I once spent a rainy summer walking through Ireland and stayed for a couple of weeks at an inn so isolated that the nearest pub was three miles away.
In Ireland, that says a great deal.
The pub wasn’t really that far—close enough to hear a dog bark, a rooster crow, or a mother calling for her children—but between where I stayed and where I drank lay a bog.
A ditch cut a line through the bog, and in any other place, the road would follow the ditch—but it didn’t. Like so many things in Ireland, the road simply wandered off on a whim.
First, it visited a place where locals dug turf for their hearths, then it dodged waves along the shore of a lake before scampering over a long, timbered bridge onto firmer ground. Once the road took its leave of the lake, it struggled up a mist-shrouded mountain before losing heart and tumbling back across the bog and into town.
In the weeks I stayed there, I learned every curve, rut, and washout along the road because I walked its length every day, always after the same ritual with Ian, the proprietor of the bed-and-breakfast where I stayed.
Every afternoon, as I left for town, Ian would wait until I squished through the puddles to the edge of his yard before calling out, “Mr. Schiller?”
Every day, I squished back across the lawn to talk.
He always asked, “Do you carry a torch?”
And I would always answer, “Yes, for a girl in Minneapolis.”
It was our joke.
But then he got serious and wagged a finger until I produced a flashlight from the pocket of my raincoat.
“Mind the Kelpie on your way home,” he would warn.
The Kelpie was a troublesome beast that inhabited the lake beside the road, and those unlucky enough to have seen it described the creature as the unholy union between an eel and a horse. Ian said it frequently took guests who couldn’t hold their liquor when they walked home after dark without a torch.
I encountered the beast only once—on my first night at the inn. I had stayed too long at the pub, and Ian came into town to escort me home. The moment we stepped onto the road, I understood why. I had never experienced dark—that dark.
Without streetlights, the fog stole even the memory of light. I could have stood on the surface of the sun and still not counted my fingers through the intensity of that darkness.
We walked with only the crunch of the gravel to guide us, and just beyond town, as we crossed the first arm of the bog, Ian stopped and said sternly, “Wait here.” Then he stepped off into the darkness, leaving me with only the sound of his receding footsteps.
Squish, squish, squish, squish.
Silence—then clink-clink.
And squish, squish, squish, squish as he returned.
As his feet shuffled onto the gravel, a bottle touched my hand.
I raised it to my lips and took a swig of what felt like boiling rock.
We continued on, taking sips on the move, until we reached the bridge, where we leaned against the railing to drink some more.
I asked what the stuff was.
“Poitin,” he said, “or, as you say, moonshine. It’s Irish white lightning.”
The bottle went back and forth in the dark as we took short nips of what tasted like lava. For a while, we drifted in and out of conversation before falling silent to enjoy the sound of the waves and a cool mist blowing in off the lake.
At first, I thought it was the booze—but what I witnessed was beyond intoxication.
A cloud rolled in her sleep and dropped a veil off one shoulder.
Stars gathered about her, and the moon stole a glance.
In his excitement, the moon spilled his light, scattering silver droplets among the dancing waves.
Out beyond a small, dark island, a shape appeared for no more than a heartbeat. It rose, undulating in the moonlight, with the body of an eel and the head of a horse.
Amid the shimmering waves, it reared up and shook a brackish spray off its scaly mane.
Then it was gone. The cloud recovered her composure, and the moon plunged back into darkness.
I couldn’t say a word. Alcohol had long since reduced my speech to babble, and besides, a monster on the lake isn’t something one readily talks about when drinking is involved.
We walked on.
Once again, Ian stopped. Once more, he instructed me to “Wait here.”
Once again, he stepped into nothingness, leaving me alone in the blackness with only the sound of his receding footsteps for company.
Squish, squish, squish, squish—then rummage-rummage, clink-clink, and squish, squish, squish, squish in return.
I surmised that Ian had stashed moonshine on both ends of his journey to town.
One for the coming and one for the going.
He walked me to the light of the inn before turning to say, “When you go to town, always carry a torch.”
I nodded.
“Or,” he warned, “the Kelpie will have you at the bridge.”
Almost Iowa 