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he would cry only when one of our neighbours was approaching death, or so Mrs Woolly told us all at primary school.
My mammy told me she’d seen her at Saint Brigit’s Hall on her way home from the Rathnew House with Mary Corley and Margery Desmond. But they’d be pissed from one too many cans of Harp and singing ‘There’s a storm across the valley,’ so it was most likely some old cunt complaining.
Mammy said she was a squat old woman with the face of a Cabbage Patch doll and yellow hair that looked a bit like Mary Corley’s home-perm.
Other people said it wasn’t the Banshee but Old Mrs Halpin who was decapitated and at the stroke of midnight would wheel her chair down Tinakilly Lane. Away from the hotel at the top.
She would wheel herself down past sycamores and oaks on both sides of a gravel lane—the soft murmurings of cornfields carried along on the wind at night. The leaves rustling a warning, a foreboding.
Nula, my mammy’s friend who worked as a dishwasher in the hotel kitchens said that one night her husband didn’t collect her and she walked the lane alone. She went on to say that in the dark she could see a head in the grass, rolling around, heckling. When she got closer, she told mammy, it had gone.
I woke up from a dream one night because my lurcher Zuppy was standing up on the end of my bed and barking at the corner. I sat up, rubbed the crust out of my eyes and asked ‘What you goin’ on about, fleabag?’ But he ignored me and kept barking at the wall, barking furiously but not getting down off the bed. I thought I heard something scuttle but ignored it and went back to sleep.
Others say that from my house, where you can see the train tracks and Jameson’s Sawmill behind them, you see a woman walking alone at night—some people might tell you that she was a young pregnant woman thrown by her boyfriend from the speeding train. Council’s workers once found the severed foot of an ankle wearing a lady’s flat shoe.
I started having dreams where I would wake up. In one dream an old woman was whispering in my ear. In another Zuppy and me are at the bottom of our stairs in Seaview Heights. On the top step is a woman’s head, just sat on the landing, whispering ‘We are coming.’ Her skin has the translucent quality of an albino snake and her eyes are pig’s eyes. In another one I am alone in a maze made up entirely of old women’s demented grinning faces and I can never get out.
This is the story of how I met the real Banshee, when she moved in on my estate two doors down from my aunty Rose. Her name was Dolores Sweeny. Her house was in disarray with armies of ants climbing out of the fireplace, grease three inches thick on the sitting room walls and a stash of dirty videos behind her couch which she would allow my sister Gina, Louise, Bob and Carmel Kinsella to watch.
She told us they belonged to her husband, who we never seen, not once while she lived there. I dropped out of The Tech and so had some time on my hands and would bring her cups of tea, fags I clipped off mammy when she was too hung-over to notice, or fine-combing Gina’s hair cause she’d picked up head lice again in school.
The month Delores moved in there was a real mini tornado in Rathnew. There was massive press coverage with dramatic photos of a characteristic twister cloud.
Delores would tell me old wives’ tales. One she kept repeating was about a gypsy woman who had cursed a settled man and his descendants, with tragic consequences when the cursed man’s great grandson fell in love Romeo-and-Juliet-like with a gypsy girl who turned out to be a descendant of the woman originally placed the long forgotten curse. She would never finish the story.
Gina and me were getting a bus back from Bray on a Saturday after seeing my Dad and his wife Maura when we seen a horse galloping northbound towards the glen of the downs. Gina started crying and I wondered why but never asked.
‘Delores said she used to have a horse like him,’ I told Gina.
Gina looked at me and replied ‘I don’t like her, something weird ’bout her.’
‘What’d mean?’ I asked, anger crawling up my throat.
‘She isn’t normal—look at them videos she showed us. And she never leaves that house. Never!’ Gina started crying loudly. But I never said anything more on it.
I stayed away for a few days. I was in our kitchen and mammy told me she was making pizza for dinner and to go fetch Zuppy. I went out to the front garden and called him. But he was off gallivanting. I was wandering up the estate calling him half-heartedly when I saw him sat on the step with Dolores. She smiled and asked me to come in.
‘Ma is doin’ my dinner,’ I said to her.
She humphed and said ‘I’ll only keep ya a minute Adam.’ I thought sure Mammy will call me when she has burnt the pizza. What are a few minutes? I thought then.
She brought me into her filthy sitting room and I sat down on the couch. She sat in the corner and started picking fleas from behind Zuppy’s ear, cracking their backs with her nails and grinning over at me. I felt a bit weird with her smiling at me like that so I said ‘Is everything alright Dolores?’
‘Did you know I had a brain haemorrhage Adam?’ she said looking down at Zuppy, still grinning.
‘I never knew that, you didn’t say it ever,’ I replied. She looked up at me, wiping her hands on her trousers and smiling.
‘I died on the operating table or something cold like it; I never said that either, did I?’ I wondered why she was grinning all the time she was saying this to me.
‘No you never,’ I said, getting more interested. ‘So what happened when you died?’
‘Nothing dear boy,’ she solemnly said. ‘Nothing at all.’
I started getting irritated by her babbling so I said ‘Then how do you know you died?’
‘Because I was there, rotting, in that nothingness Adam. I was trying to scream but there was no sound there, no floor or sky.’ I was getting scared and Zuppy started whimpering. I could hear my mammy shouting outside, I stood up to quickly
‘Here Zuppy,’ I meekly called out.
‘He wants to stay, Adam, do you want to stay?’ she laughed.
‘My ma is calling me, Dolores, and you’re gettin’ on my tits, to be honest!’ I shouted. I don’t know why I shouted at her but she went all quiet and stared out over the estate. I picked Zuppy up and ran out of the house. I was sweating and nearly balling and Theresa Stafford was standing at her doorstep.
‘Are you alright? Did that mad aul’ bitch say something to you? She had our Katie in tears the other day. I ought to go down there and tear the road with the bitch. If she wasn’t a cripple I wouldn’t think twice!’ Theresa shouted.
I went home and like a soft boy locked the doors. Mammy, Margery Desmond and Mary Corley were drinking cans in the sitting room, Joe Dolan blaring out of Gina’s CD player.
I went straight to my room without eating a thing and got into bed. I had a wild unsettled night, dreams of severed heads, women thrown from trains and Dolores calling me from under the bed. I woke up the next morning like I’d gone four rounds with Mike Tyson. Zuppy was quietly snoozing on the pillow beside me.
I looked at my watch, it was 12:00 a.m. A train had broken down and I looked out my bedroom window. It was an old-fashioned train. Bright green against a pale blue sky. The odd thing was, though, that there was nobody near it. I thought Strange, this is a small village in the middle of the summer holidays and there is nobody near the train. I decided to go see it for myself.
Zuppy and me walked across the meadow and climbed up the bank to the empty tracks. There was a small ladder at the back of the train which gave Zuppy and me entry to an old-fashioned carriage. We went inside and the place was empty. Zuppy cocked his leg and started peeing on a seat. ‘Zuppy!’ I hollered and my voice echoed back at me like a spooky refrain. The carriage door closed behind me then, and when I looked back at the tracks a white horse with a dirty grey coat was standing there.
I yanked at the door handle but it wouldn’t open and that was when the train started moving. I began panicking and looking around. A young woman, heavily pregnant, was sitting by herself. I ran down the aisle to her.
‘Miss, miss. I got stuck,’ I told her.
She looked terrified. ‘Do I know you?’ she asked me. ‘Do I?’ Then she almost seemed pleased to see me, like I was an old friend. She had a traveller’s accent.
‘No Miss, we’ve never met before.’ Again she looked frightened so I decided to sit down and get off at the next platform.
‘Are you alright miss, you don’t look well?’ I smiled over at her. She was pretty, with strawberry blonde hair and freckles, but dressed weird. Old-fashioned. I wondered if it was a travelling carnival or something.
‘Did you see a man in a bright blue suit, country boy?’ she asked. Country boy, what’d she mean by that? I ignored it and said ‘No I didn’t.’ Zuppy was scratching his ear, fleas flying everywhere so I pushed him off the seat.
‘He has fleas,’ I told her. ‘What’s your name miss?’ I asked.
‘Dolores Sweeny. ’Twas Dolores O’Conner but I just got married.’ My heart fell into my stomach.
‘I know someone called Dolores Sweeny too. She just moved into my estate. Over there,’ I told her, pointing out the window, but when I looked there was nothing but field after field after field.
‘Now you have a worried look on your face, country boy,’ Dolores said, breaking my reverie.
I started to think that I was somewhere else then, but I didn’t know where. I stayed quiet but the train didn’t stop at the next platform. ‘Are you sure that you didn’t see a man? He is my father-in-law. He doesn’t want me with his son,’ she said, looking down the aisle.
‘No,’ I said quietly. I felt like crying. I petted Zuppy and he showed me his teeth,
There was a loud noise then and a man was dragging the girl down the aisle towards the back of the carriage. The man she described. He wanted to hurt her.
‘Pleeeeeeease,’ she half whimpered. I ran down the aisle, banging my hip on one of the wooden tables. ‘Help me!’ she squealed.
‘You whore, nothing but a common knacker!’ the man spat in her face. He punched her once and continued dragging her to the exit.
‘Leave her be!’ I screamed, jumping on his back. He elbowed me in the side of the head and I fell off. Zuppy bit into his trouser leg and he kicked him flyin’.
The exit was open and the noise of the tracks screamed into the carriage. Dolores looked back, her face bloodied, tears streaming down her cheeks.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered silently. I clutched Zuppy up. The Man took one look back at me and threw her out. I stood up, and in three strides I was past him and out into the dark.
It was night on the tracks. Dolores was gone. Gas lamps illuminated the path. I was still clutching Zuppy when I started to hear a baby cry. I walked up a bit to get closer to it.
‘Look Zuppy,’ I pointed but he yawned and buried his nose in my shoulder. The Baby sat still on the tracks with its back to me. It stood up and I gasped, it still had its back to me but its head slowly turned round. Zuppy whined.
‘Its OK, OK,’ I told the baby, and it just sort of smiled over at me. It looked familiar too. Like I’d seen it before, just didn’t know from where.
Then it was light again and I was back on the other tracks with Zuppy. I went home. That night there was another twister cloud and journalists from The Wicklow People were gathered around our estate, I decided it best that I go see Dolores but when I arrived her house was all boarded up.
Theresa Stafford was holding her usual vigil on her front porch.
‘She left in middle of the night, Adam,’ she said between puffing on her fag.
‘Theresa, can I ask you somethin’?’
She smiled and said ‘Fire away.’
‘Was a woman ever thrown from a train down there?’ I asked, pointing back at the tracks.
‘Oh yeah, and they found a baby shortly afterwards. Don’t know what happened to him, though,’ she said, quenched her fag and was about to go inside.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘When was this?’ she turned around and thought for a few seconds.
‘About 16 years ago Adam . . . yeah, about that,’ and she closed the door.
I stood on the estate, leaning against a trashcan when I saw Carmel Kinsella walking down the estate towards me.
‘Hello Carmel,’ I chirped
‘Hello Adam,’ she chirped back. ‘So what are you doing tomorrow?’ she asked.
I was confused so I said ‘What you on about?’
‘Duh, its your 17th birthday, stupid lad!’ |
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