The long-awaited sequel to "This Place Kills Them", starring Sister Michael. This is about 70% flashback to her childhood, featuring a bunch of random OC's, and very tonally different (i.e. much sadder) than both the previous story and the show itself. I don't even know if this is interesting it just invaded my brain.
Hopefully updating weekly.
Warnings: blood and gore, children disappearing and dying, discussion of an offpage suicide.
Once in her life, George Michael had friends. She had the sort of true friends one only finds in childhood, the sort who could spend forever together. The sort who had stared the devil in the face and survived.
They're all gone now. Arthur Brennan went to university and is now a successful investment banker in London. Joe Conry joined the IRA and got mixed up in the wrong bomb plot and he'll be in Maghaberry for life. Aoife O'Kelly lives in Armagh with a handsome husband and three lovely children. On the morning of his wedding, Tomas Darragh put his father's gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
And Sister George Michael stayed in Derry. All her friends have forgotten her and left her and Derry far behind, one way or another, and she stayed and remembered.
She's starting to wonder if she shouldn't have just fucked off to Aruba and let someone else deal with this mess.
…
Jenny Joyce isn't at Monday morning assembly.
Sister Michael cancels the A Capella performance gleefully and waits for a phone call from Jenny's parents. By noon, she's half convinced herself that Jenny Joyce is dead in a gutter somewhere, and half convinced that if she just calls her mother the whole thing will be put to rest.
"What is it?" Mrs. Joyce says. She sounds sharp, like she's got better places to be.
"Jenny's not at school today, and it's standard practice to call the parents if an absence isn't explained." The lie comes out easily.
"Jenny's not at school?"
"I take it she's not at home, either," Sister Michael says, determinedly professional and calm.
"No, she isn't. It isn't like her to play truant."
"As it's a first offense, the punishment will be fairly light. Phone me when she gets home and we'll discuss further," Sister Michael says. She hangs up the phone with a shaking hand.
Jenny Joyce won't be getting home, she can tell. There's a feeling in her bones.
Christ, she thought they won. They'd been so sure they'd killed It, all of them, and they might not have saved Gabriel but at least they'd done something.
It's been twenty-seven years again, and the past always comes back.
…
Tom and Georgie were friends the second they met, as five-year-olds tend to be. They stuck together with the sort of passion that children who already know they're different have. Georgie liked football and judo and exploring all the places she wasn't supposed to be, and Tom liked tagging along and telling her just how dangerous everything she did was. She punched a few boys who tried to pick on him, and that just made the boys pick on them both.
Art moved up from Strabane in year two, all quiet and shy and bookish, and Tom decided to sit next to him one day, and suddenly Georgie had two fools to get into fights over. She was getting better by this time, though, and the boys learned to back off after she tried out a few judo throws on them. Georgie had friends, and she wasn't coming home with split lips and bruised knuckles any more, which made her mother happy.
They made it to fifteen just about the same way. The partisan violence was getting worse all the time, and one or two kids had dropped out and joined a paramilitary, but Georgie was a sensible girl and she knew to stay on her own side. She'd learned how to stay out of fights by now, but she could still win them if it counted.
And then one day she gave her little sister Gabriel ten pence and told her she could go to the wee shop and buy sweets, but she had to come straight back and not go anywhere near the river, and Gabriel didn't come back.
"She's probably just out exploring," Art said when they met up at the corner, and she looked at him like he was a madman.
"She's been gone all night! She got shot or kidnapped or lost, and she's nine, she can't –" Georgie burst into tears. She hadn't cried where anyone could see her since she was four, and the humiliation of it made her sobs worse.
Art wasn't much good at feelings, but he put his arm around her a little awkwardly and patted her shoulder until Georgie could pull herself together. Two old women waiting for the bus were staring at them.
"Should we talk to the gardai?" Art asked.
Georgie lifted her chin and looked both the old women in the eyes until they looked away from her.
"They never do much good," she said. "Couldn't hurt, though."
Georgie's mother spoke to the gardai, and gave them a photo of Gabriel, and the man at the desk tipped his head and said they'd look around, but missing children usually turned up fast, and were they sure she wasn't just with a friend. Georgie's mother telephoned all the relatives she spoke to, which wasn't many, and each of them had a different person to blame. And Georgie felt a rage she had never known she could feel building inside her with each passing minute.
She took the good photo of Gabriel off the mantelpiece, even if it was a year old, and went down to the wee shop, and knocked on every door near it asking if they'd seen a little girl, and when none of them had, she screamed until her voice gave out.
There's some sort of collective forgetting that happens, Sister Michael knows now. Children go missing far too often in Derry, and eventually everyone learns to get over it. Her own mother just gave up; she didn't have a funeral or accept Gabriel was dead, but she didn't keep searching either. Sister Michael seems to be the exception. She remembers each and every child. More than once she's attempted to express sympathy with a parishioner over the loss of their child and gotten a blank look and a vague response. She's learned to set her grief aside. Georgie hadn't.
She and the boys hunted for Gabriel across every inch of Derry, then farther out into the countryside. They found not a sign, and by the time they gave up another child had gone missing. Art retreated to the library for a full forty-eight hours and came back with books and stories and newspaper clippings. Children disappearing not from the random violence of Derry, but in a pattern. Every twenty-seven years.
"Every twenty-seven years for how long?" Tom said, and Art shrugged.
"I can only find a few actual reports, but the old death records show spikes in child death every twenty-seven since the 1500s," Art said. "Ever since the conquest, you know."
"You think it's the English?" Tom mouthed the last word. They were in a Catholic neighborhood, but one could never be too careful in Derry.
"Could be. The reports aren't clear. The Catholics blame the Protestants, the Protestants blame the Catholics. Some folk think it's fairies. There's even a mention or two of a clown, for some reason."
"Fascinating," Georgie said, and Art got the hint and shut up.
"We'll find her, don't worry," Tom said, putting one hand on her shoulder. Georgie let it stay there for a moment, then brushed him away. The girls at school had started gossiping about her and Tom, or her and Art, or even all three of them, and it made her sick to her stomach. The only man she needed was Sidney Poitier.
A red balloon floated by, high above them.
…
Sister Michael opens the manila folder. She kept every shred of documentation she could find. Art left most of his research behind when he left, and his ma let Sister Michael take a box of old papers with her. The folder is full of pages ripped out of library books, newspaper clippings of disappearances, building plans and maps and prayers. Sister Michael flips through them, reading each name until they get blurry.
Fiadh Casey, 11. Aifric O'Flanagan, 8. Pádraic Sloan, 14.
At the very end of the folder is a newspaper clipping that she draws out and lays flat on her desk. She has endless records of the children who died, and this. The one person they could save.
Sarah MacCool beams out from the grainy photo. She was more confused than scared when they found her, and perhaps that was what saved her life. It didn't know what to do with a child who didn't fear It.
Gabriel Michael died, and Sarah MacCool lived. Some days Sister Michael sees Orla MacCool in the hallways and thanks the Lord that at least one child survived, and forgot it all, and got to be happy. Some days she has to recite Hail Marys until her knees ache and the bone-deep anger at the unfairness of it all fades into the background. She's asked God countless times, why her? Why did you have to take Gabriel? and never gotten an answer. He hasn't given her any answers about Tom, or Aoife, or last Sunday's football match either.
The phone rings, and Sister Michael recites an Our Father under her breath before picking it up. It's not Mrs. Joyce, just someone from the county asking about the gas meters. Christ.
She does have to check the gas meters, she supposes, and she can try to think about something else.
…
Georgie kept her eyes up and focused on the pulpit, even as her mind wandered. Daydreaming in church wasn't a good idea, especially when she needed the Divine on her side as badly as now, but it was the same sermon about Job that Father James gave twice a year, and Christ it was boring.
Georgie's fingers twitched at the hem of her green church dress, worrying at the lace trim. It was more than half over, it had to be. Then she could slip out and find Tom and Art and keep searching. Gabriel was somewhere. She had to be.
Something moved in the corner of Georgie's eye and she turned her head half a degree to follow it. The statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, the same one that had been in the church for as long as she could remember, stood in the same place as always. Her hands had moved.
It's a trick of the light, Georgie told herself, and glanced away and back again. Her hands were still up, covering her face, not crossed over her breast as they'd always been.
The statue's hands slowly slid down her face, revealing an expression of agony. Georgie stared as blood began to drip from the statue's hairline.
She ripped the lace right off her dress trying not to scream aloud, and when she looked back, the statue was the same as always. No blood, no pain. Just Our Lady of Sorrows.
…
The bastard gas meters are in a closet in the lowest basement of the school, one Sister Michael can hardly fit into. They're well within normal range, but one is splattered with blood. Sister Michael wipes it off with her handkerchief and rolls her eyes.
"Oh, mysterious blood, how original. I'm terrified."
Our Lady Immaculate's less-than-immaculate basements have no connections to the sewers or the tunnels or anything else under Derry. Sister Michael inspects them annually to make sure of that. Jenny Joyce isn't down here. She's half-expecting a corpse or a clown or at least something to show up, but nothing does.
Clare Devlin is waiting outside her office door. It's odd to see the girl without her pack of friends; no doubt they're off getting into trouble again. When Sister Michael rounds the corner, Clare makes a sound like a small animal having its toe stepped on.
"Sister Michael!"
"Clare," Sister Michael says. She's prepared to leave it at that, but Clare is rightly terrified of her, and wouldn't be outside her office door without a reason. "Is there a reason you're here?"
"I wanted to talk to you!" Clare stutters. Sister Michael diplomatically refrains from pointing out how fecking obvious that is.
"What? Did you get an H2 on an exam again?" Christ, she can't be dealing with students today. She needs to … plan, or fight, or perhaps just get very drunk and hope someone else can deal with It this time.
Clare visibly shrinks.
"I was thinking about becoming a nun."
Sister Michael wouldn't have guessed that in a thousand years.
"Clare," she says carefully. "You're very bright, and you haven't seemed very invested in the fine points of theology. I assumed you'd be going to university, why the change?" Clare looks at her blankly. Obviously she's hiding something.
"It – just seemed – interesting," Clare stutters, and Sister Michael remembers, with perfect clarity, the look of pity on Aoife O'Kelly's face and how kindly she broke Georgie's heart.
"Clare, these days lesbians have better options than that." She's not built for sympathy, but she'll do her best for the poor girl. "You don't have to enter an order just to be around other women."
"What? I'm not becoming a nun because I'm gay!"
Why the hell else would she be? Room and board aren't nearly as attractive as they once were.
"My apologies, I know it's a rather delicate subject." They're still standing in the hallway, Sister Michael realizes rather belatedly. "Why don't we discuss things in my office."
Clare makes another squeaking sound as Sister Michael reaches for the door. The girl startles very easily.
As the door opens, Erin Quinn and the rest of her troublemaking friends scream and try to hide behind her desk. Orla MacCool doesn't bother, just standing in the open. The girl is a bit touched, but once in a while she's smart.
"Really, girls?"
Erin, Michelle, and James slowly stand up, looking chagrined. Sister Michael sighs. What the hell possesses these girls to keep breaking into her office?
"Clare, did you fucking rat us out?" Michelle snaps.
Clare makes a sound like a dog whistle and tries to sneak back into the hallway. When Sister Michael glares at her she obediently scuttles into the office.
Sister Michael scans the room, assessing the extent of the damage before she decides on their punishments. Nothing's broken, nothing's missing. Some of her papers are out of order. And her manila folder full of demonology and records of murdered children is open, right there on her fecking desk, exactly where she left it.
"Girls, breaking into my office is unacceptable," Sister Michael says. She's spent twenty years cultivating a truly terrifying voice, and it pays off.
"But Jenny Joyce is –"
"Even if you think you have a good reason," Sister Michael cuts her off. Christ, Erin must think her gang are the Famous Five or summat. She's investigating, and if she's not careful she'll get herself killed. "You girls are far too young to be worrying about Jenny Joyce." Erin just looks more determined, and Sister Michael gets the sense that discouraging her any further will just backfire.
"Detention for a week for all of you. Yes, even you, Clare. Now get out."
The door shuts behind them, and Sister Michael sinks into her chair and puts her head in her hands. Her newspaper clipping about Sarah MacCool is missing.
Christ, those girls are young. They're older than Sister Michael and her friends were, which felt plenty old back then, but they're children. And they're foolish and overconfident and may well die meddling in things they don't understand.
Setting notes:
It is so immensely frustrating to me that her full canonical name is George Michael. I feel like I'm writing Wham RPF when I'm going for tragic flashback and it's terrible. Calling her younger self Georgie started out as a silly one-line reference to IT and now I've resorted to it because the alternatives are worse.
HM Prison Maghaberry is one of the three prisons in Northern Ireland. It's near Belfast, across the country from Derry, and from the little research I did doesn't look very pleasant. Armagh's a town I picked at random, which is also fairly far from Derry (google maps says ninety minutes by car or four hours by train).
"The Conquest" is the Tudor conquest of Ireland, which took place from 1536 to 1603. England had taken over significant portions of Ireland in the twelfth century, but lost most of it again in the fourteenth century. After the conquest the old Irish clans were dissolved and their land was divided among English nobles. A large English population began settling in the North, primarily in what is now Northern Ireland.
Sidney Poitier was a Bahamian-American actor who was incredibly famous in the 60's, and was the first Black actor to win an Academy Award. His three most popular films (To Sir, With Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) were all released in 1967 and would have been fresh in people's minds in 1969 when this fic is set. He was also gorgeous; Sister Michael has good taste.
The Famous Five is a children's book series by Enid Blyton. The titular Famous Five are a group of children who go on elaborate adventures, often revolving around discovering criminal plots. They're roughly the British equivalent of Nancy Drew, and have been immensely popular since their publication in the forties and fifties. Fun fact: one of the Famous Five is a girl named George. Sister Michael definitely got compared to her as a child and hated it.