I’m not going back to my old school for a while and when I leave hospital I am going to a new school at a place called MacNeice House. Just for a while and then Mum and I will move into our amazing new house. Anya showed me some pictures and kept saying I’d love it but I’m not so sure. It looks like a hospital on the inside but on the outside it looks like a posh house where you would expect servants and maids and things like that. I’ve been given homework until then but I feel like someone’s attached a vacuum cleaner to my skin and sucked out all the energy. When I sit up it feels like the whole room wobbles and my head feels like an enormous cannon ball so that I have to keep putting my hands around my cheeks to hold it in place.
When the nurse brings me lunch she asks me what I’m doing.
I look up and say, ‘My head is going to fall off.’
I think she might laugh but she actually runs out of the room, leaving my food tray too far away for me to reach, and I hear her shoes clacking all the way down the hall. When I look down, my bed is covered in vomit and my nails have blood in them from where I was scratching my neck. I don’t remember being sick or scratching myself.
I’m starting to feel very strange, not like me at all.
When I wake up again my bed is clean and I am dressed differently. I can see my shirt and trousers hanging in the open locker in the corner. It’s raining cats and dogs outside, Auntie Bev would say, and I imagine what it would be like if it really was chucking down kittens and Rottweilers.
I’m thinking of the RSPCA when someone comes into the room. I think it’s a nurse and am afraid to say anything in case she gets scared again, but then I look up and see it’s Ruen. He’s Ghost Boy. He glances out of the door and holds a finger to his lips to tell me, ‘Sshh.’ I nod and about a second later a doctor comes in. He is holding a clipboard.
‘How are you feeling, Alex?’ he says.
‘Fine,’ I say. He puts two fingers against my wrist and looks at his watch and says nothing for a while. Then he puts a stethoscope under my robe. It makes me shiver.
‘Any breathing problems?’ he asks. I shake my head.
A nurse comes in and wraps a piece of material around my arm then squeezes a small black ball until the material gets really tight. ‘One twenty over eighty,’ she tells the doctor, and he writes it down. He nods and asks, ‘Temperature?’ The nurse says something I can’t really hear but the doctor writes it down, too.
‘OK,’ the doctor says.
‘Can I go now?’ I ask.
This is apparently really funny.
‘No,’ the doctor says, handing me a cup with tablets in it. ‘You have to take two of these twice a day for the next wee while. We need you to stay here to make sure they’re doing their job.’
I frown at the round white tablets in the cup. ‘What are they for?’ I ask.
The doctor looks down at me through his glasses. The nurse says, ‘To help you sleep better, Alex.’
‘But I sleep fine,’ I say.
The nurse smiles and hands me a cup with some water. I hold both cups in my hands and stare up at the nurse and doctor. Finally, the nurse says: ‘Dr Molokova says you’ve to take them.’
She’s says it like I should already know this. ‘Who’s Dr Molokova?’
‘Anya?’
‘Oh.’
I put the tablets in my mouth and they taste very bitter so I drink the whole cup of water in one go. She hands me a tray of food. It looks like Woof vomited on my plate.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘Toad in the hole,’ the nurse says. ‘You want peanuts or chopped apple for your snack?’
‘Peanuts,’ Ruen says loudly, and I jump. I ask her for the peanuts and she looks at me funny, then she nods.
‘Dessert is either meringue or bread and butter pudding.’
I glance at Ruen. ‘Bread and butter pudding, please.’
The nurse slides the tray on to the table next to me and walks out, humming.
‘I don’t want to stay here,’ I tell Ruen.
‘I don’t blame you,’ he says, looking out the window.
I glare at him. ‘I’m not your friend, by the way.’
He looks quite shocked. ‘Whyever not?’
My face is very hot all of a sudden and my hands are shaking. When I blink everything looks blurred for a second. ‘Because you made me ask Anya those questions and she got very upset. I didn’t want to make her upset and it’s your fault.’
He smiles. ‘It is not my fault that she was emotional. I simply needed to discover a little more about her, that is all.’
Eventually my face goes cold again and my hands go still. It happened last time I took the tablets but then it went away after a few seconds. So I swing my legs round and put my feet on the floor.
‘Then why didn’t you ask her the questions, huh?’
‘She’s trying to get rid of me, Alex,’ he says, turning his head to the doorway. ‘She’s trying to convince you I’m not real.’
But I’ve heard it before. And I decide he’s got a big problem with being a demon and not being able to be seen. Which, I think, is his problem, because if I can see him surely other people can, too.
‘Why do you keep hiding from everybody?’ I say.
And then one second he is scowling at me at the other side of the room and the next he is crouching down beside me, his face close to mine, snarling with little bubbles in the corners of his mouth.
‘I don’t hide,’ he says. ‘Do you think I want to be invisible, you stupid boy? Do you think it’s fun not being seen for what you are or what you can do? How do you think … Max Payne would feel if all his heroic deeds went unnoticed, eh? Or Batman?’
He stands up and walks away. I frown at him.
‘Batman wears a costume,’ I say.
He turns. ‘What?’
‘Batman wears a costume. All the superheroes do, to hide their real identity. It’s part of why they’re superheroes. They don’t want the glory for all the stuff they do. They just want to do good things for people.’ Unlike you, I think.
Ruen stares at me so long and with such wide eyes that I wonder if he’s actually died on the spot and is about to fall over.
‘Ruen?’ I say after a while.
He starts to grin. Then he starts to clap. And then – this is what really shocks me – he walks towards me, rubbing his hands, then he reaches out and ruffles my hair.
‘What a clever boy,’ he says, which is daft really because just then he’s a boy, too. Then he points at me and starts to laugh.
‘Why does everyone think I’m so funny today?’ I say. But Ruen is laughing so much he can’t speak. He walks up to the mirror above the sink and looks at himself. He straightens his back and looks dead chuffed with himself.
‘A costume,’ he says. ‘Or a proxy.’
‘What’s a proxy?’
He turns to face me, still grinning like an eejit.
‘You’re no good to me in here, are you?’
‘What?’
He shakes his head. ‘Never mind. How badly do you want to see your mum?’
‘Very badly,’ I say.
‘Right,’ Ruen says, and clasps his hands together. ‘Follow me.’
I get out of bed and immediately feel like I am on a ship. ‘Steady now,’ Ruen says, and I close my eyes and count the number of bones in an adult ribcage in my head and then I open my eyes and feel better.
‘Grab your clothes,’ Ruen tells me. I stagger to the open locker and pull on my shirt, trousers, shoes and blazer.
‘Ready,’ I say.
Ruen glances at my cap. ‘You might be needing that. And your scarf,’ he says. ‘You’ll catch your death outside. And then what would I do?’ He starts to laugh.
Everybody else on the ward is asleep. At the end of the corridor Ruen holds a finger to his lips and I stop in my tracks, then hide behind a door as a nurse wheels a boy in a chair past me. Ruen gives a slight wave with his hand and I tiptoe after him. Ahead, I see the EXI
T sign. I point at it. He shakes his head and tells me to follow him through a yellow door marked STAFF ONLY. When we get through that door there is a kitchen to my left and a fire exit to my right.
‘Push,’ Ruen says.
I lean against the bar across the door and push. And, easy-peasy, I am outside.
It is pitch-black and the rain is so thick I can hardly see through it. This kind of rain is like chain metal, I think. From here I can see the building that Mum is in, a tall white building with a thin bit at the top that occasionally flashes a blue light at night. It’s about a ten-minute walk to Mum’s building and already I am soaked right through my clothes. I decide to run. I run through the car park and then I see a lady in a long white coat walking towards me, so I duck behind a hedge and take a shortcut through a really muddy patch of grass. I keep the blue light in sight. Then, when the wind makes the rain come down sideways, I take off my coat and hold it around my head.
When I get to the front entrance I am panting like a dog. Ruen appears beside the door.
‘You’ll never get past the front desk looking like that,’ he tells me. ‘Besides, visiting hours are over.’
I frown. I am cold and tired and feel like if I fell over I’d probably stay there until someone stood on me.
‘What should I do, then?’
Ruen shrugs and folds his arms like he couldn’t care less. ‘There is one thing,’ he says finally, inspecting his fingernails like they’re really interesting. ‘But you have to promise to do something for me first.’
I am shivering now and my hair is dripping into my eyes and I can hardly speak. I am so cross with him for telling me to escape and then making me promise to do something else for him.
‘Is it something to do with Anya?’ I ask.
Ruen looks up from his fingernails and nods.
I feel a big wave of anger roll over me and I wrap my arms around my chest to keep warm. I’m shaking like I’m being electrocuted. ‘Get stuffed, loser,’ I say under my breath, because right now I hate his guts, and I turn around and start to walk through the curtains of rain towards my building.
Then Ruen appears right in front of me and I stop. My face is dripping wet and when I look up my eyes feel like someone’s pouring a jug of water into them. He’s Horn Head now, and I’ve never been this close to him when he’s Horn Head. The red horn doesn’t really look like a horn this close – it looks like it’s liquid. I feel sick.
‘It won’t upset Anya,’ he whispers in my head. ‘It’s a gift to her.’
‘A gift?’ I shout. ‘Can’t you see, you tosser – I haven’t got any money! I’m only ten!’ I keep my eyes on the ground and walk past him.
‘Your mother needs you, Alex,’ Ruen says in my head.
I feel a pain in my heart but I keep walking.
But just then, flashes of Mum rise up in my head: the last time I found her, curled up in her own sick on our bathroom floor, her head really limp and her tongue hanging out like a dog’s. The time before that, when I walked into the kitchen and saw her at the sink, and I wondered why she was crying and chopping carrots, but she wasn’t chopping carrots and the sink was full of blood. And the time before that, when I was gagging for the toilet and she wouldn’t answer when I opened the door and she was in the bath, unconscious, her head about to go under the water.
And then I remember her watching me in the kitchen as I tried to make something called gorgonzola and caramelised onion bruschetta and then gave up and made onions on toast.
‘You’re so like him,’ she said, leaning against the door frame.
‘Like who?’
She looked at the food and smiled. ‘Your dad.’
And then I think of coming out of the church that day when we were supposed to be practising for the school Christmas concert. We were singing ‘Away in a Manger’ and I remember I was fed up from standing so long and a teacher let me go to the toilet, but when I got there a big wind was coming through an open door and so I went outside.
On the street outside the church there were lots of shops and people walking along the pavement. I saw a little girl eating crisps on the other side of the road and I thought maybe she’d give me some, but then I saw the policemen and I felt scared and then I saw the blue car. I had just wandered outside, right at the moment my dad arrived, like we were attached by an elastic band and turned up at the same time at the same place. I never told anyone I had seen him, not even Mum. I don’t even think Dad knew I was there. I remember what people said at the policemen’s funeral, that the man who killed them was evil and someone said he should burn and the policemen’s wives were so sad and the little girl would grow up without a daddy.
And then something else rises up in my head, and when it does I know it’s been buried in my brain for ages, like a needle that’s been stuck in a chair and poking people in the bum all that time but they didn’t know what was hurting them.
It’s my dad, shaking something heavy out of a black shiny bag and putting it inside the piano where there should be strings. I remember he was wearing a blue T-shirt and I can see his tattoo on his arm, the one with just letters. I couldn’t read then because I had just started school so I asked him what it said. He told me and I said, ‘What?’
He smiled. ‘It’s a group, Alex. It’s a group of men who believe in freedom.’
‘And killing,’ Mum said from the kitchen.
I was puzzled.
‘Are you in that group?’
My dad put the last thing in the piano and shut the lid. ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘And my dad was, and his dad, and his dad before that.’
In my head there was a big line forming of men I was linked to. Now that link reaches to me, only it’s not something I’m sure I want any more, and it’s like the link has split in two and it feels like I’m splitting down the middle.
I drop to my knees in the mud and start to cry. I cry so hard and the wind is so loud that I am able to scream out all the pain from way down in my belly and I know no one can hear me.
When I open my eyes, Ruen is still there, but he’s back to being the Old Man. I sigh in relief.
‘What sort of gift?’ I ask, wiping my eyes.
‘Follow me,’ he says.
Ruen leads me to a side door at the back of the building where Mum is staying. Another fire exit. I try the door but it is locked.
‘Be patient,’ Ruen says, and steps back. I take a few steps back too and wait at the corner. A few moments later, two nurses come outside. Just as the door swings shut I run forward and catch it. Then I slip inside.
I spot a toilet to my left and go have a pee, then use lots of paper towels to dry out my hair and clothes. By the time I finish I see that Ruen isn’t there. I open the door and look outside.
‘Ruen?’ I hiss.
There’s no answer.
I step into the corridor. Still no sign of him. My fingers wriggle like worms at each other and I feel my neck and cheeks get hot. How am I supposed to find Mum now?
I walk down the corridor, digging my squirmy hands in my pockets and keeping my head down. Nobody seems to be about. My heart is racing and I feel sick.
At the end of the corridor is a list of signs. I scroll down the list and feel very confused. Where is Mum again? Then I see the word Psychiatry and it looks familiar so I follow the arrow.
The arrow takes me down another long corridor, at the end of which are women’s voices. I stop at the corner and wait until I hear the voices stop, then walk very quickly round the corner.
‘Can I help you?’
I freeze. There is a long reception desk right there with the sign PSYCHIATRY hanging above and a blonde fat woman in a nurse’s uniform sitting behind it.
‘Uh,’ I say. I look around for Ruen.
‘Are you lost?’ the woman says. I nod. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ She tuts. She starts to get up from her seat to come around the desk to me.
I see my chance. I know Mum is just down the ward in a room to the right, four doors
down, so I run past the woman and she yells ‘Hey!’ but I keep going until I reach the room. I push against the door but it is locked, so I stand on my tiptoes and look in through the small glass window.
I can see Mum inside. Her yellow hair is spread across the pillow and her face looks thin and she is fast asleep. I pound the door with my fists and yell, ‘Mum!’ but she doesn’t wake up. ‘Mum!’ I yell again. ‘Mum! Mum! Mum! Mum!’
Then all of a sudden there are two men beside me grabbing me by the arms and I yell, ‘Mum! I love you!’ and I see her open her eyes and look around but she doesn’t see me.
I don’t remember much after that. I know I cried and I begged them to let me see Mum and I bit one of the men on the side of his hand and then I ran but they caught me and threatened to thump me if I did it again.
They took me to another reception area where a security guard was waiting and he asked for my address. I told him, but instead of taking me back home to Auntie Bev he took me all the way back to the building I’d come from.
This time, when they put me in my room, they locked the door.
I got into bed, pulled the sheets around me, and shivered and stared for ages.
A long time later, Ruen showed up. He was still the Old Man.
‘Alex,’ he said, smiling as if he’d really missed me or something. I ignored him. He sat down by my feet and looked at me.
‘How was your mother?’
I said nothing.
‘Alex, do you remember that I organised a beautiful home for you and your mother to move into once you both recuperate?’
The Boy Who Could See Demons Page 19