Erin Hart - Haunted Ground

Instead of enlisting their help, she’d managed to alienate both Cormac and Jeremy in the space of a single day. She was especially sorry about Cormac. Why did everything have to be so complicated? Nora’s stomach was in knots as she switched on the light in her room and dropped the whiskey bottle in the trash. She lingered by the door another few seconds. Something felt wrong. She scanned the room, looking for anything out of place; her eyes came to rest on the bed. The cover was disarranged. Had Jeremy been sleeping in her room this time? She crossed to the bed, threw back the covers, and had to stifle a cry.

Atop a pile of dirt and leaves lay the huge carcass of a crow. The bird’s dead eyes were dull and sunken in their sockets; its large claws grasped empty air. The broken glass might have been an accident, but there was no mistaking the warning in this message.

Her first reaction was to phone Devaney. But as she rummaged through the pockets of her jeans, looking for the card he’d given her, Nora realized that calling the policeman meant that she and Cormac might have to leave this house before they discovered anything. Probably exactly what the perpetrator wanted, and she wasn’t about to be so easily manipulated. And that meant calling Devaney was out of the question.

Who could have done this? And more to the point, why exactly was someone in this house trying to scare her off? Hugh Osborne was out of town—gone to London, he’d said—and she wondered whether the story was true. She also remembered Jeremy’s cold look, and wondered whether he’d been upset enough to pull a prank like this.

Nora returned to the bedside and looked down at the crow. The filthy thing was crawling with maggots. She couldn’t just leave it here, not if she was going to have to spend the night in this room. She gathered up the corners of the sheets and carefully rolled the bedding into a tight bundle. Then she opened the casement as far as it would go, and pushed the whole thing out of the window into the garden below, and turned to face the room again. Sleep seemed impossible, and it was cold in the room. Nora wrapped herself as best she could in her raincoat and settled onto one of the sofas near the fireplace, contemplating what she ought to do next.

Una McGann was awakened by the sound of pounding at the front door. She hurried down the stairs in her nightdress and bare feet, and stood on the other side of the door, unsure who was making the commotion. Then she heard Brendan’s voice.

“Una, open the door, I’ve dropped my key. Una!” She stood frozen to the floor, trying to work out how to respond. He pounded again, with the flat of his hand.

“Una! Let me in. I know you can hear me. Come on, open the fuckin’ door.”

“Hush, Brendan, you’ll wake Aoife.” It suddenly dawned on her what was wrong with him. “Brendan, are ye drunk?”

“S’none of your fucking business how I am. Open up, I said.” He gave the door a vicious kick, and then another. “I built this fuckin’ door with my two hands; you’ve got some fuckin’ neck using it to bar me.”

“I can’t let you in when you’re like that. You’re frightening me. And you needn’t bother trying the back door. It’s locked as well.”

She winced as Brendan swung wildly at the door, but its stout wood received a rain of blows from his fists and feet without so much as a shudder. There was a brief respite, and she could hear him moving away from the door. But her momentary relief was shattered when she heard an explosion of breaking glass against the door and the side of the house. He must have brought home a few bottles from the pub. Una sat crouched on the floor, her arms clasped around her knees in a posture of self-protection, and though she knew the door would hold against this onslaught, the sound of each heavy pint bottle hitting the house made her jump. Fintan appeared beside her, dresssed only in his underpants. “What’s going on? Is that Brendan? What the fuck is he up to?” They listened, but could hear no more than a low muttering from beyond the door. Fintan lifted a corner of the curtain in the kitchen and peered outside. “It’s all right. He’s heading off.”

“Brendan’s drunk. He’s drunk, Fintan. He never drinks.”

“We’ll leave him until he’s sober. He can go sleep in the shed.”

“Fintan, what are we going to do?”

“He’s just angry about us wanting our shares of the farm. He’ll get over it. We can’t let it change what we’ve planned.”

“There are things you don’t know, Fintan.” She looked at him, but couldn’t find the strength to speak.

“Tell me. Una—you must tell me what it is.”

“Come,” she said, and led him down the hall to Brendan’s room, where she pulled the bed from the wall, and showed him the hiding place she’d discovered on the day of the bird’s intrusion. She reached in and lifted up some papers, searching for Mina Osborne’s hair clip. It was gone.

“It was here, I know it was. I held it in my hand.”

“What?” Fintan asked.

“A hair clip. It belonged to Mina Osborne. I know because I saw her wearing it on the day she disappeared. And there are a whole lot of cuttings about her in here as well. Fintan, what are we going to do?”

Her implication took a moment to sink in. Una could see him resisting the notion, as she had, denying the possibility even as he remembered the look in Brendan’s eyes when the sickle blade had sunk into the table only inches from his own head.

“No, there’s no way,” he said, shaking his head. “He’s our brother. You must be mad.” Despite his protestations, she could see the idea burrow in and take root. But the fact that Fintan now shared this dreadful knowledge did not make it weigh any less on her own heart.

Nora was startled awake by a knock at the door of her room. She was momentarily disoriented, but the memory of the crow crashed back into her consciousness.

“Are you all right, Nora?” It was Cormac’s voice. “It’s after ten. Nora?” The handle moved, and she hadn’t time to react before he opened the door. He understood immediately that something was wrong, and quickly approached her.

“Nora, what’s happened? Are you all right?”

She hesitated. It all seemed so strange now. “I’m fine, Cormac.”

“Then what’s—” He gestured toward the stripped bed.

“When I came back here last night, I found something.”

“What? Please tell me.”

“A dead crow.”

“Jesus, Nora.”

“I didn’t want to raise an alarm. What good would that do? So I”—it seemed too bizarre in the light of day—“I threw it out the window. Bedding and all.” She got up and crossed to the window. “I know it was dead, and it wasn’t going to hurt me, but—” She stopped short. There was no sign of the crow, or its litter of bedding and dead leaves. She knew Cormac saw it too.

She turned to him. “It did happen.”

“I believe you. But Nora, why didn’t you come get me?” She found she couldn’t say a word, but could only look at him. Cormac put his arms around her, and neither of them spoke for a few moments. Then he asked: “Do you still have the card Devaney gave you?”

“What can he do now? I’ve nothing to show him.”

“But he asked us to tell him about anything out of the ordinary, and I think this definitely qualifies. Please, Nora.”

“I left my mobile phone out in the car.”

Cormac led the way downstairs. There was no one about, until they met Hugh Osborne at the front door. He looked strangely at them, and said: “I’m very sorry.”

At first Nora wondered how he knew about the crow, until she saw the cars parked in the drive. Cormac’s jeep was in the worst state, its wind-screen and rear window smashed in, and all four tires completely flattened. The whole thing had been smeared with mud, now dried into patterns showing the sweep of the vandal’s arm. The final insult, a fresh pile of manure on the jeep’s hood, had begun to dry in the morning sun; flies buzzed about in a swarm. Her own car had fared somewhat better: although it was streaked with the same thick brown muck, and appeared to have a couple of punctures and smashed headlamps, at least the windows were still intact.