“Everything was ready for the ritual,” said the suspect. Allen Summer closed his eyes and sighed. “Samhain …”
There was a pregnant pause. Across the dull-gray metal table, Detective Tara Donn raised an eyebrow. “And?”
A knock on the door interrupted them. Sargent Oliver poked his bald head into the room. “Donny, a word?”
Tara grunted from her seat and met Oliver in the hall. “You believe this fruitcake?”
“Forensics called,” said Oliver. “Ms. Kelly’s fingerprints are all over his house.”
Tara nodded. “Of course.”
“That’s not all,” said Oliver. “Apparently, Luminol lit up the kitchen like Las Vegas.”
“Got him,” she said, giving Oliver a high-five.
Back in the interview room, Tara scraped out her chair and sat. She adjusted the folders on the table into neat stacks. She’d play her cards close to the vest for now. “Sorry,” she said. “Please go on.”
Allen looked toward her, but through her. He shook his head. “Excuse me?”
“You were saying something about … sawing?”
“Oh, you mean Samhain. Halloween’s birth name. It’s hard to believe it’s been more than a year …”
A decade of research had led me to Westboro. The cave on White Mare Peak, to be exact. That’s where the portal is. In the cave, at midnight, it’s said the boundary of the Otherworld thins, and the Aos Sí—the spirits—can cross over into our world.
There had been enough sightings of the Golden-Haired Maiden in these parts to convince me this is where I’d find her. Pragmatists would dismiss the stories as lunatic delusions, but they’d never understand. I didn’t want to find her. I had to.
A shroud of mist had descended on White Mare, as I stumbled up the hillside. I knew it must be the féth fíada—the magic mist—conjured to conceal what was to come. It sank its chilly teeth into my bones, but I persisted. As the diffuse sunlight fell below the horizon, there it was. The cave.
I crouched behind a knoll with a vantage of the portal, my heart in my throat. The moonlight through the fog dusted the landscape with pewter. The cave was a gaping, black maw. As twilight fell to darkness, still I had seen nothing. I chided myself as a fool.
But close to midnight, a faint sapphire light touched the cave walls from within. Its intensity rose until it spilled out into the clearing. The mountain fell silent. No fauna dared disturb the quiet. Even the wind through the trees had stilled, until, from that blue mouth, at last I heard the voices of the Aos Sí.
“Look, this is great stuff,” said Tara, “but can we cut to the ritual?”
“I know you think I’m crazy,” said Allen. “But it’s important that you understand. If I don’t tell you the whole story, none of this will make any sense.”
Tara snorted. The day any of this drivel made sense to her, she’d ask Oliver to put her out of her misery. But a good detective always lets a suspect talk that wants to talk. Especially when they waive Miranda.
Let them dig their own graves.
“OK, then,” she said. “Educate me.”
The first to appear looked like fairies. Little barefoot things, dressed in gauzy, gray tunics, prancing over the stones. It surprised me to find they don’t have wings, like in the movies. But are they ever nimble! One pair of their green eyes fell in my direction and I ducked. I don’t think it saw me, because when I dared again to peek, they were gone. I saw their glowing light fading in the distance.
Next, I saw the children. A dozen or more stepped from the cave one by one, looking around the land, gasping and oohing in wonder. Each of them wore traditional outfits from whatever period they’d met their demise—a macabre fashion show of children’s wear. I watched them weave a path into the woods, chattering and giggling in small, ethereal voices. I smiled when I imagined what mischief they’d make on their field trip from the Otherworld.
The cave’s steady blue silence taunted me. What had felt like hours was probably only minutes as my heart thudded for its desire. Then at last, I could hear the footfalls of someone approaching from within, and the Golden-Haired Maiden rose alone from the cave.
Time and space lost their meaning in her presence. The world’s most eloquent poets would be tongue-tied to describe her magnetism. It was like her presence lifted me from the ground, and wrung from me any concern over who I had been before that moment. She was breathtaking—literally. I gasped when I realized I had stopped breathing.
Thankfully, she didn’t hear me—or perhaps she wasn’t concerned—because she strode away in the direction of the fairies and spirit children without a backward glance.
Tara opened a folder on the tabletop, and slid a large, glossy photograph to the center. “Is this the ‘Golden-Haired Maiden’ you speak of?”
Allen swallowed as moisture pooled in his eyes. “Niamh,” he croaked. “That’s what she looked like afterwards.” He pulled the photo closer while wiping his eyes with his other hand. He whispered, “Still so beautiful.”
Tara pulled the photo back and closed the folder. “After what?”
Allen sniffled. “Sorry?”
“You said, ‘That’s what she looked like afterwards.’ After what?”
“Well, after the ritual, of course.”
Once she was far enough from the cave, it was time to get started. There could be others coming, so I had no time to waste. I crawled from the shelter of the knoll and emptied the contents of my satchel onto the ground outside the cave. Bathed in blue, I raised the flagon of goat’s blood above my head and spoke the incantation. I popped the cork, took a swig, then poured the remainder across the ground at the mouth of the cave.
The cave seemed to groan, and its blue light transformed into a flaming red. The ritual was working! I strung an ash wood Celtic cross from the brambles above the entryway. As it dangled, backlit by the crimson glow, I doused it with sacred oil and set it ablaze, then chanted the words:
Cosc a chur ar bhiotáille an geata seo a rith!
As the last syllable fell from my mouth, the cave inhaled a tremendous breath of air. I turned to face the pelting dust and autumn detritus, arms extended at my sides, my face to the heavens, while the cave sucked the féth fíada from the sky itself.
Then, silence, stillness.
I opened my eyes to the crystalline light of the gibbous moon. The cave was again an inky pool of black. Katydids scraped the quiet with their incessant counterpoint of triplets.
The ritual was a success.
The Golden-Haired Maiden was trapped in our world.
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Tara. “You expect me to believe Niamh Kelly here,” she tapped the folder, “was one of these—what did you call them—ees shee spirit things?” She chuckled.
“Mock me all you want, detective,” said Allen. “It doesn’t make it any less true.”
“So where is she now?”
“Back in the Otherworld.”
“The place you locked her out of with your ‘ritual.’”
“Well, yes. But then I unlocked it.”
“And why would you do that?”
Allen sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Because I love her.”
Tara huffed and tapped on the two-way mirror of the interview room. “Do I look like an idiot, Oliver? Because Mr. Summer here just implied that I’m an idiot.”
“Nope,” Oliver’s voice crackled over an intercom. “Not an idiot.”
Tara turned back to Allen. “Here’s what I think happened. I think you kidnapped Niamh Kelly, and then you killed her, and then you disposed of her body somewhere in the woods. Maybe in that cave? We found her fingerprints all over your house, and a whole lot of blood that someone cleaned up. Care to explain that?”
“What’s the point?” Allen said. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
Tara pulled her chair up and leaned forward on her elbows. “Indulge me.”
I stayed behind the knoll until dawn, shivering, watching as each of the Aos Sí returned from their adventures. It broke my heart to see the children’s faces fall when they realized they were stuck here. As the crowd gathered, they all stood around, debating what to do, pushing, blaming … crying.
But then the Golden-Haired Maiden came back, and nothing else mattered. I figured those spirit children would find their way somehow. To me, they were collateral damage. And it’s not like they were defenseless—far from it. Although I only realized that later, when livestock started dying off for miles around. Everyone assumed it was some mystery disease, but it was the Aos Sí feeding, draining the animals’ lives in self-preservation.
The Golden-Haired Maiden convinced her fellow spirits to disperse, telling them to regroup at the cave on the next Samhain. By then, she said, someone would have figured out a way back through. Everyone went their separate ways, but she stayed behind, slumping down next to the ashes of the burnt cross. Tears spilled onto her cheeks.
I decided to feign ignorance of what had transpired, and I approached her. Thankfully, in the light of day, her radiance had dulled to conventional gorgeousness, or I would have been as lost for words as I’d been the night before.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Are you OK?”
She stiffened, but then relaxed. “You frightened me.”
“I was out for a hike, and I saw you crying. Can I help?”
Her ice-blue eyes bored into my soul, and I thought briefly I’d made a mistake. Maybe she knew exactly what I’d done, and I was about to pay the price. But then she stood, wiped her tears on her sleeves, and smiled.
“I’m lost,” she said. “And I’m hungry.” A pulse of blue light flashed behind her pupils.
I offered to get her some food and help her find her way, and she followed me down the mountain. When we got back to my place, I found out it wasn’t food she craved.
Tara sat back in her chair. “So, the blood in your kitchen …”
“Mine.”
“That was a lot of blood.”
Allen scoffed. “Tell me about it. That first time took me by surprise. I was rummaging in the fridge for some eggs when she plucked an artery on my wrist with her fingernail. While she wrestled with me to get her mouth over the wound, it spurted all over the walls, the floor … the ceiling. That’s what your Luminol picked up.”
“But … you’re still here.”
Allen shrugged. “She knew when to stop. She wasn’t trying to kill me.” He pulled up a sleeve of his turtleneck to show Tara numerous tracks of scars. “I’ve been feeding her for a year now.”
Tara swallowed, but her throat was dry. She poured some sludgy coffee into a Styrofoam cup and gulped it down. She looked over at the two-way mirror, wondering if anyone on the other side was entertaining the same absurd thoughts as her—that he might be telling the truth.
No. Impossible. This was totally irrational. There are no ees shee spirits, or whatever he called them, and they’re not rampaging all over her county draining the life from farm animals, and Niamh Kelly certainly hadn’t survived the last year by drinking Allen Summer’s blood.
“I gotta hand it to you, Summer,” said Tara. “You weave a heck of a tale.”
“Everything I’ve told you is true.”
“Where’s the body, Summer?”
Allen’s shoulders slumped. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. You might as well lock me up, because you’ll never find her.”
Tara plucked a Mounds from the bucket of leftover Halloween candy she’d brought in. There’d been hardly any trick-or-treaters this year, leaving the working stiffs of the world to dump their bounties at the office, in hopes that they wouldn’t gorge themselves in front of their TVs at night. As she chewed on the cloyingly sweet coconut treat, she offered the bowl to Allen, who waved it off.
“Walk me through what happened next,” she smacked. “After she came to your place.”
As I bandaged my wrist, she went over her plan to revisit the cave the following year, and asked if I’d help her. Any red-blooded single man would have been a fool to turn her down. Sure, she’d fed on my blood, but—not for nothing—there was something strangely intimate about that. And, like I said, she knew just when to quit. So I set her up in my spare room, and I told her I’d do whatever I could.
Niamh didn’t have a last name, so she settled on Kelly—a good Irish name—for her identity in this world. I convinced Dotty over at Lemmy’s Diner to give Niamh a job slinging joe—mainly as something to occupy her while I worked. I despaired over what she’d get up to if left alone too long. My worry wasn’t too far off base, because as soon as she got through the door each night, she’d be ravenous, and I’d offer up one of my arms.
Whenever she fed, I would watch her, feeling a bizarre sensation of arousal mixed with an almost maternal affection. I was feeding her from my own body after all. But the touch of her warm lips on my skin and her gentle slurping sounds … these things affect a man. Eventually, I’d taken to caressing her golden hair while she was at it—which she seemed to enjoy. Not long after that, I started to get a little more bold with where my hands ended up. One time, I thought I’d gone a step too far, because she bolted upright and trapped me in her eyes. A drop of my blood snaked down the side of her chin.
I thought I was done for, but then she mashed her mouth to mine and kissed me like her life depended on it. I thought she might even take a bite, but it wasn’t like that. She told me later that she’d felt the same strange connection. I never knew blood could be such an aphrodisiac.
Through the seasons we kept at it, and it just got better and better, and I knew without a doubt she was the love of my life. It wasn’t until I noticed the bags of Halloween candy start popping up at the supermarkets around August that it dawned on me. We hadn’t discussed her Samhain plans since I’d agreed to help. My heart sank to think she would be leaving me—that maybe she or her spirit friends had found a way to reverse my ritual.
Which I still hadn’t confessed to, by the way.
I’d read somewhere that some people believe Samhain is derived from sam fuin—which means “summer’s end.” It turns out that’s probably a colloquial definition, because Celtic summers ended in August. But I thought that sounded just about right, considering the warmth she brought to my world. To lose her would be the coldest winter.
When I asked her about it that night she told me through tears that she’d never planned on staying. She confirmed my fears when she reported the other Aos Sí had unearthed a ritual they said would reopen the gateway—and that she still needed my help in order for it to work.
I told her I would, stepping over the shards of my broken heart.
“And that basically brings you up to today,” said Allen.
Tara huffed. “All except for the teensy detail of the missing body.”
“Which, as I explained, is now back in the Otherworld.”
“Oh, come off it, Summer!” Tara pushed to her feet, looming over the table at her suspect. “You can’t expect anyone to believe this ridiculous yarn. I’m sure you killed her. Now tell us what you know.”
Allen shrugged. “I’ll tell you exactly what I know.”
Tara rolled her eyes. “I can’t wait.”
Samhain had arrived.
Late that night, Niamh and I hiked up to the cave just like I’d done the year before. But this time there was no féth fíada—the moonless sky was so clear you could see the Milky Way with the naked eye. There, at the mouth of the cave, sat a half-dozen spirit children, and one of the fairies, all giving the stink-eye to the outsider in their midst. Niamh eased their minds though, saying that I was there for the ritual. At that point, they were quite accommodating.
While Niamh set up for the midnight ritual, I found out from the others that several of the spirits hadn’t survived the year. Not ruthless enough to feed on the living, they had withered away to dust. I hoped that somehow they’d made it back to the Otherworld, but something told me that was wishful thinking. And it was all my fault. All because of my obsession with the Golden-Haired Maiden. Shame burned through my body.
Niamh announced it was time, and the group gathered around a circle of stones in which an eerie, blue fire burned. Niamh embraced me from behind, whispering in my ear, “Are you ready?” I nodded, and she instructed me to close my eyes and lift my face to the heavens.
Then she dragged her fingernail across my neck, severing both of my carotid arteries.
While I drained into the mouth of the cave, her fading voice explained the only way I could undo the ritual I’d performed was to sacrifice myself for those I’d harmed.
She’d known all along, after all.
As the sapphire light rose within the cave, the whole world grew cold and dark.
Tara frowned. She marched to Allen’s side and pulled down the collar of his shirt. A gaping laceration spanned the entire width of his neck.
A pulse of blue light flashed behind his pupils, and he licked his lips.