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“I don’t understand any of this,”I protested, my eyes unable to leave the cowering blond girl.

“Go now!”R onayne almost screamed. “Leave!”

Protesting somewhat halfheartedly as I did so, I took the crucifix from him. The blond girl’s eyes seemed fixed on it as if something caused them to become attached to the sacred symbol.

“Better you don’t understand!”R onayne called after me.

I hurried up the stairs and back the way that I had come. The car was waiting there outside the main door, and the driver did not even bother to ask me where I was going.We raced back along the road to Chapelizod.

Could what I had witnessed have been real? That was the ques- tion hammering in my mind.Was I having some hallucination? Was I drawing on some forgotten childhood fantasy? Some nightmare? The legend of Abhartach—Averty—was one that had scared many a young child, a legend well-known in folklore. I squeezed my hand in agitation and found something hard in my palm, something that I still held. It was the gold signet ring and those awesome Gaelic letters—Abhartach. A two-thousand-year-old legend?

Something made me lean forward and call to the driver. “Stop! Turn back and take me to my consulting rooms at Clontarf.”

He turned the car without a word, and in a few moments it slid to a halt outside my office in Marino Crescent.

I went in and switched on the light.

I took out the sample of blood that I had taken from the corpse before it had degenerated. It was still normal and had not decomposed like the body. Perhaps removing it from the body had preserved it? I worked quickly. I began to go through every blood test I knew. I found its composition curious. A strange mixture that defied analysis. It seemed to combine all the qualities of A, B, and O blood groups and yet was like none of them at all. It was as I was making the final tests that I discovered that the blood was contaminated by a virus. I had seen the strain of virus many times before, the virulent sort that gives hepatitis B and can be fatal. The toxicity that I was observing was enough to kill an ox, let alone a man.

I put the samples carefully in the office refrigerator, making sure that I labeled them POISON. As I stood up I was aware that I was exhausted. I realized that it was long past dawn and, just as I became aware of the time, I heard a key turning in the outside door of the offices. It was Bríd. She was surprised to see me. I made an excuse about working through the night on some samples and told her to cancel all my appointments and take the day off herself. There was no way I could work that day. Then I asked her to call a taxi and went home to Chapelizod. Even in my fatigued state, my mind was still working. If what I suspected was reality, then I had no words to express my horror. It could not be true. Yet what other explanation was there for what I had seen? And the sample of contagious blood—that was certainly real enough.

If it were true, then it meant that I had to accept what I had previously dismissed as ancient legends, quaint old folklore, and old stories to scare children with. Dún Droch Fhola, the castle of evil blood, in the Kerry mountains. The Deamhan Fhola, the bloodsucking demons of western Ireland. The great vampire himself—Abhartach. If this were true, then the world must be in deadly danger. But who would believe me? To whom could I turn with such a tale?

I took out the heavy gold signet ring and stared at it as if it would provide the answer.

It was genuine enough. No one, unless they had money to burn, could have such a priceless trinket made up just to sustain a joke. No one.

I fell into my bed. Sleep overcame me immediately.

About midafternoon there came a telephone call. To my surprise it was Ronayne. He seemed calmer,more like his old self.

“You will forget everything that you saw last night, Sheehan,”h e said in a confidential manner. “Everything. It was just a joke. Right? A joke in very bad taste. You know what people in showbiz are like.”

“I know what I saw,”I replied,