Shiver the Whole Night Through (7 page)

‘But I do.'

‘Well, don't. People keep their head down and mind their own business. All of us do it. I'm no better than anyone else. It's only in the movies, in a book or whatever, that some hero stands up for the little guy. Doesn't work like that in real life.'

‘Maybe it should.'

I shrugged again, this time in agreement and resignation. It should, Sláine, but it never will. An owl hooted in the distance, sending its soft, eerie call into the darkness. Another call, a third. What cool music those birds made. It sounded almost human. No, not human exactly – more like a peculiar version of a person. I pictured a man with huge owl eyes, like pools of oil, staring at me through the trees.

Sláine said, ‘Barn owl. Male, eight-and-a-half years old. Nest about a mile from here. Bright-white face, but with an unusual dark line running diagonally between its eyes.'

‘Wha—? How do you know that?'

She smiled, playfully triumphant. ‘I know lots of things, Aidan Flood. My gaze penetrates deeply into the black heart of Shook Woods.
And
further.'

I looked into those shining dark eyes. ‘You know, I don't doubt that.'

The owl hooted once more and Sláine said, ‘There goes the whistle. End of our working day.'

‘Oh yeah – like a factory whistle. That's pretty clever.'

She said drolly, ‘Yep. The deader I get, the more clever I am.'

I laughed because it was expected of me, but I wished she hadn't said that. I didn't care to be reminded of the one undeniable, unalterable fact here: this girl
was
dead. And I didn't want her to be. Because if she was dead, then we  … 

‘Come here. I want to show you something before you leave.'

I snapped out of my thoughts and forced myself to joke, ‘Oh, I'm leaving now, am I? That's it. “Aidan, you're dismissed.”'

‘Aidan, you're dismissed. But I want you to see something first.'

The next thing I knew I was standing in a different part of the forest, much further in. Blacker in here, the trees closer together, but still moonlight to see by. No paths, though there were some gaps between the trees, wide enough to walk through.

Sláine had somehow brought me here in a split second – whisked me up and whooshed me through the woods. I had a vague memory of an even vaguer sensation of high speed, the way your stomach lurches, but at the same time no conscious recollection of actually travelling over the ground or through the air. Had she used some sort of teleportation, or was that a fantastical notion from science fiction?

I said, ‘Did you  …  ? You did something.'

‘I did.'

‘What was it? How did you get us here so fast?'

‘I clicked my magic heels and said, “Home, James, and don't spare the horses.” Come on, it's over here.'

Sláine walked in front of me, towards where she was pointing. I noticed a ring on her index finger. Blackish in colour, maybe tarnished silver; a long oval shape like a tribal shield; and a raised design, what looked like a molecule of some sort, or a crystal, perfectly symmetrical and encased in a circle.

We pushed through the undergrowth and brambles – I say pushed, it felt more like the plants themselves parted to clear a path for her – and as we made our way I said, ‘What's the design on your ring? Does it mean something special to you?'

‘This old thing? Mm  …  means more to someone else than me, maybe. I'll tell you about it another time.'

‘You've a lot of things to tell me about.'

‘I've a lot of time to tell them.' She stopped. ‘And here we are.'

A small square building – a shack, really – made of cut stone with a flat timber roof, small door, teensy window. It looked very old but very solid. Ivy curled all over it like falling hair, moss crept up along it like a second skin. The place was part fairy-tale cottage, part redneck's hideaway in a horror movie.
Hansel and Gretel
meets
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
, maybe.

There was an inscription over the door: ‘It does not trouble the wolf how many the sheep may be.' Wolves? So, more of a fairy tale, then.

I pointed to the writing: ‘What's that mean? What is this place?'

‘An old hunting lodge. Built by the lord of the manor back in whenever. Years ago. They used to sleep here overnight if it was a really big hunt, like a few days of it. The lord and his pals, they hunted wolves. Can you believe that? They were so ignorant back then. Those beautiful animals. Ireland used to have lots of wolves until we killed them all.'

‘Okay. And how did you find this? You “just knew”?'

‘I stumbled across it. It's been abandoned for years – over a century probably – but still habitable enough inside. It's dry at least. Have a look.'

She pushed the wooden door and it swung open with a creak, echoing louder in the night air than it would during the daytime. Everything sounds louder at night, doesn't it? Inside, the place was lit by two antique oil lamps which gave off a welcoming orange glow. It was about the size of a decent sitting room. Stone walls, small fireplace, table and two stools, various old tools and things hanging by nails on the wall. There was also a wreck of an armchair, which looked like it'd catch fire just by someone
thinking
about a naked flame, and an ancient iron bed with what seemed to be a new mattress and blankets on top. Hardly any rubbish or leaves or dirt, which surprised me for some reason. And the plants which caressed the outside of the building hadn't managed to break through the stone and set up residence indoors.

It was rough and ramshackle, not to mention bitterly cold, but Sláine was correct: the hunting lodge was liveable enough. It had been
made
liveable – which meant she'd been inside.

I said, ‘How did you  …  I mean you went in there, right? You crossed the threshold.'

She nodded. ‘This's the one other place. Don't know how I was able to pass inside. It's very odd. I got kind of drawn to it and then I pretty much just walked on in.'

‘Curiouser and curiouser. Anyway, I'm glad you did.'

We went in, Sláine first. I said, ‘That mattress and stuff's not centuries old. Where'd that come from?'

‘You'd be amazed at the gifts this forest provides. Once it knows you're a friend, of course.'

‘Uh  …  okay. I'm going to assume that you're joking. Cos if I don't do that, I'm in danger of pooping my pants and having a nervous breakdown. Hopefully not in that order.'

She laughed. ‘I've been busy. Redecorating. Giving this old place a woman's touch. You approve?'

‘I do. Seriously, though: how'd you get all this gear?'

‘Persuasion and female ingenuity. It's surprising, how easily manipulated some people are. A man working at a furniture warehouse, for example. Gets a whisper in his ear to drop off a mattress at the entrance to Shook Woods, only he doesn't
hear
it as a whisper in his ear. He doesn't hear it at all. Doesn't even know he's doing it, and doesn't remember it afterwards. Or a different man, who owns an antique shop that sells battered armchairs and old lamps. He won't even miss them the next time he does the inventory.'

I whistled, impressed. ‘Wow. So you can do that? Like, control people's minds. Their actions.'

‘Eh  …  kind of. For a very limited time. But long enough for my purposes, I guess. I'm better at sort of
reaching
into other people's consciousness and “talking” to them. Inducing hallucinations. Visions, if you like. But you already know that.'

‘Shit, that's impressive. I mean I thought it was pretty clever speaking to me inside my head! But to actually persuade someone to do what you want them to  …  Can you do it to me?
Would
you do it to me!?'

‘No. Never. Anyway, I thought we could come here the next time.'

Next time.
I liked the sound of that.

‘We can set the fire and you'll be warmer here,' she said. ‘Won't have to go lugging that big old duvet around.'

I tugged at my parka. ‘What, this? This's a class coat. Real goose feathers.' I grinned smugly. ‘Warm as toast. Actually do you  …  ? Do you feel the cold?'

Sláine gave a wistful smile. ‘All the time. Sometimes I feel that I'm nothing
but
cold. No physical body any more, just a mind or a soul living inside this great mass of coldness. A voice on the north wind.' She paused. ‘You know the funny thing, though? I don't mind. I don't
feel
things the way I used to. The way you do still. I'm cold right through, unbelievably cold, but it's not unpleasant. It's just how things are now. And it's as easy to accept as my eye colour or the shape of my hands.'

A piece of poetry bubbled up in my head and I muttered, half-consciously, ‘There's a line like that somewhere in a Paul Éluard poem. About his girl having the colour of his eyes, the shape of his hands  …  ' I looked at Sláine. ‘Do you know it? French surrealism. Really nice. It's  …  it's, you know, a love poem.'

I coughed uncomfortably and began rolling a cigarette. Sláine smiled and said, ‘He'd have to be French. Something romantic and melodramatic like that. No, it sounds lovely. Oh, I almost forgot.'

She reached behind the bed and pulled out a bottle: frosted, dull-grey glass, holding a dark-coloured liquid. ‘This is wine. Incredibly old and valuable wine, at that. This bottle alone is worth  …  what? Three thousand, maybe?'

‘Three thousand what,
euro
? You're kidding.'

She shook her head. I said, ‘Huh? You're
kidding
.'

Sláine said, ‘I thought we could wait before opening it. Wait for a really special occasion, you know? We'll drink this wine to celebrate something wonderful.'

‘All right. Yeah, that sounds coola-boola. Celebrate what, though?'

‘I'm not sure yet. We'll know when it happens.'

‘Can you  …  ? I mean are you able to, uh  …  drink?'

‘Not sure of that either. But you can have a glass for me anyway, can't you? Actually, bring two glasses the next time you're coming.'

‘Hey, I thought you were the girl that could get her hands on anything.'

‘I am. But it'd be nice for you to bring something. This is going to be
our
place, not just mine. You get to decorate it too.'

I nodded. ‘Okay by me. So when's next time? And when are you going to – to  …  '

‘Hush. All will be revealed in due course, don't worry. As much as I know, anyway. I promise. Now go home. You look tired.'

I expected her to do that magic trick from before, to touch my forehead and spirit me away by some unknowable, supernatural force. But she didn't. Instead, Sláine leaned in and I realised that she was nearly the same height as me and I was wondering how much shorter she'd be without those boots on, and then I forgot absolutely what I was thinking because she was kissing me on the mouth.

Her lips like soft snow. An icy tingle on my lips. My heart a jackhammer thumping in my throat. I opened my eyes wide in shock and then I –

The week passed quickly. Before I knew what was what, it was Saturday morning and I was sitting in the town library, poring over old newspaper reports and other documents. Reading up on the Famine for an essay. Interesting stuff of itself, and more importantly, it took my mind off everything that had happened in the last while. I needed a breather.

Chris Harrington, I'd heard during the week, was out of the coma, still in intensive care but slowly recovering. He'd live, and more or less return to full health – but he'd never be pretty again. The scarring was awful, by all accounts. I didn't visit him in hospital. I couldn't stand the guy anyway and felt no obligation to sympathise or empathise with his misfortune.

Also, a trip to hospital would have probably meant blowing off school, and amazingly, I looked forward to going these days. The atmosphere had changed for me, subtly and without fanfare but it was definitely different.

The bullying seemed to have faded away to a large extent. Nobody spoke to me much at all, admittedly, but nobody did anything mean either. I even got a smile or nod of the head from time to time. In any case I didn't care. To hell with them: if anyone did want to make up now, they could stick it where the sun don't shine. Podsy was enough friends for me. Podsy and, of course, Sláine.

My marble-white friend with lips of ice and fire. Friend? Or something else  …  ?

The Guards couldn't say for sure what attacked Harrington. Their best guess was a pack of feral dogs, hiding out in Shook Woods or some other uninhabited place. Why they would have gone for him like that, nobody could say; wild animals are usually more afraid of us than the other way around. Maybe they didn't like the smell of him. Maybe Harrington gave off a sour, bad odour, because he was sour and bad inside.

I didn't want to think shitty things like that. I couldn't help thinking them.

Meanwhile, my investigation into Sláine's death seemed to be on hold. That hadn't been a conscious decision; it's just that with everything going on, this whirlwind of events lifting me up and spinning me round like the girl in
The
Wizard of Oz
, enquiries had been pushed to the background. Not forgotten about, exactly, but the pause button was definitely pressed. I'd wait, I figured, until she told me what she knew. We could then work out together where to take it from there.

Now, on Saturday, I sat in the library – a disappointingly modern building, but filled with the wisdom of ages – and reminisced about that kiss. What a shock it had been. Not an unpleasant one. Not exactly enjoyable, but not unpleasant. In fact, it was hard to describe at all. When Sláine pressed her lips to mine, I'd had the strangest sensation that part of me was leaving my body, being transferred to her, as if she was squeezing it out of me, inhaling something of my essence into herself.

Which is weird enough. Even weirder is the fact that I hadn't minded.

That kiss  …  It was just a friendly peck, right? A mark of affection between two people. Friends kiss each other, don't they? Didn't necessarily mean anything  …  Although, you know, if it
did
mean something, that might not be  … 

I shook my head, banished Sláine from my thoughts and got back to business. It was the weekend – I didn't want to spend all day on homework. I'd already taken notes from a bunch of history books: national and local, academic and popular, professional and amateur. All were about the Famine, most telling me things I hadn't already known. Now I clicked to the next page on the library's microfiche. Old newspapers, scanned and stored on computer. The past brought bang up to date with the present. History coming back to haunt us.

It really was haunting. The Famine was a horrible time in this country, especially our part of it. Death stalked the land for years. People must have known it was on the way, it was coming for them. They must have looked at their own gaunt faces, their children's hunger-swollen bellies, and
known
. They must have shivered like newborns as the cold filled their bones and drained their lives away, and been certain the end was near.

What an awful way to go, I thought, and how lucky we are to live nowadays. Even someone like me, struggling with personal problems or whatever. At least I wouldn't be frozen or starved. I wasn't going to wake up dead.

Mr Lee had asked us to present a personal history of someone's experiences during the Famine. Not just regurgitate what we read, but imagine ourselves as that person. We could use a composite of different stories, reports or recollections. That's what I was doing, collecting those stories. The assignment wasn't due until sometime in January, but I wanted to get going on it – ‘
tús maith, leath na hoibre
', and all that.

After a while I'd shifted my focus to records specifically dealing with our town and surroundings. I'd come across a few notable, even downright peculiar, tales.

First, the sea froze over at one point. This was during the winter of 1851, around the time that company of English soldiers arrived. Some remaining straggler found the strength to record what happened, probably because it was so unusual. Ireland is in a temperate climate. The Atlantic can get cold enough to kill you but this isn't Norway or the Antarctic – we don't have ice-entombed seas. Yet that's what took place: the ocean froze solid, further than the eye could see, for several days, possibly weeks.

Secondly, all the crows died. Every single one, of every type: raven, rook, hooded crow, jackdaw, jay, magpie. As far as I could gather, piecing different bits of information together, this was about a month before the sea seized up. All of them, thousands, found dead within a few days of each other. In fields, streets, yards, farms, everywhere – as though they'd more or less simultaneously keeled over and fallen to the ground. There was no explanation for it. No other bird or animal had perished in such huge numbers.

Thirdly, and here's where my interest was really tickled, one of Sláine's ancestors had refused the chance to leave town with that brave group who made it over the mountains – who made it out alive. The McAuleys were pretty well off, by the standards of the time, and her great-great-great-great – I think – grandfather contributed money and whatever provisions he could spare to the expedition.

So, naturally he was invited to join them. When he declined, he was begged to join. Still he said no. William John McAuley instead put his wife Eleanor and three children into a cart, waved goodbye and settled down to welcome death, which surely wouldn't be long. He was never seen again and they never found a body – I guess the dogs had him for a finish.

I wondered why he stayed. Like virtually everyone else, he must have known he couldn't survive. There was no food left, disease was rampant, the town was in the grip of the worst cold spell in half a century. He was a dead man already, waiting for his body to catch up with reality.

Maybe he wanted to die where he'd lived, or under circumstances of his choosing, instead of halfway up a mountain while on a hare-brained flight to freedom that might never succeed. Some people are stubborn like that. Maybe he didn't want to witness his wife and children dying, although if that was true, he still should have manned up and gone with them: they needed him more than he needed himself.

Whatever the cause, William John stayed behind to die; some of Sláine's forebears lived and later returned to their home town. On down through history the line of family went, ending with Sláine and her siblings. Now she had joined the old man in death.

What would she say to him, I mused, if she were to meet him in the afterlife? ‘Should've got on the cart, dummy,' probably  … 

I jumped as someone tapped my shoulder, whirling around on the swivel chair. A handsome middle-aged man in a smart suit was standing behind me. He raised his hands in apology and whispered, ‘Sorry. Didn't mean to give you a fright.'

‘No,' I whispered back, ‘you're okay. I just didn't hear you for some reason.'

He gave an easy smile and said, ‘I should have coughed. Tapped my feet. I was wondering if you'd be long more on the microfiche?'

‘Huh?' I checked the clock on the wall: I'd been sitting here for over an hour, hogging the machine. I said in embarrassment, ‘Aw,
feck
it. My apologies. I didn't notice the time going.'

‘That's all right. Time has a funny way of getting away from us, doesn't it? “
Tempus fugit
.”'

I clicked off the page I was reading, muttering absentmindedly, ‘“Time flies.” Sure does.'

The man said, not hiding his surprise, ‘You speak Latin?'

I laughed and gathered my things. ‘Nah. Learned that from an old
Batman
cartoon.'

He laughed too. ‘Latin is  …  useful sometimes. In helping to understand very old texts, that sort of thing.'

‘Right. Are you an academic or something?'

‘Of sorts.' He added, self-effacingly, ‘More of a dabbler, really.'

He left it at that so I left him to it and found a desk nearby to jot down a few more notes while they were fresh in my head. I reckoned I had enough now for a really good piece. I'd bring in the flight over the mountains, freezing sea and crow wipeout, and mix them with general facts about the Famine. I'd imagine myself as a boy of seventeen, same as my own age, desperately trying to survive in 1851.

Perhaps one of the last people left alive, but sadly, no room for me on the convoy heading out of town. Or perhaps I'd chosen to stay, one last act of defiance against my own mortality. Bite me, Death. Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.

The hunger, fear, misery, cold  …  it shouldn't be too hard to conjure up those feelings. Especially not if this bloody weather got any worse.

I continued working for another twenty minutes, then had enough and decided to blow the gaff. En route to the exit I checked out a few books, an obese lady with a sweet smile doing the needful, bipping them through the security-tag scanner, stamping the date in royal-blue ink. I gazed around lazily, waiting for her to finish, and noticed the handsome man who dabbled at being an academic riffling through a stand of ancient yellowing newspapers fixed to a steel pole.

I said, really thinking out loud, ‘Wonder who he is  …  ?'

The librarian looked up. ‘Pardon me?'

‘Uh, the man over there. Going through the old papers. Sorry, I just haven't seen him before.'

She took a good look then went back to her work. ‘Mr Kinvara? He's often in here. A real scholar, that one.' She smiled, handing over my books. ‘Some of the books he takes out, I'd say he's the first person to read them since they were published.
Ancient
old manuscripts, they're practically falling apart. Good job we kept them, all the same. Maybe all these old things are coming back into fashion. Now, that's you done.'

I thanked her and strolled off, glancing over at the man, now reading one of the pages intently. The famous Mr Kinvara – our resident James Bond, with his presumed wealth and old Victorian pile and taste for classic cars. I wondered how my dad had got on working for him; he didn't say, I didn't ask. 'Twas always thus between fathers and sons, and always thus would be.

I trotted down the steps outside, thinking, should have told Kinvara who I was. Carefully, carefully: it was hazardous outside, a film of ice making every surface slippery. I couldn't get over how cold it was. Temperatures now remained below zero all the time, around minus two during the day and down to minus ten at night. This, in Ireland. Heavy snowfall every day for several days. It was unprecedented, according to TV climatologists.

The worst Big Chill since, it so happened, the winter of 1851. How's that for coincidence?

Even stranger, they reported, was that the cold snap was unusually localised: basically, our town and its hinterland. We were situated in a funny spot anyway – as I said, hemmed in by the sea, forest and mountains – which I presumed had created some kind of microclimate or whatever they call it. I didn't know the causes – I didn't care. I just wanted it to warm the hell up. My fingers were turning an angry blue already, starting to hurt, and I'd only just left the building.

Turning towards home, I saw one of my former tormentors, a fat girl called Clara, staring into space outside a closed-up record store called Music Sounds Better With You, after that song. She looked a bit freaked over something, muttering and pressing one hand to her head. A cigarette was perilously close to her hair, and with all that peroxide it'd go up like a fireworks display, but I wasn't feeling very charitable towards her. At first I thought she was speaking into a phone but as I got nearer I saw there was no phone and Clara was talking to herself: ‘Who – who are you? What do you want? Get  …  how are you doing this? This isn't  …  it's not
funny
. Go away. Go away go away go awaaaaay.'

Whatever. I didn't stop to ask what was wrong – screw her. I continued on, past a little park, bag swinging on my shoulder, thinking about Sláine. I hadn't heard from her since the start of the week, that Monday night. I'd woken up in bed the next morning and checked my lips in the mirror to see if her kiss had left any mark. Maybe something, there on the bottom lip – was that a slight bruise  …  ?

Since then, not a word. I wasn't massively offended by this – I figured she'd contact me when she was ready – but it annoyed me. I was impatient. I wanted to see her again. And a whisper in my mind made me the tiniest bit afraid: what if I didn't? What if something had happened to her?

Ha. Something
happened
to her? What exactly, genius, do you think might have happened to a girl who was already dead? Sláine was going to get
more
dead, and this would stop her being able to talk to you?