The Old World

I had hoped for French wine country. But swayed by my husband’s whims, and an enthusiastic neighbor, we are instead, in the land of leprechauns, fighting for our lives.

The incessant scratching at the door and shutters, the mangled mixture of screech and growl, from creatures on the other side of the walls, horrific, more than any rational person could have foreseen. Knocking, banging, scurrying on the roof towards the peak, the chimney…. did we block the chimney?

A lifetime ago, my husband Gene and I met Tom and Nancy Clancy at the Bowl-o-Rama on Route 9, the first Friday of every month, for the last 23 years, while our kids grew up.

(A moan climbs up my throat: Clara.)

We were soon to retire in a company town, corporate buyout, and had long talked about travel once our kids were out of the house.

(Oh, my sweet baby, Clara.)

Gene mentioned the old country and Tom thought it a grand idea. 

“Can we include County Cork? That’s where my people came from!”

Typical in second-generation immigrant families, my husband Gene O’Malley, and our friend Tom Clancy, both had a fascination for a beloved homeland they had never seen. Fostered by childhood dreams and lore from his grand dad’s time, the curiosity became an obsession with my husband.

            So, four days ago, my husband and I, along with Tom and Nancy, landed in Dublin. After three long days of history, three long nights crawling through pubs, and weeks listening to my husband’s insistence on the trek to the west coast, the quiet appeal of old-world ways on the island of Inishmore, was an alluring prospect for all of us.

We were warned about the fog.

“Be careful about getting caught up in the hills. The mist rolls in without a peep.  Hard to find a way home,” the ferry captain advised. “You’ll be wanting back here long before sunset.” 

But, as they say, “out of sight out of mind” and the fog was nowhere in sight, when, we disembarked.

“This is where my people came from,” my husband murmured.

“What’s that honey?” I asked.

He stomped up the road; we followed.

If only I had tripped on the dock, sprained my ankle, and been forced to spend the afternoon at the pub in the harbor, a widow-in-waiting.

We wandered up into the remote hills, amongst 1000-year-old farmland until Gene pointed to a stone path that turned to the left, “Here, this way.”

His command left no question that we would follow. 

A few moments ahead, the panorama spread before us, stunning in its starkness. It pulled the breath from my lungs, like diving into the frigid waters of the north Atlantic ahead of me. I walked closer to the edge, to within inches of succumbing to the impulse to leap.

“Martha!”

I looked back to see my husbands lop-sided grin of unanticipated discovery and dumb luck, distort between Jekyll and Hyde; a wail caught in his throat. The roiling fog cascaded towards us, spilling from the sky, upsurging from the ocean, surrounding us in an avalanche of moist grey and the stink of rot. The Clancy’s turned toward my husband, who had stopped short of the view.

Nancy screamed, Tom called out, “Gene?”

Creatures oozed from the maelstrom, beside him, above him, like blood from an open wound, creeping towards us from their wicked domain. There were dozens: 3-foot humanoid creatures, their faces, rotted pumpkins covered in earthly flesh, sagging in the middle. Two knife sharp ears stood ready to gore the next living being that confronted them.   Garbled sounds spilled from their crooked mouths, slithering between fangs. The stench of decomposing vegetation from the wave of rogue leprechauns spewed from the rancid haze, clung to the inside of my nose.

In a guerrilla attack, they dashed towards us, talons outstretched, reaching for that first scratch on human flesh. Nancy bawled, Tom grabbed her hand and ran; I followed.

“Gene, follow us this way!” I screamed behind me wondering if I really wanted him to; my own words lost in the volume of the ambush.

We ran blind into the mist, on bumpy scrub grass and limestone, hoping to find the path, when Tom ran into a stone cottage.

“Gene, Gene, where are you?” I squinted backwards, hoping to see his figure behind us. All I saw was a monster-filled filled haze.

“Come on, help me. We’ll break open one of these windows, and hunker down inside,” Tom shouted into the miasma that was almost upon us.  

Nancy’s cries had settled to a whimper.  I picked up a rock the size of a goblin’s head, and holding it with both hands pounded the old wooden shutters, until I heard a crack. Tom pulled the broken boards from the window gaining us access to the shack. We pushed the traumatized Nancy through the opening.  Tom clambered through after her. I took one more look behind me and climbed through the crack. My husband was nowhere to be seen. 

The hut was one big room, maybe an abandoned hunting camp? The breach we climbed through was one of two front windows on either side of a thick, wooden door.  There was a big table and a couple of chairs, a single bed frame with a moldering straw mattress. There were a few yard tools, a couple of rusty knives and empty gun rack. Dust and dried droppings covered the floor, the decay of the structure mirrored in its contents.

“We can block the broken window with the table. Put the one chair against the door, the other against the shutters of the second window,” Tom ordered.

Seeing his wife hunched in the corner on the old bed, weeping, he grabbed her by the shoulders, and shouted, “Snap out of it Nancy, we need your help!” He pulled her off the bed.  

           “Where’s Gene?  WHERE’S GENE?”

Outside the beasts knocked and scratched. Jabbering, they tested the blocked door and both windows. They felt the weakness in the broken window, progress impeded by the table. There was a minute of quiet, only the claws testing wood at intervals, then more prattle. But this time, this time, I heard another voice, a deeper voice within the pack.

“Gene? Gene, is that you? Are you OK?” 

The language was unfamiliar, but the voice…

“If I just move it a little more, I can see…., Gene?”

I spoke close to the broken shutter, inching the table just a smidge to get a glimpse.   

Behind me the beasts swarm down the chimney.  My friends frozen in terror, unable to defend themselves, allow the surge of small beings to move into the shack freely, teeming over their bodies, screams, babbles, blood, and skin fill the cottage.

The largest ogre takes advantage of my distraction and shoves the tabletop inwards, allowing his army of savages into the cabin.

The claws, tear through my skin, I feel them scrape bone. I hear the dying cries of my friends.  Through blurry eyes, I see the misshapen mountain of bloodied flesh that is my husband. He lumbers towards me, his claw poised to swipe the final blow to my jugular. 

“You were right dear; we should have gone to France.”

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