Shiver the Whole Night Through

by Darragh McManus

  ‘I think I’m in shock. Holy shit.’

  ‘It’s the adrenaline. You’ll be okay in a few minutes. You’re not hurt.’

  ‘No, I mean – you’re back.’

  ‘I am. I’m right here.’

  ‘You’re not … dead,’ I said faintly. ‘You know what I mean … ’

  I thought I was going to pass out. And then, at last, I did.

  ‘Aidan, we have to go.’

  She was cradling my head. I came around gradually, woozily, and saw I was lying on the ground in that old graveyard and Sláine was sitting beneath me, nursing my head on her lap. Oddly, her body felt almost warm to me, as though it retained, or maybe remembered, a trace of the lifeblood that once gave her force. But that was probably just my mind playing tricks, because the ground itself was so perishing – an iceberg would have felt warm by comparison.

  She said again, ‘We have to go. It’s not safe here.’

  I smiled up at her, remembering her superwoman rescue act … when was that? How long had I been out? I said, ‘What do you mean it’s not safe? I saw what you can do.’

  ‘I meant for you. We have to go. Now. I didn’t want to … move you while you were out. Didn’t know what effect it might have.’

  ‘How long was I unconscious?’

  ‘You weren’t unconscious, you just fainted. I don’t know, a minute or two.’

  My smile grew broader, expanding from a small grin to a face-covering beam. ‘You saved me.’

  Sláine didn’t reply. She looked around, not anxiously but with a very serious expression. A real taking-care-of-business kind of look.

  I said it again: ‘Sláine. You saved my life.’

  Finally she graced me with a tiny smile in return. I went on, ‘Not for the first time. You’ve saved me before. You’re my guardian angel, you know that?’

  She frowned. ‘I am far from being anyone’s guardian angel, believe me. I’m more like … like the bringer of bad luck.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You’re my guardian angel and that’s that, whether you like it or not.’

  I wanted to stay there forever, resting in her arms, but Sláine had said we needed to move ass, so I moved mine off the ground and shook myself down. I took a few deep breaths and searched my pockets for the makings of a cigarette. I pulled out the tobacco and said, ‘I got time for a smoke? Sort of think I need one, you know?’

  Sláine waved her hand yes and looked away. I studied her surreptitiously while assembling the fag. Her hair wasn’t pinned up high any more; it hung loose around her face, onto the shoulders, curled and shining, a thin braid at either temple; I wondered if she had done those herself. Her eyes were decorated with dark smudgy kohl, or at least the impression of it. And under the surface, she also seemed changed, indisputably. I still couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Something intangible – hard to say exactly but it was definitely there …

  ‘So what the hell was that?’ I said around the column of smoke billowing from my mouth. ‘The thing that attacked me. You said it was a person, right?’

  She stood and nodded. ‘That used to be a woman called Rita O’Leary. She was thirty-nine when she died last Monday night. Her body was discovered the next morning by her husband on one of those laneways that run from the road down to the beach. She’d frozen to death.’

  I said hesitantly, ‘And this … it has something to do with you.’

  ‘In a sense, yes.’

  ‘No, it does. Sláine, I know what’s going on,’ I blurted out. ‘I’ve worked it out, this whole thing. I even know what … what killed you.’

  She stared at me, her expression unreadable. I ploughed on, ‘It’s, aah … Okay, this is going to sound a bit crazy, but bear with me. It’s your ancestor. William John McAuley. I think – I’m pretty sure. I mean I don’t have any proof? But you know, when your gut instinct says something, it’s usually, like, bang on, isn’t it?’

  Another smile. Sláine made that ‘hurry up’ gesture with her hand.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Just feels a bit weird to me, you know, me being the one telling you something, and not the other way around.’

  She tilted her head. I could see her patience was running out.

  I took one big breath and launched into it. ‘Okay, here it is: McAuley conjured some kind of demon or some shit. Like, one of the old Celtic gods, or demons, some supernatural force. Some awful creature or presence, a thing made of the cold itself. He wrote about it in this letter that I found, that someone gave me. He was dying, it was the middle of the Famine and he knew he’d die, and he’d turned to hate God cos God didn’t help them when everyone was starving, and McAuley basically said, “Screw you, God, I’m getting help somewhere else.” So he went into Shook Woods one night and conjured up this thing, this demon, and basically cheated death that way. I don’t know where he’s been hiding out ever since, like that was a long time ago and he’s only resurfaced in the last few months. But he has, William McAuley’s definitely back, and he’s the one who killed you that night. Why, I don’t know – maybe because you’re related to him? Or he was lonely – the demon and him weren’t getting on so well, there were definite cracks in their relationship and McAuley was wondering if this really was the right person for him to spend immortality with.’

  I laughed nervously. Sláine didn’t. Okay. I hammered on. ‘He knew about this black magic voodoo from his reading – you said yourself he was into all that malarkey. He knew what to do and how to do it. So, that’s what happened. Like I said I don’t have cast-iron proof for this, but it’s a good theory. It’s more than a theory – it all stacks up, everything. There are some gaps, I accept that, but you might be able to fill those in. I’ve read a pile of stuff over the last few months and then tonight Podsy told me there’d been a rash of other deaths from the cold in the last week and a bit, and their bodies were similar to yours and the Guards couldn’t explain it and, you know, it just all came together in my head. Fell into place. This stacks up. He’s the one.’

  Still no response. I took a pull on my cigarette and said evenly, ‘Soooo … what do you think?’

  Sláine looked around, continuing to scope the place out for danger. Finally she turned back and said, ‘I think you’re actually right. Good work.’

  I smiled proudly, dumbly. Sláine was impressed and I felt happy. Even now, at the end of the world, her opinion counted for everything.

  She raised a finger to indicate ‘but’ and added, ‘Except for one important point: it’s not William John McAuley. He lies dead in the ground, where he’s lain for the last century and a half. Not even that much: McAuley’s body was found and eaten by animals. There’s nothing left of my ancestor.’

  ‘But the rest of it, I got that right? Aw, shit. I was kind of hoping you’d tell me I was full of crap, I was insane and there was some banal explanation.’

  ‘’Fraid not.’

  ‘Pity. I would have preferred the other explanation. You know, the one that didn’t involve demons.’

  I could hardly believe I was making jokes about all this, but there you go: the human heart is strange, and mine had evidently been filled with courage and bravado at Sláine’s return. Speaking of which …

  ‘Where were you since Sunday?’ I hadn’t meant to ask it yet, but it was out now, I couldn’t rewind time or suck the words back into my lungs.

  Sláine said, ‘I’ll tell you, but not here. We need to go somewhere else. You were obviously followed to the graveyard, tracked. We can assume they’ve been watching out for you.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘There may be others, we don’t know.’

  I gulped heavily. ‘Others … ? Right. Of those things. And actually, it knew my name. That monster, it said my name, Aidan Flood. Uuuugh. So it was sent here. After me.’

  ‘After you. I think so, yes.’

  I forced myself to make another joke, anything to quell this rising swell of panic and fear in my chest. ‘Gee, wasn’t I born under a lucky star? Life j
ust keeps getting better and better. What next? I’m gonna get Satan for a roommate? “Bunch up, Aidan, there’s plenty room in that bed for two.”’

  I was babbling a little. Sláine frowned at me. ‘You’ll be fine. I won’t let anything happen to you.’

  I sucked hard on the cigarette and tossed it aside. ‘All right. I believe you. So where to? Shook Woods? The lodge, yeah?’

  ‘No. Further than that.’ Sláine scooted over and wrapped her arms tightly around me. That shivery embrace, as comforting as a mother’s hug and as thrilling as a first kiss.

  ‘I’m going to bring you somewhere quite far away, very quickly,’ she said. ‘All right? So close your eyes and brace yourself. This might feel a little … weird.’

  We’d already done this, when she’d whooshed me through the forest that time; it felt a bit disorientating but not too bad. I expected it to be like that again, only magnified. I could cope with that. I held my breath and readied myself.

  ‘’Kay. Ready as I’ll ever be.’

  And as my eyes closed on Sláine, it struck me, what was fundamentally different about her, how she’d changed.

  Her shift from dark to light had been completed. Only her eyes, lips and hair retained colour and shade. Now she was fully white, a brilliant white, like the inside of a supernova.

  Black Skies and Revelations

  When I was a boy, eight or nine, my father brought me climbing on Sliabh Cohnda. I say climbing, but it wasn’t quite that – there were no crampons or ropes, and we didn’t climb so much as half-crawl, half-stagger up the mountain’s gentlest slope, which faced the town. But we made it to somewhere near the top and rested there, gazing on the panorama unfolding below: roiling green-blue sea, other mountains curving around at either side of us, streets and houses we knew from daily life as intimately as our own faces, and of course Shook Woods, on the far side of town. A balmy summer day, pleasant wind, the sun gently toasting our faces. He had brought snacks, coffee in a flask, Coke for me; he’d even rolled up a towel to use as a picnic spread. We laid our food out and smiled at each other and enjoyed the view. Then he lit a cigarette, and I still recall the aroma of the smoke as it wafted across on the breeze. The smell of warmth and affection.

  That day forms one of the absolute best memories from my entire life. My father was – is – a very decent man and was perfectly nice to me growing up, but we never did a whole lot together. I don’t have any lingering resentment over this. I’m not some petulant kid in a movie whining about how ‘Daddy missed my big softball game’; there simply aren’t that many memories of him in there. The day on the mountain, though: I’ll never forget that. It was just lovely, a few hours of pleasurable exertion followed by well-earned rest. The two of us together, a simple day, a happy day.

  A blast of wind came careening down out of the north, almost knocking me off my feet, and I put away that treasured memory and returned to the present. I was back on Sliabh Cohnda again, near the top of this highest peak in the range, but the similarities ended there. This time I was with Sláine, the sky was black and the weather was pitilessly cold – up here the wind never stilled, like it had done below at sea level for months. The view, which I couldn’t see anyway, had been changed utterly because everything I remembered from that childhood climb was covered in snow. And unlike then, I wasn’t happy and relaxed in the cocoon of childhood; now I was afraid for my life, and everyone else’s too. I was no longer a child. Now I was on the cusp of adulthood, with all the heavy responsibilities and frightening possibilities that promised.

  ‘Are we safe?’ I asked, not for the first time since Sláine had whisked us here from the graveyard.

  ‘I think so. For the time being.’

  We’d sheltered on the far side of the mountain, away from sea and town and forest, facing the yawning valley that headed north. The same stretch of land crossed by Sláine’s ancestors when they made their famous flight to freedom during the Famine. Sliabh Cohnda roughly translated as Brutal or Savage Mountain, which gives some idea of the conditions to be found there. Endured, rather. The entire top half of the mountain was bare rock, scrubbed clean of vegetation by millennia of relentless winds.

  Now it was snow-covered, sealed in frost, encased within a glacial cocoon. Sláine had landed us, or whatever the term was, in a kind of cave at its rear side, just in from a cliff edge, close to the peak.

  A ‘cave’ – that doesn’t do it justice at all, that flat, one-syllable word. The place was magical, accentuated by shimmering moonlight, literally taking my breath away in a delighted gasp when we arrived. It made me forget everything, for a moment. The full space inside was covered in ice: ceiling, walls and floor. The sides of the cave were thick with long, fat tubes and globs of ice that resembled melted candlewax. Spiky white stalactites hung from above, looking like some modern art installation, or the decor of a painfully hip club in Tokyo or Osaka, somewhere you might see on a Channel 4 travel show. The floor was glassy, clear and smooth, though for some reason, I didn’t seem to be having trouble keeping my balance. Underneath, I could see large shards of crystals, pointing upwards. And oddly, they appeared to be glowing faintly, as if lit from within.

  I wondered if Sláine was responsible for it, creating this masterpiece by rearranging the molecules of frozen water. I’d half-asked her when we got here; she’d ignored the question so I let it lie.

  ‘There was no blood,’ I said, out of nowhere. Sláine raised an enquiring eyebrow. I went on, ‘The thing you destroyed. You said it – she, sorry – a woman called … O’Leary? There was no blood, or guts or anything. Like she was made out of stone.’

  ‘She was, in a way.’ Sláine leaned against the side of the cave and wrapped her arms around herself. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn she was both tired and colder than usual. Maybe stepping away from the wall of this ice installation would help.

  She said, ‘That’s what happens when they – die. When they’re taken by the cold. They turn, more or less, to ice. Their flesh is petrified, it becomes breakable. Not soft and flexible like yours. They’re turned almost to stone. Frozen stone.’

  ‘But that didn’t happen to you.’

  She shook her head. The obvious question was why? What makes you so special? That could wait, though. I had more urgent matters on my mind.

  I said, ‘They can’t come after us here, right? These others.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘So we have time,’ I said. ‘To talk.’

  ‘Some.’

  Sláine seemed out of sorts, almost regretful in some obscure way, and I couldn’t tell why. I could always ask straight out, of course – she never refused to answer a question or took offence at any of them, even my dumbest ones – but something was stopping me. I had the strongest feeling she was reading my mind, even though she swore she was unable – that she’d guessed my intentions, what I wanted to know.

  Suddenly a giant raven landed a few metres away, coming in on down drafts like a helicopter. It skittered along the icy floor and turned its baleful eye on the two of us. Sinister and black in ancient grace; inscrutable, an ancient face.

  ‘Look at this guy,’ she said airily. ‘Size of him.’

  Okay, so she was trying to change the subject, apparently? The bird shrieked, a surprisingly low tone to it. I shuddered and rolled a cigarette with cold-bitten hands.

  ‘Ravens,’ I said, indulging Sláine’s reticence. ‘Don’t know what to make of ’em. Sometimes think they’re kind of cool, you know? Like, they’re very intelligent. Only animals besides us to use tools.’ I lit my fag. ‘Then other times, ech … Other times I imagine someone like that fella eating the eyeballs out of my head.’

  Sláine laughed softly. ‘Ah, he’s all right. He won’t harm us. Will you, little man?’ She held out a hand and the raven flew across to land on it.

  I gasped in shock. ‘Wha—? Are you able to control animals now?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I didn’t make this raven fly to me.
He just wanted to, didn’t you? My handsome little man.’

  ‘Not going to start tickling that thing under the neck and saying “coochie-coochie-coo”, are you?’

  Sláine flung the crow out the cave’s mouth, sighing heavily.

  I muttered, ‘Guess not.’

  ‘Go on,’ she said quietly, looking at the ground. ‘Say what you have to. I know you’re biting back on it. You needn’t do that.’

  ‘Okay, then tell me where you were. I know everyone’s in danger and all that, but sorry, I’m a typical self-centred adolescent and I’m putting myself first. Everyone else can wait. I need to know: where the hell did you go? And why?’

  Sláine didn’t reply. I wondered why she was hesitating. Vague feelings of impending rejection squirmed in my tummy like insects. Please don’t say it’s over, I silently implored her. Don’t return to me only to leave again. Don’t don’t just don’t …

  Something clicked in my head. Aidan, dude, you’re asking the wrong question. Find out what you really want to know. Hear her say the only words that count – or not say them.

  ‘No, forget that,’ I said. ‘I’ve a better question: do you love me?’

  Sláine looked at me, her head going back on that elegant neck like a wary swan. She seemed surprised.

  ‘Do you love me, Sláine? Yes or no, straight answer.’

  ‘Why are you asking me that?’

  ‘Because I love you,’ I said urgently, words spilling out of my mouth as though I’d drunk too much water and there wasn’t enough room in there for all of it. Or maybe it wasn’t water but wine, wine that had made me loose-tongued and reckless. ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever said it to you – you know anyway I’m sure, you must, but I mightn’t have said it out loud. Sláine McAuley, I love you. I’m in love with you. You’re the most fantastic person I’ve ever met. I can’t imagine life without you – it’d feel so empty. It did, these last few days.’ I took a step closer, gliding along the ice. ‘I love you. Do you love me back?’