Midnite Market of Malevolence #3 - Shadow of Yesterday

Never trust a faery.

Dia Dhuit Friends agus Enemies,

Welcome back to the Midnite Gazette for a special edition. Yes, this is only the third Midnite Market of Malevolence where I share a short story I’ve written. The last one was back in 2023, to be honest I haven’t been writing a lot of short stories but I will hopefully change that this year and get a few out (let’s aim for three).

This story is about a common issue in Ireland, land disputes. Many families fall out over who gets a house or who gets a farm, and that led me to write this story about the absolute extremes some people will go to in hopes of securing that land and what the cost of those actions may be. Enjoy and share with friends! And because I won’t be writing a goodbye paragraph after the story I’ll say it here. Stay safe, stay hydrated and most importantly

Keep It Sexy x

Shadow of Yesterday

Mikey Healy’s phone was just out of reach from his bloodied fingers. He pawed at the grass to grab a hold of it, but he could only brush it with his fingertips. Even if he could get to it, who’d save him now? A whip made of spines enveloped his legs and dragged him across the dirt. The hooded reaper climbed off their decaying stallion and wrapped the whip around the teenager’s neck. Bone crushing bone until a snap echoed across the fields banishing birds from their nests and the light from Mikey’s eyes that bulged like a toad on his purple face.

He’d spent the day in Navan with his mates, throwing black cat bangers into bins and at cars. They held a competition to see who could rob the strangest thing from a shop. His friend Spud won by stealing a harmonica. Halloween had come and gone, but their arsenal of fireworks remained. He stuck around Navan for a little longer than he should have, but the buses back to Kells ran regularly, so he didn’t mind. He’d have to walk home from the bus stop, but he always enjoyed a decent walk. Mikey nudged through the hole in the fence behind the bus stop and strolled down the dirt path that slalomed through the park and into the myriad of connected fields that would eventually lead to his family’s farm. Once he was sure he was alone and hidden by the trees that hung across the path like a warm blanket, he pulled a joint out of his pocket and sparked it up. In a small town like Kells, you could never be too careful as his brother Danny once told him, “the nosey pricks in this town know what you’ve done before you’ve done it.” He’d usually puff away on his more inconspicuous weed vape that made him feel like an android in the future smoking batteries, but that had died while he awaited his bus in Navan. He’d bought it off Tommy Gough’s older brother Mick, who everyone called Candy Flip Mick owing to his love of dropping acid and MDMA at the same time. He’d finished the joint before arriving at the first field, flicking its corpse onto the grass. As the roach flew through the air, he swore the wind spoke to him. He brushed this off as weed-induced paranoia. That was before he saw a set of crimson eyes burning a hole in him from the trees.

“Who’s that?” he asked. The trees snorted in response and exhaled breath flowed out from the trees like the morning mist. Mikey’s fear rose as his mind battled between logic and fear. Logic told him it was a horse. Riders loved to traverse the fields, but fear screamed for him to run before a bull charged at him. Running felt like his only option, even though he knew the bull would catch him. Ribs McKenna, one of the town’s taxi drivers, had become known as Ribs thanks to a bull. When he was a teen, one of his friends offered him five punt to run across a field and grab the electric fence on the other side. Little did he or his ribs know the farmer had recently bought a young bull full of energy for fucking or fighting. The farmer had been out in the field that day and placated the bull before it finished Ribs off, but Mikey knew he wouldn’t be so lucky. His brain had already turned him around and sent him off sprinting back to safety, but his body didn’t comply. He stood in fear as the mystery snorter stepped out from the shadows, revealing itself to be a horse the size of a moose and as dark as the night sky. Atop the horse sat a silent figure in a hooded cloak that hid their face behind an ocean of darkness. Mikey and his ribs sighed with relief at the sight of a horse instead of a bull.

“Christ, man. I thought you were a fuckin’ bull. I was shitting me togs.” The rider didn’t respond, and the horse let out another snort that exploded out of its nose like a backfiring car. If Mikey felt relieved at the sight of the rider and their elephantine stallion, his relief quickly vanished. The rider stepped out from the trees and sunlight illuminated the horse’s decaying body. The wind whistled through its exposed ribs. Had Mikey ran when he planned, he may have made it back to the park, but that wasn’t the reality he found himself in. A barrage of panicked fucks squeezed out of his lungs as he fled. Thrashing gallops built to a crescendo behind him as the cloaked jockey closed in.

Irish funerals are an event on the same level of importance as a wedding. Many joke that you’ll have better craic at a funeral than a wedding. The funeral is a two-day festival with the wake making up day one of the schedule. Funerals bring communities together. A coalescing of grief from friends, family, and locals from the community. People you see every day, people you haven’t seen in years, and even a friendly face who throws you a nod as you walk by them. Everyone shows their face, and if you can’t make the funeral, then you better make at the wake. Handshakes, tight hugs, tear-filled eyes, “sorry for your losses” and copious amounts of tea and sandwiches that morph into a copious amount of pints. It was all a part of this celebration of life, but Mikey Healy was fifteen years old. How do you celebrate a life that had barely even began? No, this was no regular aul funeral. How could it be? Somebody had butchered a well-liked local teenager and vanished without a trace, leaving the locals terrified. But folks knew they needed to rally behind the Healys. They gave them whatever support they could, even if it was just a simple handshake, a tight hug, or a quiet word of sympathy shared over a cup of tea. When the day of the funeral came along, they celebrated as best they could. Mikey’s older brother Danny gave a beautiful eulogy, while Mikey’s Gaelic football coach read out a poem for “the most naturally gifted player I’ve ever seen step foot on the club field”. His parents Tony and Marie couldn’t find the strength to get up on the altar and speak, and who could blame them? Afterwards, they went for food and drink. Pints started flowing, but people didn’t drink them with the usual vigour. Quiet sips as people searched for words. Every so often someone would crack a joke or reminisce about old tales from the pantheon of the town’s history, but these were momentary highs, a brief reprieve from the crushing weight of grief. Like Sisyphus’ boulder reaching the top of the mountain, the mood would soon come crashing down again.

Life had to go on though, but unlike most people who could slowly ease themselves back into life, farm life waited for no one. Heartbroken or not. Danny was usually away in Galway at college but had stuck around to help out around the farm, picking up his younger brother’s tasks. He walked into the kitchen while his mother Marie was standing at the sink staring out the window at the frostbitten fields, scrubbing a plate that was clean about five minutes ago.

“If you clean that plate anymore it’ll be transparent, Mam.”

“Oh, sorry. I lost the run of meself for a moment there. Do you want a cup of tea?”

“Aye sure, go on. Where’s Dad? I’ve not seen him all day.”

“Out in the shed smoking fags, thinking I don’t know. Wait there and I’ll make him a cup too.”

At the side of the house was a galvanised shed in the shape of a barn but smaller, like a shed dressing up as a barn for Halloween. Mostly used for storage, it also had a bed and a TV for if one of the lads brought over friends or if Tony wanted to watch football and couldn’t stop himself from screaming insults at every player who dared to make a mistake. “Right out to the shed with ye. I’m not listening to this all night,” Marie would shout. Danny nudged the shed door open and twirled into the room with a cup of tea in each hand. Tony jumped in his seat and executed his cigarette in the ashtray.

“Ah, it’s only me. Don’t worry. Mam knows you’re smoking, anyway.”

Danny took a seat down beside his father and handed him his cup of tea. Tony completed the trade by handing back a cigarette. Father and son sat in silence smoking and supping. Danny wanted to break the ice but every route of thought his mind took ended up at the same destination; Mikey. That’s the thing with tragedy. All anyone wants to do is talk to you about it because they think it would be rude not to, but all you want to do is talk about anything else. In the corner of his eye, Danny saw his Uncle Donal’s 1999 Honda Civic parked at the back of the shed like it had been for twenty years, but the cover no longer hid the metallic purple body that shone through the layers of dust.

“You took the cover off the Civic?”

Tony took a long drag out of his cigarette and spoke before exhaling, modulating his voice like some smoke powered robot.

“I did, yeah. Haven’t looked at the yoke in years. Guess everything that’s happened has me thinking about your uncle again.”

“D’ya think he’s dead or what?”

“Who Donal? Nah, he’s alive. I just dunno where he went, or if he’s safe. But he’s alive.”

“I hope so. It’d be nice to meet him someday. Tell me this though, how come you left the Civic sitting there all these years?”

“It’s not my car. He let me drive it a few times, but it was his baby. It wouldn’t have felt right to drive it. Plus, he took the only key with him.”

Danny let out a chuckle and saw his father crack a wee smile for the first time in a week.

“You’re free to get your own key made if you can find someone to make it. Car probably needs a bit of work to get running again though.”

“I might do, maybe in the summer as a wee project. No point while I’m off at college.”

“Aye, when are you heading back, actually?”

“I was thinking tomorrow or the day after but I can stick around if you need help”

“Ah no, head on back, might be good for your head.”

Danny threw the cigarette butt on the ground and stamped on it, gave his father a nod and headed for the door, turning to his dad before he left and telling him that “everything was going to be alright.” His father agreed externally, but his heart beat with doubt. His family needed him in these times, but he found himself unfocused and distant, unable to rally the troops as he so often did. His mind refused to loosen the binds that tied his thoughts of Mikey and the panic that he caused his son’s death. The detectives investigating the case had asked an array of questions, but one of them stuck in his mind like a moth sticks to light.

“Do you have any enemies?”

“Enemies? No, no, of course not. I’ve got in my fair share of scraps over the years, but who hasn’t? And people forget that kinda stuff almost as soon as it happens.”

Tony was lying to the detectives, of coure. He had an enemy and the perpetual grin across their grey face flashed into his mind when the question met his ears. But if he told them the story about this enemy, they’d drag him off to the mental hospital in Ardee.

It happened twenty years ago. A younger, more-in-shape Tony had spent the evening in Rafferty’s downing pints of Guinness and Harp. Soon finding his way onto the whiskey as he so often did. He drank like a horse until he was well and truly “full as a boot” - something he declared to anyone who passed him by on his walk home. He’d been drinking more often than usual because of his father John’s terminal cancer diagnosis. That night, however, took it to another level after his father revealed he was giving the farm to his younger brother Donal, who had shown himself to be the better worker. Donal was more reliable, skilled, and knowledgeable. According to his father anyway, though Tony vehemently disagreed. More reliable? Sure, Tony had a habit of showing up late with a hangover but there was no way in his mind Donal knew more about farming than he did and he sure as hell wasn’t more skilled. He argued with his father until his mother Peggy - God rest her soul - told him to get out and not come back until he’d cooled down. So, Tony took his mother’s advice and left for the pub. How better to cool down than with some refreshing pints? It took a lot of them to cool him down, but once he felt calm, he stumbled off back to the farm, stopping in Jade Palace for a three-in-one on the way. Though he didn’t consider the difficulty of eating a roasting hot container of chips, rice and curry while walking or stumbling to be more accurate. After almost dropping his food, Tony found himself a nice seat at a bus stop and plodded himself down onto the bench. Horsing plastic forks full of curry-soaked chips and rice into his gob, he mumbled curses through his chewing, globs of curry dripping down his chin and diving off onto his denim jeans.

“Who the fuck does Donal think he is? I’M THE ELDEST SON THAT FARM IS MINE NOT HIS! If only the little wanker would fuck off somewhere and let me have the damn farm. I’d run it better than him... better than Dad!”

He’d shout, “Fucking bullshit” and “why won’t he fuck off?” ad nauseum between forkfuls of food.

“Family problems, eh, my friend?”

In Tony’s eating and ranting, he didn’t notice the little ginger haired man sat next to him in a red suit and flat cap. A long ivory pipe hung from his lips as he held a match to the bowl. Puffing out green and white smoke that formed a triskelion before dissipating into the night air.

“Fucking hell, man. You scared the bleedin’ shite outta me!” The revelation of the red-haired pipe smoker caused Tony to jump and drop his food, looking down forlornly at the golden mess splat across the wet pavement.

“Apologies, my friend. I didn’t intend to scare you. The name’s Dalua Fear Dearg, professional problem solver. And you sound like you are in ownership of a mighty problem.”

“You made me drop me food, you wee prick”

Dalua Fear Dearg let out a laugh that bellowed from his belly and was louder than you’d expect from a man of his diminutive frame. He looked to be under five feet and his legs fluttered above the ground as they hung down from the bus stop bench.

“My deepest apologies” A snap of his fingers and the curried mess that painted the ground vanished. In Tony’s hand sizzled the food container, filled to the top.

“What the fuck? I knew I shouldn’t have drank that whiskey. I’m fucking seeing things.”

“The water of life has not betrayed you, my friend. Tricks like that are par for the course for my kind.”

“Your kind?”

“Faery folk.”

Tony shot Dalua a raised eyebrow and stood up from his seat. He towered over the little red man now.

“Are you having me on? Is this some sort of piss take?”

Dalua puffed away at his pipe and grinned. His lips crawled up his grey face almost touching his ears, that Tony noticed were sharp like the ears of a goblin or an elf.

“I have a penchant for trickery. I’ll give you that, but this here is no trick. You want what’s rightfully yours. I can give it to you.”

And so with a shake of their hands and a puff of the pipe a deal was made. Dalua would ensure the farm landed in the hands of Tony. Donal was not to be harmed. In return, Tony would hand over his first-born son to Dalua, with a changeling being left in his place to ensure no suspicion. Tony told himself it was the drink that drove him to make the deal, but the drink did no such thing. The deal came about from a cocktail of anger, jealously and resentment. Tony awoke the next morning to a horrible hangover and the news that his brother had gone missing. The previous night’s memories flowed into his brain, and Tony panicked. This was no strange dream he’d had. He really sold his brother and unborn son for his father’s farm. Tony’s father would pass away a few months later, never to know what happened to his son. With his father’s passing, the farm fell into Tony’s hands, fulfilling Dalua’s side of the agreement.

Marie awoke in the middle of the night to an empty bed. Embers danced in the fireplace to the musical crackling of the burning fire. Tony sipped on a brandy as he stared into the hypnotic flames.

“Finish that and come to bed, Tony. You’re helping no one by staying up all night drinking.”

Her husband’s body was in the room with her, but his mind was elsewhere. She approached him and placed a soft hand on his shoulder, taking the brandy out of his hand with her other. He turned towards his wife, looking at her through swollen, red eyes.

“This is all my fault, Marie”

“Don’t do that, Tony. If you go down that road there’s no coming back”

“I told the Guards that’d I’d no enemies”

“Sure you don’t. You sold Frank McCourt a banjaxed John Deere, but that’d hardly inspire someone to murder.”

“Dalua, Marie. I’m talking about Dalua.”

That was a name Marie hadn’t heard or thought about in years, relegated to the darker corners of her mind. The kind of memory that flashes across your mind at random like a shooting star, only to disappear back into the darkness.

“Jesus Christ, Tony. That was almost twenty years ago. Dalua is gone. We made sure of that.”

“Did we?”

Three months after Donal’s disappearance, Marie became pregnant. Nine months later, on the year anniversary of the disappearance, Danny was born. Tony had hoped for a daughter, a gendered loophole, to delay the deal. He was afforded no such luck, but when he looked into the eyes of his newborn son, he knew he needed a way out of the deal, no matter what it took.

Farmers are a superstitious bunch, even if they don’t like to admit it. They’ll salute magpies, score a cross on soda bread and never mess with a faery fort. Most don’t even know why they do it, only that they better or the following farming year won’t be a good one. But some in rural Ireland are much more in touch with the land and its folklore. There are no superstitions to those folk, only rules. Often derided as eccentric or insane until you need their help, and twenty years ago Tony needed their help.

Tony asked around farming circles, receiving laughs in response. He persisted in desperation and eventually got a lead that found him in the home of Setanta O’Shea in the Cooley Mountains. The old man had the wrinkly, grey skin of an elephant and a beard like a gorse bush. He was known for two things; his folklore knowledge and a special brew of nettle tea and Poitín that he called Cooley Brew. Over cups of Cooley Brew, Tony explained his predicament to Setanta. The old man fondled his bristly beard and responded with only a succession of exhaled yeah, yeah, yeahs or right, right, rights. When Tony finished the story, Setanta stood and paced back-and-forth.

“That was a horrid thing to do to your brother. If I was twenty years younger, I’d box the bloody jaws off ye. I’ll give you me help, but I’m doing it for your wife and your son. Not you ye back stabbin’ bastard.”

Setanta sent Tony on his way with a steel dagger and an iron crucifix pendant attached to a necklace.

“You’ll have to hand him your son. There’s no getting around that, but put this chain on him. The iron crucifix will stun the wee prick. Once he’s stunned, you need to recite this enchantment and drive the dagger into him. ‘This land belongs to you no more. With my Milesian blood, I drive you back through the Otherworld’s door.’”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself and stab him before you finish the enchantment, and for the love of God, don’t let him see the fucking dagger before he’s stunned.”

The clouds cried in the night sky above Meath, soaking Tony, Marie and baby Danny as they awaited Dalua’s arrival at St. Brigid’s Well in Ardsallagh. His red suit shone like a beacon between the trees as he approached the couple and his soon-to-be servant.

“Nice to see you again, Tony. ’Tis nicer to see you weren’t silly enough to not bring the boy.”

“A deal’s a deal. You held up your end. Allow me to hold up mine.”

Marie clutched Danny in her arms, gripping tight as Tony wrestled him loose.

“No, Tony. We can’t.”

“We must Marie!”

“We must.”

Dalua took the boy in his arms and a shit-eating grin climbed across his face, just as it had a year before.

“Don’t worry, Marie. Your boy will live well alongside me,” he said. Reveling in the mockery of the fools who were naïve enough to take a faery deal.

Dalua placed his hand on the boy’s face and then his chest. His fingers sizzled as they brushed against the iron. The faery flicked the shawl aside and his eyes screamed at the sight of the iron crucifix. Tony slid Danny out of the faery’s stiffened arms and stared into his Dalua’s frozen face.

“This land belongs to you no more. With my Milesian blood, I drive you back through the Otherworld’s door.”

No sooner had the steel blade breached Dalua’s skin had the faery burst into a cloud of dust. Banished back to the Otherworld.

Setanta took his last breath five years later. His son Fergus didn’t inherit his father’s enthusiasm for faery folk preferring to focus on his farm and livestock. Tony hadn’t stepped foot in the Cooley Mountains since that day, feeling he wouldn’t be welcome. But noe he needed help and he only knew one place he could get it, so he broke his promise and traveled back to the mountains. Fergus said he couldn’t help but he knew of someone who could.

Tony met Ferdia Joyce in a Dundalk pub that looked more like a famine-era hovel. A folk band played Danny Boy in the corner as the two men clinked their pints of Harp together.

“Always nice to meet a fellow Harp drinker. None of that Heineken or Carlsberg European soft boy shite.”

Setanta and Ferdia couldn’t have been more different if they tried. Setanta looked like a man who knew how to deal with faeries. One look at him and you’d be sure he could recite The Táin word-for-word. Ferdia, on the other hand, looked like he’d headbutt you over a game of pool. He wore an old Celtic jersey with Henrik Larsson’s name on the back and a pair of boot cut jeans with those brown shoes farmers from Carrickmacross or Leinster rugby fans wear. Ferdia looked and acted nothing like you’d expect someone in his line of work to. Tony even considered that Fergus may have sent him to Ferdia as a pisstake but Fergus didn’t seem like the type. He assured Tony that Ferdia, a former student of his father, was the right man for the job.

“The old man was right, though. Ye deserve a bating for what ye did to yer brother and, unlike the old man, I’m young enough to give ye one.”

Tony’s fighting days were long behind him and even if they weren’t, he wasn’t confident he could take Ferdia. He wasn’t a big man by any stretch, but some lads just have a look about them that screams fights for fun. He also had a dyed red mohawk and any man who willingly looked like that wasn’t right in the head.

“Batter me all you want. I’m not here looking for sympathy. I’m here looking for help. The bastard killed my son. He broke his fucking neck! I might deserve that... but Mikey didn’t.”

“Don’t get yer knickers in a twist, man. I’m only winding ye up. I’m no friend of the fae.”

Ferdia took a sup out of his pint, then pulled a pouch of Amber Leaf out of his pocket. He flung his tobacco and rolling papers onto the table and got to work on rolling himself a smoke.

“I’m sorry for what happened to yer son, I really am. I’m also sorry to say that Dalua didn’t kill him.”

“Stop taking the piss. You’ve had your fun.”

“I’m not taking the piss. You banished him and if you banished him, then he’s not going to be fuckin’ waddling around Kells, now is he?”

“Sure, I dunno anything about this shite. I dunno how long it lasts.”

“For good. Unique circumstances allow faeries to pop on over to our world, but if they get banished, then those circumstances go out the window. That’s one reason why we aren’t overrun by the wee gobshites.”

The men took their conversation to the smoking area, which was two stools and a table underneath a tin roof. Rain pinged off the roof and a smell of piss strangled the air. Tony lit Ferdia’s rollie for him, then lit up a cigarette for himself. Both men stood in silence, listening to the rain.

“Listen, man. This won’t be easy and I’m sorry to ask, but can ye tell me exactly how yer boy died?”

Tony hesitated a moment. He tried to block out the thoughts of Mikey’s death, knowing once they got in, they rarely left. He took a hefty drag out of his cigarette and nodded his head.

“He was walking home from the bus. He’d been in Navan all day. He always walked through the fields to get home so he could smoke a joint. He thought we didn’t know, but we did. The cops say someone on a horse attacked him, a pretty big horse by the looks of the hoof marks it left. Whoever attacked him dragged him along with a chain or something like it. They massacred him. He’d a few broken bones. Then they eh... they wrapped the yoke that they dragged him with round his neck and... and, eh…”

The cigarette went back between his trembling lips followed by rapid inhales and exhales as tears started welling up in his eyes. He pressed the joint of both thumbs into his eyes to plug the leak.

“Ah, fuck sake. I’m sorry... crying in front of a stranger making a show of meself.”

“Yer doing no such thing, Tony. It’d be weird if you didn’t cry. to be honest Ye don’t need to finish the story. I know how it ends. Will we sit down?”

Both men sat themselves down on some manky old pub stools. The torn covers revealing the stain-covered cushions. Tony leaned his elbow on the table and covered his mouth with his hand. Ferdia leaned forward with both elbows resting on his knees.

“Have ye ever heard of The Dullahan?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“The Headless Horseman basically. The Celtic grim reaper. Rides a big fuck off horse and carries a whip made of spines. Kinda whip that could break a neck.”

“And you think this fella killed Mikey? But why?”

Ferdia took one last pull out of his rollie, then flicked it out of the smoking area and into the torrential rain. He leaned forward, but turned his head to look at Tony.

“Did Dalua ever tell ye what he did with yer brother, no?”

Before Tony could answer, his phone rang. It was Marie.

A jogger found Danny’s body hanging from a tree in a field behind his apartment. The Gardaí quickly ruled it a suicide, though he left no note. There had been no sign of a struggle and other than a broken neck, his body was unharmed, unlike his brother. Despite his parents’ pleas, there wasn’t anything the cops could do. This appeared like an open and shut case of a young man struggling to deal with the loss of his brother. They say no parent should have to bury their own child. Tony and Marie would have to bury two. In less than a month, they’d been to two separate morgues to identify the bodies of their murdered sons. Mikey’s death stunned Tony into a broken silence. Danny’s death sent him into hysterics. His face swelled crimson. Marie was now the silent one. She shuffled around the Garda station and the morgue like a zombie, giving one-word answers or no answers at all. Tony temporarily pulled himself together to answer the cops’ questions. That was until the word suicide came up and Tony exploded.

“IT’S NOT A FUCKING SUICIDE! IT’S NOT!”

Like with Dalua, Tony knew he couldn’t tell the cops who killed his sons. Any mention of a horse-riding grim reaper would have been brushed aside as the hysteric rambling of a broken father. The cops left him and Marie alone to gather Danny’s possessions. Tony had again found the strength to compose himself, but it wouldn’t last. The cops arrived back into the room carrying a clear bag with everything Danny had on him.

“There was no note. Just his phone and a set of keys. He also had a separate car key in his jacket pocket.”

Tony took the bag in his hands and burst into tears at the sight of an old, rusted key emblazoned with the Honda logo.

Tony burst out of the Garda station ranting incoherent mumbles. Pacing back-and-forth alongside his green Mercedes. Marie followed afterwards, the worrying sight of her husband’s rapidly deteriorating mental state snapping her out of her zombified state. She halted her husband’s incessant pacing with both hands clasped around his arms.

“Tony, you need to pull yourself together and relax.”

“It’s Donal, Marie. It’s fuckin’ Donal!”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Donal did this. He killed our boys!”

Marie held tight to Tony’s arms, and he returned the favour by squeezing her arms and staring into her emerald eyes. He looked like he never knew the concept of sleep. His bloodshot eyes looked as if they’d been shattered and put back together through kintsugi.

“I think you need to sit down and rest. First it’s Dalua, now it’s Donal. Your brain is going to snap if you keep this up.”

“Dalua is involved... somehow. I dunno how, but he turned Donal in to some sort of fucking headless horseman. I know I sound insane, Marie. Jesus Christ up in heaven, I know. But this whole situation has always been insane.”

“Well, you were right about all this twenty years ago, and I know you’re right now.”

Marie let go of her grip on Tony and placed a hand on his burning cheek.

“I’m with you all the way. We’ll get through this.”

“Yeah, we will then our boys can rest, but first I’ve gotta end this. I have to kill my brother.”

“How?”

“I dunno. I’ll call Ferdia and get some advice. The bastard’s gonna come looking for me at the farm and when he does, I’ll be ready. But first I need to know you’re safe. I need you to head up to Bundoran and stay with your parents until this is over.”

“Tony, no”

“Marie, please. I’ve already lost the boys. I can’t lose you too. It’s selfish of me. I know it is, but I need to do this alone. I need you as far away from this as possible... please.”

Marie caressed her husband’s face and kissed him like a spouse saying goodbye to their loved one before they were shipped off to war.

“Okay. But you finish this and come back to me safe and sound. Get yourself killed and I’ll resurrect you, just to kill you myself.”

Tony finally found the strength to smile. Unforced and natural, powered by love. Even in their darkest moments, Marie never lost her sense of humour, and he always loved her for that. He kissed her and held her tight to his body, then sent her off to supposed safety.

Back at the farm, Tony unlocked the gun cabinet in the shed and pulled out his twelve-gauge hunting shotgun. He wasn’t confident that the buckshot would hurt whatever Donal had become, but he was going to find out. Ferdia wasn’t too pleased on the phone when he heard Tony planned to face Donal. He advised him to “pack your bags, and fuck off to the other side of the world. Mongolia or Siberia might give you some chance at survival.” Once he accepted that Tony was going to stay and fight, with his help or not, he relented and gave him what advice he could.

“The Dullahan doesn’t like gold. So if you have any, then sharpen it and shove it into his heart. That’ll hurt the prick. Once he’s hurt, then go for the head. If you can get possession of his head, then you can control him. He’ll have no choice but to follow your orders, even if that order is to destroy himself.”

Most of the gold in the house was jewellery, no use as weaponry but Tony did have a golden crucifix that hung above the front door. It was his mother’s prized possession. She placed it there to wade out evil. Now he’d use it to kill her son. He filed away at it and sharpened it as best he could then stuck it in his jeans. Prepared as much as he could be, he brought a kitchen chair outside and sat with the shotgun in his hands awaiting the arrival of the cursed beast that was once his brother.

Hours passed, and the Sun retreated for sleep, dipping down behind the hills. Tony didn’t know how long he’d have to wait. He’d no way of summoning his brother. It could be days before Donal arrived, but Tony was prepared to wait an eternity. Though he soon found out that his brother was just as eager for a reunion, as he heard the distant galloping of The Dullahan’s horse. The ground shook beneath Tony’s feet as The Dullahan and his monstrous stallion descended upon the farm. Each stride echoed across the Kell’s countryside. The beast’s heavy hooves hurled bricks of dirt up from the earth and a trail of fire and smoke burned its path to the farm into the soil. Seconds after the first quake in the ground, Donal was in Tony’s sight. A hooded hellspawn sat atop an undead stallion with his spinal whip in one hand and a burlap sack in another. Donal held the sack out in front of him like a hunter holding a dead rabbit by the ears. He put his hand into the sack to retrieve the goods inside. Tony, however, had no time for gifts. He leapt up from his seat, pumped the fore-end of the shotgun and fired a shot at Donal, ripping him off the horse. A thud bellowed in the air once Donal landed on the stone-covered garden. The sack plunged down with him. Bouncing off the stones and spitting out the decapitated heads of Paul and Jacintha; Marie’s parents. The sight dragged Tony to his knees, and he wailed like a banshee. A rapid succession of “no, no, no” rattled out from his mumbling mouth like a silenced machine gun. Clambering along the ground on his hands and knees towards the decapitated heads and the sack he was sure housed one last head. He dug his arm into the sack and clasped a tuft of curly brown hair. He pulled Marie’s head out from the sack and stared at her. Her last moment of abject terror frozen across her face. This sight was Tony’s breaking point as the mind of now childless-widow snapped. Holding Marie’s head in his hands, he brushed his fingers through her variegated grey and brown curly locks, squeezed her lips closed and planted a kiss on them. Donal had completely broken his brother. Like a boa constrictor he had wrapped around Tony’s mind and squeezed the sanity out of it.

“Oh, my dear Marie. What’s happened to you? What’s happened? Don’t you worry, we’ll get you fixed up. Yep, fixed up. You’ll be back smiling in no time.”

Gripping the sides of Marie’s head, he ran his thumbs along her stiff lips and forced them upward into a grin. Lifting his eyes off his wife’s tache noir stricken eyes, he looked upon his brother who had climbed back to his feet and towered over his sibling.

“I should have killed you when I had the chance.” Tony lamented.

“You never had the balls. You couldn’t even get rid of me yourself.”

Donal’s cold, dead voice sounded not like it vibrated through the air and into Tony’s ears, but pulsed from inside his head like a migraine.

“You’ll blame me for your family’s deaths, just like you blamed me when you didn’t get the farm, but the truth is the blame lies with you, brother. They both happened because you lacked the conviction to do what needed to be done.”

Tony dropped his head, looking away from his ghoulish brother and to the ground, where he gently placed Marie’s head after kissing her once more.

“Well, I know what needs to be done now”

Leaping to his feet with the sharpened golden crucifix in hand, Tony drove it into Donal’s chest, stabbing him repeatedly like a cornered animal plunging its teeth into a predator. Donal wailed as the gold burned his sinful form before he collapsed into the dirt. Tony stabbed him in the back again as he writhed in pain. He hoped his brother felt the fear and desperation that his sons must have felt. Tony grabbed a hold of Donal’s hood and whipped it off to reveal his headless body.

“WHERE IS YOUR HEAD?”

Tony placed the tip of the crucifix over Donal’s heart.

“TELL ME YOU LITTLE PRICK!”

Donal lifted a sheepish arm and pointed behind Tony, who turned to see Donal’s smiling head in place of Marie’s.

“You’re an awfully shite kisser”

The realisation of what had happened hit Tony like a kick from a stallion. A stream of vomit spewed out of him. In desperation, he crawled across the dirt towards his brother’s head but felt the spinal whip wrap around his left leg and tighten like a vice, shattering his tibia. He screamed out in pain as Donal dragged him back towards him.

“What did you do to Marie?”

Donal ignored his brother. He wrapped the whip around Tony’s neck and dragged him towards the farmhouse. Picking up his head along the way and carrying it under his arm like a football.

“WHERE IS SHE? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

The words spluttered out as they forced their way through his tightened windpipe. Screaming it over and over as Dullahan Donal dragged him into the living room of their family home and over to the window that looked over the farm. Donal pulled his brother up to his feet, tightening the whip’s grip on his throat. Tony could only muster up heavy, laboured breaths now. His face turned purple and his eyes barely held onto their grip to their sockets.

“I often think about the life I could have had. The life you ensured I wouldn’t. I get lost in my dreams of stolen memories, but that’s all they are. Dreams. You can scream for answers about the fate of your wife until the end of days, but just like my stolen life, in the end. You’ll never know”

Donal released the whip’s grip, and Tony crashed to the ground, struggling for breath. His lungs brushed his rib cage as they sucked in air. When he had enough air in his lungs, he wailed again in pain, then begged his brother to tell him what happened to Marie or to just kill him. Donal ignored both requests and placed a boot on his brother’s bulging chest.

“Why would I grant you that luxury? I’d rather make you wake up every morning to look over this farm and think about how much it cost. You may have stopped Dalua from killing me, but in the end, you still traded my life for these four walls and those green fields.”

Donal placed his head upon his shoulders and it burst into blue and white flames. His skin melting off the bone until his head was nothing but a flaming skull with a garish grin.

“You wanted this farm all to yourself and now you do. Enjoy.”

Donal walked out of his former home for the last time and climbed upon his steed, leaving his broken brother on the floor of the farmhouse. Alone.