‘Now, Mary,’ Ben began, smiling as though they were old friends sitting down between a pot of tea. ‘Thanks for volunteering to go first. I honestly don’t know what I would do without you.’
The woman nodded. Her fingers fidgeted as if trying to loosen an invisible knot.
Ben’s jacket was propped on the ground between them. His recorder was tucked discreetly under its collar like a spy behind enemy lines. Mary sat across from him, within the square of sunlight that lit up the stable, making her freckles glow like embers. The board had been pulled across the door, if only to keep the wasp out.
‘I’m going to ask you a few questions, okay?’ Ben said softly to put her at ease. ‘I’d like to hear about your life and any stories that you would consider a part of your village. And you don’t have to answer anything that you don’t feel comfortable with. Hopefully, you might even enjoy yourself.’
Again she bowed her head. This might be easier than expected. Outside the stable, all was quiet, like a sky at rest before a storm. Tír Mallacht was such a joyless place. Even the children – those whose sparks should burn the brightest – seemed to speak only in whispers.
‘Have you lived here all of your life?’ Ben asked.
‘I have.’
He waited for more. It didn’t come. Mary smiled at him, content that she had answered his question correctly. Top marks, Mary.
‘And tell me,’ he continued, unfazed, ‘what was it like growing up here?’
She thought long and hard. Twice her lips parted soundlessly before she spoke. ‘When we’re young we don’t know very much, I think. We do what our parents ask of us. It’s always been important to do as you’re told, especially when you’re a child. And then, when you’re older you understand it more. You appreciate why you do it.’
‘It’s all part of growing up, isn’t it?’ Ben said, not quite understanding her answer.
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
‘The summers here must be lovely?’ he asked. ‘Other parts of the country can be so loud. You know, so busy all the time what with all the cars and people.’
She just blinked at him. If Mary knew what a car was, she had no strong feelings towards them. It was a test. Ben wanted to disturb the waters slightly to see if anything moved. He had to know if they were as preserved as Sparling thought them to be.
‘Have you ever left this village, Mary?’
‘No,’ she replied, shaking her head, eyes shifting to the open frame. ‘We don’t leave here. My children will spend their lives in Tír Mallacht, as I have done and as did my parents before me.’
‘And why don’t you leave? There’s nothing stopping you, is there?’
‘We have everything we need here in the village,’ she said, feigning a weak smile no more convincing than the tone of her voice. ‘Everyone is safe so long as we stay here, and that’s what matters.’
‘Safe?’ Ben asked, puzzled. ‘Everyone is safe from what, Mary?’
The woman looked everywhere except at Ben. Lips pressed together so tight that they disappeared entirely. Her fingers tugged harder on that imaginary knot. It was a bafflingly childish reaction, as if by averting her eyes, Ben – and the question – would cease to exist.
‘Where’d your friend go?’ she asked, quite obviously changing the subject.
‘I think she was going to look at your church,’ he replied, ‘or whatever’s left of it.’
‘She shouldn’t go there,’ Mary whispered.
‘And why’s that?’
Again, silence. Ben had perhaps naively expected Mary to talk at length with the slightest push. She had understood the questions. She deliberated over her answers. And still she had given him nothing. Whatever information the woman had hidden away, she stored it in a closed book, its binding sealed with a padlock.
‘Were there any stories that you were told when you were growing up?’ he asked, leaning forward. ‘Any stories that you still tell the children?’
‘What kind of stories?’ she asked innocently.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I noticed that all the boys here wear dresses. In many parts of the country this was to fool the fairy folk. The changelings preferred to steal away the boys, you see.’
‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’
‘You don’t believe in fairies?’ he probed.
‘No.’
‘Are you religious?’
‘No,’ she replied again. ‘The church hasn’t been used for prayer since before I was born.’
‘Do you know what happened here that made the people lose their faith?’
‘No.’
‘Something must have happened, Mary. The church wouldn’t simply abandon its parishioners without a reason.’
‘You ask too many questions,’ she snapped, her agitation breaking out in beads of sweat. ‘You shouldn’t have come here. There are some things that you shouldn’t know. Nobody should.’
‘What kind of things do you mean?’
‘We live here because we have to,’ she replied, clearly frustrated by Ben’s line of questioning. ‘We have no choice. Everyone is safer that way. I don’t think I want to do this anymore. Can we stop now? I’d like to stop.’
So much for his way with people, as Sparling had put it. Ben should have known better than to upset her. He had thrown too many closed-ended questions at the woman and she had taken them like a biblical stoning.
‘I’m sorry, Mary,’ he said, and he genuinely meant it.
An awkward, clenched energy fell between them. Ben had made this mistake in the past; a lesson learned back in his academic heyday but one since forgotten. The woman had locked down her defences.
‘What can you tell me about the bells?’
‘I don’t know anything about any bells,’ she replied, her fists now balled up tight.
‘You didn’t hear them ring earlier?’ he pressed.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Is someone preventing you from leaving?’ he asked. ‘You can tell me, Mary. Maybe I can help you.’
She rose to her feet. ‘I’d like to stop now.’
‘Can I just ask you a—’
‘No,’ she interjected, turning to walk away.
Ben was worried he had offended the woman. He stepped over to the stable door and drew aside the board to let her out. Mary had been his star player. He had had such high hopes for her. But she wasn’t off the field yet. There was that one question that Sparling had asked him to throw into the mix. Even if Ben returned to him with a report full of blank pages, he could say that he had at least answered that.
‘Thanks for your time, Mary,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome,’ she replied, but her face betrayed how she really felt.
It was now or never. What was it that Sparling had called it, the creeper?
‘One last thing, before you leave, Mary,’ he asked, ‘have you ever heard of…’
‘Stop,’ she shouted into his face, sending him toppling back against the doorframe. ‘You have to stop this. No more questions.’
And with that the woman was gone, leaving Ben to wipe her spittle from his eyes. He was out of practice, embarrassingly so, like a musician who had bounded up on stage and forgotten how to hold his guitar. He had chased away the one person who had actually shown him some hospitality, and he hadn’t recorded a single worthwhile answer.
The villagers’ dress and lifestyle fitted the mould that Sparling had cast for them. But it was ludicrous to imagine that not one of these people had ever ventured beyond so small and socially limiting a village. Even the best-behaved dog could be lured outside its master’s gate by natural curiosity.
Ben pictured Sparling’s face frozen in an expression of abject disappointment. It was as he remembered, only that staged little smile of his was dragged down on either side like a sad clown. The truth would come soon enough, and the doctor would pay his fee whether this was his Atlantis or not.
When Ben returned out to the open, he couldn’t see Mary anywhere. The villagers who dallied around the common – those who had reluctantly agreed to being interviewed – were whispering amongst themselves like prisoners planning a jailbreak. They had obviously watched Mary storm out of the stable, looking none too pleased. Luckily, the wasp wasn’t around. He was mean enough without giving him a reason.
‘Okay,’ Ben whispered, slapping his cheeks, trying to focus on the task at hand. ‘Let’s try that again.’
He counted nine in all – five women and four men – orbiting the same worn circle of clay.
‘Now then,’ Ben loudly announced, ‘who’d like to go next?’
They huddled in closer to one another, protecting the weakest amongst them, whichever one that was. Such was their herd mentality that they all behaved the same and looked equally as feeble. Mary’s abrupt departure had obviously taken its effect on them.
Ben didn’t have time for this. He barged into their circle like a comet, obstructing one of the women, sending the others splintering away. She stretched her shawl tight around her skull, staring down at his boots, hoping perhaps that some miraculous means of escape would sprout by his feet. He hated bullying his way into their lives. But if they would only talk to him, they would see that he meant them no harm.
‘Would you like to go next?’ Ben asked, stooping low to peer under her hood.
He was surprised to discover that she was probably younger than Chloe. Her eyes were striking; glossy copper laced with reams of golden thread that snared the sunlight. The woman’s youth presented him with a possible advantage. A community’s elders generally safeguarded their oral history, but maybe what Ben needed now was a little innocence and hopefully a little more honesty.
‘Please,’ he whispered, to which she bowed twitchily, her hands tugging her hood even lower as she stole those first steps towards the stable.
Ben propped the board in place, scattering the last remaining woodlice; those too at home in the stable’s doorway to ever consider moving elsewhere. The woman stood by the chairs, peering around as though the building was somehow strange to her, like a fledgling fresh from the nest seeing the world for the first time.
He invited her to take a seat. She accepted with another timid flurry of nods.
‘You can take off your hood, if you like?’ Ben said to her, gesturing to it with a wave of his hand, trying to keep it casual and friendly. He was determined not to repeat that woeful opening act with Mary in the leading role.
She slipped the shawl back onto her shoulders, scattering Ben’s mental notes like a sudden gust of wind. The cloth that she held so eagerly had concealed the woman’s disfigurement. Her chin and mouth, and the eyes and nose, were without fault, in that they appeared unaffected by the common blood shared between the others. But her skull shrank back above the eyes as though her forehead had never fully formed. Behind her cheeks it caved inward. No ears had grown, but she could obviously still hear. Her head was hairless save for a few lank wisps already faded to grey. Despite her obvious trepidation, the woman’s lips attempted a smile; one that wilted before it could ever fully bloom.
‘Now,’ Ben began, keeping his surprise in check, not wanting to upset her, ‘before we begin, can you please tell me your name?’ His words barely kept their balance on his tongue.
Her gaze seemed to pass right through him. ‘Nu,’ she answered, as though the memory of it just came to her.
‘Nu?’ Ben replied, hastily reassembling his composure like the seasoned interviewer he once thought himself to be. ‘Is that short for Nuala by any chance?’
The girl shook her head and stared down towards where the recorder was hidden out of sight. She edged her feet away from it. There was no way she could have known it was there.
‘I’m going to ask you a few questions, Nu. Is that okay?’
‘Yes,’ she replied wistfully, those fiery eyes still burning a hole in Ben’s jacket. ‘That’s okay.’
‘Is it true that nobody in your village ever leaves?’
‘Who’s nobody?’
It was with that response Ben realised that maybe youth and innocence weren’t the answers to his problems.
‘I mean, sorry, let me rephrase that. Do any of the villagers, like you, ever leave Tír Mallacht?’
‘Like me? No.’
‘And why is that?’ Ben asked, silently pleading for an answer.
‘Why would I leave?’ she responded. ‘I don’t look right. I would never be chosen.’
Ben had hoped that, given her society, her appearance would have exerted less influence over her happiness in life. But the poor woman had obviously been made more than aware of it by those who populated her tiny, curious world.
Ben felt horrible for having asked her to remove the hood. He counted himself lucky that Aoife had been born without any complications. Jess and her family might have pinned his absenteeism on that reason alone, as though he had ordered a child and didn’t like the look of her when she arrived. It wouldn’t have diminished his love for her. Ben was better than that, or so he liked to believe.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, resolving to steer the conversation elsewhere. ‘We can talk about something else.’
‘Okay.’
‘Is there anything you would like to talk about?’
That familiar hush retuned to the stable. Keep it going, Benny Boy.
‘Were there any stories that you were told when you were a child?’
Nu shook her head and peered up at the ceiling as though the whole interview process wasn’t holding her interest.
‘Is there anything that you’re afraid of, Nu?’ he asked, playing a wildcard question to lure back her attention.
‘What are you afraid of?’ she parried.
Ben mused over the question for a moment. ‘I don’t think I’m afraid of anything, Nu.’
‘That must be nice.’
‘I suppose it is,’ he agreed.
‘You should leave here.’
‘Why do you think I should leave?’ Ben asked, surprised by the sudden solemnness of her voice.
She considered him sadly and shook her head again, deciding against saying whatever just crossed her mind; an idea crushed just as it was hatching. What wasn’t she telling him? If he could extend a bridge of friendship between them, then maybe she would let the truth pass over it.
‘I like your cloak,’ he said. ‘Did you make that yourself?’
Nu tilted her head down to examine what she was wearing, revealing to Ben her misshapen skull of frayed hair. The shawl’s umber wool was coarsely knitted, with gaping holes from its shoulders to her waist, where a tattered skirt hung down past the knee. Her bare legs were bruised, and no part of her was clean.
‘I like it too,’ she replied, now staring at him. ‘I don’t like wearing black.’
Ben couldn’t imagine Nu varying from the brown palette that coloured the villagers’ garments overall like a dirty rain. The whole place was funereal enough without introducing black into their wardrobes.
‘I’m not a fan myself,’ he replied, deciding it was time to mine a little deeper. ‘Maybe you can tell me what you know about the creeper? Is that a name you’ve heard spoken here before?’
Nu suddenly stood to her feet and mashed them into the bark. ‘It’s been nice talking to you.’
She didn’t seem upset. It was as though some inaudible whistle had concluded their conversation, drawing her elsewhere.
‘Wouldn’t you like to talk a little longer?’ he asked, unable to hide his disappointment at her sudden dismissal.
‘No.’
Nu was already walking away, leaving Ben to admit to his second successive defeat in record time. Whatever you thought you had, Benny Boy, you’ve lost it. Had she answered any of his questions? He had been so flustered by her appearance that he couldn’t string his memories together. Ben followed her to the door, where she secured her shawl back around her head and left without another word.
He leaned against the wall, watching his interviewees resume their defensive positions, eyeing him like an executioner standing beside a basket of fresh heads. Two to be precise, with a contract for more.
*
The hours that followed were some of the most frustrating and perplexing of Ben’s life. His thesis supervisor had once championed him for his interview techniques. But if the man could see him now, he certainly wouldn’t be so keen to recommend him for any more projects. Ben felt like a fading pop star clinging to an old hit.
Tír Mallacht was precisely the kind of community whose stories survived through the oral tradition. There was an unschooled understanding of the written word, but none who Ben spoke to could decipher very much beyond their own name. Any appreciation of the past and their own identities therefore relied on speaking about them, and yet they were each so tight-lipped. They were either ignorant of their history or else they simply didn’t want to share it with someone whose blood wasn’t home-brewed in the village.
Every answer was so terse and guarded. Often they would mutter no more than a yes or a no, and those bold enough to elaborate did so with rehearsed caution, choosing their words carefully and ultimately telling Ben nothing. No one could clarify why the church had been deconsecrated. According to Sparling’s many maps it was the only building of note in the area. Surely somebody would have preserved the facts of the matter.
One woman – a few years Mary’s senior, with skin like cracked eggshell – was so hindering as to deny knowing that Tír Mallacht even had a church.
‘Are you being serious?’ Ben had said to her, giving up on the interview in that moment. ‘You’ve never, in all of your life, seen the church? It’s not far. I can take you, if you want?’
He didn’t get much out of her after that.
They gave him morsels and all these morsels were the same – unappetising, bland, and nothing like the knowledge that Sparling was so hungry for. It was possible that they had sat down together and practised how to speak without saying anything. Maybe this was why Mary had interfered. She hadn’t helped Ben in the slightest. Instead she had chosen the best thespians in the village and all of them were hardened method actors, never breaking character for a second.
The creeper proved to be a conversational kill switch. And so Ben learned to play that card close to his chest until it was all he had left. Some interviewees upped and walked away at the mention of it. Others stared him down in a way that was just odd. It was in the widening of the eyes or in the slightest quiver of the lips, like a facial tic they weren’t aware of and thus didn’t know to conceal.
In those moments – with the creeper’s name fresh in the air – it was as though another had stepped within those four walls; the mere shadow of a presence, but one dark enough to cut every conversation short.
As fittingly creepy as these reactions were for Ben’s report, his frustration had evolved into something far uglier – despair. For all he knew, Sparling had other big-money projects planned for the future. It was doubtful that Ben would qualify as one of his perfect candidates after this shitshow.
Whenever he left the stable, Ben never once saw the wasp. As much as he loathed the sight of him, his absence was more than a little disconcerting. Chloe was out there alone. What if he had followed her? Ben tried to suppress his worries but at times they felt like the strongest part of him. Their voices overpowering the meek cries of reason and rationality. She was more than able to take care of herself. She had told him as much.
The last man he spoke to was especially anxious. He was constantly peering outside, speaking obsessively about the daylight. He seemed to be the youngest of the bunch. Ben had enquired after his age but the man wasn’t entirely sure; he was confident only of the fact that he was no longer a child. No arguing with that. He was tall as the wasp but built like an Eighties action figure. He-Man sprang to Ben’s mind. Every toy in that line shared the same ripped torso mould, as though Castle Grayskull was a multi-storey gym. Men of his strength were never given a day’s leave; not when there was land to be turned. He had a chin like a knobbly potato, and a kind glimmer to his eyes that had caught Ben by surprise. His head was a mass of black curls that he was constantly scratching at as he spoke.
‘I love the summer,’ he said earnestly. ‘There’s more daylight. We’re coming into the winter soon and that’ll be tough. You’ll see now, the sun won’t be long disappearing. It makes for too short a day to get any work done.’
There were only so many yawns that Ben could stifle. He was surprised the recorder’s reels hadn’t knotted themselves into oblivion out of sheer boredom. The furthering of knowledge is our ultimate goal here. And this villager just confirmed that there is more daylight in summer than there is in winter.
‘The night isn’t so bad,’ Ben replied, if only for the sake of saying something.
‘Not much to be doing inside,’ the man said, ‘except wait for the dawn, I suppose, and keep the little ones entertained.’
‘Are there no animals or livestock around that need looking after?’ Ben asked. ‘I didn’t see any on the walk here.’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t. They’re kept a fair distance from the village. And sure, you’d hear the sheep with the bells around their necks if they wandered too close.’
‘The sheep wear bells?’ Ben echoed. ‘And what’s the reason for that?’
‘It’s so the blind can find them,’ the man replied.
‘I’m sorry, what? Did you say the blind?’
‘Aye, that’s right. The blind tend to the animals at night.’
‘Okay,’ Ben said, jolting forward as if someone just pinched him, ‘and tell me why do—’
Ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling!
The sudden blast of noise nearly knocked him off his stool. Another goddamn bell.
Its ring was rapid and constant, like a town crier calling for everyone’s attention.
The interviewee bolted up from his chair as though the bell had summoned him home for dinner. Judging by his eagerness, it must have been a whole lot tastier than boiled cabbage. The man could probably lift an iron cauldron and drink it back like a mug of soup. He threw aside Ben’s makeshift door as if it were made of flimsy cardboard, not bothering to close it behind him.
‘Thanks for that,’ Ben called out, wiping the weariness from his eyes. ‘Good talk.’
Beyond the drapes of hanging ivy, the sinking sun bled through a light scattering of lavender cloud. It must have been approaching six o’clock.
When Ben returned outside, he saw the man responsible for the racket, pacing around in a circle, constantly twisting his head towards the sun. Any villagers that had scarpered during Ben’s interviews were returning. They dragged their feet like mindless bodies enslaved by the bell’s hollow toll.
Then he heard the slamming of wood on stone. Ben hadn’t noticed until then, but every cottage had those window hatches, like the two they had passed on their approach to the village. Their creak and knock echoed from all sides. Meanwhile, men and women were dashing back and forth, sharing baskets of food and weighty jugs of water.
‘What’s going on, Benny Boy?’
Chloe had just rounded the corner into the village.
The sun cast her long silhouette across the path as another shutter was heard to lock in place. Ben jogged over to meet her halfway. The sight of her brought a smile to his face that he’d forgotten the feel of.
‘What’s everyone doing?’ she asked.
‘They’re locking down their homes,’ he replied.
‘They’re doing what now?’
‘I think it must be the night. They don’t want to stay outside after dark.’
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What happens when the sun goes down?’
They looked back towards the nest of cottages where the last few men were exchanging words.
‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough,’ Ben replied.
The villagers had sold themselves as the most unimaginative people he had ever sat with and yet clearly there was so much they hadn’t told him. There were rules and traditions here that he had never encountered.
‘Hello!’ a voice said, causing them to flinch forward in surprise.
The child from earlier had crept up behind them.
‘Jesus, kid,’ Chloe said, ‘you have got to stop doing that.’
She skipped in front of them, dancing to a song only she could hear. Her eyes retained that mischievous glint, all the darker now that the sun had sunk behind the hedgerow. Unlike the others, the girl didn’t seem troubled by their impending curfew.
Ben glanced back towards the village. Talking to the children had been strictly forbidden and he expected the wasp to come running at any moment.
‘He’s coming,’ the child said with that devilish smile of hers.
‘And who’s that?’ Ben asked, peering over his shoulder.
‘I’m not allowed to talk about him. That’s how he finds you.’
‘Is that so?’ Chloe said, grinning back at her, playing along with the game. ‘And what’s his name?’
The child spun around in a pirouette, enjoying the attention, holding the skirt of her dress as she pranced around on grubby toes.
‘We don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘Nobody knows what he used to be called.’
Ben couldn’t believe his luck. After all those staid interviews, this child was giving him something he could use.
‘Three times you see him,’ she said. ‘The first night he’s far, far away. And then the next night he’s closer. So close that you can see him, and he can see you. And then, on the third night his big ugly face is at your window. The fourth night is your last one, because then uh-oh.’
‘Uh-oh.’ Chloe laughed. ‘What does uh-oh mean?’
‘That’s when the creeper kills you.’
The wasp came dashing towards them, his spindly limbs carrying him like a spider. He barged right through Ben and Chloe and grabbed the child in his arms. His face turned to them. Gone was the frown and the disdain that defined it. The man looked afraid.
‘What did she say to you?’ he shouted.
‘Nothing,’ Ben replied, worried that they were in all kinds of trouble. ‘She came up to us. We were just standing here, minding our own business.’
‘What did you tell them?’ he asked the girl, on his knees, holding her head in his hands.
‘She didn’t tell us anything,’ Chloe said. ‘Relax, she was just dancing for us.’
The man stared at her, searching for some proof of the lie, but Chloe gave nothing away. He took the child up in his arms and started back towards the cottages.
The sky over Tír Mallacht was darkening.
‘I don’t want to see you again,’ he called back to them. ‘You should never have come here.’