The Dolocher (14 page)

The creaking of the ship ropes mingled with the lapping water against the stone walls of the River Liffey. The sailor was on the vessel too long and Kate knew he was probably asleep now having passed out while looking for some more money. It was quite eerie there alone at this time of night at the end of the gangplank, and she quickly grew nervous. Images of her absinthe hallucination stalked her mind as she stood alone bringing new fears to the surface along with the natural ones she felt then. She saw the cobbles rise up to meet her face, and she shut her eyes against the waking dream. She started to walk away, tired of waiting.

A seagull flapped and scrawked noisily as though disturbed by something up high on the masts of one of the ships as she passed by. Her heart began to pound as she quickened her pace heading for home without another thought crossing her mind.

She cut across the empty market space and the echo of her steps reverberated as though from all around her. She spun wildly looking for someone else-all those same steps could not have been her own. She stopped dead in fear; her mind urging her on, but her body refusing to cooperate. Again the seagull flapped and gave out noisily from above, joined this time by an angry partner. She looked up, and she saw from where they had flitted, a feather spluttering in the wind not seeming to be falling to the earth at all. She looked at it a moment longer, her fascination overpowering her fear for just that second. It was so white against the black backdrop of clear sky. There was something so terribly beautiful about it, and she felt something close to wonderment and a feeling of belonging to the world somehow that she had never felt before. It spun lightly in the sky like a white, ovate leaf in water.

The echoes rumbled thunderously around her and the growl was second to them as she spun in shock and caught sight of a black snout and raging eyes before the creature crashed into her sending her sprawling to the ground, sliding away from it a little. The force of the animals attack had sent it too spinning on the wet slippery ground, covered in rotting vegetables and fish dripping. It struggled to get to its feet as Kate did, she caught glimpses of the odd lines of the body of the beast, the jaws opening and separating in a way that looked so unnatural to anything she had ever seen before.

Her glance was momentary however as she got to her feet and tried to pick the least slippery route across the ground they were on. She could hear the slapping of the creature slipping again, and she was aware of a small distance between her and her attacker but still she didn’t dare look back. She slid a little, and she could feel it gaining on her. Her traction was terrible, and she felt she was only taking half steps with all the slipping with each footfall.

The idea to scream came belatedly, and she bellowed for help as she entered the normally busy alleyway at Temple Lane. In the quiet of the night, her screams were like a cannon blast, made all the more loud by the echoing in the cloistered wet streets. She could hear people coming to windows, and someone shouted for her to shut up.

A window opened at a building as she passed, and she called pleadingly to whoever was up there,

“Please help me. It’s the Dolocher!” No one answered, and Kate stood there a moment looking around her.

“You should have thought of that before you went walking the streets,” someone called from another window higher up in one of the buildings, but which one she couldn’t make out. She glanced once more at the window she had seen open but she still could see no one there.

She ran now, with a strength and speed she didn’t think she possessed. There was anger as well as fear in her run, and she cursed the people that would let her die just because of the way she fed herself. A couple of times she glanced behind, but she was never sure if the creature was in pursuit or not; she got the impression of dark behind her, but there were so many lanes, alleys, arches and doorways she couldn’t be sure what it was.

When she could take her burning thighs and lungs no more she stopped and looked quickly behind her before leaning over to pant and try to regain her strength. Her legs felt numb, and they were shaking, she wasn’t even sure they were going to hold her up for too long. She felt like she was going to vomit, and that was when she heard the new footsteps; she was terrified again for a moment but then noticed that they were coming from the wrong direction!

She spun to where to she had been running towards, and there was a man coming towards her at pace. She looked back to where the Dolocher had been coming from, and she reeled and tried to go in a third direction but now her legs did give out and after one clumsy step she tumbled over her own legs and clattered to the ground painfully.

The footsteps were much faster and heavier now, and she turned just in time to see a man whose face she knew, but whose name she did not. He was not someone who frequented the brothel, but he was definitely known to her.

“What were you running from?” he asked kneeling down to her.

“The Dolocher,” she gasped, “I was attacked.”

“Where?” he asked already standing up, ready to burst in the direction she indicated,

“Down by the boats, where the market sets up.”

“Temple Bar?” She nodded and then he was off and running leaving her where she was.

She sat up and looked after him. He ran towards the creature in the same the way that she had run away from it, and she could see that he meant to do violence if he came across it. She watched him into the distance, and she listened some more to his footsteps which never let up even after she could no longer see him.

As she looked after him she realised that she was no longer terrified. She stood up and checked the cuts and scrapes on her legs and arms. Her head throbbed, and she could feel the blood pumping behind her ears. She looked back to where the man had run and saw nothing. As she looked away she thought she noticed movement, and she looked back once more.

She stared into the arch where the carved devil was, and she was sure that there was something in the black there, something moving. She began to back away quietly still staring at the black. As she moved, she was now sure that there was something there or someone there.

Her mind wandered to the devil statue, that it might be somehow moving in there, but she focused on the black, taking small silent steps towards home as she did. And then she froze.

The silhouette of something not human or any beast that she had ever studied came across the centre of the arch. It was on hind legs but hunched forward; there were no forelimbs that she could see. Those same massive jaws and teeth she had seen earlier glistened almost silver in the light and still the movement of the jaws made no earthly sense; they only occasionally seemed to sit upon one another.

She stood silent as she watched it move again into shadows having passed through the arch heading back down towards Temple Bar. When she thought it was safe to do so she turned on her heels, and she sprinted once more, crying and breathing heavily, and she didn’t stop until she was home.

The whisky cabin on Cook Street heaved with people that Thursday evening in early February. Mullins could tell as soon as he came in that something was afoot and he wondered was there going to be a raid on a gaol or an attack on a patrol troop. Everywhere he looked in the place there were wild drunken eyes and rosy cheeks and ruddy noses. Men fell against one another in comradely banter with arms over each other’s shoulders; boasts and oaths were flying around the room and there was a low simmering of violence yet undone in the howling atmospheric timbre as every man had some sort of weapon on him.

Cleaves came up to him as he came in, and he was as wildly drunk as any of them. His deep blue eyes losing some of their sheen and beauty with the dilation of his pupils.

“You better get some into you boy,” he cried to Mullins taking him by the arm and leading him to the bar, “It’s going to be a rare night tonight!” he roared this last part and those around him cheered in support.

“What’s going on?” Mullins asked; in surveying the room he had seen that Lord Muc and many of his gang were present.

“The Dolocher is going to get a taste of his own medicine tonight!” Cleaves again cried out and again there was more cheering.

“We’ll make him pay dearly for all the killing he’s done!” someone else shouted out and this too was cheered.

“Has he been captured?” Mullins asked. He assumed he had been and that these men gathered were going to take him from custody and do him in themselves. There was no point in sentencing him to hang and run the risk that he could kill himself in the way Thomas Olocher had.

“No, but he will tonight!” Cleaves said almost conspiratorially now, as though the Dolocher was in earshot.

“Does someone know where he is?” Mullins said matching the low tone. He was confused and didn’t know what was going on.

“He’s everywhere you look,” Cleaves said in such a serious way that Mullins almost laughed at him.

“What are you talking about?”

“The pigs.”

“The pigs?”

“We’re going to kill them all.”

As he said this Mullins knew he was telling the truth. Everyone in here bar him and maybe the owner were waiting for later in the night, and they were going to sally forth and kill every pig they came across. The myth of the Dolocher and the level of the frustration and fear that his continuing elusiveness created in these people had led them to this desperation; he could feel the belief in these people that if every pig in the city was slain the Dolocher was bound to be among them. There was no point in arguing or trying to change their minds; there had been that much drink had that any naysayer could easily see himself added to the list of victims that night. He didn’t want to get involved in this madness, but he didn’t want to be seen to stand against it. He was after all prime suspect for a lot of people who believed in the human version of the Dolocher. He took the drink offered by Cleaves, and he downed it in one before pouring another big one. Cleaves patted him on the arm.

“That’s the spirit boy; that’s the spirit.”

As midnight approached Lord Muc ambled up beside Mullins. The blacksmith looked at him but said nothing, giving a salutary nod instead.

“This is a serious business tonight blacksmith,” Muc said looking out over the crowd. Mullins looked too but said nothing. “Violence on this scale is always a serious business.” Mullins could feel that he was going to start eulogising about the pleasure of violence again, and he took a long drink against it.

“What happens afterwards?” he found himself asking.

“Depends on whether he is killed tonight or not,” Muc said, “If not the suspicion falls on the likes of me and you again.”

“There’s no suspicion on me anymore,” Mullins lied.

“Maybe not now, but if the Dolocher is not slain by morning you might find that there is a new level of paranoia once the next killing happens.”

“You seem sure that there will be a next killing,” Mullins said, “What makes you so sure?”

“This thing lives to kill. It doesn’t kill for food or in self-defence. It kills with such ferocity that it has to be enjoying it. It’s like fucking the top whore in the world to it. It can’t go on without doing it.”

“Like you and your gang?”

“Something like it,” Muc agreed. He seemed to Mullins to be in a state of preparedness (albeit drunk in it as well) for what could be his own death. Mullins imagined Lord Muc envisioning his hand to hand combat with the Dolocher and perhaps himself getting the better of the wild beast (that he believed it to be) and the glory that would come with it.

“The Ormonde Boys will be sorry they missed all the fun tomorrow,” Mullins said to change the subject a little

“They are doing their part on the north side tonight,” Muc said, “This is bigger than what’s between us.”

At two in the morning, they ventured out into the streets. They were led by Lord Muc, and they were a frightful sight for anyone who happened to look out onto the street that night. They grouped on the road around him, and he gave out orders to spread out in groups of no less than three in all directions from where they stood.

“Remember!” he shouted, like some battlefield commander from Roman times, “Leave none alive. The throat is the best way to kill them! Let this be the last night of killing in Dublin!”

The crowd hurrahed and cheered and then spread out quickly down all side streets and alleys. The first pigs were killed on Cook street itself and by Lord Muc himself, he shoved his pike through their necks and stamped on their heads as he pulled it back out.

These first squeals woke up the night and the bitter cold grew colder still, and snow began to fall heavily at almost the first strike against the first pig. Within minutes, the ground was covered, and visibility was down with the heavy blizzard that whipped up. It seemed to some as though Dublin itself had thrown this haze down to hide what was going on in its streets.

The death squeals of pigs rang out all over the city, and the white surface was shocked red by splattering blood everywhere. Pigs lay dead and others still alive though mortally wounded dragged themselves over the bodies or tried to seek out some shelter. Men cried out as they found more of the animals and some men cried out in pain as they either underestimated the strength or the will to live of their enemies. The drunken men wounded themselves and each other with their clumsy handling of weapons their hands were unused to.

The snow continued to fall, and the wind grew colder by the minute. By five, the last of the known pigs in the city was dead or dying, and the last and the most committed of the slaughterers made their way finally home to sleep off their night. What they left behind was hundreds of dead animals; streets and alleyways that were filled with bloodied mushed snow and body parts, weapons lay strewn about where men had given up or been injured. Some of the men had run afoul of soldiers who challenged their behaviour, and some were in gaol this morning. A few were holed up in taverns that had reopened to let them in after their work.

When the sun rose at just after eight that morning what Dublin showed the world was what no one expected to wake up to. There was a fairy-tale picture of beautiful snow covered streets and squares; the sun shone and the light the snow threw on the stone walls and the wooden buildings was magnificent to behold. Children came out and rolled snowmen and threw snowballs at one another as their mothers told them to come in from the cold. Footprints were dotted here and there of early risers going to set up stalls at the market or go to work wherever that may be. The city looked amazing and more tranquil than it ever had before.

All this is what was so terrifying about the morning. Less than three hours after the brutal slaughter of upwards of five hundred pigs there remained not a trace of it anywhere to be seen. There were no slayed and open pig carcasses anywhere, no blood lay beneath the new snow that had fallen, there was no longer splashes of viscera and bile and blood on the doors and walls or laneway steps as had been only a few hours before.

Mullins had come home before four, but even he had seen enough carnage at that stage to know that something extremely odd had happened over night. He stood at the corner and looked around, and it was a different world that before. Mullins could not explain away what had happened and for this reason, it was a much scarier world than it had been up to now.