Shiver the Whole Night Through

by Darragh McManus

  That was a nice thing to hear. One of many. I said, ‘Okay, sorry. I’m a moron, I admit it. How did it, uh … You know what? It felt feckin’ great. Every bit as good as I’d imagined. I didn’t even mind that I haven’t the balls to, you know,’ – I chuckled – ‘smash his face in too. I have to admit, that little fantasy has kept me warm on many a night. John Rattigan’s face at the business end of a lead pipe. And me standing over him, screaming – no, not screaming. Saying it really quietly, you know – it’s more menacing that way. “How’s it feel, asshole? How’s that taste of your own medicine going down?”’ I laughed louder, partly embarrassed but happy too, almost giddy. ‘That would’ve ruled. But hey, what happened today wasn’t bad either.’

  ‘Do you still want to punish him? Do you want revenge, I mean?’

  ‘On Rattigan?’

  ‘On all of them.’

  ‘Uh … I dunno. Like, walking away today, having just destroyed him, basically, with nothing but the power of my intellect … That felt good. And it proves I’m the bigger man, right? I’m better than him, I don’t need revenge.’

  ‘You still haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, I know … This is called stalling, Sláine. Playing for time.’

  ‘That’s fine. I can wait.’

  I sighed and pulled out my tobacco. ‘Then you might be waiting a long time. Because I’m not sure I know the answer to that myself.’

  Sláine looked at me for a good while, then nodded to herself as if something had been settled in her mind. She stood up and crossed the room, turning the oil lamps down. The room dimmed to a twilight blur. I liked it better this way. Now it felt even more like a place of seclusion, a womb, somewhere warm and safe, to hide away from the rest of the world.

  She floated to the wall opposite me, brought her hands together and pursed her lips. In this darker atmosphere, weirdly, she seemed to be glowing more than before. Her skin, impossibly pale. Her clothes becoming whiter every time I saw her. I squeezed my eyes shut and told myself it was the light playing tricks again. I opened them.

  Finally Sláine spoke the words I’d been waiting for all evening, for days past: ‘I said you were ready to know how I died. So here it is.’

  ‘I can’t explain everything because I don’t understand it all myself,’ she said. ‘Not yet. Hopefully I will, eventually. For now, I’ll tell you what I know.’

  ‘All right. That’s fair enough.’

  ‘And I’m sorry, again, that you’re only hearing this now. I was … worried. For you. How you’d react. I wanted to build up to it, gradually. It’s … this is outside everything you’ve ever known. There might be some – what can I call it? “Psychic disorientation.” So, you know. Brace yourself.’

  ‘All right. Braced.’

  ‘That night … the night I died,’ Sláine began. ‘It didn’t feel special in any way. The whole day, the weeks leading up to it – my life was carrying on as normal. College was good, I was enjoying the course, staying with a nice group of girls in Galway. Heading out, having fun. No romance going on. I’d had this thing earlier in the year, it got a bit serious on his side and I didn’t feel the same. I knew I never would, so I’d called it off about two months before.’

  I felt a prickle of jealousy. Was she talking about Tommy Fox? Was that why he was so cut up? Some sense of unfinished business, maybe … She’d ended the relationship – that was a good sign, right? But hang on, Aidan, why do you care anyway? You and Sláine are just friends, no … ?

  She was still talking; I ordered my inner voice to quit yapping and listened.

  ‘Things were good. Life was good. Ha. Life. Remember that, Sláine? Another life, another Sláine … I remember it clearly, that Sunday. Visiting an old friend in the afternoon. Coffee in that place on Main Street, you know it, with the old black-and-white movie posters. Home, did a bit of reading. Funny, I don’t remember what book it was. Something by Borges, I think … Anyway, I felt pretty tired by about nine, so I went to bed early. Said goodnight to my parents, brushed my teeth and lay down to sleep. That was the last thing, really, I ever did. As the old me.’

  I held my breath.

  Sláine went on. ‘I’m not sure I actually did anything more after that. Of my own free will, you know? I was sort of aware that things were happening around me, but I didn’t have any power myself. To move, to react in any way. I was just there.’

  A pause. I said quietly, ‘“There” meaning Shook Woods.’

  She nodded. ‘I woke up in the forest, deep in the heart of it. I say woke, but it didn’t feel like that, the way you sort of surface slowly out of sleep. This was more like – like being shocked into consciousness by a great cold. As if my body took a huge, sudden breath … ’ She opened her eyes wide and gasped violently to demonstrate what she meant. ‘ … And my eyes were open and I was standing in the middle of the forest. Much further in than they found my body – it must have been moved. It’s hard to describe how it felt. I suppose – try to imagine you’re asleep, and someone throws you into a freezing pool: the way you’d just leap back into wakefulness, your entire body screaming. Except there was no water, and no screaming. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything. I just stood there, under the moonlight.’

  Sláine paused again. Jesus, the tension was becoming unbearable.

  ‘I was fully dressed. Had I gone to bed in my clothes? No. So either I’d dressed myself or someone else had done it for me. How had I got to Shook Woods? Walked there, I guess. My feet were bare, blue with the cold, but I didn’t seem to mind. Maybe because the rest of me was so cold too. More than cold, that seems such a puny little word, those four letters … I was beyond cold. I felt literally frozen inside. All the blood frozen in my veins. My heart frozen, not beating. My eyes frozen, I wasn’t blinking. My whole body frozen, I mean I wasn’t even shivering in response to it. I was a statue. No, an ice sculpture. The only thing not frozen, it seemed, was my mind – and that wasn’t working the way it usually did, either. Everything felt weird and kind of dreamlike. I was present but detached from it too, the way you feel in a dream. How you’re part of it but at the same time watching yourself from a distance. The creator and the audience, all at once.’

  She looked at me, brows raised in a question. I nodded that I knew what she meant.

  ‘I don’t even know if I was still alive or had already died by this stage. That’s how strange it was. I stood there for what might have been an hour, might have been thirty seconds … no movement around me, the whole forest frozen like I was, although I thought I heard birds crying in the distance, like a raven’s cry, but probably just imagined that. And then … ’

  Her eyes misted over as she was transported back in time to that fateful moment: ‘I felt a … presence. Nearby. Hard to describe, again. Not a being as such, like a person or some other living thing. But not something inorganic either, you know. This wasn’t just the wind blowing … A presence. I don’t know how to … Maybe if the wind could have a personality, or the sun or moon, that might describe it. If some element of the weather had a mind or soul … The cold. It felt as if the physical state of coldness had come alive. And I realised that the same coldness I felt inside, it was outside me now as well, pushing against me. Pushing to get in. The coldness inside pushing to get out. The two of them moving towards each other, pushing me, pushing through me … And then I was the coldness – it was me, we were one and the same. It settled in me and I was part of it. And I knew for sure that I was dead.’

  I gulped painfully and supressed a squeak. Oh man, this was heavy. I was out of my depth. I wanted to run, I wanted to stay. I wanted to hear the rest of the story. I told myself to grow a pair and managed to hold my position without running off, wailing like a baby.

  ‘I don’t remember anything else for a while after that. I must have blacked out or something. Don’t even remember falling to the ground, which I must have. When you die, you fall down, isn’t that how it goes? No memory of my body being b
rought to that tree, near the entrance. No memory of being buried or rising from the dead. No Jesus-style resurrection stories to tell, I’m afraid. I was dead, I knew I was … and then I was still dead but also awake, lying on that wall where we first met. It was night. I felt as cold as before, but like I said, I didn’t mind now. I didn’t seem to feel things in the old way. That was all gone. I was gone, and yet I was right there. Looking like this.’

  She gestured down her body, pointed to her face, tilted her head and smiled distantly. I chanced a joke, to lighten the mood for me if not her: ‘Well, you look pretty good for it, I must say. For a dead girl, you look grand.’

  ‘Thanks. And that’s it. You wanted to know; now you know. Bet you’re glad you asked, huh?’

  ‘I am glad.’

  ‘Thanks again. Sorry, though: it doesn’t really answer your questions, does it? I mean I still don’t fully know what happened. Or why.’ Sláine shrugged. ‘But at least you know as much as I do.’

  ‘So basically – you did die of hypothermia? Like the autopsy said.’

  ‘No. That would suggest a natural physical reaction to extreme conditions. This wasn’t just low temperatures, Aidan. This cold, it – it almost had a mind. It wanted me. And I think it came for me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know that either. But I’m convinced of it. Something, someone, I don’t know – it drew me here that night, from my home. It lured me.’

  I had something then, an idea, a theory: ‘Maybe … hypnotised you? Persuaded you to come out here. Like how you can sort of do it to others.’

  ‘Maybe. Yeah, that’s possible. Anyway, it got me here, then it took me. Took my life and changed me into this. Tch. Whatever this is.’

  She looked a bit disgusted saying that. I retorted, ‘Hey, this is you. You’re not some monster or ghoul. You’re just a girl. And a pretty cool one at that.’

  ‘Really?’ she drawled, totally sceptical.

  ‘Yes. You’re still Sláine. Just … I don’t know, in a different package. Same you. I know it. I didn’t know you before – this is all gut instinct but shit, gut instincts are usually right. You’re a good person with a big heart. Even if you’ve got trouble believing it yourself. I believe it.’ I muttered to myself, ‘You couldn’t be a monster, cos if you were a monster … ’

  I stopped myself. She smiled and diplomatically changed tack, saying, ‘Why did you come here? We can come back to my story, but just answer this for me. You were here a few times after I died. Why? That night we met, you looked like you were on stakeout.’

  ‘I sort of was … I’m not sure. Something drew me here. Not like with you, I don’t mean some presence. I just wanted to see where you’d been found, that was the start. I was curious. Also I felt shitty for what’d happened to you. You always came across as all right – it didn’t seem fair. I came back, decided to try and find out exactly what had happened. Facts didn’t seem to stack up, you know? And then … you left me the message and I thought, oh she was murdered, and basically at that point I was trying to catch the killer. That’s why I was here the night we met. I’d read that killers often return to the scene of their crimes, so … ’ I chuckled. ‘Christ. As if I’d’ve been any good anyway! Like, me? Bringing down a murderer one-handed? Anyway, that’s it. End of report.’ I looked at Sláine. ‘So was it … were you murdered, then? Sorry, that’s – I’m sorry, can’t think of a better way to put that.’

  ‘It’s all right. The answer is, I don’t know. Something made this happen to me. But was it a someone? There, my lad, lies the question.’

  I grimaced and swallowed hard again. This was getting crazier by the minute. I felt ever more out of my depth.

  She said, putting some cheerfulness into it, ‘Ah, it’s not that bad. Being dead. Hey, I probably would have never met you if I was still alive.’

  We smiled at each other, bittersweet. Sláine added, ‘I didn’t choose it and I’d prefer if it hadn’t happened. But it’s not so bad. Honestly.’

  ‘Do you feel – sad? About it all.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not happy, but … no. Not sad. Although it kind of feels as if I’ve gone past all that altogether. Those simple emotions. Happy, sad. They don’t seem to apply to me any more.’

  ‘Okay. I won’t pretend to understand that, but I can accept it.’

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘it’s funny. After the first day or so, once the mental shock of it wore off and I’d adjusted to my new … life, whatever this is. Once I accepted that this was how it was now, there was nothing I could do about it. A change came over me. I realised that I felt different. It wasn’t scary or depressing so much. It started to feel … as if I was returning in some way. Coming back to something, some previous state of being. It almost felt like going home.’

  I looked around the old hunting lodge and smiled. I kind of knew what she meant by that.

  Then I turned back to Sláine and was shocked – not the usual ‘how can this be happening?’ stuff I’d got accustomed to, but in a far more normal, human way. For the first time since I’d met her, she looked tired, despondent, even a little afraid. Her shoulders were slumped, her gaze landing at a spot on the wall or some distant point in the uncertain future. If I hadn’t assumed it to be impossible, I would have sworn she was about to start crying.

  I said, concern making my voice shake, ‘Sláine. What is it?’

  She didn’t reply for what seemed an age. Finally she said, barely above a whisper, ‘I need your help, Aidan. You have to help me.’

  She needed my help? This was unexpected. If I’d been asked to summarise the Sláine I’d come to know, it’d probably be along the lines of ‘capable, unflappable, self-reliant, self-contained’. It hadn’t occurred to me that she could need anything. She liked me, I knew that, and appreciated whatever our friendship gave her; but actually needed me? I was dumbfounded.

  There it was, though. Sláine had asked for my help, and I guessed it hadn’t come easy to her, either: some kick of simple pride making the words stumble in her mouth; some trace of the mortal ego she once possessed lingering on in this new incarnation. She’d asked for help, and I’d give it, no hesitations.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Anything I can do – what, tell me what.’

  ‘I’d hoped to work it out for myself: who killed me, why they did it. What this all means. It must mean something. And I want to know, I need to. But I … I can’t do it by myself, I’m not able, I need you to help.’

  I moved closer to her, sitting on the bed but leaving her some personal space. ‘Sure. I told you, whatever I can do, I will.’

  ‘I can’t enter buildings, right? Properties. Except your house, for whatever reason, and here. And I can’t be everywhere at once. I can’t go into town during the day, in case someone sees me – I don’t think they would, but the risk isn’t worth taking. I can’t be away from the forest for too long. Not really sure why, it just … draws me back. Like a magnet, I’m not able to stay away for long. So, you have to do some of that for me. Going into specific places. Being my eyes and ears out there.’

  ‘Cool. What are you thinking exactly?’

  ‘Research. Investigation.’

  Sláine sort of shook herself down then, stood and began pacing around the room as she mentally worked it through. ‘As far as I can see, there are only two possible explanations for what’s going on, essentially. One, this thing, this presence I felt: it’s some weird force of nature, beyond human control. Or two, it’s being manipulated by someone. A person.’

  ‘Who lives in our town.’

  ‘Almost certainly. There isn’t another for miles in all directions.’

  ‘And it’d make sense, wouldn’t it? If you were up to some black magic bullshit, then you’d want to be right there, where the action is.’

  She nodded. ‘So those’re our two options. There may be more, but we have to be practical. We have to assume all this is down to one or other. Otherwise it’s needle-in-a-haystack stuf
f.’

  I nodded too. ‘Okay. Makes sense. It’s a start, anyway.’

  ‘Right. We have to start somewhere.’

  ‘So, what? You want me to check stuff out in the library? Bookshops? Maybe second-hand shops. Like, research into local folklore, legends of supernatural events, stories, rumours.’ I clicked my fingers. ‘Specifically, any mentions of people dying from the cold, under mysterious circumstances. I could look at microfiche of old newspapers, that sorta thing.’

  ‘Yes. But not just local. Anything along those lines, anywhere in the world.’

  ‘Like Bella in Twilight. Yeah? That scene where she’s reading about vampire mythologies across the planet cos she suspected yer man of being one, the guy with the hair.’

  Sláine smiled for the first time in ages. ‘Big Twilight fan, are you?’

  I scowled. ‘No. It was, uh … one of the girls in school was on about it. Go on, what’s next?’

  ‘What’s next is the possibility that someone is behind it. Controlling this force of … coldness, whatever it might be. But the person we could be looking for, we’ve got to narrow it down. Can’t just interrogate everyone in the town and ask them, “Are you a murderer?”’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘The way I see it, our hypothetical killer fits the following criteria.’ She ticked off the list on outstretched fingers. ‘One, a man, almost certainly. Because most killers are men – that’s a statistical fact. But more than this, I felt something … masculine. That night, when I died. When he – he, it – lured me out here. There was something male in the air. Something sour and cold and male.’

  I chanced a joke: ‘Could describe virtually every asshole I go to school with, to be honest.’

  Sláine smiled again, thank God. She went on. ‘Two: living locally. Three: with an interest in the occult. Paranormal, supernatural, stuff like that. Sorry, I can’t be any more specific – my mind feels like it’s on go-slow or something. You know what I mean anyway.’