Photo owned by Eoin O’Mahony (cc)
A biting North wind whipped in off the bay and skirled about the unhappy, rainsoaked streets of Dublin town. It whirled down slick gutters and burnt chimney pots; sending gouts of hot brown ash and cinders into the living rooms of North Dublin. It tore knickers and hairy argyle socks off washing lines in Kilbarrack and flung them; dancing, along the railway line, to be plastered in suicidal aspects on the wet-black railway sleepers. It burst out upon Killiney Hill and rolled down into Garrickstown to send late night revellers back to the chip shop for another battered sausage to keep them from the rain.
It rolled and spit and cursed about the suburbs and rattled the iron masts in RTE sending paroxysms of fear up the spines of engineers and supine executives who blessed themselves and prayed to the Seven Virgins of the Sacred Heart the Late Late Show would not be struck from the airwaves.
It whipped through Donnybrook sending squealing teenagers in scraps of arse fluff and shreds of thin cotton running for cover as their male consorts felt the jellied hair products coating their headparts slowly turn to glue and stiffen the collars of their fashionable jerseys.
In a blind rage it flew down Baggot street, toppling punters into the slime green depths of the Grand Canal and hurling whipped up rubbish against the windows of the huddled Georgian piles. It crossed Stephen’s Green in an instant and charged down Fade street to find the hunched figure of a man relieving his bladder over a crate of empty bottles.
‘Ah for the love of Jaysus!’ roared The Gurrier, as the rogue gale ran up his leg and ventilated the arse of his trousers. There was a tinkle of coins as his arse-stash shook loose and he turned in horror, to witness the precious horde of golden coins exit the leg of his trousers and roll away across the broken cobbles.
‘Me fundamentals, after them!’
His companions, Elimare ‘Red’ Presley; a violent, murderous, booze fiend and Heinous Ingoldsby; the infamous ‘Butcher of Ballinteer’ and known meat pervert, looked on, unmoved.
‘Quick, did you see where they went?’ said The Gurrier. He scrabbled at the cobbles for his fallen booty, his yellow fingernails clacking against the smooth stones. Now and then a cry would emerge from his lips as another golden ‘fundamental’ was snatched from the crevices of the filthy street.
‘I think I saw one of them roll over there,’ said Presley, indicating a darkened doorway by the street corner.
‘Deadly!’ said The Gurrier, scurrying over with his crablike gait. There was an abrupt gurgling scream, like a man drowning in his own emissions and he fell back, his hands clutched at the air and the coins tumbled unnoticed to the street. The whites of his eyes showed like fish bellies in the steadily falling rain and around his open mouth there bubbled a yellowish froth.
“Grrrarckle!” said The Gurrier.
‘What is it man?’ said Presley, shoving him aside with the toe of her boot to stare intently at the darkened doorway.
It was a comparatively unremarkable doorway, distinguished only by it’s great age and the attentions of passing street gurriers who had carved their monikers upon it’s ancient frame.
‘Joxer luvs Sharon.’
‘Sharon luvs Barry.’
‘Barry is a Gay.’
‘Joxer is Gayer.’
‘So is your Ma.’
The cave paintings of a lost generation. Age had pitted and cracked the dull green paint, and the vandals had carved or scrawled their illegible names and cryptic ciphers upon it. Above the unlit doorway were three more floors of darkened windows, each more unremarkable than the last. The paintwork peeled from the window sills and snakes of wiring clung to the lead guttering and rotting brickwork.
‘He’s having a turn,’ said Ingoldsby, removing a pair of worn brass knuckles from the confines of a leather pouch. ‘I’ll give him his medicine,’ he said, with a lopsided grin.
Presley squinted at The Gurrier as he gibbered and twitched in the doorway, ‘I think he’s trying to say something.’
‘Oh,’ said Ingoldsby, looking crestfallen, ‘are you sure it’s not just…gargling?’
Presley cocked her head and listened again for a moment, ‘nope, he’s definitely saying something.’
The two leaned closer over their fallen compatriot.
‘Is that you Heinous?’ came a weak voice from below. ‘No Heinous is over there,’ said Presley aiming the steel toe of her boot into The Gurrier’s ribs.
‘Be the hokey,’ said The Gurrier, ‘Tis yourself and himself. I had the strangest dream just now. You were there and Heinous was there and The Gin Lady was there, even Wahlberg was there. And…and…oh God, He was there too.’
‘Who,’ said Ingoldsby.
‘Him!’ said The Gurrier, clutching at his throat in horror, ‘The Beast!’
‘Who?’ said Presley, raising her boot again.
‘The Beast, The Bastard, Doctor Uí Ceasaigh.’
‘Kesey?’ said Presley.
The Gurrier’s eyes widened in alarm, ‘Do not speak his name woman! He sees all, he hears all. They say, ‘if you speak ill of him, The Bastard will take you down to hell with him’.’
‘He’s been at the ether again,’ said Ingoldsby in disgust, ‘I’m off.’
Presley gripped The Gurrier by the neck, ‘You are a criminal pervert Murphy, that ether will rot your brain faster than that filthy gorilla bukkake you like so much.’ She shoved him back onto the pavement and stalked off after Ingoldsby, in search of the nearest pub.
The mad cackling from the cobblestones drifted up over Fade street and halted their progress.
‘Hah ha! You think I’m lying do you?’ said The Gurrier, wheezing with laughter as he clambered to his feet. ‘You think me mad from rubbing ether on my nethers and licking the insides of paint cans? Fools! I need it to stop the nightmares. Only in the deep funk of a Dulux paint fugue can I know true peace.’
‘You see this,’ he said and he rapped sharply on the flaking paint of the green door.
‘This is where it all began. This is where the whole sordid tale is birthed. No amount of turpentine and creosote can dull the cache of memory nor strip it of it’s bleak abysmal horror. I speak of nefarious deeds and dark horror the depths of which remain unplumbed in modern history. A story steeped in arcane arts and eldritch times now faded into ghostly memory. I speak of heinous, violent acts that bestir the beast that dwells within the hearts of men and swell their breasts with murderous rage. Of a time when strumpets, whores and dollybirds plied their filthy wares across the scandalized streets of Dublin town, of…’
‘Jesus he’s onto the whores again,’ said Presley, ‘give him the medicine.’
‘But..the whores,’ said Ingoldsby.
‘Medicine.’
Ingoldsby sighed and gave The Gurrier two lumps of medicine in the face.
The Gurrier stopped abruptly and crumpled to the pavement, motionless.
‘Thank fuck for that,’ said Presley, ‘you must tell me where you got that stuff from. Is it prescription?’
‘Special monthly delivery,’ said Ingoldsby, swinging the inert form of The Gurrier over one broad shoulder. ‘Where too?’
‘Pub,’ said Presley.
‘At last,’ said Ingoldsby.
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Here ends Part I of the Terrible Tale of Dr. Kesey. Join us next week, if you dare, when, fortified by gin and turpentine, The Gurrier recounts more spine chilling recollections from the strange and terrible tale of how Dr. Kesey became Dublin’s most feared Bastard.
