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Sin Eater
Sin Eater
Sin Eater
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Sin Eater

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Seventeen year old Sara Shaughnessy has spent most of her life on the fringes of society, the sister of a convicted serial killer. Bullied or ignored, at least her life has an element of predictability to it.

But when her father’s death thrusts her into the care of her strange Irish grandmother, the danger to Sara is no longer child’s play.

Van Dyk’s Young Adult Horror takes us out of this dimension and into a dark netherworld where supernatural forces struggle to determine the fate of humanity.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherDee Van Dyk
Release dateSep 12, 2014
ISBN9780986948268
Sin Eater
Author

Dee Van Dyk

Dee Van Dyk’s publishing resume over the years includes Canadian Living, Homemakers, Alberta Venture, Up!, Profit, Fresh Juice, and Avenue. Her publishing diversity reflects her life and interests, ranging from extreme weather to a well-told piece of fiction.She is currently working on transferring out-of-print non-fiction books into electronic format, and on a Young Adult novel called Sin Eater.

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    Book preview

    Sin Eater - Dee Van Dyk

    The story you’re about to read is a work of fiction. Mostly. The best lies are grounded in truth.

    Although the practice of sin eating seems to be confined to a short period of history and a small span of geography, stories and rumors of sin eaters persist. In Shropshire, England, the grave of Richard Munslow who died in 1906, marks the resting place of the last known sin eater. These are the words Munslow is said to have uttered over the body of the deceased:

    I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man. Come not down the lanes or in our meadows. And for thy peace I pawn my own soul. Amen.

    The sin eater, typically a social outcast, would ritually ingest the sins of the deceased by eating (bread, salt) and drinking (ale, wine, water) off the chest of the dead person.

    There’s some interesting speculation around food, religious rituals and funerals and to this day; some bakeries in the United Kingdom continue to offer funeral biscuits specifically prepared for mourners. You can find more information about funeral biscuits - sometimes called corpse cakes - here.

    The Black Plague hit Europe in the mid-1300s killing between 75 and 200 million people. It’s believed that the Black Plague entered Ireland though its ports, probably Howth or Dalkey, and then spread throughout the country. Written recollections of this horrific period in human history do exist and I’ve included snippets at the beginning of several of the chapters to give you a sense of its effects on the people who lived - or died - through that period of time.

    A brief glossary of historical facts and personalities related to this novel, is included at the end of this book, along with links to some of the detail.

    Chapter One

    He had many strange sights to keep him cheerful or to make him sad. I asked him had he ever seen the faeries, and got the reply, 'Am I not annoyed with them?' I asked too if he had ever seen the banshee. 'I have seen it,' he said, 'down there by the water, batting the river with its hands.'

    ~ W.B. Yeats

    The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore, 1893

    Se’ heard the wail of the Bean-si’ - the Banshee - faintly, echoing in the chambers of his brain as he slept. So faint, almost past notice, but it was there. He’d heard the Banshee’s wail many times over the centuries, but it had been a very long time since he’d last heard her call.

    He was close. Closer than Se’ had been in nearly two centuries. He strained to sense its direction, to catch a whiff of the scent of the Banshee. North, Se’ decided, focusing his sleeping mind on the Banshee’s wail. And there it was, the unmistakable cinnamon scent of her flesh. And as the scent sharpened in his nostrils, Se’ was pulled from his sleep.

    He unfurled his long, thin limbs, the emaciated strings of grey flesh hanging loosely from his bones. Se’ had slept for too long; he felt weak as a kitten. He yawned deeply, unhinging his jaw and stretching his arms skyward. Se’ had chosen a shallow cave to rest. It had smelled of bear then, but it smelled of Se’ now. He shuffled over to the small pile of bones – all that remained of the cave’s previous tenants, a mother bear and two cubs – and pulled a handful of small metatarsal bones from it. He’d sucked out the marrow from the bones before he’d gone to sleep and contented himself now with the crunch of the bones between his teeth, remembering the fight for the cave. The six hundred pound black bear defending her squawking cubs, raised on her hind legs, teeth bared, two-inch claws extended and ready to tear Se’ apart.

    He had eaten her heart first, as the two young cubs supped from the blood pooled beneath their mother.

    He would need flesh soon. It was the flesh of the Banshee Se’ craved. Her flesh and the flesh of her kin, tender and ripe with knowledge and power. His nostrils flared and Se’ sniffed the air again. Yes, definitely North.

    Chapter Two

    Ten minutes after a body is dead in open air, flies arrive and lay thousands of eggs in the mouth, nose and eyes of the corpse.

    Journal Notation

    Pechod Bwytawr

    Grainne, First Sin Eater of the New World

    Every day, on my way to and from school, I pass a pair of size seven sneakers, looped around and dangling from the traffic light, fifteen feet above the intersection. I keep my eyes fixed on them, as I wait for the shrill cheep, cheep, cheep of the walk light telling me it’s safe to cross.

    If I’m lucky, I’m waiting alone. If I’m less than lucky, the kids gathering around me to wait for the light are smaller and weaker than me and we all wait silently. Dad always says you make your own luck and today he’s right. If I’d left ten minutes later – my usual time – the trip from school would have been an uneventful one. Today, I’m screwed.

    This afternoon, Mason Clester sidles up to me, bumping me forward slightly with his elbow. His breath is warm on the side of my face, stinking of cabbage and garlic.

    Sorry, he says, and I can hear the smirk in his voice. My dad says to tell you to say hi to your dad from him. A fine spray of spit hits my cheek every time he utters an s. I fight back the urge to wipe my coat sleeve across my face and focus on ignoring him. Completely.

    I shift my gaze back to the sneakers on the light pole, a pair of blue and green Supernovas, now rocking slightly at a sudden wind gust. They are my sneakers and they have been hanging up there since the beginning of the school year.

    Cheep, cheep, cheep.

    I step into the intersection, keeping my steps even and measured. Not too fast – you don’t scare me, you miserable piece of shit bully – and not too slow – I’m not gonna give you an excuse to give me a momentum shove.

    It’s seven more blocks to Fairfax Bowling, the bowling alley where my dad works and where I stop every day for a soda and a few frames after school. If Clester goes home, he’ll peel off after the third the block. I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and ignore him for three lousy blocks. I’ve done it a hundred times before.

    He steps on the back of my shoe every few steps and when I stop to adjust my shoe, he pushes into me. A small dark-haired kid, with a string of snot running down his nose, shoots me a sympathetic look, but deep down I know he’s just glad it’s me and not him that Clester’s paying attention to.

    Once, when Clester started this bullshit with me, I fought back. I came back swinging, landing punches like a prize fighter, and blackening one of his eyes. He told everyone he wouldn’t hit back because I was a girl, but the truth was he couldn’t land a punch.

    I got suspended for a week. Some of the parents – even parents whose own kids had been bullied by Clester and his gang of thugs – wanted me kicked out of the school altogether. I was told that if I was ever involved in a violent incident again, I would be permanently banned from the school. Zero tolerance. But then, my brother is a convicted serial killer. Zero tolerance is the standard for me. Bad blood and all that.

    Clester dishes off at block three, his tall, skinny frame moving gracelessly down the street, flanked by a posse of friends who exist to laugh at his jokes and do his dirty work. My right heel is bleeding from the repeated chaff of his shoe against it. I stop long enough to pull a tissue from my pocket and stuff it between my sock and foot to soak up the slow seep of blood.

    At block six, there’s an unusual thickening of traffic and people are buzzing about something. When I round the seventh block, I see a trio of police cruisers, their roof lights rotating an alert red. There’s a thick clot of bystanders forming a perimeter around Fairfax Bowling. And I know with a sickening feeling what’s keeping them back – yellow caution tape.

    A dozen possibilities ricochet through my brain, all of them bad. An angry religious nut, looking for something he calls retribution for the things my brother did. A drug deal gone bad. A heart attack? No, that wouldn’t account for the cops.

    I push into the throng, but it is a living barricade, resisting. There’s a pulse of excitement in the crowd and I catch whispered snippets of speculation. Who’s in there? That’s where that killer’s dad works, isn’t it? Somebody must have been murdered, or why all the cops?

    Please let me through, I say again and again, hearing the hiccup in my voice, but unable to control it. No one really notices me because everyone’s pushing forward to get a better look. When I finally break through to the front, there’s an ambulance – its red light revolving insistently – and more cops than I can be bothered to count.

    Off to one side is the channel 7 news van and a half dozen reporters jamming mics and digital recorders into the face of a uniformed police spokesperson. Déjà vu. I can’t hear what he’s saying but I know it’s some version of no-comment-we-have-no-details-to-release-at-this-time. At the front of the clutch of journalists is Kendall Clester, Mason’s father and mentor in the art of bullying. He stands near the front of the scrum, a tall, thin man with dark, curly hair that’s just a little too long to be called neatly groomed. My dad has always said his face is too pretty to belong to a man. Now, he’s pushing a small voice recorder into the face of the police spokesperson, yammering questions at him in a thin, piercing voice.

    An oh-so-familiar voice.

    He covered my brother’s trial and sentencing and every year, on the anniversary of my brother’s sentencing, Clester camps outside our house, looking for an exclusive look into the spawning ground of a serial killer. His words.

    I pull the hood of my jacket up around my head, hoping Clester won’t notice me. I’m frozen, wondering what to do next. Breaking through the caution tape will only draw attention and the last thing I want is Clester spotting me. I scan the front of the building, looking for an in. Uniforms – cops, medical types – everywhere. Ten feet away, an untethered beagle lies against a garbage bin, lazily watching the flurry of activity around him. Today, no one from Animal Services will be paying attention to him. As if he hears my thoughts, he lifts his head and looks at me, tongue lolling, tail slapping against the sidewalk in a dog’s expression of happiness.

    One of the cops, clearly a dog lover, pauses and drops to scratch the beagle’s ears. I edge closer to them, then, as quietly as possible, Officer, please can I talk to you a minute?

    He looks up at me, but everyone within hearing distance looks too and there’s a speculative buzz of hey-who’s-that and a whiff of recognition; Clester has tried to keep my family in the news, even though my brother’s conviction was a decade ago. Ten years ago I was seven years old. I’ve changed enough to escape most people’s recognition.

    Not this cop’s, though. He knows exactly who I am. I figure our family gets special play for all cops who work this city. I jerk my thumb at the knot of press and appeal to him with my eyes. He nods slightly and comes to me, shielding me from the sight of the journalists.

    He flips the caution tape up, and I duck underneath, both of us ignoring the hum of the crowd as it gets louder. We break for the safety of the building, covering the distance in a few seconds.

    On the other side of the door, but with another set of double doors blocking us from the bowling alley itself, I say, Thanks. My gut is a hard knot; the very fact that he brought me here confirms my worst suspicions. Something bad has happened to my dad.

    He gestures me to sit on the bench seat against the wall, then sits beside me. Sara, right? He asks. He sounds kind and, in the past, there’s been a short supply of kindness from the police to my family.

    Something happened to my dad. I say the words slowly, because now that I’m here, I don’t think I want to know. The police, the press, the silent flashing ambulance, all tell me that this is worst than I can imagine.

    He nods, then says, I’m afraid so, Sara.

    Outside, the beagle howls.

    Chapter Three

    Not to the Irish alone did the banshee fortell ruin. In May, 1318, Richard de Clare, leader of the Normans, was marching to what he supposed would be an easy victory over the O’Deas of Dysert. The English came to the ‘glittering, running water of fish-containing Fergus,’ when they saw a horrible bedlam washing armour and rich robes till the red gore churned and splashed through her hands. Calling an Irish ally to question her, de Clare heard that ‘the armour and clothes were of the English, and few would escape immolation.’ ‘I am the Water Doleful One. I lodge in the green fairy mounds (sidh) of the land, but I am of the Tribes of Hell. Thither I invite you. Soon we shall be dwellers in one country.’ Next day de Clare, his son, and nearly all his English troops lay dead upon the fields near the ford of Dysert for miles over the country in their flight.

    ~ Thomas Johnson Westropp

    A Folklore Survey of Country Clare, 1910

    Se’ was almost through the town before he picked up the cinnamon scent. If he had been moving more quickly, he would have missed it entirely. He had borrowed the body of an old beagle, cautiously, hoping its masters would not notice the old dog’s absence during the nights it would take Se’ to track the scent. He left his own bodyshell tucked carefully at the back of dog’s – BANJO, according to the stenciling across its entrance – house. The Banshee’s scent was so slight, so fragile. He feared he might not find it for a long while.

    Banjo had resisted the occupation of his body, and Se’ had struggled more than expected. It was often the way with animals, their sins so small it was sometimes difficult for Se’ to find a dark space to occupy. Banjo was old, but feisty in his resistance.

    He finally found a place where Banjo had bitten a small child many years before. The dark space was not so much the bite, as it was the pleasure Banjo had taken in the

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