Shiver the Whole Night Through

by Darragh McManus

  ‘Let’s just say … I recently had a moment of revelation.’

  ‘Well, thanks. And there’s no need to apologise for anything. If you insist on doing it, I will politely accept. That’s only good manners. But it’s not needed. You weren’t a bad friend. You were just – normal, you know? Typical teenager. Moody, unpredictable, sometimes annoying, a lot of the time really cool to be around. Don’t apologise, man, it makes me feel I owe you something.’

  ‘You don’t owe me squat. I owe you.’

  Podsy drained his Coke and said, ‘All right, all right. You owe me, fine … You know, I really would have liked to’ve been able to get some payback on the bastards. The bullies – for giving you all that grief. And me – they gave me grief too. It was never gonna happen. I mean I’m small and feeble and can’t fight to save my life. But still. A little revenge would have been nice.’

  I winced, the memory of Sláine’s confession rising in the back of my mind like a shadow taking physical form. ‘Ugh … yeah,’ I mumbled. ‘Careful what you wish for.’

  ‘Guess someone else did it for us, huh?’

  I hummed non-committally.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘seems you’re in the clear for it all now.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said brightly. ‘This’s Uncle Tim talking, I assume?’

  ‘Yep. Told my old folks off the record that they don’t have any actual evidence against you – apparently, Parkinson was hoping to squeeze out a confession the other day. That didn’t work, so … They’ll likely close the investigation if there are no more attacks, which there don’t seem to be. Probably keep an eye on you, though.’ He grinned mischievously. ‘Officially, it’ll be recorded as “unexplained and unsolved”.’

  ‘That’s something, I guess.’

  ‘It was kind of weird, though, wasn’t it? All your – our – enemies took down like that. I know it was just coincidence or whatever, obviously you didn’t assault anyone. Still, though. Feckin’ weird.’

  Did he know? Or suspect? Neither was possible – was it?

  Podsy went on, ‘Anyway, don’t mind that. What about all this stuff you’re coming out with today? Something’s going on. You’re not exactly the Dr Phil, display-all-your-emotions-to-the-world type. So – what is it?’

  I rolled my shoulders. ‘I can’t really tell you. Yet. If ever.’

  ‘Why did I know you were going to say that?’ He squinted at me. ‘You’re not dying of cancer, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dying of some other disease.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dying of –’

  ‘I’m not dying, Podsy, full stop.’ I gently banged a fist off my forehead and swallowed heavily. ‘At least … not yet.’ I pushed an envelope across the table. ‘Here. Keep that somewhere safe. Like, totally fail-safe. Has your dad got a lockbox or anything? No, not there, he might see it. But somewhere.’

  ‘I know the very place. Don’t worry, nobody’ll find it. Whatever it is. Um … Sorry, what is this?’

  ‘It’s a letter. From me to you. You’re not to open it – I mean never – unless I don’t contact you by Monday morning. Say, eleven in the morning. If you hear from me … ’

  ‘By phone call or text? Or in person?’

  ‘Any. Either. Any kind of communication. If you hear from me, it’ll be me telling you to burn that letter. If you don’t, then something bad might have happened and … ’

  ‘Then I read it. Got you.’ Podsy put the envelope in a pocket of his bag, zipping it shut. ‘Do I get any hints about what’s in this? Or why, in the name of Muhammad, something bad might happen to you? Aidan, seriously, what’s going on?’

  ‘I can’t … It’s better you don’t know yet. With any luck you’ll never find out. That’d mean everything had worked out okay and there’d be no need for you to know. Oh, how I hope that’s the case. We can have this stupid secret between us as a little joke. Hell, I’ll tell you the whole story. By that stage it won’t matter.’

  He nodded. ‘And in the event that things don’t work out okay … ?’

  ‘Something terrible is on the way, Podsy. It’s here already, and it’s going to get worse. Unless we – I, unless I can stop it.’

  ‘Well, can you? Stop it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is there any way I can “be of assistance”, as they say?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. Don’t worry, I have … I’m not totally on my own in this.’

  Podsy sat back and exhaled heavily. ‘Whew. Uh … yeah. I don’t really know what to say right now. Which isn’t like me at all.’

  ‘That letter will explain everything. I don’t know how much help it’ll be to you guys in trying to stop this … danger. Maybe none. Maybe lots. At least you’ll know what you’re up against.’

  I threw money onto the table and stood. Podsy shucked on his coat and stood too. ‘So that’s it? All you can tell me.’

  ‘That’s it. Sorry.’

  ‘Okay, then.’ He shrugged as we moved to the door, a stoical lift of his narrow shoulders, and I knew he’d do right – I knew I could rely on Podsy, trust him like I’d always done. A true friend, a real friend, to the last. How fortunate I was to have known such friendship in my short life.

  For the first time ever I grabbed Podsy and squeezed him in the biggest bear hug my arms could muster. He gasped in surprise. I muttered into his ear, ‘I really bloody hope I see you again so you can embarrass me by reminding me of this. Take care of yourself, Podsy.’

  Then I was out the door and gone.

  Hey Podsy –

  If you’re reading this, I’m already dead. Well, probably. Almost certainly. Sorry I’m so vague. The fact is, I’m not sure exactly what’s going to happen. All I know is where I’m going: Shook Woods.

  On Sunday night I go to the forest. To meet a dead girl. I know, it sounds ridiculous. It looks ridiculous to me, typing it out. The words don’t seem to make sense, but it’s all true, I swear. I can see you crinkling your nose and laughing in disbelief at this point. You think I’m taking the mickey, that this is all a joke. It’s not. How I wish it was.

  I’m not mad and not on drugs. You have to believe me – this is real.

  Podsy, you were right: Shook Woods is haunted. Remember you said that? Said there was something spooky and creepy about the place, like you wouldn’t know what could happen in there. Well, you were right. The whole town is kind of strange anyway, but there’s something unearthly about the forest. Weird things go on among those dark trees in the dead of night. Sometimes when I’m there I feel like I’m in a dream. No, more of a waking dream. Because you know you’re not asleep but you feel like you’re still dreaming.

  Hey it’s just occurred to me, that word ‘spooky’: I wonder, is it a corruption of the Irish word for ghost, púca? They sound the same, don’t they?

  Sorry, I’m rambling. Anyway, here’s the facts: you know Sláine McAuley, the girl who killed herself last November? She didn’t kill herself. And she’s not dead.

  I mean she is dead, but she came back to life. Don’t ask me to explain it – I can’t. I just know what Sláine told me. She was killed by a demon, some evil presence, which is being controlled by a guy who learned how to do this from another guy who died during the Famine. I know, it’s getting even more absurd. Bear with me, please.

  The second man, as in the first man – Famine dude – his name was William John McAuley. He was Sláine’s ancestor: her great-great-whatever grandfather. He tried to raise a demon to do his bidding; he failed. The lack of food had made him too weak. But, but, but … Someone else succeeded. A man, we don’t know his name, found writings that’d been left by McAuley, explaining how to conjure up this thing, this demon. How to control it. It’s made of the elements or some shit. I don’t really understand it. Some Celtic demigod, is my best guess: part of the physical world itself, the weather and temperature, but a separate entity too.

  That’s what’s been killing those people, the
cold deaths, the hypothermia. It’s not this cold snap, it’s him. Them. This asshole, the human half of the partnership, gets power from other people’s deaths. He sort of eats their souls or something, and it makes him immortal. He thinks it does, anyway. The guy is obviously deranged.

  Sláine doesn’t know his name, but he lives locally. A mortal man, you get it? Someone you might have seen around town. Actually it’s just occurred to me that it’s probably dangerous for you to know this stuff. But someone has to, and I trust you. I know you’ll do the right thing, and you’ll know what the right thing is. You’re smart, you’ll figure something out. But sorry anyway.

  This letter isn’t making a lot of sense. Okay, the demon: Sláine and me are going to Shook on Sunday night to try and figure out a way to kill it, and the man controlling it. We’re gonna bang heads together, then strike out into the night. Sounds kind of cool when I put it like that, but I have to admit, I’m bloody terrified. I really hope to Jesus that Sláine comes up with a plan.

  The demon, or this man I guess is the brains of the operation, brought Sláine back to life. For what reason, we don’t know. It didn’t just kill her, like with the others. She was brought back, changed, actually improved in lots of ways. She’s quite a girl. Powerful. Beautiful.

  Podsy, I’m in love with her.

  Again, I imagine you laughing, but not from disbelief. This time it’s the opposite. You’re thinking, Oh yeah, typical Aidan Flood – finally meets the girl of his dreams and it turns out she’s something from a nightmare. But it’s not like that. Sláine is amazing, in every way. She’s so cool. (Ha ha, little private joke there.) Really funny, warm-hearted, very affectionate … not without her flaws, I must add, like anyone. And so beautiful. I mean breathtaking, this brilliant-white, almost overwhelming, like breaking dawn on an Arctic ice shelf. I sometimes feel I could go snowblind just looking at her.

  Sláine’s in love with me too, by the way – she’s told me. So it’s not some disastrous one-way infatuation, like with the other one.

  We’ve been sort of seeing each other since just after her body was found. That’s where I’ve been going all those times. Sláine contacted me, she wrote a message in ice on my window. Man, I’ll never forget that moment, when it all started, this crazy dream that’s not a dream. Then I went to the forest and met her and we started hanging out together. It sounds so weird when I say it that simply, but that’s how it was. We found some connection across the divide between life and death. We found each other. Now we might be about to lose each other again.

  I don’t know what’s going to happen. In the long term, I mean, assuming everything goes well and we can defeat this thing. Do we have a future, Sláine and me? Sometimes I think, how could we? Like, can you imagine introducing her to the parents: ‘Guys, this is Sláine, she’s actually dead so there’s no need to set a place at the table, and you might be waiting a while for any grandchildren.’

  Then other times I think, yes, definitely, we have a future. I wonder if I only think that because I can’t imagine life without her, though.

  But don’t mind that. This is what you need to know: our villain plans to go on with his killing. Forever, as far as I can tell. He wants to live forever. If me and Sláine don’t bring him down, you guys will have to. I mean you, your parents, the town, the whole human race. He’s coming for all of you, and won’t stop.

  I don’t know what you can do about it. Maybe pray, maybe nuke the forest. That’s where his power is centred, I think. I also have a suspicion that the cold snap is related to this demon thing. So if you can heat up the weather, maybe you can destroy it.

  And how are we supposed to do that, Aidan? That’s what you’re asking. I don’t know – again. Giant hairdryers, point them at the forest and turn the setting up to max – I don’t know.

  I wish you well, Podsy. Everyone. I hope if Sláine and me don’t make it, you all will. Say goodbye to my parents and the smallies for me, will you? I’m not going to do that myself. I’m hoping there’ll be no need.

  Anyway, that’s about it. I can’t think of anything more to write. Good luck, man. Hope to see you soon.

  Your friend always,

  Aidan

  Wrap the Night Around Me

  I fell asleep sometime Saturday night. And since I’d basically been awake since Friday morning, and the preceding months of long days and late nights were finally catching up on me until I was running on empty … I slept right through to late the next day. It was past six on Sunday when I surfaced, fuzzy-headed, more than groggy, feeling ill, hungover.

  I’d slept for over twenty hours – and dreamed.

  A slippery, woozy phantasmagoria of pleasant reverie and fearful nightmare. Violently plummeting down a wormhole of images and sounds, the sense of a sense of something. Vertigo, spinning circles, hypnotic, nausea, ecstasy.

  I dreamed for hours and in dreamtime it felt like aeons. Dreamed I saw animals made of strips of bark and wood, running through the forest: deer, horses, wolves. Living sculptures, rearing their heads in anguish or howling at their mother the moon. They could see me despite having no eyes. They growled at me to keep away, but I didn’t feel scared. It seemed more of a warning than a threat.

  I dreamed I met Tommy Fox and he was dead, though not like the others: Tommy pointed to the back of his head, where a gaping hole let the light through. He smiled ruefully and said, ‘See where love can get you, Flood? Booooom. Night-night … ’ In the dream I felt bad for him. I knew it hadn’t happened in reality but the empathy was real. I dreamed myself touching his arm and offering words of consolation. He smiled, his mouth a dead-black universe collapsing to nothingness, and said, ‘I knew you were all right, Flood. Look after yourself.’

  I dreamed I was dead. No, not dead – I’d ceased to exist at all. I said to myself, ‘You’re thinking and dreaming, therefore you are. Like the man says. So how could you not exist if you’re aware of the fact?’ Then I replied to myself, ‘Ah – but what if these are someone else’s thoughts I think I’m thinking? Answer that, smart guy.’ Before I could reply again, I realised I wasn’t smart at all, I was Clara Kinnane who was always kind of dumb at school and now wasn’t only dumb but insane too. This thought made me giddy, like a hyperactive child.

  I dreamed of him. A man, naked for some reason but it was Arctic outside, colder than deep space, absolute cold, that temperature which it’s theoretically impossible to reach. Yet he had reached it, he was there now. And so was I.

  I dreamed of her. Sláine and me had become the Paul Éluard poem I’d quoted weeks before: she was standing on my eyelids, literally, her hair was in mine and she was being absorbed into my shadow like a stone against the sky. Her eyes were always open and she wouldn’t let me sleep and then she was dreaming herself and those dreams made the suns evaporate and made me cry and laugh and speak when I had nothing to say. That was a nice dream.

  I dreamed that Sláine was outside my window, spectral, floating, like a vampire child in this old horror movie I stumbled across as a kid. She glowed and grew to the size of a galaxy but remained just a girl, hovering at my window. She smiled mischievously and I pressed my fingertips to the icy glass and she tilted her head and bit down on her lip. She began humming a tune, ‘Dum-dum-dum-DUMMM,’ three notes up and one down, simple, catchy, a real earworm. And I frowned because I knew that melody from somewhere and said to her, ‘Where’d you hear that?’ and Sláine said lazily, ‘Oh, I don’t know … it’s just been playing in my head for a few days … ’

  And then I woke and opened my eyes and whispered to the darkness, ‘Fuck me. James Bond.’

  I knew who was behind it now.

  Sioda Kinvara. The mystery man. Our very own Double-O Seven. Mr Fancy Cars and Leather-bound Library. How stupid I’d been.

  Now that I’d worked out his identity, this madman who was playing with demonic fire and might yet incinerate us all, everything made sense. Every clue slotted neatly into place. And the musical key that unpicked all th
e locks: Sláine humming the same tune Kinvara had as a phone ringtone and played on his piano.

  I mentally ran through the evidence. Kinvara had rocked into town only a few months back, from some uncertain place of origin. He was independently wealthy: big house, classic car collection, didn’t appear to need a job, even gave my dad a hefty bonus for some straightforward work. Which meant he had time and means to pursue any wacked-out interests he wanted.

  More pieces fell into place, memories crashing into my mind, facts, proofs. Kinvara was charming, intelligent and confident. A self-confessed bibliophile. He had a generously stocked library at home and was often in the public one, checking out strange old tomes. Believed there was ‘actual power’ in words and books. Could read Latin: what was it he’d said? ‘Good for understanding ancient texts’ – something like that.

  He seemed to keep finding me in different places: outside the library, at the antiques shop … inveigling my father into coming to work for him before then. Following me. Stalking me.

  And the final proof: Kinvara invited me to his house, apparently to check out his collection of books and maybe borrow something. What? I’d have been lucky to make it out with my privates intact and my brains where they’re supposed to be. But no, he wasn’t some sexual deviant: it was worse than that.

  Kinvara had even laid out a clue for me, presumably figuring I’d be too thick to get it. Look up the origins of the word ‘bravo’, he’d said. It translated as ‘wicked outsider’. Boom, boom, joke’s on me.

  My first instinct, of course – the sensible thing to do – was tell Sláine. But there lay the rub: I couldn’t contact her. Sláine did the telekinetic, mind-to-mind communications thing, not me. I made a half-hearted attempt at ‘reaching’ her mentally, knowing beforehand it’d fail. Then I got suited and booted, snuck out of the house and trudged to Shook Woods and the lodge. Yes, it was risky, but this new information was too important: this could be our break, our shot at bringing him down.

  Him. No need for that impersonal pronoun any more. We’d moved on to actual names now.