Halloweenland

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Riley and I went home, and you and Flo stayed here.”

  Malone nodded with satisfaction. “Yes! Hell, I just had my twenty years in by then anyway, and I knew love when I saw it. Would have been crazy to do anything else. And it was really great until Flo passed on, and now it’s just merely wonderful.”

  Grant nodded, letting the moment pass.

  “So . . .” Malone began, diplomatically.

  Grant leveled his gaze at his old friend.

  “What do you know about Samhain?” Grant asked.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  They set out the next morning, which dawned blue and bright. Grant didn’t want to get out of bed, but forced himself to. He felt as if he’d been rolled over by a log. He knew it would take a couple of days to get the jet lag out of him, and that there was nothing to do but fight through it. The bottle of Paddy Irish whiskey they had shared the night before (Malone had scoffed when Grant requested scotch, and after the second drink Grant had to agree with his old friend that Irish whiskey was, indeed, smoother and easier on the belly than any scotch) had helped him sleep but also made him even more reluctant to rise.

  But Malone was there in the doorway, hitting the back of a frying pan with a spoon and yelling, “Get up, you bastard! No laggards in my house!” and ten minutes later Grant was in the tiny toilet, shaving and making himself presentable in whatever way he could.

  “I forgot they called you Captain Iron Ass,” Grant growled.

  “Trouble with you,” Malone said over their breakfast of coffee and scrambled eggs with salmon, “is you’ve had no one to kick your ass for a while. When you were little you had your momma, and then you had the Marine Corp for a bit, and then you had Rose for a good long bit. And now you have nobody but yourself, which is bad company.” He gave Grant a mock hard look. “Well, now you’ve got me. As long as your in my care, little Bill, you’ll snap to. You were talking a lot of nonsense last night, and not all of it out of the whiskey bottle, which I had to mull over, and I definitely don’t like the shape you’re in, so I’ve decided on a couple of rules. And if you don’t like them or want to comply, then you can get your butt back to Dublin Airport. In short, it’s my way or it’s back to New York. Agreed?”

  Grant made a sour look. “What kind of rules?”

  Malone lifted a thick forefinger. “One. While you’re in my care you’ll be clean and sober, ’least till after dinner. Then we’ll share a drink or two. We might have a pint along the way, at lunch and such, but no drinking alone. Yes?”

  Grant nodded slowly. “I can live with that. Maybe.”

  “You’d better do more than that.” He held out his beefy hand. “Give me your flask, then.”

  Grant started, then began to laugh. He reached into his jacket pocket and removed the flask of Dewar’s he kept there. “Once a cop . . .” he mumbled, putting it in Malone’s palm.

  Malone raised a second finger. “Two. Knock the cigarettes down to a pack a day. You know you can’t smoke in pubs here anyway, right?”

  “Christ! When did that happen?”

  “Couple years back. It was thought there’d be an uprising and general anarchy, but nothing happened except that there’s no more smoke in the bars. You can’t afford the good smokes here anyway.”

  “I should have bought them on the plane.”

  Malone nodded. “Yes, but you didn’t. I’m not telling or asking you to stop, just cut it down. I don’t like it in the house anyway.”

  Grant looked down at the lit cigarette resting on his plate and stubbed it out.

  “Christ . . .”hemuttered, “you sure you were a real cop?”

  Malone grinned, and raised a third thick finger. “Three. Moderate the crazy talk. The way you were going on last night about this Lord of the Dead and The Little Girl Who Must be Stopped was worrying the bejesus out of me, and not for any boogeyman I might see. You were raving like a madman, Bill! You can’t do that, especially in public. Act like a cop, not like a crazy American.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  Malone lowered all three fingers. “I don’t know. But that doesn’t matter. You’re a fellow police officer and Riley Gates, rest his soul, vouched for you, and that’s good enough for me. I don’t think you’re a lunatic, at least not a whole one, and I do believe you’ve seen a lot of what you called ‘weird shit.’ Riley used to mention the strange goings-on in Orangefield from time to time. As for the rest, we’ll see. The way I look at this is, this is police business, and we’re looking for someone. What we find at the end, well, I’ll keep an open mind.” He jabbed all three fingers up again, into Grant’s face. “Which isn’t to say everyone in Ireland will. The Irish don’t like meddlers, and they don’t much suffer fools, especially if they’re not homegrown. This may be the home of banshees, leprechauns, pookas and changelings, but that doesn’t mean the average Irishman believes in them. Yes?”

  “I get it.”

  Malone went back to his own breakfast plate. “How do you like the eggs, by the way?”

  “Not as good as in the Burlington Hotel yesterday.”

  Malone made a face. “You’re right. The trouble is the salmon. Everyone puts it in everything over here. After a while you get used to it, but that doesn’t make it any better.”

  “It’ll do.”

  “I would think so, compared to those Ranier Hotel accommodations you’ve been enjoying in Orangefield.”

  Grant shrugged and looked away.

  “Well,” Malone said, tactfully changing the subject, “I’ve got our itinerary all set for today. I made a few phone calls while you were sleeping half the morning away. We’re going to see a man from Trinity College who knows a few things about Samhain. Soon as you make yourself presentable we can get to it.”

  “I already shaved,” Grant said.

  Malone laughed. “Ha! Not in my book, you haven’t. Go back to the lav and look at yourself in the mirror. And do it right, this time. And comb your hair proper, and put on some aftershave. You look three days in the grave. That’s going to quickly change, my friend.”

  “Christ! How did Flo put up with this?”

  “She taught me every trick I know. The woman made me look mild and meek. I miss her greatly and I’m carrying on in her name.”

  “I don’t remember any of this when we all came over here on that tour . . .”

  Malone grinned. “We were on our best behavior then, for Rose and The Witch’s sake. But it’s a new day.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the bathroom. “Now.”

  Grant pushed his now-empty plate forward, and got up. “Christ!” he muttered.

  Malone grinned with self-satisfaction, and held up four fingers. “And we’ll have no more using the Savior’s name in vain, either.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Dr. Richard Farrely looked too young to know anything. He was short and very skinny, with sandy hair cut so that it almost looked like a mullet. He wore round horn-rim glasses and kept sniffing. Grant was reminded of a mouse.

  They met in the middle of Dublin Park and sat on one of the benches near the gardens which, incongruously, were still in bloom in late October. Grant had forgotten about the strange flora of Ireland; on their stroll over, before passing over a bridge at the River Liffey, they had seen palm trees, one of the signs the isle’s temperate climate. Before meeting Farrely, Malone had steered him around the park to stand before the mounted bust of James Joyce.

  “Anything you’d like to say to the great man?” Malone asked.

  “I couldn’t get through Ulysses.”

  “Bah. Riley and I didn’t even make you try to read Ulysses. It was Dubliners we pushed on you on that trip.”

  Grant stared at the blackened head of Joyce. “Good stuff, James,” he said.

  Malone laughed and took his arm. “Let’s go see the Boy Wonder,” he said.

  “You have to realize, Detective Grant, that Samhain is not a person.”

  Farrely, unable to sit down, was pacing in fro
nt of the two cops, sniffing and moving his hands as if they were on fire. Grant was surprised at his accent: Midwestern American.

  “Can you possibly stop shaking your hands, Doctor?” Grant asked.

  “Hmm?” Farrely said, and Malone jabbed Grant in the ribs.

  “You were saying, Doctor?” Malone said.

  “Ummm . . .” Farrely looked at the ground, sniffed, put his hands into his pockets and took them out again. “I was saying that Samhain is not a person. Samhain is a festival, marking the beginning of winter and the completion of the harvest. In Irish it’s pronounced ‘Sah-ween.’ The Druids were deathly afraid that once winter came it would never end, and that there would be no more crops to plant. Samhain was marked by the offering of harvest bounty—and sometimes human sacrifices—to the Lord of the Dead, in hopes that the next planting in Spring would be a good one. It wasn’t much of a jolly celebration at all.”

  Farrelly paced, sniffed.

  “But—” Grant began, but the teacher went on, not minding him.

  “However . . . this harvest festival, eventually, became what is known as Halloween. You realize that Halloween isn’t much celebrated here in Ireland. In America it’s a different thing, of course, but the roots are in the festival of Samhain.”

  He suddenly stood stock-still and stared at the ground.

  Grant tried again. “But you said there was a Lord of the Dead.”

  “Oh, yes! And, actually, there are a few texts where his name became merged with that of the festival. It was said that on one night of the year, on what became Halloween, that the Lord of the Dead had the power to let the spirits of the departed roam the earth.”

  Grant was about to speak when the teacher answered his question: “Therefore, yes, over time—centuries, long after the Druids were gone—the name Samhain has been blurred with that of the original festival.”

  “And is there really a Lord of the Dead?” Grant asked.

  “Hmm?” The teacher looked up, startled. He thrust his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. Suddenly he laughed, a dry blurting sound. “A Lord of the Dead? Of course not! Are there banshees? Leprechauns?” He stretched out the last word to a ridiculous length, making it sound silly. “Look, there are all kinds of manifestations of the Death Lord in nearly all cultures. The Archangel Gabriel was known as the Angel of Death. In Hindu mythology—”

  “We’re done here,” Grant said, in disgust. He started to rise but Malone pushed him back onto the park bench.

  “Doctor,” Malone said politely, “aren’t there folk who still believe in such things?”

  The teacher barked another laugh. “Of course! I’ve been dealing with them my whole academic life!”

  Grant wanted to ask him if that meant for the last twenty minutes.

  Malone continued politely. “Have any of these folk been more . . . persuasive than others?”

  “Yes! I’ve talked to people out by the Blasket Islands who swear they’ve seen witches and fairies! Once you get out of the cities nearly everyone still believes in changelings. Or at least many of the older folks do. I tried doing a treatise on leprechauns,” again he pronounced it “leap-ree-cahns,” “but I couldn’t stop laughing enough to get more than a few pages into it. I have enough banshee stories to fill a book and a half! As a matter of fact I’m publishing a book on banshees next year, University of Michigan Press. The notes alone run forty pages. If it does well—”

  “Doctor,” Malone interrupted gently, “have you come across anyone who seems . . . familiar with the Lord of the Dead?”

  “Yes! Megan Conner almost had me believing he was real. She knows where he used to reside, claims she knows all about him.” He laughed. “In fact, she called me not two days ago, said she had just seen him! I tried to corroborate a few of her other claims, banshee sightings and such, and nothing came of it. She’s quite unreliable, in my opinion.”

  “And where might we find Megan Conner?” Malone asked, pulling out his notebook at the same time as Grant.

  “Hmmm?” Doctor Farrely stood up straight and said, “I can give you her address, if you like. She lives on the way to the Dingle Penninsula, in a beehive.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “Like I told you, boyo, it’s my way or the highway. We’re staying in Killarney tonight, and we’ll talk to this Megan Conner tomorrow. I won’t hear of anything else. Ten to one it’ll be a dead end, anyway. You heard what the professor said about her.”

  Grant already didn’t like the way Malone drove—but everyone in Ireland seemed to drive like a madman. Not as bad as Rome, but almost. Once they got out of Dublin the roads were way too narrow, and more than once Grant thought they would collide with a tour bus, all of which drove nearly as fast as the tiny cars on the winding roads. At least the roads were well paved.

  Malone had taken on the annoying traits of a tour guide. They had already stopped at the Rock of Cashel, an outcrop of limestone with a tourist trap attached: a group of one-thousand-year-old church ruins that jutted like white stone fingers at the blustery sky. The tour buses, huge rectangular dinosaurs, were lined up in rows, and Grant could hear the clicking of cameras, like crickets. There was a wall around the ruins, which made them inaccessible, but at least there was a restroom near the parking lot.

  Then back in Malone’s cramped Toyota, and through the Ireland Grant remembered: the wide dairy farms consisting of impossibly green fields, a bright rich green like no other on earth, which ranged down into valleys and up mountainsides, some fields looking almost vertical, partitioned by low rock walls. And the flocks of sheep, marked with stripes—blue, red—for identification.

  “The Galtee Mountains,” Malone explained cryptically, identifying the gentle rise of the slopes around them. They weren’t much, even compared to the Adirondacks where Grant lived, but the scenery in its own way was just as spectacular.

  The road straightened and they came into a town that looked vaguely familiar to Grant. Malone turned to him with a mischievous grin.

  “Remember this, Bill?” he said.

  They parked, and stretched their legs and crossed the road—a dangerous task, since there was a blind hairpin turn to the right and the cars negotiating it didn’t slow down.

  It looked even more familiar: the walk across another parking lot with a small cluster of buildings on the right, one of which was marked with a TICKETS sign.

  Grant peered ahead; as if on cue the sky had clouded and it began to trickle a misty rain.

  “My God, not this!” he protested.

  Malone laughed; the uppermost round curve of Blarney Castle met his eyes over the trees in the near distance.

  “Time to kiss the Blarney stone again, boyo!” Malone roared. He was already disappearing into the ticket office and emerged a few minutes later with two entrance passes in his hand.

  “It’s the damned dumbest thing in Ireland!” Grant said, torn between laughter and anger. He wanted to get to Killarney, to the woman Megan Conner.

  “That it is,” Malone said, the smile on his face spread from ear to ear. “But here we are.”

  Grant blew out a long breath, resigned. “Then let’s do it.”

  They walked the path to the castle, which grew as they approached. The rain intensified, a coating wet fog that exactly approximated the weather conditions of their first trip here.

  “Do you remember what Eamon, our tour guide, said?” Grant asked.

  “He said, ‘Don’t go up! You’ll break yer head on th’ wet steps! An’ it ’taint worth it!’ ” Malone answered, affecting a heavy brogue.

  The castle loomed—at the top was the ultimate Irish tourist trap, a line of pilgrims halfway up the rain-slick stone steps, and at the end, at the top, a slab of stone where the enraptured lay down, with the help of bored attendants, and were eased out over the edge of the parapets to kiss, upside down, the Blarney Stone.

  At the bottom of the castle, at the entrance, Malone turned to Grant.

  “Shall we d
o what we did the last time?” he asked.

  Grant said yes, and the two of them marched forward and planted their lips on the castle wall itself.

  “There!” Malone cried. “We’ve kissed the Blarney stone—only not the one at the top! Remember how Eamon thought that was the best thing he’d ever heard?” He laughed shortly and then became sober and looked at Grant. “I do miss the wives.”

  Grant nodded. “And I miss Riley.”

  “Me, too,” Malone said. “Let’s go get a pint somewhere, and miss him some more.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Killarney was as nice as Grant remembered. Of all the places they had visited on their tour, only Galway, a beautiful college town on the western shore, where the Atlantic Ocean gave it a climate just like Seattle in the States, with the spectacular Cliffs of Mohr, which resembled a staggered line of huge human profiles, including one known as “The Old Woman,” nearby, had captured his heart more. Killarney was the perfect small city/large town—cosmopolitan and at the same time intimate. There were beautiful shops and even a mall, but even this had not taken away from its charm. Grant remembered a toy store run by a Czech immigrant, and Rose had bought a hat in a stuffy little establishment that had been the thing she most treasured from their trip.

  Malone had booked them into the marvelous white old world–style hotel they had stayed in on their tour. It was, as the phrase goes, “centrally located,” which in this case was an absolute fact. They could walk to anywhere they wanted to go.

  They ate in the modern restaurant on the first floor of the hotel, and Grant was pleased to see that mussels were still on the menu. He ordered and Malone shared, and over their Guinesses they planned the next day.

  “I want you to look in the mirror later, boyo,” Malone said.

  “If you call me ‘boyo’ once more I’ll kill you,” Grant replied.