The Boy Who Could See Demons (35 page)

‘Why did you want to make me go to sleep?’ I asked firmly, my voice suddenly loud and clear. ‘What did Ruen want you to do, Alex?’

He looked up. ‘He wanted me to kill myself. He said I was nothing. He said I didn’t deserve to live.’

I watched him, realising how lonely he must have felt all this time. How that loneliness must have imploded the moment he learned about Cindy.

‘I just couldn’t,’ he whispered. ‘Ruen wanted me to, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t.’

I let him cry, listening as he broke into revelations here and there – about Ruen’s different appearances, which I saw instantly were projections of how he had learned about his father’s crime. About Ruen’s offer to get his father out of Hell, which I suspected was linked to his self-blame, his willingness to make everything in his family better.

‘I know about your dad,’ I told him softly. ‘I know what he did, Alex. Your father’s acts, Alex –
not
your father – were evil. You are not your father.’

He was silent for a long time, contemplating my words. Finally he looked up, giving me a tilt of his head to indicate he understood.

There was much that remained to be properly explained. One of the doctors had suggested that Alex’s burn marks might have been caused by a reaction to chemicals in the swimming pool at MacNeice House, though tests were still to be carried out and, I felt, the suggestion was far-fetched. Still, how else did he acquire three thick stripes across his chest? Were they self-inflicted? If so, how? The ‘film’ he claimed Ruen had put in his head of Cindy’s suicide attempt echoed one of her earlier efforts, but its timing was an undeniably remarkable coincidence. And then there were my own experiences: Alex’s piece of music, for instance. The man in the music room. Alex’s perception of things far beyond his understanding, such as the scar on my face. Poppy.

When Alex had finished speaking, I identified the final thing I needed to know.

‘Can you see Ruen now?’

He stared at me. Very slowly, he shook his head. ‘Ruen has gone.’

‘Gone?’ I said. ‘Gone where?’

‘At the bottom of a pit a million miles beneath the sun,’ he said with a smile.

‘You said you could see other demons, too,’ I asked tentatively. ‘Can you see any now?’

He stared at me, looking over my head. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t see any. Not any more.’ He gave me a small smile – for the first time since we met – his eyes those of a ten-year-old boy. Untroubled.

That night I sat on a towel spread across the cold tiled floor of my flat. I was still without a sofa. But I had priorities. Alex’s new programme of treatment involved paperwork. And it involved a new approach. I would have to lead him back, back to the moment he learned his father had murdered two men. I would have to guide him through that trauma, helping him understand the emotions he was feeling, the conflict that had split his psyche into the monstrous, the ghostly, the horrific and the evil forms that now comprised his vision of the father he had loved and idolised. And in order to prevent him self-harming or hurting others ever again, I would have to teach him how to overcome the biggest hurdle of all: his fear of becoming like his father.

I opened my laptop to compose a note to Trudy Messenger about Alex. In my inbox I found an email from Ursula, short and to the point:

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date: 21/6/07 13.34 p.m.

Dear Anya

I hope you are feeling better. Please accept my apologies for what happened with Alex Broccoli; it has made me aware that our security needs to be drastically improved and measures are now in place to that effect. I can only hope that you can take my word for that without pursuing legal action.

I laughed to myself. She felt threatened now, afraid – even in the moment of her retirement – that I’d undo everything she had worked so hard to achieve. It was possible, and she was right – Alex’s attack had underlined security issues that were part of a wider problem across the system. I was certain, though, that she meant what she said: the problem
would
be rectified. I read on.

You’ll remember I told you about the role I’m taking up as Chief Advisor to the government. The priority of this role is to address the damage the Troubles have caused to our youth. I recognise now that you have a similar passion for improving our provision of mental health services for children and young people. Should you wish to assist on the board at MacNeice House, please do let me know.

I read this passage twice. She was offering no small position – a role on the board would influence policy-making. It would give me a very large microphone in a noisy arena. It would enable me to do what I had returned to Northern Ireland to do: to make a difference.

I scanned the rest of the email, frowning as I reached her ‘PS’.

I hope you have found all the answers now?

I thought back to our first meeting at my interview for this post. She had asked it then, and I had trusted in my heart that it was possible to solve every mystery posed by the human mind with medicine and science. And when I had seen the similarities between Alex and Poppy, a deep part of me believed that, by solving his riddle, I could also solve Poppy’s.

But Poppy wasn’t a riddle. What had happened
happened
, just as surgeries go wrong, just as a driver looks down from the road for a moment too long. I had nothing left to solve. I just had to accept what I couldn’t change.

And I knew now what questions I needed to be asking.

The doorbell chimed, sending a B note around the hard surfaces of the flat. For a moment I thought of Poppy again, her face when I had broken down in the music room. Her voice telling me that she loved me. I pushed it away, then immediately felt guilty. I rose to my feet and padded across the room. Laid my hand on the cold door handle. I had felt that, by refusing to let go of anything that reminded me of her, by holding on so tightly to her memory, I could somehow stop her from falling. I could somehow reach back into the past and make that extra stretch out the window after her. I could somehow save her.

I opened the door. Michael was standing there, his blond hair illuminated like a halo by the garish hall light. He held up his hand: bunched in his fist, the purple bulbs of beetroots at the end of their long red stalks, freshly ripped from the ground.

‘And this, of course,’ he said, raising a bottle of fresh orange juice in the other.

I hesitated. By letting him cross the threshold of my door, I was effectively breaking my own rules. I was crossing another threshold, too, one that left my old life far behind.

‘Come in,’ I said after a few moments’ hesitation. ‘If you don’t mind sitting on the floor.’

He grinned, a flicker of nervousness passing across his face. ‘I don’t mind.’

29

A FRIEND

Alex

Dear Diary,

I’m in Auntie Bev’s car right now and it’s difficult to write because the car is so small and she drives like the roads are made of ice. We are on our way to Magilligan Prison to see my dad. She’s been telling me jokes all morning and trying to make me laugh and she even bought me onions on toast at the fancy restaurant but I know why. She’s trying to keep my mind off Mum and the funeral and she’s worried how I’ll feel when I meet my dad. I’m trying not to think of Mum’s coffin and the way they lowered it into the ground. I didn’t like that part, it made my insides twist and my heart feels broken. So I’m remembering the daffodils we made them plant all around the headstone, which makes me think of the day Mum was so proud of herself. I wanted to put Mum’s toilet bowl on the grave but Auntie Bev said no.

‘Have you heard from Roz?’ I asked her as we were driving away from my old house. Jojo had let me keep my Horatio costume as a souvenir.

‘Who’s Roz?’ she said, but then she took her eyes off the road and looked at me as if she really did know who Roz was and then the car swerved and we both almost died.

‘Roz is that casting director who came to see me in
Hamlet,’
I said. ‘You said you spoke to her.’

She smiled. ‘Oh yeah,
that
Roz. I’m sure we’ll hear from her soon enough.’

The last time I saw Anya she sat me down and told me some things about my dad that she said I needed to know. She said Dad’s name is Alex Murphy. He was born in 1971, which makes him thirty-five, which is three-point-five times my age, though next month I’ll be eleven which means he’ll only be three-point-one-eight times older. Anya said he is staying at Magilligan Prison, just like Mum told me, so I know Ruen was lying. She said she had been in touch with him and he was really happy that I wanted to see him.

‘Happy?’ I asked.

She smiled. ‘He was over the moon, Alex. I’ll show you his letter, if you like.’

I nodded and said OK. ‘Why do you think he killed those policemen?’ I asked.

Anya’s eyes looked sad. ‘He was in an organisation that believes in killing people, Alex.’

That didn’t make me feel any better. ‘But did he
have
to kill them, or couldn’t he have said he didn’t want to?’

‘I suppose the only way you’re ever going to know is to ask your father. But …’ And she paused for a long time.

‘What?’ I said.

She looked like she was thinking carefully about what she wanted to say. ‘I think you may only get the real answers after a long, long time. Sometimes an answer doesn’t come in one go. Sometimes it has so many layers to it that it takes time for the person to tell you what they really mean.’ Then she thought for a long time.

Anya looked at Auntie Bev then, who was sitting next to me, holding my hand.

‘I think it’s important not to openly condemn Alex’s father, despite what you think of him,’ I heard her tell Auntie Bev, and Auntie Bev took a deep breath and seemed upset. Anya reached forward and held Auntie Bev’s hand.

‘I know what he did was … well, it was what it was,’ she said, which didn’t make any sense but Auntie Bev nodded. ‘A huge part of Alex’s recovery will be to visit with his father when he can, maybe even write to him.’

Auntie Bev wiped her eyes and thought about it. After a while she looked at me and gave me a small smile. Then she said: ‘Would your mum have wanted me to have taken you to see your dad, Alex?’

I nodded. ‘Definitely. Mum loved Dad. He made bread rolls dance.’ And I told her all about him cooking bruschetta and the guns in the piano, and then about the blue car. And the policemen.

‘OK,’ she said after a long time. ‘But first there’s somewhere else we have to go.’

‘Where?’ I said, and just then Anya got up and went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea, but I think she was just being polite so Auntie Bev and I could chat in private.

Auntie Bev turned to me and for a moment it seemed that she didn’t know what to say, or how she was going to say what she wanted to say. She pulled at her short white hair and smiled. ‘I bought a house, Alex. You’re coming to live with me.’

I blinked at her. ‘A house? Not this one?’

‘Is that OK? Would you mind?’

I think my eyes turned into saucers. ‘No, I would
love
that!’ And I started asking about the house – did it have a garden and a big kitchen and a driveway for her small fast car? And Auntie Bev said it had all of those. I was ready to burst. Then I thought about something.

‘You mean, I’m moving to Cork?’

She shook her head. ‘No,
I’m
moving up north,’ she said. ‘I want you to be close to Anya, so she can make sure you get better. And it’ll be close for you to do more acting if you want, and you might not even have to change schools.’

She pulled out a map of Northern Ireland which looks like a witch’s head, and Auntie Bev’s new house is on the witch’s nose. I pointed this out and she laughed. ‘It’s called the Ards Peninsula,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you been there?’

I shook my head. ‘Can we go?’

Auntie Bev put the map away and said we could, though we’d have to come back to my and Mum’s old house a few more times to make sure we got all my stuff.

Anya came back in and shook Auntie Bev’s hand and kissed her cheek. Then she bent down and took my hands.

‘Remember what I said, Alex,’ she whispered. ‘You are
Alex
. Nobody is like you, and you are like nobody else.’ She paused. ‘In fact, you can be anyone you want to be.’

I nodded and felt my face go hot when she kissed my cheek, and then we waved her goodbye. Though not really goodbye, she said, because she would be seeing me again in a few weeks’ time.

Auntie Bev flung her car around lots of sharp bends until we came to an industrial estate not far from the city centre. When she stopped I felt sick.

‘Is
this
where we’re living?’

She looked puzzled. ‘No, Alex. Look.’ She pointed at a big blue sign on a wire fence straight ahead of me. RSPCA. I stared at it. Why were we here?

‘To pick someone up,’ Auntie Bev said, smiling. And then my brain clicked.

‘No way,’ I said, because I didn’t dare believe it.

She grinned. ‘I bet he’s missed you.’

I jumped out of the car and ran through the gate. All the kennels were quiet and Auntie Bev told me she would go and ask the lady at reception because she was certain he should still be here. For a minute I panicked. What if someone had taken him?

And then I heard it. Woof’s bark, loud and frantic on his leash, walking in front of a lady who was wearing a big fishing jacket and black wellies and a hoop through her nose. As soon as he saw me he started pulling her behind him, his front paws paddling at the air to get him closer. I ran to him and he jumped up on me, licking my face and making lots of high-pitched barks.

The lady looked annoyed. ‘He’s missed me,’ I explained to her, and I let him lick my face until he started to bite my nose and then I just wrapped my arms around him and held him. ‘Hello, boy,’ I said, and he whined and did a little spin and then climbed up on my knee and tucked his head under my arm. His fur was less white than usual and I could feel his ribs a little more than before but he was still the same Woof.