CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Arriving at the private runway for the Castle Laughlin, they were greeted by Conor and Sean, as well as the rest of the team. Gabi was thrilled to see a new face, Rose clinging to Conor’s hand.
“I thank you for comin’,” said Conor. “We’re going to ensure she’s safe.”
“Can you do that, Conor?” asked Zulu with a fierce expression. “I’m not sure anyone can. This isn’t a tango we’re dealing with.”
“No, ‘yer right. Tis not. But it is an Irishman. Dead or no, I know how to deal with those and so do your lads. They’ve figured this out. Just listen to them.”
While the men went to the main living area and spoke, Rose and Julia showed Gabi what they’d discovered in the library and priest’s hole.
“Joseph tried to get him to see that he was duped but he kept telling him he was wrong. But the good news is, he did listen to him without harming him. We’re not sure why but we think it has something to do with his skin color,” said Rory.
“Well, that’s great,” said Zulu. “We have a racist fucking ghost and I’m about as black as a man can be!”
“Zulu, calm down,” said Fitz. “It’s going to be okay. You have my word and I’m the first man you can kill if she gets harmed, brother. We won’t let it happen, you know us.”
“I know,” he said rubbing his bald head. “I know. But y’all know Gabi. Sometimes she lets her mouth override her brain and says shit she shouldn’t say. She’s liable to piss off this ghost big time.”
“She seemed pretty tame on the flight, Dad,” said Tiger. “Mom has toned down a bit over the years. Give her more credit.”
“Matthew and Irene both tell us that the priest, or actor or whatever the fuck he was, is dead and long gone. There is no spirit, he is not haunting anyone and he’s gone.
So, we don’t have to worry about interference from him.
We weren’t bothered by any potential ghostly guards while there, and that makes us believe it’s just O’Shan,” said Liffey.
“I’ll be there to speak the Gaelic with him,” said Conor.
“Conor, I can’t ask you to do that brother. Besides, he spoke clearly with Joseph,” said Zulu.
“He did but it might help for him to hear from one of his own. Besides, my ancestors knew him and knew him to be a good, normal landowner prior to the visit by the Hungarian.”
Zulu nodded, standing to pace the length of the room. He walked toward the fireplace, burning intensely in the summer night. It always amazed him how it could be beautiful outside during the day in the summertime. But in the evenings anywhere in northern Europe it could often be downright brisk.
He turned and paced back to the table, then turned and went back to the fire. Turning one last time, he stopped cold with a figure standing in front of him. It was Maggie.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” said Zulu. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“I’m always here, lad. Just ask Conor and Sean. I’m Aunt Maggie.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said with a half-smile.
“Listen to me sweet boy,” she said touching the skin of his upper arms. She smiled, feeling his big muscles and shook her head, laughing.
Zulu even gave a grin to the ghost. “You are a big lad, aren’t you?
Listen to me. O’Shan was mad in his day but he’s been haunting those hills nigh on three-hundred years now.
He’s tired and he only wants rest. Your woman just needs to convince him of that. ”
“Gabi is good at convincing me of a lot of things, Maggie,” he said with a sad expression, “but I’ve never seen her with a ghost.”
“Trust her, lad. She’ll know exactly what to do.” Zulu felt a cool kiss on his forehead and stared at the woman, her feet a good twenty inches off the floor to reach him. It made him laugh and she gave him a wink.
“You must know Mama Irene,” he smiled. “You remind me of her.”
“I met the woman many years ago when she was here visiting Conor’s father. She knew who I was and didn’t blink. We became good friends that week. She was my kind of woman, like your Gabrielle. Survivors. That’s what we are.”
Maggie passed through the walls as if it were just another Tuesday. Conor and Sean chuckled, shaking their heads.
“This is like being back home,” smirked Rory. “I like your Aunt Maggie. I wish I’d known her when she was alive.”
“Same,” said Conor. “I heard stories of her but didn’t know her personally, obviously.” Joseph nodded at them, standing to leave the room.
“Let’s go find the girls and see what they’re up to.”
***
“Unbelievable,” she said shaking her head. “This Hungarian, whether a priest or not, turned this man in to a mass murderer. It makes me wonder what will happen to him when he figures it out. When he discovers that what he did was never going to help him.”
“There’s nothing in here that will help us,” said Rose.
“We’ve read these diaries over and over again.
Most seemed to stay away from him. When people disappeared around the castle, it looks as though the Laughlin’s would attempt to send out warnings once again but they weren’t heeded, or they were heeded too late. ”
“Do you remember when Archie and the others were released?” asked Julia. Gabi nodded, frowning at her. “It took them a while to remember how they’d died. They didn’t remember what happened to them. It was days, even weeks before they figured it all out.”
“What are you saying?” asked Rose.
“I’m saying that maybe he doesn’t remember his death and that’s why he’s still hanging around. Maybe, he only remembers the quest that he was on but not suffering in his final days and actually dying.”
“Well, that’s definitely something for Joseph and Eagle Feather to tell him,” said Gabi.
“Hey, how did we miss this?” said Julia pushing the journal toward Rose. “How could we have missed that story?”
“We missed that book,” said Rose. “Where did you get it?”
“It was right here on the table when I walked in. I thought it was one that we’d looked at before.”
“I brought it in,” said Michael coming through the wall. “It’s been hidden in the attic for many years but I think there are things in there that you need to see.”
“Michael, we could have used this days ago,” said Julia.
“I know but I made a promise once that I wouldn’t show anyone this journal. I see now that I was wrong to do so. I’m sorry.”
“What does it say?” asked Gabi.
August 1737
The morning Ian left the harbor, the sea looked harmless enough, all silver light and slow-breathing tide, but the older fishermen had warned that calm water could be the worst sort of liar.
He had gone out alone before dawn, chasing a shoal that had been moving farther from the usual grounds every week, and by the time the sun rose pale through the mist, he had already lost sight of the church steeple that usually told him where home was.
At first he blamed the fog. Then he blamed the current, and after that he blamed himself, though blame did nothing to turn the boat. The wind had shifted without his noticing. His little vessel seemed to slide sideways instead of forward, nudged by an unseen hand.
By midmorning, the water had grown strangely dark beneath him, and out of that darkness the black shape of the cliffs emerged, jagged and wet, with gulls wheeling above them as if circling something dead.
Ian knew those cliffs. Everyone in the village did. The caves cut into their base were spoken of the way people speak of graves or old crimes: never directly, and never after sunset.
Children were told the sea there was hungry.
Men said boats that went too near had their oars snapped by waves that came from nowhere.
Women lowered their voices and said the caves were haunted by the spirits of those murdered long ago under the rule of a chieftain so cruel that even his own warriors feared to say his name.
According to the rumor, the chieftain had used the caves as a hidden prison and a place of execution. Rivals, debtors, travelers, and anyone who crossed his temper were taken into the rock and never seen again. But Ian knew that it was more than that.
Storms would cover the noise, the old people said. The tide would wash away the blood. But the dead had not gone quietly, and because they had been denied burial, prayer, and even their names, their spirits had stayed where their bones were left.
Ian had laughed at the stories when he was younger, as most young men do when fear has not yet taken anything from them. But alone on the water, with the cliffs rising higher every minute and the current dragging him closer, the tales no longer seemed like something invented to frighten boys.
There was a wrongness in the air. Even the gulls had gone silent. The only sound was the slap of water against stone and the hollow thud of his heart knocking inside his ribs.
He tried to row away, but the current turned the boat broadside and shoved him toward a narrow inlet between two walls of rock. Foam hissed there like whispering voices.
The entrance to the largest cave opened beyond it, low and wide, like a mouth cut into the cliff.
Ian told himself he would only anchor in the lee of the stone until the fog lifted.
He told himself that men became fools when they let stories rule them.
He told himself many things, and none of them kept his hands from trembling.
The inside of the cave was colder than the sea outside. Ian tied off the boat to a spur of rock and stepped onto a shelf slick with salt and weed. The daylight behind him thinned quickly. Ahead, the cave stretched inward in a series of rough chambers where seawater pooled black and still.
A sour smell hung in the air, not the smell of fish or tide or rot alone, but something older and shut away, as if the cave had been holding its breath for centuries and resented him for making it exhale.