Haunting Nightmares

The MacNeils were an old family.

They had lived in that same house for too many generations to count, and had always had a good relationship with the Conroys. Said relationship changed somewhat due to a few too many situations caused by his father,

Yet Eoghan was not his father. And more often than not, others would compare him with his uncle.

“What are you doing here, lad?!”

Lady MacNeil was a fair woman. Even with the years showing in her graying hair, her eyes were always alert and focused. Her voice clear and strong—no matter how much Time tried to prove otherwise.

“Good day, Lady MacNeil. Is your husband home?” Conroy knew he wasn’t, yet not asking caused too many complications.

Lost too much time.

“He’s not, but—lad, shouldn’t you be with your mother?”

The moonshine kept making his head throb, his vision blurry, his steps too light. Eoghan moved his tongue around his mouth, trying to dispel its numbness with little to no avail.

“That I shall, yet before I must ask permission to intrude in your library for a few moments, Lady MacNeil. I spoke with your husband a few days back, about borrowing a particular book of yours. I hoped he would be home by now, alas, I’m afraid I cannot wait.”

The woman took a reluctant step back, closing the door a few inches.

“Can’t say I recall him mentioning anything about it, lad, so—”

Eoghan’s hand grabbed the door, his feet taking one step forward.

“It is of utmost importance. I assure you, I won’t take a single step out of the library, and as soon as I find what I need, you won’t see me again.”

Lady MacNeil opened her mouth, her words undecided, her voice hesitant as it struggled to be heard.

“Please.”

Eoghan always wondered what the woman saw reflected in his eyes. If she couldn’t hear the wails that followed him, yet somehow could see Death’s shadow hidden within his gaze, or smell it around him. He wondered if that was why she would always step away and let him in, even when she had no reason to do so.

And although the woman would keep her distance, having some of the servants follow his steps and observe him from afar, no one would ever touch the library door as he left it slightly open. People would come if he closed it or left it open, but not as it was then.

He didn’t know why.

The man could hear his own steps echoing in his ears, the sound expanding and growing in his head as if to compete with the loudness of his racing heartbeat. And Eoghan was fine with those. As long as he couldn’t hear the wails, even deafness was appealing.

He knelt on the ground, as his body suddenly grew too heavy. Staying right beside the closed curtains,

Eoghan didn’t pull them.

“You know about the Blood Huntress Cailleach.”

Only silence replied to the man’s desperate whispers, his words losing their power before they could find their way.

“Can you tell me about her?” When only more silence followed, he clenched his fists, bit his lips, before the words scratched his dry throat again. Words that pitifully tried to hide their fright and panic. “Please. It’s important.”

The curtains were pulled by a delicate and small hand, taking no more than a heartbeat for the girl’s clear blue eyes to meet his.

“You stink.”

Had Eoghan ever talked with Keelin MacNeil drunk? That, he couldn’t recall. Perhaps he had.

It didn’t matter.

“The Blood Huntress Cailleach. You know of her, do you not?”

The child narrowed her eyes, holding her doll closer to her chest.

“Why would I tell you?”

Eoghan tried to get closer, yet the sudden movement only pushed Keelin MacNeil further away from him, a faint hint of fear crossing her eyes. How did he usually approach the girl, to make her talk about the witch? With candidness? With threats? Pleas?

With the alcohol blurring his thoughts and muddling his memories, the previous days were hazy—confusing. Perhaps Eoghan had been wrong, and things did matter. Everything he did in every single ‘day’ mattered. The patterns.

“…you see, I am sick. And the Cailleach can help me.”

The girl widened her eyes for a second before glancing toward the door, as if afraid someone else would be listening.

“What kind of sickness?”

“One where Death follows me, from morning till dawn, without sparing me a moment’s peace,” he replied to her whispers with whispers of his own—whispers too fearful of their own veracity, of their own reality.

And little Keelin MacNeil could sense that.

“…this sounds like a curse,” the small girl said, while hugging her doll tighter.

At times, Eoghan would wonder if a curse would be a proper name for his affliction.

If, perhaps, a curse wouldn’t be a kinder fate.

“Be it a sickness or a curse, I’m certain I can find the aid I seek with the Cailleach. And you do know, don’t you? Where she lives.”

Eoghan had never heard of the Blood Huntress Cailleach before. He heard it first through the lips of small Keelin MacNeil herself, in one of the last thirty-one days he lived through. 

“Dadaí says good people don’t get involved with the Blood Huntress Cailleach…and mamaí says bad things happen to the ones that do.”

There were nightmares haunting those big blue eyes, Eoghan could tell—tales that possessed their own whispers and wails. Stories that made the fear in the girl’s voice even more alive.

A chill.

The wails.

As the man looked across the window, he could see the dying daylight. Before, such a sight would make him reminisce about the sun’s warmth. Yet all his body would recall in this moment, as the night stole its place within the vast sky, was pain.

Excruciating, agonizing, unending pain.

His hands were shaking again. Perhaps it was his entire body. Yet what mattered, when he was the only one collecting the memories and recalling the patterns?

“If I am a bad person for seeking aid from the Cailleach, isn’t it fair something bad stumbles my way? And if I am nothing but a desperate soul seeking a cure for an ailment, what are a few misfortunes on a dead man’s path?”

Keelin’s eyes narrowed, her gaze sharpening. She was thinking. Considering.

“Do you stink because you are sick?”

He wanted to grab her and shout. He wanted to take her out in the woods and make her show him the way. She would die with him, but once his heart ceased its beating yet again, the girl would be alive and well. Eoghan could do that. He could just take her and—

No

Nothing but rumblings from a dying man… A man drunk on moonshine and despairing wishes.

Eoghan grabbed the small hand. Not the girl’s, the doll’s. Something lifeless and cold.

“Please, Keelin. Tell me what you know. I need your help.”

He wondered what the child saw reflected in his gaze. If she saw nightmares and woeful tales, and if those tales echoed through his voice.

Yet when Keelin MacNeil started talking, Eoghan Conroy’s fear slowly became something else. Something that was still gelid and rotten, still foul and treacherous, still debilitating and maddening.

Rage.

For those were all words he had heard before. Things that were already engraved in the patterns and carved into his memories. Things he already recalled. Yet things he needed—these, they were not.

“Her home! You know where it is, do you not?” The man grabbed the child by the shoulders, his grip firm. Perhaps too firm. “You know where the witch lives—tell me.”

The little girl’s lips trembled, her eyes shimmered with tears.

But Eoghan did not care. He couldn’t care. Not when he could hear the wails so clearly again.

Not when across the window, was the dark fae.

Staring.

Grinning.

Pointing at the foul shadows that awaited him at the woods.

“Tell me! Tell me where the witch lives, now!”

Keelin MacNeil screamed and cried. The door that was always slightly closed suddenly burst open. Yet as the servants dragged him away, what brought the man back to his senses was not the cries of a frightened child as tears ran down her face.

But the glare the mother gave him as she took her daughter into her arms. Eyes that brimmed with loath and hatred, eyes that were almost too sharp and focused.

Eyes that, for a moment, seemed to be almost frighted of him.

Eoghan Conroy continued to walk. He walked deep into those woods—to the leafless trees and their dark, curved branches. The moonshine in his stomach had become something worse than poison, the sickness making him want to bend on his knees and force everything out.

Yet those wails.

The shadows.

They were all so close.

They were all so, so close. The man knew it, deep down in his every bone and flesh, his time in this day was nigh.

He didn’t want to die again. He didn’t want to see It again…

‘Call my name with thy dying breath, little man’

Eoghan fell to his knees, every ounce of strength abandoning his body.

‘Call to me in tears and woe’

He didn’t want to look. He didn’t dare to open his eyes.

‘Call to me till thy voice can be heard no longer’

Yet even if he covered his ears and screamed till his throat tore, the wails and whispers would still be there. He would still be able to hear.

The steps approaching.

‘Death shall still come for thee, still’

The heavy boots crunching the leaves. The blooded sword dragging itself through the ground.

‘Again, and again, and again’

Eoghan’s eyes opened on their own. As if they knew. As if his body knew it was time. And when the man faced the creature once again, he could do nothing but cry. In shame, in dread, in ridicule, in plea.

For the Dullahan’s presence compelled him. It demanded his tears and fright, it demanded Eoghan to succumb and crawl.

“Just…don’t…please, I just…”

The headless horseman’s presence was taller than any tree, its shadows darker than any blackness. And as the Dullahan raised the sword, the last thing Eoghan set his eyes on was the moonlight.

As Death’s sword was thrust into his body again and again, drenching the leaves in his soiled blood, what Eoghan kept watching in order to forget the pain was the beautiful silver light. The one that paled in comparison to the glow in those starry-eyes.

The eyes that still gazed at him.