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If the village even had a name, it had been lost in the mists of time. It was just another obscure Irish hamlet tucked into a valley, and anchored by a parish Catholic Church.
It was a hardscrabble place, where most of the residents lived by growing horse potatoes. The town was bordered on all sides by English manors, but none of them ever bothered to molest the village.
There were a number of suggestions for the why of this happy situation, the most popular being that the villagers had done some kindness to an English gentleman during the conquest of the Isle of Erin. However, the answer, if one even existed, had been lost in the mists of time, like the village’s name.
This had given the village some relative and unprecedented prosperity, which caused an influx of tenant farmers from surrounding manors. That caused a certain amount of consternation amongst the villagers, who had a superstitious fear of breaking the peace with their English neighbors.
Of course, immigrants were the last thing on their mind at the moment. The entire town, and a large portion of the countryside were in an uproar over the fact that the parish priest had just died.
In the back of everyone’s mind were the political machinations that would follow. The Catholic Church was inextricably bound up with the Irish sense of identity, which gave the Protestant English another reason to hate it.
A further layer of complication was that their church was an obscure backwater of the diocese, and there was a good chance that a priest sent there was being punished.
They had gotten lucky in that their former priest had been a local boy. Or at least, that was what they tried telling themselves.
Father Seamus O’Clanahan had been a terrifying figure, towering head and shoulders above the next tallest person in the village, and he was gaunt to the point of emaciation. The villagers had dubbed him ‘The Screaming Skull’ behind his back.
He had a prominent widow’s peak on his forehead, which had become even more so, as his hair receded. Nor had those who had ever seen him smile ever forget it.
He had been a stern, pious man, and his familiar expression was dour. The rare times he had tried putting on a jolly face, his smile looked like a rictus, as if the effort caused him physical pain.
Despite the holiness he wore around himself like a cloak, there was a sense of something dark and sinister lurking underneath. He bore little resemblance to any of his siblings, and a rumor began to spread that he was the seventh son of a seventh son.
When anyone had asked his mother, she always denied it. Of course, her eyes were wide, her nostrils would flair, and her lips would go white, which would lead the questioner to doubt.
As the rumors began to swirl, he became more moody and indrawn. That set up a vicious cycle that fed on a closed-loop symbiosis, so that when the priest died, his parishioners felt a relief, and superstitious dread.
There had been some talk of putting garlic in his grave, and a stake through his heart, but the monsignor who would be officiating the funeral nixed that idea.
Tenant farmers attended the funeral from all the neighboring manors, packing the church to overflowing, with those who could not get in squatting outside.
The church put on its full pageantry for the funeral mass. Compared the pomp and majesty of Continental services, it was threadbare and poor.
However, the peasants were used to seeing their priest go by in a plain black cassock, with no processional. So they were dazzled by the pageantry they were treated to.
There was a collective sigh of relief at the end, as the tenant farmers began dispersing to their homes, after the graveside service concluded.
The English had never been very clear about whether they were giving permission for a mass migration of their tenant farmers to the church. About all the townspeople got was that the English were ready to tolerate it, the implication being there would be very negative consequences if they did not return.
Of course, while the tenant farmers all scattered to their homes, the funeral party of townsfolk remained together, contemplating the coffin in its hole in the ground. Nobody said anything, or looked at anybody else. Everyone was meditating on their own private thoughts.
Obeying an unspoken order of groupthink, they marched back to the church, and trooped into the Fellowship Hall.
None of them could have offered a coherent explanation for this behavior, even if pressed. It was something fluttering amongst them on leathery wings.
Cold, chitionous fingers reached out for their vitals. Their hearts pounded, and sweat began to bead the brow of several of them.
However, none of them could seem to explain the cold terror that seemed to be hovering, leering above them. They just had a vague foreboding that something was about to happen, and they were not going to like it.
Time began to take on plasticity somewhat akin to taffy, sliding by with the deliberate pace of molasses. The charge built up and up, becoming angry, grumbling thunderheads, with the inevitable explosion being put off, and put off. It only notched the tension higher and higher.
Everyone became isolated, and inward-focused, since any human interaction risked a blowup from the other person. Each of them was a taut, humming piano wire, ready to snap.
The sense of foreboding that kept them together, waiting to see what would happen had not come any closer, but remained with tantalizing closeness while remaining just out of reach.
However, it came crashing down on them as the sun set, turning their tension into stark, blinding terror. The fiery explosion of color caused by the sun setting seemed to be a positive portend of evil and terror.
Everyone began crowding around the windows. As they pushed, elbowed, and jockeyed for a spot, an ugly growl began going through the group.
For a moment, they trembled on a precipice of having an inner savagery released. They would have clawed and bit, attacking each other with ferocity that would have shocked a wild beast.
There was a last-moment outbreak of sanity, and they began to disperse, looking away from each other, their eyes rolling with fear as they eyed each other with suspicion. Then they heard an evil laugh that seemed to come from everywhere, and nowhere at once.
Cold shivers seemed to dance up and down their collective spines, because the voice sounded so familiar. They realized they were trapped in the grip of the diabolic, and many of them got down on their knees, praying to their chosen patron saint.
It was as if the vault of Heaven had been closed against them. As the sense began to dawn on them, it was accompanied by a choking black haze of despair, like a death shroud.
Their spirits began to rise as they looked toward the window. The deepening periwinkle of the fading sunset was giving way to the deeper purples and blues of night. Stars sparkled like spilled diamonds on the dark velvet of the sky.
How could something so normal be taken as betokening something evil? It was solid evidence that God was in charge of His creation, and what they had witnessed was an aberration.
Then, before their horrified eyes, the gibbous moon began to swell, as if pregnant. There were groans and cries from those present as the stars began to wink out, one by one.
Even the moon began to undergo a change. As it became full, its light became bright and cold, like that of a fluorescent bulb, though they wouldn’t have known what one was. Even the word spotlight was alien to them, though the moon was providing a pretty fair approximation of the concept.
The moon was a glowing cat’s-eye in the sky, glowering out into the darkening sky, while the man in the moon laughed, gibbered, and made faces.
He was making mock of the pitiful humans that were getting ready to witness the feast of the Devil’s Sabbat. What made him most merry was knowing whom the guest of honor was, and knowing how much they would tremble at it.
That made them want to close their eyes, turn away, and not find out who it was. However, the die had been cast, and some force beyond their control held them transfixed, unable to look away. They quaked in terrible foreboding of who it might be.
As if on cue, a pipe organ began thundering out its discordonant bass note. It was something far above the asthmatic organ with the pump bellows in the choir loft. They had a sick certainty what they were hearing was something beyond the most cunning arts of human hands.
The mystery organ continued to boom and roar, pouring out the sounds of a funeral mass, but in such a minor key that it was rendered a diabolical dirge.
The first members of the procession began to march into the moonbeam spotlight. The altar boys marched in front, the light gleaming on their upside-down crucifixes on poles, and white albs.
They looked like angelic little cherubs, until they turned to face them. Then they revealed their eyes glowing with a terrible glowing reddish-orange fire, horns beginning to grow out of the sides of their heads. Then they smiled, revealing snaggle-teeth fangs.
Behind them came a tall figure in a cape and cowl, who looked like a monk. His cowl hid his face, and the dark material blended into the background. His most notable feature was his hands. They were fishbelly white, with long tapering fingers that ended in claws.
He held a censer in one hand, and was swinging it back and forth. However, it was not incense he was burning. They grimaced and shouted with disgust, as they smelled the brimstone.
Then the figure also turned, and looked at them, causing the blood in their veins to turn to ice. His eyes also glowed with the unholy light of the deadlights.
Then came the dreaded guest of honor. Father O’Clanahan had been tall in life, but he seemed even taller in death. He wore the black cassock and pectoral cross he had been buried with, holding a large black book under his right arm.
His face glowed with an unholy light, and all pretenses had been dropped. His mouth was curved in a sneer, and his eyes glowed with hate and contempt for all of them.
His black obsidian eyes searched them out, looking for one in particular. They held their collective breath, a cold shiver passing over them, praying it wasn’t them he was looking for.
He seemed to have found the one, because he stopped, and pointed a bony finger. A woman screamed, then fainted.
In the pandemonium that followed, it wasn’t readily apparent that it was his aged mother he had pointed to. Nor in an age where contagium was believed to come from poisonous ground mists would they understand the idea of Patient Zero. However, she had been stricken with the Bubonic plague, and when revived, sneezed several times.
Demonic imps leaped and gamboled in his wake. The procession seemed to last forever, but at long last, it came to an end.
The moon shrank back to its normal size, and the stars reappeared in the heavens. However, those who had witnessed those events knew that things would never, could never be the same.
The next day, the first black spots that signaled the beginning of the Irish Potato Blight appeared on the crops. Less than a week later, the mother was dead of the plague, and the disease was spreading like wildfire.
They found themselves trapped in their valley, hemmed in by manors all around, with all doors shut against them. In the church, the monsignor continued saying masses, even though the candle in the red vessel, symbolizing God’s presence, had gone out, and refused to be relit.
Toward the second month, the church collapsed, killing all the surviving congregants, with only the monsignor surviving to tell the tale.
He was the last to go. He was dragged before an ecclesiastical court to face charges of simony and heresy, but died of the plague before he could defend himself.
The valley became uninhabited, and so feared that even Englishmen wouldn’t go near it. For all I know, it’s still true today.
