The Moon King

by Siobhán Parkinson

  Then they tried all the churches, because some of them were open in the evenings, and they thought a youngster might feel safe in a place like that, but there was no sign of Ricky.

  When they’d exhausted all the indoor possibilities, they started looking on the streets, peering into parked cars and vans and lorries, down alleyways, in doorways, behind the hoardings on vacant sites. They even looked in a skip, pushing aside a roll of damp carpet and a couple of lengths of metal piping. Terry knew of a few derelict houses, some of which were used as squats, and they did the rounds of those too. They met a few people in the squats, some of whom were friendly, though they looked pretty battered, but nobody admitted to seeing a kid as young as Ricky. They tried under the railway bridge, where a gang of teenagers was gathering early for a cider party and in the public toilets in the square, where an old man washing his feet in the washbasin gave them a sour look. They walked along the riverbank and poked in the long grass and the bedraggled hedgerows, but there was no sign of Ricky.

  They went back towards the busier end of town then and looked in another skip and on the backs of lorries. They even did a round of the pubs, though neither of them could imagine Ricky being let into any of them. The pubs were quite full, because people had come in for a drink on their way home from work and there was music in some of them. They tried the loos and cloakrooms too.

  Then Terry remembered that the local dramatic society was holding a dress rehearsal of their annual play in the town hall, which meant that that building would be open, so they drove around to there and interrupted the rehearsal to ask the actors if they’d seen a small, thin, scared boy, but nobody had. They tried the store-rooms and dressing rooms backstage, and the producer even let them into a cavernous space under the stage, which was full of orchestral instruments and trunks of theatrical costumes, but to no avail. Disconsolately, the two men drove back along the dark streets, peering at every figure they spotted on the pavement. The early show at the cinema had started by then, but Tomo parked the van opposite so they could have a good view of anyone sneaking in late. No Ricky.

  They pulled in at a phone box, to ring home and report no progress. ‘I think it’s time to go ahead and raise the alarm,’ Tomo said to his wife. ‘Ring Mrs O’. And the guards, I suppose.’

  With a heavy heart, Tomo returned to the van.

  ‘What about the hospital?’ Terry asked.

  ‘You mean he might have had an accident?’ said Tomo. ‘I never thought of that.’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s a possibility, but did somebody say his mother was in hospital? Maybe he went looking for her.’

  ‘You could be on to something,’ said Tomo, changing gear and heading for the hospital, on the outskirts of town.

  But there was no sign of Ricky there, either prowling the wards or in the small casualty unit, and the only small boy who’d been treated all day was somebody called Gary who’d been in with a dislocated shoulder. The staff all knew him, because he was always dislocating his shoulder.

  ‘What about his home?’ Terry asked as they got back into the van.

  ‘The social worker will have somebody out there looking for him as soon as she hears,’ said Tomo. ‘There’s no point in our going there too and complicating matters. It’s miles away, anyway. I can’t imagine him getting there, unless he got a lift. I hope to God he hasn’t been hitching, though.’

  Terry nodded grimly. They both knew the dangers there were for kids on their own.

  After some more fruitless searching, Terry went home. It was getting late, and he hadn’t eaten yet. But Tomo kept on doggedly looking, looking.

  The evening wore on and started to turn to night, and there was no sign of Ricky anywhere in the town. As the early show at the cinema ended, Tomo examined the streams of people coming out of it. No sign of a small lad creeping out among the grown-ups. He stood on a corner for a while, watching the queue forming for the later show, but there were no children to be seen. They were all at home doing their homework or getting ready for bed by now.

  Tomo paced the main streets again and again, his hands thrust into his pockets and his collar turned up against the cold. He met a garda patrol car and hailed it, to tell them, but they knew already.

  ‘We’re going to do a circle of the town and try the barns and byres in the outlying farms, Mr Kelly,’ said Guard Lynch. ‘There’s a few of our lads on foot already on the lookout. If we don’t find him by morning, we’ll have to mount a formal search.’

  If we don’t find him by morning! Tomo shuddered at the thought, but he just nodded to the guard and said ‘Right, Guard, good night now,’ and the patrol car purred off down the street, its blue light flashing occasionally.

  CHAPTER 25

  Rosheen’s Nightmare

  Rosheen was truly worried by now. She sat in a tiny darkened room at the back of the house, supposedly watching television. Mammy Kelly deliberately put the TV in the pokiest and most uncomfortable room, because she thought TV viewing should be confined to programmes you wanted to see so desperately you were prepared to put up with any discomfort to watch them.

  The children had all crowded into the TV room this evening, but Rosheen couldn’t follow the programme: it was just a succession of meaningless images and booming sounds to her. She sat in the gloom, her eyes prickling with unshed tears, imagining the things that might have happened to Ricky. He’d been gone a good three hours, and his disappearance was officially a crisis by now. Mrs O’Loughlin was discussing the situation with Mammy Kelly, and Guard Lynch had called in to take a description.

  Ricky might have gone home, Rosheen thought. The guard had asked something about that when he was here. She didn’t know where Ricky’s home was. All she knew was that his mother was in hospital. Maybe she was home now, and maybe she was glad to see him. That would be nice, a happy ending. But somehow, that didn’t really seem to fit. It was like doing a jigsaw and having a piece that is almost the perfect shape for an awkward gap, but no matter how you turn it around and try to ease it in, it just doesn’t quite slip into place. She didn’t know much about how these things worked, but she knew Ricky couldn’t just run home and it would all be OK.

  She hardly dared to think of the other things that might be happening to him. He might have run off into town and be hanging around the streets, cold and hungry, looking for a doorway to sleep in, terrified in case the police might find him, or that drug-pushers or bad people might get hold of him. He might have been kidnapped by a gang of criminals and be all tied up with tape over his mouth in the boot of a car. He might have dashed out on the road in a panic and been run over by a hit-and-run driver and be lying bleeding to death in a ditch. He might have been abducted by aliens and taken to another galaxy and be being debriefed right at this very moment by the alien chieftain – not that they would get much out of Ricky. Anything might have happened to him!

  And the worst part of it was, no matter where he was, he probably really believed what Helen had said, that he was going to be sent away, that the Kellys didn’t want him. But that wasn’t true. Rosheen was sure Mammy Kelly and Tomo wanted him. She’d seen them watching him with careful, worried looks. She’d seen how they made space for him when the other children crowded round and how they spoke quietly together sometimes when he left the room. She’d watched Mammy Kelly’s smile growing when she bent over his shoulder to look at one of his pictures, her hand firmly on his shoulder, and she’d heard Tomo carrying on those cheerful, one-sided conversations, to which Ricky’s only contribution was the occasional nod or shy smile.

  Fergal liked him too, and Lauren. She knew by the way they picked him for teams when they were playing games. Thomas and Seamus didn’t take too much notice of him, but they threw things at him and kicked his ankles when they passed him on the stairs or in the hall, and with them, that counted as affection, and when they played football up and down the garden before tea they shouted at him and passed the ball to him. The younger ones took him totally for granted and as
ked him to tie up their shoelaces for them or to mind their teddies when they were busy with other things. Billy had taken a special shine to him, crawling around after him sometimes and grabbing the cuffs of his jeans with his plump, sticky fingers, though Ricky didn’t seem to notice. Helen was the only one who went out of her way to make things difficult for him.

  And Rosheen herself, well she… she supposed she loved him, really, though she hadn’t thought of it like that before. She felt her face getting hot thinking those words, but it was true, she did. If loving somebody is worrying about them when they were unhappy and being glad to see them when you come home from school and them making you smile just thinking about them, well then, yes, she loved Ricky. Oh dear! This time a tear really did trickle down the side of Rosheen’s nose and she dabbed at it quietly with the cuff of her shirt.

  Her head felt suddenly full and aching and her whole body felt weary, as if she’d been doing very hard work all day, digging the garden or cycling uphill. Her limbs ached and her bones felt heavy. She closed her eyes against the flickering dark of the TV room and rested her head back against the armchair. Maybe if she could just doze off for a few minutes, she would feel better. It felt better already to have her eyes closed and not to have to follow the movements on the screen. The noise of the TV sounded more distant, like underwater burblings.

  Lulled by the sounds of the television, Rosheen fell asleep, her mouth dropping open and her chin falling onto her chest. She woke with a start a few times, dreaming that she was falling off trains or into a hole. She closed her mouth when she woke up but it soon dropped open again and eventually she drifted into a deeper sleep.

  This time, she had a more elaborate dream. She was searching, searching, searching for Ricky, climbing all the stairs to his room and calling his name. She opened his wardrobe and out jumped a giant frog, as big as a calf, and shouted ‘Tribberr! Tribberr!’ right in her ear. She started to run down the stairs and the giant frog came bounding behind her. She ran and ran, but her legs weren’t moving, she was always on the same step of the stairs, no matter how hard she ran, no matter how high she kicked her heels, and all the time the frog was shouting ‘Tribb-err! Tribb-err!’ in its deep base voice, so that it seemed to sound in her chest.

  Suddenly she was in the garden, running still, running, running, and Ricky was there ahead of her. She could just see his back, his spiky little shoulder blades showing through his thin jacket. ‘Ricky!’ she called. ‘Wait, it’s me,’ but Ricky ran on and on and she couldn’t catch up with him, though she kept glimpsing him, always ahead. Then she was in the attic room, sitting on the moon chair. ‘I shouldn’t be here,’ she thought. ‘This is Ricky’s chair. I shouldn’t be sitting here. I can’t be the moon king. I must get him. I must find him. If I don’t, Mrs O’Loughlin will put him in a children’s home and Helen will get him and … Oh!!’

  The tailor’s dummy with the lampshade hat suddenly leant over, took off her hat and leered at Rosheen with the round, shiny face of Helen. Rosheen screamed and screamed. She screamed so loudly she woke herself up and then she screamed some more, because when she opened her eyes, she was looking straight into the round, shiny face of Helen.

  ‘Rosheen! Rosheen! Wake up!’ Helen was hissing at her. ‘Stop screaming. You’re dreaming. It’s just getting to the exciting part.’

  Rosheen looked wildly around. She was sitting in a chair, but it was a lumpy old armchair that had been relegated to the TV room and the face looming at her out of the semi-darkness was Helen’s. She shook herself.

  ‘What? What exciting part?’ she asked.

  ‘In the movie,’ said Helen. ‘And close your mouth. You’re dribbling.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Rosheen and wiped her chin with her cuff. It was true. She had dribbled.

  Rosheen lay back against the chair, still paralysed with fright, for a few moments, still half-caught in the nightmare. At last she managed to unglue her fingers from each other and bring her hand up to her face. Her hair was damp with sweat, and her clothes were sticking to her body. She combed her shaking fingers through her hair and smoothed it behind her ears. Then she tried to concentrate on the film. But it didn’t do any good. No good at all.

  CHAPTER 26

  The Stranger

  As soon as Rosheen had gone to get the food, Ricky left the pigeon shed. He knew she’d be back in a few minutes and he had to get away immediately, or she’d only stop him. He had to get away, before they came after him. Ricky didn’t have a clear idea any more what it was that he was afraid of, but his instinct was to run and run and run.

  It was almost dark as he slipped out the front gate. He didn’t know where he was going, but he didn’t care, as long as it was away from the town. So he headed off away from the lights, towards the countryside. Maybe he could find an old barn or something to sleep in.

  He knew he was heading in the right direction, into the country, because after a mile or so the houses started to thin out and there were no streetlights any more and no footpath. He could smell the cold, fresh smell of fields and he could hear the sounds of animals rustling and munching and breathing in the darkness.

  Ricky was scared. He was scared of the dark, he was scared of the animals he could hear around him in the fields, he was scared of the occasional cars that sped past, casting a blaze of light in front of them and forcing him to crouch in the ditch, partly to avoid being knocked down and partly to avoid being seen. Most of all he was scared of being caught and of being sent home.

  Also, he was cold and he was starting to get hungry. He’d missed his tea. He had an apple in his pocket, he remembered, left over from goodness knows when. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it. He should really save it, as he was bound to get even hungrier later in the evening, but by then, he reasoned, a watery old thing like an apple wouldn’t be much good to him. He might as well eat it now. Without stopping to argue with himself any more about it, he bit into the apple. The skin was wrinkled – the apple had been in his pocket for some days – and the bite of it was cold against his teeth, but the juice ran sweet and delicious and he enjoyed it.

  Tossing the core into the ditch, Ricky trudged on. Now that he’d eaten his only piece of food, he felt even hungrier than he had felt beforehand. Also, there was nothing more to occupy his thoughts except his sorry situation. He wondered about his mother, whether she was still in hospital or whether she’d been sent home by now. He hadn’t known she was in hospital, until somebody mentioned it. She wasn’t in hospital when he’d left home. Mrs O’Loughlin had explained that his mother ‘needed a break’ and that was why he was going away. She’d said his mam might be able to have him back when ‘things were better at home’. He hadn’t really understood what that meant, but he was glad to be going away for a while, where he wouldn’t have to live with Ed, although he knew he’d miss his mam.

  Ed wasn’t always mean to him, he had to admit that, sometimes he was nice, sometimes he bought him sweets and once he’d brought a video home for him, though it was one Ricky’d seen before; but he got very mad sometimes and then he started roaring at him and sometimes he hit him and it hurt, and then Ricky’s mam would cry and cry. Ricky didn’t know which was worse, being hit or hearing his mam cry. He wished she wouldn’t cry, but he wished she would stop Ed hitting him too. He and his mam used to be such great friends, before Ed came. Now she was always upset about something, and worried about him annoying Ed, though he tried not to, and things weren’t the same.

  He wished they could have the old days back again, but his mam said that a boy needed a father and she needed a man, and he should try to make the best of it. He did try, but he didn’t think he needed a father that badly.

  Thinking about home made him fidgety, and being fidgety made him walk faster, and walking faster made him warm up a bit and also the effort of it kept his mind off feeling hungry, so he kept it up, walking faster and faster, and concentrating on walking fast gave him something to do.

  He must have been c
oncentrating very hard on keeping up the pace, because he didn’t notice that he was no longer in the countryside until he was almost in the town. He wondered what town it could be. Could he have walked all the way to the next town already? Or had he made a half-circle around the outskirts and arrived back near where he’d started out? Yes, he thought he had, because he recognised this street, he was almost sure. It led into the centre.

  Part of him was cross with himself for having arrived in town, because of the lights and everything, but another part of him was glad about it, because it was nice not to be alone in the countryside with just the cows munching in the fields and the cars streaking past. He allowed himself to slow down and look around a bit.

  His attention was caught by a bakery shop with a brightly lit window, full of goodies. He stopped and stared in at the things to eat, his mouth watering and his tummy rumbling.

  Cake shop here, look Froggo, oh, all cakes and doughnuts. Chocolate cake. Happy Birthday to You! Muffins. Jammy cakes. Creamy. Buns. Oh! Face in window! Shoo, Spiderboy! Just looking, just looking. Run, Spiderboy, run.

  Ricky ran the length of the street and dodged around the corner to the next street.

  Run, Spiderboy, run, run, run. Heart thumpety-thump, thumpety-thump, thumpety- thump. Must – stop, can’t – breathe, side sore. Oh-oh-oh. Stop heart, stop, slow down, let breathe. Oh, oh, oh. Side sore. Stand still, just breathe, just breathe.

  Spiderboy tired. Like sit down now. No chairs here in street. All people, people everywhere, and cars. Everything hurry, hurry. Everybody go home now, not Spiderboy, Spiderboy no home now. Spiderboy want Mam.