“Granddad cleared his throat, “They called him ‘The Dark Whisperer’ because there wasn’t a spot in Dublin that O’Brien couldn’t light.  But that isn’t how O’Brien told it, he said there were lots of spots of Dublin where the dark collected in little puddles, lazy dark that couldn’t be easily lifted by a light.  It needed something extra to shift it.  And he was pouring all this into young Chicken Legs’ ear. 

“No-one really knew what O’Brien told him, but Old Frank’s version was that the lazy dark was so lazy that you could actually lift it up whole.  Like a dark little mink with inky black fur and deep dark coal pit eyes, and they lay around in groups, some small and some huge. 

“They had a glow around them, except the opposite of a light glow, a dark glow that absorbed the light around them, and they could move without a sound, slowly slinking away at dawn into alleys and under bins and bushes where people wouldn’t spot them during the day. "

— From “Shadows Murphy”