I must have slept because I dreamt that I was running, running, running through a cut cornfield, the rough stalks scratching my legs. Someone or something was after me and I knew that if I turned to find out I would be wiped off the face of God’s good green earth. When I finally stopped, gasping for breath and daring to look over my shoulder, a huge blade came spinning out of the dark and took the top of my skull off. The blood ran down my face and into my eyes; the metallic taste of it coated my tongue.

It had the feel of a dream that would stick with me for years and years. I woke up in a panic of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’d bit my lip and the tinny taste of blood pooled in my mouth, reminding me that it was no one’s fault but mine that I had hurt myself again.

13

I was up sitting dry-eyed at my window by 6am after the longest Friday night of my life. I watched the light gather itself behind the three hills to the east. Muckle, Aghabovey and Sessiagh are smoky blue as the mist starts to lift. I chant the names and places, the ground I have been standing on for sixteen years, like a prayer. We are on top of Dergmoy and Glebe is to the left. The mighty River Cloon still runs down between us and forks at the point of the river field in Johns Farm before it flows steely and cold under the Castle Bridge in Carncloon ten miles away. Nothing’s changed but everything is different.

The deep-scarlet sky fades to pink then to streaks of gold. Red sky in the morning, tramp’s warning. The warning doesn’t last long. After an hour all the pretty colours have been wiped out by the daily pigeon-grey sky that brings the promise of soft rain, the only constant in the churning of the days.

I see my father walk around the end of the barn on the way to his cows, his pipe already lit. He doesn’t blink. What will he be thinking today?

I am thinking he will not rescue me but I will be rescued. Someone will come for me and pull me from this latest wave of Mammy’s madness before I am washed away. I will them to come: Kathleen, Eileen, Bridie, Sheila, Kathleen, Eileen, Bridie, Sheila, Kathleen, Eileen, Bridie, Sheila. One of them will stop her with a silver bullet.

Out of the fog comes Father Pat O’Connell’s face, the face of someone who has seen much worse things than an unmarried pregnant girl and who might be able to prevail upon my mother to just let me have the thing so I can give it to Auntie Eileen and get back to my A levels! But with his face comes the face of John Johns.