Chapter 5 Toolie
Toolie
We landed at night. Rain had started hours before and never got bored, sluicing the airport glass so hard the city outside was just a set of smeared neon halos.
By the time we made it to the rental, my boots and jeans were soaked through, and so were my bones.
If you want to know how old a city is, smell it in the rain. Dublin didn’t disappoint.
Moab took the wheel because he never trusted me on the left side of a two-lane highway.
Scarlette rode shotgun, eyes glued to the GPS as if she’d punch the dashboard if it rerouted again.
Moab had given her enough valium before we left the States to knock out a horse.
Mama Celeste, wrapped in a blue windbreaker that looked older than Moab, sat in the back seat with me.
She thumbed prayer beads and hummed, almost too soft to hear over the engine.
The car stank of coffee and wet wool. Moab kept the windows cracked, trying to chase out the damp, but it just let in the night: raw, salt on your teeth, a cocktail of sea rot and diesel. I liked it more than I wanted to.
We hit the city proper in a blur. Every alley was a gutter, every light a wet bruise.
I watched the way the old city leaned in on itself, buildings hunched over cobblestones, trying to keep secrets from the wind.
The closer we got to the river, the harder the sense of recognition clamped down on my chest.
"Left here," I said, before the nav could say anything.
Moab obeyed without comment. He only trusted my direction when I sounded like I’d already been where we were going.
We rolled into Temple Bar. The streets glistened.
College kids and drunks spilled out from the pubs, but even they moved with a hunched, migratory shuffle, all their wildness dampened by the weather.
We pulled up to the hotel Vin had booked for us.
He’d called it “authentic,” which meant the windows didn’t close right and the bedspread was tartan.
Moab double-parked, flashed the hazards, and glared at me in the rearview. "Get it out of your system," he said. "But don’t go alone."
Scarlette opened her mouth to argue. I got out before she could.
The air slapped me. I walked half a block with my head down until I found an archway that looked like every alley in my dreams. Leaned against the stone.
Tried to keep my hands steady. The rain was cold, but it felt good, washed the film from my head, and left just the ache behind.
My fingers hurt, the nails bitten to the quick, a tic I’d picked up after Catherine started showing up in my head.
She was there, now. Not the way she was in the last dream, blood streaked down her chin, and her hands were sticky with mud. No, this time it was just her laugh. I heard it, a flash of wild joy in the dark, and for a second I was sure she’d walk up behind me and clamp her arms around my chest.
Instead, it was Moab. Heavy boots on slick stone, breathing hard enough to rattle the bricks. He didn’t say anything. Just stood at my side and lit a cigarette.
I watched the smoke and let it calm me.
Moab didn’t push, but after a while, he said, "You know where we’re headed?"
I nodded. "Cemetery. North of here. I saw the gate once."
He flicked the cigarette. "You want to sleep first?"
I shook my head. "No point."
He grunted, and we went back. “We need the others, Toolie. None of this cowboy shit.”
Mama Celeste and Scarlette were at the bar, Scarlette nursing a Guinness, Celeste picking at a bowl of something green and gelatinous.
Scarlette looked me up and down. Scarlette had adjusted just fine to 2026, over 300 years from her home.
Once she adjusted to the crowds and all the noises, the amenities and conveniences convinced her the change was good.
She said she missed the family she left behind.
I figured Catherine would do the same. But what if she didn’t want to come here?
What if she were happy staying in the seventeenth century?
"You okay?" Scarlette asked
"Yeah," I lied. "Let’s go." To hell with the hotel.
Nobody argued. Not even Celeste.
The drive out was silent. Dublin faded behind us, streetlights turning to old gas lamps, then to nothing. The driver stopped a hundred yards from the entrance, muttered something about “gates closed at night,” and let us out in the dark.
The graveyard was older than dirt. Iron gates, black and wet, ran rust streaks down the stone pillars.
Beyond, the grass looked like a scalp gone moldy.
We didn’t need a flashlight—moonlight bounced off the mist and made the headstones glow.
I was scared to fucking death at what was about to happen.
The walk up the main path was short, but every step doubled the gravity. My legs went concrete. Moab noticed, hung back to keep pace.
“You got this, brother.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
He obviously hadn’t even considered the possibility. What if we’d made this fucking trip and nothing happened? I stopped in my tracks.
“I can feel it,” Mama Celeste said. “It’s in the dirt.”
At the fork, I stopped. Scarlette was right behind me, barely breathing.
"This is it?" she whispered.
I said nothing. My left hand found the shamrock tattoo on my forearm and squeezed it hard enough to feel the ink burn.
Celeste caught up, her presence warming the air despite the cold. She looked at me, then at the stones, then back again. “Go on, son. She’s waitin’.”
I led them left, past a row of Celtic crosses to a sunken patch beneath a yew tree. The branches were so black they looked painted. I dropped to one knee before the headstone.
“Fuck this shit,” I said and started to walk away.
Moab grabbed my arm. “We’re in this together, Toolie.”
The moss was thick, but I didn’t need to read the name. I ran my hand over the letters. O’Toole. The birth and death dates were gone to time, but I could feel the years.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Bloody hell,” Moab said. He covered his mouth but kept his eyes on my name.
A church bell rang somewhere in the city. I flinched. My mouth went dry. All I could see was Catherine, standing just beyond the gate, hair slicked to her cheek, lips parted like she was about to sing.
Celeste’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Feel it?”
I nodded. “It’s moving through me. Shaking my bones.”
Moab circled, eyes scanning the edges, as if expecting someone to bust us for loitering with intent to grieve. Scarlette stood by the path, arms crossed, face set in that hard skepticism of hers. But I could tell—she felt it, too.
I stayed there, palm pressed to stone, until the rain picked up. Then I stood, wiped my hand on my jeans, and turned to the others.
"This is the place," I said. My voice barely made it out.
Scarlette nodded, grudging respect in her eyes.
Celeste smiled, slow and sad. “You ready?”
I didn’t know, but I said yes anyway.
Moab peeled off, posted up under the nearest lamppost, arms folded. “Signal if you need,” he said, but his eyes didn’t leave me for long.
Scarlette paced a perimeter, her boots leaving dark prints on the mud. She gripped the knife at her belt like she could stab a ghost if it got close enough.
Celeste took her time. She circled the plot, letting the hem of her skirt brush the grass. Then she knelt down beside the headstone, hands flat to the ground. She breathed in slow, then out, a different rhythm than any of us, like she was syncing with the worms and moss.
I watched her, but mostly I watched the headstone. The name called to me. Not just “O’Toole,” but the old way: Sully O’Toole. I mouthed it, felt the shape of the name on my teeth. My heart knocked against my ribs like it wanted out.
“Want to do the honors?” Celeste asked. She slid a silver lighter across the grass, its surface etched with spirals and crosses. I recognized it from the clubhouse, a talisman she used when things got strange.
I took the lighter, flicked it open, and felt the smooth, worn metal. Celeste pulled out a bundle of dried something—sage or mugwort or just plain weeds—and wrapped it tight in a blue ribbon.
“Hold it steady,” she said. She lit the end. The smoke crawled up, sweet and sharp, nothing like cigarettes or bonfires.
She started to chant, low and steady. Not Latin, not anything I recognized. The sound vibrated up through my boots and into my teeth.
Scarlette snorted, but kept her distance.
Moab scanned the fence line, hands loose at his sides. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but he believed in me.
I pressed my palm against the headstone again, ignoring the grit and slime. The memory surge hit so hard my knees buckled.
I was the old Sully, running through mud, Catherine’s name a bullet in my throat. I was dying and not dying, trying to reach her, trying to stay just long enough to say what I never could. I heard her voice, crystal-clear: “Don’t forget. I’ll find you.”
I snapped back. Celeste was still chanting, eyes half-shut. The smoke ribboned around us, bending in the wind, refusing to break.
Scarlette came closer. “There’s…something here.” Her voice barely carried. “Do you see that?”
She pointed at the grave, where the air shimmered like heat above asphalt. A trick of light, or maybe not. I reached into the haze, and the cold bit harder than any rain.
Moab gave a low whistle, but otherwise kept his mouth shut, approaching at a snail’s pace.
Celeste’s voice rose, then stopped, sudden as a car crash. The silence that followed was thick and total. She opened her eyes. Looked at me, then Scarlette, then the sky.
“This is the place,” she said. “The veil’s thinner than a razor here. I can feel it breathin’.”
The grave marker felt warm under my hand. The smoke faded, but the taste stayed on my tongue, like salt or tears.
I didn’t move for a long time. Scarlette didn’t crack a joke. Moab didn’t tell me to shake it off.
And then shit got crazy.