O'Scathatch, Part II
I am 20
Two years after Eddie ran off, mom swallows the barrel of a .45.
She was thoughtful enough to do it before I came home from work. And to leave a note telling me she loved me.
I stand and watch as the police and the coroner investigate the scene, and cart her off.
I don’t cry.
When they are gone, I feel the pain welling up inside me. I pack my things. I rummage through her liquor cabinet, looking for a way to escape.
I’d never had it before, but the only thing that caught my eye was a bottle of Tulamore Dew, a fine Irish Whiskey.
In the hotel that night, I laid on the bed, and drank.
Things blurred, my head spun, and my mind wandered.
You imagine some weird shit when you get drunk…
It has been years since the rest of our Kith left the world, seeking the shores of Arcadia.
We, House Scathatch, remained.
I am beset on all sides by treachery. The commoners whom the Sidhe cast off see us as a reminder of that abandonment.
The stagnation and ‘enlightenment’ of humanity eats away at the very core of our beings.
An unseen adversary strikes at me, waging a private war against me, for a sin I cannot recount, yet he comes for me, again and again. Seeking to destroy me.
My title is all but worthless, the commoners have rejected us, so I, in turn, reject my station. We can no longer walk in our true forms, we must disguise ourselves in the trappings of humanity. I am sought out by a clandestine agent seeking vengeance.
Nothing keeps me in the place I called home. So I don the man’s image, and I wander.
I am in a bar, outside the city of Dublin, the city that shares my name, when she comes to me.
Skin like alabaster, dark, long, braided dark hair, eyes as green as the rolling hills of Eire. Her smile is warm, familiar to me. Her body lean and athletic. She dances in the tavern, all eyes upon her spinning, bounding form.
The song ends, and she sees me, and makes her way over.
“My name is Aislin Leoghain,” she explained, “my connection to my ancestry is strong. Howls of Silver told me you’re a friend.”
We became friends, and companions, and eventually, lovers.
It was a cold night in the hills of Ulster, when the fiends came, and took her from me.
I found her body days later. Strewn about the cliffs and hills of the northern countryside.
My enemy had found me yet again.
I don’t understand what the dream meant, but I remember it as if I were there.
The Pooka falls again. She isn’t as tough as she’d been made out to be. Her magics are potent, but I am fast, and I am determined. She is merely trying to buy time to stave off the inevitable.
I am on a righteous quest to avenge myself.
She looks up at me, blood trickles from her mouth. She begins to cry and plead for her life. Pity starts to rise from the depths of my gut.
I remember she is a Pooka. I remember what she and her gang did to me, to my family, to my friends.
Anger squashes pity and stuffs it in my bile duct.
I have no recollection of how I made it to the new world. I only know that I did. I can only assume I came here because I thought it might offer me some protection from my pursuer.
I watch the world change through the eyes of the mortal I have chosen to carry me. I still avoid the society of Changelings, and I keep to myself, occasionally mingling with the few Prodigals I deem worthy.
But their companionship is few and far between. I never get close enough to anyone any more, out of fear that they will be taken from me.
I wonder if I can take much more of this. I feel banality’s cold grip reaching for me, for my many transgressions.
It is only a matter of time that it will catch up with me.
I am 26. Wandering has become a lifestyle for me.
I set out to see the world after mom died. That was 6 years ago. I called dad and told him what I was doing back them. He was drunk, so I assume he forgot. But, I called him again, and he started to write me when I got to a new town. We called and wrote when we could.
I was a lot like him. I couldn’t keep a job, I couldn’t keep a woman, I drank.
Then dad started to turn his life around. He met a girl, she convinced him to join AA. He would drop out, and she would get him back in. He got himself a job, working in a bookstore, in a year he became a manager. Two years later he was a regional managerial support rep. They got married, had kids. I remember writing to him and telling him that a man his age couldn’t possibly sire any more kids, but I understood that he would need someone to push him around in his wheelchair in a few years
Life on the road taught me a lot of hard lessons. But good ones. I regret nothing in life, the fights, the women, the booze, the opportunities lost. Time away was good. Dad made the best of it. And I had a kid brother and a kid sister to meet, and a new mom.
Things were looking up, finally. My streak had ended.
I am heading down I-495, the Long Island Expressway, towards dads. The lights on the highway cast their orange-ish haze over the other cars.
I get off at exit 62, and I head north to the town of Setauket. 6 years ago, dad could never dreamed of a place there. Now, the dreams he couldn’t have came true.
I pull into the driveway, and the cruel joke that fate had in store for me became apparent.
The squad cars, ambulances, and local reporters swarmed the front of the house.
I saw stretchers carrying out body bags, three of them. Two were small, like trash bags.
I prayed I had the wrong address, I prayed it was the wrong house.
I wasn’t. The police came out of the house with dad in cuffs, he was crying and covered in blood. He kept screaming like a lunatic.
“It was the dog! She did it! She had help! Please, dear god, please believe me!”
I stood on the lawn, my heart breaking. Tears rolling down my cheeks.
My one last shot at happiness, gone.
She curled up in a ball at my feet, holding her abdomen. Whining like a hurt puppy. The wound would not heal for her. She was as good as dead. I knew how long she had left. Long enough to talk.
I swing a chair over next to her, and sit backwards in it, looking her over. I pull out my cigarettes, and pop one in my mouth.
“Smoke?” I offer, I have to.
The bitch shakes her head. “Thank you. I don’t smoke.”
I chuckle and toss a second into my mouth, light it for her, and place it between her lips. “Cute. Even to the last breath, huh? You could make this easy on yourself, you know.”
Shaking her head, “No, if I do that, I will last longer.”
I had to wrap my head around that one. It took me a bit.
“OK, have it your way. I will ask you a series of questions, they will be yes, or no answers. All I want are yes or no answers. If I think you are telling the truth intentionally, I will make this last for days. If I get what I want, I’ll let the Knocker on the other side of the door come in to cast his healing magics on you. Do we understand each other?”
She nodded.
“Good, then, let’s begin…”
The trail was a mess.
I was hounded by the press, TV, radio, newspapers, all tried to get a piece of me, an interview, a statement.
I hid as best I could.
Dad pleaded not guilty, by reason of insanity.
Problem was, he maintained he was perfectly sane in the press. No one seemed to believe him. Except the District Attorney, and the Jury.
He stuck to his tale of the family dog killing the family, and a band of ‘circus freaks’ aiding her in the murder.
It took the jury and hour to return a verdict of Guilty on all three counts.
“A name. Do you know his name?”
She shook her head, “Yes.”
No name. Damn.
I visited him once during the whole time, the day before he was to be executed.
I was allowed to sit with him, in private for a bit.
I looked at the man who I loved, the man who had tried his best for me and mom, the man who ultimately would fail me time and again, and the man I would always be able to forgive.
Except now, I thought.
Looking him in the eye, I needed to know.
“Why?”
He started blubbering and crying. “Mikey, please, Mikey, you gotta believe me. It was the damned DOG!”
He went on. But I didn’t stick around to hear it.
The next day I went to see him off. I passed the crowds, people holding signs bearing slogans and pictures of the family I never would get to know, the family I always wanted.
Alicia would have been four. Tim was three. Donna, my Stepmother, would have been my age. The ripe old age of 27. They had a stock picture of her from her sorority composite. She was beautiful. She looked so happy.
Inside, they led me to the little theatre where the Attorney’s, the prison representatives, and the families sat and watched. I saw Donna’s Mother and her sisters. They all wore buttons with pictures of Donna, Alicia, and Timmy. The two young sisters sat and cried silently. Her mother sat still, iron faced, motionless, watching the Plexiglas window, waiting for the show to start.
I made my way over, and I offered my condolences to Mrs. Barron and her daughters. They looked at me, and the eldest of the two sisters welled up in tears, and spat at me. The mother wouldn’t even look at me. Then the sister who spat on me called dad and I trash.
I backed off, and sat off in the corner, alone.
They paraded dad in, sat him in the chair, and fitted him with the straps.
The guard asked if he had any last words.
“Please, dear God, I loved my family!” tears streamed from his cheeks as he spoke “I didn’t do it. Please!”
I shook my head.
The guard fitted him with the hood, and placed the conductor on his head. In an instant that seemed like an eternity, he was gone.
In an instant that seemed like an eternity, I awoke.
“I have been searching for you. For years. Every lead, every little scrap of information, every rumor, the confessions of your friends. All of it led me to you.”
I jump off the chair, and squat next to her. My face in hers. She coughed, her body shivered and trembled.
“It seems my father told the truth. It was you who pulled the trigger, wasn’t it?”
Her eyes peering at me beg for mercy.
I have none left.
“It’s OK, I know you did. I only have one more question for you. Why?”
She smiled, I could see her resolve boosting in her “Because, a dirty murderous half-breed like you has no right to continue to live. You want answers? Look inside yourself.”
My dagger ended her miserable life of murder for hire. I wiped the blood of the blade, and sheathed it.
Nothing. I questioned her, and got nothing. It wasn’t the first time, I am sure it won’t be the last.
I search her belongings, looking for clues there.
I find a date book.
Three years ago, an appointment in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Kingdom of Willows, the Barony of Mountain Eyre.
It was three days after Dad was executed.