Ballykillduff Hill

It started on an ordinary Tuesday morning in Ballykillduff, a place so ordinary it practically begged something peculiar to happen. And happen it did, though nobody seemed to notice except me.

I first spotted it while strolling down Main Street towards O’Reilly’s for my morning tea and scone. Glancing up towards Ballykillduff Hill—a modest lump of earth crowned by sheep and shaggy grass—I paused mid-step. Was it taller? No, that was absurd.

Yet, every day thereafter, as I ambled into town, the hill appeared just a bit loftier, just a bit broader. Soon, the sheep grazing atop seemed like cotton dots on an oversized green cake. Yet, the villagers carried on, blissfully unaware.

“Notice anything odd about the hill?” I ventured cautiously to Mr. McGinty, who was busy wrestling cabbages into neat rows outside his shop.

He eyed me suspiciously. “Odd? Yer head, maybe,” he chuckled, returning to his vegetables.

The hill continued its mysterious growth, now casting shadows that had never reached the town before. Trees disappeared beneath its expanding girth, fences vanished overnight, and still, no one batted an eyelid.

By Friday, panic set into my bones. I climbed bravely to the top, where the view was now staggering, as if perched upon a mountain. “Can’t anyone else see what’s happening?” I shouted into the wind.

The wind carried back only silence and a few indifferent bleats from the sheep.

Desperate, I ran down to Father O’Donovan. “The hill, Father! Surely you’ve noticed?”

He squinted through his spectacles at the looming presence. “Ah,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s always been there.”

“But it grows each day!” I insisted.

He patted my shoulder gently, nodding wisely. “Things often seem bigger when we dwell on them.”

Frustrated and frightened, I kept watch from my cottage window, night after night, and witnessed the hill swelling silently beneath the moonlight.

Then one day, without warning, it stopped. The colossal hill now towered over Ballykillduff, permanently altering our horizon. Yet, life proceeded undisturbed. Bicycles pedaled, bread baked, and children played, oblivious to the geological upheaval that had transformed our landscape.

Perhaps the villagers were right, I mused. Perhaps hills do grow when dwelled upon too deeply. And perhaps, I decided, turning back to my neglected tea and scone, it was best I kept my observations firmly to myself.

Years passed quietly, with the village living in comfortable ignorance, the great hill becoming simply another forgotten landmark. Yet every now and then, when the village slept and silence blanketed the countryside, I could swear the hill sighed deeply, whispering ancient secrets into the night.

Then came a morning—a Tuesday again, oddly enough—when I awoke with a sense of unease. Peering cautiously out my window, my heart froze. The hill had vanished completely. Where it once loomed, there was only flat ground, empty sky, and a scattering of bewildered sheep.

Running through the streets, I shook the villagers awake. “The hill is gone! Look, see for yourselves!” But their sleepy eyes saw only what they had always expected to see.

“What hill?” Mr. McGinty yawned. “Been flat as a pancake forever.”

Defeated, I wandered back home, accepting at last that some mysteries were meant for only one observer. Perhaps, in time, even I would question my memory. But deep down, I knew that somewhere, somehow, Ballykillduff Hill waited patiently to rise again, unseen, unacknowledged, and entirely inexplicable.