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The Moonlight Key and the Sky-Bottomed Square

05 Jan
The Moonlight Key and the Sky-Bottomed Square

Ballykillduff is a village where nothing ever happens twice. Liam is a man of spreadsheets and stone walls, a man who believes that a key’s only job is to open a door. But when he fumbles his keyring into the black, glassy surface of the Un-Lake, the laws of Carlow begin to fray at the seams.

He doesn’t just get his keys back. He pulls something out from the reflection—a Moonlight Key that hums with the sound of “What If.”

Now, the “Out-There” is leaking in. The local pub is made of liquid Guinness, the sky has swapped places with the ground, and a choir of sepia-toned ancestors is singing the town into a memory. As the “Architect of the In-Between,” Liam must navigate a landscape built of his own stray thoughts to lock the leak before the village he knows is un-thunk forever.

In the Un-Lake, the reflection is better than the reality. But as Liam is about to learn, a perfect world is a very lonely place to live.

To continue reading this story, click HERE and enjoy.

 
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Posted by on January 5, 2026 in ballykillduff, carlow

 

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Seven for a Secret, Never to Be Told

28 Dec
Seven for a Secret, Never to Be Told

Seven for a Secret, Never to Be Told

Everyone in Ballykillduff knew the rhyme. They learned it young, usually from someone older who lowered their voice for the last line.

One for sorrow.
Two for joy.
Three for a girl.
Four for a boy.
Five for silver.
Six for gold.
Seven for a secret, never to be told.

Most people laughed at it. Some people touched wood. Nobody ever talked about seven.

Alice saw them on a Tuesday morning, standing along the hedge at Curran’s Lane.

Seven magpies. Neat as fence posts. Silent as if silence were a rule they were following carefully.

Alice stopped walking.

The hedge itself felt wrong. Not dangerous. Just… held together too tightly, like someone smiling for longer than was comfortable.

She counted them twice. She always did when things felt important.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

All seven turned their heads together and looked at her.

“Right,” Alice said quietly. “It’s that sort of day.”

People passed along the lane without noticing anything at all. Mr Keane walked by whistling. Mrs Donnelly hurried past with her shopping. No one looked at the hedge. No one slowed down.

Only Alice stood there.

The magpies did not speak. They had never needed to.

Long ago, Ballykillduff had made a decision.

It was not a cruel decision. It was a tired one.

Something sad had happened. Something that could not be fixed. A thing with a name, and a place, and a day that people still remembered too clearly. After a while, the village agreed to stop saying it out loud. Not because it wasn’t real, but because remembering it every day was making it impossible to live the next ones.

So the remembering was set aside.

And the magpies stayed.

They stayed because someone had to remember, and magpies are very good at keeping what others lay down. Not just shiny things, but moments, and names, and truths that no longer fit anywhere else.

The rhyme was never meant to predict luck.

It was a warning.

Seven magpies meant a place was carrying a memory it no longer wanted to hold.

One of the magpies hopped down from the hedge and pecked at the ground. Not at soil, but at a flat stone half-buried near the roots. A stone no one stepped on, though no one could have said why.

Alice knew what was being asked of her.

She did not need to know the whole story. She did not need names or details. She only needed to do one thing the village had not done in a very long time.

She knelt and placed her hand on the stone.

“I know,” she said, softly.

That was all.

Not what she knew. Just that she knew something had been there. Something had mattered.

The hedge loosened. Just a little. The air moved again.

When Alice stood up, there were only six magpies left.

They were already arguing with one another, hopping and chattering, busy once more with ordinary magpie business. Shiny things. Important nonsense. The everyday work of being alive.

The seventh magpie rose into the air and flew away, light now, its work finished at last.

Alice walked on down the lane.

Behind her, Ballykillduff continued exactly as it always had. But somewhere deep in its bones, a small, quiet weight had finally been set down properly instead of being hidden away.

And the rhyme, for once, was at rest.

The Eighth Magpie

Everyone in Ballykillduff knew the rhyme. They said it quickly, like a spell that worked better if you didn’t linger on it.

One for sorrow.
Two for joy.
Three for a girl.
Four for a boy.
Five for silver.
Six for gold.
Seven for a secret, never to be told.

Alice had already seen seven magpies once before, and she knew what that meant.

So when she walked along Curran’s Lane and saw eight, she stopped dead.

Seven stood along the hedge, silent and still.

The eighth stood on the path itself, blocking the way.

“Well,” Alice said, “that’s new.”

The eighth magpie was smaller than the others and less patient. It tapped one foot, then the other, as if waiting for a late train.

Seven magpies meant the village had forgotten something important. A sad thing. A thing everyone had agreed not to talk about.

That part had already been done.

Ballykillduff had remembered.

But the eighth magpie had arrived because remembering had changed nothing yet.

The bird pecked sharply at the ground.

Alice followed its beak and saw the problem at once.

The old path had collapsed further down the lane. A fence lay broken. The shortcut people once used had never been repaired. Long ago, someone had been hurt there. That was the secret. That was why people stopped using it.

They had remembered the accident.

They had never fixed the path.

“Oh,” said Alice. “You mean that.”

The eighth magpie nodded briskly.

It wasn’t here for memory.
It was here for mending.

Alice went back to the village and told people what she’d seen. Not the whole story. Just enough.

By evening, someone had brought tools. Someone else brought boards. Someone else brought tea.

By the next morning, the path was safe again.

When Alice returned to Curran’s Lane, there were only seven magpies on the hedge.

Then six.

Then none at all.

The eighth magpie was gone first.

It always is.

Because once something is put right, there is no need for it to stay.

And the rhyme, at last, had room for one more line, though nobody ever said it aloud:

Eight for the thing you do about it.

 
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Posted by on December 28, 2025 in A new Alice in Wonderland story, Alice in Wonderland, alice in wonderland adventure, alice on top of the world

 

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The Troll

28 Dec
The Troll
The Troll of Ballykillduff Bridge
********************************
Everyone in Ballykillduff knew the bridge, though nobody quite agreed on how long it had been there. Some said it had grown out of the river one night like a thought nobody remembered thinking. Others claimed Jimmy McGroggan once tried to repair it and the bridge repaired him instead.
But what everyone did agree on was this:
there was a troll living underneath it.
His name was Mosskin O’Grumble, and he was a very polite troll with extremely poor manners.
Mosskin lived in a snug hollow beneath the bridge, furnished with a teapot that never stopped dripping, three boots that were not a pair between them, and a chair that sighed whenever anyone sat on it. His beard was thick with moss, his coat smelled faintly of river stones, and his hat had once been a kettle before it decided it preferred being worn.
Each morning, Mosskin poked his head out of the shadows and called in his loudest, trolliest voice,
“WHO GOES OVER MY BRIDGE?”
This caused mild inconvenience, as the people of Ballykillduff went over the bridge all the time.
“Morning, Mosskin,” called Bridget, carrying her shopping.
“It’s only me,” said Seamus, for the third time that day.
“Oh,” Mosskin muttered, disappointed. “I was hoping for someone new.”
You see, Mosskin was meant to demand tolls. That was the rule. Troll rules were very old and written in ink that smelled of damp. Unfortunately, nobody in Ballykillduff ever had the right sort of toll.
One offered him a button.
Another offered a joke that didn’t quite work.
Once, Father Donnelly accidentally gave him a blessing, which caused Mosskin to glow faintly and hum hymns whenever it rained.
Mosskin accepted everything solemnly and stored it all in a jam jar labelled TOLLS (IMPORTANT).
The trouble began on a Tuesday, which in Ballykillduff is widely considered an unreliable day.
That morning, the river stopped.
It did not freeze. It did not dry up. It simply decided it had gone far enough and sat still, like a sulking child.
The bridge creaked uneasily.
“This will not do,” the bridge murmured.
Mosskin poked the river with a stick.
“Have you tried moving?” he asked.
The river refused to answer.
By lunchtime, the village had gathered. Jimmy McGroggan arrived with a machine involving springs, levers, and optimism. Bridget brought sandwiches. Someone suggested asking the bridge nicely.
At last, Mosskin climbed up onto the bridge itself, clearing his throat in a way that startled several beetles.
“I am the Troll of Ballykillduff Bridge,” he announced, surprised by how important it sounded. “And I declare that something is wrong.”
“I am tired,” said the bridge. “People cross me without noticing. The river forgets to sing. Everyone rushes.”
Mosskin thought very hard. This caused a small puff of steam to rise from his ears.
“Well,” he said slowly, “perhaps you need a proper toll.”
“But we haven’t any money,” Seamus said.
“Good,” Mosskin replied. “Money is rarely the right thing.”
That evening, the villagers lined up at the bridge. One by one, they crossed more slowly than usual.
They offered small, strange things.
A promise, spoken carefully.
A regret, folded neatly.
A story remembered from childhood.
A song hummed badly but honestly.
Mosskin collected each offering and, instead of placing them in his jam jar, gently set them into the river.
And the river began to move again.
Not quickly. Not sensibly.
But with the soft, happy sound of something remembering itself.
As dusk settled, the villagers drifted home. Mosskin remained beneath the bridge, listening.
The water flowed. The stones no longer sighed. The bridge stood a little taller, pleased in the quiet way old things prefer.
Mosskin sat on his sighing chair and looked at his jam jar. It felt lighter now, though it was fuller than it had ever been.
Only then did he understand.
Nobody had crossed the bridge in a hurry. They had slowed. They had looked down at the water. They had touched the stone. Some had even spoken to the bridge itself, which made it warm all through.
“All this time,” Mosskin murmured, “I thought I was guarding the bridge.”
But the bridge had never needed guarding.
It had only wanted to be noticed.
So now, when someone crosses the bridge at dusk and pauses without knowing why, they may hear a voice from below, warm and grateful, carried gently by the water.
“Thank you,” it says.
“Thank you for noticing.”
And the bridge, the river, and the village of Ballykillduff go on working properly again, as they always do, once someone remembers to pay attention.
 
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Posted by on December 28, 2025 in ballykillduff, carlow, troll

 

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The Wren Boys of Duckett’s Grove

22 Dec
The Wren Boys of Duckett’s Grove

The Return of the Wren Boys from Duckett’s Grove

Deep in the heart of County Carlow, where the Barrow River winds lazily and the fields are dotted with ancient ring forts, stands the crumbling gothic majesty of **Duckett’s Grove**. Once a grand estate with towering walls, ornate gardens, and a family cursed by bad luck (and worse fires), it’s now a romantic ruin—ivy-clinging towers, empty windows staring like ghostly eyes, and whispers of a banshee who combs her hair on stormy nights.

On St. Stephen’s Day (the proper Irish name for December 26th, when the Wren Boys traditionally roam), a ragtag group of locals from nearby Rathvilly decided to revive the old custom. Led by young Tommy “The Bold” Murphy—a farmer’s son with a fiddle and too much enthusiasm—they donned the ancient straw suits: towering masks made from hay, old sacks, and painted faces, looking like scarecrows escaped from a nightmare. Their mission? Parade through the lanes, bang bodhráns, play tunes, and collect a few euro for the pub fund, all while chanting the old rhyme: “The wren, the wren, the king of all birds…”

But this year, they took a shortcut through the forbidden grounds of Duckett’s Grove. “Sure, it’ll be grand,” said Tommy. “A bit of atmosphere for the photos!”

Big mistake.

As the Wren Boys burst into the ruined courtyard, banging drums and whooping, a cold wind howled through the arches. The ground trembled. From the shadows of the burnt-out mansion emerged… the ghosts.

First came the **Spectral Huntsman**, a towering figure in faded red coat and tricorn hat, astride a translucent horse that neighed silently. His hounds—ethereal wolfhounds with glowing eyes—bounded around the terrified Wren Boys.

Then, with a wail that rattled the ivy, appeared the **Banshee of Duckett’s Grove** herself—long silver hair flowing, eyes like midnight pools, combing her locks with bony fingers.

The Wren Boys froze. One lad dropped his bodhrán and legged it toward the gate.

But the Huntsman raised a ghostly horn to his lips (no sound, but everyone felt it in their bones) and boomed: “At last! Revelers! We’ve been waiting centuries for a proper Wren Day!”

Turns out, the ghosts weren’t angry—they were bored. Trapped in the ruins since the big fire in the 1930s, they’d missed the craic. No parades, no music, no Guinness. The Banshee floated forward: “Will ye not play for us, boys? A tune for the dead?”

Tommy, ever the bold one, struck up his fiddle with shaky hands. “The Wren Song,” of course.

Magic happened. The ghosts joined in. The Huntsman grabbed a spectral bodhrán and beat it like thunder. The Banshee’s wail turned into the most haunting harmony you’d ever hear—off-key, but pure soul. Even the hounds howled along in rhythm.

Word spread like wildfire (pun intended). Farmers arrived on tractors decked in fairy lights. Villagers poured out of pubs. The parade swelled: living Wren Boys in straw, ghostly ones in ethereal tatters, marching down the snowy lanes toward the nearest hostelry—O’Brien’s Pub in Rathvilly.

By nightfall, the pub was packed beyond belief. Ghosts phased through walls to join the céilí. The Huntsman led a set dance, his horse parked outside (clip-clopping invisibly). The Banshee sang “Fields of Athenry” and brought tears to every eye—living and dead. Pints of Guinness materialized for the specters (they drank through osmosis, apparently).

The party raged till dawn. No one got exorcised. No one got hurt. Just pure, mad Carlow craic.

And now, every St. Stephen’s Day, the Wren Boys return to Duckett’s Grove. The ghosts wait eagerly. The parade grows bigger. Tractors join. Tourists come from afar.

Because in rural Carlow, even the dead know: nothing beats a good knees-up with tunes, stout, and a bit of banshee wailing on Wren Day.

Nollaig Shona Duit—and mind the ghosts on your way home! 🎻👻🍻

 
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Posted by on December 22, 2025 in Christmas Stories, Christmas story, saint stephen's day, wren boys

 

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Tullow Pyramid

19 Dec
Tullow Pyramid

The morning mist in Tullow usually smells of damp grass and the Slaney river, but on a Tuesday in October, it carried the scent of sun-baked cedar and ozone.

When the sun finally burned through the fog, the townspeople found it: a pyramid, no taller than a two-story townhouse, sitting perfectly centered in the middle of The Square. It hadn’t made a sound. No one’s Ring doorbell had captured a delivery truck, and the gravel beneath it hadn’t even been displaced. It looked as though it had been there for ten thousand years, and the town of Tullow had simply grown around it overnight.

The Impossible Stone

The structure wasn’t gold or limestone. It was made of a deep, matte basalt that seemed to “drink” the light around it. Local historian Sean O’Shea was the first to approach it with a magnifying glass.

“It’s not Egyptian,” he whispered to the huddle of onlookers. “The carvings… they’re Ogham, but they’re wrong. The lines are moving.”

He was right. The deep grooves etched into the stone weren’t static. If you looked at a symbol and then blinked, the notches had shifted, crawling like slow-motion insects across the surface of the dark stone.

The “Goings-On”

As the day progressed, the “mysteries” escalated from architectural anomalies to full-blown local phenomena:

  • The Weightless Zone: Within ten feet of the pyramid, gravity seemed to lose its grip. Local kids discovered they could jump six feet into the air with a single hop. A stray Border Collie was seen drifting three feet off the ground, looking mildly annoyed as it paddled through the air.
  • The Radio Silence: Every digital device in Tullow began to act up. Car radios played music that hadn’t been recorded yet—melodies with instruments that sounded like glass breaking in harmony. Phone screens showed maps of stars that didn’t exist in the Milky Way.
  • The Echoes of the Past: At noon, the air around the pyramid grew thick. People standing near the Post Office reported seeing “shadows” of people in ancient robes walking through the walls of the modern shops. They weren’t ghosts; they looked solid, but they were silent, focused on a city that had stood in Tullow’s place eons ago.

The Door Without a Seam

By sunset, the Irish Defense Forces had cordoned off the area, but the pyramid had its own ideas about security. A seam appeared on the eastern face—not a door opening, but the stone simply evaporating into a fine purple mist.

A low hum, like a thousand bees vibrating in a cello case, began to pulse through the pavement. Those standing closest reported a sudden, overwhelming memory of a life they had never lived—a memory of a Great Library and a sky with three moons.

“It isn’t a tomb,” Sean O’Shea shouted over the rising hum as the military tried to push the crowd back. “It’s a bookmark! It’s holding our place in time!”

As the clock struck midnight, exactly twenty-four hours after its arrival, the pyramid didn’t vanish. Instead, the colors of Tullow began to bleed into it. The gray pavement turned to gold dust; the local pub’s neon sign turned into a floating orb of cold fire. The pyramid wasn’t visiting Tullow—it was starting to rewrite it.

The Morning After

The next day, the pyramid was gone. The Square was empty. But the people of Tullow were different. Everyone in town now spoke a second language—a melodic, ancient tongue they all understood but couldn’t name. And in the center of the Square, where the pyramid had sat, the grass now grows in the shape of a perfect, unblinking eye.

The transition from a sleepy market town to a high-security “Linguistic Quarantine Zone” happened in less than seventy-two hours.

The Irish Defense Forces were replaced by international suits: UN observers, cryptographers from Fort Meade, and stone-faced men in lab coats. They set up a perimeter around Tullow, but they weren’t looking for radiation or biological weapons. They were looking for words.

The Incident at Murphy’s Hardware

It started small. Mrs. Gately, a grandmother of seven, was trying to explain to a scientist that she felt “perfectly fine.” But as she spoke the new melodic tongue—the Tullow Tongue—she reached for a word that sounded like ‘Lir-un-teth’.

As the syllable left her lips, the air in the room didn’t just vibrate; it crystallized. Every loose nail and bolt in Murphy’s Hardware rose from its bin, suspended in mid-air, forming a perfect, rotating sphere of jagged metal. When she stopped speaking out of shock, the metal fell, clattering to the floor like a thousand spilled coins.

The scientists stopped taking notes. They started taking measurements.

The Architecture of Sound

The townspeople soon realized that their new language was actually a User Interface for the Universe.

Phrase (Phonetic) Observed Effect
Vora-shé Localized gravity increases by 15%; footsteps feel like lead.
Kael-o-min Objects become transparent for exactly sixty seconds.
Thu-lar-is Temperature drops to freezing point within a three-meter radius.

The Lexicon of the Void

As the town begins to “un-anchor,” the physical world in Tullow starts to look like a corrupted digital file. Trees are turning into geometric patterns, and the Slaney river is flowing upward in silent, silver ribbons.

Sean realizes that the “Master Command” the government wants isn’t a word for power—it’s a word for erasure. The pyramid wasn’t a gift; it was a test to see if humanity could handle the “Source Code” of the universe. So far, they are failing.

The Secret in the Stone

Sean flees the military cordon and heads to the one place everyone has ignored: the “Eye” in the grass where the pyramid once stood. He realizes that the language isn’t just spoken—it’s felt.

He finds that the grass isn’t just growing in a pattern; it’s vibrating at a frequency that matches a specific ancient Ogham stone kept in the Carlow County Museum. The “Word of Silence” isn’t a sound you make with your throat; it’s a sound you make by stopping all other sounds.

The Climax: The government’s lead linguist, a man who hasn’t slept in four days, finally identifies the syllable for “Unmake.” He prepares to broadcast it over the town’s PA system to “reset” the anomaly. He doesn’t realize it won’t just reset the pyramid’s effects—it will delete every living soul in a fifty-mile radius.

Sean has to reach the broadcast tower first. He doesn’t have a gun, and he doesn’t have an army. He only has a scrap of paper with a symbol that represents the concept of “The Great Pause.”

The broadcast tower stood on a hill overlooking Tullow, a skeletal needle silhouetted against a sky that was no longer blue, but a bruised, flickering violet. Below, the town was humming—a physical, bone-shaking vibration as thousands of residents unintentionally sang the world apart.

Sean O’Shea scrambled up the access stairs, his lungs burning. In his pocket, the scrap of paper felt heavy, as if the symbol drawn on it carried its own mass.

Inside the control booth, Dr. Aris Thorne, the lead linguist, stood over a mixing console. He looked skeletal, his eyes bloodshot from days of staring at waveforms that defied physics. He wasn’t a villain, Sean realized; he was a man who had looked into the sun and thought he could map the rays.

The Standoff

“Thorne! Stop!” Sean’s voice cracked.

Thorne didn’t turn around. His hand hovered over the ‘Transmit’ slider. “You don’t understand, O’Shea. The town is drifting. If I don’t broadcast the ‘Kshantra’ syllable—the ‘Unmake’—the anomaly will expand. It will swallow Carlow. Then Leinster. Then the world.”

“You’ve misread the syntax,” Sean gasped, slamming his notebook onto the console. “You’re looking at it as a mathematician. But this language… it’s emotional. ‘Kshantra’ doesn’t mean ‘Reset.’ It means ‘Void.’ You won’t be fixing Tullow; you’ll be deleting the space it occupies.”

Thorne’s hand trembled. “It’s the only logical conclusion. We have to zero out the equation.”

The Architecture of the Void

Sean pointed to the screen where Thorne’s projected waveform sat. “Look at the spikes. That’s not a return to zero. That’s a scream. If you play that over the PA system, you aren’t just stopping the music; you’re breaking the instrument.”

“Then what?” Thorne hissed, turning finally. “The people are singing the world into geometric dust! Give me an alternative!”

Sean pulled out his scrap of paper. It didn’t have a phonetic spelling. It was a single, perfect circle with a horizontal line through it—the Ogham for ‘The Great Drown’, but modified.

“It’s not a word,” Sean whispered. “It’s a caesura. A musical pause. You don’t broadcast a sound to stop this, Thorne. You broadcast a frequency of absolute silence. You have to create a vacuum in the air so the language has no medium to travel through.”

The Final Choice

The tower groaned. Outside, the Slaney river had begun to float in giant, spherical droplets, and the local pub’s roof was turning into translucent glass.

“If I broadcast a true vacuum,” Thorne whispered, “the feedback will destroy the equipment. We’ll be deaf. Maybe forever.”

“A small price,” Sean said, “to keep the ground under our feet.”

Thorne looked at the paper, then at the dying town. With a grimace, he began to reconfigure the digital processors. He wasn’t aiming for a sound; he was aiming for the absence of it.

He gripped the slider. “On three,” Thorne said. “Say goodbye to the music.”

The moment the slider hit the top, the world didn’t bang. It gasped. A wall of pressurized stillness slammed out from the tower, rippling across Tullow like a transparent shockwave.

The humming stopped. The violet sky snapped back to a dull, Irish gray. Mrs. Gately’s floating nails fell. The river splashed back into its bed.

Sean fell to his knees, his ears ringing with a high-pitched whine that drowned out the wind. He looked at Thorne, who was touching his own ears, blood trickling from his lobes, a look of profound relief—and sudden, terrifying ignorance—on his face.

The language was gone. The “Tullow 3,000” opened their mouths to speak, but only ordinary English came out. The magic had been muted.

The silence was heavier than the noise had ever been. It felt like a physical weight pressing against the eardrums of every person in Tullow. The “Great Pause” had worked; the reality-warping vocabulary was gone, replaced by the mundane sounds of distant car engines and the wind whistling through the tower’s steel struts.

Sean left Dr. Thorne slumped against the console—a man who had traded his genius for a world that stayed still—and began the long walk down the hill.

The Gray Return

As he entered the town limits, he saw the cost of their salvation. Tullow looked like a photograph that had been left in the sun too long.

  • The Colors: The vibrant, shifting hues were gone, but they had taken the natural color with them. The brickwork of the shops was a dull, ashen gray.
  • The People: Residents stood in the streets, touching their throats. They tried to speak, but their voices were flat, stripped of the melodic resonance they’d shared for the last few days. They were safe, but they looked… diminished.

The Center of the Eye

Sean reached The Square. The military cordons had been knocked flat by the “silence wave,” and the soldiers were still dazed, wandering like ghosts.

He walked to the center, to the patch of grass where the pyramid had stood. Throughout the crisis, the grass had grown in the shape of a closed lid. Now, the soil had shifted.

The “Eye” hadn’t just appeared; it had manifested.

It was a circular depression, twelve feet across, lined with that same matte-black basalt. But it wasn’t a hole. The surface was a perfect, liquid mirror, reflecting a sky that didn’t match the one above Tullow. While the Irish clouds were gray and heavy, the reflection showed a sky of burning gold and three distinct, jagged moons.

The Last Witness

Sean knelt at the edge of the basalt pool. As he stared into the reflection, he realized the “Eye” wasn’t looking at them—it was a lens.

Deep within the liquid reflection, he saw a city. It wasn’t the ancient Tullow of the shadow-people, nor was it a future metropolis. It was a place of impossible geometry, where buildings grew like trees and light moved like water.

And then, the reflection blinked.

A massive, dark shape crossed the golden sky in the pool. It looked like the pyramid, but on a scale that would dwarf a mountain. It was coming back, or perhaps it had never left—it had simply been waiting for the “noise” of humanity to stop so it could see clearly.

“We didn’t turn it off,” Sean whispered, his voice the only sound in the square. “We just cleared the glass.”

Behind him, the liquid basalt began to ripple. A single, crystalline spire—no larger than a needle—began to poke upward from the center of the Eye. It wasn’t rewriting the world this time. It was transmitting.

The New Reality

Tullow was no longer just a town in County Carlow. It was now a lighthouse for something living in the spaces between seconds.

The Signal

At exactly 8:00 PM, during the evening news, every screen across the Republic of Ireland flickered. It wasn’t the usual static. The screen turned the exact matte-black of the basalt pyramid, and then, a single point of gold light appeared in the center.

It didn’t show a face. It showed data.

The “message” wasn’t audio. It was a sequence of images flickering at a rate of sixty frames per second:

  1. A Map: Not of Earth, but of the River Slaney, traced in glowing lines of light, extending deep into the earth until it connected with a subterranean ocean.
  2. A DNA Helix: One side was human; the other side was made of shifting, crystalline Ogham symbols.
  3. The Countdown: A series of three moons slowly aligning.

The Pulse

In Tullow, Sean O’Shea stood over the “Eye” as the spire in the center pulsed. He realized the television broadcast wasn’t for the public—it was a synchronization pulse.

He looked down into the liquid mirror. The city with the golden sky was closer now. He could see figures standing on the balconies of the tree-like buildings. They weren’t looking at the sky; they were looking up at him, through the lens of the Square.

One of them, a figure draped in robes that looked like woven starlight, stepped forward and placed a hand against the surface of the “Eye” from the other side.

The Touch

Sean felt a pull in his chest—a magnetic tug. He reached out, his trembling fingers hovering inches above the liquid basalt.

“Sean, don’t!” a voice yelled. It was Dr. Thorne, staggering into the square, his ears still bandaged. “We don’t know what they are!”

“They aren’t ‘they’, Thorne,” Sean said, his eyes fixed on the golden reflection. “Look at the stars in the broadcast. Look at the alignment of the Slaney.”

Sean pressed his palm against the cool, vibrating surface of the Eye. The liquid didn’t feel like water; it felt like a heartbeat.

“It’s not an invasion,” Sean whispered as his hand sank into the mirror. “It’s a homecoming. We’re the ones who were lost.”

The Final Fade

As Sean’s hand disappeared into the gold-lit reflection, the television screens across Ireland went white. A single sentence appeared on every phone, laptop, and billboard in the country, written in perfect, clear English:

“THE PAUSE IS OVER. THE SONG RESUMES.”

The pyramid had been the tuning fork. Tullow was the stage. And as the gold light from the Square began to erupt upward, piercing the gray Irish clouds like a pillar of fire, the rest of the world finally began to remember the lyrics.

STRATEGIC INVESTIGATION REPORT: INCIDENT T-059

Subject: The Tullow Anomaly (Carlow County, Ireland)

Status: Ongoing – Reality Shift Level 5

Date of Report: December 19, 2025

Prepared By: Department of Extra-Temporal Affairs (DETA)

1. Executive Summary

Between October and December 2025, the town of Tullow, County Carlow, underwent a total reality-restructuring event initiated by the appearance of a Class-1 Unknown Subsurface Structure (The Pyramid). The incident concluded with the activation of the “Eye” in The Square, resulting in the permanent alteration of 3,000 residents and the opening of a persistent trans-dimensional gateway.

2. Chronology of Anomalies

Phase Event Observed Impact
Arrival Emergence of the Matte-Black Pyramid. Disruption of local gravity; introduction of “The Tullow Tongue” (Language of Prime Reality).
Expansion The “Shadow Resident” sightings. Bleeding of a secondary timeline into the Carlow landscape; conversion of matter to basalt.
The Silence Activation of the “Great Pause” Frequency. Attempted reset of local physics by Dr. Aris Thorne; resulted in permanent linguistic dampening.
The Opening Activation of “The Eye.” Successful synchronization with a Golden-Sky Reality (Designation: Primus).
 
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Posted by on December 19, 2025 in time travel

 

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When the President of Ireland met the Ballykillduff Daleks

15 Dec
When the President of Ireland met the Ballykillduff Daleks

When the President of Ireland met the Ballykillduff Daleks

The presidential motorcade, usually a beacon of solemnity, was currently attempting a precarious three-point turn in a field that smelled distinctly of prize-winning Kerry cows. Inside, President McMurrow, a man whose silver hair and kindly eyes belied a mischievous wit, chuckled. “Remind me again, Fiona,” he addressed his chief of staff, “why we bypassed the usual diplomatic channels for a direct engagement with… the Ballykillduff Daleks?”

Fiona, a woman who had seen it all – from rogue shamrock presentations to international incidents involving a missing Taoiseach and a particularly enthusiastic hurling team – sighed. “Because, Mr. President, their ‘Exterminate All Humans’ manifesto was getting an alarming amount of traction on TikTok, and Fine Gael were starting to panic about the youth vote.”

Just then, a shrill, metallic voice screeched from beyond the hawthorn hedge. “EXTERNAL-LIN-GUISH! EX-TER-NAL-LIN-GUISH THE GRAZING MENACE!”

“Ah,” President McMurrow adjusted his tie, a subtle nod to the seriousness of the occasion. “Sounds like our welcoming committee.”

They emerged to a truly surreal sight. Five Daleks, unmistakably Daleks, but with a distinct Ballykillduff charm. One had a tricolour painted rather crudely on its side. Another wore a tiny, ill-fitting leprechaun hat. The leader, a particularly rusty specimen, had what looked suspiciously like a hurley stick strapped to its casing.

“GREET-INGS, FLESH-BAG!” screeched the hurley-wielding Dalek. “WE ARE THE DA-LEKS OF BALLY-KILL-DUFF! PRE-PARE TO BE… ENTER-TAINED!”

President McMurrow raised an eyebrow. “Entertained, you say? Not exterminated?”

“EX-TER-MIN-ATE IS SO… LAST SEA-SON,” replied another Dalek, its eye-stalk swivelling to glare at a sheep that had dared to bleat nearby. “WE HAVE DE-CID-ED TO EM-BRACE LO-CAL CUL-TURE!”

It turned out their TikTok fame had come from their surprisingly viral Riverdance routine. “WE HAVE MOD-I-FIED OUR PLUN-GERS FOR PER-CUSS-IVE DANC-ING!” explained the Dalek with the leprechaun hat. “WOULD YOU LIKE A DEM-ON-STRA-TION, MR. PRES-I-DENT?”

Before McMurrow could answer, a local farmer, Seamus O’Malley, ambled over, scratching his head. “Are these the fellas who keep rearrangin’ my hay bales into the shape of the Millennium Falcon?”

The Daleks froze. “NEG-A-TIVE! THAT IS A SLAN-DER-OUS AC-CU-SA-TION!”

“Oh, come off it,” Seamus scoffed. “My prize-winning ram, Brendan, saw you! Said you were humming the Star Wars theme tune!”

President McMurrow, struggling to suppress a laugh, intervened. “Gentlemen, perhaps we could discuss your, ah, ‘cultural integration’ over a cup of tea? I believe Fiona has brought some Tayto.”

The word ‘Tayto’ seemed to short-circuit the Daleks. “POT-AT-O BASED SNACK PROD-UCT? EX-PLAIN! EX-PLAIN!”

Hours later, the presidential motorcade departed, leaving behind a scene of utter bewilderment and joy. The Ballykillduff Daleks were now sporting tiny GAA jerseys, had learned to play a passable bodhrán rhythm with their plungers, and were eagerly discussing the merits of cheese and onion crisps versus salt and vinegar.

 
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Posted by on December 15, 2025 in daleks, Ireland, president

 

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The Twelve Dalek Days of Christmas

08 Dec
The Twelve Dalek Days of Christmas

The Daleks of Ballykillduff and the Twelve Days of Absolutely Catastrophic Christmas

Ballykillduff was gearing up for its usual festive carnage when the three Daleks (Zeg, Zog, and Zag) decided Christmas was a strategic weakness ripe for conquest. They were wrong. Spectacularly, hilariously, catastrophically wrong.

Day 1 – A Partridge in a Pear Tree Zeg declared himself the new Lord of Christmas and tried to occupy the village pear tree. The tree had ideas. One gust of wind and Zeg shot out like a metallic cannonball, landing upside-down in Mrs Mulgrew’s prize-winning compost heap. “EXTERMINATE THE COMPOST!” he shrieked, muffled by six feet of rotting cabbage. Mrs Mulgrew charged out in hair curlers, brandishing a broom. “You’ll be compost yourself, ya pepper-pot gobshite!” Zeg spent the rest of the day being hosed down by the fire brigade while the entire village filmed it for TikTok.

Day 2 – Two Turtle Doves Zog kidnapped the doves to interrogate them about “avian loyalty.” The doves shat on his dome in perfect unison, then flew off with his eyestalk cover. He chased them screaming “RETURN MY OPTIC!” straight into the duck pond. Ducks 3 – Three French Hens** The hens belonged to Sister Bernadette. They were ninja hens. Zog is still convinced they were cyber-converted. He has PTSD and flinches every time someone says “coq au vin.”

Day 4 – Four Calling Birds Zag tried to weaponising them with tiny Dalek voice modulators. The birds learned one phrase: “ZAG IS A SPAWNFACE.” They followed him everywhere for a week, screeching it at 140 decibels. He now sleeps with industrial earmuffs.

Day 5 – FIVE GOOOOLD RIIIINGS Zeg stole the five gold rings from the jeweller and tried to wear them like Olympic medals. They got stuck on his plunger. The fire brigade had to come back. Again. The chief now has a special “Dalek wedged in something stupid” incident code.

Day 6 – Six Geese a-Laying The geese took one look at three rolling dustbins shouting “EXTERMINATE” and decided it was go-time. Live-streamed goose chase lasted twenty-three glorious minutes. Final score: Geese 47, Daleks 0. Zeg’s dignity is still missing, presumed pecked to death.

Day 7 – Seven Swans a-Swimming The swans were rented from a posh estate for the crib scene. Daleks attempted a synchronized swimming takeover. Swans formed a V-formation and torpedoed them like feathery missiles. Zog was last seen doing 360-degree spins in the fountain yelling “WHY IS EVERY BIRD IN IRELAND EVIL?”

Day 8 – Eight Maids a-Milking The maids were actually eight burly farmers’ daughters who’d had three pints each at the pub. They mistook the Daleks for novelty kegs, flipped them upside down, and tried to “tap” them. Milk stout was not improved by Dalek hydraulic fluid.

Day 9 – Nine Ladies Dancing Céilí night. The Daleks stormed the hall demanding everyone riverdance in perfect Dalek formation. The band struck up “The Siege of Ennis” at double speed. The floor had been waxed with Murphy’s Homemade Furniture Polish (90% butter). All three Daleks achieved low-orbit skids, ricocheted off the walls like pinballs, and took out the Christmas tree, the buffet table, Father Murphy, and the life-size Baby Jesus in one glorious crash. The village gave them a standing ovation and voted it “Best Nativity Ever.”

Day 10 – Ten Lords a-Leaping The lords were the Ballykillduff under-12 hurling team in panto costumes. They used the Daleks as goalposts. Zag still has a hurley stuck through his grille.

Day 11 – Eleven Pipers Piping The pipe band marched straight at them playing “Garryowen” at full volume. Zeg’s audio circuits overloaded; he started speaking only in bagpipe noises for six hours. “SKRL-SKRL-SKREEEEE—EXTERMINATE—SKRL!”

Day 12 – Twelve Drummers Drumming Christmas Eve. The Daleks, battered, leaking, one still wearing a goose feathers like a Hawaiian skirt, rolled to the top of the hill for one last stand. Zeg raised his gunstick: “On the twelfth day of Christmas the Daleks give to you… TOTAL OBLITERATION!” Snow started falling. The village kids pelted them with snowballs. One perfect snowball hit Zeg’s power cell. He short-circuited, lights flashing like a disco, and began singing “Jingle Bells” in a helium voice. Zog and Zag joined in, completely against their will. The entire village gathered, phones out, singing along while three mortified Daleks performed an involuntary Christmas concert on the hillside.

Midnight struck. Church bells rang. Even the geese shut up for a minute.

Zeg’s eyestalk drooped. “Temporary… ceasefire. For tactical reasons.” Someone stuck a Santa hat on him. Someone else tied tinsel round Zog’s plunger. Zag got a sprig of mistletoe wedged in his gun barrel and spent the rest of the night accidentally kissing pensioners.

Mad Jimmy McGroggan raised his pint from the pub doorway and roared: “Merry Christmas, ya glorified teapots!”

And from the top of the hill came three metallic voices, small and very, very embarrassed:

“MER-RY CHRIST-MAS… TO YOU… FILTHY HU-MANS.”

Then, quieter: “…and don’t tell the Supreme Dalek.”

Best Christmas Ballykillduff ever had. The geese are already booked for next year.

 
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Posted by on December 8, 2025 in ballykillduff, carlow, dalek, daleks

 

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04 Dec

THE BALLYKILLDUFF DALEKS SAVE CHRISTMAS

A Festive Tale

CHAPTER ONE

Snow on Ballykillduff Hill

Ballykillduff was not known for dramatic weather. Rain was expected. Mists drifted in like gossip and no one questioned them.
Snow, however, did not fall in this part of Carlow. Not ever.

Which was why the villagers stared at the sky on Christmas Eve as soft flakes began to drift down with the elegance of ballet dancers who had taken a wrong turn.

Jimmy McGroggan burst out of his shed and threw his arms wide.

“I told you so,” he shouted. “The Weather Encourager Three Thousand works at last. I have finally persuaded the heavens to behave.”

Before he could continue bragging, three Daleks came sliding down Ballykillduff Hill.
“Slipping,” cried Zeg. “This terrain is treacherous.”
“My lower section is freezing,” shouted Zog.
“The ground is attempting to exterminate us,” howled Zag.

They crashed together in a perfect metallic heap inside Jimmy’s gooseberry bushes.
Jimmy sighed in a way that suggested he was used to this sort of thing.

Click HERE to continue reading this story.

 
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Posted by on December 4, 2025 in ballykillduff, Christmas story, dalek, daleks, Santa

 

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The Circus of Grotesques: It Will Change Your Life Forever.

29 Nov
The Circus of Grotesques: It Will Change Your Life Forever.

Chapter One

The Posters Arrive Out of Nowhere

On the morning it began, Ballykillduff woke up to an extra silence.

It wasn’t the usual sort of quiet you get before the rain, or the muffled hush after a good snowfall. This was a listening sort of silence, as if the whole village were holding its breath and waiting for something it couldn’t quite remember ordering.

The first to notice anything odd was a sheep.

She was an elderly ewe with a permanently offended expression and a tendency to wander off, which is exactly what she was doing—stomping along the lane toward the bridge, muttering in a sheepish sort of way—when a sudden gust of wind slapped a sheet of paper against her woolly flank.

The paper stuck there, fluttering like a strange rectangular tail.

The sheep stopped, blinked slowly, and decided—fairly—that this was one indignity too many. She shook herself. The paper refused to budge.

So Ballykillduff began its day with one very grumpy sheep trotting around the village green wearing an enormous poster as a cape.

No one questioned this at first. Ballykillduff was that kind of place.

Bridget O’Toole noticed the posters second.

She came out of McGroggan’s shop with a bag of flour in one hand and a packet of teabags in the other, intending to head straight home and not talk to anyone if she could possibly help it. That was her usual morning plan, and it rarely worked.

Today it didn’t even survive the pavement.

She stopped dead on the step, the way you do when something is so out of place that your brain needs a moment to catch up.

The noticeboard outside the shop was usually a patchwork of ordinary life: lost dogs, second-hand bikes, offers to teach the tin whistle, the eternal yellowing flyer for “Yoga with Maureen (Beginner Friendly, Bring Your Own Mat!).”

Today, every single scrap of paper was gone.

Instead, the whole board was covered edge to edge by one vast poster, so fresh the corners still curled.

It was printed in deep inky black and a strange, shimmering pearl that seemed to move when she looked at it. Not like glitter, which twinkled and sparkled and showed off, but like the inside of a seashell, where colours slid shyly from one to another.

In the centre, in letters that looked almost hand-drawn and yet impossibly perfect, were the words:

CIRCUS OF THE GROTESQUES

It Will Change Your Life Forever

Bridget read it twice, then a third time just to be sure it still said the same thing.

“Grotesques,” she murmured under her breath. “That doesn’t sound very nice at all.”

“Depends what you mean by nice,” said a voice behind her.

She jumped and spun around, slopping a little flour onto the step.

Jimmy McGroggan stood there, hands in his pockets, hair doing its usual impression of a startled hedgehog. He peered at the poster over her shoulder, squinting.

“If I’d made that,” he declared, “I’d have used better paper.”

“Did you make it?” Bridget demanded.

Jimmy looked genuinely offended. “Bridget O’Toole, if I were going to plaster the village with something, I’d sign my name at the bottom and probably add a small diagram. No, this isn’t mine. The ink’s wrong. Smell it.”

“I’m not smelling a poster,” Bridget said crisply.

Jimmy leaned closer anyway and inhaled. “Huh. Thought so.”

“What?”

“Smells like the page of a book you haven’t opened yet,” he said. “And just a bit like matches. Interesting.”

Before Bridget could decide what sort of reply that deserved, a small boy barrelled between them and slammed to a halt in front of the board.

“Whoa,” breathed Patrick Byrne. “Did you see the sheep?”

“What about the sheep?” asked Bridget.

“She’s wearing one of these things!” Patrick waved an arm at the poster, eyes wide. “Walked right past our gate like a circus queen. Nearly choked on my toast.”

“Then someone’s been busy,” Jimmy muttered. “This one here, and one on the sheep… I suppose the bridge lamppost has one too.”

He said it like a joke.

But when they turned to look, there it was: another poster wrapped neatly around the lamppost on the bridge, the pearl letters catching the weak morning sun.

By ten o’clock, everybody knew.

The posters had not appeared in ones and twos, the way normal notices did. They had multiplied in the night like mushrooms after rain.

There was one on the door of The Giddy Goat pub, another tucked neatly inside the window of the tiny post office, one pinned to the fence outside the primary school (which the headmistress removed three times before giving up, because every time she walked away, another one very quietly took its place).

There was even a poster folded under the sugar bowl in Mrs Prendergast’s kitchen, which was especially impressive because Mrs Prendergast never let anything lie around in her kitchen without first interrogating it sternly.

She unfolded it with two fingers as if it might explode.

“Circus of the Grotesques,” she read aloud to her kettle. “It will change your life forever.”

The kettle, wisely, said nothing.

Mrs Prendergast sniffed. “Nothing good ever promises to change your life forever, unless it’s a winning lottery ticket or a decent pair of slippers.”

She turned the paper over, looking for a clue. There was no address, no phone number, no small print, no “terms and conditions apply.”

Just the same message, printed again in tiny lettering along the bottom edge. The pearl ink winked at her.

She crossed herself three times and put the poster on top of the bread bin, where she could keep an eye on it.

By half past eleven, Ballykillduff had achieved the rare and powerful state known as Total Gossip Saturation.

In McGroggan’s shop, people queued for bread they didn’t need and milk they already had, purely for the pleasure of discussing the matter at length.

“It’s a prank,” declared Seamus Fitzgerald, who was naturally nervous about everything and found comfort in deciding things were nothing to worry about. “Has to be. Someone from Tullow, probably. They think they’re very funny up there.”

“Tullow wouldn’t know a proper prank if it bit them,” said Jimmy. “And anyway, have you seen the paper? Feel that.”

He shoved a folded poster into Seamus’s hands. Seamus took it like it might be electrified.

“It’s just paper,” he said.

“Ah, but is it?” Jimmy grinned. “It’s like no paper I’ve ever seen. Flexible, but strong. Look—no crease marks. The ink doesn’t smudge. And smell it.”

“Why does everyone want me to smell things this morning?” Seamus muttered, but he leaned in all the same.

He sniffed once, hesitated, then sniffed again. “It smells… odd.”

“Like the inside of a magician’s sleeve,” Jimmy suggested.

“Like trouble,” Bridget put in from behind, placing a loaf and a packet of tea onto the counter. “We don’t need any kind of circus here, grotesque or otherwise.”

“What’s a grotesque?” asked Patrick from his place by the door. He had been hovering there for the best part of twenty minutes, listening to every word, and was now buzzing with an excitement nobody else seemed to share.

“A gargoyle that’s taken itself too seriously,” Jimmy said promptly.

Bridget rolled her eyes. “It means strange. Ugly, maybe. Twisted.”

Patrick considered this. “So… like Aunt Philomena’s hat.”

Despite herself, Bridget half-smiled. “Something like that.”

“Maybe it’s one of those fancy modern circuses,” Seamus ventured, clearly trying to talk himself out of being anxious. “You know the sort. People dangling from the ceiling with ribbons. Clowns that don’t wear proper noses. They call everything grotesque these days.”

“They do not,” said Bridget.

“Well,” said Seamus feebly, “they might.”

Jimmy tapped the poster. “Whoever they are, they’re good. No phone number, no website, no nothing. That means they’re confident.”

“Or careless,” said Bridget.

“Or magical,” said Patrick.

The adults ignored that, which only strengthened his belief.

At lunchtime, the older children escaped the primary school and poured into the lane like bottled-up marbles, spilling in all directions and converging, as marbles often do, on the most interesting thing nearby.

Which today was, of course, the posters.

“It will change your life forever,” Patrick read aloud for the fiftieth time as he and his friends clustered around the one on the school fence.

“That’s a big promise,” said Maeve Molloy, folding her arms. “What if I like my life the way it is?”

“It might change it for the better,” Patrick said. “Like, I could get taller. Or be able to do that football trick where the ball spins and curves around everyone and into the goal.”

“You can barely tie your laces,” Maeve reminded him.

“That’s because laces are a trap designed by adults,” Patrick said solemnly. “Besides, it’s a circus. There’ll be acrobats and lions and people swallowing fire.”

“Grotesques,” Maeve said pointedly. “Not lions.”

“Grotesque lions, then. Even better.”

Behind them, the sheep trotted past, still wearing her poster cape. Some of the younger children applauded. The sheep rolled one unamused eye and kept walking.

“Do you think it’s real?” Patrick asked, quieter now.

Maeve shrugged. “The posters are real.”

“No, I mean the bit about changing your life.” He ran a finger along the swirling letters. “You think a circus can do that?”

Maeve hesitated. Her parents had told her in no uncertain terms that it was advertising nonsense and she was not to go lurking near any strange tents that might appear.

But the words on the paper sent a fizzy little feeling up her arms all the same.

“It’s just a poster,” she said, a little too briskly. “Posters say all sorts of things. Anyway, where would a circus even go? The meadow by the bridge is too small. And Dad says the ground’s terrible.”

“Maybe they know a trick,” Patrick said. “Maybe it just… appears.”

Maeve rolled her eyes in a way that said, You’re ridiculous and I hope you’re right all at once.

By late afternoon, even the birds seemed to have joined in.

Crows perched along the telegraph wires like a line of scruffy punctuation marks, cawing their opinion of the matter to anyone who would listen. Starlings swooped and spiralled above the fields, patterns shifting as if trying to spell something no human eye could quite read.

The wind picked up, tugging at the posters, making them flicker and flap.

Every now and then, if the breeze caught them just right, a few words seemed to whisper loose and go floating across the village in snatches.

“Circus…”
“…grotesques…”
“…change your life…”

Bridget heard them while she hung washing on the line.

She paused, a damp shirt in her hands, and looked up. The sky was pale blue and ordinary. The fields were just fields. The washing just washing.

And yet.

She thought of the words on the noticeboard. It will change your life forever.

“I don’t want my life changed,” she told the pegged-up socks and small flapping ghosts of shirts. “I just want it… not to hurt so much.”

The shirts declined to comment. A poster on the opposite fence rippled, folded in on itself, and unfolded again, as if quietly breathing.

Bridget shivered and went back indoors.

By evening, Ballykillduff had made up its collective mind in the way small places often did: noisily, contradictorily, and all at once.

In The Giddy Goat, the regulars declared it a swindle, a wonder, a sign of the times, a sign of the end times, a ridiculous fuss about nothing, and definitely, definitely not as interesting as the bad winter of ’82 when the milk froze in the bottles and the cows had to be persuaded not to lie down and give up.

In the houses and cottages scattered along the lanes, people argued quietly over dinner. Parents told children they certainly would not be going to any circus that turned up unannounced like a stray dog. Children nodded and said of course not, and wondered which window would be easiest to climb out of.

Jimmy McGroggan stayed up late at his workbench, a poster pinned under the light, muttering to himself as he tested the ink with cotton buds and strange little devices of his own invention.

Mrs Prendergast moved her poster three times—to the bread bin, then the mantelpiece, then finally under her mattress, where she could feel its faint, pearly warmth through the sheets.

And in his small bedroom at the back of a narrow house with peeling paint, Patrick lay awake, staring at the ceiling.

He could just see the corner of the poster on his wall from his pillow. He had very carefully peeled one off the school fence on the way home and worn it under his jumper like a secret armour until he reached his room.

Now it hung opposite his bed, perfectly flat, as if the wall had been waiting for it.

“Circus of the Grotesques,” he whispered in the dark. “It will change your life forever.”

He tried the words out in different tones.

Excited.
Scared.
Suspicious.
Hopeful.

In the end, they always came out sounding the same: like a promise and a dare wrapped around each other.

“I wouldn’t mind a bit of changing,” he admitted to nobody.

The house creaked the way old houses do when they’re settling in for the night. A car went by on the lane, its headlights briefly licking at the poster’s surface. For the smallest moment, the pearl letters seemed to glow with their own inner light.

Patrick sat up.

“Hello?” he whispered, feeling rather foolish.

The poster did not reply in any way a sensible person would recognise.

But somewhere in the village, carried on a wind that didn’t belong to the weather, a handful of words drifted faintly through the open crack of his window—so faintly that he might almost have dreamed them:

Step inside the pearl-and-black…

Patrick caught his breath.

He scrambled out of bed and pushed his face to the glass, squinting out into the night.

The meadow by the bridge lay dark and empty. The lamppost stood straight and lonely. The old sheep was asleep somewhere, cape and all.

There was no tent. No lights. No circus.

Only the posters, shivering on their nails and fences and lampposts, quivering as if holding in a secret.

Patrick pressed his forehead to the cool pane.

“You’ll come,” he told the night. “I know you will.”

Far off, beyond the fields and hedges and the comforting boundaries of Ballykillduff, something heard him.

Something that travelled between villages like a rumour and between hearts like a song.

The wind shifted, just a little.

The posters all over Ballykillduff rustled at once, a soft papery sigh like an audience taking their seats.

In the morning, everyone would say the same thing:

The posters had been odd enough.

But the truly strange part—the part no one could explain, no matter how they argued—was this:

The next day, without a single person seeing so much as a rope, a peg, a wagon, or a man with a hammer, a great striped tent stood in the meadow by the bridge.

But that is for another chapter.

To be continued

Click HERE to continue reading this story

 
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Posted by on November 29, 2025 in ballykillduff, grotesques

 

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The Whispering Knoll of Tullow

11 Nov
The Whispering Knoll of Tullow

The Whispering Knoll of Tullow

Just east of the Tullow Show Grounds, where the land rises sharply towards the older, quieter fields, stood a low hill known locally as Tír na gCnámh—the Hill of Bones. It wasn’t bones from battle, but from the ancient rock of the earth itself, protruding like the elbows of a giant. Every year, during the last week of August, when the ground was trampled by prize cattle and the air rang with the cacophony of the fairground rides, the knoll would grow restless.

The locals said the knoll was home to Ailbhe, a solitary, centuries-old member of the Aos Sí (the Irish Fair Folk) who resented the noise, the electric lights, and the yearly parking chaos that encroached upon her ancient domain.

Our story belongs to young Cillian, a lad of seventeen who earned good money helping the farmers set up their marquees. It was late on the final night of the Show. Rain had hammered the tents all day, and now a thick, unnatural mist—the kind the old men called the “Show Fog”—had rolled in, suffocating the last of the fairground lights.

Cillian had volunteered to take the day’s cash box, secured in a heavy leather satchel, back to the committee office in the town centre. To avoid the swampy roads, he had to take the shortcut: straight over Tír na gCnámh.

“Mind your steps, boy,” warned the security guard, glancing nervously at the hill. “And don’t you talk to any shadows up there. They’re listening tonight.”

Cillian, being seventeen, scoffed but kept his mouth shut. He started the climb, the weight of the satchel pulling at his shoulder. As soon as he crossed the low stone wall marking the knoll’s boundary, the sound of the Show Grounds vanished. Not faded—vanished. The frantic pop music, the generator hum, the distant shouts—all replaced by an immense, breathing silence.

The fog on the knoll was different, too. It didn’t just obscure the view; it played tricks with the light. The mist ahead seemed to part, revealing brief, tantalizing glimpses of things that should not be: a line of stone markers that weren’t there a second ago, and a flickering, cold flame that burned without fuel.

“It’s just the fog, Cillian,” he muttered, clutching the satchel tighter.

He had walked about fifty yards when the ground beneath his feet began to shift. It wasn’t a landslide; it was a rhythmic, almost deliberate heave, as though the whole knoll were drawing a deep breath. He lost his footing, dropping to his knees.

Suddenly, a sound arose that made his blood run cold: the sweet, unearthly melody of a tin whistle, played so perfectly it seemed to carve the air. It was coming from a clump of gorse bushes just ahead.

Then, the voice spoke. It was clear and cool, like water running over granite.

“You walk on our ceiling, little mortal. You bring the stink of diesel and the bleating of the hungry machines to the door of my home. And you carry a weight of ill-gotten gains.”

Cillian stammered, “N-not ill-gotten! It’s for the prize fund! The best barley, the fastest sheep…”

A figure coalesced from the fog near the gorse bush. It was Ailbhe, the spirit of the knoll. She wasn’t terrifying, but unbearably sad and beautiful. She wore a dress woven from mist and moss, and her hair was the colour of wet turf.

“The barley is good, yes,” Ailbhe sighed, the sound echoing like the movement of old leaves. “But the rush! The noise! It tears the sleep from the earth.” She gestured towards the Show Grounds, and a dark shadow, cold and vast, momentarily blotted out the flickering neon sign of the funfair below.

“I won’t disturb you again, I promise!” Cillian begged, scrambling to his feet.

Ailbhe paused, her deep eyes studying him. “You are the one who leaves the single silver shilling by the gatepost before the setup begins. You think I do not notice the small sacrifice, the tribute to the old courtesy?”

Cillian’s heart pounded. He always left one silver coin from his first day’s pay at the base of the knoll before the Show started—a superstitious habit taught to him by his grandmother.

“Because of that,” Ailbhe whispered, “I will let you pass. But the hill demands payment for the disturbance.”

With a swift, silent movement, she reached out. Cillian braced, expecting her to grab the satchel. Instead, her cool, dry fingers brushed his earlobe.

“Payment accepted,” she murmured, and stepped back into the gorse bush. The whistle melody soared once more, wrapping the knoll in music.

Cillian didn’t wait. He ran down the hill, crashing through the final hedge and onto the muddy perimeter road.

Only when he reached the main road did he notice the satchel was still heavy, the cash intact. He stumbled into the town office and threw the bag onto the desk.

“What happened to your ear?” the committee man asked, handing Cillian his fee.

Cillian touched his earlobe. There, hanging from a thin, almost invisible chain, was a single, tiny, perfectly formed dewdrop of amber, glittering like polished honey.

He never told anyone what he saw on the knoll, but he knew Ailbhe had taken her payment: a lock of hair, preserved in amber, ensuring that a piece of him would always belong to the Hill of Bones. And every August, Cillian always remembered to leave two silver shillings by the gatepost. He preferred to keep his appointments with the Fair Folk.

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2025 in ghost, tullow

 

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