The Parasite: Chapter Four

 

IV: Two Shots

 

That’s what it’d take, he figured. Two shots. One, if the old weathered Mauser hadn’t been tattered and timeworn from years of neglect. But it had. How on earth would he have expected it to come into use, with him living in the arsehole of nowhere with no decent hunting grounds this side of the Bluestacks? So it lay in the cow shed just outside of the village, probably buried behind a mountain of rusted pales and rakes. 

John had already been up and readying himself to make the trip to Kyteller’s. 

“I need you with me today”, he had told Cillian as he strapped the long-barrel hunting rifle to his back.

“I am.” The previous night’s dream saw him waking up in a coat of beaded sweat. This nonsense with his father and a ‘witch’ had gotten to his head.

He thought of the Dungloe incident. Since old Mick had told him, albeit, in sparse details, he had reconstructed the horror in his mind. 

Tied bricks to their feet, he did. Dumped them from the pier and watched them swallow mouthfuls of black saltwater, kicking and flailing. If they floated, they were kin of the devil. If not, well, they drowned anyway, their lungs screaming and swelling with the frigid water and their eyes rolling around aimlessly in their sockets. Because it’s better to kill them than to take a chance!

Cillian felt sick. His stomach was waving loosely and tightening to a knot. 

His mother didn’t leave her bed that morning when he awakened. Cillian kissed her on the forehead. Outside in the clearing, he could hear his father talking idly. He got dressed

 

(did I take my clothes off last night?)

 

And pushed open the front door. 

It was so wrong, how beautiful the morning was. Cloudless, soft blue, the waves rolled and crashed across the dunes. People rolled barrows to and fro’ and the creaking of the women on the spinning wheels almost gave the illusion that everything was fine; they weren’t going to starve, and no one was going to be swallowing lungfuls of salty water as they kicked and flailed their way to the surface. No one was going to kill their own father. It was mild, too, and on deathdays,  it wasn’t supposed to be mild. It was supposed to be dark and damp and rainy. This, this was all wrong.

John had already been on the fields’, by the looks of it, and his hands were flaky with dirt right up to his elbows. He waved Cillian over to the well, where he was talking to Mick and his son, Ryan.

“You alright, Ryan?” Cillian said. Ryan was in his late twenties, a capable, grounded man, and one who looked as if he’d just heard the most bizarre dose of cowpat in his life.

“Grand, Cillian. Got a half-barrow or so of edible stock there, thank God, but the rot is running through the fields fiercely.” 

Cillian nodded.

“As I was saying”, John picked up the conversation with Ryan, “there’s no harm in taking a run up to their house and seeing.”

Ryan looked at Cillian, then back to John. “I can’t tell if you’re serious John. I can’t. What, has hunger sent you mad?”

“Not at all”, John smiled. “But I’d rather not be hungry if I had a choice. I don’t see harm in checking it out. I’ve seen it myself…”

“You’ve seen what, John?” Ryan snapped, and Mick nudged him with his elbow.

“I’ve seen enough to tell me that Kyteller is up to no good.”

“You’re as mad as a March hare.” Ryan picked up a shovel that sat by the well beside him. “I’ve to get as much out of the field as I can. I have to go. John, if you’re serious, you’d best have a long hard look at yourself. And Cillian, I reckon you steer clear of this malarky too”. 

With his shovel over his shoulder and a shake of the head, he left the father and son and made tracks back to the field. 

“So be it”, John said quietly. “Mick, I take it you’re not coming, either.”

“I’ve told you already, John. You’re on your own on this one.”

“Not quite. Cillian is coming with me. Aren’t you, son?”

“Yessir.”

“You’ll thank me, brother”, John said, “when the harvest returns to normal. Cillian, I gave you a Mauser in the past. Where is it? Get it, we can never be too safe.”

“Yessir. I’ll get it now.”

“Be quick about it. I can’t watch these people starve much longer. Go, get it. And we’ll take a run up and see because I don’t see the harm in checking it out.” His lips were shattered with glowing red cuts and cracks, and he wiped his forearm harshly across them.

Mick stood in the silence between them and looked at Cillian. Cillian stared back. They needn’t speak because both were thinking the same thing. The Mauser. 

 

*

 

The cowshed was a long, wooden outbuilding that stood in isolation across the fields to the East. The village folk had spread sporadically and made their way gradually inland in a bid to reap any food. They grunted as they plunged shovels into the ground, ladies in their dresses stooped weakly in the dirt. Cillian walked past a pair of children, his distant relatives of some kind, who were laughing, and throwing rotten potatoes at each other. Their skin was pulled taught to their faces, and their once lively youthful laughs had receded to an old pipe-smoker’s wheezing. 

He approached the cow shed, which was a damn stupid name for it now since the British had demanded their cattle a few weeks ago. They had come and marched the dead-eyed bulls and calves out and led them across the border.

He pulled the door of the shed open, leaning back on it with two hands. An aisle lay down the middle, a mess of hay and grass and cow dung. Four latched rooms ran along each side of the aisle, where a cow would have resided each. Now, their latches lay open and empty.

He didn’t have use for the Mauser at all, and God forbid one of the children in the village got it, Cillian figured it best to throw it well out of the way. In the second room down, there was an upturned pail just inside the door. He kicked it over, and the gun was there. The magazine slotted out. Two bullets. A third had jammed in the barrel, and he wrestled and worked to free it, but when it fell to his hand it was just a shell casing. So that left two. Two shots, two attempts. No room for error. Or miss.

He loaded the magazine into the pistol, driving it in with force against the rust, his hands sticky and wet with sweat. Making his way out of the cowshed and back onto the rolling pastures, he tucked the pistol into his beltline and let his tunic fall over it.

Someone was crying in the fields in the distance, a high, piercing scream. A child, probably, but the hunger had brought many adults to their knees also. The sky remained spotless and crows circled overhead, gliding black dots against the fairytale blue canvas.

 

 (Who is crying, can’t someone see their poor child?)

 

He summited a small hill and the village and the sea and all of its spanning fields fell before him in the distance. A picture of isolation. Workers dotted the fields and dug and hauled at the ground, and who on God’s green Earth is crying like that? He looked over the fields of village folk who were bent over crookedly, working, as if blown into position by the western torrents. A mass of dirtied white shirts and brown-stained dresses and a woman in their midst in black.

 

(Who is that?)

 

From a distance, amidst the workers, a figure, draped in black and

 

(Looking right at me)

 

Howling an awful, shrilling scream. No one took notice of her and the men and women dug and hauled and dug some more. Some wheeled barrows right past her. She was looking at him. A black dress fell around her and her hair spiralled in the wind. How can no one see her? How can no one hear her? The two children he had walked past still threw shrivelled potatoes at each other from a distance, and that horrible, rattling laugh of theirs was drowned out by this sorrowful sob.

 

(Once the banshee sings…)

 

In the distance, by the cliffside, the oak tree outside Kyteller’s house swooned and shed its leaves behind the draped black figure.

The dream. The eyes, blue, green, the child. The flames. It all flooded back into his mind. Bring him to me, she had told him, I’ll do the rest. 

 

(... there’s no stopping the coming of death)

 

She was singing her song now. With every deathful note, she sang it aloud, and she sang it for Cillian alone.