Benbulbin

In April 2022, the coastal town of Sligo in the west of Ireland was thrust into national prominence following a series of brutal, highly calculated attacks.

Nestled between the Atlantic Ocean and the shadow of Benbulben Mountain, Sligo was long regarded as a safe, close-knit community.

That sense of security would evaporate over four days when a killer began selecting men through location-based dating applications.

But before we meet the killer, we need to meet the man who survived him.

That wind is going nowhere, Ned the Impaler said.

and the wind scoured the sky and ran the clouds at a scudding pace towards the sulking grey citadel of Sligo town, with Ben Bulben above it, the table mountain coming and going in the race of clouds.

On the sea's horizon, The surfers were at their tricks and feints, grabbing their fins with insouciance and turning the board skyward to ride the great green waves while their bodies barked like seals from the shore in hoarse appreciation and they were all just filming each other fucking incessantly.

We huddled against a storm-break wall in a black leather cluster and grimly smoked a doobie or several.

Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

A Night of the Sheep Away to the north of Ben Bulben and Cope's Mountains lives a strong farmer, a knight of the sheep they would have called him in the Gaelic days.

Proud of his descent from one of the most fighting clans of the Middle Ages, he is a man of force alike in his words and in his deeds.

There is but one man that swears like him, and this man lives far away upon the mountains.

MIRACULOUS CREATURES

There are martin-cats and badgers and foxes in the enchanted woods, but there are, of a certainty, mightier creatures, and the lake hides what neither net nor line can take.

These creatures are of the race of the white stag that flits in and out of the tales of Arthur, and of the evil pig that slew Diarmuid, where Ben Bulben mixes with the sea-wind.

They are the wizard creatures of hope and fear.

I'm the eldest of nine children.

We're a farming family on the side of, on the foot of Ben Bulbin.

Would have been young and pudgy probably at 13 or 14 and quite soft.

And they were probably looking at me saying, he's probably not going to stick that.

Even the official mind does not escape this faith.

A little girl who was at service in the village of Grange, close under the seaward slopes of Ben Bulben, suddenly disappeared one night about three years ago.

There was at once great excitement in the neighborhood because it was rumored that the fairies had taken her.

A villager was said to have long struggled to hold her from them, but at last they prevailed, and he found nothing in his hands but a broomstick.

The Celtic Twilight by William Butler Yeats.

A Knight of the Sheep.

Away to the north of Ben Bulben and Copes Mountains lives a strong farmer, a knight of the sheep they would have called him in the Gaelic days.

Proud of his descent from one of the most fighting clans of the Middle Ages, he is a man of force alike in his words and in his deeds.