‘Please say that you believe I didn’t put that tape on to torment you.’
‘I don’t know what to believe,’ she said.
‘I swear I would never lie to you. I’m not like Dad was.’ The words felt like a betrayal. Was this what Shane wanted: not only to drive a wedge between Mum and me, but to destroy the grip that my dad had on my imagination?
‘I do believe you,’ she said, sensing what price those words cost me. ‘But why would your friend do this?’
‘That’s what I’m going to find out.’
Mum tried to wrap her arms around me, but I was too angry to be stopped. My only thought was to find Shane. Mum called after me, begging me to come back, but I was beyond listening. My knuckles were clenched, and as I strode onto Main Street, only a fool would have got in my way.
FORTY
Joey
November 2009
At half past eight, I reached Shane’s place on Pine Lawn. I knocked so aggressively that Mrs Higgins opened the door at once, alarmed at my agitated state.
‘Where is he?’
Shane’s door opened. From the way he stood I knew that he had been expecting me. Mrs Higgins glanced at us both.
‘There’s no trouble, boys, is there?’
‘Why would there be trouble, Mrs Higgins?’ Shane asked.
‘You both just look …’
‘I promised to help Joey with his history homework. Come in, Joey.’ Shane beckoned. ‘We won’t disturb you, Mrs Higgins.’
I entered his room. He closed the door. We listened to the woman’s footsteps retreating down the hallway. Once her kitchen door closed, I grabbed Shane, thrusting him against the door.
‘I’ll kill you for what you’ve done!’
‘Calm down, Joey.’ Shane seemed more amused than alarmed. ‘You won’t kill anyone. Sit down and tell me what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m talking about you trying to come between me and my mum.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘You broke into my house.’
‘Well, you broke into mine.’
I released my grip and stepped back. ‘What did you say?’
‘Last night. I told you to ignore that old man, but you’re weak, like your dad was. Temptation and curiosity were always going to get the better of you.’
I grabbed his shirt again. ‘Mention my dad again and I’ll burst you.’
Shane gripped my wrists and prised away my grip, making a whispering noise as if calming a frightened animal. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t know you visited that house last night?’
‘You’re not natural,’ I said. ‘You know too much about everything. I never even told you my mum had a drink problem.’
‘You didn’t have to.’ He relaxed his grip. ‘Their life story is written in your dad’s lyrics, a golden courtship halted by the advent of a baby. Three red roses indeed. You know something, Joey? I think you were an unplanned surprise. You put an end to the roses. Maybe his death was for the best. It prevented your mum from becoming a drunken lush, trailing around behind him from one failed dream to the next.’
I punched Shane so hard that blood spouted from his nose. His head smashed back against the door. I thought he would retaliate, but he just grimaced and walked past me to sit in the armchair.
‘What stories did the old man spin for you last night?’
‘He’s demented,’ I said, ‘convinced that he’s a teenager and you have stolen his body.’
‘He sounds demented. I mean, who would believe such a crazy story?’ Shane laughed but he was watching my reaction with deadly seriousness. ‘Would you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Only that it would be the ultimate theft – to steal someone else’s identity. They used to have a name for such people: changelings. It’s all superstition, of course. But just suppose that when people die they don’t go away. What if, every time you walk along a street, you are brushing through clouds of swirling ghosts, but you’re too busy with your trivial concerns to hear their pleas? What if there always needed to be one person alive who can hear their whispers and so keep them alive too?’
‘You sound like Thomas.’
Shane walked over to the sink. He wetted a towel and washed the blood off his face. ‘Maybe I am like him. Maybe each time I stare into this mirror I see his face and a line of other faces. Did you ever think that just maybe he might be telling the truth?’
‘You’re as daft as each other.’ My anger was turning to unease.
‘And as lonely. I envy you for having your mother’s love, Joey, like I envy the fact that one day you will die.’
‘We all die.’
‘Do we?’ Shane turned from the mirror and sat on the bed. ‘Have you any idea how old I am, Joey? How lonely it is to always live my life alone?’
The front door opened and the students who lived upstairs passed within a few feet of us on the other side of Shane’s closed bedroom door. I wanted to call out for help, but how could I tell anyone that I had a sense of a net closing in?
‘What do you want from me?’
‘I want to know again what it feels like to be normal,’ Shane replied. ‘To know what it feels like to experience things for the first time. I want to be at your side when life unfolds. I want you to kiss Geraldine for me because Geraldine will never kiss me. Even if she did, I could not truly taste her lips because mine are too parched with age. My taste buds are dry. I lack your special quality.’
‘What quality?’
‘Innocence. The magic of life lies ahead for you and you can make it real for me too by letting me share it. I feel stale because I have tasted everything before, but I cannot endure another lifetime on my own. I want you as my friend, Joey. We can travel the world together. I have enough money and cunning to make you famous. It’s what your talent deserves – the immortality your father missed out on. I’ve lived dozens of lives already, yet it feels like I have never truly lived. But this time, you and I will share in every experience and you will make them all real for me.’
‘You’re insane,’ I said.
Shane glanced towards the door. ‘And you will go insane too if you walk away from my offer; you’ll go crazy with curiosity. I’m offering you fame, Joey, because I can make it happen. Don’t say you’re not tempted: temptation runs in your family. Did you find your mother drunk on the floor?’
‘She poured the vodka down the sink.’
‘Another reason for you to leave her – you’re not like her; you’re more like your dad. Once your dad saw a temptation he simply had to taste it. It’s time you tasted fame, Joey. Fame will be the greatest party this side of the Hellfire Club. Walk away from me and you’ll be leaving behind the best friend you’ll ever have.’
I stood up to leave. ‘Whoever you are, you’re no friend of mine.’
‘A true friend will do anything for you. Look.’ Shane reached under his bed to produce an old spool of recording tape. ‘Bongo Drums has a huge attic. Do you know how many boxes I needed to break open to find the right tape? I had to ransack his house then, because if this tape alone was missing, you’d be a suspect. When he arrived home unexpectedly, I even had to put on a mask and smash in his face, just to protect you.’
‘It has nothing to do with me.’
‘Did you hear the tape?’
‘No.’
‘Then listen. Every day I hear dozens of dead voices. It’s time you had the guts to hear the voice you’re so scared of.’
‘Go to hell,’ I hissed. But I was too mesmerised to leave as Shane threaded the spools onto an old-fashioned tape recorder.
‘I am in hell,’ Shane replied, calmly. ‘Blackrock is my private hell. I could not escape this place, even when I travelled the world. I’ve been a mute pig-killer, a murderer, a rake, a sea captain, a monk, a serving boy. I seduced a young Fleming girl in a field of wheat, and several lifetimes later saw her great-granddaughter break into my lair as a doe-eyed, scared child.’
With a soft click, the tape finished rewinding. Shane held his finger over the play button.
‘You look angry and scared, Joey. I wish I could feel those emotions. I’d give twenty years of my life to be you for a day. But that’s easy to say when I can’t seem to let myself die. I possess immortality. It’s what your father always wanted.’
I wanted to walk out into the night air. I opened the door into Mrs Higgins’s hallway and took a few steps away from Shane’s room. But I could go no further, because I was mesmerised by the voice coming from the tape recorder: a voice both familiar and strange. The voice told Ben Quinn and the other backing musicians to take it from the top, then started to sing. Bittersweet, tender and breathtaking, my father’s lyrics lured me back into Shane’s lair. He sat beside the tape recorder, listening intently.
‘I can hear you in him,’ he said. ‘You’re his son in every respect.’
‘At least I know who I am.’
Shane nodded. ‘You’re a good person, whereas I’m neither bad nor good. But I have learned how to plot and scheme and think five moves ahead. Singers like you are always undone by inexperience. You get so wrapped up in your songs that you make poor business decisions. You deserve to play stadiums but wind up playing shabby hotel lounges. That won’t happen if you let me guide you. I can make you more famous – than you could ever wish for. You won’t even have to sell your soul. All I ask is that you become my friend.’
‘Go to hell,’ I said again, more weakly this time.
‘There are worse places than hell, Joey: there’s limbo. That’s where your father is. Listen to his lyrics. You can make him famous: these songs are your inheritance. I can get you any record deal you want, any drug or any woman. I can make people do things without them realising I’m pulling the strings. Just share fully in my life and let me fully share yours. I’ve brought your father back from the dead. He’s standing behind you, ashamed of how he wasted this talent. Give him this second chance. Think of the lyrics you’ll write when I can tell you the words he’s whispering in your ear.’
I was only half-listening because I had turned to stare at the empty space where Shane claimed my father stood. I felt a rage within me.
‘Leave my life alone.’
‘Joey, I know your every thought. I’ve seen your type so often.’
‘Turn off that tape.’
‘It’s too late, Joey; you’ve heard his voice. His voice will never leave your head, just like I will never leave your side.’
Shane stopped talking then. He stared over my shoulder, suddenly terrified. It was as if he had been bluffing, but was now confronted by a genuine presence. I felt the room turn ice-cold. I could see nothing, but I heard a voice in my head – the same voice I had heard that night on Bull Island. The voice whispered one word: ‘Run’.
FORTY-ONE
Joey
November 2009
After I left Shane’s house I didn’t know where to go. I could not tell Mum about this because she would think I was insane. Music blared from a house further down Pine Lawn. In the front room, teenage girls in short dresses shrieked with laughter as they dolled themselves up before heading out for the Wes disco in Donnybrook. A ruck of lads tossed a rugby ball around the driveway as they waited for their dates to come out. Two teenagers were emerging from the park that stretched around the back of Newtownpark House to the homes on Mount Albany. One flashed a bottle of vodka from inside his jacket, provoking a cheer from his peers in the driveway to acknowledge his success at having procured it. His companion was cradling two six-packs of cans in his arms. They were walking straight into my path but I was in no mood to change direction. With their friends watching, neither were they. However, they parted slightly just before I barged through them.
‘You watch yourself, pal,’ the guy with the vodka said. I turned. ‘Why? What are you going to do about it?’
For sixteen years, I had been a blank canvas, willing to be shaped by other people’s expectations. I had never raised a fist to anyone, but I was full of rage now, so confused by Shane’s mind games, and so angry at his invasion of my mum’s privacy, that I was spoiling for a fight. I would have happily taken on all the boys in the driveway, even if they beat me into a pulp. I would have kept getting back up, because being punched seemed preferable to trying to work out the impossible thoughts in my head. I reached inside the guy’s jacket and removed his bottle of vodka.
‘Screw you,’ I said and walked past him into the park. I expected them to attack me under the old trees, but something in my stride made them hesitate, as if awed by my audacity. Then amid their angry shouts I heard a familiar voice and knew that Shane had emerged from his house to quieten them in that soft tone he used. I knew that he would give them the price of a replacement bottle and then follow me across that park because his loneliness would not allow him to let me go. In his room I had been seduced by his lies, but now, out in the night air as I passed evening figures playing tennis in the courts, I dismissed him and Thomas as fantasists. What I could not dismiss was the palpable sense that my father’s ghost had been present in Shane’s room.
I opened the bottle and took my first gulp. The raw taste of the vodka made me want to throw up. My throat was on fire, my eyes temporarily blinded. But I took a second slug and then a third even deeper one as I crossed the grass towards the lights of the houses on Mount Albany. I didn’t look back, but I knew that Shane was following. I felt rage at everything he had done. I also felt nauseated and light-headed from the vodka. I wanted to stop drinking and yet I wanted to finish the bottle. Thankfully, I didn’t finish it, but half the bottle was gone before I hurled it into a driveway, enjoying the reckless sound of glass smashing. I was unsteady and yet pumped full of energy. Shane was not going to manipulate my life any longer. I would show him that I could take any risk he took. A car was double parked outside a house on Mount Albany, the engine running as a young Chinese man delivered pizza. The girl paying him in her doorway was rooting for change. I stopped beside the empty car with its door ajar and heard Shane’s hurried footsteps approach.
‘What are you thinking of doing?’ Shane hissed.
‘Maybe I’ll bring you to a gig in style, for a change.’
‘You can’t drive.’
‘It’s an automatic. How hard can it be?’
Pretty hard, as I discovered after I sat into the driver’s seat. The pizza man was still preoccupied with counting change. Shane opened the passenger door and hissed, ‘Are you crazy?’
Maybe I was. When Shane saw me release the hand brake he jumped in. The car shot forward. I needed to brake fiercely to prevent us colliding with a parked vehicle.
‘For God’s sake, at least let me drive,’ Shane snapped.
I ignored him as the car shot forward again. I was in the middle of the road, trying to get to grips with the steering wheel. I heard a shout and, in the rear-view mirror, saw the delivery man chase after us. The car veered from side to side, narrowly missing parked vehicles. Shane was screaming at me to stop. He wanted to grab the steering wheel but was too scared in case the car spun out of control. This lack of control scared him, I realised: the fact that he was no longer the one in charge of the game. From the moment we met, I had let him control our friendship. But this time he would go where I decided. He had messed with my head, but now I would mess with his. I felt a sense of power as the car surged forward, a sense of finally being his equal.
‘To the Eagle Tavern,’ I shouted, repeating a phrase he sometimes used.
My drunken euphoria and the sense of control only lasted until we reached the top of the cul-de-sac where a pedestrian entrance led into the Springhill Park estate. Somehow I managed to turn the car, which veered onto the footpath, narrowly avoiding a wall. I manoeuvred us back onto the roadway, but we skidded and banged against a parked SUV, setting off its alarm. I straightened up so we were heading back towards the angry delivery man who tried to block the road but then jumped from our path.
‘You’ve gone crazy,’ Shane hissed as I reached the junction with Newtownpark Avenue. ‘This isn’t like you at all.’
‘How do you know what I’m like?’ I swung right, narrowly missing cars coming from both directions. ‘Maybe I have a mind of my own.’
‘Then use it. Stop this car before we’re both killed.’
I saw genuine fear in his eyes. ‘You can’t die.’ I taunted him. ‘How could a car accident kill an immortal being?’
‘Don’t get smart,’ Shane snapped, ‘it doesn’t suit you.’
‘You’re a fantasist, a spoof.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I know you and Thomas are equally crazy.’
Shane gripped my elbow. ‘Brake!’
We had sped past the garage and the church and were approaching the traffic lights at the junction with Stradbook Road. I had to swerve into the other lane because I could not stop in time. Cars approaching us swung up onto the footpath. Somehow, I managed to turn left without hitting anyone and we found ourselves speeding down Temple Hill.
‘How did your aunt in England really die?’ I said.
‘She crashed her car because she couldn’t cope with living with me. The more I tried to befriend her, the more scared she became.’ He flinched as car horns beeped in protest because I was unable to stay in one lane. ‘Where are we going?’
‘There’s an old dairy I’d like you to visit.’
Terror entered Shane’s eyes. ‘That old man is using you.’
‘No one is using me. I want the truth for once.’
‘You’ll need to kill me before I’d set foot back in that house.’
Shane had the passenger door open. He was going to jump and risk being killed rather than be brought any closer to Castledawson Avenue.
‘Stop!’ I shouted.
He looked back. ‘You think you’re in charge, but someone else is always pulling the strings.’
New Town Soul Page 16