fallen back a hundred years or more. The size and age told him the building was one of two things—an old estate, long abandoned, or a workhouse for the poor left over from Famine times. The latter was the most likely, because if his eye was telling him true, it was laid out along the specifications to which most workhouses had been built. Many workhouses had gone on to other purposes once the Famine was over, some would become sad institutions that housed the poor or mentally ill. Why he could remember tidbits of history and architecture he did not understand, but much of the knowledge seemed innate and had been well fortified with books over these last few years.

  Casey found a relatively sound part of the building, and entered a door there. Steps led up from a small landing, the wind moaning its way to the second floor. He tested the first couple of stairs and found them sound enough to risk. Fishing a torch out of his bag, he turned it on, playing it on the ceiling above. It was more form than substance and he could clearly see the stars through the holes in the roof. There were vines hanging down like great green clouds and near the stairs, where he stood, a tree grew, three times his own height and clearly undisturbed for many years.

  Casey went up the stairs slowly, checking each one so that he didn’t plunge through and break his neck. No one would ever find him here, and a man could linger on injured for a very long time before succumbing to death. He came out onto the second floor into a great room with corridors leading off it. It was a vast echoing space, the sound of his steps loud and unnerving, coming back to him multiplied so that it seemed as if a legion of ghosts was shuffling about the room. He shivered. Exhausted from the pain gnawing through his head, Casey just wanted to find oblivion for a few hours. Perhaps down one of these corridors he would find a room where he could lie down for a bit. He walked down the corridor that appeared the most sound of the three he could see. The branch he chose had small rooms spaced evenly along each side. He assumed this was where the workhouse staff would have had their quarters, as the person actually seeking refuge here would have slept in a long dormitory crowded with hundreds of people, most ill. Not unlike himself right now, he thought, as a wave of nausea swept through him. He needed to pick a room and lie down.

  He chose a room which had a hearth, and prayed the chimney wasn’t too decayed to draw the smoke up and away. This place was buried so deep in the wood that he didn’t worry about anyone either scenting or sighting the smoke. He gathered bits and pieces of wood that had fallen either from the roof or branches that had made their way in over the years. It took about twenty minutes of scavenging so that he had a good-sized pile that would last him the night. He pulled his sleeping bag out as well as another of the pain pills the doctor in Dublin had prescribed for him. He needed two, but he didn’t want to be entirely unconscious should someone come upon him in the night, as unlikely as that seemed.

  He built the fire carefully, feeding it slowly as the medication took hold and blurred the outlines of both his pain and the room around him. It was like dousing a fire at the edges but without the ability to actually put out the hot heart of it. He was relieved to see that the smoke was going up the chimney. It was drawing well enough that he needn’t fear choking to death on smoke while he slept and the warmth of the fire was a relief to his chilled, damp self. He changed his wet sweater for a dry one from his
bag, and then crawled into the sleeping bag with what little strength he had left.

  Casey lay awake, despite his exhaustion. His knee still hurt like a burning blade was stuck into the bone. The night around him was so still that he cleared his throat just to hear something. The sound was startling. He didn’t frighten easily, but the place was bloody unnerving, what with the wind creeping into every corner to moan and make complaint and the dead leaves scuttling across the floor like tiny, spectral footsteps. It was in part, he knew, the purpose this building had served; it was a place people had fled to with great reluctance, with only a small hope left that they would survive the holocaust that was laying waste to the country around them.

  Suddenly, he realized that he hadn’t looked at the papers he had pulled out of the hole in the fairy house. He pulled his coat over to him and dug in the inside pocket. They were gone, the small bits of paper were gone. He searched through all his other pockets returning to the inside pocket again, in the vain hope he’d missed the papers due to the medication which was making him feel rather woozy. Finally, he put his coat down in defeat. He felt terribly bereft as if the papers had truly been his and he’d been meant to have them.

  He lay back down, utterly exhausted and not just physically. He was tired in all sorts of ways he realized. He had sought isolation when he arrived here, wanted it with a longing like that of an addict craving his drug of choice. For a long time he had savored it, for it had brought a certain level of peace with it. But sometimes, like tonight, he wondered if the isolation wouldn’t eventually drive him mad. He prayed before sleep, because the building and wind and the loneliness in his heart seemed to require it. It was a drifting prayer, half spoken out loud, half a slow stream of thought in his semi-conscious mind. He prayed for his pain to recede, he prayed for the people he could not remember but who lived inside him somewhere like ghosts that slid through his fingers each time he tried to touch them.