NOTE: Here it is, the latest of my Rose Of Skibbereen novels. This one is called "Mary's Secret", and it's about Mary Driscoll, a character who appeared briefly in the first book of the series. Mary has her own story now, and it's quite an entertaining one. It's a story of passion, betrayal, theft, bootlegging, murder and love in the first third of the 20th century. I invite you to read the first chapter below, and I hope this will whet your appetite to purchase the book on Amazon or Smashwords. Enjoy!

Chapter One -- 1936

​Who would have thought it would end this way, with me lying in the street and the life running out of me?
 
It isn’t fair, is it? Ah, but there’s no use in complaining. Life just keeps moving, like a fast flowing stream, and there’s no good in worrying about what’s fair or not. I did better when I stopped worrying about all that business. 
And it’s all in the past, isn’t it? But the past comes rushing back at times like this. I hear the priest saying the prayers above me, but his voice is less important than the pictures rushing through my head, and the voices, and the feelings attached to them. It’s all so clear to me, like it’s happening before my eyes.
It was a good life, even though it turned out so differently than I expected. 
I was born in Ireland in 1862, in a little town called Skibbereen, almost at the tip of the southern end of the country, in County Cork. It was a land of great beauty, but great hardship. I remember the mist in the mountains, the glint of the sun on the sea, the green fields, the long rivers running through the valleys, but mostly I remember not having enough. Not enough food, not enough clothing, not enough heat to keep out the cold and the damp. Worst of all, though, was not enough respect. 
My family, the Driscolls, had an old name in Cork, and there were stories that some of them went to sea and became pirates. Pirates don’t give authority its due, you know, and I liked that part about them. Those days were long gone, though, when I was a child. It was hard times for us, like most others that we knew. The Great Famine had ravaged the country fifteen years before, and it was a specter that haunted every family I knew. There were fresh gravestones in the churchyard from people who’d died, and we all knew the field outside of the town that had the mass grave, where scores of poor starved wretches had been thrown because there was no time to give them a proper burial.
In all this world of misery, however, my family was near the bottom. It was an old story: a father who couldn’t support his family and fell into the pit of drink, two brothers who’d started down that path all too soon, and a mother who was nearly mad from the grief of losing her only other daughter during the Famine. My friend Rose Sullivan had a mad mother also, worse than mine, truth be told, and we became friends for that reason. Neither had a mother worth the name, and we mothered each other because of it. 
From the time I was a small child I wanted to get out. I’d heard stories of this magical place, America, where there were jobs, and money, and people wore fine clothes and had enough to eat. I’d seen girls leave at the age of 18 and come back to visit five or six years later, wearing fancy dresses and looking radiant with health and good fortune. They said they worked in fine houses for rich ladies, and they got to sleep in a bed with a mattress made out of feathers, instead of the moldy straw beds we used. 
“We must go, Rose,” I said, when we got old enough. “It’s our only chance. We must go now, or we’ll be stuck in this miserable place forever.”
Rose had a stronger feeling for home than me, and she wavered for a time over whether she could leave Skibbereen, but finally she agreed to go. She wanted to send money back to her family, to help them have a better life than she’d had. I had no such desire -- my family by then had dwindled to my brother Conor and my mother, and I had no intention of giving up my chance at freedom just to stay there and take care of my daft mum. I knew it was a horrid thing I was doing, as I said goodbye to her, probably never to see her again, but I felt if I didn’t leave I would surely go mad myself.
Rose and I had many adventures, and we found a good position finally with a family called the Lancasters in Philadelphia. I got three square meals a day, and I was able to buy some nice clothes, but it was never enough. I had a hole inside me that was bottomless, it seemed, and I couldn’t fill it with the money I was being paid. 
So, I started stealing from my employer. It was only small things, you understand, little pieces of jewelry here and there. I started by sneaking in to the grand lady’s bedroom and trying her pretty things on -- a necklace here, a ring there, and admiring myself in the mirror. Then one day I kept one of the baubles. It was a ring, and I thought she’d never miss it. I gave it to a man I’d met, an Irishman of ill repute, and he sold it and split the money with me. I told myself it was only the once, I’d never do anything like that again, but soon enough I took another shiny trinket. 
It was bound to end badly, and it did. My friend Rose found some pieces I’d hidden in our room, and she told Mrs. Lancaster. Prim Rose, who pursed her lips and told me I’d done something wrong and she had no choice but to report me. I thought she’d be on my side, I thought she’d understand since we were both trying to escape the same Hell, but no, she refused to understand. I hated her after that, and in the years to come my life took a bad turn, which made me hate her more. 

You can purchase my "Rose Of Skibbereen" novels on Amazon or Smashwords.

June 1880

​“Oh, Rose, I wish I’d never set foot on this ship,” Mary moaned. She was curled up in a hammock directly above Rose, and she had been making a terrible racket, complaining mightily about her queasy stomach ever since the storm started several hours ago. Rose herself wasn’t feeling much better, having already made two trips up on deck to vomit over the side of the ship as it pitched and rolled in the storm’s fury.
“Don’t think of it, Mary,” Rose said. “Sure and it’ll blow itself out after a time. Say your prayers, and it’ll take your mind off the situation.”
“It’s saying my prayers I’ve been doing this whole blessed night,” Mary said, groaning. “And my mind hasn’t stopped. It’s telling me we made a mistake leaving Ireland, and we’re going to perish before we ever get to America. God is punishing us for our hunger for money.”
“Now you’re talking nonsense,” Rose said. “God wouldn’t punish us for trying to help our families. We’re just trying to do our best for the people we love, and what’s the wrong in that?”
Just then the ship shuddered and plunged down a great wave, and the hammocks swung against the walls while the belongings of the people around them belowdecks crashed and there were moans and cries of, “God save us!” from every quarter. The storm had come on them just after sunset, and it had been thrashing the ship about for what seemed like an eternity. Not only that, but the ship groaned and creaked with every buffet, as if it were about to splinter apart with each wave.
“If I ever get off this ship I’ll kiss the ground and never leave it again,” Mary said, as the ship settled itself before the next wave. “I’ll never get on another one of these floating coffins as long as I live.”
“Sure, and you’d never see Ireland again if you did that,” Rose said. “Unless you know another way of getting home, you’ll have to take a ship to come back.”
“God help me, if I have to take a ship I’ll never see my home again,” Mary said, as another boom of thunder roared in the background.
“Now, Mary, don’t talk such nonsense,” Rose said. “We’ll all be going home again, God willing.”
“We should have stayed,” Mary said. “If I was you, Rose Sullivan, I’d never have left, not with that fine McCarthy boy making eyes at me like he did to you.”
“He did more than that,” Rose said, mischievously. She was trying to distract the two of them from the terrible storm, and she thought talk of Sean McCarthy might do that.
“What do you mean?” Mary said.
“Why, he kissed me, don’t you know,” Rose said, feeling the color rise to her cheeks.
“Kissed you?” Mary poked her head out of her covers, and looked down at Rose. “Why the devil didn’t you tell me this before? That black-haired boy kissed you? What was it like, Rose? Tell me this instant.”
“It was like a spark of fire on my lips, and it spread through my whole body,” Rose said. “I can tell you it kept me warm the rest of the night.”
“You don’t say! How many times?”
“Just once! What kind of a girl do you think I am, Mary Driscoll? Do you think I’d be kissing a strange boy the whole night through?”
“No, but I can tell you what I’d have done,” Mary said. “I’d have sold my ticket on this blasted ship, and home I’d stay if a boy who looked like that kissed me.”
For the twentieth time in the last couple of days Rose wondered the same thing. The very thought of Sean McCarthy’s kiss made her heart pound and her breath come short. Strange new feelings welled up in her, and she could hardly think straight. Should she have stayed home, abandoned her plans to go to America and save her family?
One look at the miserable conditions around her was enough to quell those thoughts. Everywhere she turned there were ragtag Irish, dressed in tattered clothes and clutching their few possessions close to them, moaning in misery in the dank, smelly bowels of the ship. Desperation shone in their eyes, and a hunger for something better. They had been pushed to this point by a country that had nothing left for them, no hope of anything save a life of poverty on land that was not their own, in a world that could find no use for them.
She thought of her own family, her damaged mother wandering the fields talking to herself about “The Good People”, the fairy folk, whose name must never be mentioned, her poor father whose body was stiff with rheumatism, her brother who was already turning bitter at 18 about his prospects in this hard land, and her two younger sisters whose bodies were thin and whose faces were hollow with hunger.
It was up to her, Rose, to do something about it. She had long assumed the role of caretaker in the family, doing the chores and the nurturing that her mother had abandoned. She was “little mother”, as her father Abraham had called her since she was a young girl. She could not abandon that role to run after a handsome boy with tender lips. She must do her job, do what was expected of her, no matter how hard. It was up to her to save the family.
“Ah, it wasn’t meant to be,” Rose said. “I have a task to carry out, and I can’t let my head be turned by one kiss from a handsome boyo.”
“Rose, you’re a better girl than me,” Mary said, as the ship shuddered and groaned and rolled down another wave. “I’d give anything to be back in Skibbereen right now, sporting around with a boy like Sean McCarthy.”
“Now, Mary, think of the wonders we’ll see in America,” Rose said. “Besides, there’ll be plenty of handsome boys there, I’m sure. Doesn’t your sister Kate say so in her letters?”
“That she does,” Mary said, warming to the subject. “She says they have dances there that all the folks from home goes to. She says the girls get all dressed up in their finest clothes, and they have the money to buy the latest fashions, you know. She sent us a picture of herself in a dress with buttons all the way up the front, and a fancy hat, and looking like the Queen herself she was. She says everybody has money in America. The people she works for have a big house with fine furniture and silver forks and spoons, and they eat steak and kidney pie every night for dinner. They have a fine carriage with handsome horses, and they dress in the latest fashions from Paris.”
“And she says there’s work for us?” Rose said. “She can get us jobs in such a grand place?”
“To be sure,” Mary said. “Kate says they need more serving girls, and she told them we’re two respectable girls who’ll be arriving soon. We’ll be living the high life yet, Rose Sullivan.” She groaned as the ship lurched again and the thunder boomed. “If only we make it across this terrible ocean in the first place.”

This is the beginning of Chapter Two, Book One, of "Rose Of Skibbereen". To read more, please purchase the book at Amazon or Smashwords. 

November 1979
 
Rosie hadn’t had this dream in awhile, but she remembered being here before. She was at the top of a long ridge that was like the crest of a wave, and she was looking down on a valley that had a stream running at the bottom of it. There were clumps of mist clinging to the low ground, and she could see the sun glinting through wisps of clouds on the mountain at the other side of the valley.
And there was the most beautiful music playing! It wafted up from the valley like a sweet aroma, from instruments that she could not identify exactly. Perhaps a violin or two, some kind of bagpipe, a tin whistle. A chorus of voices behind a high, aching voice that was lamenting something. It was sad but sweet, and she wanted to hear more of it.
As before, she found herself running down the hillside to the cluster of trees by the stream, which is where the music was coming from. She had to get down there and see who was playing it, find out for once what this strange, sweet music meant, who was behind it.
She got closer, halfway down the hillside, with the Spring grass smell in her nose and the sun on her cheeks, and the sky fighting between dark and light, mist and clarity. She was closer, closer; it seemed that this time she would finally get there. . .
And then she was awake once again, with the gnawing feeling of loss inside, like so many times before. She stared up at the white ceiling of her bedroom, saw the pattern of the roses on her wallpaper, and heard the sounds of the cars going by on the street outside.
Why did this happen again? She hadn’t dreamed that dream in awhile, but now it was back, with the same result.
Something is missing in my life, she thought. The dream is telling me there is something missing. But what?
And then she heard the knocking on the door downstairs. It was an insistent rapping, three raps then a pause, and then three more raps. On and on it went, as if the person knew she was inside and would not stop until she opened the door.
She looked at the clock radio on the stand next to her bed. It said 8:30. The record store didn’t open until 10:00, so why was someone knocking on the door?
It was probably another crazy oldies collector. She had dealt with a number of these fanatics since she and Dittybopper opened the store a year ago, guys who were obsessed with collecting old 45 records or 78 LPs, and they came around all the time with their greedy eyes, pawing the records in the bins and trying to find a record by some obscure group of teenaged a capella singers from 1954, some group that only released a couple of records and then faded into obscurity.
Oldies were starting to get popular nationally, not just here in Philadelphia, and these collectors were looking to make a killing. The prices of these 45s had gone up steadily in the last couple of years, and the crazy fanatics had come out of the woodwork.
Rap, rap, rap!
Rosie got out of bed and fumbled around on the floor, looking for her jeans. She slept in only a t-shirt and underwear, and once she found her jeans crumpled up on the floor next to an empty wine bottle she pulled them on, then wormed her feet into flip flops and looked at herself in the mirror.
She saw a middle aged lady, with bags under her somewhat bloodshot eyes, brown hair with gray roots showing, and a bit too much stomach hanging over the waistband of her jeans.
You look every bit your age, she thought. You’re 52 and selling oldies records to weird guys who can’t look you in the eye and would sell their own grandmother to the Mafia to get their greasy hands on a mint condition Danny And The Juniors version of “Pony Express”.
Rap, rap rap!
“Okay,” she yelled in the direction of the nearest window, which was open a crack. “Back off, pal. I’m coming!”
She found her way down the stairs blearily to the office in the back of the store, then unlocked the door and went through the aisles of record bins to the front of the store.
As she suspected it was a man at the door, and he looked strange. He had longish hair, thick glasses, and ill-fitting clothes. His pale skin looked like he spent a lot of time indoors.
She unlocked the door and opened it just a crack, enough to say, “We don’t open till 10, mister. You can come back later.”
“No, please!” he said. “I drove all the way here from Bucks County. I don’t get the car much, and this is a big deal for me. I’m looking to sell a record. It’s important, please, can I come in?”
Rosie wanted to tell him to go away, because part of her worried that he was some kind of loony, but his eyes looked gentle and she felt sorry for him. He probably didn’t have much else in his life besides record collecting.
“Please?” he said again. “I won’t stay long. I just want to find out if you’re interested in this. It’s a mint condition record. My mother died a month ago, and I found all these old records in her attic. I think some of them are valuable. You could make a lot of money on these!”

This is the beginning of Book Five of "Rose Of Skibbereen". To read more, please purchase the book at Amazon or Smashwords. 

​ November 2, 1935
 
“Why, I can hardly believe my own eyes. Is it Rose Sullivan I’m looking at?”
Rose stared back at the well-dressed woman who was standing at her counter in the Wanamaker’s Ladies’ Dress Department. The woman had on a fox trimmed gray coat, there was a string of pearls at her neck, and her silver hair peeked out from under a black wide-brimmed hat tilted at a jaunty angle. She had a round, fleshy face and merry green eyes, and although she looked familiar, Rose could not place her as someone she knew.
“You don’t recall me? Why, I suppose that’s to be expected. It’s been near 50 years since we last spoke. It’s me, Mary Driscoll herself. Do you not remember that name, Rose?”
It was like an electric shock to Rose. “Is it you, Mary?” she said. “This is a surprise, after so many years. To be sure, I am sorry I did not recognize you.”
“Well, I doubt you’ve been thinking much of poor old Mary Driscoll all these years,” Mary said. “I admit I look different, though. I’ve come up in the world, as you can see.” She adjusted her fur and struck a pose.
“Aye, you always wanted fine things, as I remember,” Rose said. “I’m glad it has all worked out for you.”
“And what of you, Rose?” Mary said. “How are things with you?”
Rose saw that Mary was looking at her plain gray dress, the parsimonious touch of makeup on her face, her white hair cut in a sensible bob.
“Fine, to be sure,” Rose said. “I am surviving, Mary. Now, can I help you? I take it you are here to buy a dress.”
“Oh, Rose, don’t be so formal,” Mary said, taking her hand. “We grew up together in Skibbereen, remember? I know there was a falling out between us, but it’s late in life and we should forget those old grievances. Let’s not hold on to those grudges the way so many of our countrymen like to do.”
“I am holding no grudge,” Rose said, taking her hand back. “It is only that this is my place of employment, Mary. I cannot be standing around chatting with the clientele about times past, you see. I am lucky enough to have a job in these hard years, and I want to keep it.”
“I understand, Rose,” Mary said. “But I believe it’s a good sign that I happened upon you today. I hardly ever come to Wanamaker’s on my own, you understand. I usually send my maid Christine to pick up a few things for me. I’m only here because I’m leaving for Ireland tomorrow and I needed to buy a few last minute items, and Christine is busy with other errands.”
Rose detected a gleam in Mary’s eyes at the mention of a servant. Of course, Mary would want her to know that she was able to afford her own servants now, that the wheel had turned since those days so long ago when she was a servant for others.
“Anyway,” Mary said. “‘Tis a miracle, me running into you like this, and I don’t want to pass it by. Let’s go out to lunch, Rose, just you and I. We can talk over old times, and catch up on our lives.”
“Out to lunch?” Rose said. “After all these years, Mary?”
“Why not?” Mary said. “It’s ten minutes before noon. You do get a lunch break, don’t you? I know a lovely little tea room just around the corner on Market street, and we could have a delicious lunch and a chat. What do you say?”
Rose shrugged. “I’ll have to ask Mrs. Hedges, my superior, if it’s all right. I only get 30 minutes, though, so we can’t be long.”
Mrs. Hedges was a woman with the posture of a ballerina and the frosty mien of a curmudgeon. She rarely smiled, and never got chummy with her staff. She agreed to Rose’s request with a simple, “Be back in 30 minutes,” without ever looking up from the paperwork she was doing at her desk.
At the tea room, which was full of women like Mary who oozed money and elegance, Mary ordered finger sandwiches and tea for them, folded her hands, and said: “So, Rose, how have the years been for you?”
Rose sighed. She knew very well that Mary had probably heard all about her troubles many times over. After all, Mary had written the letter years ago to Rose’s father in Ireland telling him that Rose had gotten pregnant before she married Peter Morley. Mary was very connected to the Irish community in Philadelphia, and since she had always been a gossip, Rose figured she knew a lot.
“I would suppose you’ve heard a bit about me, Mary Driscoll.”
“No, I have not,” Mary said. “It may surprise you, but Philadelphia is a big enough place that a person can disappear from sight. You don’t keep in touch with anyone I know. Of course, we travel in different circles now.” It was another show of Mary’s status, but Rose ignored it.
“I can understand why you might feel shy about telling me anything,” Mary said. “I know I was the cause of some trouble for you when I wrote that letter to your father. Sorry I am for it now, Rose. I was just a broth of a girl, you understand, and I was angry at you for making me lose my position with the Lancasters.”
“You stole from Mrs. Lancaster, Mary.”
“That I did, and it was wrong,” Mary said. “I made a mistake or two in my youth, I am ashamed to say. You’ll get no argument from me about the right or wrong of it. It’s just, I wanted something better than what we had in Ireland, Rose, and I didn’t know how to get it. And when I lost my position, well, it was like a death sentence. No proper lady would hire me after that, and I thought I’d have to go back to the old country and live in shame for the rest of my life. Can you see how it would make me a bit mad?”
Rose said nothing.
Mary smiled. “Ah, well, I know, there’s no use in digging up old grievances. Let the past be dead and buried, I say. I’ve come a long way since then, as you can see.”
“You look well, Mary.”
Mary smiled at the compliment, pleased as could be. “It’s just a bit o’ luck, I suppose. I had a hard time of it those first few years, Rose. I don’t want to talk about all the things I did to keep body and soul together. I found myself living a desperate life, with a hard crowd of people.”
She took a sip of her tea, holding her finger aloft like a lady, and then putting her cup down on the saucer daintily. “Those were bad years, Rose. I often wondered what was going to happen to me, where I’d fetch up. After ten years of living hand to mouth, with some days not enough food to keep a field mouse alive, God smiled on me and I found a respectable position. I was hired at the seminary, of all places, to be a housekeeper for the priests who taught there! I got a nice, clean room, three square meals a day, and all the confessions my soul could handle.”
“I never knew you to be a religious woman, Mary,” Rose said. “I well remember how you wouldn’t get out of bed on Sunday mornings to go to Mass with me.”
Mary laughed. “Oh, I was a pagan in those days, Rose, to be sure. I couldn’t be bothered with priests and all their fussing. A few years of hunger will change a woman’s mind, though. Another year and I’d have surely become a nun, if they’d have taken me.” She laughed in her jolly way, and Rose couldn’t help but smile.
“A nun!” Rose said. “I have a hard time seeing you in a nun’s habit. You always liked fine clothes, Mary.”
“Lucky for me it didn’t happen,” Mary said, winking. “I was saved by the priests, and I showed them my gratitude by being the best housekeeper they ever had. It was a happy time for me, and I made a lot of good friends among the clergy. And all the good that’s happened to me since is a result of my time at the St. Charles Seminary.”
“You don’t mean to say you’re still working there, Mary?”
“No, Rose, I left that position years ago. I met a good Catholic man named Francis Dillon, a man who had a small bricklaying company. He was hired to work on an addition to one of the buildings at the seminary. I met him, and it was love at first sight. Oh, I don’t say he lit all the candles for me, you understand, the way some others did. Francis was a quiet, simple man, but I had had enough of the other type, and I was ready for a man like him. And he has taken good care of me, I must admit.” She emphasized her point by holding out her hand to show Rose the several gold rings on her fingers, including an elaborate diamond wedding ring.
“I take it he’s a man of wealth,” Rose said.
“Not when I met him,” Mary said. “No, he was a simple bricklayer, with a half a dozen fellows working for him. But I have helped him to expand his business, so to speak. Why, today his company is one of the largest in the city for brickwork. He does all the work for the archdiocese.”
“Does he now?”
“Yes,” Mary said, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “It so happens that one of the young priests I met back in my seminary days was Dennis Joseph Dougherty. You’ve heard of him, of course? The Cardinal?”
“I’ve heard of him,” Rose said. “They call him ‘The Great Builder’ because he’s put up so many new churches and schools.”
“To be sure,” Mary said. “And my Francis’ company is usually the one doing the brickwork. The Cardinal has been good to us. Why, I can’t tell you how many dinners I’ve been to at his residence, grand affairs with many important people at them. He’s a very powerful man, you know. The Mayor, the Governor, all the politicians come calling on him. They want the Catholic vote. And there’s me, Mary Driscoll from Skibbereen, sitting there talking to them, like I was born to it. Can you imagine?”
“You’ve done very well for yourself, Mary,” Rose said. “I am happy for you.”
“And how about you, Rose?” Mary said. “How have things been for you? Are you still married to that handsome coachman named Peter?”

​This is the beginning of Book Three of "Rose Of Skibbereen". To read more, please purchase the book on Amazon or Smashwords.

My name is Rosalie Morley, and I had a boyfriend who thought I was a witch. I guess that’s not the way most people would introduce themselves, but I’ve never been like most people. 
I’ve always been different, seen things differently than other people, and had different thoughts and dreams. I don’t know if that makes me a witch, but it means I’m not like everybody else.
I think I’m somewhere on the Autism spectrum, but who knows where? Who knows what little spot I occupy, all to myself? Because I’m not like someone with Autism, either. You can’t put me in that box. I went through some testing once, when I was younger, but the doctors couldn’t give my parents a clear-cut diagnosis. I’m high functioning, not one of those people who can’t speak or look you in the eye. Well, actually, I don’t really enjoy looking at people’s faces, although I can do it if I have to. But, anyway, I can function in society, and get along pretty well. I am very good at some things, like word games and music and computers, plus putting colors and patterns together. And identifying birds, I’m real good at that. I’m not good at other things, like understanding poetry, or emotions, or people, for that matter. People make me scratch my head sometimes, and there have been long stretches in my life where I’ve just tried to avoid them. 
I live in an apartment in New Hope, Pennsylvania, close to the Delaware River. It’s a quaint little town with lots of history, and a lot of artists and musicians and writers live here. I grew up here during my high school years, and my parents, Pete and Betty, still live nearby.
I should tell you about them. Pete, my dad, is part of a crazy Irish American family, and his mother, Rosie, was one of the craziest. She had a great singing voice and lived in London during the Swinging Sixties, then moved back to Philadelphia, and eventually she opened a bar and restaurant in New Hope, which is how we all ended up here. My mother Betty is African American, and she is a lot calmer, more sedate, even classier than Pete. She grew up in Philadelphia and her family were all God-fearing people, the kind who got dressed up to go to church on Sunday and stayed dressed up the rest of the day. My brother Martin got more of the genes from that side of the family. He’s got more class, more sophistication, than I’ll ever have. 
I’m like my father Pete. I’m stubborn like him, that’s one thing. If he makes his mind up to do something you just get out of his way, because you’ll never sway him. I’m like that. Stubborn, to the point of stupidity sometimes. 
In one big way I’m not like Pete at all. I see visions and hear voices, which never happens to Pete. Or, at least he doesn’t admit it if it does happen to him. 
Visions and voices, that’s the kind of stuff that happened to my grandmother Rosie. She told me all about the music and voices she’d hear at odd times. When I was a little girl and I told her it happened to me, she said, “It’s something the women in our family have. We’re descended from Irish witches, at least that’s what I think. It’s a blessing and a curse.” 
So, you see, maybe I am a witch. I mean, it’s in my family, right? I never took it seriously, because just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean you have to get all spooky about it. I always thought my visions and voices were probably something going on in my brain -- maybe like epilepsy or something like that -- and there was no supernatural reason for them. That’s what I thought for most of my life.
Now, I’m not so sure. There are times when the visions and the voices can seem so real, almost more real than anything else.

This is the beginning of Book Six of "Rose Of Skibbereen". To read more, you can purchase the book on Amazon or Smashwords. 

​THE GIFT 
By John McDonnell
 
Until seventh grade there was still a part of me that believed in Santa Claus. Oh, I would never have admitted that to my schoolmates, but there was still a secret part of my heart that wouldn’t give up the belief in a jolly, red-suited man who brought presents every year at Christmas. If you asked, I would have said it was because I had younger siblings, and I had to keep up appearances for their sake. And it was still fun to dream about what would be waiting for me under the Christmas tree each year, so I had a vested interest in not looking at Santa Claus and his gifts too cynically.
In 1964, though, it all changed. I had discovered girls, and the fact that just because you liked a girl, it didn’t mean she liked you back. Actually, it was more likely that she would ignore you, which made you doubt your very existence.
As that Christmas approached I had received my first heartbreak, when a girl I liked made it clear that I was the last person on Earth she was interested in. On top of that, I was developing acne, I was in the middle of a growth spurt that made me feel like my body had been taken over by a lurching monster from a B grade horror movie, and I was hopelessly lost in Math class. All in all, it was not a good time.
So, I was already in a depressed state when Christmas morning arrived. When I went downstairs and saw what was under the tree, it left me cold.
There was a pile of new clothes, some books, and a bike. It was a three speed bike with skinny tires, hand brakes, and those curved racing handlebars like European bikes. It was everything my old Schwinn was not -- sleek, lightweight, fast.
But I hated it.
It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate getting a bike from my parents, it was that I didn’t want a bike in the first place. The reason I didn’t ride my clunky old Schwinn bicycle anymore was that I had realized something: nobody my age rode bikes. Well, none of the cool guys did. The girls had stopped riding bikes the year before, and the cool guys had stopped with them. The only boys who still rode bikes were the ones who wore big round glasses, and accidentally spit when they talked, and had scrapes on their knees from falling off their bikes.
Things had changed overnight, and in the ruthless world of seventh grade you had to adapt or you would permanently be tagged as a loser.
So, I gave a weak smile, mumbled “Thanks,” to my parents, and went upstairs to my room, where I laid on my bed listening to my transistor radio and thinking about the cruel march of Time. I heard the excited babbling of my little brothers downstairs and I realized I would never have that kind of youthful enthusiasm again.
I was old, there was no doubt. My childhood was forever gone.
It didn’t take long for my father to come upstairs and ask me what was wrong. I told him I just didn’t feel much like Christmas this year.
He figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t like the bike. “You ungrateful child,” he said. “That’s a great bike, and it cost me a lot” (he whispered this so the kids downstairs wouldn’t hear). “Spoiled, that’s what you are, spoiled! When I was your age it was the Depression, and we didn’t have Christmases like this! My father was only working ten hours a week at his job, and that year we only got one present each. You don’t appreciate what you have here. You probably wanted some bigger, fancier bike, right? Well, the hell with it, I’m taking that bike back to the store tomorrow!” He slammed the door and went downstairs and ranted to my mother for awhile about how ungrateful I was.
He never took the bike back. My little brothers begged to be allowed to use it, and my father let them ride it after much pleading, mostly because he hated to not get his money’s worth out of something he’d bought. There were times when I actually rode it, too, although that was not till years later, when being cool didn’t matter to me anymore.
I should have known better, but I did the same thing when I was a parent. When my son was in seventh grade he was a great soccer player. I used to love to watch him race down the field and shoot the ball from any angle, and see it go rocketing into the goal. I lived for those soccer games, and that year at Christmas I bought a full-size professional soccer goal from a Web site. It had a metal frame and a mesh net, and although I didn’t put it together on Christmas Eve I had the box and a picture of it under the tree for him.
He seemed excited, but not as much as I thought he’d be.
“It’s great, Dad,” he said. “Really great.”
The weather was warm that year, and I was able to assemble the goal and put it up in the backyard on Christmas afternoon. My son put his soccer cleats on and I played goalkeeper and he took shots for an hour while I dove every which way trying to deflect them. He rocketed one ball after another past me into the net, and I was gleeful at his skill.
But that was the only time we did that. The cold and snowy weather came, and he wasn’t able to use the goal for several months. When Spring came he didn’t seem as interested in soccer, and he hardly ever practiced in the backyard. By the next year he had quit soccer to concentrate on basketball. Basketball was the game the cool guys in his school played. 
I had to take that goal down five years later when we moved to another house. By then the net was torn and the metal frame was rusted. It had been a long time since anybody shot a soccer ball at it. I spent an afternoon taking it apart, and then I threw the pieces into a big dumpster we had rented for cleaning out our house.
“Damn spoiled kids,” I said to myself. “All the money I paid for that thing, and he didn’t appreciate it.”
Then I thought of my Dad buying me that bike, and how I always felt bad about not showing enough appreciation for it. I realized he’d probably done the same thing to his Dad. Maybe that year in the Depression when they didn’t have hardly anything for Christmas? Maybe the one thing he got he didn’t appreciate, and he made that fact clear to his Dad. Maybe he always felt bad about that, and it was the real reason he bought that expensive bike for me.
Because maybe we buy these gifts not for our children, but for our parents. As a way of saying we’re sorry for never telling you we appreciated what you did for us.
 
THE END
 
mcdonnellwrite@gmail.com
 
 
 

HERE IS THE BEGINNING OF MY HOLIDAY EBOOK, "THE CHRISTMAS GIFT":

Constance was the prettiest doll in the collection of Miss Emily Hawthorne, who lived in a big house in Philadelphia that her father built years and years ago. Miss Hawthorne's father was a very wealthy man who owned the biggest department store in the city, and he loved to buy her dolls when she was a little girl.
A long time ago Miss Hawthorne had played with Constance every day. She had dressed her in pretty outfits and had tea parties with her, and curled up next to Constance in bed every night.
Nowadays, though, Constance spent most of her time in a big mahogany display case with the other dolls. Miss Hawthorne had never married or had children of her own, and she was too old to play with dolls, so she put her doll collection in the big case and took them out once a year, when she invited the neighborhood girls in for a tea party at Christmastime.
This Christmas was an especially important time to bring the dolls out, too. It was December of 1937, the start of a particularly bleak winter. There were many people out of work, and groups of men took to traveling around the country looking for anyplace where they could find enough work to pay for a little food, so they could survive another day. Every day people would come to the back door of Miss Hawthorne's mansion and ask for food, and the cook, a big red-faced woman named Annie, had Miss Hawthorne's permission to feed them.
There were rumblings of war in Europe, and people were weighed down by events.
Children know when their parents are worried, and it makes them afraid, because if parents are worried, the world seems unhinged, and the very ground under a child's feet seems to vanish.
This is where a doll comes in handy, because dolls help children take their minds off troubling events in their lives. Most dolls are happy to do this, but Constance had no feeling for it. She thought her job was simply to be pretty, and that people liked her because of her blonde hair, her tiny little red lips, and her beautiful pink satin dresses.
This year Miss Hawthorne had invited a dozen girls to come to her tea party, and they all arrived laughing and bringing that special glow that little girls have. The house seemed brighter, and there was happiness in the air. There were Christmas wreaths everywhere, and gingerbread houses, and the smell of cinnamon and spices, and a ten-foot Blue Spruce tree in the parlor with candy canes and ribbons on it. 
Miss Hawthorne and Annie had prepared a lovely afternoon, with teacakes and cookies and little sandwiches and many other good things. All the dolls were primped and prettied, and Constance had her spot at the head of the table, because of course she was the prettiest doll.
The girls were all situated in the dining room, chattering away and laughing gaily, when Annie came in and whispered in Miss Hawthorne's ear.
"There's something you need to see in the kitchen," she said.

You can find the full version of "The Christmas Gift" here.

The sign in the window said, “Closed”, and Christopher Van Meter felt a wave of fear rise in him. It was the only jewelry store in this godforsaken town, and he needed to get his watch fixed fast.
It had stopped, and he could feel the change happening already.
He had always been so careful about not getting stuck like this. And then he thought of Daria, who was back in the hotel at the top of the hill. God, she was beautiful: jet black hair and green eyes, and that little ghost of a smile. It had promised so much, that smile. It had warmed him, made him forget the pain in his soul, enticed him to end his long bachelorhood. He had never gambled, not once, until her. “You only live once,” she would say, and he’d thrill to her randy kisses in an elevator, or a park, or a busy street.
He heard the shout of a child, and he turned to see a boy riding his bike around the cobblestone circle at the center of town. Around and around he rode, shouting from the sheer joy of being alive. There’s eternity for you, Van Meter thought. Ticking clocks don’t exist for him.  But he, Christopher Van Meter, was bound by space and time. He was stuck in a village in the Catskills, on his honeymoon, and the jewelry store was closed. His watch had started slowing down yesterday, but he couldn’t think of it then -- Daria took up all his time. Early in the morning he had awoken to stiffness in his joints, and he knew before looking that the watch was stopped. He’d tiptoed out of the room and walked as fast as he could down here to the town square.
Now he realized he’d have to drive someplace else, find another town with a jeweler who was open. It was his only recourse. Daria wouldn’t understand, so he’d just have to leave. He’d make up a story -- an appointment, an emergency, had come up -- if he ever saw her again.  He looked back up the street, winding up to the hotel perched like an Alpine chalet on top of the mountain. The effort it would take to walk up there and get the car would fatigue him.
But that boy riding his bike around the square. Look at all the energy he had! Christopher lifted his arm and waved laboriously, and the boy pedaled over.
“Can you help me?” Christopher said, with a voice that sounded like a creaky hinge.
“What do you need?” the boy said.
“A taxi. Do you know where I can get a taxi?”
“Old man Jones runs a taxi service. Over on the other side of town.”
Christopher’s heart leaped. “Can you ride over and ask him to come here? I want to use his service. I’ll give you a quarter.”
“A quarter? That’s not much money.”
“What? Why, when I was a boy. . .”
“That was a long time ago, Mister.”
And Christopher realized it was. “Okay. I’ll give you a dollar.” He reached in his pocket, and held out a dollar in his trembling hand.  The boy’s eyes lit up, and he snatched the bill.
“That’s more like it,” he shouted. “It’ll only take me ten minutes.” He took off, pedaling with that extravagance of energy, that child’s ecstasy in being alive on a crisp Fall day.
Christopher sat down on a bench. The sun was rising in the sky, beating down on his head, but Christopher’s bones felt chilled. How long was ten minutes? The boy couldn’t possibly know. Once, he had been that way -- the days were endless. Now he could count the seconds by the spots appearing on his hand.
It was weakness to let a woman turn his head. But oh, he had never felt so alive.
When the taxi drove up, the white haired old man behind the wheel got out and looked around. He couldn’t see anything but an old-fashioned vest pocket watch on the bench. “That Irving boy ought to get a whipping,” he said out loud. “Taking me away from my crossword puzzle, just to play a joke.” He picked up the watch and held it up to the light. The numbers were in some language he’d never seen before. “Well, it’s not a total loss,” he said. “Somebody’ll pay a good price for this at the outdoor market next Saturday.” He got back in the cab, slammed the door, and drove off. A handful of dust whirled in the breeze as he sped away.
 THE END
THIS STORY IS FROM MY COLLECTION OF HORROR STORIES CALLED "13 HORROR BUNDLE". YOU CAN FIND IT ON AMAZON HERE.

CHAPTER ONE

 

January 1, 1900

Rose awoke in the gray dawn of New Year’s Day to the sound of gunshots outside in the street. Her heartbeat quickened with fear at the sound, and she sat up in bed, trying to make sense of what was going on. Then she remembered: it was a custom in Philadelphia for revelers to “shoot in” the New Year by wearing costumes and walking around the city firing their guns. There were crowds of people outside on the street singing and shouting, punctuated by the occasional gunshot.

She relaxed. Everything was fine. She lay back, closed her eyes, and put her hand out to touch Peter’s body.

But he was not there.

Once again she sat up and struggled to waken, to get her mind working so she could digest this fact.

He had told her he was singing at a saloon last night and that he would be home late. “Don’t wait up for me, my girl,” he’d said. “Sure and it will be a late night, seeing as how it’s the turning of the New Year and the new century. The boyos will be wanting to celebrate, and I’ll have to sing a good deal of the Irish ditties to them. It’s late I’ll be getting in from all of that business.”

But he was not here.

He had always come home before, even if it was at three in the morning or later, and she would feel his big body sliding in to the spot next to her in bed, him smelling of beer and cigar smoke and the oysters or peppered eggs they served at all the saloons.

The smell was not there. It meant that he had not come home at all.

She could feel the panic like an icy claw closing around her neck. Her heart pounded, her breath came shallow.

He is gone, he has left you, her heart spoke, in its deep wordless language. 

No, her mind said. Maybe he has simply gone back to the Lancasters’ to sleep. Maybe Mr. Lancaster needed him to drive him somewhere, or the family is going on an outing, or. . .

It is New Year’s Day, her heart said. He has the day off. He should be with you and the children, not his employer. He has left you. It was something you knew was coming, no matter how much you wanted to deny it.

Gone. Her body ached with grief, with the loss of its partner. He had been distant these last few years, it was true, but she still longed for the warmth of his body next to hers. It still made her feel secure to have him there. His body gave off heat like a furnace, and she treasured its warmth.

Now it was gone.

She wanted to lift her face to the sky and scream, to rage at the injustice of the world, to let all the shame and humiliation out in one long roar that came up from her depths. She felt like she had been shipwrecked and she was clutching onto a plank in the middle of a storm and she was choking on the raging, frothy sea, about to drown.

She pulled the sheets about her as if she could hide from the awful fate that had just presented itself to her.  What will I do? I’m lost. I’m finished. I’m alone in this mad country, lost in this mass of humanity, and I will disappear without a trace.

Then she looked over at her three boys, crowded together in their bed. They were jumbled together as always, a mass of arms and legs and tousled hair. They were her anchor, her root. They were about to wake up, prodded into consciousness by the gunfire and shouts on the street three floors below.

I cannot fall apart in front of them. I must not.

Maybe he will come back. I will hold onto that, it will help me to stand up and carry on.

She ignored the voice that said: No, he will not come back. Not ever.

That voice was her mother. 

This is from Book Two of Rose Of Skibbereen