Saturday, May 28, 2011

Ambush at Loch na Súl, part 1.

After having traveled such great distances in North America, it's definitely made me re-evaluate Ireland's comparative size. To paraphrase the U.S. author Bill Bryson a bit, Americans will travel further to get a taco from Taco Bell than many Britons or Irish would ever consider traveling on a long bank holiday.

We reached County Sligo in no time in a couple of rentals. Not much longer, we arrived at Loch na Súl, or what was left of it. The whole lake...well, pond is more like it, but anyway...was bone dry, just a shallow indentation in the earth. What looked like a scientific research team was on site. Also, there was a farming family living right up against the (former) lakefront.

It was agreed that the other team members would try to convince the science teams to leave, whilst I would persuade the family to clear out, to keep them safe and to allow us to set up our ambush.

A kindly Irish grandmother answered the door and I pulled out my inspector's badge from GARDA. Strictly speaking, I'm supposed to use my INTERPOL bage but these country folk wouldn't know INTERPOL from the band U2. They greeted me amicably enough but wondered why I'd come all the way from Dublin, and where was the local constable? I explained I needed them to clear out as soon as possible, that we were facing a possible environmental hazard and it was my job to clear civilians out of the area for at least the next 24 hours.

"What took ye so long, anyway? The Loch's been dry for two weeks now?" asked the family matriarch.

"Ach, it's the paperwork, mam, back in Dublin. Feckin' Euro-crats, if you know what I mean, pardon the language...Sorry I couldn't come sooner." I said like a lying dog.

The family protested that surely if they'd been there this long, whatever environmental hazard there was must've run its course, and they could just go to the local hospital if their health took a turn for the worse.

"No, ye don't understand. There's going to be an excavation at the Lake, and that is where the hazard comes, from underground. Once that's opened up to the air, then you could be at risk. I admit, this is all about probabilities and maybe everything will turn out fine. But for the next 24 hours, I needs you to go visit your relations in the larger metro areas. I'm sorry for your troubles, here's my card. Give me the number where you'll be staying and hopefully I can give you the all clear to return in 24 hours, safe and sound. I'll buy the lot of you a round at the neighborhood pub for all the inconvenience...I'm truly sorry about all this."

The family were finally convinced, and loaded up just the bare essentials. From the look of it, the science teams also were clearing out, persuaded both by Laurel, and also by Camilla, who had managed to disguise herself as one of them.

With the civilians out of the area, we set up our ambush round Loch na Súl. I remembered a bit of my field training from my stint in the Irish Ranger Wing and found a good hiding spot in some trees near one edge of Loch na Súl. The others hid in some reeds along the former shore. Nate tracked Caleb's movements with Gunnar's axe. Before long, we could hear the high buzz of a motorcycle engine....

Friday, May 27, 2011

In Dublin

After paying a brief visit to me Mam, to let her know I was alive and back in Ireland for a time. I told her I was taking my American friends up to County Sligo to enjoy some of the local music festivals, etc. I left out the bit about the Loch. I needn't have bothered. Ma always knows how to get Dad to spill the beans.

Later on in the morning, Camilla pulled me aside and spoke to me in a hushed tone.
As I recall, the conversation went sorta like this:

Camilla: Hey, Brendan...I'm running low on ammo for the big one. Any chance I could pinch something off the police arsenal, maybe?

Brendan: Ah, no. But I can point you to the local IRA boys who might be able to arrange something. They know I'm a "Shinner", one of the few outspoken ones on the force. As long as they keep operations in the North, I tend to look the other way. Tell them you're a Basque separatist. If you can convince them you're with ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), they'll think that's deadly gas craic!

Camilla: ... ?

Brendan: It will meet with their approval. They view the Basque as engaged in the same type of struggle and will be sympathetic enough to fork over some ammo for your Barrett.

By evening, Camilla proudly showed off her shiny new boxes of .50 cal ammo.

"They bought it, hook, line and sinker." she beamed.

"I never had a doubt.", I replied.

I don't think either of us doubted Camilla's hourglass figure had as much to do with her success as pretending to be a Basque from Spain, but why bring it up?

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Live and Let Die, a Postlude.

We took the roads to Bayou Pigeon as far as they would carry us. We then hit the edge of the swamp at a boat rental shop. We broke into the place easily enough and (ahem) appropriated one of the large boats that would accommodate all of us. In the interest of being as stealthy as possible, we decided not to turn the engine on. Nate was holding Gunnar's axe...I don't pretend to know how it works, other than it can sometimes work like a sonar listening in on a homing beacon when searching for divine objects--or something. Like I said, I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but we use it like that from time to time. I decided to activate my boon, Wind's Freedom, and fly alongside the boat.

Any stealth gained by keeping the engine quiet was, in all likelihood negated by all the cursing and grunting of my companions struggling to keep the boat going forward and in a relatively straight line, or turning as necessary to follow the signal picked up by Gunnar's axe. Like a drunken Irishman with three sheets to the wind, we stumbled and lumbered forward to our goal in the thick and humid night of the Louisiana swampland. Eventually dawn began to break over the swamp and Nate could tell...somehow...that we were much nearer to our goal. We were determined to save Luc and the key (i.e. his ring), to grab them before Caleb got the key and killed Luc.

As dawn broke, we saw off in the distance a lone tree house a few yards up in the air, probably with a boat tied round back. This had to be it, had to be where Luc was holed up. Caleb was nowhere to be seen. We were all filled with excitement and anticipation--had we finally gotten the jump on that big blonde bastard??

Suddenly, a big Louisiana gator came flying through the air and landed, dazed and confused, in a big heap at the back of my companion's boat. More sinisterly, dark forces were moving beneath the water, only these weren't gators, but some kind of mythic fish-man, attacking en masse. I saw Jack dive into the muck to fight one, while others began to tear at the boat's hull, and I could see they were soon taking on water. The boat became a scene of mass chaos and splashing and blood, as I floated serenely above the water. I looked towards the open passage of the treehouse, where our goal lay, and the confused mess behind me. Obviously whomever was responsible for the Loa fish-men, and the mysteriously thrown gator, they were seeking to keep us from our goal. But so far the fish-men had ignored me, hadn't attacked me, hadn't taken notice of me. I could dive in and duke it out with them, but then Caleb might seize the key while we were busy fighting...

I looked at my friends again...Gunnar had just sliced through one of the fish men, and Jack seemed to be holding his own, while Camilla was drawing a bead on the gator with that huge sniper rifle of hers...

I knew they wouldn't understand, but I also trusted my friends and knew that they could handle this without me. We had to get that goddamn key, had to get it NOW. Gators just don't fly through the air on their own, and I had an inkling why this one had achieved its airborne status. I charged ahead, leaving the watery chaos behind me, my eyes focused on the tree house.

I crossed the threshold of the tree house and saw a surprisingly young African American male in his late 20s or early 30s seated in the middle of the room, chanting and in a meditative, almost trance-like state.

I greeted him in my best French..."Monsieur Luc Francoeur?"

There was no reply. The young man did not even look at me, or even open his eyes, or otherwise acknowledge my presence.

I noticed a dark shape in the corner but couldn't make it out. I decided the young man seated was probably not Luc, and circled around him, making my way to the dark shape at the back of the room.

Here I found a sickly, elderly black man on a cot, in his bedclothes and under bedsheets but clearly struggling against the chills of an illness.

I repeated my greeting in French.

He looked up weakly, having trouble focusing on my face. "Who are you?" he said.

I explained my name was Brendan, that I was a friend of Odette, and I was here to help.

"Odette? Where she at?" the old man cried.

"Monsieur Francoeur," I continued, "...this is very important...do you still have the ring given to you by Margaret Haughery in your childhood?"

"How you know about dat?" he spat in English, then calling to the young man behind me, telling him to get over there. The young man ignored him as he had ignored me.

"Sil vous plait, Monsieur Francoeur, you are in grave danger...I have to get you out of here, we have to keep the ring away from..."

Suddenly a huge pair of familiar Fomorian feet came crashing through the roof of this tiny hovel, and the bright dawn light spewed in unwelcome. Caleb looked down from on high with a look of satisfaction, not even acknowledging my presence or regarding me as any kind of threat.

"...him", I finished my sentence uselessly.

FUCK FUCK FUCK, my mind raced...as time seemed to slip into slow motion...

I bucked up my courage best I could and seeking to distract Caleb, raised my right hand in a exaggerated mock salute, and bellowed up at him...

"TOP OF THE MORNING TO YE, YE FECKIN' UGLY FOMOIRE
GOBSHITE!!"

There was no way I could inflict any meaningful damage with Gae Bolga on Caleb all alone like this.

In a fluid motion I reached down and scooped up Luc's frail body in my arms, turned 180 degrees and bolted toward the open doorway. I activated my Wind's Freedom boon upon crossing the threshold and kept running on air out past the open passageway, flying out over the swampland.

If this scene had had a soundtrack, it would be any number of mournful Irish tunes on the uilleann pipes, wailing like a banshee.

It was not enough. Caleb took one lunging step foward and brought down his terrible, gigantic obsidian Katana squarely on the midsection of my body. The last sight I remember was the inscription written in Ogham script on the blade, which I screamed out in Old Irish...hoping my companions would hear. My life flashed before me as the blade tore into my flesh. Oh, Aisling, I'm so sorry...I hope Laurel remembers to recover you and transport you safely back to Ireland...the last thing I felt was the Katana's blade smacking hard against my spine and bruising my rib cage...I could feel Luc go flying out of my arms and heard him splash into the water less than a second before I must have hit, but it seemed like more than a few seconds.

A seeming eternity of darkness followed. Through a sheer force of will my wounds began to close...my body, which had nearly been torn in half...reconnected itself...still bruised and battered, naturally, but...

The next thing I felt was another sharp pain in my chest, and then my consciousness floating up as if from the depths of a great lake. Adrenaline injection, forcefully delivered, to prevent cardiac arrest, most likely.

"YOU STUPID FUCKING MICK!! IDIOT! IDIOT IDIOT!!!!" ... Laurel's screams were muffled at first, then became more audible and clear.

I tried to focus on Laurel's face...her hair a beautiful, watery mess, tears streaming down her face twisted and contorted by anger, concern, fear, and a thousand other emotions they don't have names for yet.

Still delirious, I managed to mumble "we have to stop meeting like this..."; I laughed involuntarily but the pain cut my laugh short and I started to black out again.

Ignoring little my joke, Laurel kept screaming "OH NO YOU DON'T! NOT TODAY GODSDAMMIT." as she kept working on me furiously, keeping me from going into shock.

I looked over and saw Luc was still alive, propped up against the same tree root as me. "Worth it", I mumbled to myself.

I think Jack and Gunnar made makeshift rafts and floated Luc and I out of the swamp...somehow. I later learned that Luc had been suffering from Cholera, which Laurel fixed. It turns out Luc's young associate had been in league with Caleb, somehow, but Caleb had just been using him and now the young man was dead. Luc was a treasure trove of information, and he was most grateful to us for saving him. He planned to return to New Orleans proper to live out his final days.

Thanks to Laurel's skills as a doctor, and thanks to some of my own self-healing abilities, plus the last-minute crappy itinerary we booked for getting ourselves back to Ireland, I was able to sleep on the flight and find myself good as new upon touching down in old Dublin town a few days later.

Zombies in 'Nawlins, and other tales.

Gunnar and I compared notes at the hotel, when Laurel and Nate phoned to let us know they'd been dealing with a major outbreak of Bubonic plague in the greater New Orleans area!?

Jack and Camila had investigated a local cemetery not far from Jackson Park. With Nate and Laurel's help, they put two and two together and realized some force had caused plague-ridden zombies to rise from their graves to terrorize the populace. Using Nevermore's keen senses, we were able to track them all down (not like they can move all that fast!) and burn them all to oblivion.

It wasn't easy, but we managed to get them all over the course of the evening. When we returned to our hotel we found an elaborate letter addressed to Nate. It was all in elaborate golden script, written in Japanese, so Nate had to translate for us.

Basically it was an invitation to New Orleans' port district, to a nondescript Japanese freighter bound for Yokohama.

We climbed aboard and found our way to a cargo hold where a distinguished looking Japanese gentleman in a fine suit sat behind a long table, flanked by two zombies chained to the deck for safe keeping. The table was elegant and elaborate, and looked very out of place in this dank room. He invited us to sit. It became evident immediately that we were conversing with the Jinkiniki that Jack, Nate and I had managed to "kill" in Jackson Park. He allowed that we were indeed formidable opponents. He explained to us that Caleb had tricked him and that, as payback, he would let us in on what he knew of Caleb's plans. He explained that his kind were neither Gods nor Titanspawn, they had not yet decided which side to join, if they would join a side at all. Gunnar taunted him, saying the Gods were not going to lose, and if he were smart, he'd join us. The Jinkiniki replied that this was a premature judgement, that much remained to be seen. We gained some key intelligence, so I wasn't complaining. We bid adieu to the Japanese gentleman and left the ship unharmed.

We had earlier gained further intelligence that Luc was now residing in Bayou Pigeon, a small unincorporated Cajun village located near the southern extremities of Iberville Parish in Louisiana. Not far from New Orleans, but we would have to make a road trip. The hamlet is primarily composed of fishers and plant workers. A great majority of the village's population are of Cajun descent. Cajun French can still be heard in most of the older resident's homes. Some use Cajun French as their sole language. Tres Bon.

Satisfied the CDC had matters in hand regarding the Plague outbreak in New Orleans (thanks to information Laurel had researched and slipped to CDC), we hit the road in the middle of the night...if we could find Luc, so could Caleb, and that bastard had a head start.

Hitting the books.

Alas, dear readers, I know that I, Brendan O'Shea, have been one terrible chronicler of later. The muse seems to have left me for a time. I've already been to the Emerald Isle and am on my way back. I almost paid a visit to Shakespeare's Undiscovered Country but more on that later.

Anyway, after the near-disaster in Jackson Park, I decided it was necessary to do some more background reading on the Legend of Balor and see if I could dig up any more clues on Caleb and his plans.

I decided to hit the libraries at Loyola University (for occult/mythology info) and at Tulane University (for local area history), which is actually older than the Loyola U. campus in NOLA.

I sat down at the library after it opened one day, surrounded by heaps of texts covering countless Irish myths in hopes of finding some kind of lead on Balor or Caleb, and here is what I found:

Balor was King of the Fomorians until his death at the hand of Lugh, his grandson. This death was prophesied to happen. Lugh, according to legend shot a stone from a sling with such force that he knocked Balor’s eye out through the back of his skull. This occurred at the Second Battle of Mag Tuired (Plain of Pillars.) An odd note, the story tell of Balor killing Nuada, king of the Tuatha but as a Tuatha Scion myself, I happened to know he is fine and well. Some tales say that he may only have fallen into a coma.

When struck by the stone Balor’s eye rolled back out his skull and its deadly gaze fell upon the fomorian troops and eradicated them within seconds. Its gaze was so strong that it reportedly destroyed a portion of the land itself. That land has since been filled in by water and is referred to as Loch na Súl (Lake of the Eye) or so the legends say. Some tales say that Balor too did not die and fell into a coma. Ogma once told me, however, that he saw the corpse himself and can attest to the death.

Since then Balor’s wife Cethlenn (a nasty bitter hag that serves as the Entropic avatar of disease) has stopped at nothing to bring down the rule of the Tuatha. Ogma had told me she has no regard for her own spawn, the fomorians, using them to any end that will strike a blow at the Tuatha.

Since then nothing appears in tales of myth leaving me unsatisfied since nothing spoke of Caleb. I then turned my attention to history and accounts of Balor in modern times.

I knew that Balor was the avatar of Rot as it applies to Entropy, and that since his death, rot was supposed to have not touched the world. As an Irishman I couldn’t help but laugh at this knowing well the blights of your mother land. In fact there was no famine as bad as the one that stretched from 1845 until 1852, one that saw a mass exodus of your people, a great many of which egressed to the U.S. Natural or supernatural, the Great Potato famine was made incomparably worse by prevailing British economic policy at the time. This got me interested in researching the time period in question. At this point, I broke for lunch.

I enjoyed what the locals call a "po-boy" sandwich and sat at an outside table at a small restaurant that serves local creole cuisine. Having been in virtually all the Irish pubs and bars in the French Quarter very recently, I was interested to learn more about the history of the Irish immigrants behind them stretching back into the 19th century. I decided to head for Tulane University, which was one of the oldest universities in the area. I greeted the reference librarian, explained I was researching Irish immigration to New Orleans in the time of the Great Potato Famine, and she pointed me to a host of relevant resources.

It is in one such book that I found mention of New Orleans and the Irish that immigrated there. One book tells of the poor and destitute orphans that arrived in America, their parents having died on the boat trip over. Into the story steps an Irish woman named Margaret Haughery who herself was an orphan transplant from only a few decades back. Margaret took the orphans in and looked over them in the process starting a string of orphanages in New Orleans. The tales go on to paint this woman as a Saint as she fostered care to all races, religions and circumstances in the hopes of giving the children a better life than she has experienced having lost not one but two families after her husband and child both died of Cholera.

This history began to make me speculate that Margaret Haughery may have been under a Geas similar to Laurel’s, and Geasa aren’t just laid on just anyone off the street. The more I read about this woman and her hard work and dedication to the people of New Orleans the more I became fairly certain that she must have been a Scion of one of the Tuatha...A thought that was further cemented much later in the evening when I compared notes with my teammate Gunnar (who researched material on the Loa religion at the University of New Orleans on the same day) and I realized that Marie Laveau and Margaret Haughery lived and operated in this city during the same period of time.

Before that revelation, though, I found more information.

I decided to look into the released documents of the emancipated minors whose names would be available from those orphanages, hoping to find some kind of lead. In 1936 from the St. Vincent de Paul Infant Asylum a name and photograph jumped out at me, Odette Samania (A common Haitian family name I was aware of, and knowing Voodoo is very prevalent in Haiti). Doing the math I realised that this couldn’t just be a coincidence; the girl in the photo would be approaching her 94th birthday this year. In the photo there is another person standing aside Odette, a young man approximately the same age. You flip the photo over and find the following inscription:

“Odette Samania & Luc Francoeur
Emancipation Day
August 2, 1936"

In the image you notice that Luc is wearing a ring with a large jewel that was identical to a jewel worn by Margaret Haughery in the few pictures there were of her. The jewel always struck me as odd in the photos because of Margaret’s otherwise extremely drab and simple manner of dress.

Unfortunately from there I hit a brick wall; nothing I found gave any more information on either Odette or Luc. Or Caleb, for that matter.