Chapter 3 Toolie
Toolie
The next night, we met in the corner again, but the air was different.
Charged. A storm crouched above Lexington, thunder rolling low enough to set off the car alarms on the street outside.
The RBMC clubhouse was full of ghosts and drunks, but none of them came near our table.
Even the hang rounds knew not to break this circle.
Moab brought the bottle and four chipped glasses.
Vin came with two new notebooks, the pages already dog-eared.
Canon showed up last, pale from a shift at the shop, hands still stained with grease.
Scarlette was waiting for me, hunched over the end of the table, fingers drumming slow on the sticky wood.
All of them stared when I came in. Not hostile.
Not friendly, either. Something in between.
I sat, and Vin slid a glass my way. No one spoke, so I started.
“You want the whole story, or just the end?” I asked.
“If you’ve got more, spill it,” Moab said. “But don’t get poetic. You’re not writing a memoir.”
I grunted and poured myself two fingers, neat.
“It’s always raining,” I said. “Always.” I looked at Vin, who nodded and scribbled. “The grass is slick, the stones black as old blood. I’m already running before I know what from.”
“Running toward or away?” Scarlette’s voice was soft, but the question was a punch.
“Both,” I said. “There’s a hill. Not high, but steep enough to hurt. You can see the river at the bottom, and the city behind. Dublin, but not the city we know. Smaller, meaner. Thatched roofs and mud roads. Smoke everywhere.”
Canon rolled his eyes, but I ignored him.
“I’m young. Maybe twenty. Hands are cut up, arms strong.
I can feel the calluses even now.” I closed my fist, let the memory ride up my arm and into my gut.
“There’s fighting on the hill. Not just us, but dozens, maybe more.
The English are coming up from the water.
I hear the metal before I see them—armor, swords, those old rifles that take a minute to reload. ”
“Matchlocks,” Vin said, without looking up. “Seventeenth century.”
“Whatever,” I muttered. “All I know is, we’re outnumbered. We’re supposed to hold the hill. We’re supposed to be heroes.” I laughed, ugly. “None of us even had boots. I remember the mud, how it sucked at your ankles every time you tried to run.”
I looked up. Moab was stone, but his hands were white-knuckled around his glass.
“I get shot. Not right away. There’s a lot of running, a lot of screaming. The rain makes it hard to see, but I know I get shot because the fire comes first, then the cold. I drop, and my mouth fills with dirt, but all I’m thinking about is whether she’s watching. Whether Catherine is there.”
Vin perked up. “She’s your wife?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Not at first. She’s just…
the only reason I go back up the hill. I should have stayed down, let myself bleed out.
But she’s there, at the bottom, with the other women.
I hear her voice above everything—she’s shouting, calling me home.
I crawl, then I run. I make it halfway before someone sticks me with a pike.
Right in the ribs, below the heart.” I tapped my chest. “Hurts like hell. I go down again.”
Scarlette leaned in. “You die?”
I nodded. “I die. But I don’t leave. Not for a long time.
I see her wading through the mud, skirt torn, hair wild.
She’s not crying. She’s angry. She finds me, presses her hand to the wound, but there’s nothing to be done.
She knows it, and I know it. But she stays anyway.
She curses my name, curses the war, curses God.
She kisses me and tastes the blood, and I remember thinking she deserved better. ”
The room was so quiet you could hear the freezer humming behind the bar.
I flexed my left forearm. The shamrock tattoo seemed to glow under the cheap light.
“She buries me herself. No priest, no prayers. Just a pile of rocks and her voice in the wind. She says, ‘I’ll see you again, someday, you stubborn bastard.’ I believe her. ”
Vin’s pen stopped moving. “Her name is Catherine?”
“Catherine Dunn,” I said, and something twisted inside me. “She was taller than I, at least when I was kneeling. Black hair, eyes like the ocean before a storm. She laughed like wind through reeds, always at the wrong time.”
Scarlette smiled, for real. “Sounds like you loved her.”
“I did,” I said. “Still do. Maybe that’s why I keep seeing her.”
Canon shook his head, but not to argue. “You believe this?”
“I don’t know what I believe,” I admitted. “But the dreams don’t lie. And they’re getting worse.”
Moab finally spoke, voice brittle. “Why tell us now?”
I stared at him. “Because it’s not a dream anymore. Last night, when I woke up, my sheets were soaked. Not sweat, not piss. Just water. Like I’d crawled out of a river.”
No one laughed.
Vin flipped pages in his notebook. “There was a battle near Dublin, 1649. Cromwell’s men slaughtered the Irish defenders on the hill above the river Liffey. The survivors were buried in unmarked graves. Some stories say the women came at night to reclaim their dead.”
I nodded. “Sounds about right.”
Canon looked at me, hard. “So what do you want?”
I drained my glass, set it down slow. “I want to know what happened to her.”
“And if you find out?” Moab’s voice was sharp.
“I’ll put it to rest,” I said. “Or die trying.”
Scarlette refilled my glass. “What if she’s still there? Waiting?”
I didn’t answer right away.
“If she is, I’ll find her,” I said, voice like gravel.
The room settled into silence. Vin started to say something, but Canon stopped him with a look. Moab just stared at his hands.
Scarlette watched me, head tilted. “You ever think you’re supposed to fix something? That maybe this is a second chance?”
I snorted. “If it is, I’m not doing a great job.”
She laughed. “Maybe this time you bring her back.”
I thought about that. About the way her hands trembled when she touched my face, the way her voice broke when she swore at the sky. About the promise I made to her, just before the end. Yeah. Maybe this time I’d bring her back.
I raised my glass. “To Catherine,” I said.
The others hesitated, then joined in. Four voices, one name.
It didn’t sound like much, but for a moment, it felt like prayer.
When the bottle was gone, I stood and left the table.
The others stayed behind, talking in low voices I didn’t care to hear.
I walked outside, into the parking lot, and let the rain soak through my shirt. It felt clean. Honest.
Moab found me out front, sitting on the curb under the eaves, a cigarette going limp between my fingers. The rain had let up, but the sky was still bruised and sour, like it could crack open again at any second.
He kicked at the puddle near my boot. “You okay, man?”
I took a drag, let it smolder in my lungs. “Define okay.”
He snorted. “You want to talk, or you want to keep brooding out here like Batman?”
I flicked the cigarette, watched it hiss on the asphalt. “Not a big talker.”
“Coulda fooled me, the way you were spinning those ghost stories.” He sat beside me, legs splayed, shoulders hunched like he was gearing up to tell me a secret. “You believe it. All of it. Don’t you?”
I stared straight ahead. “She was real, Moab.”
He let it hang for a minute. “You think you’re cursed, or chosen?”
“I think I’m stuck,” I said, and it surprised me how much it hurt to say it. “Can’t move forward, can’t stay put. Just rerunning the same shitty highlight reel, every night, over and over.”
Moab nodded, then bumped his shoulder into mine. “What’s the plan?”
“Drink until I black out. Go to Dublin. Maybe get some answers.”
He grinned, mean and brotherly. “Atta boy.”
We didn’t say anything else. We just sat, letting the silence fill up with rain and engine noise and the occasional scream from the pool table inside.
Eventually, we went back in. The others were where we’d left them.
Vin was poring over some ancient map on his phone, tracing routes with a trembling finger.
Canon was back to arms crossed, jaw set, eyes narrowed at the world in general.
Scarlette was alone at the table, two glasses in front of her. One full, one empty.
I sat down. Poured myself a shot. No one stopped me.
Vin was the first to break the ice. “You remember anything else? Any other details?”
I drank, wiped my mouth. “Yeah.”
I closed my eyes and let it come.
“It wasn’t just the battle. There was a life before that.
A farm—barely more than a shack, but it was ours.
Catherine made it beautiful, even when the roof leaked and the sheep chewed the walls.
She’d hang wildflowers from the rafters.
Every Sunday, she’d walk to the river with her sisters and bring back armfuls of green, fill the place until it looked like we lived in a goddamn forest.” I laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“She had these hands, always stained with earth or ink. She’d help me with repairs, never complained, even when I smashed her thumb with a hammer once.
Just wrapped it up and cursed me out in Gaelic.
” I smiled, remembering the sound. “When she was tired, she’d lean back and stare out the window at nothing, humming old songs her mother taught her.
Sometimes she’d cry, but never when I was watching. ”
Scarlette’s gaze burned into me. “What about you? What did she see in you?”
I shrugged. “She said I made her feel safe. That I was the only one who listened.”
Vin scribbled that down, like it was gospel.
“Night before the battle, we fought. I didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to join the others.
She said if I stayed, I’d be branded a coward.
If I went, I’d never come home. Either way, we’d lose each other.
” My hand shook a little as I poured another shot.
Moab reached over and steadied the bottle for me.
I let him. “She wore a blue ribbon in her hair that night. The first thing I ever gave her, when we were kids. She didn’t say goodbye.
Just pressed it into my palm and told me to come back. ”
I opened my fist, stared at the white scar bisecting my lifeline. “She knew I wouldn’t.”
The silence was a living thing.
Finally, Canon spoke. “You realize this is insane, right?”
I didn’t look at him. “I do.”
“You think you’re the only person who’s lost someone? Who dreams about what could’ve been?”
“No,” I said. “But I’m the only one who remembers.”
Vin jumped in, voice shaking. “It’s not impossible. There are documented cases—” he nodded at Moab and Scarlette.
Canon cut him off. “You’re enabling him.”
Vin’s face flushed. “You don’t know that.”
“Enough,” I said, and they both shut up.
I turned to Scarlette. “You’ve seen the other side. You know there’s more to this than dreams.”
Her jaw tightened. “I’ve seen what magic does to people.”
“It can fix this.” I gestured to the room, to myself.
She said nothing.
Moab leaned in. “If you could do it—if you could go back—what would you change?”
I didn’t hesitate. “I’d save her.”
Vin looked up, eyes shining. “But you died on that hill.”
“I did,” I said. “But maybe this time, I won’t.”
Canon stood. “This is bullshit. You want to drink yourself to death, fine. But don’t drag the rest of us down with you.”
He left, boots thudding hard on the tile. The three of us sat in the echo of his absence.
Scarlette reached for her glass, but her hand stopped short, fingers trembling. “You really believe I could send you back?”
I met her gaze. “You’ve got the same magic that brought you and Moab here. I know you do.”
She swallowed. “It’s not safe. Not for you. Not for me. It worked once, but that doesn’t mean it’ll work again.”
I smiled, but it didn’t reach my eyes. “Since when was any of this safe?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she finished her drink and stood. “Let’s get some air,” she said. “All of us.”
Vin followed, still clutching his notebook. Moab hauled me up by the shoulder.
Outside, the rain had finally stopped, but the street was a river of neon and oil.
Scarlette walked ahead, hands jammed in her pockets. I caught up, matched her stride.
“You’re going to help me?” I asked.
She didn’t look at me. “I don’t know.”
We walked in silence to the edge of the lot, where the city lights flickered like old dreams.
“You think she’s still there?” Scarlette asked, voice barely a whisper.
I nodded. “I feel it.”
Scarlette looked at me then, really looked. “You know if you do this, you might not come back.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I already didn’t.”
She laughed, sharp and sad. “You’re a fucking lunatic, O’Toole.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I keep my promises.”
Behind us, Moab and Vin argued about logistics—how to get from Lexington to Dublin, what to pack, whether a bulletproof vest worked against seventeenth-century musket balls.
I didn’t care. I had everything I needed: a name, a promise, and a friend crazy enough to try.
Scarlette put a hand on my arm. “Tomorrow. We’ll figure it out.”
I nodded. “Tomorrow.”
When the others caught up, we headed back inside, one unit. Not whole, not healed, but hungry for answers.
I didn’t know what the future held, or if I’d ever see Catherine again. But I knew this: I wouldn’t stop until I tried. And if the universe wanted to fuck with me one more time, it better be ready for a fight.