‘Lemmego!’ he screeched.
‘Just calm down! You’re hurting yourself!’ My head smacked the floor as we rolled again, and I saw stars.
Then I was hauled up by my collar, my father’s voice an unaccustomed bellow in the already overcrowded space. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
I’d never before experienced my father’s physical strength, and it stunned me to be jerked bodily to my feet and hurled into one corner while my brother was similarly manhandled to the other side of the room. I rebounded off the wall and stood breathless and dishevelled, my burnt hands tucked into my armpits, my hair hanging into my eyes. Our father stood in the middle of the small room, a hand held out to each of us like the referee at a boxing match. He didn’t know which of us to be looking at, so he swivelled his head between the two of us.
‘What. The hell. Are you doing?’ he repeated.
Dom glared at him from the opposite wall, eyes black, skin pale and marbled blue, and I was raging suddenly, at my dad, for being able to stand there and ask what the hell we were doing when Dom was dying in front of his eyes. I glowered at him, all kinds of words knifing through my head, none of them making it past the blockade of my throat. Dom just loosely clenched his fists and said nothing. Dad’s fury morphed very quickly to exhaustion and disappointment. He flung up his hands in despair, then covered his eyes.
‘Jesus,’ he sighed.
Nan’s voice surprised us all. ‘You always were a hot-headed little man, Francis.’
She was still huddled up on the sofa, in the exact same position she’d been when asleep. But she was smiling up at Dom in clear-eyed amusement. Dad looked at her, and he seemed to reach the end of his tether. He shook his head, his face crumbling, and waved at us in shaky dismissal.
‘Get out of my sight,’ he croaked.
‘Dad,’ I said.
OUT!’ He didn’t even look at me, just pointed at the door. ‘
As Dom and I left the room, I heard Nan say, ‘Ah, they’re just lads, David. Let them blow off their steam.’
Dad said nothing that I could hear, and I didn’t look behind me as I led the way to the room that I now shared with this thing called Francis.
LITTLE GREEN PILLS
TO COMBAT THE COLD
I SLAMMED MY WAY into the bedroom and just kept moving. If I stopped, I’d die. I’d scream. I’d explode. Why couldn’t Dad see? What was wrong with them that they couldn’t bloody see! Dom was the colour of chalk, his eyes were pitch-black, frost was bloody well coming out of his mouth! Why couldn’t they see?
I prowled from one side of the room to the other, my fingers dug into my scalp, my eyes so wide they hurt. If it wasn’t for Nan and Dee, I’d have thought I was imagining it. Hah. Yeah. That was great: a senile auld wan and a wee girl who thought fairies lived under the stairs. Super grounding in reality there, Pat. Oh God.
I spun on my heels in the centre of the room, pulling my hands down my face. Then suddenly I was launching myself at the furniture. I flung myself at the wardrobe first; a two-fisted thump against its dark wood that had me recoiling instantly, my burnt hands held high over my head, my face contorted in pain. Shit. I turned and kicked the dressing table. This hurt my foot, and I hopped backwards across the room until I clattered into the bunk. The bunk. The damned BUNK.
I grabbed the side-rail and shook the whole bed, repeatedly jerking it towards me and banging it violently against the wall. I think I got about three or four really good bangs in before Dad bellowed up the stairs. I’m not sure what he said, but this is the last straw was loud and clear in his voice.
I stopped, clinging to the side-rail of the bunk, my cheek resting on my forearm. Panting, I waited for the old man to hurtle up the stairs and maybe give me the first thrashing of my life. But I heard no more from him, except his footsteps retreating down the stairs and the clattering of the pipes as he filled the kettle.
I bowed my head in defeat, resting my forehead against the cool metal of the battered rail. The sweat of anger still burnt on my face, but the rest of me was freezing, and I began to shiver with cold. There was an arctic draft sweeping over my back and shoulders, and I knew exactly where it was coming from.
Dom was behind me. While I had been raging about the room, he had come quietly in and shut the door. Now he sat on the windowsill, his knees drawn up, his head leaning on the glass. He was looking down into the garden, his eyes narrowed against the light. He was heavy and still, and the cold rolled off him like an incoming tide. I may as well not have been in the room for all the attention he was giving me.
What was I going to do?
For lack of any other ideas, I crossed to the dressing table and got myself a jumper. And a cardigan. And a scarf. I pulled them all on, keeping an eye on Dom as I did so.
‘What age are we?’ he asked, still looking into the garden.
Sixteen in August.’ ‘
He blinked at that. ‘Five years,’ he said in disbelief.
‘What?’
‘We’ve been in the grey for five years.’
‘Dom, what’s the fecking grey?’
‘The grey, Lorry. You know . . . ’ He moved his hand about. ‘Just . . . the grey. When everything . . . ’ He looked about him, gesturing at the walls, the ceiling, me. ‘When everything . . . faded out.’
I squeezed my temples, but didn’t bother reminding him that I’d never been anywhere but here, full technicolour all the way. ‘I think you’ve been gone a lot longer than five years,’ I murmured, thinking of his reaction to the TV. ‘Can you remember anything specific? What year was it when they took Lorry?’
He just shook his head, little shakes, a nervous movement, over and over, his mouth working, his eyes roving the landscape below. Eventually he squeezed his eyes shut against the light and rested his forehead against the glass. ‘I remember them taking you. That’s all – and then the grey . . . being in the grey – and then the bad man chasing me, on and on. That’s all. Before that we were happy. You and me, May and Jenny.’ He thought of something and his eyes shot open. ‘That old lady, the one who knows me. What’s her name?’
‘Nan? Her name is Cheryl. Cheryl Finnerty . . . er . . . yeah, Finnerty is her married name. Dunno her maiden one. She’s our nan.’
He sighed in tired exasperation. ‘I don’t know any Cheryl.’
‘She’s senile. She doesn’t know anyone . . . ’
‘She knows me!’ he cried. ‘She said my name! She said Francis! You heard her!’ He groaned and laid his head back again, as if shouting had given him a headache. ‘This world is so full of noise and colours,’ he moaned. ‘It hurts.’
‘I’m going to get you out of him,’ I told him evenly. ‘You can’t stay.’
‘Urgh!’ He whacked his head back against the glass in frustration and glared at me without lifting his head from the window. ‘Why can’t you remember? You knew me before! When I found you in the bed; when we were talking in the garden! When the soldier came and you were frightened! Why can’t you remember now?’
‘That was Dom!’ I yelled. ‘You were talking to Dom! And he didn’t know you! He thought you were me! Don’t you remember? When you had him by the hand and you were rabbiting on about moonlight and you looked up and you both saw me? Don’t you remember how scared he was?’
‘He . . . he was scared of the bad man . . . The bad man was leaning out the window.’
‘It was me leaning out the window!’
‘Lorry was frightened . . . ’
‘Dom! Dom was frightened! Because he realised I was upstairs! He realised he was holding hands with a frickin’ ghost in the frickin’ garden in the middle of the night! Of course he was scared!’
He grabbed his head. He was getting upset again; I could tell by the way the temperature was plummeting. My breath began to fog in the air and, even through my three jumpers, I felt needles of cold chill my arms.
You can’t freeze a tomato, I thought. Jesus.
I hunkered down cautiously by h
is side. I tried to make my voice low and unthreatening.
Listen,’ I said, ‘Isn’t it obvious that you don’t belong here? ‘Just think about it for five seconds and it’ll be obvious. This isn’t your life. This can’t be anything like your life! This is Dom’s life.’ He groaned, the heels of his hands pressed to his temples.
‘I thought that when I finally found you, we’d get everything back; that we’d be alright again . . .I thought . . . ’ He gasped, leaning back. Frost bloomed with an audible hiss across the glass behind him. I watched in horror as its jagged icy pattern fanned out around his head. He looked like a religious icon, with his tormented face and his frozen halo, outlined against the vivid blue sky.
‘You have to calm down,’ I whispered.
He flashed me a look that was all goblin-boy and nothing of Dom, and when he bared his teeth at me I was surprised that they weren’t yet black against his white lips. ‘Calm down?’ he snarled. ‘I finally get out of the grey. I finally find my brother, and when I do it’s just lies and noise and damnable colours. And you . . . you don’t even know me.’
‘All I’m saying is . . . don’t get so upset.’
He chuffed out a bitter little laugh. ‘You’re one to talk.’ He looked over my shoulder, and when I followed suit I saw that my assault on the bed had loosened the plaster on the wall. Several big chunks of it had fallen onto the blankets.
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘Your language is terrible,’ he whispered.
It was my turn to half laugh. ‘You’ve met me on a bad day.’
My laugh seemed to surprise him, and I felt him relax a little. His eyes lost some of their midnight-blackness, warming a shade closer to Dom’s usual chocolate brown. I lowered myself to my knees beside him. It felt like I was edging my way around a tiger. The two of us were so volatile.
‘Are you cold?’ I asked him. He shook his head in surprise. ‘Look at the window behind you.’ He did and pulled back, shocked at the ragged silhouette etched in frost on the glass. ‘Look at my hands.’ I held them out to him, palms out. The flesh was pinched, pink and raw. ‘I burnt them when I grabbed you downstairs.’ He was appalled, and I leant forward to press my advantage. ‘You’re hurting my brother. Just by being in his body. You’re going to kill my brother. Please. Please, please, please just leave Dom alone.’
‘But . . . ’ He looked down at himself, then back at me. ‘What are you asking me to do?’
‘You know.’ I made a shooing gesture with my hands. ‘Get out of Dom’s body. Let him take control again. Just . . . ’ I made that ineffectual motion again.
‘Lorry,’ he said, seemingly torn between being amused and bewildered. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Let Dom go!’ I shouted. ‘Get out! Just leave him!’ I shoved at his shoulder, knocking him into the glass, and his lip curled in warning.
‘Don’t hit me again,’ he said. His eyes began to darken. That fog began to curl up from his shoulders.
Calm down, I told myself. Softly. Softly. ‘I tell you what,’ I said. ‘Just let me talk to Dom. You don’t have to leave. Just . . . please just let me talk to Dom.’
Bright angry splinters of frost glittered on his mouth as he answered me.
‘There is no Dom. I’m Francis.’
I shot to my feet, my hands clenched. I had to gather every stitch of patience I’d ever had and wind it around myself just to keep from flying to the four corners of the room. ‘I know you’re confused,’ I ground out. ‘But listen to me now. My brother, Dominick Finnerty, lives in this body. You, Francis . . . something-or-other . . . have taken it over. You are inside my brother’s body. He’s in there with you. You have to . . . ’
He stood suddenly and came very close, looking up at me from Dom’s ever so slightly shorter height. He was glaring into my eyes, reading my face. Looking for what? Deceit? Malice? Something hidden behind my words? I held his eye, and it wasn’t long before his expression softened and I saw him start to consider the impossible.
He looked down at his hands, the too-smooth hardness of his flesh, the blue marbling of veins beneath his milky skin. He turned and watched the last of his frosted silhouette dispersing from the window.
‘Let me talk to Dom,’ I whispered.
He didn’t seem to hear me. He began turning from left to right slightly, as if looking for an exit. His movements became jerky and stiff, and he began to crackle with cold – literally. It was as if I could hear the cold off him, the brittle sound of hundreds of needles hitting a tiled floor. Tendrils of fog began to curl from his hair.
I wrapped my hands in the ends of my scarf and grabbed the tops of his arms. I yelled into his face, ‘Calm down before you kill Dom!’
He desperately met my eyes, his legs starting to buckle. ‘Can’t. Too scared . . . Can’t . . . ’
‘Jesus. Jesus Christ.’ I was angry all over again. I dragged him, stumbling, to the bunk and flung him onto the bottom bed. I reefed all the blankets off the top mattress and piled them on top of him. I rifled through all the drawers and just piled everything on him: jumpers, undies, pyjamas – everything I could lay hands on. I bent down to him, snarling into his frightened face, ‘Calm down. Calm the hell down.’
‘Y-you . . . calm down,’ he whispered, his lips barely moving. He sounded so like Dom that I nearly shouted for joy. But the terror in his eyes brought me to my knees.
‘Dom?’ I asked.
My heart fell when he managed a tiny shake of his head, his eyes desolate. Still Francis. His lips were blue now, and though there was ice starting to form on the top layer of blankets, he wasn’t even shaking – he was too cold.
‘Help me,’ he managed, and then all that came from his lips was the hollow whistle of his breath on immobile lips.
I pushed myself away from the bed and staggered to the hall. I had no idea what to do. Downstairs, Ma had come back from the old biddies’ place; I could hear her and Dad in the kitchen. She must have just come through the door, because Dad was telling her about us.
‘. . . on the floor like gurriers. I nearly killed them. I swear, if they’d’ve said a word to me, I don’t think I could have contained myself.’
I put one foot on the stairs, then another, an indecisive downward movement.
Ma’s shadow passed across the wall at the turn of the stairs as she crossed from one side of the kitchen to the other. ‘The girls aren’t coming for Easter,’ she said. ‘They’re afraid they’ll get caught by the bloody bus strike.’
‘Ah babe, I’m sorry.’
‘S’alright,’ she said, not quite managing to hide her disappointment. ‘Sure, they’d only be underfoot anyway.’
I have to calm Dom down, I thought. I have to calm him down.
I thought of Ma and Dad, of calling them up to witness what had become of Dom. I thought of the yelling, the panic, the chaos that would follow. I imagined them dragging Dom’s body out of the bed, stumbling with him to the car. The frantic lunatic search for a hospital or doctor. And all the time Francis, trapped, rigid and frozen, more and more afraid in a world less and less familiar, with people who had no clue – it would kill him. It would kill Dom. I couldn’t do that.
I backed quietly up the steps and stood perfectly still and silent on the top landing. Then I turned and went through Ma and Dad’s room to the adjoining room at the far end of the house. Nan’s room.
I never actually made a conscious decision, if you can believe it. There was no moment of, Hey. What if I do this? I just went straight to the little wooden box on Nan’s dresser and emptied Nan’s medicines out onto her bed. There were a lot of them: packets and boxes and vials of stuff. But there were two in particular that I was looking for. There, Nan’s sedatives, a bottle of little yellow tablets and a bottle of green – both full. No one would miss any.
I weighed them in my hands, trying to decide which ones to give him. I decided on the green ones. Nan took three half-tablets a day. They kept her calm. I wondered how much I should giv
e him to keep him calm. A whole tablet? He was pretty bad. How fast would it work? If I gave him a whole tablet, would it work faster than a half one?
Shit. I was wasting time. I pocketed four of the little green pills and shoved all the boxes and bottles and vials back into Nan’s wee box. I didn’t even pause to make sure everything was in order. I just crept back across the top floor, hoping to God that no one downstairs heard me creaking about overhead. My hands were shaking as I filled Dee’s night-time bottle with water in the bathroom. I sloshed half of it on the floor while crossing the landing.
His lips were solid curves of blue marble by the time I got back to him, and I thought I was too late. But then his eyes moved under his half-closed lids, seeking me out and fixing on me as I dropped to my knees by the bed. I balanced the bottle of water and rooted in my pocket for the drugs.
I cradled a little green pill in my palm for a moment, wondering if I should cut it in half. Then I just slid the whole thing between his lips, lifted his head a little and dribbled some water in after it.
‘It’s called librium,’ I said. ‘Swallow it.’ His eyes found mine, and I knew he was scared to. ‘Swallow it, for Christ’s sake, or I’ll kick your arse.’ I dribbled more water down his throat for good measure, laid his head back on the pillow, and then sat on the floor, watching his face and waiting.
THE MONSTER OF PELADON
THE GREY. YES. That’s such a good description of it. You always had a way with words, didn’t you, Fran?
I SNORTED AWAKE, my face mashed into the blankets, drool drying in sticky strings under my cheek. My mouth was gluey, and I had that foul-breath feeling of having been in a deep sleep. My eyes found his before I was with it enough to remember where we were, and I got the feeling he’d been watching me for a while. I was still sitting on the floor, my head lying on the bottom bunk. I blinked rapidly and sat back, working my tongue about to get rid of the glue. Dee’s bottle was still a quarter full, and I drained it in a couple of swallows before clearing my throat and coming to full consciousness. ‘Jesus,’ I mumbled.
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