The day my father got sick was the day mother and I locked all the windows. The sluagh were on their way; you can feel it in the air and in the vibrations of the ground beneath your feet. They would be coming for him that night. Storm clouds were growing in the west, hailing their arrival.
Tonight the sluagh were hunting for my father.
I sat on the porch, waving my pale little feet back and forth and watching the last few glimmers of sunlight disappear. The great mother moon was all but full that night, smiling down at us with her cracked and blemished face. Even when the sun was gone, she would illuminate the sky for us. She would be our beacon-our watchman-when the sluagh came gliding over the treetops.
The sluagh are nothing more than the forgotten spirits of sinners, left to wander the earth and claim the souls of the sick and the innocent. Here in Ireland, where I was born and raised, we close and bolt our western windows shut every night, so that they can't come in and steal our souls while we sleep. And with my father on his deathbed, they would surely be on their way tonight to steal him away from us with their cold, damned fingers.
Now it was only a matter of time before they sniffed him out.
"Deirdre…Deirdre, get inside now." my mother whispered through a crack in the front door. "It's time to come inside, my little love." With her hands outstretched, she beckoned to me and I obeyed. She grabbed me up in her strong arms, caressing my locks of orange-red hair.
Mother took one look out into the cloudy gray sky before shutting the door behind her and latching it quickly and efficiently.
"Check the windows." she told my big brother and I. "Make sure they're nice and tight."
We did as she said. My brother Fergus, who was twelve years old and much taller than myself, lifted me up to the windowsill and let me check the locks one by one. They were all secured tightly, just as we had expected.
As Fergus closed the curtains, the last glimmer of gray light from the sky reflected in our identical green eyes. The night turned silent, heavy, and ominous.
My father was the one to break the silence with a hoarse, painful-sounding cough. Mother ran to his bedside and shushed him with a finger against her lips. A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth, and mother wiped it away gently with her apron.
Fergus removed his hat, as though in prayer. I was too young to understand the concept of life and death at age four, but the pit of my stomach turned heavy nonetheless. My legs quivered. But perhaps that was not just my legs, for it seemed that I was not the only one to notice.
The entire floor began to quake, subtle at first and then heavier and heavier. Sounds filled our ears; the tinkling of glass, the rattling of the windows, the creaking of floorboards. I grabbed my big brother's hand and squeezed his thumb tightly with my small, fragile fingers.
Like a great storm, it stopped just as abruptly as it had started. The house went still and quiet once more, and the four of us were left standing shaken and alarmed.
"Fergus," mother motioned to my brother. "Get a damp rag for your father."
My brother released my hand and ran to the kitchen, leaving me to stand alone. Mother was leaning over father's bed, checking the temperature of his face and his arms.
With nothing to do but think, I found my eyes drawn to the window.
Whatever had passed through-whatever it was-must have left some horrible mess behind.
I tottered over to the window and boosted myself up on a chair with only minimal difficulty. Crawling onto the windowsill, I reached for the curtain and grabbed up a bit of the fabric in my tiny white hand. I would only have to pull back an inch. Just a tiny peek.
"Deirdre, no!"
I heard mother's scream, but it was a lost cause.
What rested on the other side of the glass was not the wreckage I had expected to see. Instead, I was looking into the white and gleaming eyes of something not quite human. It had gray-colored skin the texture of leather and cracked lips drawn back to reveal its rotting teeth.
And although its eyes were void, I could feel it staring into me.
XxxxxxxxxX
"Japan."
I drew a circle around my destination and then placed my pen between my teeth.
"That's my next stop."
Kendrick scanned his eyes over the map, which hung large and proud in the center of the office wall. For a moment, he only silently glanced at each circle and each 'x', and all the little scribbled notes I had placed to the sides. I had more marks on this map than I had freckles on my cheeks.
"Japan." Kendrick echoed me. "And what, my dear girl, is waiting for you in Japan?"
I turned to him with a scoff and a grin of disbelief. "Only one of the richest cultures on Earth," I answered him, pacing back and forth in front of my map. "It's full of legends and ancient customs, Kendrick. There's mythology everywhere you turn. Can you imagine what sort of things I'll dig up in six months' time?"
"Hmm, let's see," Kendrick scratched his scruffy chin and leaned back casually in his chair. "I'm guessing the same things you always dig up-urban legends, superstitions-the usual."
Of course he wouldn't understand.
Kendrick and I worked closely in the department of science in Dublin. He was a Paranthropologist, studying old civilizations and the cultures of ancient peoples.
I, however, was a Folklorist.
After all that I had seen as a child and all the years I had studied the paranormal, I found that it was the only career for me. Nothing interested me more than hearing the legends of other countries and investigating the rich and mysterious mythology that surrounded every culture on the planet. And although Kendrick had once dreamed of putting Atlantis on the map of the world, his skepticism was overwhelming.
I looked at the map with admiration. Only nineteen years old, and I had already traveled half the world in search of the unknown and the unexplained. My newest conquest, however, was more exciting to me than any I had taken on in the past.
Japan, and all of its spirits and monsters, was a dream to me.
"Well, I hope you have fun," Kendrick said with a hint of the nonchalant. "Because according to your flight tickets, Miss Deirdre Quinn, you have ten minutes to get your fat ass on that plane before it leaves without you."
"What?"
The sensation I felt then can only be described as cardiac arrest mixed with the feeling one gets being pelted with ice-cubes. I turned in a flourish, dropping my pen to the floor and snatching the tickets out of Kendrick's hands. "I'll call when I get there!" I screamed as I rushed out of the department with my bags stuffed under one arm. My other hand was busying itself attempting to flatten my tangled, half-braided hair, which always seemed to get itself caught in the handle of my luggage at inopportune times. Coworkers and strangers alike stared at me as I passed, but it was nothing unusual. Among all the respectable men and women of modern science, my work was…unorthodox.
As was my behavior on most days.
And that wasn't about to change. Even as I boarded my plane, I seemed to attract the eyes of my fellow passengers. Perhaps it was my clumsy feet that interested them, or the paint-stained overalls that I wore, or just a certain look about me. This was just the way people were. They were attracted to things that were different, things they didn't see every day.
No better reason to go to Japan.