I awoke to ruddy darkness and dancing shadows. A fire. A log cracked and fell in the grate, sending splinters hissing and making me jump and then cry out at the flash of pain along my side. The crack sounded like a gunshot, and I remembered, though I wasn’t sure if it was a memory or a new story. It was like that for me sometimes. I would become so immersed in writing that the scenes and characters I created came alive in my head, fleshed out and independently animated, visiting me as I slept.
I’d been shot. I’d been pulled from the water by a man who knew my name. And now I was here in a room that looked a little like my room at the Great Southern Hotel, though instead of carpet, the floors were wood and covered with flowered rugs, the paper on the walls was less purple, and the windows were adorned with long lace curtains instead of the heavy drapes that allowed the guests to sleep in darkness at midday. Two lamps with pleated fabric shades trimmed with drops of glass sat on end tables at each side of the bed. I breathed deeply, trying to determine how badly I was injured. I fingered my abdomen carefully, tiptoeing around the thickest section of bandaging along my right side. It burned and pulled when I moved even slightly, but if the placement of the bandage was any indication, the bullet hadn’t done any serious damage. I’d been cared for, I was clean and dry—though completely naked beneath the blankets—and I had no idea where I was.
“Are you leaving again?” The child’s voice came from the base of my bed, disembodied and startling. Beyond the bars of the brass footboard, someone stood, peering at me.
I raised my head slowly for a better look and immediately abandoned the effort, the muscles of my abdomen contracting painfully.
“Will you come closer, please?” I asked, breathless.
There was a weighty silence. Then I felt the brush of a little hand at my feet, and the bed shook faintly as if the child hugged the edge and used it as cover. The approach took several long seconds, but curiosity clearly won out over trepidation, and a moment later I found myself eye to eye with a small boy. He wore a white shirt tucked haphazardly into dark pants held up by a pair of suspenders, making him look like a little old man. His hair was a red so deep and warm, it was crimson. He had a fine, pert nose and a missing front tooth, the hole visible behind his parted lips. Even in the flickering light, his eyes were blue. They searched mine frankly, wide and measuring, and I was sure I knew him.
I knew those eyes.
“Are you leaving again?” he repeated.
It took me a moment to separate his accent from his words. “Air ya leavin’ agin?” he’d said.
Was I leaving? How could I? I didn’t know how I’d even arrived.
“I don’t know where I am,” I whispered, my words strangely slurred even as I copied his accent. Morphine. “So I don’t know where I’ll go,” I finished.
“You’re in Garvagh Glebe,” he said simply. “No one ever sleeps in this room. It can be your room now.”
“That’s very nice of you. My name’s Anne. Can you tell me your name?”
“Doncha know?” he asked, his nose wrinkling.
“No,” I whispered, though, oddly, the confession seemed like a betrayal.
“Eoin Declan Gallagher,” he answered proudly, giving me his full name, the way children sometimes do.
Eoin Declan Gallagher. My grandfather’s name.
“Eoin?” My voice rose in wonder, and I reached out to touch him, suddenly certain he wasn’t really there at all. He stepped back, his eyes swinging to the door.
I was sleeping. I was sleeping and having an odd, wonderful dream.
“How old are you, Eoin?” my dream-self asked.
“You don’t remember?” he responded.
“No. I’m . . . confused. I don’t remember very much. Can you tell me? Please?”
“I’m almost six.”
“Six?” I marveled. Six. My grandfather was born in 1915, less than a year before the uprising that took his parents’ lives. If he was almost six, it was . . . 1921. I was dreaming about 1921. I was hallucinating. I’d been shot, and I’d almost drowned. Maybe I’d died. I didn’t feel dead. I hurt—despite the pain medication, I hurt. My head. My stomach. But my tongue was working.