Rhiannon covered her ears. Her eyes squinted, too, as if that might also deafen a sound that hours of her grandmother’s stories warned her was the shriek of a banshee, a frequent companion of the horseman in Irish folklore. In the dark, she looked at the mossy gravestone again and back to JD, lacking a critical piece of the puzzle that might help solve the mystery: the detective had also recognized an old family name, one from his maternal side.
Perhaps the reason this odd ‘portal’ had opened for the pair of them, along with this particular incarnation of the headless horseman, was because of the peculiar interplay of blood and magic. Both of their ancestors shared a connection with a revenant, one who was taking on the characteristics of the Dullahan because of them. The ‘dark man’ they couldn’t see through the fog was a harbinger of death, the embodiment of Crom Dubh, a fertility god who required blood sacrifice by decapitation. Once Christianity arrived in Ireland and reduced his pagan offerings, he haunted the roadways in spirit form, calling the names of those who were about to die. He carried his head under his arm, the flesh rotting and peeling, and drove a coach with a casket for the bodies of the dead. This coach was decorated in skulls, some of which held lit candles. He used a human spinal column as a whip on his horses.
“Bad news,” she muttered. “That is the Dullahan. If he calls out your name, you die. From now on, I’m only answering to Hey You.” The hunter looked around them. “I was just thinking… he can’t talk if we crush his skull.”