When it Rains it Pours
I was 32 when I married Ashley, the love of my life. The daughter of two wildly successful divorce lawyers, she carried her wit as well as she carried her elegance. Taking after her mother, she was blessed with strikingly Baltic features, and taking after her father, she was perhaps the sweetest and most genuine soul I had ever met. In other words, she was perfect.
A few weeks after our wedding we set off on our honeymoon. Instead of sun-drenched beaches and overpriced umbrella drinks though, we opted for medieval museums and frosty pints. Something that fit the both of us much better. Over the course of the 10 days, we scoured the southern half of Ireland, stopping in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Dingle, and even my family’s ancestral home of Knockfierna.
Knockfierna, or “The Hill of the Fairies”, is an ancient farming community situated roughly an hour southwest of Limerick City. Shrouded in green rolling hills and lush fertile farmland, it is perhaps the most beautiful place I had ever seen. Oddly enough though I knew next to nothing about it prior to our visit. Hell, I actually thought my ancestors were from neighboring Ballingarry of all places and was only visiting Knockfierna in order to walk its infamous “famine trail”. But while preparing to make the three-kilometer trek up the hill, I found something that forever changed my life.
Fixed at the trail’s entrance, right next to the rocky ruins of a centuries old farm house, is a small monument to the people of Knockfierna. Scrawled across it in both English and Gaelic are the names of the last known inhabitants of the historic hill. And sitting smack dab in the middle of those names is that of my great-great-great-great grandfather, Ryan Kelly.
After finishing the hike, we rushed back to our hotel so I could start researching my newfound homeland. I was giddy as a schoolgirl as I read article after article about the historic hamlet. Apparently, Knockfierna was a largely isolated hill community in the desolate countryside of County Limerick. It had a population of no greater than 150 at any given time who relied heavily on farming and sheep herding for their existence. This tight knit group of hill folk thrived for centuries, flourishing upon their beloved mount and developing a deep sense of old-world wonder. But their prominence quickly came to a devastating end in the summer of 1845 when potato blight came to the Emerald Isle. Like much of the rest of Ireland, the people of Knockfierna struggled immensely, losing nearly all their crops as famine swept the land. Less than a decade later Knockfierna was a ghost town, having been completely abandoned by its starving people. Records show that some went to Limerick, some went to Dublin, and others London, but great-great-great-great Grandpa Kelly opted for a more untraditional choice. With little more than the clothes on his back and the air in his lungs he boarded a steamer and crossed the Atlantic, en route to the Windy City.
For as depressing as its end might have been though, its beginning was quite magical. The story goes that Knockfierna was first founded by King Donn, an all-powerful fairy, many millenniums ago. And when I say fairy, I don’t mean the puny winged little fuckers you see in Disney movies, but rather big badass mystical creatures capable of immense doings. If you have read any of the ACOTAR books you know what I am talking about. Anyways, King Donn was said to have built the hill way back before the dawn of man, carving out a home for himself deep in its core. Alongside the hill, he also constructed dozens of stone stacked portals called “raths”, which he subsequently used to travel between his world and ours. Legend has it that he hand-picked the first group of people to settle upon his beloved hill and lived in harmony with them for centuries, visiting through said raths and blessing them with his mystical powers.
But then one day a local chieftain decided to build a castle atop the hill. After all it provided a gorgeous view of the surrounding countryside and possessed a certain powerful mysticism. But despite repeated warnings from the people of Knockfierna, the chieftain and his men began gathering stones to build this massive structure, knocking down dozens of Donn’s raths in the process. Upon its eventual erection, the chieftain swelled with pride, admiring the stone monstrosity that now dominated the ancient hill. Later that evening though a devastating storm was said to have swept in seemingly out of nowhere, effectively leveling the castle and killing the chieftain and his men instantly. Local lore suggests that King Donn stirred up the storm himself in order to get back at the greedy chieftain and then placed a protective curse over the hill, forever damning anyone else who removes a stone from his beloved home.
After reading this, I went back to my luggage and uncovered a small handful of trinkets that I had been collecting over the course of the trip. I had a chunk of brick from the Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, a heavily oxidized piece of metal from the River Shannon in Limerick, and of course a piece of stone from the Kelly homestead. Thinking nothing of it though, I placed them back in my luggage and went upon my evening, soon forgetting all about King Donn and Knockfierna.
Before long, our trip was over and we were back in the States. Life was business as usual and I was glad to be back on a normal schedule. 10 days of heavy drinking, over eating, and non-stop travel really takes a toll on you. A few weeks later I was out with Ashley, enjoying some drinks at one of our favorite restaurants. We had taken some time off from booze following our return home and were finally back at it for the first time since. So naturally we hit it kind of hard. I had a bourbon on the rocks with my appetizer, a Manhattan with dinner, an Espresso Martini with dessert, and God knows how many glasses of wine when we got home, all culminating into one hell of a blackout.
I awoke sometime later glued to my couch. A half-eaten bag of Doritos lay strewn across my lap and the remnants of last night’s drunken escapades were scattered about. I tried to peel myself up off the sweat soaked leather, but quickly found that I was frozen in place. My muscles jellied and my bones mush. At first, I thought I was just still drunk, so hammered that my mind and body were existing on completely different planes. But then I saw it. Lurking in the corner of my living room was a shapeless figure.
I opened my mouth to scream, but like the feeling you have during an especially terrifying bout of sleep paralysis, found that it was sewn shut.
“What the hell is that?” I thought to myself.
Jet black and deeply opaque, it looked more phantom than human.
“You know who I am,” it growled in a guttural dialect that sounded straight out of Lord of the Rings.
It must have been able to read my mind because it was looking right at me.
“I don’t though,” I thought.
A feeling of ancient wickedness wafted from it.
“You have something of mine,” it hissed.
I couldn’t understand a word that it said, yet oddly enough knew exactly what it was saying.
“What do I have?” I asked.
In the blink of an eye, it was on top of me, hunched over my frozen frame, and peering deep into my petrified soul.
“You know,” it whispered, its hot breath kissing my nose.
I tried to fight it, but quickly found that it was no use. Whatever this thing was held a paralyzing power over me.
“But I don’t!” I swore.
Then all of a sudden, a swirling gust of wind came in out of nowhere, blowing books off the shelves and tossing trash about.
“GIVE IT BACK,” the figure roared.
A deafening crack of thunder echoed throughout the apartment.
“Give what back?!” I pleaded.
Violent bolts of lightning illuminated the space.
“ITS MINE!” the figure erupted.
Torrents of water spilled in from the ceiling.
“What is yours?” I cried.
Right before my eyes a vicious thunder storm developed in the middle of my living room, drenching everything in sight and leaving me in a shocked state of confusion.
“You have one week,” the figure cried before suddenly disappearing into thin air, seemingly taking the devilish downpour with it.
I awoke the next morning more confused than ever. The strange events of the night prior had felt so real yet there wasn’t a single trace of damage to show for it. Outside of a trail of chips, a pile of clothes, and a collection of empty wine bottles, my apartment was surprisingly quite clean. I woke Ashely and found that she was just as hungover as I was. She had no recollection of any storms and also didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. So, chalking it up to the booze, I shrugged it off as nothing more than a vivid nightmare and continued on with my day.
A week later my car was stolen right out from under me. I was stopped at a red light at Damen and Milwaukee when two punks clad in White Sox jerseys and ski masks pulled up beside me. Before I even had a chance to react, they were at my window, waving a Glock in my face, and yelling at me to “get the fuck out”. I watched in shocked silence as they peeled off, leaving me in the middle of a busy intersection with no car, no phone, no wallet, and no dignity.
Three days after that my bank account was hacked. I still don’t know exactly who did it, but investigators believe it was someone in China. Whoever it was though took a total of six grand before the bank finally noticed and froze my accounts. The same six grand that I had planned to use as a downpayment on a new car.
Less than forty-eight hours after my bank account was hacked, I lost my beloved black lab, Ernie. I was on the phone with a detective, who had just informed me they had no leads in either of my cases, when I heard the distinct whine of screeching tires followed by a sickening yelp. I raced outside to find my best friend sprawled out in the middle of the street lying in a pool of blood. The dog that I had raised since a pup was dead, squashed to death by a passing motorist.
Two months later Ashley asked for a divorce. I don’t know if it was simply grief or something deeper, but everything seemed to change the day Ernie died. She was cold and standoffish, blaming anything and everything on me, and anytime I tried to talk to her or God forbid touch her, she would recoil in disgust and retreat back into our bedroom.
Five days after that my mom called and tearfully told me that my dad had been diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia, a dreadful neurological disease that causes horrifying hallucinations and crushing depression. Oh, and on top of that her breast cancer had returned with a vengeance, this time being deemed “untreatable” by her oncologist.
Less than a week later I found myself scoring pills from a sketchy coworker. Now I had done my fair share of drugs back in the day, but one thing I never did was fuck with prescription painkillers. I always viewed pills as a trashy high reserved only for the lowest dregs of society, but seeing that was quickly becoming me, I said fuck it and bought a half dozen 40 milligram Oxys. And before I knew it, I was hooked.
The night Ashley finally left for good I went out on the town with my childhood best friend, Steven. He had just gotten a big promotion at work and we were celebrating accordingly. Little did he know though, I had started the party early, popping a Vicodin and snorting a line of Xanax before picking him up. We were less than a mile away from our favorite dive bar when I nodded off at the wheel and merged into oncoming traffic. Steven was killed instantly and I was flown to the nearest trauma center in critical condition.
I spent the next twenty-four weeks drifting in and out of consciousness in the local ICU. The wreck had left me with nine broken bones, a lacerated liver, a collapsed lung, a perforated ear drum, and a pretty significant brain bleed. My doctor told me that he had never seen someone in such bad shape survive. Lucky me, I guess. At some point during my hospital stay my parents died. Apparently, my mom couldn’t take seeing my dad suffer, and since she had a terminal illness as well, decided murder suicide was the best way out. So now not only did I not have a dog, a wife, nor a best friend, but I also didn’t have any parents. And to top it all off, I was being charged with vehicular manslaughter as well.
So, the second I was released from the hospital I hit up my dealer and swung by the liquor store. After obtaining my spoils, I sat in my car chugging whiskey and railing Percocets before finally stumbling up the stairs of my apartment building. I could feel the cold bite of winter air stinging my cheeks as I toed the roof’s edge. This was it. All I had to do was clear the tree off to my left and I would be as good as dead. I figured there was no way I could survive a six-story fall. But right as I prepared to step off a violent storm blew in out of nowhere, knocking me off-kilter and into the massive oak.
“Mr. Kelly, can you hear me?” A distorted voice cried.
The vibrant hum of fluorescent lights and beeping medical monitors purred loud in my ears.
“Mr. Kelly, blink twice if you can hear me,” the voice reiterated.
I knew exactly where I was.
“Mr. Kelly?”
I tried to move, but found that I was just as paralyzed as I had been nine months prior. Only this was no dream.
“The paramedics said the tree saved your life,” the voice cooed. “Someone sure is looking out for you.”
I tried to blink, but felt nothing.
“With that being said though the damage to your spinal cord is still pretty extensive.”
Shit, I couldn’t feel anything.
“Mr. Kelly, what I am trying to say is that you are paralyzed,” the voice paused for dramatic effect. “But at least you are still alive, right?”
Wrong. All I wanted was to die. To be free of this dreaded curse. But here I was, a tortured mind trapped in a broken body. As long as the machines that surrounded me kept running, I would live like this for years, if not decades, imprisoned in my own flesh and blood with no way of escaping. So, the next time you feel the need to take a souvenir from your vacation, don’t, because you just might end up like me.