Haunting Beauty (7 page)

It was a book. She let out a shaky breath. She’d expected something worse, something threatening.

Not knowing what her mother wanted, Danni crept closer. The book was bulky and irregular—not quite squared at the corners—easily the size of a seat cushion. Its black cover was made of leather, beveled with concentric spirals, like the comb the woman in white had held out. Jewel-encrusted gold and hammered silver twisted and twined around the edges and corners. A trio of circular lines connected in a mysterious lock fixed over the jagged edges of thick creamy paper. There were more symbols—like letters, but not any she’d ever seen before—set in a row across the front of the cover. She reached out to touch them, but her mother grabbed her wrist and stopped her. Slowly she shook her head.

Fingers curled into her palm, Danni let her hand drop down to her side. By degrees she became aware of a low hum trembling in the air. It pulled at the pit of her stomach and jarred her already stretched nerves. She felt hot and clammy, and she wanted nothing more than to back away, because suddenly she didn’t want to touch the book anymore. Suddenly she wanted away from it.

The humming became a drone that throbbed and pulsated all around her. Too low to be heard, too insistent to be ignored. It rose from the floor, dropped from the ceiling, pushed and shoved from the walls until Danni thought it would crush her down like an aluminum can. A heat began to glow in her mind, a fiery coal that flared in response. Eyes clenched tight, Danni tried to force it back, pictured herself as a fist, opening against resistance, expanding and extending until she’d created a space within the confines and she could breathe again. She didn’t know how or even
what
she’d done, but the pressure had eased.

She opened her eyes. Her mother stood stiffly to her left, white-faced and rigid, her gaze fixed with an emotion Danni couldn’t decipher. There was fear and there was anticipation, and both were directed at Danni.

As if on cue, they turned their attention back to the black book sitting like a fat spider on the table. Danni glared at it, wanting it gone, wanting nothing more than to see it thrown into the blazing fire and turned to ash. On some level she didn’t understand, she knew the book was responsible for the sick feeling in her gut.

Without warning, the three interlocking circles burst apart and the cover flew open, fanning sheaths of thick paper in a blurred arc. Both Danni and her mother gasped and stumbled back.

A dark and fecund odor filled the room, filled Danni. She tried to turn away from it, tried to take another step back, but now she couldn’t move. Her eyes were fixed on the whirring pages, her mind enthralled by the creamy blur of their movement. What was this book?

The pages stopped, leaving the book opened in the middle, spread like something vulgar, something unnatural. She was shaking her head even as the first drop of red seeped from the binding to the polished surface of the table. Like honey, thick and sticky, it inched to the edge and then dripped over the side, following the intricate maze of the trellis before spilling to the floor.

Once again, the air became too heavy to breathe. Ripping her horrified gaze from the dripping wetness, Danni gave a surging mental push against the weight bearing down on her, gaining just a small space this time.

The red pool grew, bubbling up from the open spine and spreading out. It was blood, she thought. The tabletop was covered and now the liquid poured over the edge, faster and faster, spilling to the floor in a crimson tide. In moments it would be at her feet, and then it would touch her like the sticky tendrils of an inescapable nightmare. She wanted to scream. She
needed
to scream.

The pressure continued to build. Around her—inside her. It pressed against her ears, bore down on her heart, on her empty lungs, on her thoughts. She was past the point of distinguishing between reality and vision. This was happening and she couldn’t stop it. This time, there was no way out.

Blackness clouded her sight, and she knew if she didn’t breathe soon she was going to faint, right here, right now. And if she succumbed there would be nothing to keep that ooze from covering her feet, her legs, pouring into her mouth, her mind.

Danni took a deep, gasping breath.

Like a trigger, the sound of it shot across the room. The pages of the book began to fan again, furiously thrumming backward, forward, creating a noxious wind that lifted her hair and stung her cheeks.

Danni did the only thing she could. She loosed the scream trapped beneath her fear and hurled it across the room. She felt it ripping, tearing, shredding the invisible wall around the terrible book and then it broke free.

The book slammed shut with a
bang
that resounded, and the spiraled knots of the lock seemed to rush forward and join, mating with crude and sinister glee before it caught with a metallic grind.

Before she could take a second breath the book vanished, then the table, then the room. She was standing in the pouring rain with her mother again, and the air was pure and sweet. She gulped it in, staring at her mother as shock or cold or both wracked her body.

“What was it? I don’t understand what it was,” she tried to say.

But the words were garbled, swallowed by the enormity of her fear. A look of agony pulled her mother’s features and she began to fade. “No,” Danni cried.

But in an instant she was gone.

Danni stared at the foreign land and suddenly the blaze of emotion turned from terror to frustration and anger. “What now?” she yelled at the sheep, the clouds. “What am I supposed to do now?”

And then a word took shape in Danni’s head, like a sprout pushing from the black earth, becoming a green shoot and then a blooming flower of understanding. It was followed by another and then more.

Fennore. The Book of Fennore.

“What is it?” Danni breathed. “What do you want me to do? I don’t even know where I am. Do you hear me? Where the hell am I?”

No one answered, her mother didn’t reappear, but another trembling image poked up from a dark furrow in her mind. It wavered before snapping into focus.

Home.

This terrible place was home.

Chapter Four

T
HE Book of Fennore, Danni learned via the seemingly endless web pages she’d read between customers, was an ancient text thought to predate the Book of Kells—the illuminated manuscript written sometime in the eighth century. The Book of Kells was famous for its ingenious illustrations and the breathtaking artwork interwoven into the text. It told the story of Christianity, combining gospels with portraits, ornate canon tables, and intricate symbols. But where that book was dedicated to Christianity and was a historical treasure of Ireland, the Book of Fennore dealt with a darker side of Irish culture—the part seeped in superstition and born of its pagan ancestors. Its claim to fame came in the form of sinister legend and damning lore.

And the Book of Kells was real and on display in Dublin. The Book of Fennore was only a myth.

Or so the numerous pages she’d read claimed.

Danni tried to take comfort in that consensus. The Book of Fennore didn’t exist. Like the boogeyman or the Loch Ness monster, it wasn’t real. But she could still smell it, still sense it in the air. Still see the blood seeping from the pages and feel that dark, malevolent vibration working its way through her body.

All that from seeing it in a vision. She couldn’t imagine what it might be like to
really
stand in its presence. She didn’t want to even think of it. But there was a reason her mother had shown her the Book of Fennore, and Danni was afraid it had been a warning of what was to come. Of what she might be forced to face.

She rubbed her eyes. If that didn’t make her sound like a raving lunatic, she didn’t know what would.

Fennore, she read, was from the Gaelic word meaning
white ghost
. She noted that
Fionúir,
as in Ballyfionúir, was listed as a derivative. The white ghost. Was she the woman who’d appeared to Danni? It certainly fit.

Some experts speculated that the white ghost had been a pagan priestess before the birth of Christ. The Book of Fennore, they claimed, was her guide to the underworld of dark magic. Others thought the Book was propaganda created by the last of the Druid priests to instill fear into their dwindling flock of believers.

It’s thought that our ancestors were ancient Druids,
Sean’s voice whispered in her head.

It was all conjecture, of course, because there was no tangible evidence that the Book of Fennore was anything but a widely circulated legend. Still, the controversy over who authored the Book raged on. Danni couldn’t help but see the irony in an argument over who might have written the Book they all agreed didn’t exist.

The disparity narrowed when it came to the content and purpose of the Book. All parties concurred that the Book of Fennore was believed to be a fearsome tool capable of harnessing the power of the universe. What was meant by that remained unknown. Likewise, how all that power could be utilized was a mystery as well.

What seemed clear to everyone was that the Book of Fennore should not be trifled with. All that power didn’t come cheap. As with most religious myths, the gifts the Book of Fennore bestowed would inevitably bring tragedy and death—worse, anyone foolish enough to use it for personal gain could ultimately unleash on the world an evil of unimaginable dimensions. The Book of Fennore could not be trusted to obey any man’s law—worthy or not.

“Terrific,” Danni muttered. “So why’s my mom got all the evil in the universe hidden in an antique coffer?”

It would take a historian to make sense of everything she had read, and Danni was far from that. But it seemed for every expert refuting the Book and its powers, there was another coughing up proof that it had existed at one time even if it did no longer. In the infinite realm of belief, the Book of Fennore had a great following. There was even a picture of it, drawn in a journal by a monk who’d lived seven hundred years ago.

All the skin on Danni’s body seemed to pull tight as she stared at the sketch. He had the asymmetrical shape right, the pitted blackness of the leather, the entwined silver and gold, and the glitter of jewels. He’d floundered when it came to duplicating the knot that locked it tight, though. Not surprising, it had been intricate and strangely fluid.

But for something that wasn’t supposed to be real, she and the monk had both imagined it in the same way.

Danni shivered, wondering if the monk had felt that screeching hum that still seemed to rattle her bones . . . or seen the thick and viscous liquid leaking from its pages. Had someone shown the Book to the monk as her mother had shown it to Danni? If so, who? And why?

She covered her face with her hands. Her head hurt. Her mind ached. But she felt like she was circling something and if she just kept at it, she would figure out what it was.

Sighing, she scrolled to the next link her search had pulled. This one took her to an article from the
Irish Times
archives, titled “The Bloody Isle of Fennore.” The date on the article was October 1999. She read the first line twice, letting it sink in before she continued.

The tenth anniversary of the murders and suicide that rocked the tiny fishing village of Ballyfionúir passed with little ceremony and no closure.

Closure.
There never seemed to be any of that in her world. It was something Danni had longed for and dreaded her entire life.

Although officials insist the investigation into the disappearance and likely murders of Fia MacGrath and her children will continue until they are found or their bodies recovered, they admit the likelihood of the young mother and her children being alive is slim to nonexistent. The triple murders of the MacGraths followed by the apparent suicide of their attacker was sensationalized when two additional bodies were later found in an unmarked grave, bringing the death toll to six. One of the victims was positively identified as the son of the alleged murderer, Niall Ballagh.

Stunned, Danni paused and read that again. Niall Ballagh was the alleged murderer? Niall
Ballagh
? Related to Sean Ballagh?

Rumors that the mythical Book of Fennore had been found on the island and was the catalyst to the violence that occurred that night have added to the mystery surrounding the grisly and brutal slayings, and fueled an international search for the victims, who have never been found. Cathán MacGrath, husband and father to three of the victims, is the only known survivor. MacGrath’s eyewitness account portrays Niall Ballagh as a twisted and jealous man on a killing spree, which left MacGrath’s wife and children dead and Cathán MacGrath seriously injured.

Using MacGrath’s account of the events that took place, investigators have tried without success to uncover the catalyst for Ballagh’s actions, but a head injury sustained in the attack has hindered much of MacGrath’s recall and made his memory unreliable. MacGrath has never been able to offer insight about the subsequent deaths of Ballagh’s son or the unidentified woman found buried with him.

When asked about the rumored Book of Fennore and its possible discovery on the island, Cathán MacGrath denied all speculations and accused the media of ridiculous sensationalism. Chief Inspector Byrne responded in like, “When so many innocent people are killed, the public seeks an explanation that will make sense of it. Unfortunately, some things will never be explained.”

Evidence uncovered by the Garda supports Cathán MacGrath’s accounting of what happened that night, but without the bodies of the alleged victims, much of it is inconclusive.