The Boys were being led by The Dark. They were being led by The Dark across The Dead Zone. And there were communications between the dead. From the dead that had crossed over into other regions of The Zone. In December we receive notice that three women in the Armagh prison had joined us in the hunger strike. Three women were approaching. Three shades, coming through from the other side. The priest talked to us about the agonies of Christ Jayzus. How Christ Jayzus will be in agony until the end of the world. But the world had already come to an end. We had left the world behind us. And now there was only a final suffering, a final monumental sacrifice, before we would have no more of this world and every single one of us, echoes, in time. If you could enter the eyes of a dead man, the black, inscrutable eyes of a dead man, at mass, in H3, in the years of the hunger strike, then you would come to know that heaven and hell are just party games played for the benefit of the living.

Part Five: The Ocean and the Shore

The phone rings, in the middle of night. It’s Tommy. It’s a game of Tommy calling me from the other side, and I sit on the stair, and I pick up the phone, in the dead of this Belfast night, and it’s the same silence on the end of the line, the same fucking silence as ever. But now someone is trying to speak. Tommy? Is that yourself, Tommy?

Answer me, Tommy.

Moira’s out of bed. Get back to fucking bed and close that fucking door behind you.

Someone’s crying. A woman’s voice is in tears at the end of the line.

Kathy? I says to it.

Kathy, is that you, honey?

Xamuel, it says.

Xamuel, I’m in trouble.

Xamuel, they are going to kill me.

Xamuel, I’m in trouble deep.

They? Who are they?

The ones what are going to kill me, she says, and the voice, it is Kathy’s.

Nobody’s going to kill anybody. Not while I’m around.

(muffled noises on the phone)

You need to speak clearly, sweetie.

Will you meet me? she says through the tears.

We can’t talk on the phone, she says, will you come to me?

I’ll run to you, darling, I says to her, I’ll come to you wherever you are, my heart, my sweet heart, I says. Belfast isn’t safe, I says to her, so meet me in Carrickfergus, meet me in Carrickfergus by the shore.

Come back across the crackly telephone line, come back to me a song.

In Carrickfergus, my love, I’ll meet you in Carrickfergus, I’ll meet you in Carrickfergus, by the shore. And what time will we meet?

Tomorrow, at half past three, my love.