Prince of Hazel and Oak
John Lenahan
Chapter One
Detective Fallon seemed to have given up on shouting.
‘I’ve seen people get off by claiming insanity,’ he said, sitting back in his chair. ‘Conor, you ain’t doing it right.’
‘So you don’t think I’m crazy then?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I think you’re plenty crazy but not insane.’
‘Aren’t they synonyms?’
‘Not in my thesaurus. If you want to get off by reason of insanity you have to be a nutcase all the time, you know, with the drooling and the swatting at imaginary bats. You, on the other hand, kill your father and then act completely normal – except for claiming that Daddy was attacked by Imps and Pixies from Faerieland.’
‘Tir na Nog,’ I corrected.
‘Sorry, from Tir na Nog.’
‘And there are no Pixies in Tir na Nog.’
‘Look, O’Neil’ – Detective Fallon leaned in and I could see he was inches away from returning to shouting mode – ‘you’ve been arrested for murder. They’ve got a death penalty in this state.’
‘I didn’t kill my father – honest. If I killed him where’s the body? If there is no body there can’t be a murder.’
‘You’ve been watching too much TV, O’Neil. You can fry without a body – trust me.’
‘So what do you suggest I do?’
Fallon softened back into his good-cop mode. ‘Tell the truth.’
‘Oh that. I was kinda hoping you had a better suggestion.’
The truth – telling the truth is how I had gotten into this mess in the first place. As soon as I returned to what the Tir na Nogians call ‘the Real World’, all of the Real World problems crashed in on me like a tidal wave. I’ve never been very good at lying but what else could I do? Dad’s boss had reported him missing and the cops were waiting for me when I returned. They had lots of questions after finding the front door wide open and the living room trashed. I made up a lame excuse about a boisterous party and told them that Dad was on a spontaneous trip with old fishing buddies. The cops accepted that explanation, but as I later found out, they didn’t believe it.
Sally was really mad at me. She went on and on about how worried she had been and how thoughtless I was for not getting in touch. The sad thing was I didn’t care – not only about Sally but about pretty much everything. What’s that old saying? Home is where the heart is. Well, I had left my heart back in The Land.
Even though I missed the actual ceremony, apparently I had graduated high school. I forced myself to show up for enrolment at the University of Scranton but after just one day I knew I couldn’t face it. What could a college professor teach me? What did they really know?
All food tasted like cardboard and, even worse, when I slept – I didn’t dream. I remembered once telling Fergal that some of the Real World was like The Land but covered in a grey film. Now all of it seemed like that.
And then there was Essa. I knew it was unfair but I couldn’t help comparing her with Sally – and Sally didn’t match up – how could she? It didn’t take a soothsayer to notice my thoughts were elsewhere. Sally finally had enough. She said I had changed, and she was right – we broke up.
I suppose I should have gotten a job but that seemed even more trivial than university, so I spent my time staring at the walls. I couldn’t even stomach watching television.
The trouble really started when the electric company turned off the power. I hadn’t opened any mail, let alone paid bills, but darkness forced me to do something about it. I had the PIN numbers to Dad’s bank accounts (well, he didn’t need money any more, with him living on top of a gold mine). I can remember standing in front of the cash machine as Dad’s words swirled around in my head, ‘There is nothing back there for you.’ I hated it when he was right. I punched the buttons and withdrew a wad of cash. I didn’t think I could feel any lower – I was wrong.
The police showed up at the house that evening with a search warrant. They had been monitoring Dad’s bank accounts, waiting for me to do exactly what I did. Forensic specialists in plastic jumpsuits took samples of the carpet, confiscated my clothes and all of the weird weapons in the house. When they finished, a policeman told me not to leave town, like he was in some old TV cops show.
Word of the police raid spread through the neighbourhood like wildfire. The authorities, it seems, weren’t the only ones who thought I had committed patricide. I didn’t know what to do. Sally showed up as I was packing in preparation for making a run for it. I decided to tell her the truth. I sat her down and told her everything (playing down the Essa stuff) and amazingly she took it in her stride. She told me that she believed me and wished me luck. Two minutes after leaving the house, she called the cops and told them I was crazy. The only crazy thing I had done was to come back for her.
A uniformed officer and a badge-brandishing Detective Fallon were standing on my front porch when I opened the door with a bag over my shoulder. It was Halloween. The first thing I said to Detective Fallon was, ‘Don’t you have a policeman’s costume?’ The first thing he said to me was, ‘Conor O’Neil, I have a warrant for your arrest.’
‘Here’s how I see it, Conor,’ Detective Fallon said as he paced around the interrogation room. ‘Your father – the mad one-handed ancient language professor – was a strange man. I’m not saying that to make you angry, but I’ve done some research and you have to admit he was, at least, unusual.’
‘You won’t get any arguments from me on that one,’ I said. ‘Pop was the weirdest guy in town.’
‘I also heard that he used to make you sword-fight with him just to get your spending money.’
‘Strange but true.’
‘So one day you just had enough, in the heat of one of your fencing practices-’
‘Broadswords,’ I interrupted, ‘Dad hates fencing.’
‘OK, in the heat of one of your broadsword bouts you flipped out and accidentally killed him – then you panicked and buried the body.’
I laughed, ‘You don’t know how many times I came close to doing just that, but no, that’s not what happened.’
‘Conor, we found your father’s blood on the carpet.’
‘He was injured when we were attacked. I didn’t do it.’
‘And we found traces of blood in a splatter pattern on a leather shirt.’
‘That’s not Dad’s blood.’
‘The pathologist disagrees. She said the shirt and the carpet had one of the most unusual DNA patterns that she had ever seen.’
‘That’s ’cause the blood on the shirt came from one of his relatives.’
‘I thought your father was an orphan?’
‘So did I!’ I said, throwing my hands in the air. ‘Look, I’ve explained all of this. Haven’t you been listening?’
Fallon sat down and sighed, ‘To be honest with you, no I haven’t. As soon as you start going on about hobgoblins and dragons I just glaze over. I figured if I let you ramble on with this cock and bull story you would get it out of your system and we could get down to the facts.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, Detective Fallon…’
‘Call me Brendan.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, Detective Fallon,’ I repeated, ‘but those are the facts.’
