Free Shiver the Whole Night Through by Darragh McManus

move his car in case the bell tower came down on it like the plunge of a giant hypodermic needle. Nah, he’d be all right.
    Town was quiet, this being Sunday. On the main street, however, a Garda squad car zoomed past, blowing a tiny hurricane around my head, siren squealing, heading out of town. I figured it was a traffic accident and blessed myself, more from habit than anything else. I didn’t have religious belief but old superstitions die hard; it feels nice to make a blessing for someone in trouble. I hoped nobody was seriously hurt and walked on.
    I thought about that – belief. If someone had told me last week that another world existed beyond this one, I’d have told them to see a psychiatrist or get off whatever drugs they were taking. (Or give some to me, ha ha.) But it did – I’d seen it. A world where the dead aren’t gone, where they can talk and laugh and touch. A world where ghostly girls move through the shadows of the dark woods, glowing like stars fallen to earth.
    I passed an old gent I vaguely knew and he gave a big cheery wave. I waved back, just as cheerily. I heard the sirens again, whooping through the air, over in the distance. I guessed they were skirting the town, coming around by that estate near the golf course. It was hard to tell for sure.
    After a while I went home and chilled out in front of the TV, doing the bare minimum of homework. Study could wait. Revision for my Leaving Cert could wait. The whole bloody thing could wait, while I waited for another message from Sláine.
    At around six I put on the TV news and the second story, most unusually, was from my town. A grave-faced reporter in an ill-fitting suit was standing across the road from the golf club, a line of trees running behind him. I knew the spot. The river’s course partly took it along there, and the whole area was a sort of nature reserve, marshy and overgrown, with walking paths and a car park. Families went there for picnics.
    Also, assholes went there to shoot ducks, looking ridiculous in their army fatigues and those stupid caps they wear. I smiled vindictively and wondered if one had shot his friend in the backside. Hope springs eternal  … 
    I turned up the volume and the reporter said, ‘Full details haven’t been released yet, but investigating Gardaí are not looking for anyone in connection with this incident. The victim, Chris Harrington, was found by a jogger this morning, lying unconscious in this stretch of marsh behind me. It is believed he was mauled by one or more large animals, probably dogs. Sources are telling us that, due to the severity of injuries received to his face, the teenager was unrecognisable. He was identified by an eagle tattoo on his right arm. Mr Harrington was rushed to hospital, where his condition is described as “critical but stable”. His family was being consoled by local priest Father –’
    I killed the sound. What the hell? Chris Harrington. A good-looking sleazeball, the year ahead of me at school. Unlike Sláine, Harrington hadn’t gone on to college; he hadn’t gone on to anything but hanging around town, collecting his dole and keeping a string of casual girlfriends on the go. Some people said he did some small-time hash dealing, but I only smoked the legal stuff so I wouldn’t know.
    I rang Podsy’s mobile but it went to answerphone. I opened my laptop and went online. If anyone would know the details of what had happened, social media would.
    After half an hour of searching and reading, I’d pieced together the basic facts, allowing for the usual distortion and Chinese whispers of the internet. Harrington went out last night at around half ten. He was drinking in a scuzzy pub that serves scuzzy people until they all got kicked out sometime north of one. Harrington headed home alone. After that, a gap in the narrative.
    Fast-forward to this morning. He hadn’t come home. Then this