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<h1>8</h1>
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<p>On the east side of Arden harbour there's a shore path that winds its way round the rocks and shingle and past the beech trees that form a windbreak for most of Westbay. Further along the path there's some rough grass near the point that juts out into the firth and on that flat area there's a big standing stone of smooth basalt.</p>
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<p>It's been pounded by the wind and the salt spray and, on the south-west side that takes the brunt, the stone is almost as smooth as glass. It's said to be about five thousand years old. It looks as if it has been standing there pointing at the sky since the beginning of time. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been down this way.</p>
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<p>Years at least.</p>
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<p>It was a couple of days after the dinner with Alan and his family, and since then I'd tried to write with the usual lack of success and that was sapping my confidence. I'd visited Jimmy Allison and he'd handed me a cardboard box filled with papers and books and demanded that I have a good look through them if I was short of ideas. I hadn't got around to them yet, although I did later, and I'll tell you about that further on.</p>
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<p>I'd called Barbara Foster - I should say Hartford, but I won't because she'll always be Foster to me - and arranged for a picnic the following day with her look-alike daughter. For some reason, I felt elated about that. I know it sounds like something out of a romantic novel, but I'd found myself thinking about Babs in a way I had never thought about her before, which is hardly surprising since I was only ten at the time.</p>
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<p>I stood with my back to the ancient mass of the monolith, thinking about when I'd seen Babs' daughter in the car park.</p>
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<p>Today the sky was just as clear and I had to narrow my eyes against the glare of reflection spearing up from the estuary. From where I stood, I could see for miles. Due west the firth disappeared in a heat haze down past where it took its dog leg for the open sea. Closer in, the bulk of the Cassandra, lying on its side out on the sandbank, was like a great beached whale, black and dead in the clear blue.</p>
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<p>To the east there was the curved sand shore pushing out from the marsh of Ardmhor bay, then a line of silver where Strowan's Well flowed down its runnel to the bay. Beyond that, the massive bulk of Ardmhor stood like some castle in Tolkien.</p>
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<p>Even on that clear, sunny day it looked dark and ponderous. Foreboding. I know that sounds melodramatic, but that's the way it looked. I stood there, looking at the rock and remembering the scare I'd got on the night the Cassandra went down, and my thoughts seemed to get on a weird track. I started thinking about things that had happened since I'd come back to Arden. The two dead farmers, the night on the rock, my bad dreams and my inability to put one word after another for my book.</p>
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<p>That dark mass drew my eyes and held them. Ardmhor Rock. It was just a rock: some said it was a volcanic plug and I guess that was so, since most of it was pure basalt spewed up from the bowels of the earth long before the dinosaurs. That core of magma had cooled and solidified before continental drift had swept Arden and the rest of Scotland out of the tropics and into the ice ages, and then the tower of stone that had been born in the heat at the core of the earth started the long battle with the wind and the rain and the rivers of ice that whittled and rubbed and wore it down to a fraction of its former splendour.</p>
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<p>Still, it was an impressive piece of the earth's handiwork, for successive rivers of ice and storms and tides had tried to wipe it from the face of the earth and failed. Ardmhor stood like a Colossus right on the highland fault line where the old red sandstone was heaved up and folded into mountain. Even the tremendous forces that had raised Ben Lomond and the Western Highlands had so far been unsuccessful in shifting the rock.</p>
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<p>I stood with my back to the standing stone, staring out across the bay. Some gannets were wheeling in the air over the deep water, stalling on the air and sweeping their wings back to plunge like arrows into the firth. Their shrill cries carried the distance.</p>
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<p>A hand grasped the sleeve of my windcheater and I leapt about six feet into the air. I turned and saw an old woman. Tall, lean and weatherbeaten with startling blue eyes and greying hair. Her hand still gripped my sleeve.</p>
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<p>
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'Jeesus,' I gasped. 'You nearly gave me a heart attack.'</p>
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<p>
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'You've come back,' she stated, staring right into my eyes. I was still trying to catch my breath and my heart was still doing a drum riff on my ribs. She kept holding on and kept staring.</p>
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<p>'I knew you would come back.'</p>
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<p>Somewhere in the depths of my memory the old woman's face came back to me. Kitty or Katy something. MacPhee? MacPherson? One of the tinker folk who scoured the foreshores and stayed in corrugated shacks all along the west coast. Displaced crofters from the bad old days of the highland clearances, descendants of outlaws from the time of Rob Roy Macgregor.</p>
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<p>The old woman had lived in her ancient cottage on the point since anyone could remember. As kids we were a bit scared of her tongue which would clip a good going hedge on any day of the week. She seemed ancient then. How old must she be now?</p>
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<p>The old woman's eyes held mine for a long time.</p>
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<p>'Ach, I've scared the living daylights out of you, Mr Nicholas Ryan,' she said, and let out a huge laugh. 'And here I was thinking all the travelling would have taught you a thing or two about surprises.'</p>
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<p>She let go the sleeve and looked me up and down, like a farmer's wife checking out the stock.</p>
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<p>
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'You've grown big enough,' she said appraisingly, 'though it's not surprising, the height your mother's father was.'</p>
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<p>'You knew my grandfather?'</p>
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<p>'Yes, I knew Nick Westwood. Sure, I knew his father too.'</p>
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<p>That was hard to believe. My grandfather had died well into his seventies, close on eighty. She must have noticed my mental calculations and laughed again disparagingly.</p>
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<p>'I'm eighty three years old, if you must know,' she said. There was a twinkle in those piercing blue eyes that were set in a leathery skin and surrounded by a fine corona of wrinkles.</p>
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<p>'And I'm exactly fifty years older than yourself,' she said with a matter-of-fact nod. The old woman swivelled, a bit awkwardly, giving me a look at her profile. She had a strong nose, almost hooked, but finely chiselled, and a good jaw and high cheekbones. Old Celtic stock.</p>
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<p>Despite the years, I could tell she had been a stunner in her day. She moved away from me, and I saw what had made her turn awkwardly. Her right leg was bound in a splint that locked her ankle, calf and thigh in a rigid line. Her armpit clamped the seat of a crutch that looked home-made and was tightly whipped with baling twine.</p>
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<p>Over her shoulder, as she retreated with a hopping limp towards her hut, she called: 'The kettle's boiled. You'll have a cup of tea.' Curious, I followed.</p>
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<p>Her cottage - more like a hut and patched here and there with driftwood - was a scrupulously clean beachcomber's den filled with odd bits of furniture, some of which had been made from the same stuff that had been thrown up on the flood tides, and it was crammed to the ceiling with pots and pans and dried plants. There were odd- shaped pieces of polished driftwood, and smooth stones of different hue from the shore. On a brick and iron hearth, a big, black kettle steamed enthusiastically. In minutes the old woman had made two cups of strong tea.</p>
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<p>She gestured me to sit down and lowered herself gingerly into a similar but unmatched chair, easing her rigid leg out in front of her under a rough-hewn table. The tea was good.</p>
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<p>
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'Midsummer's day in the year nineteen thirty,' she said abruptly after taking a sip of her brew. 'That's when I was born. And you came half a century later on the same day. June the twenty first, nineteen eighty'.</p>
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<p>'How do you know that?' I asked, feeling a bit stupid as I did.</p>
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<p>
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'Don't ask how I know. It's
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<em>what</em> I know that is the most important. I am Catriona O'Connor MacBeatha. And my people have lived on this land since forever.'
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</p>
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<p>She nodded her head over the enamel mug and across the cropped grass to the standing stone.</p>
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<p>'My people put that there as their marker.'</p>
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<p>There was something in the way she came out with that astounding statement that just made it seem believable.</p>
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<p>
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'There's a lot I know about you. Maybe even more than you know your own self. And some things I've got to tell you too.'</p>
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<p>She stopped and looked out of the open door, way out across the bay. 'There's things I've got to say. I knew you would be coming down here, you know.' Kate MacBeth looked up sharply. 'And before you think I'm an old widow woman just talking for the sake of it, I'm not saying I know
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<em>everything</em>. But I reckoned you would come down to the point sooner or later. We've got a lot in common, you and me.'
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</p>
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<p>She drank some of her tea. 'Them at the town, they think I'm a witch, or maybe just a mad old fool. Ha. They don't know. They know I've been here a long time. But they don't know I've been away, just like you. And I had to come back, because I'm the last, you know. The last of the long line of the O'Connors and the MacBeths.</p>
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<p>'And I'll tell you something else, young Nicky Ryan. On your mother's side you've the same blood in your veins as I have in mine. That's how I know about you.'</p>
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<p>'You mean we're related?' I asked.</p>
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<p>She nodded, again matter of factly. 'Yes, but I'll tell you about that later on. It goes back long before my time. Long back. I know you were conceived on the night of the equinox in forty nine. I know that because I knew your lovely mother. What's more, the other two were special too. All born or conceived at the midsummer or on half-night day.</p>
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<p>'You all were special.' She looked at me over the mug of tea with a half smile. Inviting the question.</p>
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<p>'Who were special?'</p>
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<p>'You all were. The three of you. And you <em>still</em> are,' she said.</p>
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<p>Then she paused and looked down into the cup, frowning a little.</p>
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<p>'This place is going to need you again, and soon.'</p>
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<p>'I'm not sure I know what you are talking about,' I said. In fact I hadn't a clue. 'You will, Master Nick. There's a lot I could tell you, and there's some I
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<em>will</em> tell you, if you've a mind to listen. It won't matter anyhow, because the time is surely coming when you'll be needed again, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.'
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</p>
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<p>Again she stopped and frowned into the dregs of her tea. Mine was almost done, barely a half inch of the thick, hot liquid swirling at the bottom of the mug. I wondered what the hell I was doing here in a tumbledown cottage down at the foreshore listening to an old lady rambling on about God knows what. I suppose in my line of business I've got along fine because I've always had that ability just to sit and listen. It was doing no harm anyway, I suppose, and if it wasn't achieving anything, it was probably less frustrating than sitting over a barren laptop.</p>
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<p>'You won the last time, you know,' she said at last. 'When I found you under the rocks. Whatever you did, you sent it away, and it has stayed away for these twenty years and more. But it's stirring now. I can feel it. And there's going to be worse than just a handful of people buried on the hill.'</p>
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<p>Her voice was soft, but strong. There was no sign of the quaver that old women develop.</p>
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<p>'Ah, there's madness coming, I can smell it in the air. And the walls no longer can hold it back. It comes like the tide and my time here is not long enough.'</p>
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<p>
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'What's coming, Miss MacBeth?' I asked.</p>
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<p>'I am Catriona O'Connor MacBeatha, of the Connors of the west and the Sons of Life - if you know your Gaelic, young Ryan, as you should. You can call me Kitty like everybody else did, before I became an old hag,' she said, with a laugh, her eyes dancing in my direction.</p>
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<p>
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'I'll tell you what's coming. I'll tell you in a little while, when you start to believe and when you start to remember. I'll help your memory, boy, because it's there.' She raised up a hand and lightly touched her finger to my temple.</p>
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<p>As soon as she touched me I jumped, almost spilling the dregs of the tea on my jeans. It felt like the crackle of electricity along the side of my scalp, and a tingle went right down my spine.</p>
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<p>She laughed again. 'That's the touch of Kitty the Witch, so they'd say. But it's not. It's in
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<em>you</em> my boy, and the others too. You should listen to what that old wanderer Seumas Allison tells you. He knows more than most and less than he ought.'
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</p>
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<p>'Jimmy Allison?'</p>
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<p>'The same. You pay heed to him, for he's a fine man with a good head on those strong old shoulders. Ah, he was a fine lad in his day.'</p>
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<p>
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'He's given me some of his papers. He's been doing a history of the town.'</p>
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<p>'That I know. And where his history stops, mine goes much further back, and I'll fill in all the spaces for you.'</p>
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<p>'I'm still not sure what you're talking about.'</p>
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<p>'The Bad Summer. That's what I'm talking about. Like the summer of nineteen hundred and six, and the others. Like the one that started in ninety one, when you were ten, and stopped sudden the night your grandfather and myself pulled the three of you from the rocks.'</p>
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<p>She held up a hand to forestall my next question.</p>
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<p>'No. Listen. You think Seumas is just an old man with an old man's night chill. He doesn't know the half of it. My history of Arden goes back to the start, when the land was low after the ice, when the people of the west came in their curraghs and mixed their blood with the Sons of Life.</p>
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<p>'It was then that they joined together to battle the hordes that flowed in from the south and the east and forced them to the shore between the Langcraigs and the rock. It was there that they fought a terrible battle, but there were too few of them. When they drew themselves into the shadow of the rock, the shamans of the tribes made a ritual on midsummer night and brought to life the Cu Saeng, the dweller under the roots.</p>
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<p>The blood they spilled and the words they sang caused the rock to split and from under it came the Cu Saeng and it brought madness to this place. But it fell on the hordes and massacred them all.</p>
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<p>'But when they awakened from their madness, what was left of the people and their shamans realised that they might have been better to die in battle, because the Cu Saeng they had raised could not be sent back. There were many more deaths as the demon wreaked its havoc.'</p>
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<p>As I listened to the old woman's voice as she told her tale, almost in a sing-song lilt, I couldn't help but be captivated.</p>
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<p>This was one legend I had never heard of. I hadn't even heard the phrase 'Bad Summer' until Jimmy Allison had mentioned it a few weeks back, and to tell the truth, I hadn't yet bothered to look through the stack of notebooks and papers he'd dumped on me. The old lady was spinning a good tale, the kind of thing you would expect from the old gypsies. However, I didn't believe a word of it.</p>
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<p>So you can imagine how startled I was when she stopped her monologue and said: 'I know you don't believe a word of it. It couldn't be otherwise. But you will, in time, so do an old woman a favour and listen a while.'</p>
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<p>I nodded and gulped the last of my tea to cover a twinge of embarrassment, like a little boy who's been caught cursing by his mother. Kitty stood up, still staring at me, limped across to her old iron stove and started to make another pot of tea. When she'd poured two more cups, she brought them back to the table and put one down in front of me. I thanked her and she started talking as if she'd never stopped.</p>
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<p>'They tried to send it back to where it belonged but they had no power left, so they used another ritual that served as a cage for the thing, hoping that when they were strong enough they could gather sufficient power to send it from the earth. They used a sacrifice and other words of force that made the Cu Saeng sleep long, and then they ringed it around on the rock with the walls to bind it.</p>
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<p>'There were four walls that they made as barriers to form the cage. To build the first, they had to dig a channel from Cardross Hill where the clear spring rose from the foot of a rowan tree, because the rowan had the most power. They called it the Water of the Rowan, but you know it as Strowan's Well. The stream came down the hill where they split it in two, one to the east and the other to the west, and both flowing into the Clutha - the Clyde firth.</p>
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<p>'They built another wall, this time of the red sandstone from Langcraigs, that went parallel to the streams. And then another fence, a living one of hawthorn, which they planted one footspace one from the other to tangle together and bind each other.</p>
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<p>'And the third wall was a ring of the bones of the dead heroes that had died in the great battle. They buried them in a line, with the heads removed from the bodies and all facing into the rock.'</p>
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<p>Kitty looked at me with a half smile. 'That was that. They trapped that beast they'd summoned up from the far side, with spells and chants and their four walls. A wall of water, wall of stone, a wall of wood and a wall of bone.'</p>
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<p>'And it worked. It worked so well that the sons of the sons of the men who wrought the spell let it lie, and they forgot, and the ravener passed out of their minds and into stories.</p>
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<p>'You think I'm just weaving a story. Well, so did they, the ones who came after. For the Cu Saeng slept for five hundred years and more, and when it awoke it found itself trapped and it raged. And it sent out its mind like grasping fingers to those who lived too close to it and caused them evil dreams and made them fall over the edge of madness. But though it fed, it could not get out, and when it was spent it went back to sleep again.</p>
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<p>'But then, the walls were forgotten, and some of them crumbled because there were none who thought to tend them. And when the wall of stone was breached by the newcomers - the Roman legion - it rose again, stronger than the last time, and it was able to reach out further and further. Since that time, the children of the Connor and the MacBeatha put a watcher on the shore, to ensure that the walls remain, at least one of them, to hold the thing until they come who can destroy the Cu Saeng for ever in this earth and send it back.'</p>
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<p>I looked up to see the old woman staring right into my eyes with such intensity I thought she was about to strike me. The piercing gaze was strong enough to be felt.</p>
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<p>'I tell you now, Nicholas Ryan, that time is coming soon. You and
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<em>they</em> are the ones. You have to watch the walls, for the Cu Saeng is awake and it will send out its power to those who will break open its cage. It almost succeeded last time, and you beat it for a time.
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<em>Yes</em>. You and the others, although you don't know it now, defeated Cu Saeng and sent it back into the rock. But it stirs now, and a bad time is coming. A
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<em>bad</em> time.'</p>
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<p>I was riveted. The old woman actually believed every word of what she was saying, just like Jimmy Allison had when he tried to tell me about the Bad Summers.</p>
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<p>Kitty stared at me long and hard, then she reached over quickly and grabbed the teacup from my hand, a startlingly quick movement that took me by surprise. She swirled it around and turned and threw the dregs out of the open door on to the path where years of her tread had compressed the earth into a hard-packed track. She turned back and looked into the bottom of the mug and then up at me with a sly smile.</p>
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<p>'This is the kind of thing we're supposed to be good at,' she said. 'Reading tea leaves. Ha, there's plenty more ways of seeing what's on the road ahead of us, but it's as good a way as any.'</p>
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<p>She bent and frowned in concentration, murmuring to herself softly. The murmur went on in a sort of mantra for some time, a drone that was so low and monotonous it could have sent me to sleep, but then it started to get louder and I looked up at her to see that her eyes were half closed. She seemed almost in a trance.</p>
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<p>Then her eyes snapped open and she looked straight at me. 'A long life, Nicky Ryan of the Connors and the MacBeths.</p>
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<p>'A long life to you, and that means that I can rest soon. Born on the midsummer and conceived on half-night day. A joining and a rejoining. A life to be saved and a life to be owed. A child of one and a man child awakes. A storm and a battle. There's madness here, and slaughter and there's hate. But there is also love. Hold on to the love for it is for you three and for ever, and greater than you know.'</p>
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<p>I didn't understand a word of that.</p>
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<p>'You cannot write yet. But you will. You fear for your talent, but you have it. It will come after the bad days are past. The Cu Saeng reaches out to you and the others. It saps the strength, it snares the will, it sends fear. But you will win.</p>
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<p>'Take care of the child. The man will grow. The woman will hurt .... '</p>
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<p>Her voice trailed off and the fierce look which was drilling into the back of my eyes softened. She smiled again and her whole expression changed.</p>
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<p>'The one-and-onlies?' she laughed. 'That was more true than you could have known. And I suppose you now know what a Virginia is?'</p>
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<p>'How the hell did you know that?' I asked, really astonished. That last statement, straight out of a ten-year-old's memory, threw me right off balance.</p>
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<p>'I told you before. It's not how I know, but
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<em>what</em> I know. And that you've got to learn. That was just to teach you that you should maybe believe an ancient lady down in a shack at the point.'
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</p>
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<p>Then she laughed out loud at the expression on my face. So an old woman had told me a tale. An interesting and scary old tale. And then she'd looked into the bottom of a teacup and she'd come up with some sort of riddling prophecy and then she'd plucked a memory out of my childhood and a thought right out of my head. I liked the legend, like something out of Slaine MacRoth, my favourite strip cartoon Celtic hero. I couldn't make head nor tail of the riddle, or whatever it was, but the last two threw me, as you can imagine. I suppose that's what they were meant to do. I'd gone down to the windy point to get some fresh air and clear out the cobwebs that were slowly filling my mind with self-doubt and I'd ended up just as off balance as before.</p>
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<p>When old Kitty MacBeth had laughed at my expression, she motioned me across to her and put her arm on my shoulder, using me as an extra crutch, and half beckoned, half shoved me to the door.</p>
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<p>'Come on, I'll show you something,' she said, still having a great old giggle to herself. She reached behind the door into a bag hanging on a bent nail and pulled out what I thought was a piece of stiff canvas, and braced herself on my shoulder again.</p>
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<p>We went along the path that led to the big standing stone, going slow, while Kitty half skipped at my side. She placed herself in front of the monolith, on the south side where the salt-spray-laden wind had weathered the black face to a polished smoothness.</p>
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<p>'The old folk knew a thing or two,' she said. 'Look here. It's all smooth with thousands of hard years facing that firth. But you look at every tree you see. The moss and lichen grow on the north side, and on this point the winds never come from the north, only the south and west.</p>
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<p>'Come round here,' she said, gesturing me to follow as she did the crab walk round the other side of the basalt spine. 'Look at this.'</p>
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<p>I looked. She was right. On the straight, slabbed north face of the stone, a thin sheen of lichen covered the flat surface.</p>
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<p>'And look now,' she said, taking the piece of canvas in her hand and folding it around her fingers. It cracked as she wadded the material.</p>
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<p>'Dogfish skin. It's better than sandpaper,' she said, reaching up to scrape gently at the slick green covering. She did that for a few minutes, then took the skin away and rubbed with a wetted finger.</p>
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<p>On the surface, thin lines appeared, etched in the stone. It looked like some form of script, but what kind I couldn't tell. The whole area, maybe the size of my hand, was completely covered in tightly drawn figures and letters which were cut into the rock and had been completely protected from the elements by the natural insulation.</p>
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<p>'They told the whole story, but people forgot how to read it,' Kitty said. 'They told what they did and why they did it, and they wrote down the way to send Cu Saeng back, but there was not enough people to do that, not enough of the
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<em>right</em> people.</p>
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<p>'This part speaks in a riddle. It is a foretelling, and that's why I'm showing it to you, Nicky Ryan.'</p>
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<p>'Why, what does it say?'</p>
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<p>'If I tell you, will you believe me?' she asked.</p>
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<p>'To tell you the truth, I don't know. It all sounds a bit weird to me.'</p>
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<p>'Ah yes. That's the right word. It is
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<em>your</em> weird. And mine. But it will get through to you as time goes on, and I don't think we have too much of that. You can't avoid it, so I might as well tell you.'
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</p>
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<p>She lifted her hand and pointed out some lines. They could have been Greek or runes for all I knew.</p>
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<p>'Yet come three, alone yet one, earth-day born.</p>
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<p>Awakens one who sleeps and strays,</p>
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<p>two return to fight the wrath.</p>
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<p>Sacred flow and sacred grow</p>
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<p>and sacred stone</p>
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<p>to end the rule of Cu Saeng.'</p>
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<p>'What does that mean?' I asked, not entirely convinced that the old woman could actually read those scratches on the rock.</p>
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<p>'Well it could have many meanings, but I think that you three, your one-and- onlies, fit the first part.'</p>
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<p>'How come?'</p>
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<p>'Because there are three of you. That's easy enough. Alone yet one, only children, single children, but you were close enough then to be one, at least last time you did whatever you did on Ardmhor.</p>
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<p>'And you're all earth-day born. You on midsummer, the girl on the autumn equinox and the boy in spring.</p>
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<p>'The chances of that happening in a small place like this are surely millions to one. Especially when you consider that you all have the blood of the Connors and the MacBeths in you, though a touch more diluted than I'd like, but it's there.</p>
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<p>'It has to be you, and the other two, and you have to watch the walls. The bad thing's coming, for I can feel it, and I cannot watch the walls.</p>
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<p>'Look at me. Broke my leg like a silly old fool down on the rocks. Hobbling around like a shore crab. Set it myself, but it takes so long, and we don't
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<em>have</em> long.'</p>
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<p>She nodded across the bay to where Ardmhor sat squat. 'I can't get over there, and something's happening that I can't see. You have to be my eyes and hands now. It's just like last time, when you were a boy. My mother was dying, and I was away from here. I came back on the night your grandfather was searching for you down at the rock. If I had not been away, maybe we could have ended it then. And now, with this old crippled leg, I might as well not be here.'</p>
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<p>Kitty took one of my hands in hers and smiled again.</p>
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<p>'Remember, a long life. You can believe that anyway, because I do. It means that you will beat this thing, although how you will do it, I cannot tell. It's hidden. But don't worry about not believing the rest. That's no problem to you or to me.'</p>
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<p>I didn't know what to say to that.</p>
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<p>'You will, Nick Ryan,' she said. 'And when you do, you'll have some work ahead of you.'</p>
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<p>The night after I saw the old lady down at the point, I thought about what she'd said and what Jimmy Allison had told me and wondered if maybe I should take a look at his handwritten history.</p>
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<p>Kitty MacBeth had really surprised me a couple of times, especially when she went into that tea-leaves stunt. Now, I have to say I've never believed in that kind of thing, but when she spoke about the one-and-onlies, and when she told me about my writers block, it did put a shiver into me.</p>
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<p>The old legend I could take or leave. The west coast abounds with them. I suppose I'd have been prepared to go along with the fact that every legend has a root in some truth, however shallow. Maybe something
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<em>did</em> happen on Ardmhor way back when the world was young, but I couldn't see the relevance of it today.</p>
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<p>True, one or two things had happened recently, like the lifeboat crew who disappeared and still hadn't turned up. There was my tangle with the grasping undergrowth that night, which, though it still gave me the shivers when I thought about it, I had by that point dismissed it as an extra-vivid imagination brought on my tiredness and whisky.</p>
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<p>Way back in my childhood, Colin and Barbara and I had ended up in the rock, or under it, and Colin came out ruined. Nobody knew what the hell we'd been doing down there, least of all me. It was a blank.</p>
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<p>Later that night I got out of bed to close the curtains.</p>
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<p>The half-full moon was beaming directly into my eyes and must have woken me. Outside the window, a silver-blue haze outlined the trees and rooftops. It was still warm, at the start of August, and the summer felt like it was set to stay a good while longer.</p>
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<p>I stretched and went downstairs for a glass of water, automatically missing the creaky seventh stair, and into the kitchen where moonbeams lanced through the lace curtain, dappling the water in the basin with amethyst. There was not a sound, except for the quiet creak of the rocking chair in the sitting room and the small drip-plink from the tap where it drained its last.</p>
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<p>The sitting room was awash with moonlight which didn't strike me as odd, although it's not on the same side of the house as my bedroom or the kitchen. I padded through on my bare feet and stopped dead.</p>
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<p>My grandfather was sitting in the shadows. He looked up from the rocking chair and smiled.</p>
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<p>His face was half in shadow and his old, big hands were curled around the smooth arm of the chair. I stood there, paralysed. Just as I started through the doorway, I'd taken a drink of the cold water and now it stuck somewhere between my throat and my stomach and seemed to want to move two ways at once.</p>
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<p>'Come in, come in,' the old man said. 'Come in and sit yourself down.'</p>
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<p>He motioned me over to the armchair at the other side of the fireplace where the white coals had long fallen to dust since the last fire had been lit. I was rooted to the spot, which is a phrase I've always disliked, but it was nonetheless true. It was as if my whole body was clamped in a block of stone. My heart thudded wildly - I could hear it in my ears - and from way down in my stomach I could feel waves of sheer panic layering up on top of each other, building up to one huge eruption.</p>
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<p>That's not what happened.</p>
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<p>My old grandfather's eyes caught the moonlight, black and blue under his brows, and he gestured again to the easy chair. Some force took my feet and lifted them one by one off the floor where they'd been nailed down and walked me across the room and sat me down. I didn't do it. It just happened.</p>
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<p>'Ah, Nicky boy, you've grown,' he said in that big gravelly voice that I had often remembered with a warm jolt of affection. It now seemed to come from a million miles away, dry and cold.</p>
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<p>'And you've come back to stay with me, eh? That's good. Very good.'</p>
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<p>He nodded, almost contentedly and his eyes looked into the fireplace.</p>
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<p>'But you've been a bad boy. A very bad boy. I've told you not to go down to the rock, and you went down there.'</p>
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<p>He paused and seemed to consider.</p>
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<p>'I told you not to have anything to do with that old witch, but you've been speaking to her, haven't you'?'</p>
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<p>I sat and stared. No sound would come out of my throat. I could hardly breathe. .</p>
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<p>'If you want to stay with me, you'll have to be a <em>good</em> boy.'</p>
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<p>He raised his eyes from the fireplace and turned his head slowly round in my direction. I could a dry sound like old hawsers taking up strain. And he grinned a huge grin. That wasn't my grandfather. Of course it wasn't my grandfather, for he'd been dead for years.</p>
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<p>But whatever this was, it wasn't even him. My old grandfather laughed, or he smiled, or he roared. But he never grinned.</p>
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<p>I stared at the apparition. My eyes must have been opened so wide they were in danger of falling right out of my head.</p>
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<p>The grin widened until it showed an impossible array of teeth that were long and thin and blue in the unearthly light.</p>
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<p>'You be a good boy,' he hissed through the teeth, 'and I'll let you stay with me.'</p>
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<p>He giggled then and skin began to flake off his face.</p>
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<p>
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<em>Hee-hee-hee</em>. High pitched. Mad. And the more he laughed, the more the skin shrivelled up like leather on an old boot and split down the seams of his face and his head seemed to swell. The eyes got bigger and paler and the noise of old ropes tearing and twisting got louder. The rocking chair creaked as it swung back and forth as the thing that had looked like my grandfather swelled and split and giggled.
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</p>
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<p>Then the glass that I'd been holding in my right hand suddenly gave way in the pressure of my grip and a jagged edge went straight into my palm with such a force that blood just spouted out. That was enough to get my breath back and I let out a cry that must have been heard from the far side of the firth.</p>
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<p>I leapt out of the chair in terror and instinctively hurled the base of the glass and what remained of the water, plus, no doubt, a fair quantity of the blood that was pouring out of the gash in my hand, right at the thing in the chair.</p>
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<p>In slow motion I watched the glass tumble, catching that light, and smash right into the writhing, giggling thing. It hit with a muffled thump, and then a crash as it struck through and into the turned risers at the back of the chair which tipped over with a thump.</p>
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<p>The thing just disappeared in front of my eyes as if it had never been there, leaving me in the middle of the floor cursing in words that I thought I'd forgotten, a stream of invective that reverberated back at me from the walls until I stopped, gasping for breath, and sank back down into the chair.</p>
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<p>The light from the early morning sun awoke me through the space in the curtain that I'd meant to close the night before, and I suddenly jerked awake with the vision of that thing still in my head.</p>
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<p>Everyone has experienced that moment of awakening when a dream simply fragments. I rolled over and out of bed, breathing deeply, still shuddering from the visual memory, crossed the room and opened the curtains fully to let as much daylight in as I could.</p>
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<p>As I did so, I felt a sharp stab of pain in my hand as it brushed against the curtain fabric. I looked down and there in the centre of the palm was a small, crescent shaped cut that was just beginning to scab over.</p>
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<p>Instantly I got a vision of the dream again but I shook it off. I've had falling dreams when I've ended up on the floor, or fire-engine dreams just when the alarm goes off. I couldn't remember cutting myself, but that didn't mean it hadn't happened yesterday, maybe down at the point. I probably just hadn't noticed it.</p>
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<p>By the time I got dressed and slunged my face with cold water, the shaky feeling was receding. I told myself it was just a dream.</p>
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<p>The day looked fine and clear and I felt like frying up a good breakfast and then getting out into the fresh air and away from the house for a while. I'd fixed up with Barbara Foster to take her and Paddy across to Loch Lomond for a picnic, so I thought I'd go up to the shop to get whatever we'd need for a day out. In the kitchen I had the pan sizzling with good Belfast ham and I threw in some mushrooms and set a couple of eggs on to poach.</p>
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<p>The kettle boiled quickly and I had a coffee while I was cooking and another one while I ate. I felt a whole lot better after that.</p>
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<p>By the time I'd finished and cleaned up the kitchen, I took a third cup and carried it through to the sitting room.</p>
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<p>There I promptly dropped it on my foot, which would have been badly scalded if the coffee hadn't cooled down a little.</p>
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<p>For the rocking chair lay on its back at the far side of the room.</p>
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<p>And there was a broken glass and shards lying beside it.</p>
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<p>The scald was painful enough to make me cry out, which I suppose helped release the breath that was getting ready to back up in my lungs, but the pain quickly receded. All sorts of explanations began to line themselves up in my head, but before I could think of any of them a face loomed into the window frame so suddenly that I jumped backwards in fright.</p>
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<p>If I'd thought rationally, I suppose by this time I would have been getting a bit pissed off at the number of shocks my poor thudding heart had been given in quick succession. But when the figure looming at the window lifted a black arm to cut off the reflection and peer into the room, I recognised Father Gerald O'Connor. He wasn't wearing his motorcycle gear, but the normal black suit and white collar. I motioned him around to the front door and he was standing there in the sunlight when I opened it.</p>
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<p>'Sorry if I gave you a fright,' he said affably. 'You look as if you've seen a ghost. What were you doing in there? A war dance?'</p>
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<p>'No, I spilled some coffee on my foot.' We both looked down.</p>
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<p>There was a light red weal where it had splashed. It wouldn't come to anything.</p>
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<p>'Ah, I'd love a cup,' said the young priest, eagerly, inviting himself in. 'I've been up since five o'clock this morning. I'm the duty man on the emergency service. I think I'll get a siren and a flashing light.'</p>
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<p>'What was the emergency?'</p>
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<p>'Oh, nothing serious. Mrs Black found her father at the foot of the stairs and thought he'd had a heart attack. She decided he needed extreme unction. What he needed was extreme black coffee and I suppose he'll have an extreme hangover later this morning. And when you think of the voice his daughter's got, you can expect he'll wish he had died before the week's out.</p>
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<p>'What gets me is that she's not even a Catholic, but that's the third time she's called me out in the past year for the old man.'</p>
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<p>I put the kettle on and the priest - he said I should call him Gerry - said he'd shoot his granny for a bacon sandwich, so I fired up the pan and put a couple of rashers in to sizzle.</p>
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<p>'I just thought I'd drop by in the passing,' he said. 'I never got a chance to meet you up at Alan's house the other day. I'm sorry if I gave you a fright. Most people are glad to see us. We're on the good side, you know.'</p>
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<p>'No, it wasn't you,' I said. 'It was something else entirely.'</p>
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<p>'Why, what happened?'</p>
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<p>'You wouldn't believe it.'</p>
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<p>'Try me. I'm a good listener. It's all the hours we spend sitting in a little box.'</p>
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<p>I'm not a religious person, but strangely it seemed a relief to talk about it, even to a young priest who ran about on a racing Honda. I sat there and told him about what had happened last night, and how I'd woken up thinking it had been a nightmare, and then come back down and seen the rocking chair lying in the corner. Just before the kettle boiled I took him through and showed him.</p>
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<p>'What do you think? Am I going crazy?'</p>
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<p>'Not at all,' he said, smiling. 'You've been sleepwalking. I used to do it all the time when I was small. My mother was worrying but my old man said as long as I didn't pee the bed he didn't mind.'</p>
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<p>
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'I've never walked in my sleep before, and I've been getting bad dreams almost every night? '</p>
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<p>
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'You're probably tense. Are you worrying about anything?'</p>
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<p>'Nothing that should make me feel like I've seen a ghost. I've not been feeling great, but what happened last night scared the hell out of me.'</p>
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<p>'Well, that's pretty normal. But I wouldn't say you're crazy. I'd just put it to the back of my mind if were you. Things always look different in the daytime.'</p>
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<p>I made more coffee and fixed up the bacon sandwiches. He started eating them with obvious appetite.</p>
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<p>He took a gulp to wash down a bite and said: 'The world's got a lot worse to throw at us than ghosts, you know.</p>
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<p>'Look at that poor woman who killed her son and then took her own life. And there's that farmer, Mr Gillon; you were there, weren't you? If ghosts were all we had to worry about I'd be delighted.'</p>
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<p>
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'That's another thing,' I said. 'Those two accidents, I mean. What could have caused them?'</p>
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<p>'Accidents happen. No rhyme nor reason. And we've just got to try to help after they do.'</p>
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<p>'Have you ever thought that these accidents might not have been accidents?'</p>
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<p>'How do you mean?'</p>
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<p>'I don't know. Not yet anyway. But I've got a funny feeling. Ever since I've come back to Arden, things haven't gone right. Like those deaths. In a small place like this two freak accidents seem more than coincidence.'</p>
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<p>'I could say something trite, like "The Lord giveth", but I won't,' Gerry said. 'These things happen. I can't explain them. Nobody can.'</p>
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<p>'What if . . . ' I said, but I stopped.</p>
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<p>'What if what?'</p>
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<p>'Nothing. I'm just a bit shook up. Shaken up, I should say. I've spent too long in the States.'</p>
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<p>
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'You're a bit too worldly wise for me to give parental advice,' he said, 'even though I am a priest. I know what I'm like after a nightmare. But at least we always wake up. I don't believe in ghosts and ghouls. The Holy Ghost maybe, but that's between me and him.'</p>
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<p>'I can't say I'm much of a believer,' I confessed.</p>
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<p>
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'Don't worry about that. I'm not an evangelist. Even priests have their own doubts.'</p>
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<p>'So have journalists who aspire to be writers. Lots of them. Let's just hope you're right.'</p>
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<p>He drained his cup and we exchanged some chat as he was leaving.</p>
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<p>'Will you be coming to the festival?' he asked at the gate.</p>
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<p>'I suppose so. Everybody else will be there.'</p>
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<p>'Good, I'm looking forward to it. They're getting things ready up at the seminary, so I'll be kept busy with that for a day or so. Listen, why don't you come up and see the place? You'd like it. I'm still amazed, being a city boy, how self-sufficient the old timers have got it. Been doing it for hundreds of years, I'm told.'</p>
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<p>I said I would come up sometime, and Gerry suggested Thursday. Not having anything planned, I agreed.</p>
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