Martin & Marcella

Eight

It was only a matter of how She would next show herself. Whether a hare darting across the path or a black bird circling above, She continued to make her presence known. Even in instances when Martin and Marcella were uncertain, they felt fear in their hearts. Their fear was for one another, for they did not love their own selves. He cared only for her, and she cared only for him. Because of this, they were able to struggle onward. They knew only to continue.

When they began to hear Her cries, they knew that their plight had turned far more serious. At times low and wailing, sad as the willows weeping in watery glens, Her cry woke them from fitful sleeps and drove them through the emptiest of hopes. Eerie in its persistence, alarming in its increasing volume, Her call was enough to shoot arrows of sorrow into their weakly beating hearts.

After the incident with the bees, Joel became insistent that he and Fr. Kavanaugh complete the journal of Etienne Barcleaux. The boy couldn't stand to hear what the artist had written, but he knew he had to listen. He was frightened of Eitenne's words, but he had to know things. There were tremors inside his own heart that had to be settled before he could begin to really think of any school or social life again.

Fr. Kavanaugh agreed to complete the diary in one last sitting, so the two settled themselves into the room off the library in order to finish satisfying their curiosity. What the priest translated in the last fifteen or so entries nailed the lid onto the box of worries that had been building in Joel. He had far too much in common with the artist; he was uncertain where he stood.

From what he'd written in the last months of his life, Etienne Barcleaux knew he had gone mad by the time he decided to end his existence. There were instances in which he heard or saw things that he knew could not possibly live anywhere but in his mind. " . . . for I have been in the presence of others," the artist wrote, "and yet I have been the only one to see." One particular passage caught Joel's attention instantly. It read, "I hear humming constantly. In my sleep. In my waking hours. In my dreams. I cannot escape it. It has come for me, and I do not know that I can ever get away." Toward the very end, just before Etienne commented that he was going to take his own life rather than watch others lose theirs, the man wrote, "It is not my own senses that have deceived me. I have not arrived at this state through some interrupted nerve in the passage of my mind. It is that I have let them into my constant thought--allowed them to roam freely--and I would have been able to allow them freedom except for the fact that the Bean Sidhe followed them. She, I cannot escape. All of them are in me, now, and though I feel mad at times, I am aware always that this is because of their probing presence. I have given them new life, and the Bean Sidhe is now trying to take the life from all of us in her search. She cannot be allowed to do so . . . not through myself, at least." As the entries were read one by one, Joel felt that there were chilling similarities between himself and the tortured artist, even though he couldn't comprehend them.

Fr. Kavanaugh read smoothly and richly, rarely stumbling on the translations and keeping a close eye on the opaque expressions flitting across his young listener's face. The man was not sure what to make of Joel Banquo. Knowing little of the boy's home life, he could only surmise that it was there that Joel's problems lay. This was a likable, intelligent, wealthy young boy that sat with him, awed by the old journal of a long-dead man. Any normal student would find such readings tedious and disheartening, but Joel Banquo was quite enraptured by them. Fr. Kavanaugh couldn't help but be curious about his young, obviously troubled friend.

When the final words of Etienne Barcleaux had been spoken aloud, leaving their listeners in silent, pensive moods, the priest turned slowly to Joel. "Quite a story, wouldn't you say?"

His reverie broken, Joel could only nod his head. He held out his hand and Fr. Kavanaugh placed the journal into his white fingers. He turned to go, then swiveled back toward the priest with a look of concern. "Father, what . . . what's a Bean Sidhe?"