Present Day

Clouds had been rolling in, gathering ominously, even before Billy Doyle picked me up from the harbour, and we started the car journey to Slaughtaverty, one of the island's secluded villages.

The sun has not set yet, but darkness is creeping in with the rising weather, casting our surroundings in deep shadow and watery light. To the right of the pitted old stone road, the island ends in sheer rock, plunging itself into the angry ocean far below, and to the left, an overgrown forest skirts the road, cutting it off from the village nestled at the foot of the hill.

Ahead, breaking away from the dense forest and towering darkly over the ocean, perched loftily on top of the cliffs, is Slaughtaverty Manor, our destination.

I nervously brush the palms of my hands over the wrinkled material of my most professional-looking, calf-length brown skirt, my heart filling with apprehension as I take in the turrets and contours of my soon-to-be home etched against the dying light of the defeated sun. Of course, I've seen many photographs, but none prepared me for how eerie the mansion could look with a storm brewing overhead, embracing it in secretive shadows.

The island was called Peace Haven because, historically, it provided a refuge of peace for many families fleeing their countries in the hopes of finding a place where they could live in peace and safety, untouched by politics and war. Since its discovery in the 1600s, the small island has belonged to the Slatherty family, with the first owner being the Duke of Ulaidh in Ireland. Although the Slatherties permanently left Ireland in the 1700s, the dukeship, though in name only, technically still belongs to them according to all the sources I could find, making the current Duke of Ulaidh, Alaric Slatherty, my new employer.

Some say that the village the manor presides over was named Slaughtaverty in honour of the Slatherties, but the locals misspelt it. While researching the island, I came across many opinions on the matter, but nobody was entirely clear on how the town got its strange name. It doesn't really matter; all I care about is the fact that Alaric Slatherty hired me to appraise and document all the treasures hidden in the halls of Slaughtaverty Manor.

It is a dream come true!

No appraiser has ever even entered the mansion, let alone looked at all the antiques hidden there and documented them. I'm thrilled that the honour of doing so fell on me. Photographs have occasionally surfaced, hinting at the splendour the Duke of Ulaidh sits on, as did his ancestors for hundreds of years. The treasure trove of antiques is not the only thing that doesn't appear in the public domain. Searching as much as I liked, I couldn't find any proper photographs of the Slatherty family online, except for some blurry ones where they were just unidentifiable blobs, among many others at functions and events.

So far, though, the island has not met my expectations; the experience has been cold, stormy, and rather depressing. I imagined something entirely different, perhaps because I'd been floating on a cloud of pure joy and relief ever since I received the wonderful news that I was chosen for the project based on my credentials and a warm recommendation from my mentor. Well, the nasty weather shaking the car as it drones along explains why the island isn't a sought-after holiday destination; besides, the inhabitants are rumoured to value their privacy. So far, I could testify to that.

Travelling through the village felt like going back in time. If it weren't for the modern dress of the few people I saw scurrying around, getting ready for the storm, the cars, and the electric streetlights, I would've believed that time stood still there. Still, it was a quaint town, rather pretty, and I have enough fondness for history to appreciate the beautiful old buildings, the ancient fountains, and the moss-covered stone statues.

We left the town behind to wind along this road, taking us on a zig-zag route through the forest and up the hill's steep slope, finally reaching the stone road clinging to the island's edge while steadily climbing towards its highest point. Thick mist is blowing in from the sea, wrapping itself around the car in candyfloss clouds. Swallowing nervously, I glance at Billy, hoping he knows what he is doing, as the border of the road, where the sheer drop into the ocean waits with its gaping maw, is no longer visible. The path of light the headlights are carving out for us to follow is progressively becoming more and more constricted.

Billy is not half as relaxed and chatty as he'd been when we loaded my luggage and started this daunting trip, but he doesn't look as freaked out as I'm feeling. He simply keeps his eyes on the road, expertly steering his vehicle through the building mist. The duke asked him to fetch me from the ferry, and he's doing a fine job so far. Until a few minutes ago, he'd also been a mine of information, telling me about the sawmill and brewery that keep the island's economy going and other fun facts.

"I... I'm glad the village did not die completely during the epidemic that killed so many children in 1745," I remark when the silence stretches too long for me to bear. "I read that many residents fled to other parts of the island, and some even left the island completely during that awful time."

"Epidemic?" Billy grunts, taking his eyes off the road for a second to give me a confused look, and then his face lights up with understanding. "Oh, right, right. That's what it was called in all official documents. I forgot about that. There's nothing like a good old cover-up, is there?" he snorts, squinting to see through the growing mist, reducing speed until the vehicle barely crawls along. "Yes, many returned after a few years when it became clear that the nightmare was truly over."

Nightmare?

Gazing at the dark clouds, the mist, and what I can see of the tall trees tossing in the strong wind, I do not like hearing that word. To me, Peace Haven had been the island of hope, but it is fast becoming the island of mist and shadow, wrapping despair around my dreams that only this morning had been so bright with promise.

"Peace Haven has a consistent trickle of new blood coming in and old blood flowing out. There's not much of a future here for young people; though the mill and the brewery do well, many school graduates prefer to see the world and find their fortune elsewhere. Some return when the world disappoints them.

"Most of the current inhabitants are still the descendants of everybody who fled here from the British Islands to escape the wars, power struggles, and hardships. We are a hearty blend of Scots, Irish, Welsh, and even some English, all living together in harmony under the rule of the Slatherties."

That explains Billy's rather pleasing accent. I love the sound of it, but I've been struggling to place it, as it has elements of what I've heard from people of all the places he'd just mentioned.

"Me family has been here for over 300 years, and I can tell ye that I have no desire to leave. I've travelled, and there's no place in the world like it."

I knew these facts, of course, but hearing them from a descendant's mouth is different from reading about them in old articles. Information on Peace Haven is scant at best.

"Life works under the rule of the Slatherties since their rule mainly consists of letting people get on with their business and only stepping in when there are real problems to deal with. It's been working well for centuries now. The island has no scarce resources others might want, and it doesn't have any strategic value, so the powers fighting to rule the world generally don't bother with us."

"Until the epidemic nearly destroyed the community," I prompt, wanting to know what he meant by 'nightmare' but also rather reluctant to hear about it.

"There was no epidemic," he shrugs. "In 1745, young boys disappeared at an alarming rate. One or more each week. Seven in all. At some point, young women and babies started to vanish too."

"What?! Why?" Anxiety settles uncalled for in my throat, and I have to swallow several times to keep it at bay. "Did they perhaps get lost in the mist and fall into the ocean?" I suggest, my eyes straying to the rising mist, hiding the violent sea from our view. I know my theory makes no sense; there is no way that babies could crawl from their cribs and get lost."

"If only," Billy sighs, making me even more apprehensive, and I hasten to remind myself that 1745 was over two centuries ago. Children are not disappearing right now.

"Madrigal Byrne was the first girl to disappear; she was the 16-year-old daughter of the apothecary and not just some farmer's little boy who might've wandered off and got lost, like the boys who disappeared before her. She disappeared on her wedding day, which was finally the last straw to spur the town into action. A colony of Pavees were camping in the forest at the time, and they left just when Madrigal went missing."

"What exactly are Pavees? I've heard the term before, but always out of context."

"Travellers, gypsies. We still have them. They keep to themselves and don't bother anybody. Nobody is entirely sure of their origins, but they are not prone to crime; they just want to be left alone. It was thought that Madrigal took a fancy to a young Pavee lad who earned some money, challenging men to fight him in the town square. When she disappeared on her wedding day, everybody thought she took off with him because she didn't want to marry Donald Murphy, the richest man in the community, aside from the Duke, of course.

"Who could blame the girl? Donald was nearly three times her age, and she was about to be his fourth wife," Billy says, lifting a hand off the steering wheel to wipe a stray red curl out of his eyes. He is a tall, handsome, rugged-looking man with a warm smile and piercing blue eyes. I think he might be in his late twenties or early thirties, but he has the peaceful air of a much older man.

"Donald wanted an heir, and as soon as it became clear that his current wife would not produce one, he'd divorce her and marry another. It never occurred to the arrogant bastard that the problem might lie with him, even when most of his estranged wives later went on to have children with their new husbands. He did finally have a son with the girl he married after Madrigal went missing, but it is said that the boy bore a striking resemblance to that very Traveller everybody thought Madrigal ran away with. Donald chose to ignore it because acknowledging it might've caused him to admit that he was indeed sterile."

I press my lips together in disgust, grateful that I wasn't born in the era when females were only valued for producing heirs to arrogant men.

"Well, the Pavees decided to break camp and leave when the boys kept disappearing since they had quite a few boys of their own to protect. Their leaving, unfortunately, coincided with Madrigal's disappearance, lending truth to the theory that she ran away with them. Donald and a group of men chased them down to bring her back, and when no trace of her was found with them, they suspected the worst possibilities. Enraged by everything happening to their village, they started burning wagons and killing people, not even sparing innocent children.

"It was quite a bloodbath, and those who survived fled, never to return to this side of the island. The tragic events took place in this very forest," Billy adds, nodding towards the window next to me. A shiver runs down my spine as I turn my eyes to where the mist is curling up the branches of trees being bent by the merciless wind. This is not the best time or place to listen to such unsettling stories. I wish I didn't bring up the subject, but now I need to hear how it ended.

"That is truly horrifying," I breathe. "Did it stop more children from going missing?"

"No, four boys went missing before the massacre and three more after it. Word of the terrible attack on the Pavees only leaked some years later. The handful of men involved in it regretted their deeds and didn't boast about it or broadcast it, probably fearing punishment. After Madrigal went missing, babies started disappearing from their beds, and the nightmare reached a new level of terror. Three more girls between the ages of 13 and 17 went missing without a trace.

"As ye can imagine, the townsfolk and farmers were up in arms. Ye cannot touch people's children and get away with it. They were baying for blood, and when it became known that the duke was in residence, many marched on the manor, demanding that he take action and save the children... and he did.

"One evening, he rode into town, holding onto a rope that bound a bloodied man stumbling along behind his horse. From the stories passed on through generations, it was quite a sight to see. I know stories become embellished through the years, but some of the earliest paintings and drawings depict the duke riding his notoriously temperamental black horse through the mist, his long hair trailing in the wind. Those artworks aren't particularly good, but, looking at them, it isn't hard to imagine the man's cold beauty and overwhelming presence, especially not once ye've dealt with the current Slatherties. I believe the descriptions," Billy says pensively, then shrugs.

"The man he all but dragged into the village was a reclusive pig farmer living at the edge of the forest. I'm not sure what made the duke suspect him, but he raided the farm, and besides a couple of traumatised boys found locked in cages, there were traces of all the other missing boys found all over his house, mainly clothing. On closer inspection, rather horrific discoveries were made in the pig pens. Apparently, if the boys died, he'd chop them up and feed them to his pigs."

I gasp in revulsion, my fingers clutching at the material of my skirt.

"The two rescued boys were never able to speak of the horrors they'd lived through. One of them, Timmy Collins, was only 11 years old when he flung himself off these very cliffs we're passing now. He would've been presumed missing again if he wasn't seen doing it. The other boy, Sam O'Neill, spent a few years hiding in his parents' cottage before he could finally take up living again, but according to the stories, he was never the same."

My heart lurches painfully, imagining the atrocities the boys must've endured at the mercy of that vile man. I cannot bring myself to remark on it; my throat, still tight with anxiety, is suddenly flooded by a rush of overwhelming grief.

"Angered beyond any reason or capacity for mercy, the town's folk beat the pig farmer, Henry Craik, to within an inch of his life and strung him up from that huge old oak tree we passed in the town square. That ended a nightmarish chapter in the history of Slaughtaverty. Children stopped disappearing, and as the years passed, life returned to normal, and the town started to heal and eventually flourished again."

He falls silent for a while, the wind and the engine's drone the only sounds in the car, and then he glances at me, a frown between his eyes.

"The strange thing is that though he never denied taking any of the boys, Henry vehemently denied taking the girls and the babies. Even as he gasped his last breath, his legs doing the hanged man's run, he still screamed that he had nothing to do with the disappearances of the missing girls and the babies. No traces of them were found on his farm, and they never resurfaced.

"Through his excellent detective work and swift judgement, the Duke of Uliadh delivered the community from a nightmare consistently growing in proportions, threatening to destroy the town and the island's very existence. He became the people's hero, and they started to refer to him as the Knight of Slaughtaverty."

We travel in silence for a few minutes, Billy concentrating on the ever-disappearing road and me chewing nervously on my lower lip, mulling over this new, sordid information, further damaging my previously warm feelings towards the island.

"It is his descendants ye'll be working for," Billy points out. "Quite the honour, I'm sure, though it's been a couple of centuries since the Knight of Slaughtaverty reigned over the island. The current Slatherties are doing a pretty good job of keeping the island functional and prosperous in the way that business managers would, but they're not actively involved in any of the community activities. They mainly keep to themselves, which causes quite a lot of fanciful gossip, as ye might imagine. Still, they do many good things for the island's inhabitants and are well respected."

My eyes once more dart from the deepening shadows of the forest on my left to the ocean of mist, hiding the one made of water on our right, to finally focus straight ahead, where the mansion continues to grow in size as the car bumps along the road leading up to it. Another shiver runs down my spine. None of the horrible things Billy just told me made it into any articles on Peace Haven and Slaughtaverty I managed to find online. He is right; much effort went into covering up the truth. Officially, an epidemic killed off the community's most vulnerable, as often happened in the ages before modern medicine.

It could, of course, all just be an urban legend birthed from boredom—stories made up through the years to tell each other as entertainment. The truth might be that the so-called Knight of Slaughtaverty saved the village by supplying them with the ingredients required for a cure, as the articles stated. They didn't refer to the duke by that title, though.

"When we reach the manor, I will have to hurry back to town before the storm hits and it grows too dark, or I might never make it home," Billy informs me, and the anxiety finally dislodges from my throat to settle like a lump of coal in my stomach. As brief as our acquaintance might be, I don't want to say goodbye to the only person I know on the island.

"Thank you for picking me up and taking me there," I mutter, trying to smile with lips that have gone numb somewhere during his horrible story. I am surprised that he was willing to do so in this weather now that I've experienced the treacherous, winding road. I would hate to drive it myself... even on a clear day.

"No problem," Billy smiles, and when he sees the anxious look on my face while I study our surroundings with growing apprehension, he chuckles. "Who knows how much of that story is true? Just because it contains the names of people who actually existed back then doesn't mean that it's true. The same people who spread the tale through the years also spread stories about having spotted young Merry Doyle, one of the missing girls, wandering around in the forest and graveyard, searching for her missing little brother, Uilliam. There are a few people who, even today, claim they saw her; they also say that they've seen Madrigal wearing her wedding dress, stained with blood. Ye and I both know that's just bollux."

"Oh, my word," I gasp, my fingers nervously finding each other and entwining in my lap.

"Old wives' tales, Aubrey!" Billy chuckles again, giving me a regretful look. Clearly, he did not mean to upset me; he was just sharing a story I asked for. He finally navigates the car under an arch covered in ivy, the leaves ghostly and black in the thickening mist.

We have arrived!

The lack of a gate to keep the world at bay startles me, but then I remember that we're on an island with virtually zero crime currently, except for the kind that involves cheating in cards and love.

Leaving the car idling, Billy leaps out and unpacks my bags and boxes, running to the patio with them. He'd already finished two trips by the time I joined him to lend a hand. When I left the car with my handbag slung from my shoulder, I stood frozen in awe and horror, gaping up at the intimidating building with its turrets and ivy-covered walls; its windows, lifeless eyes staring out into the growing dusk.

Driving up to the mansion, I noticed how well-kept and maintained the gardens seemed, from what I could see through the mist, but it did nothing to prepare me for the daunting beauty of the mansion itself. The silence is unnerving and thick every time the wind eases up for a few seconds and stops howling and plucking at my clothes. It is hushed and filled with expectation, broken only by the sound of distant thunder, growing steadily closer. No insects are chirping, and no dogs are barking.

"It was really nice to meet ye, Aubrey. Feel free to call if ye need me again," Billy smiles, handing me a business card - which I slip into my bag - and shaking my trembling hand, giving it an encouraging squeeze. "Just be sure to arrange yer trips for sunlit hours; as ye've seen, navigating that road in the dark is dangerous."

"Thank you, Billy, I will," I smile, enjoying the comforting warmth of his hand. "Please have a safe journey back to town."

"Good luck to ye, Aubrey," he says, looking up at the dark windows above us, and then he runs to the car. He is turning the vehicle around, hurrying down the driveway, determined to outrun the storm and the increasing darkness before I've regained enough of my faltering composure to climb the steps to the intricately carved double front door.

Before I boarded the boat this morning, I tamed my wild mane of tawny ringlets, bullying them into a low ponytail at the nape of my neck, and dressed in my most professional-looking blouse, covered in tiny sprigs of flowers.

Now, my clothes are wrinkled, my hair is a mess, and I'm tired, hungry, and wholly unsettled by the horrible story Billy told me. If there was no storm tossing my skirt around my legs and I didn't know about the murdered people and the hanged man, would the forest, held at bay by a low moss-covered stone wall, still have looked as threatening as it does now? Would the manor still have seemed foreboding rather than inviting?

My good spirits have waned and died during the trip from the harbour to the mansion. I had such high hopes for this employment. I need rest and healing after the storms life has put me through, but a fat raindrop splashing wetly onto my cheek warns me that an actual storm is about to hit, and wrapping my arms around myself, I hurry up the steps to the front door.

Lifting my hand to pick up the ring hanging from the brass wolf's mouth and use it to knock on the dwarfing door, I glance over my shoulder, sure I caught movement from the corner of my eye. All I can see is the mist and the shadows moving inside it. It feels as though the world has disappeared, swallowed by the thickening fog, and all that exists now is the heavy door and the brass knocker. I hope Billy makes it home safely, but I wish he'd stayed with me until I was let into the mansion. I understand his need to hurry, but from the moment we arrived, he'd seemed different, uneasy, and tense.

Breathing shallowly, suddenly afraid and unable to shake the feeling that I'm being watched, perhaps even stalked by something or someone lurking in the mist, I reach for the knocker again, tossing bewildered looks about, alert to any signs of danger.

~~~