#2. The Red Man Arrives in Sunny Hill
(Year is 2006...11 years before the Personal Apocalypse)
The town of Sunny Hill is located on the periphery of County Louth in the Province of Leinster. Considering Louth’s center isn’t exactly known for its sprawling cities, a town situated on this County’s edge can only be described as being awfully quiet. Quiet, but rather bemusing. The bemusement stems from the placename…in that “Sunny Hill” made no sense whatsoever – the entire town is located on landscape that is unquestionably flat. Even characterizations such as “slightly bumpy”, or “moderately hilly”, would be a stretch. So then, where did the “Hill” in Sunny Hill come from? It was a bemusement.
With regards to the “Sunny” part, this only served to further increase the levels of perplexity. As previously noted, Sunny Hill is located in Louth. Louth is one of the twenty-six counties that make up the Republic of Ireland. The Republic of Ireland is not a sunny place. Therefore, Louth, and Sunny Hill by association, are most definitely not locations where an abundance of sun can be found. In fact, this part of the world is as renowned for its beaming rays of sunlight as it is for its in-depth knowledge of African tribal drumming. Lacking.
Now, as with everything puzzling, there are theories. Perhaps there had indeed once been a hill. Perhaps this hill had then been flattened to make way for the town. And perhaps this flattening had occurred on an exceptionally sunny day. Then, just perhaps, the flatteners had decided to name the town after both this hill and this exceptionally sunny day. Why? Maybe they weren’t particularly inventive people. Or maybe, after the aforementioned flattening, the flatteners had felt bad for the now steamrolled hill, so they decided to incorporate this hill into the town’s name as way of a memorial. A bit far-fetched as theories go.
Another theory was that the people charged with naming this new town had been an ironic bunch – bestowing a name like Sunny Hill on a flat, perpetually wet place certainly smacks of irony. If this theory is the truth, then we can only hope these same people are never given the opportunity to name a hospital. Or a cemetery.
Anyway, curious name and poor weather aside, the town of Sunny Hill is actually a rather idyllic place. The surrounding hinterland consists of an immense woodland that encircles the town on all sides. It’s as if the entire town had been airlifted directly into the middle of this dense forest. A single road runs through the heart of Sunny Hill, serving as the only entry and exit points. This road thus serves as the town's main street, with all the houses, shops, and businesses lining up on either side.
Due to this rather isolated location, the residents of Sunny Hill very rarely venture too far. There are enough jobs in the town to keep the locals happy and those who do indeed choose to leave – like restless youths for example – usually tend to not return. And good riddance to them was the general consensus of the locals.
This all resulted in Sunny Hill possessing a close-knit community. The residents know each other by their first names and band together whenever there are difficult times. They pretty much all get on, being content with their closed off community, and so it’s exceedingly rare that any trouble occurs. In fact, the Gardai of Sunny Hill haven’t been called into action for nearly two years; not since the infamous Night of the Tipped Cow back in 2001. But that's a story for another telling. Quite a boring story if truth be told. The offenders – the thirteen-year-old Mullarchy brothers – had in no way possessed the bodyweight to topple a fully-grown cow. A strong gust of wind would have caused more structural issues for the cow in question.
It’s fortunate the Gardai in this part of the world are relatively redundant as the entire force consists of just three officers – two of which are part time with questionable levels of training. The question being have they received any training at all.
Now, because of the close-knit nature of this community, any strangers that happened across Sunny Hill are instantly spotted and identified. News of the arrivals is then circulated around town within hours. Every time, without fail, whether right or wrong, these newcomers are labelled as one thing – city folk. These people mightn’t have been from a city – they could have been from a town just as small as Sunny Hill – but this mattered little. The label “city folk” stuck. This is just how the Sunny Hill residents saw anybody who they didn’t know. Any such person, a stranger, was obviously from the city. Did this make any semblance of sense? Not really. But, regardless, that’s how it was.
In the Sunny Hill peoples’ defense, there is very real divide present between urban and rural dwellers. In general, rural folk see urban folk as condescending and obnoxious because they live in big, modern cities, while urban people view rural people as somewhat backwards and out of touch because they didn’t live in hubs of modernity. This isn’t always the case, of course, but it’s certainly an attitude that is prominent enough for stereotypes to have been created – exemplified by the good people of Sunny Hill.
Sure, they had never encountered enough city people for any actual grievances or concerns to form, yet, as alluded to, the Sunny Hill clan are not ones to be deterred by logic – they hold true to the belief that city folk are bad folk. This kind of blind ignorance has a certain merit to it. After all, it takes an incredible amount of ignorance to be fearful or to despise a certain social or ethnic group for absolutely no logical reason whatsoever. A truck load of ignorance and boat full of stubbornness. Impressive on some level.
Therefore, with this ignorance constantly on full alert, the folk of Sunny Hill spotted the tall man within minutes of him appearing one afternoon at the top of the main street. Full town awareness was then achieved within an hour. Though, in all honesty, a person didn't have to be a life-long Sunny Hill resident to know that this particular man wasn't from around town, or even from County Louth. In fact, he didn’t appear to be even Irish. He was, let’s say, odd.
To start with, the stranger was very tall. No, scratch that, he was freakishly tall. Irish people are not known for their height – thus the unfortunate association with Leprechauns – but this man would have been abnormally tall in any land. The stranger was also incredibly skinny, something that was accentuated by his fitted suit. The jacket and pants of this suit were dark red in color, almost maroon, and the man’s shoes were of the same color – they shone in the sunlight. A large broad brimmed hat sat atop his head, also dark red, and his long suit jacket fell to his knees. The jacket hid a black shirt and tie. Hair the color of snow spilled freely down to the middle of the man’s back to finish off his appearance.
The large brim of the stranger’s hat hid his face until you got up close. When someone did manage to get a peek under this brim, the smiling face of a middle-aged man was to be found. As with the rest of body, the man’s face was gaunt and almost skeletal.
Upon arriving in Sunny Hill, the man in red embarked on the same routine – he would appear at the entrance of the town at exactly seven a.m., no-one knew exactly where from, and would proceed to walk the entire length of the main street at a casual pace. Anyone who passed by and peered under the brim would get a big smile but no words in way of greeting. When the stranger reached the end of the main street, he would pause for a minute or two, turn, and then walk back the way he had come, once more assaulting those in his path with a beaming smile. When he reached his start point, he would apparently disappear. Obviously, or so the folk of Sunny Hill told each other, the man in red had a car waiting for him somewhere off-road. People don't just up and disappear.
The stranger’s first week saw him make this leisurely stroll up and down the main street on each day, Monday to Sunday. The people found this quite odd but not altogether unpleasant – after all, the stranger was smiling from underneath his broad brimmed hat, even if it was a creepy skeleton smile. After the second week, though, the townsfolk started to get a bit unsettled and slightly annoyed, especially when several of them tried to actively engage the stranger in conversation. They attempted to stop the man in red’s daily jaunt by placing themselves directly in his path when they saw him coming. This would be followed by a “how are you doing today, sir?”, or perhaps a “how are you finding our lovely town, friend?', depending on the creativity of the questioner. What was said proved irrelevant as the stranger would smoothly sidestep the obstructing townsperson, beam a smile at them, completely ignore the question, and then continue on his way. A popular theory began to circulate that the man was probably Polish and thus couldn’t understand English.
After the third week of this oddness had come and gone, the townsfolk started to get a bit freaked out. They were not accustomed to having strangers in their midst for long periods of time, especially ones who, Polish or not, put the strange in stranger. The townsfolk wished that the man in red would go away so a sense of normality could return to Sunny Hill. Sure, the stranger wasn't doing anything of a negative or harmful nature, but his mere presence was enough to spook the townsfolk. Such men were probably commonplace in the city, but out here, in Sunny Hill, odd characters and their subsequent odd behavior were very much out of place and not at all welcome. Little did the townsfolk realize that the man in red and his smiling face would have disturbed even the most veteran of city dwellers. Or Poles.
Thankfully, after week three had come and gone, so did the stranger. On the Monday of the fourth week, the early risers were throwing wary glances up the main street in expectation of seeing a broad brimmed hat bobbing their way, just as had been the case for the previous twenty-one mornings. Only this time, on the twenty-second day, no such hat or accompanying man in red could be seen. This did not change the next day, or the one after.
It was safe to say that the townsfolk of Sunny Hill were rather delighted. Things could finally return to normal. They could not have been more wrong…
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“Thanks for reading so far, I hope you’ve enjoyed it! If you’d like to find out what devilry the Red Man has in store for the Sunny Hill folk, and if Finn McCool can stop it, then click on the link below!”
- Aj