Free Departures by Jennifer Cornell Page B

told me. There are no rabies in Ireland.
    The Emmonses were an elderly couple who lived on their own outside of town; they weren’t the type, my father reasoned, to be involved in pranks. We’d had a number of hoaxes in preceding months, usually clear as such from the start but not always. They’d sent a child once, a six year old with curls and dimples, who’d told my father that her mam was suffering from delusions, that she’d even tried to cut her own throat. She’s in the kitchen now, mister, the child had said, and she’s got my daddy’s gun. When we got there the woman was preparing supper, bent over a pot with a ladle in her hand. A crowd of boys had gathered to watch us, but they were afraid of my father and what he might do to them, and they’d run off as soon as we left the house.
    The old man and his wife were waiting by the road for us when we arrived. He stood up and came over as my father stopped the car.
    You alright? he asked, and the old man nodded. Well let’s get to it, then. Which way?
    Emmons’s wife stood behind him, grey and illusive against the darker, oleaginous black of the night. Her husband turned to her and they spoke briefly; then together they stepped into the crossed beams of our headlights, becoming for a moment a pair of pale trousers in unlaced work boots, a dark skirt in bedroom slippers, nothing more. They lifted the latch from the cattle guard and stepped forward, pushing the gate in front of them like a plough. We left the car where the gravel drive ended and followed the soft crunch of their footsteps along a dirt path which led to the barn.
    It was an ancient, ruinous structure, about two hundred yards from the house. The animal, Emmons said, whatever it was, had been in there for hours. Around midnight he’d heard noises, the sound of glass breaking, what could have been buckets and tools overturned, and he’d gone to investigate. Something had hissed at him and seemed to lunge forward; he’d heard fangs coming at him so he’d bolted the door and run back to the house. An hour or so later when he’d listened for movement he’d heard snarling and foaming and agony instead. It was his wife who’d remembered my father’s name, who’d found the number and had him phone us.
    Beneath us the path was lit up like a runway by potholes and wheel ruts filled with rainwater, each one reflecting a trembling white stain of the moon. Emmons stopped outside the barn.
    Just open it? he asked.
    Yes, I think so, my father said. But let me go first.
    The air was cooler inside, and damp. Fine grains of dust twisted like slow falling stars in the shaft of light from the single window, settling amid shapes of stacked crates andequipment which blunted the far edges of the room. Crumbling bird nests clung to the rafters and the floor was cobbled with guano and down. My father glanced around quickly.
    Is there a light switch?
    The man and his wife looked at each other in confusion. No, the man said, I’m sorry, no.
    Anything will do, my father said quietly. A torch if you have one, even a candle.
    Again the old man looked at his wife. After a moment she nodded, turned, and headed back towards the house.
    Should I stay, Mr Leary? Emmons asked. But my father was walking forward again, his eyes fixed on a point beneath the stairs that led up to the loft. Even from the doorway I’d seen it too, the brief, incandescent, lighthouse flashes shining green, then amber. Gradually, as my own eyes adjusted, I distinguished the outline of a long, slender muzzle, large ears upright and inquisitive, the sound of swift breathing, the occasional glimmer of something wet. My father put his palms on his knees and bent down.
    There; there now, he said softly. It’s alright.
    We waited that way for Emmons’s wife. Soon I could hear the slap of her shoes on the pathway, then the light from the storm lamp she carried seeped under the door