Shiver the Whole Night Through (12 page)

At the end of November three lads had become embroiled in quite a serious scrap outside a pub – the same shithole Harrington had his last pint in, though that was probably coincidence. All of them claimed that one of the others had sent malicious text messages, insulting their girlfriends (or sisters, mothers, goldfish, whatever); all denied ever sending such texts. They each took an equally bad beating, in some weird form of karmic balance, street-fighting style.

A week later, a teenage girl was institutionalised by her parents and doctor, after suffering a psychotic break: she'd imagined she saw someone hovering outside her window over several nights, which wasn't possible because they lived in a fourth-storey apartment overlooking the river. The figure, she babbled, was ‘beautiful and terrifying like the face of death, the face of hell'. It called to her, telling her the river was waiting.

Then a guy who lived near enough to me had his car set on fire and, beside it, a message was scorched into the ground in burning petrol:
NEXT TIME YOU MIGHT BE SITTING IN IT, SWEETHEART
. There was something blackly comic about another incident: a young lad was found, coming on for midnight, doped up to the eyeballs and stripped to his underwear, his
head
rammed inside a hole in this giant tree that stands across the road from the town's ‘Welcome to  …  ' sign. He was hospitalised for hypothermia, drug intoxication and mental trauma. He's lucky he didn't die of the first, and was still suffering from the last.

Even my old pal Clara, that fat fucker, had gone a bit doolally, as Podsy said – she kept hearing voices in her head, so she thought, tormenting her, trying to drive her maaaaaad. She got bundled off to the same ‘rest home for the terminally bewildered' as the other girl.

At first I didn't see a link between any of this: stolen phones, prank texts, religious hallucinations, drugs and abduction, burned-out cars, ghostly voices, whatever. Or between those events and the animal attacks. I resisted this dawning awareness, but it slowly rose within me like creeping damp.

I actually started to shake a little as I realised: Jesus Christ,
I'm
the connection. Again.

‘They were bullies too.'

I'd whispered that, my words barely rising above silence, so Podsy asked me to repeat it. Something stopped me. Some instinct of caution or self-preservation made me mumble instead, ‘Nothing. Sorry, just talking to myself, it's nothing.'

Meanwhile the thought was getting louder and
louder
: all those kids had also bullied me. The fake texts guys, Clara, that dipshit McGuinness getting his crappy car burned up, the girl who thought she saw the devil, Marina Callaghan, that was her name  …  She was one as well. God help me, they
all
were.

What was I saying here? I didn't know. But something
very
strange was going on. Just as with the animal attacks, these other victims had picked on me. Which meant, of course, that I'd hypothetically want revenge on them too.

I raised my eyebrows, blew out carefully, interlaced my fingers, cracking them loudly.

Podsy said, ‘You all right, man?'

Careful, Aidan.
Careful
.

‘Yeah. Uh, everything's fine. Just, you know, pissed off at this. These allegations, me attacking people.'

‘Don't worry. I know you couldn't pull some crap like this. You're too much of a wimp for starters, ha ha. Daniel Moynihan would probably beat you and me
together
in a fight. But  …  clearly something is off here.'

Podsy thought about it for half a minute while I held my breath and tried to calm my hands long enough to roll another smoke. I told myself, don't mention the other stuff, whatever you do: texts, arson, Clara, that moron inside a tree, the rest of it. Nobody else seemed to have made the link to me, not the Guards nor concerned parents, not even Podsy. I assumed it was because those incidents were so dissimilar. There was no obvious pattern to them  …  except my strange connection.

Finally he said, ‘Occam's razor.'

‘Whose what?'

‘Occam's razor. A philosophical principle. Basically it can be reduced to, “The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”'

‘Uh  …  right,' I said. ‘So according to your buddy Occan –'

‘Occ
am
.'

‘What
ever
, the explanation here is  …  ?'

‘You didn't attack those kids – but someone did. It's too much of a coincidence otherwise. Yes, a wild animal could do that, but to only choose people who'd bullied you? Statistically, it's impossible.'

‘Go on. I know you have a theory, you always have a theory.'

Podsy said, ‘They all picked on you – now someone's getting them back on your behalf. Either with their own two hands or using, like, trained animals or something. That's the less likely scenario, in my opinion.'

‘Someone? Who?'

‘Beats me.'

‘It's not you, is it?'

He didn't even laugh, that's how ridiculous the idea was. I said, ‘Sorry, that's stupid. Who, then?'

‘I haven't a clue. Have your mum and dad seemed a bit on edge lately?'

‘Very funny, Podsy.'

‘Hey, maybe it's you. Some split-personality thing, like in
Fight Club
. Maybe Evil Aidan's getting revenge on behalf of Wimpy Aidan, who doesn't know the other one exists.'

‘And that's even funnier.'

‘Joking, obviously. Although you have been acting a bit weird lately,' Podsy added. ‘I haven't seen much of you for a good while. You look like you haven't slept in a month. And, and,
aaaand
 …  your kid brother told me he sometimes sees you creeping out of home at night.'

‘The bloody little sneak.'

‘Don't be too hard on him. I got it out of him through low cunning and bribery. He thinks you're some sort of vigilante, by the way, like Batman. Which obviously isn't the case, cos Bruce Wayne is Batman.'

I looked Podsy right in the eye. ‘No. So what do you think's going on if I'm not Batman?'

He looked right back. ‘I don't know, Aidan. I'm not sure I even want to know. All I know is you're my best friend  …  my only friend, prob'ly. And you're not capable of hurting anyone.
Really
hurting, like. They're a shower of pricks but even bullies don't deserve to get assaulted that badly. And I know you think that too.'

‘I do.'

‘Look.' Podsy sighed. ‘Something is happening with you, something else, besides this  …  whatever. Vigilante-slash-revenge thing. What that something is, I haven't a clue. Like I said, maybe I don't want to. Don't even know if it's good or bad – I'm thinking a bit of both  …  I assume you're not going to tell me?'

‘Eh  …  no. Sorry, I can't.'

‘What I figured. That's okay. But it's definitely
something
. You seem  …  different. These last few months, you've kind of changed. I mean in a good way – you're more  …  grown-up. More sure of yourself. And that's cool, I'm happy for you. Just  …  you know. Watch yourself, man.'

‘Thanks. I mean I will.'

‘If you need my help – and it's help I can give – you know where I am.'

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘Again. I know that, thanks. Third time.'

‘And don't worry, nobody else knows. Sneaking out at night or whatever, it's just me and the kid. Maybe make up some story for him, swear him to secrecy.'

‘All right, I'll do that. Listen, Podsy, I'm gonna have to bail on you. D'you mind? Got loads of things to do. But thanks for giving me the heads-up on what people are saying.'

‘It's only
some
, now, in fairness. Most people I'm sure know the whole thing is rubbish.'

‘Yeah, hopefully. Talk to you at school, all right?'

‘Cool, yeah. I'll let myself out.'

He did, while I finally lit that smoke and inhaled and exhaled a dozen times, hardly aware of either. This was
mental
, it was crazy. Not just the bizarre revelation that people thought I was capable of mutilating other kids or beating them into comas (capable in either sense: morally or physically). Even weirder, I thought now, was the second tranche of victims, the other connection to me that I'd kept from Podsy.

Apart from my link with it – and the queasy suspicion that some demented stalker was out there, wreaking havoc on my behalf – parts of it simply didn't make sense. They didn't seem possible. The arson on McGuinness's car, yes, that was doable. It was also possible, albeit difficult, to steal or hack someone's mobile and fire off incendiary messages about their mate's girlfriend. Even abducting someone, drugging them to the gills, ramming them into an oak tree: that could conceivably be carried out by someone. Not me, but someone strong and daring and ruthless.

But the thing with whatsherface, Marina Callaghan: how could anyone have done that? Her family lived four storeys up, for God's sake. Floating outside her window, it was inconceivable. Unless, unless  … 

My mind casted around for plausible explanations, and amazingly, suggested one: you could slip a psychoactive substance into her food, after laying down subtle prompts about what you want her to think she's seeing. Plant the seed of an image over a few weeks, then water that seed with a hit of acid or what have you. So she
thinks
she's seeing the scary-beautiful face of death, when there's nothing outside her window.

A long shot, but possible. Was it? Just about,
maybe
. And it still didn't explain how poor old Clara heard voices in her head. How'd my avenging angel get those in there?

Oh, this was pointless. I knew I wouldn't be able to untangle the mystery on my own, and I couldn't hammer it out with Podsy, my parents or anyone else  …  Sláine might be able to help. We'd arranged to meet that night, in our hunting lodge, right at the stroke of midnight. Two days since we'd spoken, and I'd been counting down the hours with the impatience of a kid on Christmas Eve. But now I was buzzing on an even sharper sense of anticipation. I wanted to know what was going on. Maybe Sláine could help with that.

In the meantime, I decided on the spur of the moment, I'd do a bit of schoolwork. It would take my mind off things, these unsettling developments. Might even knock some insights into place – lateral thinking, or whatever they call it.

My decision sharpened to a narrower focus: I'd work on that History essay for Mr Lee, the one where we imagined ourselves as a Famine survivor. The due date was within a fortnight, and I hadn't written so much as a word. I hadn't even opened the folder filled with notes since I scribbled them in the library that day. I smiled tenderly and thought: Sláine, you're interfering with my education now. How long ago was that? The day I'd softened Rattigan's cough, by the park. It seemed a long while past. Anyway, today was as good as any to get back into it.

I scrabbled around under my bed for where the folder lay – for some reason, I remembered sliding it in there on my return from the library, to keep that stuff separate from other school notebooks and things. My fingers felt it, sharp-edged cardboard. I pulled it out, sliding ‘ssshhh' along the carpet. Pale grey, two punched holes, secured at the top by an elastic band. I popped the elastic and opened the folder.

And nearly dropped it again when I saw, sitting on top, sheets of paper that were not in my handwriting, not of my doing, and by the looks of them, not even from this century.

The handwriting was elegant, ornate, done with, I'd guess, an old-fashioned fountain pen. Dark-blue ink, flamboyant loops on the letters f and s, the words slanted quite a bit to the left. The paper looked ancient, though I guessed it had been of high quality when first bought. It was stiff and frayed at the edges, turning a sort of burned-brown colour from age. I handled it gingerly as I read, fingers holding the small pages gently but firmly, like those robotic hands they use for delicate, precise surgery. I reckoned some of the document must have been missing, because the text began on that lower-case word ‘to', and apparently in the middle of a sentence. So I didn't have the beginning, which was annoying; I didn't even know how much was missing. Still I read.

How did I come to have these pages in that folder? I tried to remember back to the day at the library, how glacial the weather was outside, all the fascinating stuff I came across about the Famine and Sláine's ancestors, the freaky cold spell that had encased the area like a snow globe. Had someone put this document into my bag when I went for a smoke break or nipped to the toilet? No, wait  … 

The old lady. The one who carried Sláine's message, but prior to that had helped me pick my stuff off the ground after Rattigan slapped the bag from my shoulder. She could have slipped these small pages into the folder, on top of my foolscap-sized notes. I read on.

The Great Hunger. Another name for the Famine. Something was telling me that this had meaning, it was a message, it was trying to make me
see
 …  See what? I didn't know. Keep reading, damn it. The Famine, the cold, all that death, loitering everywhere with the baddest of bad intent. This man calling out to God. His desperation, his rage  …  His. Who wrote these lines? Who are you? I kept reading.

I stopped, paused, some fraction of a thought echoing from the deepest recesses of my mind. Demonology, necromancy, the study of obscure disciplines and dark, dangerous arts: why was that familiar to me? I read back to the top, and there it was, black on white or blue on yellow, the starkest confirmation.
My beautiful Eleanor.

William John McAuley wrote this. Sláine's great-great-something grandfather, I remembered now: his wife's name, the breadth of his reading, his interest in what were considered, back then anyway, ‘questionable' subjects. He filled these pages and must have left them somewhere, in the hope that another might read them after his  …  death, whatever. He'd seemed to think he could somehow circumvent death, hadn't he, there at the start? What had he written  …  ? I scrolled back the pages, quickly.
This thing I now attempt  …  It may kill me. Or it may refashion me, making me into something new.

Jesus. I shuddered, an involuntary reaction. What the hell did
that
mean? And why, again, did I now have McAuley's last testament in my hands? I hadn't a clue of either answer, but that nagging sense remained in my nervous system and heart, getting stronger all the time, insisting this was connected, in some as-yet-unexplained way, to what happened to Sláine  … 

I raced to the end, my eyes flicking over the words like a careering skater on thin ice.

There it came to an abrupt halt. The back end of this letter or diary must have been missing too. I dropped to my knees and searched around the floor, thinking loose pages might have fallen under the bed, unseen and unread. Knowing they hadn't. Perhaps this was all that survived of McAuley's epistle. Perhaps this was all they wanted me to know.

They
. He, she, them, whoever. I now knew, at least, who wrote this stuff, but still wasn't sure who'd given it to me. Or what it meant. All I knew was that it meant
something
. I felt, as certainly as I've ever felt anything, that part of the solution to our riddle lay in these words. At least a clue to guide us towards that solution. The cold, he mentioned it more than once – that was crucial, I was sure. McAuley summoned something, or tried to, or thought he did; and he needed freezing weather to do it.

I couldn't wait to talk to Sláine about all this; how excited she'd be, fired-up like me. I knew she'd said at Christmas that she was cool with not knowing exactly what happened to her, that we should move on from the past, but I didn't truly believe that. Anyone would want to know, wouldn't they? It's beyond a choice, it's down in the guts, it's in your blood as much as white cells or platelets. You
need
answers. We all do.

Midnight seemed an eternity away. I grabbed my coat and hit for the door. A walk, while there was still daylight. A blast of fresh air to clear my mind, blow the cobwebs out, get a better handle on this, freshen me up in readiness for a big discussion with Sláine about what I'd found.

Two words popped into my head, McAuley's words, unbidden and very unwelcome: ‘refashion me'. That shudder again, juddering through my body like a convulsion. I told myself to ignore it and left.

I ambled through town, aimless and directionless, just walking to be out walking, listening to music on my headphones, deliberately not mulling over what I'd read. I could discuss it with Sláine all in good time, see if she had ideas. Two heads are better than one, and so on. Besides, she was a clever girl in life, far more than me, and her mental powers seemed to have grown since her new life began  … 

‘New life.' Hadn't McAuley mentioned that, too? My pulse rate ticked up a notch and I thought, we're close, sweetheart. We're
close
, I'm certain of it.

Passed the local industrial park – tiny, depressing, with its peeling paint and vacant units – then two housing estates, a very plain and modest Protestant church, something else, an empty patch of real estate overgrown with weeds and discarded bottles, something else again, I forget what. After another few minutes I came to Belladonna Way, the poshest street in town. Belladonna, aka deadly nightshade – only in this kip would the fanciest area be named after a poison.

Gorgeous houses, though. Lots of money went into restoring these beauties, renovating them, building them in the first place. Some of the properties on Belladonna were ancient, dating back to the nineteenth century. A range of architectural designs, though all scrupulously tasteful and, especially, ‘traditional': Gothic and Neoclassical here, Georgian and mock Tudor there, and none of your ugly Modernist rubbish, thank you very much. A few crows, brooding in the shadows, motionless and black, completed the mood of time-worn, spooky elegance.

An upstairs light went on in one of the houses exactly as I passed. I stopped, and it went out again. That
might
have been the home of Mr Kinvara, I wasn't sure. There was a spacious garage to the rear anyway, and no car out front, which would suggest a man with a collection of vintage motors that he didn't want getting keyed by some boozed-up knacker staggering home from drinking jungle juice in a ditch. A faint sound of music drifted from somewhere deep within the house – the rear, presumably – a four-note piano motif, vaguely familiar to me. Rising steadily from a mid-tone for the first three, then crashing down, hard and very low, for the fourth. Dum-dum-dum-DUMMM  … 

My father had mentioned Kinvara in passing a few days before; maybe that's why he was in my head. He'd asked Dad to drop over and collect some extra money for that job he did on the cars. My father was a proud man but not too proud to refuse hard cash in straitened times. Kinvara tactfully called it a ‘delayed Christmas bonus'. Dad described the house as ‘smashing', inside and out; that's literally the best he could come up with. Said it reminded him of the library of a gentleman's club in London where he once did maintenance work, decades ago, when he lived in the UK. I guess this meant a lot of plush leather, hardwood bookcases and expensive brandy running hot and cold. The building was, according to my father, a ‘converted something-or-other'.

Flash bastard, and his own piano too – Kinvara really
was
like James Bond.

Dad also said Kinvara was ‘very charming' and ‘a real gentleman'. And the guy's first name, it turned out, was Sioda, which sounds like it should be a girl's name, but apparently isn't. I'd never come across it before. Means silk, or fairy folk, or something. I'm a dumb-ass when it comes to languages.

Sioda Kinvara, super-spy! Women swoon for his dapper good looks, men for his sexy cars and a house that looks like Bill Gates' boardroom. The international man of mystery, hiding out in a sleepy Irish town  …  Actually, what
did
he do for a living? My father hadn't said. I kind of got the impression that Agent Kinvara was a man of independent means and didn't need a job, so didn't have one. A perfectly sensible approach to life, really.

I quit my mental rambling and shuffled on further up Belladonna Way. I thought I heard a car pull out behind me, but it didn't sound like the souped-up growl of a Jag. As far as I knew. I was as
au fait
with cars as I was with languages. I kept walking.

This being dead midwinter, dusk was already beginning to crawl across the sky as I travelled out of town and continued along Distillery Road. So-called because it once was home to a whisky manufacturing business, long defunct, this led in a straight line along one edge of Shook Woods – the far side to its main entrance.

The album on my MP3 player had ended, I belatedly noticed. Silence in my earphones; I decided on a whim to take them out. I stopped walking and did that and found my tobacco and rolled a smoke. And I heard a clicking noise.

Faint, distant  …  but definitely there. I finished assembling the cigarette and listened, and it continued to sound. Maybe a little nearer? A regular click, a tap almost, probably louder in this still, chilled air, minus five degrees and dropping. I lit the smoke and looked up. A man was walking in my direction, same side of the road – cheap-looking overcoat, and no hat despite it being as cold as the proverbial witch's tender parts.