The Dark Sacrament (23 page)

Christmas Day itself passed peacefully. Moya's parents came for lunch, exchanged gifts, and left around nine o'clock. The children were put to bed soon after. The Dwyers watched a movie and retired at 11:30.

But at midnight they found themselves wide awake and hurriedly switching on the bedside lights. Somebody was knocking on the front door.

“Maybe it's your parents,” Shane offered, on seeing his wife's look of alarm. “They might have broken down on the road.” He got out of bed.

“Hardly, they left ages—”

Her words were cut short by another burst of knocking, this time louder and more furious. Shane hurried downstairs. He threw the switch that turned the porch light on.

“I'm coming!” he called out. He drew back the bolt and flung the door wide.

There was no one there.

Perplexed, he went outside and stood on the step. Snow had been falling gently but steadily all evening. The garden and pathway were covered. The tracks made by his parents-in-law and their car tires were obliterated—and there were no fresh tracks to be seen. All about there lay a deathly silence.

As he stood there trying to make sense of the mystery, a sudden fear gripped Shane. He slammed the door shut as Moya was coming down the stairs.

“Children awake?”

“Sound asleep.” He saw that she shared his unease. “I
knew
there was something awful about this place from the very beginning.”

“I think you're exaggerating, love. Maybe we imagined it.”

But no sooner had he said the words than the frantic knocking started up again—this time on the back door. Shane rushed down the hallway to investigate but, as he did, the clamor at the back ceased and immediately resumed at the front.

“It was then I had to admit we were dealing with something completely unnatural,” he tells us. “It was as if ten sets of knuckles were rapping…rapping really hard. And that's the way it went on—stopping and starting. Back door, then front—back and forth, back and forth. Then together, at the same time.”

The situation was too preposterous for words. They did not know what to do. They hesitated in the hallway.

“Jesus, we'd better get out of here!” Shane said finally.

“I'm not going anywhere!” Moya was shaking visibly. That surprised him; she was a strong-willed woman who did not scare easily. She started slowly up the stairs. “It's outside. If you open the door again, it'll come in. I
know
it will!”

He followed her. All at once, the knocking ceased. There was silence. They stood for a time staring at each other.

“It's over!” Moya whispered. “
Listen!
”

Feeling a little more confident now, they tiptoed up a few more steps, each sharing an irrational notion (they confided to each other later) that the slightest sound might trigger the terrible disturbances
again. But just before they reached the top stair, they were pulled up short. Moya gripped her husband's wrist hard. The front door was opening.

It swung fully open. An icy blast swept into the house, making everything about them tremble and flap.

“It blew open!” said Shane, seeing Moya's terrified face. “The wind blew it open, that's all. I'll close it.”

Steeling himself, he prepared to go back down the stairs. But, before he reached the bottom, the door had swung shut again, all by itself. He hesitated on the stair. He heard something. He felt something, too; it caused the blood to drain from his face. It was not his imagination—heavy footsteps were slowly crossing the hall, in the direction of the stairs.

Shane hotfooted it back the way he had come. Moya reached out and grasped his arm, pulling him toward the bedroom, as one would pull a man out of the path of danger.

“Oh, Jesus, Shane
—quick!
”

They stumbled and half-fell into the room. Shane locked the door. Moya fell onto the bed, crying uncontrollably.

“Shush.” He wanted her to stop. Even through the closed door he could hear the unseen intruder mounting the stairs, so loud were the footfalls.

“They were the steps of a heavily built man wearing boots,” he says. “You could hear the stairs shake with every step he took.”

The footsteps continued to climb the stairs. Shane put his ear to the door and listened, hardly knowing what was louder, the thudding of his own heart or the lumbering tread of the phantom boots.

At the top of the stairs they halted. Moments later, they crossed the landing. Shane caught his breath—the children's rooms were on that side. His terror was supplanted by the overriding urge to protect his children at all costs. He unlocked the door.

“What are you doing?”

He told her.

“Oh God, Shane!”

They found the landing deserted, nor was there any sound from the children's rooms. Rory was sleeping undisturbed, as was his sister, Emma.

The house was silent. Whatever had intruded seemed to have left them in peace, if only for the time being. Moya fetched the holy water she kept on a windowsill and gently blessed the children as they slept.

“Let's say a rosary as well,” she said.

They knelt in their own bedroom and began the prayers. “Our Father who art in Heaven…” The words were soothing. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”

Moya held up a hand. “No, not ‘evil.' ‘The Evil One' is what we should be saying. ‘Deliver us from the Evil One.' There's an evil presence around this house. I can
feel
it.”

“Look, you were the one who didn't want to leave,” Shane said untactfully.

She started crying, and he wished he had kept his mouth shut. His nerves were taut; he was not thinking straight. The uncanny occurrences had frightened him more than he was admitting to her.

“It's stopped now anyway,” he said gently. “Let's finish the rosary. It'll be all right.”

The silence held. They knelt again and resumed the remaining decade. But hardly were they halfway through when Moya stopped again.

“Shane, there's someone outside the window!”

He was growing exasperated. After all, they were on the upper floor; in order to reach the window, an intruder would need a ladder. And the blinds were drawn. He had no idea what Moya was talking about.

“I
heard
something,” she insisted. “Listen!”

But there was no sound apart from the ticking of the clock on the bedside table. The night was unusually quiet—as nights are when a fall of snow lies on the ground.

“Very well,” he said, getting up, “if it puts your mind at rest.”

He raised the blind and peered out. He had left the gable light on. Snow had started falling again. There was no trace of anybody
near the house. He saw the distant lights of a car out on the road, but that was all. He left the window.

“Nothing there,” he said. “What did it sound like?”

But she did not need to answer because it came again, and this time it was loud enough for Shane to hear. He recalls it as sounding like a low whimper, followed by moaning.

“The wind.”

But it was not—and he knew it. The moaning grew steadily louder and higher in pitch. There could be no doubt: the Dwyers were hearing the wailing of a grief-stricken woman.

“Oh, my God!” Moya cried. “What
is
that? Who's doing that?” She was still on her knees by the bed, twisting the rosary beads around and about her fingers. She tugged at Shane's sleeve. “Let's just keep praying!”

He got down on his knees again. Although he tried not to show it, he was as terrified as his wife.

They tried to pray more loudly, to drown out the woman's voice and their fear. And yet, the more they raised their voices, the more the wailing intensified. In the end, a frightful, high-pitched screaming was drowning them out. They had a wild conviction that something or somebody was attempting to stymie their prayers.

But they would not be deterred. Sheer terror spurred them on, and prayer seemed the only course to adopt. They wanted desperately for their prayers to be effective against the evil—they felt certain it was evil—that was encroaching on their home.

They began a second rosary. Hardly had Shane recited the opening words than the banging on the front door started up again. He flinched. Even upstairs, the blows were deafening, seeming to resound throughout the house. They stopped, but the screeching from outside the window continued unabated and undiminished.

And then, momentarily, it died away. Now it was replaced by a frenetic rapping at the window. It was too much; they had to abandon the rosary. The “intruder” had won.

The couple hurried to look in on the children again, believing that the racket was bound to have awakened them. But, incredibly, as before, they slept on undisturbed. Shane could only conclude that some force was exercising control over their waking and sleeping.

The siege of the Dwyer home—the screaming and wailing, the urgent rapping on windows and doors—continued all through the night.

“It would switch itself off and on every half an hour or so,” says Shane. “The wailing in particular alerted us to the possibility that it might be a banshee, so I telephoned my family to check that everyone was okay.”

It is perhaps only natural that the Dwyers should draw this conclusion, for the myth of the banshee runs deep in the Irish psyche. In Irish and Scottish folklore, she is a female spirit who attaches herself to families, especially those whose surnames begin with
Mac
or
O
. Her wailing is said to presage the death of a member of the family. Irish mythology paints the
bean sí,
or “fairy woman,” as a beautiful creature with long, flowing hair and eyes reddened from weeping. She is variably dressed in a green or white gown. But, although many claim to have heard her, actual sightings of this elusive creature are rare.

According to Scottish tradition, the banshee is also known as the
bean nighe,
or “washerwoman.” The legend runs that she anticipates the violent death of a family member by appearing to wash his blood-stained grave clothes in a river or stream. Unlike her more beautiful counterpart, the
bean nighe
appears as an ugly, deformed creature that exudes malevolence.

Shane only half-believed the legend. But he was taking no chances. The horrendous events of the night had convinced him that paranormal forces were arrayed against him and his family. If
they're
real, he thought, why not the banshee as well?

He telephoned his young brother Andy in Australia. Andy had called on Christmas Eve to wish them well, and had told Shane he would be traveling between Adelaide and Sydney on December 27—that very day, allowing for the time difference. He knew he would
never forgive himself if Andy were to have an accident because he had failed to warn him. He also called his mother and sister, both of whom lived near Clifden, and persuaded them to come over.

“There was a need to get others to witness what was happening,” he says, “and so prove that we weren't going crazy. The puzzling part was the children. They were sleeping, oblivious to the whole thing, which was just incredible, because the noise was deafening. I remember when I was phoning my Mum, she didn't need much convincing, because she could hear the commotion down the line.”

Mrs. Dwyer and Maura arrived at 4 a.m. They could tell at once how upset the couple were; Mrs. Dwyer commented on how haggard they looked. No sooner had they crossed the threshold than the wailing began, much to Maura's consternation. Moya saw her cross herself. Without delay, Mrs. Dwyer suggested that all four say a rosary together in the red room.

“Why there?” Shane asked.

“I don't know, son. Maybe it wouldn't do any harm to recite it where this thing started.”

They had to raise their voices to make the prayers heard above the screeching from outside and the almost incessant pounding on the doors, back and front.

“My mother was a tower of strength,” Shane tells us. “She seemed to take it all in her stride. At one point during the prayers, the Bible was flung again from the top shelf by the fireplace. It came down on the carpet in front of the fireplace, and it fell open at exactly the same place: Isaiah twenty-eight and nine. I don't think she believed me when I told her about it before, but she did then, that's for sure.”

At around 4:30, the howling and banging, which had begun a full six hours earlier, stopped as abruptly as it started.

“You need to get the priest in,” Mrs. Dwyer said, when they had completed the rosary. “Give him a call first thing.”

“But it's Stephen's Day, Mom.”

“Sure, don't worry about that. He'll come.”

And he did. Father Dorrity answered the summons promptly, losing no time in coming to bless the house. He could only speculate, but in his considered opinion the root of the problem was “a wandering soul—or souls maybe, more than one.” Perhaps it was Shane's uncles, the previous inhabitants, he suggested. He urged the family to pray for them.

The Dwyers felt reassured after the priest's visit. Mrs. Dwyer and Maura stayed on that day to keep the family company and give support. Maura did the cooking. They left in the early evening, having assured the couple that they would be in touch before the New Year. When Shane and Moya retired for the night, exhausted by the night's ordeal, they felt that their troubles must surely be at an end.

Moya checked the children and sprinkled more holy water. She was not in the habit of shutting the bedroom doors, but that night she shut Rory's, remembering with a shudder the sound of the phantom footfalls entering his room. It was her way of assuring her little son's safety, even though, in her heart of hearts, she knew that a closed door would offer no resistance to a ghost.

Tuckered out, the couple fell asleep almost immediately—only to be awakened again after a minute or two by a noise that made their flesh crawl. It was the unmistakable sound of a door opening, and it was coming from across the way.