“Yes,” she’d seen hair where his trousers had been torn by barbed wire. She saw the scratch marks on his skin. Their scandalous whispers grew enthralled by fear. Outside were dogs. Catherine’s lies and Sara’s imagination kept them hallucinating tiredly while they grew acquainted with Matti Bonner, the first real person they’d known to die. They grew to like their fear of this man as night fell. He had been such a man that if you looked away you would not remember him. He was a small house with poor walls, a name, a Catholic yard, a white bleating goat, a way of walking, a way of talking with bothered outbursts, a bachelor with a missing digit on the right hand. Someone they could look down upon. Now he was an immense frightening figure in a state of eerie erection whose pathetic dog, night after night, whinged on the step of his house.

One night, the girls not only saw lights in Matti Bonner’s house, but furniture being hurled through the windows. The dog was frantic. Then, there was the sudden discharge of a shotgun, a terrifying shriek from Reilly, another shot and then silence. The countryside at last went quiet. The torment of his soul had suddenly ended.

The next day Jonathan Adams said: “That’s it. Tonight, Catherine, go back to your own room.”

“Daddy, I’m afeared.”

“And what’s there to be afeared of?”

“Matti Bonner.”

“Go long.”

“I am.”

“That’s enough out of ye, once is enough, Catherine, for me to tell ye. Matti is in heaven.”

“He’s in hell.”

“Stop it, Catherine. Tonight you’ll hike yourself back to your room.”

“But Daddy, he’ll folly me.”

“Foll-ow!” the Sergeant said correcting her.

“Follow,” said Catherine, “he’ll follow me.”

“There’s no one going to folly ye, daughter.” He took her by the hand and the two stepped briskly along. “Once you start that kinda talk, you’re asking for it. People should learn when young to be alone.”

So Catherine went back to her room and strangely enough Matti Bonner did not visit her that night. It was the ghost of the dog haunted her and Sara, till eventually the dog backed off, as a dog will in terror from the unknown. Reilly was forgotten. Matti’s house housed animals, his furniture sat in his nephew’s garage. The gap leading to the subconscious was filled in, and finally the land was sold to a Free Presbyterian from Tyrone who scoured the walls and the floors clean of all signs of Catholic possession and painted on the gable RIGHTEOUSNESS IS OF THE LORD.

Across the fields Matti Bonner now lay in consecrated ground.

But Catherine knew he was out there somewhere trying to get back in.