Tir na Nog

She had heard of black-eyed children before. They were an old wives tale about harbingers of death that were taught to her as an old superstition. She remembered sitting in her living room as a child playing with her dolls, and then, faintly, she would hear her mother look out the window and curse under her breath.

“Those damn black-eyed kids again…”

It wouldn’t be long afterwards that her mom would get a phone call proclaiming the inevitable bad news that their Uncle Ricky had passed or that their cousin Jean-Marie was stabbed to death in a passion killing.

Now, looking at the dining room with all the other ship-goers, she’d never seen so many. Black-eyed children would duck in and out of groups of people, giggling and playing tag, reaching out and accidentally bump into a handsome man at a table, or a waiter carrying champagne glasses on a silver platter, but what she didn’t expect was grown adults, their eyes being just as shiny black as tar and their faces as white as a blank canvas, but somehow whiter.

Some of them would flit in and out of sight, carrying champagne and masquerading as normalcy, giving their patrons a devious smile when they laughed and asked for seconds and thirds of alcohol.

Her mom always told her growing up that black-eyed kids didn’t grow up; that they were the human children that didn’t fit in with the fae after a changeling crib-swap; that they were kids that went to Tir na Nog, but came back somehow changed, or much more rather, lack of changed. They no longer smiled, no longer experienced joy or excitement, they were as monotone as they were monochrome as if their very soul was bleached from their body, but they remained child-like for eternity.

“Darling, are you quite alright?”

“I’m going to go to the powder room. Excuse me, dears.”

She stood up from her seat and rushed from the main dining hall to the main deck. The air was frigid and cool–a welcoming kiss from the arctic–but it was far from the breath of fresh air that she was expecting.

They were everywhere.

Black-eyed families holding hands and dancing on the main deck, their hellish heels clicking against the polished floor in rhythm to some sort of tune that humans couldn’t hear, but they could hear well. Adults and their children were running and playing in the eigengrau nighttime, the only color to their faces from the yellow safetylights all over the ship’s rigging.

She felt sick; her stomach turned seeing the alabaster demons suffocating the main deck. Her hand went to her mouth and she backed up until she hit the railing, bumping into a maintenance sailor along the way.

“Ma’am, are you doing ok?”

She lifted her face to look at the man, and felt her breath be stolen from her as her eyes didn’t meet friendly brown eyes under a navy outfit, but those marble-like liquid black eyes against the unpainted skin that set themselves so far apart from the night sky surrounding them.

“You shouldn’t–no you can’t talk.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, ma’am.” the sailor spoke, a wide smile cutting across his face like a moon with little jagged shards for teeth.

She turned tail and sprinted away–rushing to her cabin. There was only one solace for her and that was her bed, the warm embrace of sleep to end this horrifying nightmare of a cruise.

Before she knew it, she was in her cabin, the door locked twice and her body crumpled against the door. She let out choked sobs–she was drowning in fear. She took deep breaths, counting to ten between each of them. They would disappear soon, they never kept themselves around long. Here and then gone, like the apparitions they were.

She slowly opened her eyes to see her cabin full of smoke, and across the room, reclining in a loungechair, was a black-eyed man himself, slowly smoking one of those fancy long cigarettes that her aunt was always puffing on.

“What’s wrong, dearie? You act like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She couldn’t speak–they shouldn’t be able to speak. Everything was wrong–they were adults, they could speak, they were prancing and laughing and running all over the ship like it was their personal playground.

“No, no, no, no… you’re here to take me to Hell, aren’t you?”

“Dear, where you’re going, it’s going to be a lot colder.”

He puffed another long stream of smoke and she clenched her eyes shut while her body rocked back and forth in despair.

Minutes…

Hours? Hours passed.

Her breathing slowed to a calm in and out, and the sidhe reject was gone. Her room was just as she had expected it to be, well lit and empty. On rubbery legs she stood up, the creaking of the ship the only noise that she could hear.

She’d been gone for too long, her family must be looking for her.

Shaky fingers gripped the cold metal of the door and opened it. There were more people on the deck than she had ever seen in her life. There was a deep ringing in the back of her skull and the once cold air was now hot with panicking and rushing people hither and thither.

“But they’re really people.” she whispered to herself as a hurried man passed by her screaming something incoherent to her, but she understood now.

“Get the lifeboats! Women and children first!” “The ship is sinking, oh God, the ship is sinking!”

She thought of the pale demons dancing to their own invisible rhythm, their heels tapping out the rhythm of screaming panicking people.

Get the Lifeboats.

Tap-tap-tap-

Women and children first.

Tap-Tap. Tap-Tap. Tap.

The deadly morse-code she had heard earlier was in rhythm to her heartbeat. It sounded like a little diddy she knew this whole time–like a nursery rhyme her parents taught her. Her feet moved on their own, the people around her in a panicked waltz to get to whatever lifeboat they could. She looked out over the railing at the diagonal horizon, flashing with s.o.s.es and short circuiting lights.

Titanic let out a deep, whale-like groan, sick and full of parasites that tapdanced a rhythm to a long forgotten psalm. Much like a whale would breach the water and splash water onto onlookers, Titanic was raising her tail. People were rushing uphill on the back of a submerging leviathan.

"What are you doing? That boats needs more people!"

Before she could react, she was carried along in the pandemonium, turning to look out over the water that was drawing closer and closer with each minute.

The sound of rockets rushing skyward and sending out a piercing star of light were the only things that were louder than screaming people. She could already feel the icy cold water gripping icy daggers into her body.

She thought of the smoke filled cabin.

She thought of the alabaster skinned man.

She could see him in her peripherals, his death colored skin blowing streams of white hot flare smoke into her ears and his abyss colored eyes looking her dead in the soul.

She broke away from the crowd, and in a final act of freedom, she sprinted to the railing and made her choice, something that had been on her mind long before the ship started sinking. For a moment, it felt as though the stars would reach down and catch her and skirt her away to safety and she leapt up to them, praying their white hot arms would carry her away to a paradise she never thought she deserved.

“Dear, where you’re going, it’s going to be a lot colder.” the stars cackled at her.

And then

she fell

into

his

eyes.