Faerie Tale (42 page)

Jack smiled. “That sounds just about right.”

Tugging on his hand, she led him through the kitchen. With a quick promise to Aggie they’d be back in time to help with dinner, they headed out toward the road for an
evening walk. Aggie watched them leave while Sean silently ate half of a peanut butter sandwich. Behind the everyday tableau, she sensed something terrible was approaching and felt a chill rising in her chest.

For a moment Aggie stood silently, then sensed Sean’s eyes upon her. She fought back the urge to shiver, pushing down the sense of impending trouble, and forced her mind back to the concerns of the moment. She had a family to feed.

Sean watched Jack and Gabbie leave and turned his attention to the sandwich. Absently he wondered what Patrick was having for dinner with the—He dropped his sandwich on the plate as his eyes widened. With the.… For a moment he had understood something, then that knowledge had fled. He sat quietly for a long minute as his heart raced, trying in vain to recapture what he had grasped for only an instant. He waited a long minute, hoping for the thought to return. When it didn’t, he sighed and picked up his sandwich, eating it halfheartedly as he considered that Patrick was being fed off a plastic plate at the hospital. But he couldn’t shake the image of something dark yet shining in a corner. At last he put the half-eaten sandwich down and left the kitchen.

Phil stuck his head into the kitchen, informing his wife and son he was on his way back to the hospital. Gloria nodded as the door swung closed behind him. Phil maintained a degree of normalcy in his outward behavior, keeping everyone on an even keel.

Phil got in his car and turned the key. The engine rattled to life fitfully, despite having been run earlier in the day. Overdue for a tune-up, he thought absently. As he pulled out of the drive and turned onto the road, he considered the toll Patrick’s illness was having on every
one. For the last two days Gabbie had taken to fixing Sean’s breakfast and lunch and seeing the house stayed in order, as Gloria barely managed dinner with Aggie’s help. Despite his preoccupation with Patrick, Phil was concerned over Gloria’s mental state. He didn’t know how to cope with it; the last week had left him too emotionally exhausted to make any rational judgment. He knew that under more normal circumstances, his wife would have been constantly at Patrick’s side. But she couldn’t deal with this odd creature who was once Patrick. And Phil knew she felt guilty over not going back to the hospital. Maybe when they got him moved, to a long-term care facility, or even if they could bring him home again someday.… He let the last thought trail off.

Phil knew that somewhere down the line Gloria would need some sort of help. She moved like a zombie half the time, or she sat around staring off into the distance. If anyone spoke to her she seemed to snap out of the mood, but as soon as she was alone she withdrew into herself again. She fell asleep about eight-thirty and slept the clock round, unless she woke up screaming from dreams. Often her shouts awoke Sean, and he would be brought in to sleep with his parents. It was almost as if Sean awakened at the same instant. For a moment Phil considered that. He shrugged off the thought. But until something concrete occurred—until Patrick’s fate was decided—Phil, like the others, simply held his breath and waited. As he increased the car’s speed, he remembered he hadn’t said good-bye to Sean. Pushing aside a twinge of guilt, Phil turned the car onto the highway toward the hospital.

Gloria absently washed the dishes, staring out the window, unaware of the quiet boy who sat at the table. Gloria was silently desperate. She couldn’t talk of Patrick without tears, and the few visits to the hospital had been
more than she could endure. Her near phobia about illness, joined with her pain for her son, was pushing her beyond her ability to cope. In her own private world there was a blank space once filled by a boy named Patrick. No one in the family said anything about her reluctance to go to the hospital. Had Patrick been physically sick she would have stayed at his side. But that unspeakable thing he had become, that miasma of … the unholy … about him caused her to feel more than grief. There was a darkness surrounding Patrick, an aura not of the normal world. Despite her emotional confusion, Gloria struggled to remember; there was something everyone else was missing, something she had seen. And if she could only remember it, Patrick would return to her. She was frustrated to the point of anger by her inability to remember, and her short temper was making everyone tiptoe around her. She vaguely heard Sean putting down his glass of breakfast milk and returned her attention to the dishes.

Sean was in a pout because his mother wouldn’t let him go outside or to Saturday night’s Halloween Party. He really didn’t want to go to the party, he just didn’t want to be sitting around alone—missing Patrick. He hadn’t assimilated his experiences the night he and Patrick had been taken to the hospital; something clouded his memory, making things dim and hard to handle. Yet he was on the verge of understanding. Holding the fairy stone seemed to help. And each day it seemed he could recall the images faster, and they were more clear. He had given up trying to get anyone to understand about the images. They just wouldn’t listen. They just didn’t understand. Sean sighed silently.

He gripped the fairy stone in his fist and stared at it. There was something he could remember about the night Patrick got so sick. It was a vague shape in darkness, something that hovered at the edge of memory, something that had reached out and—

Sean’s eyes opened wide as his heart leaped. He remembered! The Shining Man! And the thing that looked like Sean! The Shining Man and the Bad Thing had taken
Patrick! Sean squirmed in his chair, his agitation unnoticed by his mother. He had to do something; he just wasn’t sure what it was. And he couldn’t do it cooped up at home. He had to get some help, and he knew where he might be able to find it. Sean pushed aside the half-eaten sandwich and said, “Mom, can I go outside?”

“No!”

Sean jumped at the vehemence of her answer. She looked at Sean through tired eyes and softened her tone. “No, honey. You’ve been sick.” She thought it best not to say anything about what Gary had told them. But she wasn’t going to let Sean anywhere near the woods.

“But, Mom.…” Sean began, but then his mother turned to face him, and he saw a new Look, one that frightened him. She knew! Or at least she suspected. On some level, conscious or subconscious, she had decided that one son lost was enough. Sean knew any revelation to his mother of what he remembered would only increase her resistance to letting him out. He ceased his complaint and quit the kitchen, finding his way to the parlor, where he resigned himself to another round of Saturday cartoons or sports on TV while he puzzled out a means of getting away. Maybe he could go to bed early, then sneak out after Mom went to sleep. He sat back on the floor, his back against a chair, and used the remote control to turn on the TV. He used the satellite dish controls to lock in on a college football game. He didn’t care who was playing.

Less than an hour later, Gabbie stuck her head in and asked, “What are you doing hanging around here, kiddo? It’s a beautiful day outside, Indian summer.”

Considering his reply, Sean said, “I was just watching this game.” Casually he stood and turned off the TV. “Where’s Mom?”

“Taking a nap. Why?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. I’m going to the park, okay? The guys are going to play touch.”

Gabbie almost said no, thinking about Gary’s conjecture, but she remembered he’d said all the odd goings-on
took place after sundown. “Sure, just be back before it starts to get dark.”

“Sure. I’ll be back early.” He waved a casual good-bye and exited through the kitchen, then out the back porch door. As soon as his sneakers hit the ground, he was off at a dead run. He sprinted through the woods, reaching the Troll Bridge in record time. He paused to catch his breath and felt the evil aura that signaled the presence of the Bad Thing under the bridge. He removed his fairy stone from beneath his shirt and clutched it tightly. With resolution he marched across the bridge. Once across the creek, he felt a giddy sense of accomplishment. As he looked back at the bridge, a clear remembrance and certainty descended upon him. It
was
his responsibility to help Patrick. Not his father’s, or his mother’s, or the doctor’s. None of them knew what the boys had endured, and none were willing to listen. Whatever caused people to be the way they were when kids tried to explain things was working overtime now. Even Sean’s dad, who normally took time to listen, seemed unable to consider for a moment his son’s confused attempts to describe what happened that night. Now that Sean could tell him exactly, he knew his father still wouldn’t allow for a moment that what the boy said might have some foundation in truth.

Sean now understood what he must do. He must face the Shining Man and the Bad Thing one more time. They still scared him, but he somehow knew that having reached the nadir of fear that night, he would never be that terrified of them again. He had confronted them and survived. And he knew he must do it once more, only this time it would be battle. Patrick’s fate depended upon it.

Sean knew there was only one person who could possibly understand what the boys had faced. Sean raced through the woods. Running the entire way, he was soon pounding on the door of Barney Doyle’s workshop.

The door opened and Barney looked down at Sean. “Here then, what’s the ruckus?”

Sean blurted, “Barney, it was the Shining Man! Everyone thinks me and Patrick just got sick. But it was the
Shining Man. He and the Bad Thing came into our room with these two things that looked like us and they took Patrick. They’d have taken me, but I had the stone—” Sean stopped when he saw another figure move in the darkness behind Barney. Aggie Grant came forward, a concerned expression on her face. “What is this?” she said.

Sean backed away, but Barney put a hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s all right, boy. Come in.”

Sean allowed himself to be steered into the shack and saw that Aggie had been consulting a large notebook. He glanced at her, and Barney said, “Miss Grant’s dropped by on her way to your home, to listen to some more tales, Sean.”

“What did you say about a Shining Man, Sean?” asked Aggie patiently.

Sean looked at Barney, who never took his eyes from the boy. Quietly the old handyman said, “The
Amadán-na-Briona.”

Aggie spoke softly. “The Fool?” Her eyes were wide with disbelief. “You can’t be serious. Patrick is ill from a fever.”

Barney ran his hand over his face, showing uncertainty, then he spoke, his voice low and controlled, but intense with an impatient, frustrated tone neither Aggie or Sean had heard before. “Aggie Grant, there are truths you’ll never find in books, and that’s a fact. God has a plan, and it’s only those of us who are filled with pride who think we know what that plan is. You come around and ask to hear stories of the Good People.…” He paused, as if struggling for words. “But what you don’t understand is that the stories aren’t … made up. They’re stories told and retold because they teach. They teach us how to live with the Good People. They’re stories told first by people who met the Good People”—his voice lowered—“and lived through the meeting.”

Aggie’s expression was clearly one of disbelief. “Barney,” she said softly, in wonder, “you don’t honestly believe the old tales, do you?” The man’s face was set in a resolute mask, showing he did believe, as he nodded his
head once. Aggie looked at Sean and said, “I think I should take you home.”

Sean made as if to bolt. “No! I’ve got to talk to Barney. Please.” Sean pleaded, but Aggie heard an odd note in his voice: Something else was there, a sense of final desperation.

Aggie again looked at Barney, unwilling to accept his statement or Sean’s at face value. “Barney, what stories have you been telling the boys?”

“The more common ones,” he answered frankly, “but nary a word about the Fool. I’d not scare the lads like that. And I still haven’t puzzled out what in fact this Bad Thing might be.”

Aggie sat back on Barney’s stool, her eyes traveling from Sean to Barney and back. Years of teaching had made her sensitive to the frustration encountered by youngsters who feel they are not being listened to. She was thoughtful a long time, then said, “All right, go on.”

Sean said, “The night we got sick, we didn’t get sick. The Shining Man and the Bad Thing came into our room.…” Sean continued until he had finished the narrative of that night.

Aggie listened closely and, when Sean finished, said, “Sean, what did this Shining Man look like?” An intuition told her that whatever else was happening, before her stood not a boy who was simply repeating a tale once or twice heard, or story fabricated to mislead adults, but rather a boy who was revealing something he believed in with conviction. Sean believed he had seen what he said he saw, and Aggie wasn’t about to dismiss something this important to him. Sean described as best he could how the man looked, and the more he spoke, the more she became convinced he had seen either a myth come to life or the most incredible hallucination on record. When he had answered all her questions, her manner was subdued, her voice barely above a whisper. “Barney, this is unbelievable. I don’t for a moment believe the boy actually saw the Amadán-na-Briona. You can’t possibly believe that either.” Her tone was not one of disbelief, but rather a plea that sanity be returned, that this impossible de
scription issuing from the lips of an eight-year-old be a cleverly rehearsed script, a strange, tasteless, and inexplicable joke. If not, the world was an alien place and man a blind creature passing through, ignorant of the dangers at every hand. Aggie’s face was pale as she said, “Can you?”

Barney said, “I can. And I do, Aggie Grant. Your nose is too much in books and not enough in the real world.” He stood and pointed at the window. “Out there is mystery after mystery and wonders hidden by magics so profound all your science can’t describe it. Our history tells of when we came to Ireland: how we found the Firbolg and the Tuatha De Danann already living upon the island, and how we wrested the land from them. The British and their American children have wandered too far from their Celtic roots and the Old Knowledge, the lore before the Church came to save us all. The Britons are one with the Roman, Saxon, and Norman invaders, losing their vision of the past. Many of us Irish have not.”