Shiver the Whole Night Through

by Darragh McManus

  Right. Where was this leading … ?

  ‘And when you’re a teenager, I mean, everything feels like the biggest thing that could ever happen. It’s all very dramatic and exciting at that age.’

  Okaaay … I muttered, ‘Uh … I guess so.’

  ‘You know, Aidan, people come and go. Into our lives, I mean. And you’re very young. There’ll be a lot of people in your life. You’re so young, you’re only a child still.’

  I saw her smiling at me, kind and melancholy, out the corner of my eye. My discomfort was sliding towards embarrassment as Mam went on. ‘All I’m saying is that nothing is ever as bad as it seems. A broken heart, say. We’re never really broken. We’re just … waiting for someone to make us whole again.’

  Ugh. That humorous postcard was getting ever-more interesting. I kept my eyes fixed on it.

  ‘I’d my heart broken once,’ she said. ‘This was long before your father, now. A boy called Tiernan. Beautiful, he was. Dark hair, dark eyes, just gorgeous … like someone you’d see in an old picture. I thought I loved him. Heh. I thought he loved me too.’

  Life lessons and personal revelations, a mother–son heart-to-heart. Save me, Jesus, pleeeeease … I don’t do emotional honesty with my family. I’m Irish, not a Hollywood TV character.

  My mother said, ‘And it hurt. I thought I’d die when he broke it off. Went to bed for a solid week! My parents were afraid I was having a nervous breakdown.’

  I was actually squirming by now, physically. I stared at the postcard and wished to hell Mam would stop talking, even though I appreciated why she was doing it.

  She paused, then said, ‘That girl Caitlin. You know I never put the two of ye together anyway. I don’t think she was meant for you – ye didn’t fit right together.’

  Finally I looked at her. ‘Wha—? Caitlin, what are you on about?’

  My mother seemed perplexed. ‘Aren’t you … ?’

  ‘What? No. Caitlin?’

  ‘Yes, isn’t that … ?’

  Ah. Got it. Right situation – sort of – wrong girl. I smiled. ‘No, it’s not her. I mean it’s not anyone. Everything is cool, swear to God.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes. The Caitlin thing, it’s all over and done with.’ I tweaked the truth a little by adding, ‘Sure, I only met her today, chatting after school. It’s all fine. I’m fine.’

  ‘All right, well … I worry, you know? About all of you.’

  ‘I know. Thanks. It’s grand, honestly.’ I stood and kissed the top of her head. ‘Finish your tea, I’m off to bed. And quit worrying.’

  She seemed half-reassured when I left. My own anxiety continued running at full steam. I slept badly. The next day I went back to sleepwalking. Same thing Friday. By 8 p.m. I was sitting at my desk again, gazing dully at some textbook, not reading it, only scanning my eyes across the pages, back and forth, like an empty swing in a breeze.

  I abruptly shut the book, moved to the window and opened it. A shot of chilly air, like a drug being injected to the heart. It woke me up somewhat. I rolled a cigarette and thought, I need to get some purpose back in my life. For sanity’s sake, if nothing else.

  Sláine’s gone, all right. But it’s only been five days. She might come back – she will, goddamn it, will, not might – and when she does, you should be ready. There’s no point putting everything on pause while you wait. Keep moving forward, it’s the only way to exist. So: continue with the investigation. Follow up this McAuley thing. The letter. The cold. Something strange and malevolent which took place in the woods …

  Gah. I didn’t even know where to begin. I had nothing, pretty much. Just a handful of whispers and suggestions and possibilities. My head was spinning, a vortex of confusion, and it spun worse when a second stream of thought joined in – those bloody animal attacks or psycho-revenge attacks on my behalf – and then a third stream, the freaky connection between me and the text messages and Clara’s mental voices and the girl who dreamed of the devil on her acid trip from hell …

  Coffee. I’d read in one of the Sunday newspaper supplements that coffee was a good aid to thinking. My parents only had crappy-quality instant that looked and tasted like dust swept off the floor, so I texted Podsy and asked if he’d meet in a cafe in town. Might as well have someone to drink with. Fair play to him, he agreed on the spot. He must have known I needed some company.

  As it happened, my nerdy little friend gave me a whole lot more than that.

  ‘What’d you tell the young fella?’

  ‘What the what now?’

  ‘Your little brother,’ Podsy said. ‘What’d you say about those night-time excursions? You know, you being Batman and all.’

  We sat across from each other in a booth, in a place called Fiver and Dimes, a confused mixture of Irish food and small-town American decor. Podsy had arrived first and ordered coffee. Double-shot Americano for me – he knew what I liked. We let the drinks cool and I tried to remember what excuse I’d given Ronan about sneaking out of the house at all hours.

  Then it hit me. ‘Ah. Right. Told him I was birdwatching. Owls and things that only came out at night.’

  ‘He bought it?’

  ‘He bought it. God bless the gullibility of youth.’

  I smiled, Podsy didn’t. Instead he said, ‘And are you going to give me the real reason?’

  I winced. ‘Eh … no. I can’t, Podsy. Sorry, boy, I just … ’

  ‘Can’t, won’t, whatever. Look, ’tis grand – your own private business. But I am curious. And nosy.’

  He shrugged, making an end to it there, and blew across the top of his coffee, his wonky little mouth in the shape of a wonky little O, giving him a comical appearance. ‘Hey, did I tell you about what’s happening with Hiro?’

  I said, ‘Hiro the Hero. With the cool name.’

  ‘Cool guy too. I told you we’ve been tracking electromagnetic radiation for SETI, this project I’m involved with.’

  I nodded. He went on. ‘You asked me a while ago to let you know if there were any more unusual patterns in the flow. You know, spikes of energy?’

  I had asked him, I remembered that. And good on him, Podsy remembered too. I felt like a heel for keeping him out of the loop so much about everything. Then again, what exactly was I to say? ‘Okay, don’t jump to any snap conclusions about this? But I’ve been in a relationship with a dead girl for a few months. Seems to be going all right so far.’ There was nothing I could do; he had to be kept in the dark. Everyone did.

  Now I said, ‘Uh-huh. Patterns in the flow. Sounds like a lame-ass prog-rock band. So did you get any?’

  He replied, enthused, ‘Yeah, actually. What we’re dealing with here are irregularly occurring phenomena in the electro—’ He stopped, seeing the genuine look of bafflement on my face. ‘Okay, look at it like this: you have the normal flow, quote–unquote, of energy out there in space. Over us, here, in Ireland. But what we’ve been seeing –’ He smiled proudly. ‘What I’ve been seeing, and Hiro has been processing, is these unusual spikes. Weirdest thing is, they’re coming at quite regular intervals? Which really is weird.’

  ‘What’s weird about it? I’m still a bonehead, Podsy, just like the last time you told me about this stuff.’ I gave a small smile. I think it was the first time I’d smiled – properly, happily – since Sunday afternoon. Whether through the coffee, the conversation or the distraction, I felt a bit better, the mental load slightly lifted.

  He said, ‘It’s weird cos … usually, with something like this, it’s gonna happen randomly. The usual thing with unusual events, ha. But here we have what kind of looks like a pattern. Two or three of these spikes, every week, for about two months now. And that, as it happens, coincides with the cold weather. Which I have to say I’m ticked off that it doesn’t look like going away any time soon.’

  ‘What does Hiro the Hero make of all this?’

  ‘He’s still sifting through the data. But it’s picking up – that’s the other weird aspect. The rate o
f these spikes, their frequency, it’s accelerating. Last week we had four, this week so far six and it’s only Friday yet. So … that’s it, that’s where we stand.’ He added as an afterthought, ‘There was one night actually, man, the bloody thing nearly went off the scale. Just this huge, I mean a massive surge of energy. Few nights ago. Haven’t seen anything like it since.’

  My curiosity was piqued now. I said casually, ‘Oh, yeah? D’you remember what night?’

  ‘Yeh, it was Sunday. Which I know cos I was Skyping – yes, you guessed it – Hiro at the time. We chat online most Sunday nights. Our time, obviously, they’re already into Monday by that stage.’

  Sunday? That could have been Sláine. Whatever happened to her, whatever she did, maybe it had been recorded in electromagnetic radiation, as her mortal death appeared to have been. Written in some invisible ink across our outer atmosphere. For an instant, my heart was kindled with some vague, unsettled feeling that I couldn’t put my finger on.

  Then I thought, what difference did it make anyway? So her disappearance was recorded on a graph somewhere in SETI headquarters. Big deal. That didn’t change the fact that she was gone – and I was miserable without her.

  I went for a pee and ordered two more coffees on my way back to our booth. Podsy picked up a sugar sachet and twirled it in his fingers. He said, ‘Any follow-up from the Guards?’

  I chuckled. Of course he’d know about my little chinwag with Parkinson; no secret was safe from Uncle Tim and his enormous, uncontrollable gob. I didn’t mind. In fact it was quite amusing.

  ‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I think they were fishing.’

  ‘Me too. I wouldn’t worry about it.’

  ‘Easy for you to say, pally.’

  ‘No, but seriously. Anyway there hasn’t been another incident since Rattigan. Maybe the wild animal or whatever was behind it has died of the cold. Maybe it was just coincidence all along.’

  ‘How’s he doing anyway?’

  Podsy pouted. ‘Rattigan? Tch. He’ll pull through. Cockroaches are virtually impossible to kill off, didn’t you know that?’

  ‘Yeah, well … I’m not unhappy about that, I have to say. Wouldn’t want the guy dead. Despite what the sergeant might think.’

  ‘Mm, I suppose so … Anyway. You’re off the hook, I’d say. The Guards have bigger fish to be frying now.’

  ‘Oh, right? Like what? Banditos riding into town to rob El Banco. Shoot-Out at the Fairly Shitty Corral.’

  ‘Nah, man. The hypothermia deaths.’

  Something gave me the chills as though my mind had seen an awful future looming on the horizon. The worst thing of all was that this something was telling me I’d have a part to play in it.

  I said slowly, ‘Podsy. What deaths?’

  He looked at me in surprise. ‘The bunch of people killed by the cold? You know about this, right? Wakey-wakey, Aidan. Everyone’s talking about it.’

  ‘Talking – what?’

  ‘All right, not everyone. Some people. In fairness the cops’re trying to keep a lid on it. They’re bullshitting people a little, so’s not to emphasise too many similarities between the different cases. They’re afraid it might start, you know, a panic or whatever.’

  ‘Killed when?’

  ‘Last week or so. More, maybe. Ten days?’

  How had I not heard about this? Maybe I had, but dumped the information without paying it any attention, like deleting spam email. Christ, I really had been sleepwalking through the last few days. And now it appeared I’d woken up into some real-world nightmare.

  Podsy went on, warming to his theme. ‘They didn’t think anything of it at first, Tim and them. Okay, someone’s found frozen to death out by Shook Woods. Whenever, say ten days ago. Which, I mean, isn’t crazily surprising of itself, with the big freeze we’ve had for the last eight weeks. People die from hypothermia in winter, that’s a fact of life. So a one-time happening, in this weather? Not a bad percentage. An isolated tragedy, as they say.’

  I said, a sinking feeling in my tummy, ‘Go on.’

  ‘This’s where things get weird. That was the first one. Then another body was found within twenty-four hours. Then … another. Okay, you’re still talking isolated tragedies. A bit of a trickle to start with. But at the beginning of this week it just, whoa, suddenly there’s a flood of these things. Bodies, bodies, everywhere. More being found each day.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I think about two dozen so far, but they’re not sure. Hang on, though, I haven’t got to the really weird bit yet.’

  He gave me the full story, and my heart grew colder with each new revelation. This wave of deaths didn’t involve either elderly or homeless folks, as would generally be the case with hypothermia. Most of those who’d perished, literally, were young enough – all under fifty, the majority from about twenty to early thirties (none younger than that, nobody from school). Besides, as Podsy pointed out, our town didn’t really have homeless people – it wasn’t big enough. The odd chronic drunk might spend the odd night sleeping outside in the rough, kicked from the house by an angry wife, but none of those had passed away anyway; somehow they’d survived a night in the cold. Maybe the old gag about a ‘drink overcoat’ had some truth to it after all.

  Some of the victims were people I knew. Some were strangers to me, their names unfamiliar. Some men, some women. Students, workers, parents, on the dole, about to emigrate. As far as I could tell they were decent people, cool people, stupid people, annoying people, creeps and sweethearts, assholes and angels. All in all, it was about as random a selection of townsfolk as you could get. As though some giant computer was arbitrarily selecting names off a list and designating them for death.

  They had each been found in the morning, frozen, by loved ones or passers-by. None of them were in their homes – all outside, whether that was their front doorstep or on some road far outside town or anywhere in between. (That must have been what Uncle Tim was whispering about on his phone the other day, organising to send out a crime scene unit to where another corpse had been discovered.) The bodies had all turned partly blue with the cold. Some had their eyes closed, and looked almost peaceful; others were staring into the infinite emptiness of death, a horrible grimace on their faces.

  Podsy continued to run through the details. I zoned out his voice and thought, not for the first time, he’s right – it is strange. Done in by the cold: not disease or a car crash or some tragic accident. Not a ‘normal’ death, for want of a better word. Of course, on a very simple level it wasn’t strange at all: that’s what happens if you lie down, outside, with the temperature ten below and dropping. But on a broader level it was so peculiar as to put a shiver – appropriately enough – up my spine. All these youngish people freezing to death, within less than a fortnight, some inexplicable compulsion making them leave their house and lie down to wait for the cruellest of deaths.

  And that shiver turned to an eerie prickle in the back of my mind with what Podsy said next – more confidential information from ever-reliable Uncle Tim – all the victims looked the same post-mortem. What he didn’t add, but I obviously thought, was: yes, Podsy, the same as Sláine. Their eyes and skin bore the identical marks of each one’s demise: those thin light-blue lines covering their bodies, as though death had used them as canvases for a sinister tattoo, their irises changing colour to the same icy-blue as her.

  Now he said, ‘There has to be something to this. It can’t be a coincidence. That sort of biological reaction simply does not take place under regular circumstances.’

  I fobbed him off with a non-committal reply. I was running this through my head, this Sláine thing, hoping to find some structure to it.

  Podsy continued, ‘Parkinson’s really losing his shit over this. Trying to work out why it’s happening, and more importantly I guess, to stop it happening again. This – I don’t know – phenomenon. Is that the right word?’

  I shrugged, another non-committal response. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to
say the right thing here, or rather, not say the wrong thing.

  ‘Those animal attacks, that’s one thing,’ Podsy said. ‘As my dear Uncle Tim declared the other day, “Regrettable, of course, but comprehensible at least.” I love when he tries to use big words like that, he’s a gas man … But this thing with the cold is just bananas. Like, think about it, Aidan. Why are all these people coming out at night-time in the middle of the worst big freeze for a hundred and sixty years? Some sort of communal madness? Are they sleepwalking? Pff.’ He threw his hands in the air. ‘Nobody can say for sure. And the other thing, I mean, none of the victims were suicidal, right? Or at least none had shown suicidal tendencies. As far as the Guards know, nobody had a reason to kill themselves.’

  Police and civilians both, he said, had been trying to make sense of these ‘cold’ deaths through speculation, deduction, wild guesswork. Such-and-such, it was insisted, must have tripped while walking on the ice and hit his head. Someone else, they reckoned, had been mugged and left unconscious with tragic consequences. A third fatality fell asleep on the road with a feed of drink in his belly. Then the ice and frost got them all.

  One guy – this clown called Delaney – had died on the beach, on a wind-blasted, Arctic night the previous weekend. He’d gone there to shift his girlfriend, sheltering behind an upturned rowing boat, and they were in the middle of it when he pulled away. She laughed at first, she later reported, thinking he was playing the fool. Then he gasped and stiffened and finally keeled over onto the sand, unmoving. Still she thought he was joking, until she noticed that no condensation was coming from his mouth. He wasn’t breathing any more.

  She was totally hysterical talking about it afterwards, Podsy said, babbling about a ‘white spirit’ swishing past extremely quickly and what she described as ‘a lightning bolt of fog’ shooting out of nowhere and going right down her boyfriend’s throat. It was unintelligible gobbledegook – she wasn’t making any sense. Nobody took her story seriously. They assumed she was drunk or high, and besides, had suffered a great trauma, so it was to be expected she’d be mentally unhinged for a while.