DO YOU BELIEVE?

Shallow breaths filled the small cottage, as if the Irish wind had finally grown old and tired, forced to crawl through the room’s open window. 

Worn, dirtied hands rested on the cushion of hay, speaking of decades of work. They had tilled the land, whether dirt or turf, and not once dared disturb the fairy tree in the centre of the field. 

Each gulp for air lifted pale skin into the light of the small candle that sat on the crude nightstand nearby. A man could swear on the Bible that it was the same colour and texture as the wax pooling beneath the flame. 

Two deep, sunken eye sockets stared at the world beyond their prison, a dark abyss that hid brilliant gems inside. Doran knew they were there, because he had seen them. 

Laying in this bed was an honest, friendly, and god-fearing man. And yet he would die like anyone else. 

“Feeling any better, father?” The old chair beneath Doran steadily creaked as his knee bounced nervously. He knew the truth, but more concerningly, he already knew the old man’s answer.

“More alive every day, Doran.” The reassuring statement came in a gasp of air, like someone drowning off the coast. In this case, it might as well be a drowning person saying it, before they disappeared beneath the waves again. He wanted to tell the man to be honest. 

“Glad to hear,” was Doran’s answer instead, “and Enda’s feeding you well?” He hated leaving his brother alone to care for father, but even as the letters had gotten bleaker, the prospect of travelling had been daunting. It was only once it was clear this was it that the excuses felt empty.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. But what about your job? At the bank.” 

“I still have it. It’s going well.” Doran reached into his pocket, retrieving a small golden pin with an inscription upon it. Even as a simple clerk, the institution spent more to represent itself than countries had to feed this island only a few decades ago. 

A smile spread across the sickly clay face laying before him, and it was harder to tell if the rotting teeth or skin was more discomforting. “I told you the good luck charm would help.”

“Doing a good job didn’t hurt either.” Doran tried not to sigh. If good luck charms ran the world, his father would be their king, which is the only way he’d be anything more than a farmer.

“One day, you’ll run the bank. And then that gold will run into the right hands for once. Lord, maybe you’ll run the Bank of Ireland.”

“They don’t want an Irish person running that, father. At least, not our kind of Irish.”

The dim dusk outside slowly thickened to a cool grey, and then a blanket of darkness. The two talked for hours, conversation’s sails filled with memories and hopes of the doomed man. Doran had always enjoyed hearing him talk. The man wasn’t a leader, but he sure was a storyteller. And there were few better tales he could make than life itself. It must have been past midnight when the candle had nearly reached the end of its wick, and the old man the end of his. 

“Doran,” he whispered, the dying light casting deep shadows on his face. “I heard one of the Carrols passed away recently. I could tell. The banshees howled for ‘em.”

Doran gave a saddened chuckle, knowing exactly what his father was saying. “The Banshees only howl for the great clanns. The Carrols don’t have a drop of royal blood in them, and neither do we.”

“I always told you, our ancestors did great things. Don’t laugh at a man old enough to know the past…” The haunting grin returned, but this time as a bittersweet smile. “Most of all, don’t forget the stories.” 

The silence hung over the both of them until the candle had extinguished itself. The old man had gone silent--he was asleep. Enda would be home soon, he had to. Doran had already been here for the last words, he didn’t think he could stay until the end. 

Rising to his feet, the chair scraped across the floor. He had to stumble through the darkness, but eventually he found the lantern. The light returned, illuminating a small figure peeking from the house’s other room.

“Is grandpa going to be okay?” Aisling, his niece, stared up at him.

“He’ll be fine,” Doran said without a thought, “the world looks out for good people.”

“But what about the things outside?”

“What things?”

“Lotsa things. Like that the Fair Folk might get upset he didn’t leave food out, or a Clurichaun might drink all his alcohol and ride the pig across the whole island. And he said that if the banshees don’t wail for him first, the Dullahan might come, and that he doesn’t have any silver to scare it off.”

“Your grandpa tells great stories, but they’re still stories.” Promising to come back in the morning, he hugged her and sent her to bed before leaving. 

Outside, the warm, choked breaths of the bed’s inhabitant gave way to the piercing howl of cold winds. Nature itself carried on as usual, and he could believe it was in his father’s memory if he wanted to. The glow of the moon cast a light blanket across the Earth, and what awaited him felt like something between spiritual and physical. Beyond the enduring beam of his lamp, fields stretched across hills, a patchwork quilt of farms and grazing grounds knitted together by enough stone walls to last forever. A simple dirt road trailed through it, waiting for him like a loyal friend. 

Night was a cold observer for travelling, and even it made no exceptions. The biting cold blew through his clothes and jacket, causing his teeth to clatter as he tried to preserve some semblance of feeling in his hands. It was freezing, wet, and unwelcoming. Or as he and his friends joked, a pleasant night in Ireland. And for all the trouble, it was exactly that for him, as he dreamed of reaching the inn and sitting near the fireplace, safe from his troubles until tomorrow. Like for most of humanity, it was a nice dream...

It began as a low hum, a whimper. Instinctively Doran paused, as something deep down inside freaked out; there was something innately human about finding crying discomforting. The whimper turned into a cry, everywhere and nowhere at once, and then a wail. The high-pitched scream that followed shook him to the core. It was the cry of the banshee: the herald of death. Terrifying as they were, they were helpful, announcing the end of a great man. Unfortunately, what was ahead of him was not so kind. 

It started as flashes in the distance, like a steam engine or horseless carriage. But the dot on the horizon quickly grew as it shot over hill and field with a speed that dwarfed anything humanity had made. Flames and sparks shot out of it in all directions, as if it was nothing more than a barely-contained flame flying across the world. A closer look wasn’t any more comforting. 

It was a carriage, riding the winds behind a team of six horses, skeletal and jet-black. From their nostrils flared tongues of flames, and the wheels spun so quickly bushes burst into flames from the air friction as it flew by. The carriage rocked back and forth violently from the speed, causing a sealed casket in the back to bounce a metre into the air, only to land perfectly before repeating the process. But the true horror was what was guiding this unstoppable force. 

The rider was headless, a body free of any hindrances of a head, or at least he thought, until he saw the disembodied head sitting next to it on the seat, a grin splitting its sickly-pale head in half. The body swung a bleached-white whip at the horses, who neighed each time it hit them with a sickening ‘crack’. It was made out of a human spine. In the matter of a minute, the fairy had travelled from the horizon to only a couple dozen metres away, tearing up the road as it hunted down its human victim. One of the hands let go of the reins to pick up the grinning head, whose eyes glowed blood-red in anticipation. This thing was a force of nature in and of itself. It was a Dullahan. 

Doran simply stared in shock. As quivering lips muttered a prayer and he made the sign of the cross, his other one slowly reached into his trouser pocket, shaking uncontrollably. He fumbled a couple times, trying to pinch the small item between uncooperative fingers. So close, damn it! The ground shuddered as the creature got closer and closer, and the young man heard what felt like thousands of screams from its past victims. The disembodied head was still held high in the sky, grinning as it looked down at him. Its lips pursed as they prepared to utter a single word: the name of the next person to die. Unlike the banshee, there was nothing stopping this headless horseman from claiming the soul of a young, healthy human. 

Finally his head snatched onto the elusive item in his pocket: his golden pin. The Dullahan and its minions were no more than six metres away, a wave of heat washing over him followed by a sickening wave of stench. Every part of him wanted to run, flee, hide. In some way save himself from this impossible event. Instead, he stood his ground. Four metres. He raised his hand, still quivering. Two metres. He stammered out prayer after prayer, demanding the being disappear back to where it came from. Zero metres. He opened his hand to reveal the metal pin, feeling the breath of the front horses on it. 

“Fuck off!” His final words weren’t holy, but accurate. He spent the next five seconds wondering if that’s how he’d be remembered, until he realized nothing had happened. Lowering his unsteady hand, he glanced around, blinking in confusion as he found himself alone on the road, like before. And then he laughed hysterically. 

Doran took a few moments to collect himself, a foolish figure shivering on a dirt road in the dark. His hand still gripped for dear life to the piece of metal, tremorring nervously as it took on the same shade as the Dullahan’s head had been. It’d be a while before he finally willed it to stop, wrestling with the wild limb like it was an animal of its own accord. When the pin was back under the sanity of his right hand, he curiously held it up in the moonlight, studying the thing that saved his life. Except it hadn’t. 

“Gold, Aisling. The Dullahan hates gold, not silver.”

He remembered the tale, no matter how long ago it had been. It hadn’t even been a night, and the words of a dead man were the reason he stood here. He knew that he’d have to tell his niece his father’s stories sometime. 

That girl was clever for her age. If she got any smarter, she might think they were real.