We present another story from the RTÉ Short Story Competition shortlist 2025 - read Wolves by Peter McCauley below.
The shortlisted stories will be broadcast nightly from Monday 13th October on RTÉ Radio 1's Late Date.
About Wolves, Peter says: "Set in my native city of Derry, Wolves is a story about family, home, isolation and mental fragility; a portrait of a lost boy, spiralling downwards..."
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John had been working in Manchester for three years when one morning he realised that life was short. A job had opened up back in Derry. He'd been missing the city. Yearning for it on bad nights. You can leave Derry, but it never leaves you someone had said. They were right.
'Should be back Friday evening,’ he told his mother on the phone.
‘Grand. You’ll be staying wi’ us then?’
‘Until I get sorted wi’ my own place, maybe a couple o’ weeks,’ said John.
‘Your room’s ready anyway. Never changed it much after ye left to be honest. It was always your room. I kind o’ knew you’d be back some day. Mothers know them kinda things.’
‘Well, as I say, it’ll just be for a few weeks,’ said John. ‘Till I find my own place.’
‘Aye. Come an’ go as ye please. You’re your own man now… It’ll be good for Rory though, to have ye back.’ She left that last sentence hanging in the air.
Sunlight spun bright gold on the placid surface of the River Foyle as the train pulled into the station. Donegal’s hills drank the blue of the sky in the distance, while clouds of birds caressed the top of the Guildhall as its clock called the hour. This city had been home, and it would be home again. The taxi from the station took John across Craigavon Bridge, up Carlisle Road, across the Diamond. Memories appeared on every street corner. Familiar shapes and forms made grey by time’s silent passage. Days of terrible innocence. The days before life had raised its voice at John.
The taxi pulled up outside the house. His mother came out, arms out. She hugged him and held him.
‘My boy, back home, where he belongs!’ she said.
John bundled his baggage out of the taxi and paid the driver. The street hadn’t changed much, though it seemed smaller for some reason. The green opposite where he’d played football as a boy was still there. Overgrown now, made ancient by a paltry collection of emaciated arthritic trees. There were no children playing on it now.
‘We’ve given the place a lick o’ paint on the outside,’ said his mother, ‘and we’ve a couple o’ new neighbours. Oul’ people mostly. Other than that, ye’ll find the place much as ye left it.’
John’s old bedroom felt strangely new, but smaller than in his memories. He dropped his bags on the worn carpet. The bed had been freshly made. The window was slightly open. A small alarm clock lay face down on the bedside table, clicking time into the grain of the fake mahogany. Silence apart from that. How many dreams had been dreamt in this room? How many beats from the heart of a life beginning? It was all quiet now.
*
The kitchen. Kettle hissing. Mother buttering bread.
‘Rory!’ she called. ‘John’s here.’ A distant rumble from somewhere in the house. A door sang on its hinges. Off-rhythm footsteps. Rory came into the kitchen. John extended his hand.
‘Alright, Rory. How’s the form?’
‘You’re back then?’ said Rory.
‘Aye, back. See how it goes. What’s happenin’ wi’ you?’
‘Tea warm?’ said Rory to his mother as he drifted across the kitchen, rudderless, and grabbed the kettle and the cups. ‘Into the flapjacks now so I am,’ he said.
‘Flapjacks?’ said John.
‘Into the flapjacks now so I am. There’s a new brand o’ them out. Chocolate squelchy bit in the middle. I’m all into them so I am,’ said Rory proudly. He was spilling the tea as he poured it. ‘You’re back then?’
‘He’s a Derry man,’ said his mother cutting in. ‘That’s the height of it – he’s a Derry man. Derry always calls her sons an’ daughters home.’
‘Well, this new job meant I could come home,’ said John as he sat at the table. ‘Would’ve been hard wi’ out that. Are you working yourself, Rory?’
‘Rory’s had a hard oul’ time of it since ye left,’ said his mother. She placed her hand on his. ‘Your brother’s back now, Rory. Sure there’s no truer friend than a brother!’ Rory reached for the packet of flapjacks. He cleared his throat, ripped at the wrapper. His eyes were wandering.
‘Ye should give Manchester a go,’ said John. ‘Plenty o’ opportunities there. Would do ye a power o’ good.’
‘Are ye serious?’ said Rory suddenly with a blade on the tip of his tongue. John stiffened. The air curdled. Rory’s eyes darkened. ‘And how d’ you think I’d fare in them unfamiliar surroundin’s, eh? Did ye give a thought to tha’? How d’ you reckon I’d fare…wi’ my way o’ thinkin’? It’s alright for you.’
‘He didn’t mean anythin’ by it, son,’ said his mother. ‘He’s jus’ sayin’. It was meant wi’ a kindness.’ She squeezed his hand. She grimaced blank-eyed at John. ‘Aw, it’s been a hard oul’ station for Rory now to be fair.’
Rory picked at something on his face like a fruit fly picking at a carcass.
‘Ma, that truck show’ll be on the telly now at four,’ he said. ‘Monster trucks an’ all. I’ll head in an’ see it.’
‘Would ye not sit an’ chat to John a while?’
He picked at his face again, nail deep. A silent agony beneath the skin. Something burrowing there.
‘Aye. Monster trucks an’ all that,’ he said. ‘I’ll head in an’ see it.’
With that, he stood and walked out. His mother muttered something to herself at the sink.
Evening. The metronomic clack of chopped vegetables. In his bedroom, John unpacked the last of his things, then he slumped on the edge of the bed. Birdsong rang from the back garden. Tangled melodies. Unintentional harmonies that sang off the side of sadness. John stood and looked out the window. Part of the shed had been dismantled and bits of it lay pointlessly on the grass.
‘John, Rory. Dinner!’ came the call from the kitchen.
‘You’d need to be fattenin’ our Johnny up, ma,’ said Rory, grinning. His mother carried dinner to the table. ‘Mustn’t have been eatin’ right in Manchester. Don’t ye think he’s a bit thin aroun’ the gills?’
‘Looks alright to me,’ she said. In truth, it was Rory who had lost weight. John had noticed it almost immediately. His face seemed little more than a footnote of his pale neck, and his entire frame appeared like botched scaffolding. He seemed to be a stranger to his clothes, to his hair, and to whatever chair he sat on. Even his voice had thinned into a malnourished wheeze around the edges.
‘I’m heading into town tonight,’ said John after a moment. ‘A few boys from school know I’m back and want to meet up.’
‘What time’ll ye be back?’ asked his mother immediately.
‘Not sure. Midnight, I suppose. Maybe after,’ replied John. ‘Depends if I go back to one o’ their houses.’ His mother looked at Rory. Rory stared at his plate. ‘Is that alright?’ said John.
‘Aye,’ she said absently, still looking at Rory.
‘You’re welcome to come, Rory, if ye want,’ said John. ‘Get ye out o’ the house for a bit.’
His mother’s eyes narrowed like a borrowed sorrow. Rory said nothing. Dinner was over.
John staggered up the driveway just after 3am. A light from inside the house blurred through the moulded glass of the front door. He turned the key in the latch and crept inside, into the kitchen. His mother sat at the table in her dressing gown. There was a glass of water beside her.
‘Mum?’ said John, as if saying the word for the first time. She whispered to herself. ‘Mum it’s three in the morning. You alright? Where’s Rory?’ She lifted the glass of water but she didn’t drink any.
‘Needs me awake. Can’t have me fallin’ asleep,’ she said. Under the bright electric light, John could see the folded rings under her eyes, the sleep-seeking shadows creeping around the red rims and the lids.
‘What are ye up at this hour for? You need to get some sleep.’
‘Sure he’d go doolally if he thought I was asleep,’ she said.
‘Doolally? Why?’ asked John. Silence.
‘The wolves,’ she said after a moment. ‘He reckons there’s wolves aroun’ here at night.’
John took a breath. ‘Wolves?’
‘Reckons there’s wolves roamin’ these parts at night. Reckons they were in the back garden last week. He wrecked me shed lookin’ for them. Ripped the front part off. Says he found claw marks all o’er it. His head’s done in wi’ wolves.’
John took a moment. He’d been drinking earlier but he was far from drunk. Even so, the odd angles of the moment, the feeling of suddenly falling down a flight of stairs that wasn’t there, reminded him of many nights on the town.
‘Sorry mum,’ he said. He sat down. ‘Wolves? Did you say wolves?’
‘He has this notion,’ she said, forcing her voice. ‘He’s had it this long while. Tormented wi’ it. Must’ve seen somethin’ on telly or on his phone and latched on to it. Reckons there’s wolves aroun’ here at night. Reckons they’re after him. Him alone. Reckons they know he’s in here, hidin’. Says they want to turn him, whate’er that means. Spends his nights hidin’ from wolves, poor fella.’ John searched the kitchen table for answers, for meaning. There was neither.
‘Mum. There are no wolves in Derry,’ he said after a moment. ‘There aren’t even any wolves in Ireland!’
‘Aw you try tellin’ him that. You’d get nowhere tryin’ to tell him that.’
She gazed into the depths of the glass of water. Things swirled within it, invisible things that made no sense. ‘He saw somethin’ somewhere ‘bout some malady o’ the oul times where poor critters thought they were turnin’ into wolves from the inside out. Somethin’ like that,' she said. 'He’s taken to scratchin’ his arms. Scratchin’ day an’ night. Scratchin’ till the skin turns red and bleeds. Says there’s hair underneath his skin. Turnin’ inwards, he says. Like wolf hair, he says. Aw, he has my head turn’d wi’ wolves!’
‘Seems like a peaceful enough night, ma,’ came Rory’s sudden voice from his room. ‘Not hearin’ much o’ concern at the moment.’
‘There’s nothin’ out there, Rory,’ replied his mother. ‘Sure get on to bed now.’
‘Streets very quiet tonight, ma,’ he called. ‘The howlin’ o’ last night hasn’t repeat’d itself so far as I can hear. Might be a good sign, ma.’
‘Aye, sure sleep off the rest o’ the night now, son,’ said his mother. ‘You’re all clear.’
‘Thought I heard a paddin’ at the door a while ago, ma,’ he called back. ‘Not hearin’ it now though. Did you hear that paddin’ at the door yourself, ma?’
‘That was your brother. John. Comin’ back in,’ replied his mother. ‘That was him at the door. He’s in here now.’ There was no reply. She stood up, hobbled into the hall, and then back into the kitchen. ‘His light’s out,’ she whispered. ‘That’ll be him down…for a while anyway. I’ll lie down meself, but I’ll stay awake. He’ll be up again soon.’
There was a picture on the wall. A chocolate-box image of a boy and his dog. It had hung there since John had been a child. Only now did he really look at it. The tranquillity of it. The simplicity. Nature observing perfect order. The dog looking up at the boy, the boy looking down at the dog. Everything in its rightful place. A serene scene in a broken frame.
‘Does this happen every night, mum?’ John asked.
His mother drifted towards the door, an ancient monument of motherhood, burdened, leaning heavily, pitching the full weight of the world. She turned to him.
‘Switch off the lights when you’re comin’ up like a good man.’
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About The Author: A Derry native, Peter McCauley graduated from the Open University in 2018 with a first-class honours degree in English Language and Literature. He works in a secondary school in Derry, but outside of this, he is working towards developing a creative writing career, and he plans on setting more stories, both for page and stage, in his native city. His story O n Craigavon Bridge was shortlisted in this competition in 2023.
Listen to the RTÉ Short Story Competition 2025 stories nightly on Late Date from Monday 13 October (full broadcast schedule here). Tune into Arena for interviews and updates, and join us for the live Arena/RTÉ Short Story finale in the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire on Friday 24 October - tickets are on sale here
