A Galway Epiphany

The Epiphany of Benjamin J. Cullen

Benjamin J. had never really been taken by surprise. Few events shocked him, and he was the bringer of shock.

The morning of Tuesday the eighteenth, he found the kitchen in a mess. James Powell was not the tidiest of guests/employees.

Benjamin read him the riot act, culminating with, My house, my rules.

As Benjamin finished shaving, he was debating,

“Scrambled or fried eggs for breakfast?”

James came behind him, pulled his head back, cut his throat with one deep lethal slash.

Then he dragged Benjamin by the scruff of his clean-shaven neck, out through the spacious hall, trailing a line of blood, opened the front door, flung the body out across the drive, shouted,

“Not your house!”

James was eating scrambled eggs when the Guards came bursting through the front door.

When asked why he’d murdered Benjamin,

He asked, in total bewilderment,

“Who?”

James Cromwell is one of those character actors that people recognize but never know his name. They go,

“Don’t tell me, I know.”

But they don’t.

His one leading role was with a pig, literally, in Babe.

He gave numerous heavyweight performances in movies such as The General’s Daughter and L.A. Confidential.

I mention him as on a sunny Friday morning I was availing myself of a brief shot of sunshine on Eyre Square when James Cromwell came striding toward me.

No, of course, it wasn’t him but the spitting image. Tall, rangy as they say in the States. A weather-walloped face, distinctive nose, in the age range of good seventies or not so fine sixties. Dressed in a dark suit with, oddly enough, sparkling trainers, dressed as the song goes, like,

“A walking contradiction.”

He stood over me, said,

“Jack Taylor.”

I nodded and he asked,

“Might I have a word?”

I said,

“Seems you’re having it.”

He smiled briefly, then,

“I’m Edmund Dysart.”

His accent, ting of U.S. but more like English was a second language. I studied him for a moment, ventured,

“You’re a priest.”

Staggered him but he recovered, asked,

“Why would you think that?”

The devil was in me to say I can smell you.

But a bit harsh so I said,

“My life is beset by the clergy.”

He thought about that, said,

“I’m no longer a priest.”

Right.

I said,

“Once a priest...”

He asked,

“May I buy you a drink?”

I agreed and said,

“You’re definitely not a priest anymore.”

If he found that insulting, he let it slide. We went to Richardson’s at the top of the square, got a table. I ordered pints and he didn’t demur but, unpriest-like, he paid for the round.

We skimmed the heads of the pints, then he began,

“I was sent to Guatemala for various sins of my past,”

Paused, added quickly,

“Nothing to do with children, I swear.”

Then he continued.

“The caravan trail of people heading for the U.S. border had just begun, a long line of destitute folk walking or hoping to walk through so many countries. It was in Guatemala that I first heard of a miracle child, a girl surrounded by light, but it was soon discredited, then other stories began of this girl/woman attaching herself to young boys, declaring them her brother, and evoking sympathy.”

He sighed with tremendous weariness, then,

“More stories of young boys found with their throats cut, and rumors turned to La Niña del Diablo.”

He looked at me, asked,

“Do I need to translate?”

I ventured,

“Devil child.”

He signaled to the barman, another pint and shorts of scotch.

I hadn’t the heart to correct him. Scotch! And figured he was paying so...

He took a gulp of his, then,

“I met her once, but once was more than enough.”

I tried the scotch. It would suffice.

His eyes had a far sheen to them when he continued.

“She seemed the essence of innocence at first, with a charisma that invited you closer, and then I noticed a small boy almost hiding behind her. I asked,

“Este es su hermano?” (Your brother?)

He now looked right at me, said,

“She was peeling an apple, slowly, deliberately, with a knife that glinted off her eyes. She said, with a kind of a hiss...”

He took a moment, then,

“She said, Fuck off, priest.”

His whole body went into a minor spasm but he reined it in, said,

“Then she turned to the boy, offered him a slice of the apple, cajoled, Eat, my sweet.”

He sighed, continued.

“I threw my rosary beads at her. I still am not sure why but it hit her neck and it sizzled, left the mark of the crucifix just below her jawline.”

He shuddered violently, said,

“She said, ‘My mother cursed you at Camargue, I curse you anew.”

He said,

“I had indeed crossed paths with a psycho woman in France and this child, this spawn of evil, was her daughter. There is a legend there of a child, Sara: The Gypsies worship her. I had gone to see this creature who was supposed to be possessed. She had a cobra tattooed on her arm. She cursed me, told me her daughter would be the cause of my death, that she would find me in Guatemala. Now this was long before I was banished to that country by the Church.”

I felt something cold, sinister creep along my spine, needed a moment to regroup, and asked,

“Why are you here?”

He said.

“Because she is here.”

In near contempt, I said,

“You seriously think a fourteen-year-old girl is capable of such...”

I searched for a word, got

“Malevolence?”

He looked at me in what seemed to be disbelief, said,

“In your own country, have you not recently tried two thirteen-year-old boys for a horrific murder?”

He was referring to the Ana Kriegel case, our very own version of the Jamie Bulger case in the U.K. Two teenage boys had lured a fourteen-year-old girl to a derelict building, tortured, raped, and murdered her.

The details of the boys’ preparations to kill were so terrible that even the media practiced restraint in their reporting.

What was known was that Boy A, as he was called for legal reasons, had over a thousand videos of porn that involved animals, murder, satanic rites, mutilation, which he brought to the murder site with tape, knife, homemade zombie mask. The girl had more than a hundred wounds on her body but she had fought like a tigress so that Boy A had a host of injuries.

Ana, adopted from Siberia when she was two, had been a beautiful girl but shy, vulnerable, sensitive, badly bullied at school for her stature and otherness. She longed for friendship.

Both boys were found guilty, the youngest convicted killers ever in the history of the state.

I asked Dygart,

“When you find her, what then?”

Without hesitation, he said,

“I’m going to kill her.”