THE THIN VEIL

They come on the eve of All Saints’, trying to break in.

They picked up the house for a song. It looked out over the bay from the edge of the village. Built in the 1950s, it had been done up, and winter would be snug behind the double glazing, with the efficient central heating set just right. By the time they had fully moved in, it was late October; the summer crowds had well and truly vanished, and the village became more as it was at heart: close-knit, authentic and anchored firmly in its history, in its slate and schist and sandstone, in its copper-depleted coastal mountains. Stone circles, wedge tombs, and the tools of Bronze Age miners defined its selfimage, its public image, and were entwined through its spirit. The sea, with its Gaeltacht island just offshore, breathed the weight of the Atlantic and resistance, a holding-out against the forces of dispossession. Selkies reached out of the sea for lonely men, and the Others swapped feeble children for strong ones. People built houses near the famine pits, and the rich poured their materiality into the cauldron of myth in summer, taking as much away with them as they felt they could extract. In truth, they took nothing and left little.

The newcomers were foreigners, of a sort. Half the young people of the village had gone to Australia for the mines, so a family from ‘down there’ coming to live ‘here’ instead was a talking point. They expected dialogue. Though the husband was something of a recluse, the wife was gregarious, and her three children keen to be part of everything. They instantly wanted costumes for the Halloween dress-up at school, wanted to spend Halloween evening down in the village with the other families. Not quite confident enough to trick-or-treat in a strange neighbourhood, especially since that wasn’t done back home in their coastal town in Australia, they were nonetheless sure they’d be ready by next Halloween. Their father was working on a ship in a bottle – literally, it was a hobby he was fanatical about, a welcome relief from his career as a web designer, a career he shared with his wife and which allowed them to live anywhere a broadband connection could be established.

I’m heading downtown now, love. Steady, kids. Calm down. Say goodbye to Dad. Oh, sorry, love, they meant to say goodbye – out the door before I could stop them.

No problem. Lock it behind you. I’ll be busy, I don’t want to be disturbed.

Look, I’ve left a bag of sweets and chocolates on the table for the trick-or-treaters when they come by. I imagine they’ll start soon.

I won’t be answering the door, I’m busy.

I thought as much, but if you change your mind …

I won’t.

I know, I know. Well, enjoy your own company.

*

Tonight he was going to insert the small vessel into the bottle and raise its sails by gently drawing on threads. It was a fine art. He generally had a steady hand, despite a tendency to anxiety.

As a child he’d made hundreds of model aeroplanes. Boats were a thing of his middle life. The planes were constructed from kits – pressing plastic parts out of their frames, gluing it all together with a sickening, addictive solvent glue. But his personal touch was the painting with Humbrol colours. At ten he was a master, entering his works of art in hobby fair competitions, always winning his age section. He researched the historical painting, the camouflage, the livery, and even personalised particular planes, compiling whole squadrons. Obsessive.

Before starting work, he placed the bag of sweets in the cupboard, and set all his materials out on the kitchen table, which he’d covered with a plastic cloth to prevent damage. His wife didn’t need to remind him to do this – he was a naturally neat and orderly person. The messiness of his children’s rooms gave him hives. Once it was set up to his satisfaction, he began the painstaking, delicate act of construction. Tonight it was a three-masted schooner of the Onedin Line. His hand was machine-like in its control, its ability to lift the thread of a sail into place, to fix it here … and here.

There was a knock at the front door. He ignored it. It came louder, over and over. He heard children’s voices – small children. He ignored them and the noise, and fixated on his hand, the thread it was working. The knocking stopped, and he heard the tricksters crunching across the bluestone. For a moment he wondered where the bluestone had been quarried, then settled again.

The next set of knocks was louder, more aggressive. Someone shrieked, and he looked out of the kitchen, down the corridor, to the front door, which was taking a battering. His hand was shaking and he bumped the model, jumping out of his chair with a start. He saw the mail slot lift, and fancied there were eyes glowing in the darkness. Tricksters! Had they seen him? He couldn’t be sure. He abandoned the model and retreated to the side of the doorframe. His palms were sweating. They were yelling and banging and then there was silence and something – blue metal? – fell through the door slot.

Looking back anxiously at his work on the table, he retreated into the living room, which was as much in the centre of the house as he could get. He closed the doors, checked the curtains were drawn, and turned off the lights. And there he crouched in the abject darkness, the tenuous silence, waiting for the next assault.

*

It’s the time of year, the night when the veil is thinnest. Before the children were born, he and his wife had lived in America, and had vaguely ‘participated’ in the grotesqueries and festivities by attending a Halloween work party in costume (he a ghoul, she a witch). But in that place, there was a degree of separation from the festival’s origins that made it less disturbing for him. Not that he was admitting he was disturbed, huddled there in the dark, without even the glow of a computer screen to comfort him. In fact, as the next set of pounding pounding pounding on the door came, he was glad there was no computer on in the house – it suddenly seemed the thinnest of membranes.

Not far from their house, there was a famine pit, a mass grave. He walked around it rather than past it. His ancestors had travelled to Australia to escape the famine. It had struck him that so much of the Halloween imagery was portrayals of the starving, of the faces of those whose lives were stripped away by blight and a murderous government policy emanating from London. In that room, the pounding reached in and threatened to pull his heart out, the sounds of the starving pleading for the sweets and chocolates buried in that bag in the cupboard.

When the Others reach through the membrane, they are alive and vibrant. It’s their time of year, and they must be respected and celebrated. They feel empowered. They assemble the ship in the bottle without tools, without threads to raise the mast. Someone was tapping at the window and yelling, Trick trick trick. Teenagers. Rocking back and forth, he propelled himself forward, opened the door and dashed to the kitchen. Groping in the dark, he found the cupboard and the sweets and, following the street lights to the front door, opened it and hurled the entire bag out front, slamming the door behind him. A manic dance began outside, with caterwauling, screaming and hooting.

*

Hello? Are you here, love? Where are you? Why are the lights off? Love!

Where’s Dad, Mum? Look, here he is. Dad, what’s wrong?

Love, why are you curled up like that on the floor? Come on, get up. What’s wrong? You’re frightening the children!

He looked up into the faces of demons, the flesh of the faces running hot in the cold air they dragged in from outside.

*

He didn’t emerge from the house for days. The house had grown older inside. He insisted the computer wouldn’t function; his work was an anachronism. His wife compensated, to meet a deadline. She was brimming with creative energy and ability, but frustrated with him, and in agony on the children’s behalf. He had a habit of bringing her down when she was otherwise peaking.

The children were embarrassed when they realised the ‘madman who hurled sweets’ at kids was in fact their father. It was the talk of school, of the village. They hadn’t had friends round yet, so nobody had quite worked it out, but they would eventually. And then the children would die a thousand deaths. They had to move town, they just had to.

Really, love, you can’t behave like that. You’re getting more and more anti-social. It’s not a good model for the children to follow. You know they’ve always looked up to you. I must say, now I think about it, you’ve not really been yourself since we moved here.

In the cold, crisp November air, the sun breaking through over the bay, he walked down to the main street. It had taken every bit of mental and emotional strength he could muster to propel himself through the front door. There weren’t many people out and about; those that were stared at him, then put their heads down suddenly and walked briskly past. He fancied even their little toy dogs gave up shitting on the pavement to get away from him as fast as possible. He reached his target, his reason for venturing out, and stood before its weirdness. He peered in through the window. His wife had told him about it – how much care went into its creation, how much activity, belief, and ‘art’. You would have been impressed, love, with the detail. So much detail – just like you have with your models. Pure attention to detail. He broke into a cold sweat.

*

Doctors who do house calls are rare anywhere in the world these days. Even rarer in a place that shares its doctor with two other villages. And she was impatient and annoyed at being summoned. He needs to go to hospital, the doctor told his wife. He’ll need to go on a drip. If he won’t eat … can’t eat … then that’s the only way. You say he’s lost fifteen kilos? Really, something should have been done days ago. I know what men are like when they refuse to see a doctor. And I can’t rule out something psychological, but I’ll send these blood samples off immediately and see if we can’t locate something biological. The fevers certainly suggest an infection, but if, as you say, he keeps repeating himself and obsessing over what seem like trivial details to you or me, then clearly he’s under some kind of stress.

*

He had forgotten his wife, his children. He remembered the witches’ house. The witches had been tending great cauldrons – cooking children. Turnips bobbed in the bubbling muck – turnips that were heads of children. Blood ran down the windows and the walls. Emaciated ghoul-children caged and prodded, part of a thin feast.

This was how it had been described to him. The kids were thrilled, love; I’ve never seen them so excited. And they felt part of the community – so many of their friends were visiting and a few were even in the cages. You’d think they’d not eaten for months. The make-up was a credit to them. And the witches were mothers and grandmothers, really caught up in the spirit of the occasion. The amount of time and effort that went into it! Says something about the sense of belonging, of sharing and camaraderie you get here.

He had peered into the building – abandoned by a shop owner who’d gone bankrupt during the crash. Through streaks of red paint and dirt, he could see fragments of truth. Most had been cleared away. But there was a cauldron, there were babies’ playpens folded up. The cages. Making do with what’s at hand. The messiness of it all appalled him. It looked so slipshod – even in the clearing-up, it shouldn’t look so slipshod.

*

Hunger gnawed at him. He needed Hunger to consume him. The hospital lights ate into him like false suns. He hated the light. Through the murk of generations and migration, he remembered the one saying that had come down through generations of his family on the Irish side, from his Gaelicspeaking ancestors who had climbed aboard the ships with hope and fear and with death everywhere behind them. He wondered how much had been lost in translation, through the whisperings fading over years, through reading other accounts. Who did the words belong to? He tore the drip from his arm and called out in a voice barely his own, ‘Crowds of wretched creatures begging for something to eat, wan little faces thrusting themselves in at the window.’ The thin veil of skin and flesh fell away and he walked free, replete.