DIRTY BEAST

The Hemming Farm, The West End, Munster, Ireland (1900)...

  Intumescent clouds of the darkest gray swirled into view as they loomed rather heavily over the bustling little towns where the people went about their business as if they had not a care in the world. The soggy rolling hills loomed in the distance as far as the hazel eyes of a fourteen-year-old lad took in the view of the oncoming weather before racing back toward the animal pens where his father kept the three chickens and the three pigs. The lad was quite tall, and lean in terms of body weight. His long dark brown locks came to his shoulders formerly pulled back into a neat ponytail, but returned to a wild state following his work with the more stubborn and unruly animals. He wore a long-sleeved shirt with ruffles on the ends of the sleeves a collar that was dirty from his efforts with the animals and dark brown trousers that seemed to ride up his calves along with black loafers with silver buckles on the top of them.

The lad raced along the farm getting the animals in order despite their stubbornness as the rain continued to come down as he attempted to get them all corralled into the pens. It was especially difficult to get the three pigs they had to cooperate as the lad found himself slipping and sliding among the muck and mud while trying to get them to behave. Although he was only fourteen years of age he had the run of the farm and lived mostly alone with the animals doing all the chores and shopping in town while his father, Seamus Ryan Hemming went out with the men to hunt seals.

There were numerous times when Seamus would return home with little to no money and then there were times when he made a bit of money and mostly spent it on his booze down at the local pub ignoring his son most days or putting him to work if he owed a debt to anyone while he'd been busy getting drunk. The lad had little choice in doing everything as he'd been the only remaining member of the Hemming family aside from his father. His mother had only just named him when she died shortly after giving birth and the midwives passed the screaming boy to his dear old dad only for him to want nothing to do with the boy in the beginning.

Seamus was sore about the death of his wife, Fiona McCready-Hemming, and had very little to do with the lad whom she had named Ronan Seamus Hemming shortly before taking her last breath. Seamus had not even bothered to acknowledge his son even now that he'd been a half-grown man and doing most of the housework, cooking, and tending to what remained of the family farm animals that Seamus hadn't eaten or sold off to pay his increasingly high debts.

To see Seamus in person was to know misery and bitterness in the flesh. He was a nasty old cuss with narrowed brown eyes and pale skin that turned red due to frequent sunburn. He had short red hair, vibrant in coloration like wildfire, and he wore overalls often and sometimes walked about barefooted despite the many things a person could get stuck in their foot and cause pain or infection. He was supposed to be an accomplished sailor but was relegated to seal hunting due to the high bounties and the demand for seal parts.

He was also up to his elbows in debt, but often traded his livestock and what little furniture he had to pay it off and it was mostly over drinks.

His only son Ronan by contrast was a handsome young lad with a lean muscular frame due to all the hard work he had to do on his own, he had his late mother's dark brown locks and intriguing hazel eyes despite never getting the chance to actually meet her beyond his birth. Young Ronan was a bright and headstrong lad that often clashed with his father as the drunken brute often caused the boy to have to go many a night with an empty belly due to his folly.

On this particular day, young Ronan's father was good and truly drunk and the subject of selling one of the pigs brought forth his father's immediate wrath and as a result, the lad was struck plainly across the face by the man. Reeling from the enraged attack, Ronan bolted out the back door feeling a bit of rage himself as he headed back toward the animal pens needing to get as far away from the house as possible but wanting so badly to finish his chores so that he could before the rain picked up.

Ronan was still out tending to the animals alone when he heard a rustling in the thick of the bushes where his home had been. He took a few moments to investigate grabbing a nearby pitchfork and approaching the bushes to see what it had been. He was relieved to know that there was nothing there but neglected to check behind him as someone or something decided to head into the barn.

The sound of a squealing pig had gotten his attention and he rushed into the barn to see what became of the poor creature expecting to see a wolf or a badger only to find a strange thin ragged looking woman with vibrant red hair lengthy and in uneven strands, she wore what looked like an outfit fashioned out of a burlap sack and held in her hands the bloodied intestines of the now dead pig that lied at her rough looking bare feet.

Ronan had no idea of what to make of the scene with all the blood and entrails dripping in his view due to the strange woman giving him no choice, as she rushed him screaming like a madwoman as she caused him to trip over a bale of hay and land on the ground surrounded by the hay he had already broken up as part of his chores prior to her arrival.

With his face stricken with terror and his heart racing as if it were going to beat out of his very chest. The sixteen-year-old lad scrambled for a means of getting away from the strange woman who had set her sights on him. Blood oozed from her mouth along with saliva and it was only in being so close to her that he could see the razor-sharp teeth and sunken black eyes as she advanced upon him. With his lungs burning, Ronan attempted to crawl away from her but she had proven that she was much faster than he was and closed the gap between them with ease.

He could feel her sharp nails that were more like claws against his exposed flesh as she pulled him via his leg toward her with what Ronan was sure was inhuman strength, especially for her being a woman. She tossed him about the barn causing him to hit his head on the wall and nearly blackout from the pain as she screamed and pounced upon him. He faded in and out of consciousness when he felt her tearing through his clothes ripping them to shreds with her terrible fingernails.

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The Barn, The Hemming Farm, The West End, Munster, Ireland (1900)...

Young Ronan came to feeling sick and disoriented as the vile woman with red hair suddenly towered above him, he could hardly make out what she'd been after as she suddenly impaled him via her clawed hand bursting past the flesh and seemingly rearranging his organs as she had the dead pigs that remained only a few feet away from them. He yelled out in pain as he attempted to get away from the deranged woman once more noticing the wild red glow of her sunken eyes and how she seemed to delight in his misery.

Rage filled Ronan as he felt his warm blood ooze from the gash her claws had made in his soft flesh and he found himself wishing to do her harm, for the first time in his life, the lad had not been content to just take the injustices that were heaped upon him and as fate would have it, he found himself once more in possession of the pitchfork he entered the barn with.

In one swift motion just as the accursed fiend charged to pounce on him again, Young Ronan impaled the monstrous woman via the pitchfork breaking through the soft flesh of her belly as she screamed and hissed in agony and fury alike. He had not cared, she had started this whole endeavor and he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of an uncontested victory.

He collapsed onto the ground too weak from the blood loss to do much of anything else at that moment. The foul creature appeared to have met her match as she hovered over him a few moments more before retreating once she got the pitchfork pulled from her belly. The exchange of blood between Ronan and the vile creature proved to have far-reaching consequences as Ronan found that his body was ablaze via a fever of some sort as if the monstrous woman's blood transmitted some grotesque disease to him in the wake of their scuffle.

Young Ronan lay on the floor of the barn, pitchfork only a few meters away from his hands, as the heating of his body gave way to fever as he began to sweat profusely and the burning and stinging sensation that traveled all throughout his body gave him cause for worry, as he lay dying, Ronan didn't bother to call for assistance as he knew no one would bother.

His father was content not to have another mouth to feed and there were no neighbors to lend a hand. He was an only child and for the most part only a child despite barely reaching the age of fourteen before it appeared his already miserable and short life had been extinguished.

In the wake of the delirium that plagued him for hours on end, Ronan opened his now darkened hazel eyes to find that he'd been staring into the dark brown eyes of a strange nobleman from a foreign land. Having had enough of being around strange people Ronan attempted to bite the man who had kneeled down beside him and examined his sweaty brow. The dark eyes of the now angry man flickered for a few moments before he pressed his hand harder into the mouth of the delirious fourteen-year-old boy.

Warm drops began to flow into the back of the lad's throat coating it via a thickness that didn't feel right to ingest but the effect it had on his weary body was as if it were water coming to cool him on the inside and it seemed for a while that's what it did as the heat began to die down the delirium began to fade and was replaced with sheer exhaustion.

The last thing young Ronan saw was the now inquisitive eyes of the strange foreign nobleman who had come to his barn before everything faded into darkness.

102 YEARS LATER...