The Dolocher (7 page)

“No.”

“And when the body was being taken away did you actually see it?”

“Well, it was covered in a sheet.”

“Were you able to tell for sure that it was Olocher?”

“Well no, but it must have been.” Kate was confused as to what he was saying, but he didn’t dwell here.

“Tell me about the night that the first guard was killed.”

“We were asleep over at the wall away from the window, trying to keep warm,” Kate said, and the thought of this made he put another hot piece of potato in her mouth, “and then there was this noise outside and we could hear the guard crying out in agony,” she felt the hot flush of tears come to her as she remembered the event.

“Could you see anything at all, a shadow even?”

“No nothing.”

“And the noise you heard before the guard crying out, what was it?

“I don’t know, it sounded like an animal.”

“What animal did it sound like?”

“I don’t know, they all sound the same to me really,” she said stifling her tears.

“They brought this man into the prison?”

“Yes and then the doctor came.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it looked like some animal had done it.”

“Did he say what animal he thought it might have been?”

“I think he said it could have been a dog.”

“And they took him away to the hospital where he died. Can you remember anything else about that event?

“No, it seemed to happen so fast.”

“Ok, what about the second guard?”

“I saw it that night; I was awake.”

“You saw it?” he sat forward now and studied her seriously.

“Yes, first I heard it growling outside.”

“Growling? Like a dog?”

“Could have been a dogs growl”

“And you saw it?”

“Yes, but I was so afraid that there were tears in my eyes when it passed by the cell window,” again her tears were falling.

“What was it?”

“I couldn’t tell!” she cried out feeling as though she had let someone down by not being able to say what it was.

“Relax it’s ok, here have a drink,” he said pouring her some of the wine he was drinking. She took a mouthful, and she almost choked on the taste of it, much different that the ‘wine’ she was used to drinking at the brothel. She coughed and then regained her breath again embarrassed by her display. “Could it have been a man?” he asked her.

“No, it was big and black and I’m sure it was on four legs, oh and those teeth!” she had just remembered this and she thought it odd that she should have an image of those sharp fangs now and to not have perceived them at the time.

“The teeth?”

“Yes they were huge, much bigger than you would expect for even a creature of that size.”

“Did they bring this man into the prison?” Kate looked at him as though he were stupid.

“There was nothing left of him to bring in.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, they had his torn clothes and his halberd but that was all.”

“Did the doctor come again?”

“No, there was nothing for him to examine,” again she wondered why he was asking such silly questions.

“Did anything else happen that night?”

“No.”

“Did you notice anything odd on any of the other nights that you were there, anyone passing by the windows late at night or any strange noises in the area?” She thought about this, but nothing was coming to mind. She could just sense the stench of the place in her nostrils, and she almost retched at the thought of it.

“No, nothing I can remember anyway.”

“Ok,”, he said and he thought for a while about what she had said. Kate took this opportunity to continue eating, and she took some more small sips of the wine which was much better than she had though after the first taste.

Finally, he stood up, and she looked up at him.

“I will have my driver drop you home or to the brothel or wherever you want to go in a little bit.”

“Thank you”

“I just want you to do one more thing before you go,” he said with an evil smile as his hands began to undo his trousers.

Superstition and rumour combined make one of the most powerful and persuasive concoctions known to man. After the two killings at ‘The Black Dog’ people started to talk, and assumptions and gossip were repeated as facts throughout the markets, coffee houses and taverns. What was said was fanciful and outrageous but on these dark, cold evenings, the words began to gain traction, and the fears of the people were given solid form.

It was said that the two guards who had been killed, the second one completely devoured-his body never found, had been particularly cruel to Thomas Olocher on the night he was in that prison. It was said that he cursed them and swore revenge-( this information apparently came from one of the soldiers who had been placed in the prison on duty that night) and that now his spirit was back and roaming the streets at night meeting out revenge to those whom Olocher felt deserved it.

Someone remembered the pigs that made way for Olocher’s cart to get to the prison gates and others still could recall that night when hundreds of pigs gathered outside the gates of the prison and squealed as he killed himself and how they tried to force their way through the gates. When rumour spread of the hoof like marks on the chest of the first guard to be killed it was thought that Olocher’s demonic spirit had entered the body of some feral mutant pig breed and was now out to kill who it could. Others said his evil was ingested by the very pigs that feasted on his body when it was found by the soldiers.

Sightings began to be recorded of large unidentifiable animals darting in the shadows and through the dark alleyways at night. Women used the name of Olocher (they called the beast The Olocher which was then shortened in the Dublin way by usage to D’Olocher and then finally metamorphosed into The Dolocher) to scare their children to make them go to bed at night or to stop being bold.

It was said that the Dolocher was a huge black pig that could walk on its hind legs like a man when it wanted, it could climb walls and get in through doors and windows. It had the massive teeth of a wolf. It would lie asleep in some lair by day and set forth at night to sate its evil appetites.

Of course, these rumours were rubbish but there was no stopping them for the week after the second guard was killed. The streets were noticeably quieter at night now, especially in the area of Cornmarket and those streets that adjoined it.

People would scoff at this as mindless superstition and say that it was clearly the work of a mad man, that there was no such thing as evil spirits inhabiting animal bodies and other such nonsense. But even these people felt the chill wind of fear of the Dolocher if they were ever unfortunate enough to be alone in the city after dark, even if only for a few moments. They too would see the great black pig in the shadows of the large buildings, they would hear his growling deep into black alleys further than their eyes could penetrate.

Mullins sat and listened to the talk around him in his favourite whiskey cabin in Cook Street. He had always been fascinated by the way simple phrases and drunken comments in these places suddenly became gossip and fact the very next night, in some cases the same night. He had watched a few nights in a row now as the stories gathered and changed and coagulated into this new narrative of ‘The Dolocher.’

Cleaves came in and sat down beside him, and Mullins could feel the cold from outside on him.

“Another glass,” Mullins called to the bar and a woman brought one over put it in front of him. Mullins poured a big drink for Cleaves.

“Full house tonight,” Cleaves said looking around and raising his glass to Mullins.

“It gets fuller as the colder nights come in,” Mullins said “People’s homes are not as warm as these places and the whiskey has its own warmth as well,” he smiled, his own cheeks feeling the heat he had just spoken of.

“No sign of the Dolocher out there tonight,” Cleaves joked, Mullins felt that Cleaves shared his own scepticism of the tall tales that were doing the rounds. A few angry eyes looked his way, but no one said anything.

“Too cold out there for him,” Mullins laughed.

They spoke for a while about customers and work they had done this last few days (Cleaves worked unloading the ships that came to Temple Bar every day and he often saw things that Mullins found fascinating, he also did early morning deliveries for businesses some mornings) as they made their way through another jug.

“Who is that ugly fellow who has been eyeballin’ this way all night?” Mullins asked Cleaves later on.

“He’s Lord Muc,” Cleaves said not having to look as he had noticed him watching them as well.

“The leader of the Liberty Boys?”

“The very same.”

“That explains the state of his face so.”

“He’s probably spent half his life bleeding at this stage.”

“Why do you suppose he’s been watching us tonight?”

“No idea,” Cleaves said, “and I won’t be asking him to find out,” he smiled before adding “You shouldn’t either.”

As they spoke, Lord Muc stood up and went to leave the cabin; he was tall, almost six feet and his frame was thick with undefined muscles and he was covered in scars. His left ear was mangled as though some animal had been chewing on it, and his nose was bent many times in both directions and covered with pock marks. As he got to the door, he leaned over to Mullins and said,

“I’ll come and see you sometime this week.”

“For what?” Mullins asked, but Lord Muc didn’t answer, and he went out the door. Mullins looked at Cleaves. “What do you suppose he wants?”

“Probably wants you to fix weapons for him, or maybe make new ones.”

“Well, he will be disappointed if he does.”

“You should be careful with them Mullins; you’ve seen yourself I’m sure what they are capable of.”

“Fuck them,” Mullins said and at that moment he would relish the chance to pop Lord Muc one in his ugly grizzled face. When he had his first violent thought of the evening, he knew that it was time to stop drinking and go home.

He leaned to the table, and he poured the rest of his glass back into the jar.

“I’m off home,” he said to Cleaves, who he was sure already knew the drill when he saw Mullins fail to finish his drink.

“Be careful out there Mullins,”

“I will be.”

“And go straight home,” he said with a mocking mothers tone. Mullins smiled at him and stood up. He was a little uneasy on his feet, and he stumbled against the door frame. Cleaves laughed, and Mullins joined him.

From his standing position, he could see that it was raining outside now and heavy.

“Shit, it’s pissing out,” he said out loud.

“Here use this since you brought it,” Cleaves said laughing and holding something out to him. Mullins looked at it and for a moment he didn’t recognise it out of context, not in the place where it always was. It was his big black leather apron that he wore while he worked. He had run out of his smithy earlier that day to deliver a finished job to a gentleman he’d arranged to meet in Hell and he had come straight from there to the whiskey cabin with the cash he had been paid. He took the heavy garment from Cleaves and arranged it over his head as he stepped out into the night with not another word said.

The rain was freezing as it hit his body, driving down at an angle that rendered his apron almost useless except for keeping the top of his head dry. It slapped against his face and body, and he instantly lost the inner whisky glow, and he cursed the sky. He was tempted to turn back but the fact that he was already wet through now, and the idea of his clothes hardening to dryness on him changed his mind and he hurried on towards home.

When he got to his door he fumbled to open it and he could see in the moonlight that there was red stains forming on the ground around his feet, he looked up but could see nothing and then he realised that it was rusted metal fragments running down from his encrusted apron and turning the groundwater that same rust red. He finally got inside and out of the cold.

Mary finished her work at the tavern on Wards Hill just off New Market, early tonight as the custom was slow. The owner sent her home so as not to have to pay her for the full evening. She protested, but she had no power and she was told to go for the night or go for good. She needed the money, so she had to swallow this less well paid night. When she left it was raining very heavily and there was a vicious chill in the water driving down, and it was falling so heavily that it seemed that the drops were bouncing right back off the ground and she was getting as wet from below and she was from above.

She rushed homewards in this foul weather rather than try shelter in some door or archway. She had heard in the course of her work of the terrible rumours about the killings at the prison and as you would expect they affected her more deeply than they would anyone else. She didn’t believe the rumours, but she couldn’t stop them from pervading her thoughts every evening as she made her way home alone along the sometimes eerily quiet streets. She was so scared some evenings that when she rounded a corner and found a pig in the street she would double back and take another street to get where she was going, and as there were hundreds of these dirty beasts all over the city this could happen a few times every evening and would cause her sometimes to have to run past one on the opposite side of the street having exhausted all the routes home she knew.

On this night, there was no one about, and even the pigs had the sense to find shelter where they could. The noise of the rain slapping on the ground was all she could hear and not even her own scurrying footsteps registered in her ears.

Once or twice she thought she saw someone ahead but when she looked up to see properly, there was no one there. It was probably someone darting into one of the buildings to escape the weather. She continued on regardless.

She was still living with Sarah (this was a month and half after she had been let stay for one night!) in Hanbury Lane. The walk home only took her fifteen minutes, pigs depending, and she always felt she was just about there when she reached the junction of Ash Street and Engine Alley. She could see this now and she quickened her pace with the thought of the dryness inside Sarah’s place, the fire that would be possibly still be going now-it was normally down to embers by the time Mary got in. She would poke and crush them to get the last heat from them normally and fell that loved warmth for a few seconds before going to bed. She felt a little warmer even thinking there would be a fire.

Then she saw something move by the side of the wall ahead of her. This time she did stop. The movement hadn’t looked natural, and she was alarmed by what it might be. She looked around to see if there was anyone else there who might be able to assist her should she need it but no one was there. A sheet of rain slapped against her causing her to shut her eyes for a moment, the tide of it clearly approaching her from across the road before it did. She looked again to where she had seen movement. There didn’t seem to be anything there now, but she had seen it at the corner of Croslick a small street that she would have to pass to get to her junction.

She crossed over to the other side of Ash Street and edged forward slowly still trying to see something. The closer she got, the more fearful she became and the driving rain and the rush of bubbling water at the roadsides were all she could hear. She could feel the cold, rough brick of the buildings at her wet back as she shunted along trying to make herself as quiet and invisible as she could.

She could see a little into Croslick now, but there was still a part hidden by the angle of the corner where someone may be lurking. She took a deep breath; the sound of her heart beating was now audible to her inside her head and she stepped out into the crossroads with Garden Lane to her back and now she could see across Ash Street down the full length of Croslick.

There was nothing there! The relief almost brought her to her knees, and the pace of her heart seemed to lessen as she became even more aware of the thumping in her chest. She breathed deeply again to try to calm her shaking body; her jellied legs and light head.

She felt the crash of her forehead into the road before she felt the effect of the strike from behind or the tumult of her fall. She was dazed for a second and then she heard the animal noises that she had so feared, and she felt the ripping of the flesh of her upper back and she heard her clothes tear along with it. She screamed and tried to turn but the creature had his weight on her now, her legs were pinned under it grinding against the hard ground and she could feel more strikes and she could see glints of light on the dripping wet teeth and they smashed around her, sometimes hitting her and sinking into her and sometimes missing and making horrible screeching noises on the cobbles; there seemed to be flashes of sparks as it crashed the cobbles. Each slash was more painful than the last, and still she struggled on trying to wriggle free, her hands swinging as much as she could behind her at her assailant. She twisted and writhed and once caught sight of one wild eye that didn’t meet hers, but didn’t seem to be focused on anything.

Just as suddenly as it started, she felt the weight lift from her body and then was aware of some men shouting and the sound of running footsteps. She was face down and she felt so weak and like she was going to pass out but the pain was keeping her conscious and she moaned in agony and ran her hand over her back to where it hurt the most. She could feel thick ridges that she couldn’t understand, and the pain was unbelievable.

Someone was talking to her but she couldn’t focus on what they were saying and then she felt a new excruciating pain as she was lifted from the ground and she let out a howling wail before falling out of waking.