Fergal Leo was planning to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and asked me if I could join him at the party. He even mentioned the dress code and menu.
"Green", I smiled but I told him about the emergency call from the office and asked him to join me with his camera and other equipment. We got out of our car as we approached the hilly dirt road leading to that village.
Leo clicked his first shot as we approached that ghostly village. People thought there was a dark shadow of death even during the full light of day in this village. We heard strange rumors spreading about this village. They said at dusk, graves yawned, and hungry skeletons, cloaked in darkness, roamed the streets, trails, and fields in search of food.
The hideous jackals walked around the corpse, hearing the rattling of their loose paws. There was a strange silence all around, and the meat-eating vultures, their heads covered in feathers, hid in dry stubble shells.
I was interested when Leo said, “Let’s prepare the figures for this village as well.” But I shuddered and thought, “yet another village?” However, I approached a boy from a nearby village who agreed to accompany us. A glimpse of that village was visible in the clumps of trees at a distance in front of us.
Skeletons started appearing in the fields of the village, even though we were still about a mile away from it. Leo put his camera back in his bag as we reached the outskirts of that ghostly village.
Hunger seemed to have sown its seeds of death all around the villages in that area, and we could see rotten corpses lying everywhere. Dogs, vultures, jackals, and crows were taking full advantage of that situation.
Leo was surprised, “Why the heck no government department is taking care of this village?”
“This village is in no-man's-land, at Ukraine and Belarus border so no one wants to take responsibility“
At that moment, there was a strong gust of wind, and the stench turned our heads around. But then, as the heavy and half-gusts of wind, laden with that foul odor, stopped, stuck in the clumps of dried bamboo. The first hut of the village of the dead was visible right in front of us. The walls of that house had almost collapsed, and half its shed was hanging on one side.
A skeleton was lying near a half-fallen wall. The boy with us paused. “This is Jack, the fisherman.”
“Where?” Leo asked.
“That fisherman is now sound asleep!” The boy pointed to the skeleton and said, “That fisherman was the sturdiest young man in this village. There was a famine. First, his mother died of hunger. And they had nothing to eat, and no money left. So he burned his boat for the last rituals of his mother.“
“What do you mean, he burned his boat?” Leo took a photo of the skeleton lying in the courtyard.
The boy looked terrified. “If he did not have food to eat, it was impossible for them to bring wood for the pyre. So he pulled out his boat from the river, placed the mother’s body in the boat, covered it with dry grass on top, and set it on fire.“
We moved to the next hut. Oh, did Leprechaun visit this area in recent past?
“Oh,” he shouted, looking at another skeleton in the courtyard, “His wife also went away. I think she was hungry, too. And his mother also died in the same place.“ He approached the body.
The wind blew again, passing through the bamboo trees and making a strange sound. Suddenly, the boy whispered, “She is breathing, haven’t you heard?”
“Who?”
“She is the wife of the weaver. She is still breathing.“
“What nonsense,” Leo said curiously.
“What are you talking about? Can’t you see the bodies lying in this hut? These two weavers that lived here but now probably died of hunger. I can see the dead bodies of the weaver, his wife, and their loom, but even the loom is of no use now.
The boy said, “Someone told me they were eating the Shamrock from the nearby forest during this time of hardship and famine.
We could see their sharp teeth, like the giggles of jackals. But the weavers fell ill. The weaver’s wife used to dig the roots to eat them. One day, while cutting the roots and Shamrock, her tool slipped from her weak hands, and the index finger and thumb of her left hand were cut and fell off.
When she reached home, the hungry and sick weaver got angry and shouted, “Get out of my house. Now you are useless.“
She could neither operate the loom nor dig the roots. Since then, no one saw the weaver family anywhere in the village. No one saw the weaver’s wife. But some people say that she still roams near the village graves as a ghost.
Leo reached for that body. “She is still breathing, you hear that?”
Leo looked at me. We both entered the weavers’ hut. The boy stopped, but then he also moved forward. We went inside. The boy tried to close the door from inside and stood next to us. He was trembling with fear.
Oh, we saw three open pits in the front courtyard. There was a big hole in the middle of one grave. A badger came out of it and looked at us. We felt horrified for a moment, but shook our heads and then approached the grave. We could feel a strong smell of rotting dead bodies spreading in the courtyard.
Leo grabbed his camera and got ready to take the photos. At that point, we heard the rear door sprung open. I felt my hair stand up. Leo said, “I think it’s a jackal.” It was like someone started pushing the door again. Maybe the dead people from all over the village were trying to attack us. They were hungry, and the smell of living people was bringing them here, I thought.
Every drop of my blood froze with fear. The boy screamed. Leo went slowly out, opening the door, but came back in few moments and stood near me. I was getting mad, and you wouldn’t believe what I saw at the door.
What I saw could not be a man. He was not an animal, not even a ghost. The woman’s face, whose skin was hanging all over, the hair on her head fell, the lower lip swung, and the teeth were sharp like dogs. It looked as if the skin of a lizard had been placed over a human structure. She had a scabbard in her right hand and some roots in her left paw, with two half-cut and three whole fingers on her left hand. She stood by the door for a moment, then crept forward.
I wanted to scream but found it hard, as my throat already felt choked. She stood very close to us, put roots on the ground, moved her three-fingered hand near her mouth, and gestured as if asking for something to eat.
She was still alive, but was probably too hungry. She was still alive and not dead yet. Because hunger is the sign of a living human being. Leo took out a banana from his bag and tossed it towards her. She picked up the banana and held it close to her mouth. But then she stopped, got up, and walked to the other side of the hut.
We got curious, so we went after her. The woman went to a corner of the hut. There was a dead, rotten body that had fallen and spread across the courtyard. The village boy saw him, and for the first time, a voice came out of his mouth, “Weaver, this is the weaver’s corpse.” This weaver has turned into a ghost, too. That boy was even more scared now.
She approached the dead weaver’s corpse. The corpse was decomposing, and there were ants all around it. She put the banana and the roots in the corpse’s mouth and laughed. The sound of laughter did not come out of her mouth properly; it sounded like giggles. No, we could not say. She was not laughing, but crying. The very next moment, she sat down and started sobbing with her head on the dead body’s chest.
Leo went close to the dead body and took another photo. “Is this that weaver? But he must be dead at least seven days before.“
“Seven days, yes indeed,” He shook his head. Leo said, “Let’s take this woman away from here, otherwise she will also rot in a couple of days.”
We approached her, but she was already dead.
We came out of the hut. We saw a pit nearby. I thought we should bring those dead bodies and put them in this pit. We went inside, carried the dead weaver’s corpse, and his wife’s dead body one by one. I was almost panicked and on the verge of fainting. Leo shook my shoulders and took care of me. For a while, we kept silent. Then I said, with a heavy heart, “All of it is finished. Probably once she cut her fingers, there was nothing left to eat.“
I could feel the emotions in Leo’s voice. “Yet, she came to the dead weaver before dying herself with the banana and tree roots“
“Why yes, she was his wife. Get up now. We have to fix these dead bodies!“
Leo remained silent until we decided to place both those bodies in the pit of the deceased couple and set them there. The smell was unbearable.
We picked up the dead bodies and put them in the pit. We covered the bodies with dry bamboo leaves and the clothes we brought from the hut.
Fergal Leo felt as if the woman wearing the green frock was the same as his cousin wearing it in Dublin or Belfast, or in other cities back home.
I felt like he was singing the poem of Yeats that evokes the bond of a humble weed plant that unites our people, whom he had never even seen before.
I wrote in the dust with my finger near the pit, “Tomb of the Weavers, 2022“
As we walked towards the next hut, Leo took the last shot of the newly laid tomb. He was thinking he would send all the money to this village that he had planned for St. Patrick’s Day party and to buy St. Patty’s Day paraphernalia.
INKWELL TOPIC- St. Patrick's Day