Souling Night
By Kelly Dunn

“I heard a bell ringing by the garden wall, and a voice in the stillness of the night calling on all good people to pray for the souls of the dead, it being All Souls’ Eve.”

—Charles Dickens

    
he new boy pounded on the door nine times before Sorsha Sarin, her long skirt flying, finally caught up with him, reaching up as high as she could to catch his fist in hers lest it hit the door again.

The other children skidded to a halt as they, too, reached the door, clustering around it, breathing hard. The older ones held lanterns that flickered feebly in the Irish twilight, each like a will o’ the wisp. It was the one night of the year they could legitimately beg their neighbors for specially prepared extra food, in preparation for the morrow of prayer and fasting called All Souls’ Day.

“What d’ya stop him for?” The prematurely deep voice of stout Terrence O’Grady pushed through the crowd as he shouldered his way closer to the threshold. Sorsha regarded him with surprise, the new boy with mild curiosity.

Sorsha blushed. “He does na know what house this is!”

“I say, let him find out, and see what he gets!” Terrence retorted. “I hear Old Man Galvin drinks the blood of the children who knock on his door.”

Sorsha, her features puckered with anxiety, turned back to her new friend. “We dare not come here, never, not even on Souling Night!”

The stranger threw her a puzzled look that emphasized the fact that he did not look like the boys of the village. Delicate featured and wiry where they were broad and coarse; he had eyes the color of fresh water, hair the color of dead leaves. He shrugged. “I dare it.”

Terrence straightened defensively. “Then we dare it too,” he declared. “We’ll stay to see what Old Man Galvin does to ye.”

The rest of the children murmured together, moving closer to the mysterious portal that Old Man Galvin’s door now represented. Excitement and an overabundance of sweets made them daring, and familiar evening sounds comforted them. At the opposite end of the village, church bells chimed in honor of the night. Somewhere behind Galvin’s cottage, pigs grunted contentedly. 

“D’ya think he’ll come?” blond Nancy Randall stage-whispered.

“Nah,” muttered Oscar Griffith, who stood next to her. “He’s mad.”

“He will, I’m thinkin’,” said the stranger.

Little Peter Haney piped up, “Me fayther, that worked alongside him once, says he has soft words for none.”

“No,” Oscar sniggered. “No. His pigs be his closest kin since his woman run off, says me Gran.”

“Please,” begged Sorsha, tugging at the new boy’s sleeve. “His woman was to have his child, ya see, and now he canna stand the sight of young ones such as we. Let’s be away!”

“Hush!” Terrence jerked his head toward the door. “We canna help it now.”

Inside the house something creaked, followed by the scraping of the inside latch. When the door opened, a burly man stepped into its frame. The children all drew in a pre-flight breath, but then let it out again, for Old Man Galvin’s look did not seem to threaten harm. A twinkle in his eyes even hinted that he might have known merriment in his day. But now his mouth, nearly hidden by a graying beard, formed a grim line that moved only a little as he asked, “Why am I disturbed tonight?”

“Soul cakes, soul cakes,” the children recited. “A bit o’ bread, an’ we pray for the dead!”

“I have none to give. Which of ye knocked on my door?”

The new boy stepped toward Old Man Galvin in a silent admission as the others subsided into the shadows. Galvin bent down until his face was level with his young visitor’s.

“What’s your name, lad?”

“Jimmy.”

“Good lad! That’s my name, too. Where’s yer mam?”

“Live yonder, do we.” The boy pointed across the marshlands, where a neighboring village supported itself by harvesting the nether half of the bog.

“So she’s not from here, and she would not ha’ told ye that some doors are best not to knock upon.” Lunging forward, he gripped the boy’s shoulders, eyes narrowing. Softer and more bitter became his voice, stirring in the other children their half-remembered fears. “How did ye get here, across the wilds, with no light to guide ye?”

The boy’s voice trembled. “I had a light.”

“Well, ye’ll never see light again if ye come here a-beggin’ again, boy.” Little blue marks began to form where Galvin’s fingers dug into the stranger’s arms. With a twist as quick as a fish evading a fisherman’s grasp, the boy wriggled out of his captor’s hands and disappeared into the darkness, rubbing his arms as he ran.

Galvin stood up. His hands shook a little as he waved at the remaining children, who stood paralyzed in fearful fascination. “Begone, the rest of ye! ‘Tis too late for -”

A cacophony of squeals from behind the cottage drowned out his next words. Pigsty stench and the smell of fresh-turned mud coincided with the sound of madly flailing hooves as a herd of swine stampeded out from behind Galvin’s cottage. A small human figure followed them. As it passed, the children saw it belonged to the stranger.

“The pigs!” Galvin shouted. Shoving aside the young ones who stood in his way, he ran off in the direction of his fleeing property. Behind him, fast as they could, the children followed, mirth quelling their fear. Someone had gotten the better of Old Man Galvin.

Like a herd possessed by Legion, the pigs galloped in a close-gathered group along the dirt path that served as the road through the village. Little Jimmy ran behind them, waving his arms to goad them on. He screamed at the pigs with a high keening cry that sounded even more unsettling than the animals’ panicked squeals. Through the village they ran, past the church that had been old centuries ago, and into the wilderness. Above the pigs’ noise the children could hear Old Man Galvin’s shouts of “Stop! Thief!” but both the pigs and their abductor seemed driven along by the rising night wind. In its stream floated the children’s shouts of, “Come on!” “Faster!” “Where d’they be?”

Gradually the sounds of the chase ahead of them tapered away, and the sense of being on the edge of danger made them slow and stop. The pigs and their pursuers had gone eerily silent.

Sorsha pointed. “They’ve gone into the bog!”

Just ahead lay the peat-bog, where by day their fathers cut the fuel that warmed their tiny cottages winter and summer. No one ever ventured into it at night. The children listened apprehensively to the sudden singing of nocturnal creatures, and sounds that may have been squealing pigs or something else. The children looked back across the path they had trampled with the mingled glee and terror of those who have passed the established boundaries.

From the village, which at this distance looked as unreal as a city in a fairy-ring, a figure wended its way toward them.

“’Tis a ghost!”

“No, no, ‘tis only Parish Polly.”

Patricia Flynn, whose great bitterness lay in the fact that she had to settle for humble rural holiness in lieu of convent life, ran toward them, her rough petticoats flapping round her like dark spirits. “I heard the pigs, and seen you a runnin’ to the bog, and I knew no good could come of it.”

Speaking all at once, the children reached for her. “A stranger, a boy no older than Oscar, there …”

“He took Jimmy Galvin’s pigs …”

“Sorsha knows him …”

Patricia Flynn listened as if performing a penance. “There’s nothing the morning light won’t reveal,” she said. “As for the boy, he’ll no doubt scamper home to his own. It’s hardly wise to meddle with those who live yonder.” But anxiety remained in her glance as she herded the young ones back in the direction of the village.  “Stay close, now.”

*     *     *     *     *

Old Man Galvin ran some distance, fury spurring him on, before he realized how deep into the bog he was. He could no longer see the pigs, and he wondered if he would ever recover them. The sounds of their squeals had shattered and stopped as if swallowed. Pausing to catch his breath, he took stock of the darkness and seeming uniformity of his surroundings. It would take him a moment to gather his bearings, but only a moment. Didn’t he know every step of these bogs far better than any boy? “I’ve been out on darker Souls’ Eves than this, boy, and I’ll find you,” he shouted. But, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the still-growing darkness, he wondered.

A sudden starfire dot of orange danced in front of him, dodging away so that he had to move forward to keep it in sight. “I’ve something to show you,” the boy’s voice called, his voice oddly amplified in the thickened air. “See my light!”

Old Man Galvin lunged after the light, which darted in front of him like a playful insect.

“Show yerself!”

“Ha! Do ye want to see?”

Galvin took one step, then another. He could tell by the way the ground suckled his shoes that he had ventured far. As long as he could see the light he moved forward, until abruptly as a blown-out candle, it ceased. As he hesitated, wondering whether he should give up the chase, there stood the boy, as if merely waiting for him to catch up. He held his small hand in a fist on his chest. Old Man Galvin stumbled forward to seize him, but the boy jumped away.

“Shall I show you how I got here, Jimmy Galvin?” the boy queried. “Here is my light.” The child opened his fist while tugging at a string around his neck, part of which had been hidden under his shirt. He held up the weight at the end of the string. Galvin saw a circlet of gold, light running along its surface like water reflecting daylight. The hair on Galvin’s arms stood up as he looked more closely at the metal in the boy’s hand. It was a ring, a bit of jewelry he knew the design of …

Somewhere near them the ground slurped as if a foot caught in the wet mud had just freed itself. Treacherous going, he knew. “You’ll not lead me farther, boy. Tell me where you got that ring.”

“This is the light me mam gave to me,” said the boy. “Don’t ye know it?”

Unwanted memories flashed in Galvin’s mind: a woman smiled up at him as he placed the ring on her finger, lovely as the day he had first seen her walking toward him from another place. Her beauty was not like that of the maids in his village. It entranced him, ensorceled him just as he knew it must do to other men … Old Man Galvin, who had begun to shiver in the bog’s bone-freezing chill, now felt sweat moisten his body.

“Ye lie, boy! Who is thy mam?”

“With her was I when you brought us here.” As he spoke the boy turned the ring back and forth, its strange flicker highlighting his fine features the way a revolving lantern reveals shadowy faces. Galvin recognized his own eyes, the modeling of his own chin before the beard had come to cover it, the twist of the mouth he made when amused. But the boy’s visage bore more strongly the influence of that other face, so lovely he once thought he would never want to look away. “I have na’ forgotten that night. And I speak the truth, Jimmy Galvin.”

Like the echo of a bell, the words brought back to him the sound of his own words—how long ago?—almost nine years to the day. Eight months of building anger expressed in a brief explosion. Ye lie! Who is the fayther?

She had protested, of course, sobbing that her innocence was the truth, by all the gods, by all the saints. In his jealousy he found it easier to believe that she had taken up with a lover from her former place than that she could really be faithful to one such as he. As he forced her toward the marshes, warning her for the sake of her life and the life of her unborn not to make a sound, he thought he intended to drag her back to where she came from. But he didn’t get that far.

Galvin sputtered. “Should never ha’ trusted one from a place not my own. Not of my kind, was she!”

“You’ll find she is of your kind now, and ye of hers. Look there!”

The hair rose on Galvin’s neck; the being the boy pointed to stood not ten feet away looked so like her, yet at the same time not even remotely human. This creature, its skin as brown as the mud of the bog, stretched tight over wasted flesh, did not look like the pretty woman he had wedded, nor like the terrified pleading creature he had strangled and left in disgust, her belly bulging sideways into the mire. But he recognized her. As she moved toward him he saw the flesh of her neck, still purpled, swollen, indented with the marks of his fingers. Tongue protruding, she tried to tell him something. But her thinned lips gave forth only a gurgle. The boy ran to join her, putting his small arm round her waist.

“She wanted you to see me; so did I,” he said. “But she bid me wait till I was strong enough.” Something was happening to the smooth features of the child’s face. “D’ya love me, fayther?” The light of the ring around his neck began to fade. “Now ye’ve no light at all.”

As he spoke the handsome boy shriveled before his eyes as the being beside him collapsed in a heap. The child fell over in a curled-up position near its mother’s thighs, the wretched stillborn it had been nine years before when their lives had ended. Galvin felt a tugging at his feet. Something soft, like heavy hands, pulled him into the shifting ground.

*     *     *     *     *

With the red streaks of dawn came men into the village. Their weary air gave them the attitude of long-absent wanderers, now returning home. Up since the sky had turned gray, they bore with them a burden stretched on their coats and carried between them. When they put the garments on the ground one could see that burden was double: the eerily preserved corpse of a woman, still wearing remnants of a dress and cap, and the mummy of an infant dead before it lived. On the child’s chest, underneath a mouth frozen open in an eternal cry, something softly gleamed. People stirred; doors opened; children ran eagerly out, but drew away in consternation at what they saw.

Only Patricia Flynn, face pinched with disapproval, moved in close, examining the dress and the desiccated child and the gleaming thing without touching them. “Did you find Mr. Galvin?” she asked.

“Na,” said the leader of the search party. “Nor any of his pigs, neither.”

The church chimes started their toll: the beginning of a holy day. The woman shook her head, bending to admonish the children standing timidly round her. “If ye pray tonight, pray for his soul, children,” she said. “No one has more need of it than he.”

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