The Shamrock Killer

Chapter Five: Dead Man's Promise

The sensation of damp grass tickled the back of my neck, and I awoke with a shudder. As I cleared the sleep from my eyes and took a glance at my bearings, I realized I had no idea where I was or how I had gotten there. I definitely wasn't in Boston anymore. I was instead, on a small mound of dirt, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Kansas maybe?

I looked in all directions and saw a large plain filled with small hills and undergrowth that seemed to stretch on for miles. There was no end in sight. Where the grass ended, a dark blue sky met it in a quiet embrace and the first rays of light coming from the east told me that it was soon to be dawn.

A river hurled at my feet at breakneck speed, the rapids foaming and spitting white. One step in the wrong direction and it could mean certain death.

It was quiet. So, very quiet that something seemed wrong in this place. Almost as if this was a place where there was no life, and we all know the opposite of life is death. Ok, so not Kansas since people lived in Kansas. 

Yet despite the deathly atmosphere, it was beautiful, even if it was eerily still. No wind, no clouds. I felt oddly content, at peace even, though I had no idea where I was.

Then I heard it. Moving from the direction of the water with tendrils reaching for me, the sharp keening noise made me twist in pain and drop to the ground. Shudders ran through my body as the awful shrill radiated off my ear-drums. My scream soon matched its intensity as I grappled on the ground, heaving with the tremors of the earth.

Was this earthquake caused by this awful noise? There was no time to discern because suddenly the ground was splitting open between my feet and as much as I wanted to stay in that peaceful plain forever my wish was denied as I began to fall into the depths of the earth, without regard to time.

A hand touched my elbow a few eons later and I was once again on that endless plain in a fetal position, though farther away from the river this time.

My hands still covered my ears and tears leaked from my shut, swollen eyes, the scream still echoing harshly in my ribcage, ricocheting off my heart and lungs. My throat felt raw and sore. "Beautiful, isn't it?" A voice murmured softly above me, and even though my ears were covered tightly with my hands I heard it clearly. I recognized the voice of a dead man.

"Patrick?" I gingerly took my hands off my ears and looked up. I couldn't believe it. Patrick stood at my right in the flesh, smiling. Smiling! 

I hesitantly poked at his arm with my finger. All of my senses disappeared. My finger disappeared into smoke. "Is this a dream? Are you really dead?  Or am I dead? Where am I-"

"Hold up, hold up," Patrick's slate-colored eyes twinkled in amusement. "I'll answer all your questions in time, but I have a few of my own." I numbly nodded my assent. I was having a hard time tearing my eyes off his vibrant red hair, a stark comparison to the bleached ginger it had been when I had found him that night in the funeral home.

"This," Patrick spread his arms out to acknowledge the surrounding plain, "Is where I woke up after I died."

 "Ummm," I looked around and crinkled my nose, "Is this where the Good People took you?" I joked, of course, for the first time since Patrick's death, as the Good People were nothing but an Irish myth. To myself, I thought the setting could possibly be Ireland more than anything now. Made sense.

"I really don't know," Patrick admitted, rubbing the back of his neck in what I could tell was an uneasy gesture, "I think that if I might have believed in all that, fairies, leprechauns and such, while I was still alive, it could have happened. But I didn't believe in anything I suppose when I died, so I ended up here." I frowned and a wrinkle appeared on my forehead.