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Read on for a sneak peek at another chilling tale from Felicity Savage’s debut collection of occult and suspense stories, Black Wedding and Five More Funerals…
A NATURAL PHENOMENON
The dolmen felt sticky to the touch. Kathryn drew back her hand. There was a speckly brownish residue on her fingers. She wiped them on her jeans and walked around the outside of the granite uprights to Colm, who stood beside their rented car, looking down at the town of Kilcoole.
“Trying to imagine this place a hundred years ago,” he said. “I think my head might explode.”
Kathryn had been thinking of eras much longer ago than that. But she nodded. “It’s hard to imagine why anyone would ever have wanted to leave.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Colm’s laugh was strained. “I think I want to leave already.”
“Come on, Colm, jeez. We knew it wasn’t going to be all shamrocks and leprechauns.”
“No, of course not, but when you’ve got this really – really strong connection to someplace—”
“Then OK, maybe it is a bad idea to go there in real life,” Kathryn said tartly. “And maybe we wasted our vacation, and we should just go and hide out in a freaking Holiday Inn for the rest of the week.”
Face set, Colm shook his head. “You don’t get it.”
You don’t get it! The refrain of their five-year relationship, Colm’s preferred way of ending a conversation when he could not be bothered to explain himself, or was simply feeling lazy – for Colm was lazy, and pessimistic, in Kathryn’s opinion, a bad combination that threatened to turn his life into a string of self-fulfilling prophecies.
He had hit the stock-options jackpot on his first job out of school. After that he had drifted from Santa Clara to Austin, from Austin to Asheville, from Asheville to Boston, his period of dormancy growing shorter each time, like a serial killer’s intervals. During this slow migration Kathryn had almost unintentionally cultivated a habit of pretending not to get it, even when she partially or entirely did. To her fell the task of mustering sufficient insensitivity to keep their relationship functioning.
“Well, I’m hungry,” she said, “and thanks to the new! now with more imported groceries Ireland, we’ve got Greek salad, Polish sausage, Australian wine, and some French bread that looks improbably like the real thing. Let’s find out how it tastes, whaddaya say, hombre?”
They spread out their picnic on one of the rain ponchos they had bought in Galway, next to the dolmen, in its shade though not actually beneath its massive roof.
They had come to Ireland on a whim, following a cash windfall, to trace Colm’s roots. His grandparents on both sides had emigrated from the district around Kilcoole.
Kathryn had not expected that at the height of summer, the south of Ireland would be as hot as the Mediterranean. Even up here the day was windless. They had been able to drive to the very top of the hill and park on the grass beside the dolmen that seemed as uncared-for as it was unvisited, despite its prominence in their guidebook. Below the adjacent cattle field, Kilcoole tumbled steeply to a stone-walled harbor. Inland, the town had bloated into a traffic-infested snarl of new housing estates, competing gas stations and car dealerships, and the Tesco where they had bought their lunch before driving up here – this was the vista that had depressed Colm so much.
But when they first drove across the causeway, towards the old town straggling to meet them in pastel ragtag, while seagulls swooped screaming, Kathryn had exclaimed aloud, “Yes! Oh Colm, can’t you just see us living here? We could telecommute…” This, surely, was what Colm had been looking for all these years. But their excitement had faded into disappointment as they discovered that the old town was just a façade nowadays.
Now she said aloud, “It’s just a question of perspective.” Colm did not respond, but chewing on her baguette sandwich, she applied her mind with more urgency than usual to the problem of their future.
The birds got most of the baguette, the Polish sausage went back into the car; the Australian wine did its work. Side by side, in the shade of the dolmen, they went to sleep.
“Yes! Yes!”
Kathryn raised herself on one elbow. Colm lay flat on his stomach, taking pictures of the sunset that now swamped the top of the hill. Burnished spears of light glanced off his lens. “Yes! Wow!” He scrambled up and retreated from the dolmen. “Kath, can you stand in between – yeah – let me see your profile – yeah!”
She draped herself sexily against the bulkier of the upright slabs; arched her back and thrust out her pelvis in homage to an image from some advertisement floating around in the bilge of her brain. Colm had confessed to her once that he’d first been attracted to her “aesthetically,” and she sometimes thought that might still be his main reason for staying with her. Still, it was nicer to be appreciated than not. “God, you’re gorgeous,” he muttered. Click, click. The ends of her hair tickled the small of her back where her baby tee had ridden up. Something dripped on her forehead and slid down between her eyes.
“Eek!” She swiped the back of her hand across her forehead; stared at it aghast. “I’m bleeding. Colm!”
“What? Lemme see. What did you do?”
“Nothing – I just—”
“You’re not even scratched. Where’d that come from?”
As they stared up at the roof of the dolmen, blackness welled in a shadowed crevice, bulged, and fell sparkling into Colm’s palm. It filled the crease of his head line, bright red.
“Oh my God.” He fumbled for his camera. “Here, take it—” He ripped the strap over his head and thrust it out to her. “I already put it on video mode. Just keep shooting.”
“Something must be dead up there,” Kathryn moaned. Her hands were shaking, and Colm would later bewail the jerkiness of the video that showed a drop of liquid welling out of the granite overhead, then splashing into his cupped hands. But even so, the color of the liquid spoke clearly enough; and there was nothing on top of the dolmen, nor if there had been, any way for its blood to seep through the stone.
“Jaysus,” said Maura O’Brien. She sat on the sofa in her “front room” at the Harbor View B&B, looking at the screen of Colm’s camera, while the two Americans stood expectantly on either side of her.
“It’s gotta be a natural phenomenon,” Colm said.
“We think it may be the explanation for all those bleeding statues of saints,” Kathryn said. “I mean, whatever the explanation is.”
“I’d say the explanation is that someone’s been playing a trick on you,” Maura said. “How long did it go on like that? When did it stop?”
Kathryn resented her for pouring cold water on Colm’s excitement, but Colm did not notice. He said eagerly, “It started when the sunlight hit the underside of the rock – which means the sun was pretty low – and it stopped when the sun went down. I mean, that’s the interesting thing, isn’t it? It’s like Newgrange or something!” Catching himself at last, he made a rueful grimace. “I mean, I guess we’ve probably been played – tricked, but good. But I can’t see how they did it.”
“Neither can I,” Maura said, handing the camera back to him. “Sure I don’t think I’d want to know.“ She was in her fifties, thin, with a spongy white face. She rose and straightened her hooded sweater. “But there’s people desperate to believe all this kind of thing, isn’t there? Send that video into the television, you could be famous!” She smiled, exposing the missing canine that had given Kathryn a shock when they first met. “Will you be going out again for supper? I can recommend you a local restaurant.”
Given the rise of the euro against the dollar, they were avoiding restaurants. “We thought we might just go for a drink,” Colm said vaguely.
“Ah, then maybe I’ll see you at Houlihan’s later. Tell Diarmid you’re staying at the Harbor View, anyway.”
“Now we know which pub to avoid,” Kathryn muttere
d to Colm when they were out of the room.
But they soon discovered that Houlihan’s was the only game in town. There were four other pubs dotted along the streets that forked up from the harbor, with light coming from behind their frosted glass windows; but all of their front doors were locked shut.
END OF EXCERPT
A Natural Phenomenon is now available for purchase from your preferred online book retailer in print and ebook editions. Learn more about the book and the author at www.knightshillpublishing.com
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