The memory of the night my grandmother passed away is perhaps the most clear of my entire childhood.
“Get in the car, Michael,” my father had said while I sat on the floor, playing with my toys, “we’re going to see your grandmother.”
“Why?” I asked him, “Is grandmother making us tea and biscuits?” A grandmother’s tea and biscuits are always the best.
“No,” my father said, his eyes dark and clouded, “she’s sick, Michael. Very sick. We have to go see her right now.”
“Should I bring my pajamas?” I asked. “I could sleep over again. That would make her feel better.”
My father clenched his fist and tried to say something, but instead his mouth snapped shut as he bored into me with broken eyes. They weren’t usually so strange and sad. I didn’t understand why he would be. We’d visited grandmother a good many times before when she was sick. I was sure those visits helped her get better.
“Let him bring his pajamas,” I heard mother say. She came up behind my father and gently rested a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes were also strange and sad, but not as hard as father’s.
“Alright,” father said softly. “But we have to go right now.”
Mother got my Postman Pat pajamas while father started the car. When I got into the booster seat, she buckled me in. Her hands felt cold. I noticed her eyes were somewhat damp. When I turned to my father, his were practically soaked. It was so hard to see them like this.
“Mum, dad,” I said, “why are you crying? Grandmother will be alright.”
Both were silent for a few moments. My mother’s hand rested on dad’s, and she gently began to rub it soothingly, like she did for me when I cut myself.
“Not this time, Michael,” father sighed, “not this time.”
The drive was quiet and still. I didn’t say anything, just held my pajamas in my lap. My parents said nothing the whole way, aside from mother telling father which way he should go. He would only answer her with an ‘I know’ or a ‘thank you.’
Grandmother’s house was way out in the country. It was a big, two story house, with a low stone wall encompassing it, the driveway and the yard. Her gate was rusted at the joints and squeaked whenever it was opened. Tonight, we parked next to the wall. Father practically ran out of the car while mother collected me. I watched as he pushed the gate open and then was inside the house. Mother closed the gate behind her carefully, but our pace was just as quick and tense.
Inside, some of grandmother’s friends and neighbors were already present. Like me and her son, she was an only child. People like Mr O’Brian, the local pig farmer, kept her company, as did that McCune woman. I never liked her much and now that I look back, I can’t understand why. She was so eager to help out during the whole ordeal. Made me some lovely sandwiches.
I heard people muttering about when the doctor would be here or how far Father Riley was. It was discomforting to hear them whispering to each other and giving me a look of sympathy whenever I asked them what was wrong. They never answered, though, just said I needed to go see grandmother.
When mother finally led me upstairs, father was clutching on grandmother’s hand tightly, as if he thought he could do so forever. Her arm was softly caressing his back, as she hummed softly.
When grandmother saw me enter, she smiled and patted her son’s back a few times before lightly kissing his cheek.
“I’d like some time alone with Michael,” she said softly. “One last talk with him. Just the two of us.”
Father sniffed hard as he stood up, his every breath as unstable as a crooked wall. Without a word, he and mother left the room, gently closing the bedroom door behind them. And so now I was left alone with my dear grandmother.
“Oh, Michael,” she said, extending her thin, wrinkled arms to me, “come here, my dear boy.”
She didn’t look anything like herself. However, seeing the old, weak husk of a woman who, just months before, had been able to carry me on her shoulders without much trouble, was not particularly upsetting. She still had those same eyes full of deep, sincere love I have grown to find safety in.
I could hear my father crying downstairs, even through the closed oak door. It wafted up to the room and penetrated into me. The safety of my grandmother’s eyes weren’t a reassurance anymore.
Her fingertips gently traced my cheeks as she smiled, keeping her lips pressed together. Her blonde hair descended down from her scalp in flowing curls, but I could see the clumps where it was falling out.
“Oh Michael,” she sighed, “dear boy. You know the old stories we shared together? Of the púca and fear dearg? How the leprechauns play the fiddle as the little people dance?”
I nodded and smiled with her. Those were lovely stories. Stories of nature, old and mysterious, of the creatures which lived there and how we must be wary of them.
“You know where I keep the book containing those tales? Go get it - there is one Aoi Sí I must tell you about before I go.”
I didn’t like how grandmother said she would go. It sounded like we would never see each other again. Not even the passage of time and maturity has diminished how much I dislike them. But I was a good boy who did as I was told and got the book.
Grandmother’s book was an old, dusty thing, bound by faded leather and decorated with intricate spirals. It was on a bookshelf which must be the same age, and thankfully just in reach for a child my age.
It was a heavy book, and my small body struggled to hold it as I waddled back over to her. She hurried me along, all the while glancing outside the window into the night. Licking her dry lips with a dreadful anticipation, her eyes were searching for something. More than once she cocked her head to the side and listened before breathing a sigh of relief.
I set the book down on her bed, and grandmother opened it quickly, brushing through the pages filled with words I couldn’t read but beautiful pictures of small men in wonderful clothes that I loved to trace over with pencil and paper. My grandmother had read this book to me many nights already, but in the short time we had together never could read me the whole thing. That undertaking I would perform on my own.
On this night, she hurriedly flipped through the pages until she came to one in particular. My eyes were drawn immediately to the picture of a large black horse rearing on its back legs with horrible, furious eyes that gleamed with an ethereal power I could feel through even this illustration. There was a rider on its back, dressed in clothes of the same shade. Yet this rider had no head upon his shoulders, but instead held the rotted and grinning thing in his hand, the other holding a whip of bones. The head reminded me of moldy cheese. I shivered at the sight of it, gazing into unnaturally large eyes that shone with a sickly light. The grin plastered across it stretched from one ear to the other, exposing yellow, jagged teeth while the skin hung down off it in tatters.
“Michael,” grandmother said softly to me, “in this fine country of ours, there is no creature more terrible than the Dullahan. The black rider comes for those like me, Michael.”
“You mean...old people?” I asked, staring up at her with a quizzical expression. She laughed softly.
“Aye, sometimes, Michael, he comes for the elderly. But not all the time.”
“Why is he coming for you?” I asked, becoming distressed. “Is he going to take you away, grandmother? He can’t! I won’t let him.”
She smiled warmly at me, stroking my cheek with her knuckles. “Ah, Michael, there’s nothing you can do to stop him. Unless,” and here she chuckled softly, without a hint of malice or mockery but only forlorn longing and affection, “you have some gold. He’s terrified of the stuff.”
I blinked, and shook my head sadly. “What’ll he do to you, grandmother? Will he hurt you?”
“It’s alright Michael,” she said again, patting my head, “I don’t think he will.”
“What will happen?”
She opened her mouth and this time I saw how many of her teeth, those lovely white teeth of hers, now were slightly brown with black stuff building between them. “He shall call my name, my love,” she said sweetly, “and I shall go home to heaven, to be with your grandfather. You don’t remember him now; he went there before you were born.”
I knew a enough about heaven to understand. Sniffling, I rubbed my nose on my sleeve. “Use a tissue, Michael, use a tissue,” she said gently, “you’ll get your lovely shirt all dirty.”
“I don’t want you to go to heaven,” I said with water streaming down my cheeks, “I want you to stay here and read me more stories.”
“Oh, Michael, don’t cry,” she said as she took my hand, “we all have to go one day. Tell you what, when it’s your time, I’ll make sure everything is perfect for you, and we can read so many stories together. Would you like that?”
I nodded, and then she wrapped her thin arms around me, holding my body close to hers. A knock on the door interrupted us. “That’ll be the doctor,” grandmother sighed, “you’ll have to now. But Michael, listen closely. Don’t go outside tonight, and if you have to, the moment you hear the pounding of hooves and a horse screaming, I want you to lay face down, close your eyes and cover your ears. Don’t open them no matter what, otherwise, you’ll go blind, and we can’t have that now, can we?”
I shook my head as the door opened. The doctor, a tall, thin man in a white coat was accompanied by the parish priest, Father Riley. The two men ushered me out of the room. As I saw the door swing back its hinges, my grandmother held my gaze one last time, her last farewell. But just before she was blocked from my sight, I saw her expression change as she seemed to recall something and then there was a great panic in her eyes as the doctor inserted a needle into her arm. Then she was gone.
I never will know what she wanted to tell me. Yet that doesn’t stop me asking that question every time I think of her. Our last night together will always remain unfinished to me.
It was against my weak protestations that my parents sent me to the car while they stayed in the living room. Mother took my hand and lead me back, locking the doors after she gave me a kiss on the forehead. “Get your rest Michael,” she said to me, “your father wishes to be alone right now. We’ll be out soon.”
They weren’t. I waited for what felt like hours in that cold, freezing car, laying on the passenger seat as I tried to rest, but I could only think of my grandmother and her panic that was my final memory of her. I pondered over it, turning it round and round in my head with all the brain power a five-year-old could muster, but that isn’t much to speak of.
Then the doors unlocked. I sat up, expecting to see my parents coming round the side of the car doors, but nobody was there. Not a soul.
Instead, all four doors swung slowly open, with no assistance from any living creature I could see. I stared out into the night, and saw the door of grandmother’s house also lay open, the bright light of the house streaming out and illuminating the darkness. I jumped when I heard a crash from behind me and turned to see the gate had swung open all on its own. It bumped against the stone three times before coming to a rest.
All was still and quiet, save the wind through the trees and my shallow gasps for air. It traveled through that same wind and wafted about me. The fear of this dark night and what it had to offer me.
Something was coming. Something dark and dreadful.
It came over the hill. The first tramping footfalls of hooves, faint but carrying a sinister power that no child should have familiarity with. Then I saw a faint, pale light in the distance, coming closer and close as the tramping got louder and louder. It passed under the trees which adorned either side of the road, but through the leaves, moonlight trailed down and I saw a figure. A horse, far bigger than any I have ever seen since, was approaching fast, its face twisted into an angry grimace. Upon its back, I only briefly saw the rider, yet that glimpse sent a chill down my spine as grandmother’s warning remained fresh and clear.
The dark rider really had come. And I had no gold to protect myself or grandmother.
For a moment I almost tried to run back inside the house, but I hesitated. And those wasted moments closed off that choice completely. The rider was coming too fast for any adult to hope to outrun it, let alone a child.
I curled into a ball on the seat, closing my eyes tight and pressing my palms hard against my ears. I mustn’t look nor must I listen, that’s what grandmother had told me, but I could still feel the vibrations from every crashing hoof grow stronger.
And then, as I finally heard the harsh snorting of the horse which overpowered every over sound, the tramping stopped For a moment, I almost considered opening my eyes to take a peek. But I knew grandmother would be so disappointed in me if I didn’t listen to her last instructions.
Then came a slow clopping which stopped just outside the open door. The horse’s snorting was now so close I could feel the otherworldly presence with each breath, and it was accompanied by the dreadful odor of rotting flesh. I gagged but kept still through sheer fear.
Then I felt something against my hair, blowing hot gusts of wind that washed across my soul. I shivered at a horrible sniffing sound that accompanied this, before cold, rough flesh pressed against the top of my head. Flesh I later came to know as that of a horse’s nose.
And then the Dullahan spoke my grandmother’s name. His voice was loud and as full of sinister power as the rest of him and that horse, yet there was neither malice nor hate in it. Only pure solemnity. The horse gave a cry and the terrible pounding was back with full force, but this time it grew fainter and fainter, before finally fading away.
Trembling, I finally uncurled myself and heard running footsteps. It was my parents. Mother kissed me when she saw I was alright and father couldn’t stop looking up the road after the rider, shaking from head to toe. They scooped me up from the car before rushing back into the house, slamming the door shut. Inside, the other grown-ups were whispering to each other and badly shaken. The doctor inspected me for any injuries, yet found none. I overheard the priest remark that “it was a miracle the rider of Crom Dubh didn’t harm the child.”
Father held me so tightly, in tears as he apologized for leaving me out there, alone, I’ve never been able to make myself feel angry at him for doing that. And he learned from this mistake. He never left me alone again.
We waited a good hour before going back to our house. Well past midnight. None of us slept at all, though I tried. Nor did I sleep the next night, or the one after that, until finally I was given sleeping pills. For months afterwards, I had nightmares of a demonic horse chasing me down before it bit down and ripped the flesh from my bones. I came to dread sleep and prayed always for a pleasant dream, just one to bring an end to these horrific nights. But like all things, even those horrible nightmares drifted away and bothered me no more.
Yet I will never forget that voice, nor the nightmares that came from my hearing it. For I know one day, I too shall hear it call my own name. And I will finally be able to read stories with grandmother again.