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I’m climbing out the window. It’s midnight. I step carefully into the flower patch beneath my bedroom window and shine the torch around my feet to avoid damaging my dad’s prize-winning gladioli. I lower the window, balancing it carefully on my school ruler so it doesn’t close completely. I mustn’t get locked out. Ringing the doorbell when I get back is not an option. My mother would never recover from the shock of knowing her one and only son has been wandering the neighbourhood in the middle of the night. My parents think I’m good-as-gold. And usually I am. But tonight I’m climbing out.

When Gren Harrington took me aside in school today and asked me to meet him at the Seven Castles carpark at ten minutes past midnight, I should have said no. But I said yes. Because that’s what everyone says to Gren Harrington. I’ve often watched him from my corner of the classroom and tried to figure out why. I think he may have charisma. We read the definition — magnetic charm or appeal — and, yup, it fits. I guess that’s why when he came up to me in the corridor today and said, “So, Flynn, the other boys have you down as a bit of a wet blanket but I’m thinking there’s more to you than meets the eye. Am I right?” I found myself wanting to nod. But I wasn’t at all sure that there was. More to me. Than meets the eye. So I tried a non-committal shrug.

He said, “I have this thing I want to do but I’ll need some help pulling it off. I figure you’re my man. What do you say?”

I thought: What thing? When? Where? What will I have to do? Will it hurt? I said, “Sure.”

“Great,” he said. “You live in Kells, right?”

I nodded.

“I live a mile outside,” he said. As if I wouldn’t know that; we travel on the same school bus every day.

“The Seven Castles,” he said. “You know the visitors’ carpark?”

I nodded again.

“I’ll see you there,” he said. “Tonight, ten after midnight. Bring a torch.” He drew his fingers across his lips in a zipping motion and grinned at me before walking away to join his friends. That grin said he knew I’d be there, he knew I wouldn’t bottle out.

And even though I’ve been scared stupid all evening I’ve never once considered not going. It’s only now, as I arrive at the carpark still breathless from stumbling across the fields by torchlight, that it occurs to me this could be some sort of ambush. Maybe there’ll be a whole gang of boys waiting for me. Maybe I’ve been chosen as the victim in some initiation thing where they take turns beating me to a pulp. I stop dead in the lane outside the carpark. Are you mad or what? I ask myself.

A hand closes on my arm.

“Get off the road, will you?” Gren Harrington shines his torch in my face and pulls me after him through the gate into the empty parking lot.

“Why are we here?” I ask. I can hardly hear my voice over the roar of blood rushing through my ears. I probably sound as freaked out as I am.

“You’ll see,” is all he says. He indicates the ruins in the field below us with his head. “Come on.”

We cross the tarmac and pass through the stile into the field. I can see cow shapes standing around in the darkness; I suppose they are asleep. I should be asleep. I should be at home, in my bed, asleep. The big walls that surround the ruins grow blacker as we near them. The square towers along the walls seem to challenge us: Come inside if you dare.

“They’re not castles,” I say. “They’re watch towers, meant for defence. We call it the Seven Castles but it’s actually a walled priory.” I’m gabbling, doing my Finbar Swot-face Flynn thing. That’s what the boys in school call me — Finbar Swot-face Flynn. Cut the history lecture, Swot-face, I tell myself. But I’m afraid if I stop talking my knees will turn to jelly and I’ll collapse on the grass. “You probably know all this stuff already,” I say.

“Not all of it,” Gren says. There’s no sarcasm in his voice and there’s no menace in his smile, but I know he’s a good actor — I’ve seen him lie to a teacher without so much as breaking a sweat. One smile doesn’t mean our entire class isn’t hiding behind those walls, waiting for me.

The ground dips steeply; I try to concentrate on minding my step. Any minute we’ll pass under the entrance arch. If someone’s lying in wait, this is where they’ll be. I want to turn and run; instead I speed up. Whatever it is I’ve stupidly walked myself into, I have to get on with it. I rush right in, swinging my torch around. Nothing but stones: broken walls, arches, the outlines of what were once churches, buildings and rooms. I stand in the centre of it all, taking deep breaths, giddy with relief.

“Got to hand it to you, man,” Gren says, coming up behind me. “I find this place creepy. You marched in here like it’s the middle of the day.”

He taps my backpack. “What have you got there?” he asks.

“Just some things I thought might come in handy,” I say.

He jerks the backpack off my shoulders, tests the weight of it, puts it down.

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” he says.

I filled the backpack in my bedroom while I waited for midnight to come. My plan was this: in the event of an emergency, I coolly reach into my bag and take outjust what we need; if nothing happens, it all stays in the bag. I packed extra batteries for the torch, a blanket, some rope, chocolate (two large bars), biscuits (Figrolls), a map of the site from the Seven Castles’ website. I considered a flask of soup but the logistical problems of organising it without arousing the suspicions of my parents were too complex, instead I brought Cup-a-Soups, an old saucepan, water, sticks and matches. Now I notice Gren has a backpack too. Of course he has. He’ll have brought everything he needs for whatever this thing is he wants us to do. I feel my face flush pink as I take all the stuff out of my bag.

“We won’t starve then,” Gren says. And winks.

He reaches into his backpack. He pulls out a camera and a load of dark material which I mistake for a blanket until he shakes it out. It’s a monk’s robe, brown, with a hood.

“Rented,” he says. “Pascal’s Party Shop, Kilkenny. Cost me thirty euros. But it’ll be worth it, to see their faces.”

“Whose faces?” I ask. I can’t stop myself glancing over my shoulder.

“6A,” he says. “That mob of muppets you and me are privileged to call our classmates. Tomorrow I plan to go in and tell them a story, one in which I have spent the night alone in the Seven Castles and caught a peek of the famous Priory Ghost.”

“There’s a ghost?” I say, glancing around again. “I’ve never heard of a ghost.”

“Sure you have,” Gren says. He slings the robes at me. He waves the camera in my face. “He’s appearing tonight and I’ll have proof.”

“They’ll say you Photoshopped it,” I say.

“It’s a Polaroid camera,” he says. “Which means instant prints.” He points to the slot where the photos come out. “Can’t mess with them. And even if they have their doubts, I’ll still go down in school history as the boy who spent the night alone in the Seven Castles.”

“You’re not alone,” I say.

“Ah, but I am,” he says. “Tonight you’re not Finbar Flynn, you’re the Priory Ghost.”

“But then,” I say, “no one will ever know…”

“You were here?” Gren says. “I’ll know.” He looks at me questioningly, like he hopes that will be enough.

It is. I nod.

“I looked around the class to pick me the perfect partner for this adventure, and there you were,” he says. “Let‘s sort the photos first.”

As I pull on the monk costume, Gren suggests I use my rope to tie it around the middle because the cord that came with it looks pathetic. He checks my maps for the most authentic place for a ghost monk to walk. We find the perfect spot. We set up the torches to provide atmospheric shadows. I walk, Gren clicks. Photo after photo slides out of the camera. We line them up and reveal them all at once, peeling off the backing paper, groaning and hooting as we see what we’ve got. Most of them are useless but two look convincingly spooky.

“Score,” says Gren, and punches the air.

“Score,” I say.

The perfect partner for this adventure is me, I think.

We make a small fire with my sticks and heat the water in the pan, but we take it off too early and the soup is lukewarm-lumpy. We eat it anyway, me in the monk robes and Gren wrapped up in the blanket I brought. We talk, talk, munch, munch, words and biscuits and chocolate in the glow of the firelight.

“You know what I think?” Gren says, thumping his head like he’s had a sudden brainwave. “You need to drop the bar.”

“Huh?”

“The bar. Secondary school will be three kinds of hell with a name like Fin-bar. Finn Flynn. Now that’s a cool name.’

I consider this. “But how…”

“Just start using it. Like you mean it. Write it on your schoolbooks and your copybooks. Next time someone asks your name, you’ll say…” He leaves the sentence dangling and stares at me expectantly.

“F-finn,” I say.

“Again,” he says.

“Finn,” I say. “Finn Flynn.”

“Again,” he says, raising his voice.

“Finn Flynn,” I say, raising mine.

“Again,” he shouts.

“Finn Flynn,” I yell.

Gren jumps to his feet and I scramble to mine.

“Finn Flynn, Finn Flynn, Finn Flynn, Finn Flynn,” Gren chants, and he leads me around the fire, stamping his feet and waving his arms.

“Finbar Flynn is dead and gone, long live Finn Flynn,” he roars.

The words bounce around the fractured walls: “Finn, Flynn, Finn, Flynn, inn-inn-in.” We laugh at the echoes, we laugh at our dancing shadows, we laugh at everything-nothing till tears roll down our cheeks and our bellies hurt.

“Gren’s a really cool name,” I say when we’re done.

“A lot cooler than what it’s short for,” he says.

I stop and search about my head, adding endings to his name, trying for a likely match. No. Gren couldn’t be short for —

“We need to get gone,” Gren says, handing me my blanket. “The sun is coming up.”

He’s right. The walls of the priory are turning pinky-grey. He kicks dirt over the ashes of our little fire and I gather up my stuff.

“Thanks for having the guts to come tonight, Finn,” Gren says. “You must have wondered what you were getting yourself into. Fair play, man.”

We don’t say much as we pass the cow shapes and go through the carpark. In the lane he thumps my arm in salute, sets off at a run; then he’s gone.

Does this make us mates I wonder, as I cross the fields towards home, but I know it doesn’t. When he shows the ghost photos to the other boys they’ll look around to see who his accomplice was and it’d give the game away if he’s suddenly talking to me. He never has before.

*  *  *  *  *

The ruler is where I left it. I tilt it slightly, get my fingers underneath the frame and lift the sash. I climb back into my bedroom. Everything is just as it was when I left. I’ll go into school later and no one will know that Finbar Swot-face Flynn is not a wet blanket. Nobody but Gren.

And me. I’ll know. I know.

Finbar Flynn is dead and gone. Long live Finn Flynn.