CC 100: The Soul or the Snake

‘We’re coming up to the soul train,’ said Emer.

‘We should be,’ I replied.

There was in fact a tunnel at Cuchullain’s Castle, a souterrain running into the motte; the small entrance to this tunnel had long been blocked up, though I had memories of a time when it was open and as kids we were able to crawl inside with candles we’d stolen from St. Nicholas’s Church and scare each other with stories of Bas-Mall, the legendary serpent sleeping underneath.  In those days, I remember we could only go so far down the tunnel before we met a dead-end, where it had caved in sometime in the past.  Though with our holy candles alight, we could make out cracks in the rock and would go down to chip away at the wall often, dreaming of treasure on the other side.  Magical stones and jewels, enchanted weapons of untold power, the sword of Cuchullain.  Maybe even a few bottles of rum left over from the time of Pirate Byrne and his folly.*  Once, when we were there, I was holding the candle and my mate Jimmy was chiselling away at the rock when a shaft of green light came shooting out of a tiny rift in the ground below us.  I shit myself, but Jimmy was our leader, and very brave, so he took his screwdriver and started picking at the gap where the light was coming from.  Not long after, the roof of the tunnel shuddered and we could feel dust and pebbles dribbling onto our faces.  Jimmy eventually started to shit himself too, so we withdrew from the excavation.  Was it Bas-Mall, descendant of the last dragons of the west?  Who knew?  Not long after that incident, the souterrain was blocked up.  Some thought this was done to protect its many secrets, others thought it was to prevent plucky kids like us from going in when it was obviously unstable and dangerous.

Emer called it the soul train.  On the occasions we’d been there together, she’d often comment on the mysterious impenetrable doorway, putting forth her own theories.  She had it in her mind that if we’d been able to get inside, we’d get to the bottom of things.  There was no bloody serpent down there – what was waiting there however was a tour of the self which ended in a kind of spiritual awakening.  This meant seeing and valuing the world for what it really was, and the true nature of all those precious and ineffable things like love and wisdom.  I couldn’t help but think that, by Emer’s reckoning, if we had gone into this tunnel together, we might have saved our marriage long ago.  Pity it was all sealed up now.

‘There it is, the soul train,’ she said, as we came upon the tiny opening, still shut off from the world.   It was about the size of the screen in a confession box, draped in writhing ivy.

‘Well, it’s either the soul or the snake train,’ I replied.  ‘I don’t think we’ll ever know.’

‘If it’s the snake, then someone should have let him out years ago.’

‘To do what?  Kill us all?’

‘We could train it to only go after big business.’

‘Big business?’

‘Well, the ills of the world.  And that’s an ill.  A big one.  That snake, if it’s in there, could be taught to kill and destroy these ills in the name of human decency.’

‘But the soul could do that too, couldn’t it?’

‘Yeah, of course, but it’s stuck in there, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know, there must be soul enough on the outside to deal with big business.’

We ended the exchange there, and kept walking up the coiling track towards the castle.  And I thought about magic in the real world, and whether it was there or not, but my thoughts got in a muddle with the weight of the issues I was trying to address in my head, so stopped addressing them, realising I wasn’t licensed to make that call.  However, I counted at least ten seconds of real magic in getting the last word in with Emer in the debate on souls and snakes.

*Cuchullain’s Castle, the tower itself, is often called Byrne’s Folly, in reference to the owner’s decision to build the house at the highest point in the area.  He was known as a wealthy braggart and picked the spot just so that everyone in town knew they were entirely beneath him.  But it didn’t change anything.  People still broke in and stole his booze anyway.