Page 6 of Heart of the Wren (Haunted Hearts: Season of the Witch #2)

DARA

THE COTTAGE had seen better days. It sat an angle in the farmhouse’s backyard.

From what Lorcan told me, it had been the family’s original home, where his parents and grandparents had lived.

Lorcan’s father had been born there, and when he grew up, he married Lorcan’s mother and they built the farmhouse.

The whole family moved into it and left the cottage to rot.

The cottage had a corrugated iron roof, not unusual for that sort of house, but the weather had lifted it in places, letting drips in.

The wind howled through gaps between the window frames and the walls.

A mouse scurried past on the far side of the room.

I’d have to have a word with the farm’s cats about it.

Each room held a discarded piece of farm equipment, from broken feed funnels to burst and muddied tires. Whatever colour the walls had been had long since faded or been worn away to a featureless grey. The fireplace was a gaping maw, blackened with decades of soot, the grate long gone.

Checking I was alone, I rolled up my sleeve and found the relevant tattoo.

A custom sigil I’d spent years perfecting before inking onto my skin.

From my pocket I drew a small vial containing an oil I’d made from mugwort, rosemary, and yarrow.

I touched a drop of it to my forehead to open my third eye, then another to my tattoo, and rubbed it in.

Then I clasped my hand over the tattoo and closed my eyes, feeling the energy of the earth creep up through the soil floor, into my feet, and filling my entire body.

I saw the sigil flare in my mind’s eye; then I reached out and touched a wall.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the wind stopped whistling.

The room slowly became warmer and brighter, as if heated by a roaring fire.

A distant echo of footsteps grew louder and closer.

I opened my eyes to find everything as it had been except I was no longer alone.

Wispy outlines of people moved around me, lifting unseen cups to their lips, pointing, shouting, laughing, reading books.

The wisps moved like smoke, blending with each other, becoming difficult to tell apart and making my spine tingle when they passed through me.

Men and women moved through the cottage and then smaller wisps appeared.

Boys who ran and knocked things over, who sat on tables and ran in and out, in and out.

And then a girl who flitted through, briefly, and was gone .

“Dara?”

I took my hand from the wall and the wisps vanished. The atmosphere in the cottage turned icy once again. “Yep, in here.”

Lorcan poked his head in through the cottage door. “What are you up to in here? I thought I heard voices.”

“ Hah , I was probably talking to myself. I do it a lot. There’s no one else to talk to on the road except the radio, and it never listens.

No, I was having a look around. I wondered if…

” Something caught my eye. A shoelace hanging from a feeding cone.

I pulled on it and one of Lorcan’s shoes popped out.

I reached in and found two more. All odd shoes.

He took them from me without a word.

“How did they end up in here?” I asked.

He grumbled under his breath. “I must have done it in my sleep. I sleepwalk sometimes.”

“Ah, right,” I said. “That explains it.”

???

I stood under the frigid light of the shed and stripped off my shirt.

I hung it on a tap jutting from the wall.

I’d taken a small handheld mirror from my van and held it up.

While it galled me to validate Michael’s earlier comments, my hair was much too long for my liking, so with a pair of sheep shears I took to clipping it down.

Strands of red hair fell to the ground. Some of it caught in the breeze and drifted away.

Michael walked past and caught my eye. “Don’t you worry yourself,” he said. “You start using our equipment for anything you like. No, you don’t need to ask. Help yourself.” He tutted before walking on.

“Ignore him.” I hadn’t noticed Lorcan approach from within the shed. “He doesn’t like it when… Actually, he doesn’t like anything.” He watched as I continued clipping. “Mind you don’t lose an ear.”

“It’s not my first time,” I said.

“Seems a shame to lose those locks.” He rubbed his own receding hair. Chestnut brown, with a slight curl to it. “I doubt I’ll have mine much longer.”

I held up a long cutting. “It’s too much hassle on the road.” It lifted high in the air and sailed away across the yard. “And it won’t go to waste. Some birds will use it for their nests.” I could tell Lorcan was examining my tattoos. “Don’t worry, I’m not in a gang or anything.”

He went pink. “I wasn’t… I’ve never seen so many. Do they all mean something?”

Uncertain of how he’d react to the whole story, I simply told him they did. Each one represented a moment in life I wanted to remember.

He pointed to my arm. “It looks like your van but in black and red?”

“She was those colours when I won her.” I brushed the stray hairs from my chest, aware my nipples had perked up in the chilly air. I took my shirt from the tap and started to button it up. Lorcan tried not to watch.

“You won your van?”

“Would you believe me if I told you I won her in a poker game with the devil?”

?? ?

In the long greenhouse at the side of the farmhouse, Lorcan snipped dead leaves from his plants.

The glass room had a doorway into the little hall at the back of the kitchen and was packed with all sorts of vegetation, in every shade of green.

Some had wide leaves as big as tennis rackets and some were barely shrubs.

“This place is so peaceful.” I felt the earthly energy all around us. The life. Surrounded by greenery, Lorcan looked right at home, more so than outside on the farmland.

“You said you’d tell me about the poker game.”

“Right!” I found a rickety dining room chair shaded by a huge leaf, so I sat. “I was up in Dublin in the early 70s and I fell in with a group of Ceremonial magicians.”

“And what does a Ceremonial magician do?” he asked.

“Ah, think of them as the Hammer Horror film type of magic user. They have these big, elaborate rituals with lots of hooded cloaks, and long-winded incantations, and strict rules they have to follow. These particular ones followed the teachings of Aleister Crowley. He was a big name on the magic scene at the turn of the century, into all sorts of black magic rites and the like.”

Lorcan stopped his cutting.

“But don’t worry, all it amounted to was some pretentious eejits talking Latin in robes made from their mammy’s curtains.

I would have been, what, 21? 22, maybe? Long hair down past my shoulders.

Ah, ye should have seen it. A magnificent mane, altogether.

Hah! Anyway, we all ended up at the top of Montpelier Hill one night.

There’s an old, burned out stone lodge up there called the Hellfire Club.

It dates from the 17th century, I think.

The story goes one of the richest men in the country built it on the site of an ancient passage tomb.

There was supposedly this great stone cairn marking the entrance and he used one of the rocks from it to make his fireplace.

And so, despite the passage tomb dating from pagan times, there’s a ton of stories about Satan visiting the lodge.

Because, yeah, of course, sure what would the second most powerful being in all of creation be doing with his time but pissing about in the Dublin Mountains?

“Anyway, we’re all in there because some fella wants to summon Satan.

Now, this lad was five foot nothin’, thin as a rake, lived with his granny, and called himself the Devil of Dublin.

He was desperate for everyone to think he was a big, important ceremonial magician.

So, we all sit down in this burned-out shell of a place, light a load of candles, and start playing cards, right?

Nothing happens for an hour or so, then a wind blows in out of nowhere and starts making all these candle flames jump.

Some of the others get scared, but the Devil of Dublin gets all excited.

And I mean excited . You could tell even through his robe.

He says Satan is watching us play so I says to him, “Why don’t you really get his attention and place a big bet?

” Yer man says “good idea” and bets his new camper van.

We play a hand. I win. He’s distraught for a minute until he starts to channel all his feelings into his spell through his little wand.

So he stands up, he strips off his robe, he’s stiff as a lamp post, and he starts pulling himself and chanting for Satan.

The others join in with the chanting. Then they all start riding each other and drinking and smoking, and I thought I might as well get stuck in, myself. ”

Lorcan laughed. “How was it?”

“Waste of time,” I said. “The sex was awful and the beer was watery shite. So I just watched and pulled myself off.” I made a jerking motion with my hand, making Lorcan laugh again.

“And did Satan appear?”

“He did in his bollocks,” I said. “But they all got a ride and I got a new van, so I suppose I’ve had worse nights.

You should have seen the van back then. Jet black with red highlights and a big scary demon face painted on the side.

I had to get it repainted as quick as possible, I didn’t want people to think I was weirdo. ”

Lorcan grinned and went back to tending his plants.

“I knew a woman who painted lorries so I asked her to paint the moon phases on one side for me. I wasn’t expecting the bear on the other side but she said her muse took over and she felt compelled to paint it. She said it suited me.”

“I prefer ancient history,” Lorcan said, “but I’d still like to have seen the Hellfire Club in its heyday.”

“I noticed you’ve a lot of history books in the living room.”

He snipped a leaf and caught it in his open hand.

“They’re the closest I can get to seeing the past. Seeing the ancient high kings, the warriors, the battles.

.. I know I've got a romantic view of it all but it feels like life was simpler back then.

But I'm sure it wasn't. If I was a farmer back then would it be so different from being a farmer now? Worrying about livestock. About the weather. About making enough to get by.” He snipped another leaf and let it fall to the floor.