2. A Pint Reborn

Siobhán asked the barman, Darragh.

“Who’s that for?”

He scratched his beard. “That? No one. Shows up every night at midnight. Same seat. Same pint.”

She laughed. “Some tourist trick?”

“Hardly. That seat’s cursed. Or blessed, depending who you ask.”

The next night, Siobhán returned early, notebook in hand. She chose the table across from the midnight pint.

And at 11:59 p.m., the glass appeared again. Full. Creamy head. Still cold.

Then she noticed the initials ‘E.M.’ carved into the table’s edge.

And a faded line of poetry scratched beneath:

“A pint to the page unwritten.”
3. Eamon’s Legacy

Darragh finally told her the story.

“In the 1920s, a writer named Eamon Murray haunted that snug. Claimed he’d never leave Toner’s until he finished his ‘masterwork.’ One night he vanished, left behind a pint and a half-finished stanza.”

Siobhán’s heart jumped.

She asked to see the pub’s archives, old ledgers, anything.

In the cellar, she found a stack of notebooks behind a false wall. Faded ink. Yellowed pages.

Inside, verses danced — elegant, biting, unfinished.

But one stanza struck her most:

“The streets wear puddles like overcoats,
The lamplight weeps in amber notes,
My pen, a promise I have failed —
Let Guinness hold what I have jailed.”
And below it, in pencil: “If you read this, help me finish it.”

4. The Ghost in the Snug

That night, the snug smelled of wet pages and old smoke. Midnight came.

The pint appeared.

And so did Eamon.

He was pale, in a grey waistcoat, eyes hollow with hope.

Siobhán didn’t scream. She nodded. “I’ve read your work.”

He looked at the pint. “Then you know what I owe it.”

“You never finished?”

“Not in time. I died here. Before the last line. That’s all that holds me.”

“And if it’s written?”

He smiled. “Then I’ll drink it at last.”

5. The Final Line

Siobhán didn’t sleep for two days. She read everything Eamon had left. She walked the misty paths he wrote about — Baggot Street, Merrion Square, the Grand Canal.

Then, one rainy morning, she found the words in the fog:

“Yet in the snug where shadows speak,
The poet finds the line they seek.”
She wrote it in his notebook, left it on the table.

That night, midnight came.

The pint refilled. Eamon appeared, read the line, and raised the glass.

“To the ones who finish what we begin.”

He drank.

And vanished.

This time, the pint did not refill.

6. A Poet Reborn

Siobhán’s next chapbook was called Midnight Glass. It opened with the poem she and Eamon had finished together.

Critics called it the rebirth of Dublin verse. She was invited to festivals across Ireland.

But she always returned to Toner’s.

Sometimes at midnight.

Sometimes with a pint.

And sometimes, in the deepest silence of that old snug, she swore she saw another poet watching her — with a grateful smile and ink-stained fingers.