A Mortal Drag

Hilda stopped moseying about and looked up at the sky.  The two men did the same.  The stars had multiplied as though they were all rushing in to get a decent view of Earth before the dawn made it impossible. 

Another snort from the pig. 

She turned again to the entrance of the dell, looking beyond the pathway between the trees and out into the dark of the wood.  Human voices were travelling along the path towards them, mutters and groans, too faint to be identified.  In response, Hilda moved back across the dell and stood under the bog man like a servitor, prompting Moloney to question the pig’s allegiances.

            Would you look at that, he said.  You show them mercy.  And all you get is disloyalty.

            Mercy-kill me and I promise you my loyalty in the afterlife, said Sullivan.

            What does that mean?  You’ll stick by me?  I don’t want your bloody ghost at my side for the remainder of my years. 

Hilda began to huff excitedly, digging her little trotters into the grass as sound increased in the trees, the buzzing, which had become more sustained since Sullivan arrived in the dell; now it appeared the electricity board had their house in order and the power lines, though pulled and mangled, were once again activated, the half-hums now a continuous thrummmmmmmmmmmmm.   From everything Moloney had seen and heard this night, he predicted a reaction from the body so he gripped the shotgun tighter and redirected it from Sullivan to the risen corpse; he was correct to assume a correlation for the bog man’s head joggled slightly, robotically, and then elevation from the right arm.  For a few seconds, it held up and looked at its own hand, which was like a wrinkly old catcher’s mitt. 

The two men bristled as the figure turned to face them.  Even if you were the most God-trusting citizen of Ireland in those times and well aware of moving statues from the news, this was a sight to make your hair stand.  Its movements swithered between motorised and rubbery as though the driver was caught between sleep, half-sleep and dead drunk. 

Hilda skittered back as the thin knees bent and the body slumped forward, keeping balanced and standing nevertheless.  Then with the small steps of a foundling, the bog man started to move towards the two men. 

The nightmare of something slipping your mind and then returning at the most objectionable time.  Moloney had a realisation: he hadn’t re-chambered the shotgun yesterday.  It had been empty all day long.  Luckily the carton of shells was in his pocket.  He quickly began to replenish the firearm but as he was doing so the bog man once more stopped. 

Something got into Sullivan again and he took two steps forward.

Any chance you would do me in? he asked the silent revenant.

The body stared blankly at him.  Its face was even more weepy and miserable than Sullivan’s, and what’s more, it had a lifetime and beyond of weepy and miserable to display, solidified, immutable; confronted by it, Sullivan felt his own death wish being insulted, belittled, and written off as merely a mortal drag.

Get back here, ye fool, yelled Moloney.

Then the body seemed to lose interest in the men.  Finding its feet, it steadily moved across the dell and disappeared into the southwest trees with Hilda following behind at a lag.

The voices made themselves known.  There at the entrance: Elder, MacKenna, Abby.  And Knox with the Super 8.  Just in time to miss entirely the reanimated corpse and its attendant pig.

            How are we for light, Knox? said Elder.

            Not too rosy.

            Get that camera on him anyway!  Secure the photographic evidence.  Now Moloney: you put that weapon down and stand away.  You reprobate, where in the many-worlds have you stashed the Steever Man?

            Initially, Moloney didn’t answer.  He looked to the fold of trees where the bog man had taken leave, then looked back at the oak tree.  Then he said, I don’t know where he went.

            He’s up and about, said Sullivan.  You just missed him.  He wandered off into those trees. 

            Wandered off? enquired Elder, half-excited, half-terrified.  So it’s true.  He’s awoken.  I knew it.  Was it the custard?  Wait.  He wandered?  He walks?   

            Long, proud, machinelike, said Sullivan.

            Knox moved a few steps to the right with the camera.  He panned around the dell, filming only the darkness and dispersed steel glints, making sure not to land the camera’s eye on Moloney; he still feared the farmer, especially with the shotgun once more in his hands, and wasn’t keen on unnerving him, no matter what indispensable shot his director was seeking.  Moloney still had his own unique aura of danger about him, but the weapon had now drooped down to his side, and he had not aimed it at anyone since they arrived at the dell.  He seemed a little out of sorts, in a manner mellowed; looking back at the great oak tree, the farmer spoke:

            Before it got up by itself, I saw the woman again, or what the Oul Lass would have classed a nymph – a female ghost.  If I was to be clearer about her appearance, I would say she resembled the Hollywood film woman Shirley MacLaine.

            Shirley? said Elder.  She’d be having no business with your kind, Moloney, I guarantee that.  I’ve met the woman.

            I’m sure you have.  Though I’d wager the spirit was only wearing Shirley MacLaine’s face, and maybe a little number from her personal closet too, but all for a breath, for she went on to change, transforming to look like other people too, not just herself.  Others that not even you with all your starry connections in the world could possibly know.

            And was she prognosticating again, this shape-shifter?

            Not this time, no.  She was more concerned with getting back to her place of residence, which I believe was the cadaver we’ve all been fussing over.  She talked a fair bit though.  About the cruelty she had done to her.

            Well, I’m sure you felt like Gay Byrne having the old chinwag.

            Oh, he showed up too.  I think.

            Elder looked past Moloney to the oak tree and reflected.  Soon the mistrust he had of his long-standing nemesis eased.

            The druids were right about those old trees, he said, a dreamy flavour to his voice, lecture-mode.  I should have known.  I wish I’d studied more botany when I was younger.  I never would have taken you for a master in the fields, Moloney – far from the prizewinning agrologist you are – but I trust that what you say is true, from all that we have seen, and from your addled state now, like when you had that scare back at the house.  Yes, it’s a fine tree, it is.  Splendid.  I have seen it before, of course.  I’ve passed it.  Ahem.  Bat-eyed attention I gave it.  But now I see.  Longevity is its design.  Pity whoever designed us didn’t bother sprinkling in some of that good stuff too.  But if you say our bog man is up on his feet at last, I’m thankful.  Could all the forces be aligning finally?  Immortality within reach.

Abby Kane had been holding back beside Elder for some time, just happy to see that Sullivan was well.  But now she sounded off at him for his earlier skedaddle, coming across more like a seething mother than an escaped philosophy student:

           What in the hell are you doing out here?  Why did you leave the house?

            Ah, I needed a bit of air, my dear, you know, Sullivan replied.

            We have people combing the countryside looking for you.  At such an hour.  And here you are gallivanting in the woods.

            I wouldn’t call it gallivanting.  I don’t know how I got here, to be clear.  I can’t remember leaving the house.  Something got into me and I walked out of there.  I’m surprised none of you noticed me get up, come to think of it.

            Well, Elder interjected.  One might say somnambulance is your natural state – how would anyone in their right mind know the difference?

            There’s not a one of you with a right mind, said Moloney.