Devil's Mountain by Bernadette Walsh Page A

me.”
    Bobby opened his eyes and looked at me uncertainly.
    “Do it,” I said in a voice not quite my own.
    His teeth grazed my nipple, and while he didn’t hurt me the way my dream man had and I wanted, it was enough to rekindle the fire that burned through me this afternoon. I lowered myself onto him and rocked back and forth, willing my orgasm to break forth. Bobby, unused to me being the aggressor and taking my own pleasure, soon came, well before I had found my own crest. Well before I was fully satisfied.
    Later, as he snored beside me and I was on the edge of sleep, I found myself back in the forest, in the arms of my dream man.
    Chapter 10
    Mary
    My shirt was damp with sweat as I weeded the flower beds. With the heavy rains last week and this week’s fine weather the beds were overrun. Busy. Nurse Byrnes at the home said to keep busy. Not let my mind wander. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop and all that.
    In the six months since I’d returned to the Mountain, I’d pruned the old garden within an inch of its life. I’d organized the presses, cleared every storage space, scoured the linoleum until it shone. I baked bread with Bridget Griffin, attended Mass twice a week, went for long brisk walks and took my tablets three times a day. I’d done everything Nursey told me. And she was right, my busy hands seemed to have warded Him off. But for how long?
    The district doctor who’d met me once a fortnight at the home said if I took my pills then the voices, the visions, the hallucinations would all stop. Slanaitheoir would disappear and be no more than a bad dream. Maybe he was right. Maybe. Then again, he wasn’t from around here.
    Nurse Byrnes’s mother was a Murphy. Her great-grandmother a Griffin. She didn’t tell me I was hallucinating Slanaitheoir , that I was crazy. She was gentle with me, as those who share the blood often are, and comforted me the best she could. I think she knew gardening and Mass and taking pills would only ward off Slanaitheoir for so long. The best it would do was buy me some time. And that it had.
    Ever since my mother told me my fate, I hadn’t gone more than a few days without hearing from Slanaitheoir , either as a voice within my head or as a physical visitation. But not once did He come to the home. I’d neither seen nor felt Him since I’d returned.
    Was it the pills that kept Him away, or had He decided to focus His energies on another?
    I knew He hadn’t bothered Orla, and there were no other women left from our line, my younger brothers having only produced sons. Perhaps, as I often prayed, He’d decided to remain in the bowels of the earth and stay with His own people, leaving me and the other five families to our fate. Without the curse of His “love.”
    The pills. Perhaps they kept Slanaitheoir from me. But they also dulled my other gifts.
    I’d lost my gift of visions, of fortunetelling, at a time when I needed it most. I needed to know how to protect my son.
    Five days before, I’d stopped taking my pills.
    My senses no longer blunted, the world came alive for me again. The colors were brighter, the song of the birds sweeter. No longer did I stumble around the world like a blind man. I knew, at least, when small things would happen. In time, when I was stronger, I could return to Bobby and attempt to see his future. To protect him. Save him.
    For now I had at least enough sense to expect a visitor in the next hour and knew I should prepare for them. I returned my gardening tools to the shed and went inside where I bathed and changed into a flowery summer dress from Brown Thomas, a birthday gift from Orla. I cut thick slices of bread, made tea and arranged on a tray everything but the second cup for my visitor. I didn’t want to tip my hand. I carried the tray into the garden along with a paperback. I wanted my visitor, whoever he was, to see me as relaxed and serene. As sane.
    Ten minutes later I heard the crunch of the gravel, the slam of a car door. I