Reluctantly Charmed (40 page)

“So, Father Creane, he believed in fairies?”

“Yes, I think he believed there were some other forces at work. He really was scared. Priests . . . we’re asked to believe in a lot of things—the devil and demons. So for some of us a belief in fairies—it’s not such a leap.” Father O’Brien looked sad. “He probably should have given the Steps over to the bishop, but I think he was frightened. So he locked them away. Here. Hoping they’d never reappear again. He told the next priest about it, who then told me.”

I was looking around the room to see where they might be hidden. “You didn’t destroy them?”

“No, I suppose I just forgot about them. I never thought it would be an issue. I never thought they’d arise again, because they weren’t real until you . . .” He looked at me for a long time. “You’re the key to the completion of these Steps. Because you can get people to believe in them. Without you, they don’t work. I didn’t know that until now.”

“I don’t understand. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Stop it. Stop it now. Tell everyone that it was a hoax, a cry for help, that you made them up yourself, that there was no witch
and there are no fairies.” Here was a man hanging from the edge of a cliff by his splintered fingernails. “Stop it.”

“No.” I was startled by my own response. I’d never spoken to a priest like that before. I’d never even considered speaking to a priest like that. Something had come over me. I don’t know if it was the brazen schoolchild in me, or the shock of being told what to do by a man who didn’t know anything about me, but I wasn’t having any of it. These were my Steps. This would be my decision.

“Please.”

“No. It’s nearly over. There’s only one more Step.”

“Please.” His hands grabbed the sides of his chair. “I’m begging you.”

“No.”

His face was flaming with anger. “But look what you’ve done! Look what you’ve created! A false god, a false religion!”

“I haven’t created anything. This has evolved. People
like
this, they’re happy with it.” And I was happy with it. Since I’d remembered my fairy, Paudi O’Shea, I’d felt a warm and fuzzy sense of happiness and completion. What harm could possibly come from that wonderful joy? And surely if I could, I should share it.

“I’m begging you.”

“I don’t understand. You’ve seen these Steps. They’re harmless. This will all blow over.”

“Please.”

Now I was suspicious. “Is there something else?”

His shoulders stiffened.

“It’s the final Step. There’s something about the final Step, isn’t there? You’ve read it. You’ve seen it. Show it to me. Where is it?” I stood up and started frantically looking around the room. “Where is it?”

He shook his head. “Please stop this.”

“Where is it?”

“Will you stop if I show it to you?”

“No. How can I stop this? Why would I stop this?”

He stood up, looking weak. “The final Step is not harmless. It’s an awakening. It changes everything.” He hung his head and shivered. “Follow me.”

Stooped, he turned his back and walked toward a heavy wooden door. Grasping the iron handle, he heaved it open. He looked back at me nervously. I nodded and walked behind him. We entered the church, and I watched as he shuffled up the marble steps of the altar, silently blessing himself. I stood back, not sure whether to follow him. He waved his arm for me to proceed, and my thirteen years of Catholic schooling caused me to genuflect and bless myself before stepping up. Father O’Brien dropped awkwardly to his knees behind the altar and slid back a large green mat. He patted the stone underneath. “It’s here. It’s here,” he whispered, under his breath. There was a wobble and the stone shifted gently. Father O’Brien slid his fingers around it.

I bent forward instinctively as he gritted his teeth and his face turned puce with the strain of pulling the stone back. “Can I help?”

But just as I spoke the stone came free. Father O’Brien flew backward, falling clumsily. I moved forward and stared into the black dusty hole. I caught a glimpse of a tin box.

“Stand back!” Father O’Brien jumped to his feet. “This is for me.”

Surprised by the aggression in his voice, I edged away, keeping an eye on the box. Father O’Brien dipped in and pulled it out before rubbing it anxiously. “This, em . . .” His face creased with worry, and he placed a heavy hand on top of the altar to steady himself. “These are the Steps.”

He flipped the box open toward his chest, and I noticed his
hand tremble as he pulled out pages of clear waxy paper. He studied one, and then handed it to me. It rustled between us as if caught by a breeze. It was the first Step. The same inky spidery script weaved its way across the page.

“It’s the Step. It’s the same handwriting.”

He sighed. “You believe me?”

“I’m looking at it. It’s true.”

“Well, look, look.” Father O’Brien was animated now. He moved toward me lightly; his breathing had quickened. “They’re all here, all of them.”

He started to push other pages into my hands, all bearing Kate McDaid’s handwriting. They were the same Steps I’d received from Seamus MacMurphy. Father O’Brien was smiling. His eyes looked bright. “You see? They’re here.”

I nodded, unsure why his mood had changed and why he seemed so excited now.

“So, promise me you won’t publish the seventh one. You won’t even read it. You’ll end this now.” His face was inches from mine. He was clutching a piece of paper that must have been the seventh Step.

“No. This ends when the seventh Step is released.” I looked at the page in his hand.

“No. You don’t understand. This will bring you no peace. This is just the beginning for all of us. If you publish this,” he said, looking straight at me, his face brimming with anger, “if you tell them what this says, then this, all of this . . .” He threw his arms wide open, embracing the church. “All of this is over.”

“I don’t . . . Let me read it.”

He shook his head. “If you read this, if you publish this, it ends.”

“Exactly. It ends. I’m publishing this final Step and then that’s it. Game over.”

“Trust me.” He stumbled back a step. “I beg you to do the right thing. This is bigger than you.”

“What? How? You have to tell me.”

He shook his head again.

“I get the final Step tomorrow. I’ll know what it says then,” I said.

He winced.

I started to walk out of the church. “I’m not stopping this,” I shouted over my shoulder.

“She didn’t disappear . . .”

I spun around and stared, open-mouthed, at Father O’Brien.

“She didn’t just disappear.” Ashen-faced, the priest was resting his hands on the corner of the altar.

I walked back toward him to hear what he was saying.

“They burned her out. Burned her out of house and home and . . .” He swallowed dryly. “Burned her with it.”

“The old ruin?”

“They set fire to it one night—it was Halloween. They wanted to be rid of her. It was a witch hunt.”

I nodded. I knew this was true. It explained what had happened to me when I was at the ruin. I shivered, remembering how I’d felt the heat and smoke of the fire. There was no doubt that memories of the Red Hag’s terrible death lingered there. They’d burned her the day after she’d written her will. She must have predicted it. She must have seen her own death.

“They succeeded. She burned to death up there.” He shook his head.

“Who were they?”

He lifted his head. His face was like stone. “The villagers, led by Father Creane.”

A religious man led a witch hunt? I was shocked. “That’s
barbaric! He was a priest.” I didn’t know whether that was a statement or a question.

“Priests are human. Humans are scared of the unknown and can react in frenzy, rage, or fear.” Father O’Brien sighed heavily. “Kate, what you’re dabbling in is the occult, the other world. It brings an evil with it. You may think there’s no harm in this, but, trust me, this final Step could be an awakening to the other world. Do not upset the natural order of God’s earth. Put an end to this now. Never publish that final Step.”

“Okay. Thanks, I think, Father,” I answered dry-mouthed. I felt so confused. If Father O’Brien was telling the truth, if this seventh Step was going to “end it all,” what did that mean? What could that mean? End the church? Or worse? What could be worse? And why would he say not to upset the natural order? Weren’t the fairies part of the natural order?

Maybe Father O’Brien wasn’t telling the truth. Maybe he was just trying to frighten me. Maybe it was about the Catholic Church. Maybe he was just scared because he’d kept the Steps from the bishop. Maybe he was worried he’d be defrocked and he’d lose his extensive wardrobe of gold trimmings and floor-dusting capes. I wouldn’t know until I read the final Step. I couldn’t even think about the “what ifs” until I read it.

I left the church feeling more confused than I’d ever felt in my life.

35

F
iona and Lily had gone to mass. I hadn’t wanted to go, and I was glad I hadn’t when they told me the blow-by-blow of what had happened. Father O’Brien had read a letter from the bishop to the parishioners. The bishop called the Steps an unnecessary evil, a cult of unchristian values, a nonsensical school of thought that had been developed from pagan beliefs and which was emphatically not condoned by the Catholic Church. The bishop said that these Steps, and any supporters of these Steps, were not Christian.

That stung. No matter what your beliefs were, Christianity was a part of being Irish—it was in our makeup.

Father O’Brien had apparently looked pale and hung on to the sides of the pulpit for support, swaying weakly under the burden of the message. He paused for a long time at one point, and the girls thought he might have been having second thoughts about whether or not to proceed, but, really, they knew he didn’t have a choice. His orders came from the bishop and he had to follow them. So he denounced me. He said I was creating a religion and erecting a false god. He gritted his teeth and pointed at his parishioners, repeating the commandment that he’d recited to me earlier that day: “Thou shalt not put false gods before me.”

He spoke of the corruption, greed, and sudden drive for money
he saw in Knocknamee. He asked everyone to stop: to stop promoting these Steps; to stop running tours to the ruin; to stop selling water at the well; to stop talking about widening the main street or extending the circus into the back field; to stop talking about witches and fairies; and to stop listening to Kate McDaid.

The church pews had creaked noisily as people shifted uncomfortably.

And then, Lily said, the craziest thing happened as the sermon was interrupted. I suspected that no one had ever interrupted a sermon during the fifty years Father O’Brien had been in Knocknamee, so when Annie from O’Donahue’s rose to her feet and coughed for attention, it appeared that he just thought she was ill. She wasn’t. When she had his attention and everyone else’s, she spoke loud and clear. “Father, I am a religious person—you know I am. We all are. But we’re not putting any false gods before anyone. None of us here are spooning well water into us, or bathing in the nude at An Trá Bhán. Not one villager is going to see the psychics from the circus. That’s what the tourists are doing. And let them at it, I say.”

There was a rumbling of approval. “Let us make some money out of this. God knows, times can be hard here, and money will make all our lives a lot easier. Don’t tell us to stop. I never thought I’d say it, but Johnny Logan is right. We should be
making hay while the sun shines. We’re paying no heed to the fairies, or to any false gods. We’re making a bit of money.”

“Money is also a false god, Annie,” Father O’Brien replied, apparently looking like he was still in shock from being interrupted.

“That’s rich coming from you, Father, a man who works for the richest organization in the world,” Annie spat back. And with that, she had picked up her handbag, slung it over her shoulder, muscled her way out of the pew, and left the church. Others
followed, silently padding after her. Some nodded to the pulpit as they passed, saying “Sorry, Father. I need the money.” Others made no excuses, barging out and slamming the door after them.

A skeleton congregation remained, nervously eyeing one another as they waited for Father O’Brien to take the lead and tell them what to do. He didn’t. He remained fixed to the spot, gripping the pulpit and breathing heavily, looking stunned that this could have happened to him.

Johnny Logan, who was sitting in the front pew, beside the girls, got up from his seat and walked to the altar. He held out his arm and gripped Father O’Brien firmly across the shoulder, whispering into his ear quietly. Then he led the priest slowly toward the vestry.

Father O’Brien followed Johnny, muttering to himself. “It can’t happen. She can’t do it. She can’t.”

Denounced. I’d been denounced. It felt so final, so severe. It wasn’t that I was particularly religious, but I’ve always believed that, at its heart, the church had compassion and understanding. But now it had shown none of that, and I was angry. I didn’t know what the seventh Step was, but it was undoubtedly something Father O’Brien believed would shake the foundations of the church, and he was going to do everything in his power to stop it and me.