Fanore

SETTING - The police car outside the main entrance to McNamara’s Quality Lodge & Eatery.

SOUND - The wind is starting to whistle around corners and whines as it is sliced by the antenna. The sound interrupts the car radio, which is intermittently squawking something indiscernible. There is a faint vibrating sound suggestive of a heavy helicopter which grows gradually louder.

LIGHT - The brightest part of the sky is over the Burren to the east, but that section is shrinking fast. A single source of light against the darkening clouds between the coastline and the Aran Islands shows the apparently slow moving position of a helicopter.

ACTION - Garda Burke opens the police car door as the radio squawks again but he ignores it. That’s the third time they said they fixed the problem with the car radio, but experience has taught him that he can expect better reception using his walkie talkie.

“November Charlie - Rourke, Rourke.”

“Rourke. Go.”

“The car radio is on the blink again Sarge. Can you relay to the Sikorsky that he should set a search pattern north east from Fanore Beach. Over.”

“Stand By Burke.” A half minute passed.

“SAR Says there will be no pattern today. He is already scraping the ceiling, whatever that means. He says he is level with the summit, but he will stay on station until it disappears. Does that make sense to you Burke? Over.”

“Thanks Sarge. Out.”

Burke glances towards the lodge entrance as Cathal Brennan emerges. He is guiding Ethan by the elbow and seems to have forgotten that he could be an assault suspect. “Cathal, we’ll need the cuffs for the drive. Y’know, procedure.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Says Cathal. “But the cuffs are still in the car.”

“What cuffs?” Says Ethan. “We need to go up there now and find out what happened to Mona before this weather gets worse. What’s wrong with you people?” He pulls angrily away from Brennan, who is surprised by the aggressive movement. Ethan had reverted to stupefied docility while he wrestled with the multiple conundrums of losing forty years, his own sanity and the love of his life. The mention of handcuffs snaps him out of it and he becomes fixed on getting back into the hills to do something, anything rather than sit in a jail for nothing and doing nothing.

Sioga sprints out the door behind them. Her long clothes competing with her hair to make her look like an attacking octopus. “Follow me Brian Og. I’ll take you back to where you want to go.” She screams and is past the police car and off in the direction of Fanore beach. It’s not far and from there she will be just a stone’s throw from the start of the Old Green Road.

Just then Brennan lunges at Ethan, who turns expertly on his side and flips the policeman over his hip, using his shift in impetus against him. Garda Brennan hits the ground and is winded. He drags himself to his feet wheezing badly.

“Jeez Brennan.” Burke mutters as the girl is already on the road and literally running north. Their priority will have to be the nut job first. With him secured, they should be able to pick her up on the way back to Ballyvaughan anyway.

Then in more commanding tones. “Do you know the penalty for assaulting a Garda on duty? And that will be after I get hold of you, ye cretin?” Seamus is absolutely furious and makes his move towards the American, while Cathal Brennan collects himself to join in, keen to make amends.

The two police officers get Ethan under control in double quick time and with only the occasional accidental punch to his face. Seamus Burke is leading the way when he sees the red head in the back seat of the police car, obviously realising how much shit she was in. He decides to leave her attempt to flee the scene out of his subsequent report. Shioga then obligingly pushes open the door opposite her, inviting them to put Ethan in the car.

“Good girl Sioga.” Says Seamus Burke and the upstart American is cuffed and in the back seat with the girl in no time flat. The few slaps seems to have done him good because he doesn’t look so wild eyed now.

“Will you be alright in there Sioga? He can’t hurt you but if you don’t want to be stuck in there with him, I’m happy to come back for you later to clear things up.” Says Cathal, feeling better for having been bettered so easily.

When he gets no response, both officers turn to see the two heads in the back of the car are way too close together. “Listen Brian,” Shioga hisses with an intensity that makes Ethan take notice. “Mona is not what you thought she was.”

“She was always a part of the same breed that took her off with them. I think they just took her back, that’s all. For all we know, they might have been protecting her from us.” Sioga maintains unblinking eye contact and his irises shrink to meet hers. “They are bad things, like restless spirits driven to come, cause mischief and then go leaving only suffering behind. Just look at yourself if you doubt me. Mona was different because she came from a different place as well as a different time. Most of them are only stuck in time. They are not nice and they are not people. You should be glad they found her tomb. She was compelled to go up there and she can’t come back here again.”

Ethan struggles with that, but there is an intensity in the girl’s eyes that is inversely proportional to the logic of finding himself helpless in the back of a police car and looking at a very serious crime he had nothing to do with. So he just listens.

Burke bangs on the perspex that separates the front of the car from the rear. “You two. Heads up now.” He shouts.

“We’ll go there together and clear this up. Are you ready?” She is smiling with lips that could never compare with Mona’s but her eyes. What is it with her eyes? He nods.

Sioga’s fingers are deft and she undoes the cuffs in an instant. Burke wonders how she got the spare keys from the front of the car and his glance passes the ignition, from which she has also taken the key.

“She got them while we were busy with the crazy guy. Dammit.” He roars and reaches for the door lever. Faster than his brain has come to grips with this altered reality, Ethan turns the key from the outside and the car becomes a momentary prison, while Sioga makes a bee line for the Lodge.

Ethan and the two officers play pull the button up and then re-lock the car with the key for a few precious moments. Then Ethan follows Sioga into the Lodge.

When Seamus Burke and Cathal Brennan storm through the door and present themselves to the wide eyed receptionist, she just looks at them frozen.

“Well?” Demands Burke, but she just grimaces and then shuts her eyes.

“Where are they Angie?” Cathal’s use of the name used by her familiars seems to negate whatever threats were made by Ethan, or more likely Sioga and she raises a finger in apparent slow motion. It seems to take an age for the slender red tipped digit to settle on the staff room barely ten feet away. Seamus feels the breeze from the window that had to be opened in advance by Sioga but just then, the tyres of his police car are already spraying gravel.

“It’s getting pretty wild up here and to be perfectly honest, I’m no longer sure I’ll be able to identify the spot where they took her.” Ethan abandoned the blue police car in pretty much the same spot as he abandoned the blue Avis Ford 16-E about forty years before. The only difference being the keys which he left in the ignition and his choice of companions, though choice might not be the appropriate word.

Despite the significant increase in affluence, houses, holiday cottages and the abundance and size of cars parked outside, things that hadn’t registered with him on the frantic race for help that took him back to the guest house slash lodge, the Old Green Road is perennial.

It could have been the kind of profound fatigue that only futility can produce, or the revelation that nothing really matters regardless of the supreme effort invested in everything, that finally broke him. Under a huge monolithic slab of limestone that looked like it had never been wet on the side where they cowered, Ethan sinks his head into his chest and sobs with an audible Boo Hoo.

Overhead, the big red and white Sikorsky makes what would be its last pass as the weather closes the Burren. The rotor blades protest with a particularly loud series of slaps as they bwap-bwap-bwap and smacked the wind so hard they could feel the percussion in the rock at their backs, but then it was gone. They’d never quite seen it through the cloud and yet it sounded sometimes like it was going to land on their heads as they scrambled uphill, never daring to look back.

Shioga shivers involuntarily and he registers the young girl behind all the total craziness. The well worn dress is apparently the only thing she wears because it sticks to her chest as she heaves. Despite his confusion, he is obliged to wrap a protective arm around his saviour’s shoulders and she responds by moving closer. There is a suggestion of body heat behind the basic smells of perspiration and wet hair.

“So if Mona is … was so bad, then what does that make you Sioga? If you can see bad spirits coming and going and they know who you are because Mona certainly did, then what does that make you?”

The wind whistles through rocks that have witnessed fire and ice and then more ice and a miniature cascade eventually runs down the massive unyielding spectator that eavesdrops on their words, mere inches away from where she looks up with those eyes.

“I’m just a silly girl who fell ridiculously in love with a boy who was taken from me when I wasn’t old enough to know how to keep him. After that, I only had time on my hands, but I made myself believe you’d come back and I wasn’t going to be a withered old spinster when you did. So I had no choice but to find a way to move with the times.” She looked up at the rain. It wasn’t falling from the clouds, it was manifesting itself in horizontal streaks driven by the wind.

She had to raise her voice to be heard. “I was lucky not to fall victim to them and their ways. But I learned to see their comings and goings and I stayed out of their way when I could, especially from Mona. She really is … was a queen in her other life. But when I saw you came back for me, the devil took me and I sat up here to wait for you both.”

Sioga had no choice but to wait while Ethan and Walker acknowledged destiny through conflict over Mona and herself. It was always likely to be brutal but she could never know it could also be so fast, and the victor looked out at her through Walker’s eyes. “Now what?”

“If you promise you’re back to spend time with me …” She smiled. “We can start from the beginning again.” And reached up to run a cold hand across his face. If the rain was just a little softer, he had no doubt she could cast her spell just as effectively as Mona had apparently cast hers.

“You’re cold.” He smiled but his eyes were smiling and soft.

“Do you believe in belief and the power to create a new tomorrow from this moment?” She asked, even more softly.

He didn’t think. That was always his problem. “Mona believed all that but I’m not sure.” Sioga winced at the sound of Mona’s name.

“I’m sorry.”

“Close your eyes Brian Og and let me tell you how it will be.” She said, in a voice that was impossible to disobey.

“We can stop the wind and the rain. Try it with me Brian. That’s it. Do you hear that? The drops are not so big nor falling as hard as they did, are they? Now if you don’t open your eyes, you will still sense the brightness growing because the sun is coming out now and I’m not shivering any more because I can feel it on my skin.” She paused, but he wasn’t sure for how long. “Can you feel it Brian?”

She took his hand and pressed it tightly to her chest until he felt her heart beat on his palm. Then her heart beat stronger and stronger until he was afraid for her. He was about to speak, but she squeezed his hand so tight it hurt. The onset of an intense dizziness scared him so much, that he didn’t dare open his eyes until it passed.

“Wait my love. We are almost home.”