Chapter 2Nolan Whitmore arrived at Dublin Airport early one late-August morning of that same year, 1996. He was 23 and he was tall and studious and, like so many who are that latter quality, he was also brooding. A beast of burden, he bore a large backpack on his shoulders, a second bag across his neck, and pulled along two suitcases behind him as he himself was carried down to the second level of the airport by escalator. On this level were the restaurants and snack bars and souvenir shops, which were at this time closed up tight and dark. Nolan wasn’t looking at them. He was too busy looking at the signs hanging from the ceiling telling him where to go.The double doors slid open as he approached them, for which he thanked God, and he stepped outside to the pickup/drop-off zone, standing at the bus stop sign along with a handful of others. Nolan kept his distance and soon the bus appeared at the end of the road and as it neared, its destination became visible: MAYNOOTH – STRAFFAN.Nolan was the last to board and pay, so all the seats were taken but he didn’t mind. The bus took off like a NASCAR racer and it proved challenging enough for Nolan to heave his considerable load onto the racks in the back of the bus but he did it. And then he took hold of a pole in the corner and kept to himself again while those around him talked in that early-morning-plane-arrival way.Dublin is a city of scum and beauty, of darkness and light, of asphalt and cobblestone, of Georgian and crackhouse architecture, so very metropolitan. People get up early to get their coffee to get through the nightmarish traffic to get to their jobs to get back home to pass through the years to die.And this particular morning was no different.It stirred in Nolan a mixed feeling, both of love and hatred for the great Irish metropolis, and he was more glad than sad when the bus, traveling abreast of the Liffey River, reached the outskirts of the city and at last left it behind, steel and stone giving way to rurality, while the sunrise cast westward-racing light through the dark twists and turns of Dublin.Rolling green hills, sheep in pastures, streams, brooks, bogs, the bus passed Blanchardstown, Consilla, Glen Easton, and by the time it reached Maynooth, Nolan was the only passenger left on board.The morning light coming through the windows of the bus parked on Main Street was radiant. People walking, cars rattling slowly by as they never could in Dublin, for the bigger city’s roadway neuroticism.Nolan got his luggage down and proceeded off the bus, thanking the driver, who might as well have worn a Formula One helmet.Once on the sidewalk, the bus turned back onto the road with an exhalation of exhaust, which when it dissipated gave Nolan the illusion of the town—although more a village, to speak honestly—being unveiled to him. The charming shops, the nondescript pubs. He couldn’t help but smile as he toted himself and his luggage down the sidewalk.He went into a pub whose name had withered away and never been restored but which all the residents of Maynooth probably knew. Leaning over the bar was the publican, a 50-year-old white-haired man who wore reading glasses while flipping through that morning’s Irish Examiner, whose headline read: BOOM ONLY GETTING BIGGER: Ireland’s economic miracle continues to flourish.There were no people in here, so he might as well read about the people out there. But he put the paper down when Nolan came in.“You’re a fine old donkey.”“Hi. Are you open?”“Is the sun up? Sure lookit.”“Could I order a fry-up?”“If you would. Here.”He came around the bar and helped Nolan move his luggage into a corner, then he moved out a chair of a window-side table.“Tea, coffee?”“Coffee, please.”Nolan sat while the publican went into the backroom behind the bar, still talking to Nolan through the order window.“You’re American.”“I am.”“Whereabouts?”“New Mexico. A town called Albuquerque.”“Oh, I know Albuquerque. Glen Campbell sang about Albuquerque.”He came out lowly humming “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and set a large mug of steaming coffee and a cup of creamer in front of Nolan. Then he headed back into the kitchen.“Start on that fry-up.”Clanking, sizzling, humming. Nolan stirred his coffee.“You here on holiday?”“School.”“That’s grand.”Nolan smiled as he kept stirring his coffee. The publican concentrated on his cooking for a moment.“You’ve been to Ireland before, sure?”“Yeah, few years ago.”They went quiet after this, Nolan staring out the window.He trudged with his luggage to the north side of town, where there was an apartment complex, which was to be home for Nolan for the foreseeable future. He crossed the road into the half-full parking lot of the complex and headed for the main office.Within, a single middle-aged woman was clanking on a typewriter at the front desk. She looked up and smiled in an I’m-sure-you’re-a-lovely-person way.“Hello to you. Checking in?”“Yes, please. Nolan Whitmore.”The complex’s courtyard had polished wooden benches, smooth stone tables, flourishing trees, incandescent lamps, faux Greek statues and busts. Near the upper end, a portion of a creek flowed beside the cement footpath through the courtyard. Nolan and his luggage followed this footpath to Building H, at the base of which was a stone staircase.When he got into his apartment, there was sweat on his forehead. If anyone had seen how flushed his face was, he would have been embarrassed.But he made it inside and once he saw it, he smiled at its quaintness: a couch, an armchair, a television stand in the living room, a small fridge, a stove, washbasin, wooden cabinets, a tall round table with two seats in the kitchen.Putting his luggage in the corner, he shut the door. In the bathroom a tub-shower. The bedroom, a closet and mirror, a bedside table with a lamp, and a wooden bedframe underneath a naked double mattress. He sat on the mattress to collect himself and digest all this.Back on Main Street, he walked along the pavement, seeing many store signs but looking for only one in particular: MAYNOOTH BICYCLING. He looked in the window at the display models and nearly as fast as he went inside, he was back out, wheeling a simple bike beside him. Eagerly he put this in the shoulder of the road, hopped on, and proceeded to cycle through the village.He emerged from a path in a tree-lined park onto an empty walkway in an open field running beside a rectangular ivy-covered brick building with a sign, RHETORIC HOUSE. Beside the double doors of one of this building’s entrances, he locked his bike in the rack and went in.Inside it was quiet, empty, and sickeningly bright, the way a summer day on a beach can sometimes instill dread in someone. He followed the directory to GRADUATE AFFAIRS.He found a plaque beside an open office door: JOHN MCHILDE, Registrar, sat behind his desk directly across from the open door. Nolan knocked on the wood.“Afternoon. Come to check in, have you?”On the second floor, which was just as sterile and hospital-like as the first floor, McHilde opened a door with the plaque GRADUATE STUDY on it.“Here we are, your den of frustration, brooding, and unease for at least the next year.”A wooden table, a padded four-legged chair, several bookcases, and a filing cabinet. In the diagonally opposite corner of the study, the same setup.“You’ll be sharing with another graduate student—studying old Gaelic.”“I look forward to doing a lot of crying in here.”“Remodeled two years ago, underfloor was stricken with mold, how d’you figure? What’s your area of interest?”“The 18th Century, the first famine and the economic results, the secret societies the Catholic peasants formed.”“Aye, turbulent time. Have you selected a supervisor?”“Yeah, Dr. O’Connor.”“Oh, he’ll be great. We can go see if he’s available—there are some things I need him to sign.”McHilde led the way upstairs to the third floor. Rounding a corner, they came to a closed door with a DR. O’CONNOR plaque on it, as well as a sheet of paper with O’Connor’s schedule printed on it.“Damn. Some other time then,” McHilde said.He was about to turn back around but stopped short, giving Nolan a mischievous look.“You superstitious, Nolan?”“Not particularly.”“Squeamish?”“I don’t think so.”“You know about Room 2?” McHilde cocked his head to indicate behind Nolan.Nolan turned, looking beside O’Connor’s door, and saw beside it another door with another plaque innocuously called ROOM 2.“I don’t.”McHilde came beside Nolan and opened the door. Inside, the room was barren, a patchwork of wooden slats forming the floor, plaster walls and ceiling. In a recess in the far wall was some sort of religious statue—a saint Nolan couldn’t name.“The Rhetoric House used to be the residence hall for the seminary,” McHilde said, stepping into the room, which also pulled Nolan into the room. “It was built in 1834. In 1841, a priest-in-training was assigned to this room. One day, he missed his lectures and when his friends came looking for him, they found him in here dead. He’d slit his throat. The following year, same story: Room 2’s occupant found dead, throat cut. In 1844, Room 2’s resident leaped out of the window and survived long enough to tell hospital staff he’d seen a demonic face in his mirror that morning. He’d been overwhelmed with the desire to end his life. He fought against himself trying to take the razor to his throat and instead pitched himself out the window. Not long after this, a priest spent the night in here, intending to confront whatever evil spirit lurked in this room. He survived the night, but his hair had turned white and he never spoke again. After this, the window was covered and that statue of St. Joseph, patron saint of peaceful death, installed.”Nolan was silent for a moment, struggling to find a way to respond to this. Looking at McHilde, he again saw that mischievous grin on him.“Glad my office is on the second floor then,” Nolan said.McHilde chuckled and led the way out of Room 2. Get full access to Cinq's Fiction at cinq.substack.com/subscribe

Chapter 1Mountjoy Park sits in the middle of Mountjoy Square and it’s a lovely park in a scummy part of north Dublin. This scumminess is accentuated at night by streetlamps shooting out earwax-colored light and thus the scene looks painted as by a talented artist with watercolors. That is to say, shit.Claire Shaughnessy was 25 the 1996 night she died. She was cutting through Mountjoy Square, her head ducked low, chin in the collar of her overcoat to combat the cold of the January night, eyes glued to the greasy asphalt of the road underneath her ragged tennis shoes—or “runners” as the Irish call them—trying to keep as much of the seedy lamplight out of her vision as possible, thus keeping her nausea at a sufferable level (no easy task, especially considering she’d just gotten off work as a waitress) to get to the neighborhood around Croke Park, which has an underworldly quality all its own, where she lived with her parents and son, the three-year-old joint product of a young woman whose very Catholic family didn’t believe in sexual education and her then-boyfriend, who hit the bricks even before the urine could dry.The time of night was such that the square was barren and she was moving as quickly as she could, her tote-bag purse knocking against her hip, moving so fast in fact that she probably didn’t even notice that alleyway in between two houses—one with a red door, the other blue. In that alleyway stood a large dumpster the color of infant diarrhea and it was against this dumpster that Claire’s head was smashed after the killer seized her arm and hurled her into the darkness.She was dazed and confused and weakened when the killer, clad in a black leather motorcycle one-piece and black helmet, tore her overcoat and purse off her shoulders, then hiked up the sleeves of the sweater she wore underneath. He took out a straight-razor and cut her arms from the front of her elbow joints to her wrists, curving at the end to cut around the back of her hands, over the base of her finger bones.Blood seeped out but it didn’t hurt enough for Claire to scream.The killer took out a handful of cotton balls from his one-piece’s breast pocket and stuffed them into her mouth, lodging them in her throat with his long gloved middle finger.Then he pushed her onto her back and watched her writhe like a worm, trying to cough up the cotton balls but unable to, trying to pull them out of her throat but unable to bend her fingers, blood dripping onto her face.Once she was dead, the killer bolted down the alleyway and disappeared around the corner. Not long after, a motorcycle roared to life and quickly crescendoed as it sped off, fading…fading…He lived in Dalkey, about half an hour’s drive southeast from Dublin.He stored the sports bike in a garage unit across from his apartment complex. There were flecks of blood on it but he would wait until the morning to clean it with hydrogen peroxide.The gloves were the first things he took off, as he ascended the exterior staircase to get to his third-level apartment. He put the gloves in the pockets of his one-piece, then unlocked the door and went inside.He liked his windows blinded and he liked the lights out when he wasn’t there. He turned them all on as he made his way into his bathroom to turn on the showerhead—instant steam.He stripped out of the one-piece and hung it by a hanger from a hook in the middle of the ceiling and he put his helmet on the closed lid of the toilet. There were flecks of blood on the barren white tiled floor, about which he seemed totally unconcerned.Now naked, he stepped into the back of the tub-shower, out of the spraying firewater. A rat was squeaking in its cage on the toilet’s cistern and he took this rat out even as it fought and screeched. Then, in the back of the tub-shower, he held it in both hands above his head and he proceeded to squeeze.Squealing, snapping, blood dripping onto his face, neck, shoulders, and chest, the rat quieted and he threw its corpse into the sink and then looked at his bloody hands before running them all over his body and hair, smearing the blood. Then he stepped into the scalding water, scarcely a wince as it hit and burned his dirty flesh. Get full access to Cinq's Fiction at cinq.substack.com/subscribe