The Wail of the Wind

Read carefully. I know how easy it is to embellish and exaggerate accounts of stressful situations but this is the truth. Word for word. This January, bereft of both love and a job, I drove west. I came to a place they call Connemara. It was wild, wet and bleak. After spending one night in my car I looked for somewhere with a bed to stay. Half an hour of searching brought me to a small house. It was remote, intact and grey, miles from anywhere, except the fuming Atlantic. I was tempted to break in but didn’t. I was in enough trouble. A mile down the battered road was a small farm so I stopped and inquired there as to who owned the cottage by the sea. Turned out it belonged to the farmer himself. He was haughty at first but he was a kindly man despite my accent and sudden arrival. I asked about the cottage and he said I could stay in it for as long as I liked. He charged me less than half the seasonal rate for a week’s stay. More than enough time to decide what to do with my life. He even gave me a cup of tea, some bread and a few eggs.
“Be careful,” he said as I set off.

I threw my bag on the bedroom floor. The bed sheets were ancient and cold. Down a narrow hall was a bare kitchen on one side followed by the front door of faded green. There was also another empty bedroom and a small sitting room with an armchair and fireplace. In time I got the fire going, I brought in the car radio and managed to get it going as well. For dinner I had toast, eggs and some ham by the fire. Peace and quiet! I scrawled a rubbish poem in my notebook while I dozed. The fire burnt low. I locked the door and peered out the front window for a long time, listening to the constant beat of the waves. I went to bed.

The house shuddered slowly. A gushing sound rose gradually in volume. There was a thud and the wind howled through the hall. Had the front door come loose? My bedroom door then reverberated. Yes it must have. Dam. I flung off the sheets and got out of bed. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, now I had to get up to sort this out. The bedroom door I near torn off its flimsy hinges! The gale almost knocked me off my feet when I entered the hall! I leaned against the wall and trudged through the dark. The front door was blown open – as I had thought! Aw God! Beyond it was the faintest of lights. From the Moon probably. I reached the door and pushed it. The wind pushed it back. I pushed it harder. The latch clicked. I grabbed a log from beside the fire and stuck it by the front door. That should keep it in place. I went back to sleep.

Above the hall way was a trapdoor. After breakfast I took a chair from the kitchen and stood on it. I pushed the trapdoor away and pulled myself up into the attic. Nothing was up there except for a tin box; like one of those fancy biscuit tins you get at Christmas. But this one wasn’t decorated and it had no biscuits in it. I took it down and set the plain tin on the kitchen table. It was quite hard to open it because the rim of the lid was rusted shut. Inside was a gun! It was an old revolver, like a soldier’s. I’d never held a gun before so I gingerly lifted it from the tin and set it down carefully. Wait a minute. There was more!

An old crucifix. Parts of Jesus’ metal body had crumbled off. Interesting. More interesting was the last item in the box – an antique silver comb. The type of comb a woman would use. It must be of some age, older than the gun and the cross. I set each of them back in the tin box and put it under my bed. I’d take them home and sell them. The farmer needn’t know. He already had money. Probably.

I went out for a walk along the windy strand. It got dark earlier and started to rain so I ran back to the cottage and followed the same routine as my first night’s stay, dinner, fire, bed. Gaelic music played on the radio. Peace and quiet!

Outside a storm rushed in from the ocean. There was an intense scraping sound coming down the hall. Then a Boom boom boom. God! The wind wanted in through the front door again. It was worse than last night. I waited, half asleep, for it to crash open again. But it didn’t. The wind died down and I fell asleep.

The morning was very calm. I had bacon and eggs for breakfast, toasted over the fire. Tasty! Later I planned to go out and buy more food.

“Any trouble up there?” asked the farmer.
“No, no trouble, all’s grand thanks,” I answered.
“You’re okay for food?”
“Wouldn’t mind more bacon if you’ve any.”
“Just watch yourself up there. The wind can be wild.”
“I’ll be grand thanks, the place is holding up well.”

I hadn’t noticed the marks on the front door. Five roughly parallel lines cut into the wood. Funny, how I hadn’t seen them when I arrived the day before yesterday. They looked fresh enough. I unlocked the door and went in and set my shopping on the kitchen table. That afternoon I went for a walk on the beach again but this time I went in the opposite direction. There was no one about. Not even a sea bird. The rain began on queue and an icy wind arrived. I ran home. Again, dinner, fire radio etc. I’d developed a routine!

I dozed. God how the wind howled! It was like a singing wolf, raising and lowering its voice. I imagined a wind swept tree to be conducting a wolf-choir in the moon-light. No, it wasn’t a wolf. More like a woman. She’s an echoing soprano. In fact she’s right outside. I wonder if she’s as lonely as me.

“Come on in, baby. Yeah, come in and get into bed with me and…”

Boom boom. Not again. That bloody front door! A rough, elongated scratching. Boom boom boom. The wind squeaked through every chink in the house. I need to sleep! No wonder no one lives here in this dump! I closed my eyes tightly.

Christ save us! How the hell? More marks on the front door! How did they get there? Wait. There was a tree nearby. I suppose the branches were blown against the door during the night and that’s what caused it. But was the tree close enough? I’ll think about it later, I’m going for a walk.

Those scratches on the door have filled my head all day. What a place this is!

My senses have got used to this environment. I know what to listen for, what to see. Every night there was the constant wind! I lay in bed waiting. Expecting. It came suddenly, sometime in the dark between midnight and the dawn. Knock knock knock. My fingers seized the bed sheets like the frenzied talons of an eagle would seize its prey. Then a deep echoing howl, of lamentation, of warning, of forebodeance. I near choked. It wasn’t the wind. That was an unearthly woman’s voice or I else I am insane! I sat up rigid in the bed but I did not flee - how could I escape it in the storm? Like nails traversing a black board it scratched at my front door. Christ help me! I leapt head first from the bed and reached beneath it for the tin box. I dug my nails onto the lid and pulled it of. I fumbled for the cross and held it to my chest. As if sensible to my movements and the noise I’d made within, the mournful wail rose in defiant anger. I kissed the cross and yearned for the dawn.

Nothing happened. The howling continued intermittently. Then with the first light of the day it died away. I finally exhaled. I got dressed in a heartbeat. I was leaving this place. I was leaving today!

I flung my clothes into my bag along with the tin. I thrust a mouthful of lukewarm bread between my lips. I raced outside without locking the door, leapt to the car, slipped and fell into the snow. Snow! The country was consumed in white! Holy mother of God! Where had it come from? I don’t care I’m leaving. I got in the car. The engine began hesitantly. Typical! It was an excruciating trial getting up that narrow unpaved track! And it was a trial the car failed. It was lodged in the snow. The farmer would have a tractor! I put my rucksack on my shoulders, pushed open the door and walked into a blizzard. His farm was somewhere amidst this frigid white hell. I trudged in the direction I guessed it to be. The passage of time became a conjecture. Every way I went I could see nothing and the more I pressed on the more the wind blew. Forget it. I chanced back upon my frozen car, now covered under centimetres of snow. Through the swell I glimpsed the cottage. It seemed untouched by the storm. It was waiting for me. Bearing no particular emotion I went back to it. By now, so numb with cold, I’d forgotten why I’d even left it. I didn’t care. It was shelter. I took off my snow-covered coat and clothes then somehow got the fire started. And you know what? I’m crazy. I’m crazy to think whatever it was, was after me. The wail of the wind I’d misconstrued as a ghostly yell. And that tree’s coarse branches had damaged the door. ‘Go out and see for yourself’, I thought. ‘You’ll see last nights damage’. I opened the door and stepped outside. It had stopped snowing but still there blew a gale. It was too dark to go out and try again. Now, those marks! See? Scratches running here and there across the door…

No tree did this! O’ Lord Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!

I raced inside and slammed the door! It must have come to the cottage on each night of my stay. This would be my fifth night and I did not doubt it would come again. I did not even think why it came to the door. Let it come! Who cares?

I sat on the bed, eyes fixed on the front door down the hall. Tap tap tap. Knock knock knock. A cry of entreaty, as if it were the voice of the wind itself, came from beyond. A faint light too. I tried to aim the gun but my unsteady hand prevented this. I set it down on the bed.

Boom boom boom boom.

Each thud seemed to press a mighty weight down on my chest. Then my mind, despite its battle with recent stresses, managed to suddenly recall an old lore:

To greet or beckon a spirit’s kin
is to invite the Devil to come in

And my words from two nights before came back to me with a jolt.

Come on in, baby.

Followed by,

Come in, get into bed with me and….

I’d said that! Muttered it rather. But even that had been enough!

I jumped up and gently closed the bedroom door. I had wanted to slam it but it would hear me! How pathetic. It already knew I was in here hiding! My frigid fears and hot self-admonition at having entreated this thing welled within my throbbing heart. I could feel the chill through the thin door yet it did not relieve my pulsating temper. But this barrier could not block out the wails, the moans or the echoing disembodied, marrow-chilling shrills of the thing outside. I reached for the gun but instead my hand came back clutching the silver comb. The front door smashed open and a roar of icy rage, louder than ever before, gushed into the house like the waters of a bursting dam. A dismal light flowed down the hall and lit the perimeter of the darkened bedroom door. And then a horrific realisation came crashing into me as I held the antique brush before my frantic eyes. Of how spirits, like the one now setting foot inside, coveted such things! It didn’t want me. It wanted the comb! It wanted its comb; the same comb which decades before had been left by some idiotic soul in a biscuit tin! God alone knows why.

The wailing grew and grew. I yelled in answer and wretched open the door with half-shut eyes and flung away the comb with all my might! Vividly, I recall only the noise, the streams of light cast like wisps of hair and torn garments and, what I pray is my own mind’s creation, a long grey face of wrinkled torture with empty shells for eyes.

“Take it!” I shouted.

I shut the door and heaved my back against it. I grabbed the gun and held it close. It was now my crucifix. The silence did not last long. Its cries began again and now, to my ears, they sounded thoughtful as if it was scrutinising the item now in its possession. I pictured it skeletally fingering the comb. I sat down slowly on the bed and raised the gun to the door. The wailing died down. But I still felt its icy presence and its echoing cries linger in my head. I opened this, my notebook, and began to write. In utter silence, as if I was whispering this tale to you, I’ve scrawled the above and have come to this point.

I’ve written this story from the perspective of a survivor. I can say now with no shame that I have misled you in this regard. You see my fear has made me mingle by past and present tenses in an effort to assuage this terror. A terror that lurks, waits and watches not ten paces from me. For I am still in the house. It is still in the house. It has its comb but is still here. And it is coming down the hall. It is coming for me….

© Ciaran McVeigh 2010