Strange Dominions: a collection of paranormal short stories (short story books) (4 page)

“So you see,” Martha concluded, “ghosts can’t really harm you. They’re no more real than the images on a cinema screen.”

“Yeah, and Robbie can make them happen,” Tommy said, all agog. “Go on, kid,” he urged, “make somethin’ else happen!”

“I can’t make things happen!” he shouted, rising to his feet, “They just happen, whether I want them to or not,” With that he ran from the cabin.

Sarah rose to follow him and offer her comfort, but Martha interceded. “Leave him be for now,” she said, “He needs time to think things through.”

A painful constriction suddenly gripped her chest. She gasped for breath. Her face grew pallid and she was sweating profusely, signs that her diseased heart was undergoing yet another frightening incident. Fumbling in her pockets for her medication, she popped a tiny pill beneath her tongue.

“What’s wrong?” asked Sarah, alarmed by the sudden transformation.

“It’s nothing to fret yourself over,” she reassured her, “I’ll be fine in a minute or two.”

Seeing the old woman in such a condition brought about a sudden change of heart in Sarah. She suddenly felt ashamed of their former treatment of her. The badgering and abusive name calling no longer seemed so funny. She wanted to tell her how sorry she was and would have done so had not Robbie’s ‘screen projector’ fired up again!

Amid the abrupt clamour of a buffeting wind and now labouring marine engines, Martha called out to the children not to be afraid.

Despite her reassurance that they were safe, Sarah threw her arms about the old lady and clung on.

Tommy on the other hand was grinning inanely, completely exhilarated by the whole affair, knowing now it wasn’t real.

Martha was immediately struck by the boy’s earlier description of the boat. The constantly shifting imagery was indeed that of the Cormorant as it had been some twenty or more years ago. But one thing remained markedly absent, its continued non-appearance fuelling her need to seek it out. She clambered to her feet, but was instantly thrown to the floor as the boat rocked violently to starboard. It was then she realised that the two images had coalesced. Things had unexpectedly become very real.

Sarah was beside herself with terror. She pleaded for Martha to stay where she was.

Ignoring the teen’s entreaties, and the sickening pain in her chest, Martha rose uncompromisingly to her feet. Nothing was going to prevent her from accomplishing her goal.

She was almost within reach of the cabin door when a startling crash from the stern reverberated through the bulkhead. Only then did she remember the frightened and angry child who had run out on them.

Seeing Robbie, soaked to the skin and ashen faced, should have brought home to her the alarming consequences of her actions, but she was far too close to the truth to let compassion stand in her way. The boy had seen something they hadn’t and it had taken him to the brink of nervous collapse. On a still heaving deck, and with cold, clinical detachment, she set about interrogating him.

Tommy had never liked Martha Pedigrew and the old crone’s relentless badgering of his friend was doing little to remedy his scorn. Finally he snapped, his outrage erupting into open hostility. Hauling Robbie to his side, he warned her to leave them be, if she knew what was good for her.

She threw him a withering glance and made a grab for Robbie, but his companions closed ranks; an uneasy standoff that Robbie himself broke.

“I saw a man, Tommy!” he cried, vying to be heard above the raging tempest, “He was dressed in oilskins and one of them floppy sailors’ hats.”

“Where? Where did you see him?” Martha barked, “Tell me!”

“There!” he said, pointing to the hatch, “He was climbing down into the hold when the boat rocked. The lid fell on his head and I never seen him after that.”

“His face. Did you see it? This is important, Robbie. Try and remember.”

“No, Doctor Pedigrew, I didn’t.”

She took hold of his arm and shook him. “You must have. He was only feet from you. You’re lying!”

“You’re hurtin’ me. Let go!”

“Not until you tell me the truth.”

“I have!” he insisted, “His hat was coverin’ his face. That‘s why I couldn‘t see it.”

Martha released her grip, mortified by her ill treatment of a child who had already suffered enough traumas in his short life.

She knew that the death of his father had acted as a catalyst for his abilities, as it had for others who had experienced sudden traumatic events. She suspected, too, that powerful, negative emotions played their part in setting free the boy’s latent ability to unlock the past. In fact, she might never have witnessed the latest and most impressive manifestation had it not been for his thoughtless friend angering him earlier.

The wheelhouse now stood between them and the hatchway, obscuring from view the spectral figure emerging from its inky blackness. Only the dull thud of the hatch cover dropping carelessly against the deck alerted them to its presence.

With bated breath they watched and waited, clinging desperately to the bow rail least they be washed overboard.

From behind the bulkhead crawled a bedraggled figure. An unruly shock of bloodied hair spilled out from beneath his sou’ester. He struggled gallantly against the elements, trying to regain his footing on the pitching deck. The side rail was within reach and he grasped it in both hands. Hauling himself erect, he staggered forward, pain etched across his weather-beaten face.

Sarah turned away from the distressing spectacle. But Robbie’s attention was now on Martha who, on seeing the apparition, had clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes filled with horror and recognition.

‘Matthew!’ That was the name Robbie had heard escape Martha’s lips; the name he unintentionally now spoke aloud.

Martha’s head snapped round at the mention of it, “Please, Robbie!” she begged, “Stop this now.” But in her heart of hearts Martha knew there was nothing the boy could do as they watched the luckless soul struggle against his fate.

Matthew drew nearer - one pace - two paces- then another - before finally coming to a halt.

Dragging his sou’ester painfully from his head, he looked heavenwards, “I’m done for, Martha. Forgive me,” he wept, sinking to his knees.

Despite her awareness that he was little more than an ephemeral echo of a time long passed and could never return to her as she had known him, Martha reached out to him, willing him on. He was less than eight feet from her when a towering wall of water crashed over the deck.

Martha and the children raised their arms defensively, fully expecting to be washed overboard. Then, all fell eerily calm.

Sarah peeked warily out from behind her arms, “It’s over!” she cried.

Martha looked up. Matthew was gone. She ran to the rail and called out to him, but to no avail.

A sympathetic arm wrapped around her waist and she looked down to see a tearful Sarah looking up at her. “He’s gone, Mrs Pedigrew, she said.”

She pulled her close to her side, telling her, “I never got to say goodbye to him. Every time he put out to sea I would tell him how much I loved him. But on that last day we’d argued. I had a feeling something was going to happen, but he just wouldn’t listen.”

“Mam calls dad ‘bull-headed’ when he gets like that.”

She smiled down at her. “Fishing was his livelihood. ‘I trust in God, my crew, and the shipping forecast’ he’d say.”

“What happened to the others?”

“They died, too. The sea eventually gave them up, but Matthew was never found. The Cormorant is the closest link I have to him. I couldn’t part with it. When I met Robbie everything seemed to fall into place. Maybe there was a way to see him one last time.”

Tommy was leaning over the side rail, peering down into the attenuating mist. His exultant cry brought Robbie to his side. There, nestled in the sodden grass at the foot of the keel, lay the ladder and before anyone could do anything to stop him he clambered over the rail and dropped from sight.

As they hurriedly disembarked and made their way across the field, distancing themselves from the boat and its lone occupant, Robbie gave a backwards glance.       Through the clearing fog appeared a pinpoint of light. Flickering tongues of flame sprouted up hungrily consuming the age-old timbers. Beside the flaming hull stood Martha Pedigrew, her careworn figure slowly turning and vanishing into the darkness.

Robbie called out, “Look, Tommy! She’s set fire to it! Why would she do that?”

“Cos she’s barmy, that’s why.”

Sarah turned to Tommy. “She isn’t ‘barmy’! It’s like one of them Viking funerals they told us about at school. She’s sending’ his soul to Valhalla.”

“Whatever!” he replied, “But I still think she’s barmy.”

“Men!” Sarah bemoaned.

Death came to Martha in the twilight of her bedroom and in those last moments of mortality the hidden memories of immeasurable lifetimes began to surface.

The familiar souls she had encountered in this life she now realised she had always known, in one guise or another. Like birds of passage they had journeyed with her from the beginning of time, each an integral link in the chain of causality that bound them together. They were souls forged by earthly deeds, their acts, good or bad, determining the circumstances of their collective incarnations.

Death and rebirth, she now understood, were not so predetermined as to entirely exclude the influence of the human will upon them. Matthew’s stubbornness had not only brought about his own demise, but had also altered the chronology of her own. She had become a troubled soul, unable to rest.

But where was Matthew now? What new persona had he adopted in order to expunge the guilt of his former life?

For the first time since his troubles began, Robbie awoke from the deepest slumber he had ever known to an uncommon feeling of contentment. Though he could not for the life of him understand why, he felt as though a heavy burden had been lifted from his troubled shoulders.

Rannith eyed Áine with mild suspicion. For untold millennia she had watched over the M’Lauchlin’s fortunes, her unearthly shrieks and wails foretelling the passing of many of the ancient clan. But as they watched the unsuspecting
mortal youth something in her demeanour unsettled the Fianna Sidhe warrior .

The moon had crested and columns of silvery light pierced the woodland canopy, magically transforming its interior. It was a scene that fifteen-year-old Conner M’Lauchlin had witnessed many times and had never tired of.

A suffusion of wild garlic and lavender scented the evening as he lay beneath the majestic oak. It was the same pervasive odour he had smelt the night his grandfather had died. At his funeral, too, it was conspicuous, causing a gaggle of his ageing aunts to sough of the ‘White Lady of Sorrow‘.

As to what they had alluded he never found out. Two days later they, along with his grandfather’s ashes, returned to Ireland. Nevertheless, as had happened on each of those occasions, he had an unsettling sense of being watched by unseen eyes.

From his vantage point on the hill he looked around, but all was calm and serene. Only the gentle murmur of the leaves high in the canopy disturbed the night. Still he could feel the troubling presence close by and decided it was time to leave.

Taking hold of the rope swing hanging from an overhead branch, he leapt into space. Down he sped, the wind whistling passed his ears in his gathering momentum, the steep embankment dropping abruptly away beneath him. Outwards and upwards he soared, intersecting the dirt track far below in an exhilarating arc that took his breath away.

At the apex of his climb a resounding crack rang out. The once tense rope recoiled back on itself, and he plummeted earthward into the unyielding woodland floor.

Seconds passed. Áine remained mute, unmoving and unchanging.

Rannith turned in bewilderment, wondering why she had not transformed into the wailing hag. Only now did he see the inner turmoil reflected in her eyes. She was struggling against her very nature; fighting desperately against the need to perform the
caoineadh.

Conner awoke from his brief period of unconsciousness to the frightening realisation that he was completely paralysed. It would be hours before his drunken father would even notice his absence. By then it might be far too late, his fertile imaginings having already conjured up frightening scenarios of how death might overcome him
.
He thought too of his grandfather, the one comforting and stabilising influence in his chaotic life, and of how he would soon be joining him.

In the midst of his anguish he heard a soft voice say, “Look, Rannith, he still lives!”

“Aye, but for how long, Áine?” he heard another say, “He is beyond saving. Do what you must and have done with it.”

Conner blinked away clouds of tears and gasped in awe at the sight before him. Only in faerie tale picture books had he seen her like before.

From beneath a cowled, mist-like, cloak intensely green eyes held him spellbound. Her scarlet mantle flowed fluidly on the night breeze as if possessed of a life of its own. Shrouded though she was he could see her delicate form, and her pale face framed by an abundance of red-golden hair.

He was instantly struck by her height. She was far taller than the images he’d seen depicted in the picture books of his childhood. By his reckoning she was at least two inches bigger than himself.

She approached the stricken teenager then turned to her companion, gasping, “He sees me!”

“Aye, and the moon is made of cheese,” he heard the gruff voice quip, his cold eyes narrowing as he came into view.

Though somewhat smaller than his companion, he was powerfully built and wore a draggletailed calfskin skirt and tunic. A large broadsword was slung casually over his shoulder, lending a sense of menace to his medieval attire.

Conner’s face betrayed his fear at the warrior Sidhe’s approach.

“Finvarra’s beard! He does see us!” declared Rannith.

“Please don’t leave me here, Áine!” Conner begged.

Ignoring his plea, the masterful Sidhe again counselled abandonment.