Free The Black Snow by Paul Lynch

Barnabas before she turned, saw him storming past her towards them with his arms rolling boulders. The short man rose a hand up in hello and went to speak, got the words out of him, howareya sir we meant no harm, but Barnabas was already upon them. Get to fuck off my land, he said.
    Eskra saw the boy and what was pure of spirit became a darkening thing as if he had witnessed the blooming of evil. She turned to Barnabas and cast him a look he read from her as a warning to back down, but he took no heed, and he said to the strangers, go on, get, pointing towards the gate. Eskra’s voice fell away from her. The men lowered their heads and the boy cast Barnabas a petrified look and the gaunt man began towards their horse and cart on the road. The stout man began talking. We meant you no harm so we didn’t no harm at all sir praise God and may the Lord look after your house and everyone in it, may there be a year’s blessing upon it and no harm meant to yous at all God bless.
    Later, she stood over the sink and noticed her hands were shaking. Through the bluing glass of sundown she saw the remains of the byre that sat to her like some kind of depravity. She let drop a cup into the water. When she spoke her voice came loose, a coiled spring that stung him where he sat. I did not marry the bastard you’re becoming, Barnabas Kane.
    Barnabas in the range chair straightened up, folded over the paper, did not answer, did not look at her either.
    They were only good people. Poor is all. Tinker folk. What did you have to do that for? she said.
    She turned and faced him and he stood and turned his head as if he planned to leave the room but then his head snapped around to her, the look in his eye measuring the fight left in her. Them people? he said.
    There’s nothing out there but scraps of wood and metal and cracked stones. What would you be wanting with them? That thing staring down at us every day. An abomination. Why wouldn’t you want to get rid of it?
    Their kind are good for nothing, Eskra. They roam around living off others. These are lean times. We need what we have round here. That’s all there is to it.
    Why couldn’t you let them take what they need? That byre will be rebuilt without any of what’s there. Why did you have to be so rude to them?
    I’ll tell you why, Eskra. It’s because they’re insects. Parasites is what they are. None of them ever work. I’m sick of them traipsing around the countryside eating up everything with their eyes. Should be rounded up the lot of them. The smell off them.
    Eskra’s shook her head in disbelief. Many’s the time I talked to Matthew Peoples about them and he had great time for them. Said they were full of uses.
    Matthew Peoples was a half-baked fool.
    He saw her mouth and eyes open as if to let in more light against the darkness that came from his mouth. What do you mean by that? she said.
    That’s not what I meant.
    What did you mean then? He saw her eyes set down to disdain. Do not speak ill of the dead like that. Weren’t you the one after all who sent him in?
    Barnabas’s mouth opened like his tongue had been yankedout of him. Billy came into the room and asked what time it was and began to saw at the bread. Barnabas tried to speak, shook his head violently. After all the work I done yesterday burying them cows. You think that was easy? He pulled at the back door and left her standing, went up to the byre and took the snake-twisted metal that had been left lying on the ground by the gaunt stranger and threw it off the wall. The metal pinged a brief high note that rose into the evening silence and then dulled fast like it never was.
    He stepped out of the house and could not read the sky. The weather withdrawn into a nilness that was wan and made him tense with unknowing. Everywhere he saw foreshadows of rain and opposing signs of sun held in slivers and when he looked again towards what he thought were such signs, everything he saw could be read otherwise. Eskra was