Devil's Shore Read Free

is.”
    “No. That can’t be true.”
    “It is. And it is up to you to stop Him.”
    “You’ve had a hundred and fifty years to stop Him. What makes you think I can do it now?”
    “Because you’re not hobbled by Him. You have the power.”
    “I have nothing but a headache. I’ve my own family. My own life. I won’t end up in the Feale with the rest of you.”
    “I’m not giving up, Orla. I’m not leaving. I’ll haunt you every night if I have to.”
    I reached over to the bed stand table and grabbed one of my mother’s many pill bottles. The tablets the doctors gave her to stop her seeing visions and hearing voices. I popped a pill in my mouth. Within minutes, Roisin’s mouth moved but nothing came out. Soon she became transparent and eventually faded from view.
    “Goodnight, Granny.”
     

 
    Chapter 2
     
    The funeral was about what I expected. Reams of strangers filled the church, more gathered outside on the steps. I stood with my mother’s brothers and their families. Caroline and her two children sat with the Griffins, her new family now. Baby Kathy, nestled in her mother’s arms, slept through the Mass. Almost involuntarily, my eyes were drawn to the child. Her lips were little rosebuds, her hair black and curly. She was an exceptionally pretty child. Like a china doll. A fragile china doll.
    My mother, who in life was a lonely, solitary woman, isolated on her mountaintop by her innate shyness and her madness, was now celebrated by throngs. Strange. The whole thing was strange. But later, when they lowered her coffin into the Devlin family plot, next to her mother, Roisin, and countless other Devlin women whose bodies were now no more than dust, the tears that had so far eluded me flowed. Caroline, annoying Caroline, enveloped me in her arms and stroked my hair like a child. And I let her.
    After the two days of raucous waking, the village and the remnants of the original five Mountain families were spent. The village was quiet as I drove through its crooked streets, and the Mountain even more so. On the Devlin side of the Mountain, all was still. The cattle and sheep that usually dotted the fields seemed to have scattered and the sole animal I saw was the pucan . Alone and sitting under the gnarled hawthorn tree, its eyes, like black saucers, seemed wet. As if it, too, were crying.
    After a restorative cup of tea and a slice of one of the many apple tarts brought by the villagers, I felt better and ready to tackle my mother’s closet. I sorted everything in three piles: save, donate and burn. I’d promised the new tenants, the Griffin’s oldest daughter who was moving back to Ireland from Birmingham with her young family, they could have the cottage by next week.
    Originally, I’d wanted to get rid of the place. Sell the cottage and its acres of surrounding land. With land prices the way they were thanks to the recent Celtic Tiger, even a remote place like this should’ve fetched a good price. But when I brought the deed to the local solicitor, a distant cousin, he explained to me the land could not be sold. That what I’d inherited was a life estate, whatever that was. To break the trust would take time and money, neither of which I had in abundance. I needed to get back to my three lads in Dublin. So the easiest solution was to let out the cottage and lease the fields, for a nominal fee, to John Griffin, a local farmer and another distant cousin, who lived on the other side of the Mountain.
    Save, donate, burn. The last pile was by far the largest. And even those things I wanted to keep seemed hardly worth saving. Mostly old pictures of people I didn’t recognize. But, much as I loathed the Devlin side of my family, even I couldn’t burn old pictures.
    Most of my mother’s wardrobe fell into the burn category. White silk sheaths and red woolen robes, at least ten of each. Where the hell had she worn these? I probably didn’t want to know.
    I’d cleared through most of her closet when