The Boy Who Could See Demons

by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ he said, his voice breaking. The paramedics gave me an epinephrine injection in my thigh, which, he told me, made me open my eyes and stare right at him for a few moments, before sinking back into deep unconsciousness. Ursula shouted something about Alex’s torso. She was leaning over him on the floor, raising his white shirt. There, garish on his pale skin, were several large burn marks on his chest.

  ‘He had a medical examination just this morning,’ Ursula had said. ‘These marks weren’t there.’ With Howard’s help, she tried to revive Alex, but to no avail.

  ‘Is his heart beating?’ Michael had asked.

  Ursula nodded. ‘Very faint.’

  The ambulance arrived a minute later. With an oxygen mask attached to my face, the paramedics carried both Alex and me on stretchers and loaded us into the ambulance as Michael and Ursula watched on behind. Ursula’s secretary Joshua came racing outside. He glanced at Michael before leaning close to Ursula to tell her about a phonecall, and despite Josh’s best efforts at being discreet, Michael heard him clearly: Cindy was dead.

  I sat in silence as Michael broke the news of her passing to me. I watched the thin floral curtains shuffle gently against the windowsill on the far side of the room. I thought of Cindy, a moment from the time I had observed her meeting with Alex. It was when she had showed him her creation in the greenhouse, when she felt proud. Alex had made her laugh and she’d turned to me, her blonde hair flung up and lit golden by the sunlight, her smile wide and easy, her blue eyes young and bright.

  I thought of something she’d asked me when we first met. Do you think there’s ever a chance for a kid that starts out in life like me and Alex did? Cindy’s life had been one long tumble from one foster home to another. Rape, neglect, violence – until she was adopted by Beverly’s mother at the age of fifteen. By then she was already pregnant with Alex, and her chances at a better life had been all but crushed.

  But with Alex, I wasn’t so certain that his chances were up. If anything, I felt assured that, despite everything, Alex had every chance in the world.

  No, not despite. Because of Cindy. Because she loved him, and he knew it.

  Michael began to speak again, telling me the pieces of the puzzle he had been able to put together – a necessary act, I understood, for him to feel resourceful in a challenging situation.

  ‘The peanuts were from this hospital,’ he said angrily, pointing at the floor, as if somehow the City Hospital catering staff should have had some ability to detect the potential of peanuts to be used as deadly weapons. ‘Alex had stored them in his locker, then crushed them up,’ he said. He shrugged and shook his head in bewilderment. ‘I mean, how? Why would he do this?’

  I knew Michael felt to blame for this. He believed he should have seen it coming, that he should have insisted on coming into the therapy room with me.

  ‘How would he have known you would go into shock?’ he said, shifting in his seat, restless with unresolved riddles. I spied traces of soil under his fingernails. His hands looked like he’d spent the last forty-eight hours sowing rhubarb.

  ‘I don’t think Alex intended to kill me,’ I said, my voice no more than a hoarse whisper. Michael looked up sharply.

  ‘It certainly looked like it to me.’

  I shook my head, reaching for my throat. ‘It’s more complicated than that. He remembered what he had repressed so violently, the things he couldn’t understand about his father.’

  I remembered that Michael had not seen the footage of the shooting – that, in fact, he had no idea who Alex’s father was. I would explain it to him, in time. But now, we needed to focus on the facts. Alex had lost his mother. His home. He had witnessed his father’s killing of two men. His psychosis had no doubt been triggered by this event, compounded by his mother’s suicide attempts. It was difficult for me to feel angry with Alex for what he had done. Instead, I needed to build a clear picture of why he had done it. Alex’s future depended on that picture.

  ‘Take me to him,’ I told Michael after several minutes had passed.

  He glanced at a wheelchair on the other side of my bed. Without a word, he stepped forward and helped me settle into it, with the IV at my side, and pushed me to the paediatric unit.

  Alex had been moved earlier that morning from intensive care into a sideroom in the paediatric unit. Another social worker I’d met briefly – Joanna Close, an English woman in her sixties; short, feathery black hair and a grey trouser suit – was sitting outside. She rose to her feet when she saw Michael and me approaching.

  ‘No lasting damage,’ I heard her tell Michael. ‘X-rays of his chest are clear. The doctor wants Alex kept in at least one more night for observation.’

  I asked Michael to wait outside while I spoke with Alex alone. He made to grab my arm as I went inside, then stopped.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I told him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, glancing past me and into the room. ‘Just, after last time …’

  ‘He’s just been moved from intensive care. I don’t think he poses a risk, do you?’

  He sighed and glanced inside the room. Finally, he relented. ‘I’ll be right here.’

  Alex was sitting upright in bed attached to a drip, his torso covered in bandages. As soon as he saw me he melted into deep, shuddering tears. I wheeled myself close, noticing at once the photograph beside his bed of him and his mother some years before: a tight embrace, their arms wrapped right around each other, both of them pulling a face. He saw me glance at it and wiped his eyes with his palms.

  ‘Auntie Bev brought it,’ he said when he’d recovered.

  I hesitated. ‘I’m so sorry about your mum, Alex.’

  He nodded and struggled not to break down again. When he turned back to me, he seemed older, somehow. No longer the nervous, troubled boy I met in the psychiatric unit only two months ago.

  ‘The funeral is on Thursday,’ he said, wiping tears from his cheeks. ‘Will you come?’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  He seemed relieved at this, enlivened by my support. He took a few deep breaths, wincing with each breath. I glanced at the bandages across his chest and stomach.

  ‘What happened there, Alex?’

  He looked down. ‘Ruen did it.’

  ‘Ruen?’

  He raised his head slowly and nodded.

  ‘Can you tell me how he did it?’

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Not really. I think it was because he had such a hold on me. He didn’t want you to make him disappear.’

  ‘Is that what he told you?’

  He looked down again, wrapping an arm around his chest. ‘It’s just something I knew about him. When you’re friends with someone you know things about them without them having to tell you, you know?’

  I nodded. After a moment he looked at me and said, ‘I never meant to hurt you. I’m so sorry.’

  I thought quickly of the moment when I realised what was happening. The twist in my gut. The tightness of my throat. I closed my eyes, thinking how close I came to dying.

  Would I have seen Poppy on the other side?

  ‘Did you understand what you were doing when you put the nuts in my coffee?’ I said carefully.

  He looked deeply ashamed. ‘Ruen said to …’ He began to tell me about Ruen’s revelation that Cindy was dying and his promise to save her if Alex took his own life. The images of Cindy in his mind. I waited until his wounds forced him to stop and take a long, slow breath. ‘I just thought you’d go to sleep,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  ‘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: A_molokova@macneicehouse.nhs.uk

  From: U_hepworth@macneicehouse.nhs.uk

  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?’