The Pig Comes to Dinner by Joseph Caldwell

brushed by the touch of his fingertips.
    Kitty saw him in profile, his face immobile, his eyes downcast. He was listening. As was Brid. Whether the song was sad or happy she would never know, but she could tell from the distant look on Taddy’s face and Brid’s that memories had been awakened.
    Kitty knew she must turn around and go back down as silently as possible. She must return to her computer. She must deny what she had seen, what she was seeing. Or she must review the workings of her psyche and determine whether she was sane or insane. In self-protection, to reach for some accounting of what was happening, she tried to tell herself it was not all that unusual. All her life—with the exception of her time spent in America—things would disappear and reappear in and out of the mists: a tree a few feet away, the islands in the bay, the high ridge of the hills and every sheep and cow in sight, all seen, then unseen, with the sky the least reliable presence of all. Her own house would vanish after she’d taken but three steps from the door. Long had she been prepared for this present phenomenon. And her acceptance of it was not as reticent as it might have been had she been born anywhere but at this farthest reach of the Western world, where the eternal mists offered hints of the proximity of the seen and the unseen. To see ghosts could be a gift given by her Kerry birth. Refusal of the gift was impossible. The sole act of choice was what she would do about it, about these visitations. That had yet to be decided—especially since she had not the least idea why she had been singled out but, it would seem, no one else, not the squatters or anyone in the countryside around. If someone had, it would have been not only mentioned but proclaimed. Most significant, not even her husband had reported any “sightings.”
    Her next thought was that she could no longer dismiss these appearances as aberrations peculiar to County Kerry and its ever-shifting shadows, to the rise and fall of the mists that could, without warning, nullify the distinctions between the real and the unreal. This was Brid; this was Taddy, as named by the local Hag. There on their necks were the marks of the rasping rope. On their faces showed the loss to which they seemed reconciled, a grief whose source had been taken into their hearts, cherished and protected, until a rite could be found that would reunite them to themselves and give them peace or, perhaps, a respite from the wanderings to which they now seemed consigned.
    Kitty decided to continue on her way to the upper air. With land and sea in view she could test her mind; she could think it through, this assault on her lifelong insistence—mist or no mist—that there were no such beings as ghosts, just as there were no Little People, no leprechauns, no netherworld of kingdoms and castles, of stolen children and predators ready to pounce and to snatch, to abduct and to imprison. She would see how Brid and Taddy, if there was a Brid and Taddy, would react to her passage through their private domain. Would they vanish, as seemed their habit? Would they ignore her? Would they, perhaps, seize her, take her to the parapet above, and fling her down for having invaded this world of their betrayal? There was only one way to find out.
    Reverting to the pace of her approach—and fueled by her exasperation with Maggie Tulliver and the misguided Mary Ann Evans—Kitty passed through the room as though nothing out of the ordinary was taking place. Brid, and Taddy too went about their business. At the second step, just before the turn that led to the top of the turret, Kitty stole a quick backward glance to see if they were still there. They were, Brid at her loom, Taddy with his harp, each unmindful of her presence.
    The trapdoor at the top of the narrow stair was stuck, as usual. Kitty stepped high enough so that her bent head was pressing against the door, the palms of her