Saint Tibb's Eve
Short Fiction - Supernatural/Historical
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Cattail toyed with the brim of the gray tweed newsboy cap sitting on his lap and watched as the little rinky-dink island neighborhoods and farms slipped past the window of the motorcar. There was a black leather case on the seat beside him; it belonged to the driver, he guessed. The driver himself, some big fellow the boss had hired called Dunn, hadn’t said a word to them since they left the ferry dock, and in the passenger’s seat Cattail’s partner—Trio—was singing in his raspy tenor:
“Come away with me Lucille…in my merry Oldsmobile…”
The sun was setting off to their left somewhere through the trees, dipping like a sinker into the sea, and even in his warmest wool coat Cattail shivered. In his pocket was a note with coordinates and in his memory was the blue gaze of his boss, the words, “You gotta bring it back, Cattail, or we’re out thousands. Understand?”
“On the road of life we’ll fly…automobubbling you and I…”
Cattail finally sighed. “Alright, Caruso. Pack it in.”
Trio stopped, turned in his seat. “Thought a little song would do us good, since Lefty over here doesn’t have much to say.”
“Where I come from,” Dunn said, local-slow, “wise silence is better than a fool’s noise. Maybe that ain’t so in Seattle. You big city types all seem to like to talk more than you listen.”
“And you island types all seem to have hay in your ears or something.” Trio pulled a cigarette out of the case in his coat pocket, the light of a match glowing on the underbrim of his brown derby. “Where’s this place we’re going, anyway? Is it far?”
“Not too far. Just up here a mile or so and across a bridge. Orchard Island.”
“Sounds charming,” Trio said, doubtfully.
“Think so?” Dunn smiled, then, but it had no friendliness or humor in it. “I s’pose it is, in the right light.”
“And you know for sure where the stuff washed up?” Cattail asked.
“I know the place,” Dunn replied. “The stuff is your job. You just leave the driving to me.”
They reached the end of what seemed an interminable length of road and turned right onto the bridge, a long and rickety thing over a churning strait in the low light of the winter sunset, and Cattail found himself bracing for the whole thing to snap and send them tumbling down and down into the chasm.
But it didn’t, and soon enough they passed a sign reading ORCHARD ISLAND - NO TRESPASSING.
“No trespassing, huh?” Trio said. “What counts as trespassing?”
“We count,” Dunn said. “We shouldn’t meet up with any locals. But if we do, you let me do the talking, or it’s all of our heads. Got it?”
“No argument there, Dunn,” Trio replied, but Cattail just silently watched the trees crowd out the last of the sun as they drove on down a dirt stretch. Cattail had been a city boy his whole life, used to the noise and the bustle and the big buildings and the streetcars. These old, deep country places made him nervous, the only light from the motorcar’s headlamps and not a soul or a house in sight. Just trees, watchful trees, and dripping moss and reaching ferns.
“Trio,” Cattail said, quietly, “got a swig?”
Trio wordlessly pulled his flask out of his pocket, took a sip himself, and then passed it to Cattail. It was a small, silver-plated thing with CWH stamped on it. Trio’s initials, he figured, but Cattail had no idea what they stood for. He took a drink—that good Harwood’s whiskey from the boys in Vancouver—and screwed the cap back on, but before he could pass the flask back to Trio the motorcar pulled off of the dirt road onto an even smaller one, the wheels struggling over stones and rutted dirt and overgrown grass.
Minutes later, the area ahead of them opened out and Cattail suddenly realized that he was looking at the saltwater, and Whidbey Island in the distance, just as the light started to truly fade behind them, just a hazy winter glimmer on the waves.
“Okay,” said Dunn. “Out we get.”
Cattail tucked the flask in his pocket, slipped his newsboy cap on, and they all stepped out of the motorcar. The cold winter maritime wind hit them first, and Trio had to grab his derby to keep it from flying off. They trekked down the stunted grassy meadow to a short beach, just enough light to see by.
Cattail looked around for the stuff, for any sign of it. Crates, barrels, boxes, even broken bottles. The boss had said that the ship had run aground on the rocks just off this spit, and according to a witness, the stuff should be right here.
But the further down the beach Cattail went, the more apparent it became: there was no stuff. No sign of anything.
“Where is it?” Trio asked, somewhere behind him, giving voice to his own thoughts. “S’posed to be here, right?”
“Yep.” Cattail shrugged, turned. “Hey, Dunn, are you—”
Blam! The beach erupted. Cattail had swiveled just in time to see the glint of the revolver out of the corner of his eye, as Dunn fired three times into Trio’s back and he crumpled to the ground and lay still, the brown derby rolling lonely down the beach.
Then, Dunn turned the gun on Cattail.
Cattail couldn’t think, couldn’t even make a sound, just started running. Running as fast and as far as he could into the failing light.
Toward what? Toward nothing, away from the gun. Just away.
A bullet screamed past his ear. Another hit the ground, sending a spray of beach pebbles against his calves. A third one found its mark, bit his back, to the right of his spine and up toward his shoulder. No wool coat thick enough to protect him from that. He couldn’t even cry out, just ran and ran until he realized with a renewed sense of panic that he was in the trees, now. In the trees, and completely turned around. No sign of the road. No sign of the motorcar. The water somewhere behind him, and his shoulder throbbing and throbbing.
Cattail didn’t dare stop, but he slowed down to listen for the pursuing sounds of Dunn, for the crack of gunshots in the dark. There was nothing, just the wind telling tales to the treetops and the eerie silence of the country night.
Double-crossed.
It was the only thing in Cattail’s mind besides the pain. Double-crossed. But why, and by who? Did Dunn have his own reasons? Did this island have a rum-running faction no one knew about? Or…
His boss’s blue gaze, his insistence.
“You gotta bring it back, Cattail, or we’re out thousands. Understand?”
You stupid bastard, he thought. Just an errand-boy, at the end of the day. Just a fall guy.
He thought suddenly of Trio, lying back there in a pool of his own blood on the beach. Poor old Trio, the sad son a bitch. Shot in the back, and that was all. Gone, in a moment. Cattail hadn’t been at this business long, and he’d seen a few things already he could never unsee. But not that, yet. Not the switch from life to death. And certainly not in someone he had considered a friend. He was too confused by it to be sad.
Cattail wandered through the thick trees, stumbling over roots and reaching underbrush, and for the first time all night he allowed himself to think about Ruthie, about her not knowing, about her wondering tomorrow morning why he wouldn’t come to call.
He was deep in her questioning gaze, the pain turning the visions real, when he heard the first whisper. It rippled across his back like a breeze, wordless and fond.
Cattail paused, turned. There was nothing but the dark lines of the trees and the flutter of fir and leaf around him, the crunch of underbrush below his feet. And the pain, the ever-present pain.
The second whisper swept past his ear like an old hymn, and there were words in it, “Take my hand…”
“Hello?” Cattail said, just loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to attract attention from Dunn, should he be nearby.
“Come with us…” the whisper said. “Come here, come this way…”
That was when he saw the shapes, in the dark. Round shapes bobbing between the trees, a crowd of them. Faces. Glistening faces with wide, wondering eyes. Not human, not human! How was it possible? And an inhale beside his ear, a soft sound like a woman’s pleasure, a cooing.
“Come here…take my hand…”
Cattail felt tears spring into his eyes, though he hardly knew why. The pain in his back was reaching for his arm, climbing into his neck, and he was consumed with the desire to follow the whispers, to let them take him away, away…to where? He did not know.
He thought of Ruthie. She wouldn’t know. She wouldn’t understand.
“She will forget,” said the voice, reading his thoughts. “Come away. Come with us. Leave her to better fates.”
He couldn’t argue. Ruthie was certainly better off without him, this was true. The glistening faces swam closer, slowly, dipping as though at the mercy of the breeze, and the eyes were deep pools of darkness, toothless mouths to swallow him whole.
His hands were numb. His feet were frozen. He fell to his knees.
And then, just as he reached out to let them take him, to leave this world behind…a scream—distant, but not far—split the night air, a long shrilling like a bird, upturned to greet the stars.
The faces froze, hissed, trembled.
And then, another shout joined the first. A man’s voice. And then another. Still more, in the distance. Yips and barks and cries, and the banging of pots and pans, and the howling of dogs. A great chaos of noise stretching from horizon to horizon, drowning out the whispers.
The faces fled, then, in a confusion, leaving Cattail all alone.
But not quite alone. The underbrush shivered with the passage of feet, and Cattail looked up to see a lantern, swinging in the hand of the oldest man he had ever seen.
The old man was dressed all in green linen and leaning on a curled old wooden cane. He had a crown of white hair and a white beard, like frost, like a tumble of frost, and his eyes were odd in the light of the lantern. Fierce.
“Now, then,” said the old man, upon discovering Cattail on his knees. “You are certainly not supposed to be here.”
His voice was strange, like no accent Cattail had ever heard, but there was a note of regality in it. Authority. Cattail reached up and pulled off his cap, out of respect. In the distance, the shouts and howls carried on, eerie like a choir of phantoms.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and the memory of the whispers and the throbbing of his wound made him feel seasick. “I’m very sorry, sir. I’m lost. I’m so lost.”
The old man stepped forward and lifted the lantern to regard Cattail closer. “Lost, tonight of all nights. You almost deserve it, I shouldn’t wonder. I can smell the bloodshed on you. The lies. The treachery.”
“Please,” Cattail said, “there was a bridge. I remember the bridge. If you could…please show me the bridge, I’ll go back to where I came from. Back to my…back home.”
The old man continued to stare at Cattail for a long stretch of minutes as the cries echoed out through the trees. Then, after a fashion, he seemed to make up his mind, and he nodded.
“Keep up,” he said. “I’ll take you to your bridge.”
*******
The old man was remarkably sprightly for his advanced age, and it was more challenging than Cattail expected to keep up with him. They walked through the forest for several minutes before Cattail could take it no longer.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but…what’s all the shouting for?”
The old man nodded. “As your luck would have it, tonight is the howling. On the night of January the seventeenth every year, the orchardists come out to the Orchard and pour libations of cider on the roots, tie bread to the branches, and shout to frighten the devils and spirits of winter’s darkest days away. Wassail, wassail! Bare branches in long rows of misty shadows are a perfect hiding place for haunted things, you know.”
Cattail thought of the glistening faces in the dark, the whispers, and he shuddered. “What do the devils and spirits do?”
The old man turned. “I suspect you know better than most.”
Cattail swallowed. But the old man did not elaborate. He carried on walking, and Cattail followed after.
Soon enough they stepped out from the line of the woods, and Cattail had to pause to take in what he was seeing.
The old man had mentioned an orchard, and Cattail suddenly understood. Long rows of ancient apple trees, winter-bare and gnarled with time, stretched out and away from him seemingly for miles, disappearing into the dark in either direction. He had the sense of the orchard as being vast in scope, but could not see its far limits, especially in the dark. There was movement among the apple trees: people, passing to and fro between them, kneeling at the trunks to pour their cider at the roots, stepping up on stools to tie bread to the branches, just as the old man had said.
The shouting and screaming was louder, here, rippling down through the rows of trees, waves and waves of sound. And the dogs he had heard were in fact great beastly hounds, black and gray in their shaggy winter coats, patrolling the Orchard with sharp eyes and pausing to lend their voices to the rest.
The old man waved impatiently with his walking-stick. “Come along,” he said. “Nothing to gawp at. You have a bridge to reach.”
Cattail followed as the old man walked assuredly down the line of the apple trees. The hounds passed on silent feet, their eyes glinting at Cattail in the dark, but when they saw the old man they continued on their way without a sound.
The old man did not slow until they reached the edge of the Orchard. Ahead, Cattail could see a dirt road. But the old man stopped instead at the largest apple tree that Cattail had ever seen, a giant, thick-trunked and bent with time and frosted with lichens. The old man stood beside the tree and beckoned Cattail over.
“Now, then,” he said. “It’s time to offer what you carry. Be free of it.”
Cattail paused, confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
“She doesn’t know, does she?” the old man said, those strange eyes glimmering in the flickering lantern light. “Your lady, the girl with the sweet smile. She doesn’t know what you do. You haven't told her.”
How could he know that?
Cattail shook his head, slowly. The blood was seeping down to the waistband of his trousers, cold under his coat.
“No. No, she…she thinks I work in shipping. She doesn’t know. But it’s for her. All of it. Once I make the money, I can marry her. Buy the house we’ve been talking about, away from the city.”
Cattail’s voice sounded very small before the big tree and the strange old man. That had been a dream, and it was all over. Double-crossed. Good as dead. What was he going to do?
“Please, sir, I should never have come here,” Cattail said. “I know that. But…I don’t want to break her heart. If I disappear and she never knows why…”
Trio, with three bullets in his back. Brown derby. Dunn the hired gun. What is it all for?
The old man said, “Offer what you carry. Just like we all do.”
Without really knowing why, Cattail reached into his coat pocket, the silver flask cold against his fingers. He pulled it out, turned it over in his fingers. CWH, etched into the silver, surviving long after its owner was gone. He wished he had asked Trio what it stood for. He wished a lot of things.
He unscrewed the cap, took a sip, the good Harwood’s sliding down his throat and numbing the pain, if only for a moment. Then, he turned the flask upside-down and poured it out at the base of the tree, the way he had seen the orchardists do with their cider. When it was empty, he tucked the flask up into the branches, nestling it into a crook of the old tree where it sat, glinting embers in the light from the old man’s lantern.
For the first time, the old man smiled up at Cattail.
“Just as you offer, you will receive,” he said, softly. “Be sure of that, son. Now, to the bridge, and home.”
*******
The rest of the walk down the dirt road took place in thoughtful silence, and Cattail felt somehow free in a way he never had, before. The country darkness felt more like a comfort, now, the eerie cries of the orchardists like a hymn, chasing the worst of the whispers from his own mind, his very soul.
But the unnatural peace was shattered when they rounded a corner into the entrance of the bridge, and Cattail’s heart seized in his chest: Dunn was there, only yards away, the motorcar parked sideways to block the bridge entrance, the revolver pointed straight at them both.
“Don’t move,” Dunn called. “I won’t miss a second time, boy. Not at this range.”
The old man lifted his lantern, but Cattail stepped up, hands raised. “I’m out, Dunn. I’m going home. You’ll never see me on this island again.”
“I won’t, that’s true. I’ve got good money to make sure that’s true. It's a tough racket.” Dunn gestured with the revolver. “Old man, step away. I’ve got no beef with you.”
The old man’s strange eyes took in the scene with calm indifference. “Those who bring bloodshed to this place often see it repaid, stranger. You could turn now, if you choose.”
“Step away,” said Dunn, cocking the revolver. “I don’t want to wing you, old man, but I will if I have to. Makes no difference to me. Go on, back where you came from.”
But no sooner had the words left Dunn’s lips than his eyes widened and his mouth fell slack, the gun sliding an arc down toward the old beams of the creaking bridge.
Cattail looked around him, where the shadows had blurred and coalesced into shapes.
Hounds. Hounds, with glinting eyes and shaggy coats and sharp teeth. Hounds, emerging from the trees on soft feet, the color of night. Dozens of them.
Mad with fear, forgetting himself, forgetting the motorcar, forgetting the gun, Dunn made his final mistake.
He ran.
Dunn disappeared into the trees, pursued by the hounds.
He was seen no more, not by anyone willing to speak of it.
The old man motioned to the motorcar. “Just as you offer, you will receive,” he said, eyes glinting. “I think it’s past time for you to go home to your lady.”
Cattail took off his cap, held it to his heart. “Thank you, sir. For…well, everything.”
“Away with you, now,” the old man said.
So Cattail limped down the bridge to the motorcar. Behind him, he heard the old man call:
“Don’t come back until Saint Tibb’s Eve, you hear?”
But when Cattail turned to ask when that might be, the old man was gone. Vanished like a breeze, the lantern glowing at the bridge entrance like a lighthouse in a dark sea.
With nothing else to do and no answers for his questions, Cattail climbed into the motorcar, pleased to find the key still inside. As he reached to crank the engine, he paused. There, on the seat, was the black leather case. Dunn’s black leather case.
Curiously, he pulled it open, and stared in shock.
Money. The blood money, for killing him and Trio. It had to be hundreds of dollars. Maybe even thousands.
Enough to start something new. Enough to at least try.
Just as you offer, you will receive.
Cattail cranked the engine, backed the motorcar up, and drove off into the night, the eerie shouts of the orchardists ringing in his ears, the howling of hounds like a psalm to the stars.
END
Author’s Note:
This story is based on real-life rituals and related folktales from the Somerset region of the UK, in which the apple trees were historically “wassailed” every January and given offerings of cider and toast to ensure a fruitful harvest.
Whoa.
And a side note: Every time I saw "stuff" I read "Suff."
I loved the "Just as you offer, you will receive" theme in this. Have we encountered whoever is connected with CWH before? That feels familiar somehow but I don't remember where and it's bothering me.