Knock Knock, Open Wide

by Neil Sharpson

The Irish coast spread out before her in all its wild, rough-faced beauty and she had a mad desire to stop by the side of the road, strip naked, and leap into the sea until she was too cold to think or worry.

She had been drugged by exhaustion. Overdosed on static. She was high on rain.

In Denmark, they call the static “myrekrig,” he remembered. A war of ants. The static was swarming, eating at the edges of the screen, dissolving and bleeding into the air.

Na Daoine Maithe, the Good People, a name utterly wrong in every particular.

Father Fitt’s soul was a subject of much whispered speculation amongst the priests of the Diocese, as it was generally agreed that he did not possess one.

Irish mythology I would recommend The Irish Storyteller by George Denis Zimmerman, The Lore of Ireland by my former tutor the late, great Professor Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, Over Nine Waves by Marie Heaney, and, if you can lay hands on them, the works of Seán Ó Súilleabháin (unfortunately out of print).