Wild Country (Ist draft of Part 2)

So here I am in Donegal.

After all these trips, I’ve never been to Donegal. For some reason the encounter with the old singing man left me weary of Donegal. But there’s nowhere else to search in Ireland. There are thirty-two counties and I’ve searched thirty-one. Donegal is located in the north western county of Ireland, a bizarre place…a wild place. It feels isolated here, lost in a different century.

The locals speak Irish Gaelic to each other. It’s a very musical language and I enjoy listening to it. They speak English to tourists but their accent is unlike the accents of the rest of Ireland. Their accents are of people who speak English only when they have to. Some of the people here are uncomfortably nice to me. I don’t know what to do. I’m not accustomed to kindness since after the incident that caused me to stop writing, ruined my marriage, and sent me spiraling towards Ireland. The people here probably don’t read the news.

The hotel is old, built a hundred years before the potato famine that sent millions of people either into the soil or over the water. The hotel overlooks the town square with its little park of cement and benches. It’s a small town with only a few hotels and shops circling the square. Donegal Castle looms just to the east of the square along with an old Presbyterian church. I parked my motorcycle on the street near the castle and was greeted by an impressive amount of black ravens flying over the Castle like something you’d see in an old Dracula movie. It gave me chills.

I checked into the hotel and was surprised that they gave me a key with a piece of wood that said “Room 313” rather than the more widely used electronic card that resembles a credit card. I didn’t think hotels used keys anymore. The key itself wasn’t even modern. It was long, made of thick steel. It looked more like a prop in an old British play. For some reason I was reminded of Sherlock Holmes. I smiled. Sherlock Holmes was the first novel I ever read. I was nine years old.
I noticed a window on the north end of the room that overlooked the little town square. I walked over to the window to open it up so air could circulate. The Irish don’t believe in air conditioning and it can get quite hot and humid during July. The window well was unusually deep. It made the outside wall appear to be unusually thick. I opened the window outward towards the town circle to allow some circulation and then I headed down to the pub.

When I got down to the lobby of the hotel, I heard a beautiful sound flowing from the pub. It was a remarkable melody, something familiar. I picked up the day’s newspaper from the lady at the front and headed towards the music. I was shocked to find that the melody was emanating from the old singing man. Only this time he was sitting on a stool on a dark stage playing what sounded like a more melodic version of the highland bagpipes.

The instrument he was playing was much quieter than the blaring highland pipes and he seemed to have the ability to bend and melt notes together. It was beautiful. The instrument was held in his lap. He had a bellow under his right arm that would pump air into a black leather bag that was placed under his left arm. He’d squeeze the bag and air would pass through an ivory chanter. The motions he made with the chanter reminded me of a snake charmer. Every move he made would shape the note into whatever he pleased. There were some other parts of the instrument that looked like the drones on bagpipes, only these drones faced the ground between his legs.

He sang as he played. It reminded me of those one man bands you’d see at a county fair. These drones made a single low note that harmonized with the melody from the chanter. There wasn’t a part of his body that didn’t seem involved, a part of the melody. It was magical.

It had been four years since my first experience with the old singing man. I wasn’t surprised to see him doing something musical. In fact, I was quite relieved because he had been appearing in my dreams whenever I would come to Ireland, always singing about Donegal. Perhaps that’s all he does. During these four years, I was convinced that he didn’t exist and that my experience with him in the pub was either a drunken hallucination or a schizophrenic episode. I talked to therapists, argued with most of them. I was diagnosed with all sorts of disorders, given medications and placebos. Everything just got worse. Then the incident happened during the last trip to Ireland and I stopped talking to everyone altogether. That was a year ago. I promised myself that I was never going to come back. But here I am.
I don’t feel disordered though. Perhaps a bit lost, that’s all.
After self-medicating the night away, listening to the old singing man’s music, I stumbled up to my room.

So here I am…

…sitting on the edge of my bed at 5:30 in the morning. People always say that it’s always the darkest before dawn. Tonight is no exception. A fog has covered the town square. Because I left the window open, my room is full of a thick mist, thicker than I’ve ever seen. I awoke only moments earlier to whispering. When I sat up in my bed, I saw a girl sitting in the window well, hiding behind the curtain. She is still there, whispering to someone and giggling. I think I might still be a little bit “medicated”. Perhaps I’m still dreaming.

After staring at the girl and trying my best to convince myself that she doesn’t exist, I decide that she must be a prankster who climbed up through my window.
Right before I went to bed, the town square was full of loud young college girls. I suppose that it could be possible that one of them could have climbed up here on a dare. She’s probably stuck in my window well, too scared to climb back down and too shy to ask for help. I get up and walk over to the window in nothing but my black boxer briefs, annoyed at whoever is waking me up. I think briefly about putting on a robe but decide not to. I don’t care if she see’s me in nothing but my skeevies. Maybe seeing the naked body of someone who has spent four years in a self-destructive mood will teach her not to climb through hotel windows.
I open the curtain quickly, hoping to startle the girl.

Empty.

I fall back onto my bed with shock. “What the fuck? I can’t still be drunk…hung-over maybe but not drunk. Maybe I’m just sleep-walking.” I have been known to sleep-walk but I haven’t done that since my early twenties. I close the curtains and turn towards my bed. As I lay back down, feeling a bit foolish, I hear the whispers again. She’s back. I study her face in the dark, hiding behind the curtain, for a solid ten minutes. The mind can often play tricks on your eyes when it is early and dark. I want to make sure of what I’m seeing.

She occasionally turns and giggles something to someone hidden behind the curtain. I must be imagining her, somehow awake in a dream. When I can’t convince myself of her non-existence any longer, I stand up and repeat my earlier action.
Empty.

“For the _____ love of Patrick!” I scream out the window, “Where are you?!” I quickly climb into the window well and poke my head outside, thinking that she must have climbed out onto the edge. I’m sure I’ve caught her but the fog is so thick, I can’t see more than three feet outside the window. The ledge is only about six inches wide. How could she have gotten away? I must be asleep, dreaming. I reluctantly climb back into my room, close and lock the window and climb under the sheets of my bed.

Before I could even close my eyes, I heard the whispering again. This time I tried to ignore it. The relief of seeing the old singing man the previous night is supplanted with a certainty that I am having a schizophrenic episode. This girl is all in my head. I doubt whether the old singing man last night was even real. I sit up in bed, trying desperately to ignore the whispering girl. I start weeping, wishing I had some whiskey nearby to help me wash this night into oblivion. The loneliness and humiliation is unbearable.

“Who are you?” I manage to blurt out through the sobs.

No answer.

“WHO ______ ARE YOU?!” I scream, throwing Gideon’s Bible at the window.
I don’t care if people in the other rooms hear me. I don’t care if people think I’m crazy. I don’t care if people have to break into the room to find me yelling at nothing. God could be standing in that window well for all I care. I just want to know. The worst part of being broken is not knowing if you are.

I close my eyes so tightly that my entire body is shaking in the silence that echoes through the room. My is beating so hard, my chest hurts. After an eternity of silence, I open my eyes.

“Sìve…my name is Sìve,” a young lady says as she emerges from the window. Her accent is strong. I can tell that English is not her first language. Every part of me that tried to keep my eyes shut is now trying to keep my eyes open.

“Why are you here Sìve, tormenting my brain?”

“You don’t know?” She put her hands over her mouth, excited, smiling. I find myself smiling back at her, studying her. Even if she is just a figment of my imagination, she is gorgeous. Her hair is black. Her skin is tan. Her eyes are an emerald green. I don’t realize how short she is until I stand up to look into the window well to see if the person she giggled to is still in there with her. Her eyes reach my chest. I can’t tell her age. She could be anywhere between 16 and 30 years old. I don’t recognize her except that she has the same mischievous eyes of the old singing man.

“I don’t know who you are. Why would I have any clue as to why a girl would be coming into my hotel room through a window? Answer that.”

“I can’t answer that just yet. I’m not actually supposed to be talking to you…not yet. I’m just supposed to give you this.”

She hands me a card and giggles with excitement. I smile back at her, confused, and turn towards the far wall to turn on a lamp so I can read the card. After I flip the switch, I notice the card has Celtic knotting around the border adorned in gold-leaf. In a Celtic script, the card reads “Conor O’Sid. Shoe repair and accessories. Located in the old fallen oak down by the bay.” My eyes light up, suddenly realizing the shoe-repairman shares my last name. Finally, I’ve found someone who might have known my Grandfather. I turn towards Sìve to thank her.
She’s gone. The window is wide open. The mist outside is gone.

“You could have used the door you know,” I yell out the window, not knowing if she hears me.