Blood of Cain

91

It wasn’t an island. Not by the real definition of the word. I reached for the bottle of Jameson’s that Cormac Moore had given me, rolled my pants up to my knees, and walked from the shore of Derrynane Beach through ankle-deep water to Abbey Island. The pristine spot was about fifty miles south of Puffin Island on the western coast of County Kerry. Within five minutes of walking and climbing, I could see the ruins of an ancient stone abbey and the nearby cemetery. My heart pumped.

The wind blew across the Atlantic, gulls chortling and riding the air currents off the cliffs. Cotton-white cumulus clouds floated like small nations across a cobalt blue backdrop of the universe. I scaled to what I knew was a sacred place in the history and hearts of Ireland. Suspended on what felt like the skybox of the Atlantic, on a high cliff overlooking the sea near the ruins of the old monastery, were dozens of graves marked with iron crosses, Celtic crosses, gravestones worn thin from time and the sea. It was the Abbey Island Cemetery, a place filled with the remains of Irish sailors, farmers, and their families. All of the headstones overlooked a horseshoe-shaped deserted beach that reflected the ice blue sky.

I walked slowly through the cemetery, the smell of the sea mixed with damp moss and aged limestone. I saw the gravestone of Mary O’Connell. The inscription read that she was the wife of Daniel O’Connell, known as The Liberator — a man who fought for Catholic Emancipation in Westminster Parliament.

I continued walking, carefully scanning each headstone for the name I’d come to find. Why? Why walk through an ancient cemetery off the Coast of County Kerry Ireland searching for the name of a person I never knew … would never know? What was the connection beyond the fact that my mother had told me about him. In the four hours I had with her, she painted a picture of a caring and kind man, a man who lived for his family, a man who eventually died for his family. I was only a baby when he was killed. I had no conscious memory of him. But my subconscious may have his whisper concealed. That was all the connection, all the bridge to the past that I needed. He was my father.

And I was his son.

I looked to my right, and there it was. A Celtic cross. For more than four decades it faced the Atlantic, faced the winds, sun and salt air. The old weathered cross was very much an old rugged cross, as was, I felt, the man buried beneath the cross — rugged and tough on the exterior, tender as a spring night on the inside. My mother had told me stories of his physical and internal strengths. How he could build a house from the ground up with plans he’d drawn and the expertise he had with his hands. And how inside his heart was at peace, and how he was her rock, her guiding light into an often too-dark world.

The inscription read:

There was an old and faded embossed photograph of a man, and it was bolted to the lower part of the Celtic cross. I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture, almost as if it had a magnetic pull to it. He was dressed in a tweed sports coat, wide smile, angular face, thick dark hair and eyebrows. I felt as if I’d seen him before, dressed in the exact same clothes. But where? I looked at the old photo, the dark hair, the eyes, and I saw a little of myself.

And then I remembered.

It was at my mother’s funeral. Across the cemetery, after the others had left, the man appeared, fog swirling around his legs. He seemed to have worn the same style — the same cut of suit, same dark hair and rawboned face. Impossible. I felt fatigue build behind my eyes, my shoulder burning. Move on.

I blew out a breath and poured a shot of Jameson in the plastic cup that Cormac had given me. I raised my cup and said, “Hello, Dad. It’s been a long time coming. I want you to know that the man who put you here is no more. I didn’t kill him, his evil did. Maybe it was time to collect … I don’t know. You probably already know that Mom’s gone, at least she’s not in this world anymore. I bet she’s in yours, maybe right beside you. I hope so. You have a granddaughter. Her name is Courtney … she’s Sarah’s only child. And right now, she’s in trouble, some serious trouble. I’ll do everything I can to help her, because I’m about all the family she has left on earth … and she’s about all I have, too. Mom told me you enjoyed a shot of Irish whiskey. I’m going to leave this bottle next to your picture. Maybe you can sip and enjoy here overlooking the sea.”

I knocked the shot back and swallowed the whiskey, the breeze kicking up over the Atlantic, the smell of shellfish in the air, gulls calling out across the cliffs. I set the bottle of Jameson down at the base of the cross, just beneath my father’s picture and said, “I wish I could have known you.” Then I turned and walked away, walked barefooted down the hill and across the tidal pool, the sound of shrieking cormorants over Abbey Island, waves breaking against the rocks, and the undertow of my father’s voice pulling at the edge of my conscious mind.

I stopped and glanced back at the island and somewhere under the breeze, I thought I heard or maybe recalled the murmur of his voice, like the whisper from the bottom of a well. “He doesn’t resemble his brother … Sean is different … different as the shamrock mark on his shoulder.”

When I opened the door to the rental car, my phone rang. It was Dave Collins. “Sean, Logan’s people are scrambling. Doing whatever damage control and denial they can. The river confession video is viral, getting a hundred thousand views an hour, globally. The news media have ID’d your voice on the video asking the questions of the guy in the river. All of it, the near attack by the big gator, the gunshots, your questions and his hysterical, but real answers are more than convincing. It’s reality TV at its finest. The media are hunting for the guy you pulled out of the river and you.”

“They won’t find him. And I’m sure there’s no public record of him in existence.”

“I’m not so sure the pressure is off you. If the media can’t find you, they can’t corroborate this, and the Logan camp will contend it’s all manufactured by democrats who are hell-bent on political chaos. So it’s in Logan’s best interest to make sure you never surface again, at least until he’s done with a second term. Where are you?”

“A place called Abbey Island, near the Ring of Kerry, on Ireland’s west coast. I found my father’s grave.”

“When you get home, when this settles down, we’ll sip an Irish whiskey and you can tell me how you found his gravesite. Speaking of finding places, that information you gave me from the priest with the God-complex, Father Thomas Garvey … a background check reveals a lot of skeletons in the priest’s closet, so to speak. Thomas Garvey was maybe the worst of the worst in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals during the seventies and eighties in Ireland. Beyond that, he was also known as an expert, a scholar in his knowledge and appreciation of nineteenth century poets and writers. Dickenson, Cummings, Carroll, and Poe, among his specialties.”

“Let’s focus on Poe.”

“The narrator in The Raven seems to get a perverse pleasure between his desire to remember and forget, like a shunned lover. Your brother Dillon, if he’s a master hypnotist, he specializes in causing people to forget or remember — to recall what he wants them to remember, and ultimately, to have them carry out his desires.”

“And if the desire is murder?”

“Like Nick mentioned, you might get a Manchurian Candidate, a pre-programmed assassin. Dillon could surround himself with these types.”

“Maybe.”

“Father Garvey used the word balm for the wound and your soul … in the Raven, Poe writes: ‘On this home by horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!’ Sean, the mention of ‘balm in Gilead,’ is found in Jeremiah eight — twenty-one, where it asks … ‘is there no balm in Gilead?’”

“What’s your take on that?”

“He may be referring to Mount Gilead. In biblical times, it was east of the Jordan River. Some speculate in the land of Nod, places were Cain wandered, east of Eden, if you will. There is a Mount Gilead in America, or at least there was.”

“Was?”

“Yes. According to my research, it was hidden in the hills of Virginia. An eccentric herbal doctor, a spiritualist, built a health commune there in 1821. Way atop a Virginia mountain he renamed Mount Gilead. Apparently it had the right elevation, natural springs, Goose Creek in particular — the spiritual vibe and so on. Anyway, the conditions may have been right, but something else wasn’t. A few serial murders happened back up in the woods, people fled, the Civil War arrived and the Goose Creek area became a blood bath. Eventually the county no longer maintained the one road leading into Mount Gilead. The settlement was literally at the end of a dead-end road, no highway to Heaven, for damn sure. The village became a ghost town. Father Garvey told you that Dillon found it and Aideen, but not you. What was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“We do know Aideen is east of Eden, and the reference to balm and Gilead. Although there are two other towns with the name Mount Gilead in the states, one in North Carolina and the other in Ohio, I’d wager the ghost town in the mountains of Virginia might be pay dirt.”

“And that’s where I’m going. Dave, rent a car at Dulles in your name. List me as one of the co-drivers. Make up a name for someone else.”

“Okay.”

“One thing, more.”

“What’s that?”

“On Jupiter, under the bed in the master, I have my Remington 700 there. It’s packed in a travel case. Wrap it in brown shipping paper and overnight it to the Red Fox Inn in Middleburg, Virginia.”

“Is that where you’ll be staying?”

“For five minutes. Book a room and tell the clerk someone will be picking up a package that’s being delivered to the hotel. Tell them the package is part of the accessories for a group meeting, part of visual presentation.”

“Gotcha.”

“Thank you.”

“Be damn careful, Sean. Between the legacies of those serial murders, which were probably some kind of Hatfield and McCoy-style killings and a bloody Civil War battle, Mount Gilead has a very dark history.”