A Midnight Door is a tricky piece of magic to pull off. As the name indicates, it’s a spell that can only be cast at midnight. But this does not mean 12am. The only time it can be cast is at Astronomical Midnight: that moment when the sun is furthest below the horizon. For Dublin, that’s usually 20-25 minutes after 12am, or 1am during the summer months.
Even after the maths is done and the appropriate charts consulted, a door is needed that has not been opened for some time; the longer the better. There’s a ritual to cast and then the spellcaster needs to knock once, and only once. I’ve seen the ritual cast several times and that’s always the creepiest moment of the whole procedure, because if the spell has been cast correctly someone or something on the other side will knock back.
After that, the door can be opened and - until it is closed again - anyone who is willing to take the 1-in-10,000 chance of simply not appearing on the other side can use it; even a troll like me. They can walk through and find themselves stepping out of a door in Rio de Janeiro or Alaska or New Zealand or wherever the destination was aimed.
The Travel Agent
Monday, March 14th, 10:15 AM
The gang of traffickers we had been chasing had finally slipped up. They had been working out of an old warehouse in Firhouse. Of all the things to have given them away, a flock of parrots native to Brazil had found its way through a Midnight Door and had left the warehouse by an open window in the early evening. A passer-by had spotted them squawking and fluttering about in confusion and called the ISPCA.
We’d had an alert out for anything unusual of that nature for months, but this was the first time it had paid off. We managed to call off the ISPCA inspection and had been staking out the warehouse over the weekend. We were reasonably sure the gang would be on-site on Monday morning so every field officer in the department had assembled for the strike.
The warehouse had large roller-shutters front and back which containment planned to breach simultaneously. But the building had three smaller entrances that also needed to be covered, so two-man teams were deployed to each. Cormac and I flanked the door on the northern side of the building while some of the Scene Team and Containment took the southern ones.
I had a helmet and stab-vest, and I could see Cormac outlined in the thin glowing lines of fire he had cast as protection. He had still not recovered his rings, so his protective magic was a little less subtle and a lot less reliable than it had been. He examined the glowing sigils then gave me a quick thumbs up. In my earpiece, Murtagh counted down from five and then I heard echoing crashes from each end of the building as they took the shutters and stormed inside.
I put my shoulder to the door and shoved hard. Behind it were the corridors of the admin section of the warehouse. I could see the open door to a breakroom to my left and an office to my right. I pushed through the door into the office where I saw a tall woman standing and peering out the grilled window to the warehouse floor. She spun in surprise when I entered, causing her blonde braid to swing wildly behind her.
She yelled something in a language I didn’t recognise and unleashed a wave of magical energy towards me. I have no idea what the spell was supposed to do, but it washed over me like a breath of warm wind and caused the papers tacked to the cork board on the wall beside the door to crinkle and fall to the floor. She said something else in that same language, but this time I got the general meaning. It wasn’t complimentary.
I raised my palm and said, “We’re not here to hurt you. But you can’t go anywhere. We have the building surrounded. Come quietly-” as I said this I reached around behind me to take out a set of zip-tie cuffs and I swear I only took my eyes off her for a moment, but when I looked back she was gone. “Fuck!”
Cormac pushed past me and pointed out the window, onto the warehouse floor. “There. She blinked out.” I glanced to where he was pointing and could see her beside a cargo container. She had blood under her nose and trickling from her ears and she leaned heavily on the container as if she would fall without its support. These are the perils of blinking through physical objects, kids.
Cormac aimed his wand at the wall, which blew out as if someone had put a fist bigger than me through it, then ducked out through the hole. I followed and approached the woman again. Elsewhere, I could hear shouts and the sound of Containment working through the warehouse.
“Want to try that again?” I asked, holding out the zip cuffs. She looked up at me and I could see haemorrhages in the whites of her eyes and blood in her teeth.
She repeated the presumably-very-rude word and spat some of the blood at me as I took one of her wrists and slipped the cuff over it. Then she kicked me hard on one kneecap and blinked again. There was a sudden hollow echo of feet hitting metal in an open container behind me so I turned to pursue. I heard Cormac follow.
The container was empty except for the blonde woman, who staggered and crawled on the floor ahead of me, making her way towards the doors at the other end, which were held ajar by a long plank thrust sideways between them. As I watched, she scrambled to her feet and ran towards them, kicking the plank aside as she dived out of the container. The door swung wide, but she turned and grabbed it, trying to stop the heavy metal from opening further and ram it closed.
I jumped out and grabbed her. “If you teleport on me again, I swear I’m going to… Hey Cormac, what’s Russian for-” I paused when I saw that Cormac had emerged from the container but stopped dead in his tracks. He was staring up and around him in confusion. “What’s wrong?”
“This isn’t the same warehouse,” he said. “That ceiling is way too high.”
I looked up and saw he was right. About eighty feet above me was a corrugated iron roof, punctuated by windows covered in dirt and grime. But filthy as they were, they still let in far more light than you would expect from Dublin in March, and from entirely the wrong angle.
The woman I was holding twisted out of my grasp, and threw herself at the door of the container. Cormac ducked out of the way as it swung closed with a solid, final-sounding, ‘CLANG’. Then she put her back to it and slid down to the floor with a satisfied smile.
I shoved her to one side and wrenched open the door. Inside, the container was stacked to its roof with sealed crates and spools of thick cable. The woman at my feet cackled hysterically and threw her arms wide. “Welcome to Madagascar!” she yelled, before doubling over in pain with her arms clasped to her waist.
Blinking is a quick and dirty spell; useful in a pinch but not without its side-effects. Blinking through a solid object could make you feel like you were punched through it by a cannon rather than by magic. Cormac examined the unconscious woman while I explored outside to see if she had been telling the truth.
It seemed we had come out inside an aircraft hangar beside an overgrown dirt landing-strip surrounded by dense jungle. I waved my phone about a bit and got no roaming signal, but the height of the sun in the sky outside made me suspect she had been telling the truth.
Back inside, she was conscious again and still grinning. “We make a deal?” she said through bloody teeth.
“What?”
“There is another door near here. It goes back to Ireland. I show you where it is and send you home. You don’t arrest me. I stay here.”
I scoffed. “You’re a human trafficker. We’ve found literal slaves who were brought here by you. We don’t let people like you just walk away.”
“The gang of men - they bring the people - they pay me to make the doors only. And you, you have arrested them, yes?” She sensed my hesitation and continued. “With them in jail and me never coming back, the problem is solved.”
Cormac walked to me and whispered, “She sort of has a point. We supposed to arrest her and extradite her? You know who to speak to in Madagascar about this? Does Ireland even have an embassy here?”
I knelt by the woman and turned her pockets inside-out. I found a set of keys that I chucked to Cormac, a wallet containing the currencies of at least six different countries and a Russian drivers’ license in the name Mila Petrova. I gave her back her wallet but held the license in front of her face. “You come back to Ireland, I make sure you never leave. Understand?”
She nodded, then climbed unsteadily to her feet. “The door is not far. Follow me.”
The Midnight Door back to Ireland had been created in a cinder-block building that once housed a generator. That building was in an abandoned industrial plant about twenty minutes from the runway, down a long and winding jungle path that I suspected a jeep would have had trouble traversing. The buildings were dilapidated and on the verge of collapse, with trees growing through many holes in broken roofs. Despite this, it seemed the area saw regular use with well-worn paths snaking between doors propped open with tree-branches.
I gestured to the door of the generator house, “Is this the only other one going to Ireland?”
Mila nodded. “I will close it when you go through, and not make more.”
I peered through before stepping inside. The other side of the door opened onto a narrow cobbled alleyway. I didn’t see the Spire peeking over any nearby rooftops, but it seemed like Dublin, and the position of the sun meant it was almost certainly Northern Europe.
I stepped through and my phone beeped to let me know I had voicemails. Cormac followed, then Petrova grinned and waved before slamming the door. The voicemails were all from Murtagh, asking me where the hell I was in escalating tones of concern. I called him back while Cormac scouted the end of the alleyway.
In our absence, Containment had rounded up the members of the trafficking gang and were currently combing the warehouse in search of me and Cormac. I got him caught up on our situation then stowed away my phone and approached Cormac who was staring in puzzlement at something he could see from the alleyway’s cross-street. It turned out to be an old church.
“I’ve never seen that before…” he said.
I cursed Petrova in Troll. “That’s because you’ve never been to Cork.”
Mystery on the Dublin Express
Monday, March 14th, 12:45 PM
“You’re sure you don’t want to get the train?” I asked.
“Absolutely not,” replied Cormac. “I’ll be sick as a dog all week. You’re sure you don’t want to fly back?”
The idea of taking the afternoon off to day-drink at Cork Airport while waiting for an evening plane held some appeal, but I was already a million hours behind schedule. I was supposed to be visiting some werewolves that afternoon to talk about the Dead Deer Situation, but that was now going to have to wait. “I have to be at RTÉ this evening. Can’t be put off.”
“Hutton?” said Cormac, trying to hide a smile. “Good luck with that.”
“You could come too, you know. This is your entire area of expertise.”
“He doesn’t like me. But he’s really fond of you. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
We parted ways at the top of St. Patrick’s Street. As I walked towards the train station, I tried to ignore the looming spectre of the cathedral on the hill behind me, and what was sleeping underneath it.
As a city-dweller who doesn’t own a car, I’ve become somewhat of an aficionado of good and bad public transport. As far as Ireland goes, the Cork-to-Dublin train is a high-spot. It’s very frequent, fairly reliable, and has never - as far as I know - entered a tunnel at one end and then not come out the other.
I waved my phony garda credentials and managed to get a free upgrade to the first class carriage at the front of the train. I was still wearing my tactical gear, but was carrying the bulkier items like the helmet and gloves and vest in a plastic bag I’d nabbed from a newsagent’s shop. I stashed them in the rack above my seat as the train pulled away from Kent Station. I wanted nothing more than to collapse into the chair and nap for two hours, but I knew I couldn’t be comfortable unless I’d swept the train once, just in case.
I walked from the front of the train to the back, carriage-by-carriage. My outfit got more than a few curious looks, but curious lookers were nothing to worry about. I was looking for anyone either holding or deliberately avoiding eye contact.
Your average wizard will not travel by train if they have any alternative. But there are plenty of others under my jurisdiction who would and if any were on the train, I’d rather not have them sneak up behind me. A rowdy group of GAA supporters stopped singing when I walked past, and I could see them pull a bag full of cans closed. I gave them one of those ‘I don’t mind, just keep it down’ gestures and continued towards the rear of the train. In the next carriage two young parents were trying to calm down a young child, a boy, who had his hands clasped tightly over his ears and who was rocking back and forth in obvious distress. The end carriage held what looked like a school excursion. It was full of uniformed teenagers in full throttle with what seemed like three adults trying to corral them and two more just keeping their heads down. After seeing that, I gently slid the door closed again and returned to my seat where I closed my eyes and attempted to nap.
The train had passed Limerick Junction when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see the Conductor, sorry, the Onboard Customer Service Officer, standing over me with a scared look on his face.
“Yes,” I said as I squinted at his name-plate, “Tony?”
“Sorry to disturb you, but you are a Garda?”
I considered telling him that I wasn’t, despite the fact I was wearing most of the uniform of the Garda Emergency Response Unit. But something about his worried expression told me it was serious.
“I’m law enforcement, yes.” You know what they say about lies of omission. “There’s been some trouble?”
“A family on the train have lost their son. They’re panicking and I said I’d do everything I can. I hoped you could speak to them, keep them calm. Or help search?”
I stood and stretched. “Could he have got off at the last stop?”
“Oh, no, he was still sitting with them at the last stop. But he’s run off since. He’s probably just hiding under a chair or in a luggage spot,” Tony pointed to the arched space between two back-to-back chairs that was intended for suitcases too heavy for the overhead rack.
Tony led me back to the parents of the missing boy, then left to resume the search. It was the young couple I had seen earlier who had been trying to calm their distressed son. I introduced myself and walked them to the end of the carriage where there was more space to talk.
“I’m Catherine and this is Jason,” said the mother, who seemed more annoyed than upset. “Byrne. Our son is Jeremy.”
“Have you found him?” asked Jason. He, at least, seemed suitably worried.
“The conductor is looking, as we speak,” I said. “Has he done this before?”
“He does this all the time at home,” said Catherine. “He’ll hide somewhere and we’ll tear the house apart looking for him, but then at dinner time, we’ll find him sitting at the table as if nothing was wrong.”
I hesitated briefly before broaching the next topic. “I saw him earlier. He was covering his ears and I know that’s a sign off… Well, is he neurodivergent? Autism? Aspergers?”
They exchanged confused looks. “Oh, no, no,” said Jason. “He just really doesn’t like travelling by train. The last few years, every time we’ve gone to Cork to visit Catherine’s family, he’s been like that.”
“A five-year-old boy who doesn’t like trains?”
Jason grinned. “He’s special.”
“He may be more special than you think. Come with me.”
On the way to the front of the train, I found Tony kneeling and peering between seats in the second carriage using his phone as a torch.
“Did I see a carriage in front of first class?” I asked.
“The luggage car?” he asked. “We use it for bicycles and heavy goods. But the door to it is locked. You can only access it from a station when we stop.”
“Can you open it for me? I think I know what’s going on.”
He seemed a bit more confused than normal, but climbed to his feet and hurried to the front of the train. I followed, with Jason and Catherine in tow.
At the front of the first-class car there was a short corridor that swerved around the toilets, and a door to the luggage carriage. Tony pulled a strange key from his pocket and unlocked the door. I gestured at him not to open it and waved him back towards the train.
“I need a bit of privacy now, please. Just me and Jeremy’s mum and dad.”
Tony shuffled past us and asked, “Should I keep searching?”
I thought for a moment and said, “Yeah. Better to be safe than sorry.”
Tony threw a quick salute, then dropped his hand in embarrassment, and darted away.
When he was gone, I dropped to a crouch and turned to where I could see Jeremy sitting on the floor next to the door. “Hey, Jeremy. My name is Victor.”
“Who are you talking to?” asked Catherine.
“Your mum and dad are here. They tell me you don’t like trains. I bet trains make you feel all sick in your tummy and in your head. If you stop hiding, I can take you to where the train won’t hurt. Can you do that? Can you stop hiding?”
Jeremy looked at me with tears in his eyes and then wiped his nose with his sleeve. He nodded and I heard his parents gasp in shock behind me.
“Jeremy!” Catherine yelled as her husband let loose an astonished profanity.
I opened the door to the luggage carriage and went inside, beckoning them to follow.
Inside were a few boxes and bicycles, and an assortment of suitcases. There was also a large locked cage with the An Post logo. I took the family all the way to the front of the carriage and patted a large sack flat, for Jeremy to sit on. He did so and seemed relieved, though I could see he was still suffering a bit.
“OK, the first thing you need to know is that magic is real, and your son’s kinda good at it. He has what’s called a ‘Talent’. A sort of trick he can do without being told how. They’re very rare, and I have to say that turning invisible is a pretty good one.”
“You’re kidding,” said Jason in an accusatory tone.
I removed my glamour. “Oh, I never kid about my work. There’s no history of it in your family?”
Jason tried to speak but it seemed he couldn’t.
Catherine knelt down beside her son. “Of magic? No.”
“That’s not surprising. There’s not many who can do what he does.”
She looked up from tending her son’s brow and asked, “Why does the train hurt him?”
“A wizard during World War Two did that. His name was David Martin. He put a low-level curse on a German train to try and mess with the enemy wizards. It was very small, almost undetectable, but every time the train rolled over the same bit of track, it would both lay down the curse and then pick up a little bit more. Every train that rolled on the same track picked up the curse too, and then it put that down on all the rails it moved over. Like a prayer mantra, the constant repetition made it stronger and stronger and it eventually spread to every train and every train-track in the Third Reich. Martin was planning to lift it after the war, but he didn’t live that long and so it spread over the continent and then to Britain and Ireland in the sixties as trains and train-tracks were bought and sold. The only way to lift it is to cleanse every train and every piece of train-track at the same time, and nobody’s figured out a way to do that yet.”
“Will he be OK?” said Jason.
“Oh, yeah. The curse just disturbs the magical ‘current’, so-to-speak, like a boat churning water in its wake. The fluctuations cause nausea. That’s why he’s better here at the front of the train. He’ll be right as rain an hour after getting off.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s a lot, I know. I have some phone numbers I can give you. There are people in the Department of Education who can help him.”
“Is there a special school?” Catherine asked.
“Like Hogwarts? No. Nothing like that. Just a few people like your son who grew up to become teachers. They can do a few home visits and make sure you and your husband are fully aware of the implications and some of the dangers involved, and to explain why this has to be kept secret.”
“Why, though? If there’s magic and thousands of wizards about? Why is it kept secret?”
“There’s only a few hundred in Ireland, actually. Still more than any other country in Europe on a per-capita basis.” I looked from Jason to Catherine, and held each of their gaze in turn to ensure they understood what I said next. “But the secrecy is important. It’s one of the only things that keeps kids like Jeremy safe from exploitation.”
No Business Like Show Business
Monday, March 14, 6:22 PM
I was late for my appointment at the RTÉ campus, but it seemed they had not missed me and had started rehearsals on schedule. An overworked-looking receptionist brought me out to where Andrew Hutton was preparing his show, which was on the lawn just to the north of the campus proper.
He had established a large circular stage surrounded by rings of folding chairs. The whole thing was flanked by a pair of stands for additional spectators. On either side of the ringed seats two pylons, each holding a ladder, rose to a height of about forty feet. It looked like the setup for a tight-rope walk, but the two pylons were connected by a narrow plank of wood instead of the expected metal wire. I took a seat in the stands and watched as Hutton himself directed proceedings, instead of the increasingly-frustrated director who simply trailed him with a clipboard.
Eventually, Hutton saw me and did a double-take. I waved and he spoke quickly to the director before climbing the stand towards me. I’m no expert in these matters, but it looked like the director immediately started talking to crew and moving cameras back to the positions they were in before Hutton had readjusted them.
“Victor, right?” he said as he sat beside me. I nodded as he continued, “I never got to thank you properly for getting my spellbook back. Tell me, did you ever catch the person who took it?”
“Investigations are proceeding.”
“Oh-ho, I see how it is.” He winked. I had no idea what he meant by that.
“How goes the preparations?” I gestured at the stage in front of us.
“Very well! Going to be a great night of TV.”
I pointed to the narrow plank spanning the stage. “This the big finale?”
“The rope-less tight-rope! We’ll have a cable there for the whole evening, build up the expectations, then whip it away at the last minute. What you can’t see right now is that there’s a narrow plank spanning the gap. It’s enchanted and glamoured six ways from Sunday. I’ll walk over it and people will see me walking on thin air.”
“An invisible plank?” I asked, looking at the plank.
“It’s going to bring the house down.”
“And what’s the mundane explanation?”
“The what?”
I sighed. “The mundane explanation? If some magician who doesn’t know magic is real is watching, how is he going to think you did it?”
“They’ll have no idea!” Hutton said with a laugh and a clap. “There’s nowhere to hang a harness off, and it’ll be live so there’s no chance of camera trickery.”
“Ah, for fuck’s sake, Andrew. You can’t do this. You know you can’t do this.”
“I’ve done magic on TV before. I do it all the time.”
“You’ve never done it live, on St. Patrick’s Day. People might actually tune in for this. It may be shown abroad. What if you put, like, a gantry overhead with lights on it?”
“Then people will think I’m hanging from it by a wire.”
“That’s the point. Or you could do it indoors, with a ceiling. Or put a big canopy over it, and tell people it’s in case of rain. That way, The ‘wire’ has something to anchor to.”
Hutton stood and walked several paces away before walking back and sitting down again. “I don’t think you understand. The whole point of this is to do the impossible.”
“Say some Las Vegas casino magnet-”, I stopped. That didn’t sound right.
“Magnate?”
“Thanks. Some Las Vegas casino magnate calls you up and offers you six months headlining the Strip and all you have to do is tell him how you did this trick. What will you say?”
“I’ll tell him a magician never reveals his secrets.”
I let out a short sharp laugh. “Fuck off. You’d sell your mother’s diary to a tabloid paper for fifteen minutes on local radio, and we both know it.”
He opened his mouth to protest and then closed it again, quietly.
I looked back at the stage again, an idea forming in my mind. “Put up the gantry with those lights, big ones, then pre-record the show. Not by much; just by an hour or two.”
“How will that help?” He was pleading now.
“You’ll also ask everyone in the front, say, three rows to take out their phones and film the stunt too.”
“What?” Now he was standing again.
“Embargo them: Say that they can't put their videos online until an hour after the show airs. The videos will be crappy because of the big gantry of lights directly overhead, so there’ll be plenty of doubt. People watching on YouTube will look into the lens flares and claim to be able to see wires or a perspex walkway.”
He swiveled his head to the stage and back. “But the people here, who took the videos, will say there was nothing of the sort…”
“They'll want to defend their videos. You’ll create a massive online debate, thousands of people talking about you. You’ve always wanted to go viral.”
“But the professional magicians won’t listen to audience testimony. They’ll assume the videos are faked or that I’m using thin wires and the lights are there to cover them.”
“Who cares what they think? They’ll be jealous as hell of the attention you’re getting. The important thing is that nobody will suspect you’re using actual magic.”
“Fuck. I might as well use wires.”
I nodded sympathetically. “True, though that seems a waste. You’ve already enchanted the plank.”
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