“What if he’s telling the truth?” she demands, her lip trembling. “I mean, Alex wouldn’t do that. Would he? He’s so talented and smart and braver than me.” She looks up at me. “He would never do that.”
“If Alex has seen you self-harm, chances are he’ll do it, too.”
My words smash around the room. Cindy’s face crumples and she lets out a long, loose cry. It takes me a moment or two to realize why she is crying: She has never, ever considered the impact of her own illness on her child.
I walk across the room to retrieve a box of tissues. She plucks one out with a trembling hand and holds it to her eyes.
“I want to see him,” she says.
Alex was brought to the hospital later that afternoon. I asked Cindy if it would be okay for me to stay and observe their time together. I expected her to ask why, but it seemed my comment about Alex’s potential self-harming had knocked the fight out of her. I wanted to ensure that I gathered the information I needed to answer these pressing questions: Is there a link between Ruin and Cindy? Or between Ruin and Alex’s father? Is Alex’s hallucination—and indeed, his condition—linked to an incident in the past?
The adult psychiatric unit is close to MacNeice House and is surrounded by a sprawling green lawn dotted with patches of bright flowers, fenced off from the outside world by tall fir trees and an array of greenhouses. One of the nurses suggested Alex and Cindy take a walk outside—hinting at me to provide the necessary medical supervision—and so I carried three coats and an umbrella, in case the fat gray awnings of cloud toppled their load, and ushered us all outside. Cindy was eager to show Alex the result of her horticulture therapy workshop, and so we headed toward the greenhouses.
I let Alex and Cindy walk ahead of me, noticing the way Alex linked his arm around Cindy’s. There was genuine affection between the two, and playfulness; on several occasions Alex made Cindy giggle, tickling her until the giggle became a substantial laugh, at which she thumped him over the head, visibly careful not to hit him too hard. They were almost the same height, mother and son, although Cindy’s frame was starkly bird-like beside his, the bones of her ankles and wrists jutting out like white buttons on her arms. I noticed that they had the same walk.
We reached one of the greenhouses, which was crammed with tomato plants and hanging baskets exploding with lobelias. Alex and Cindy huddled around a toilet bowl outside that someone had filled with bright yellow daffodils. Cindy waved to me and asked me to join them.
“I won a prize,” she told me, her thin face alight. “My first ever.”
“Where did you get the toilet, Mum?” Alex was inspecting the broken back of it and utterly perplexed by its incongruity beside the other plant pots.
“Never mind that, Alex,” Cindy said. She looked up at me again. I saw she was eager to share an achievement. “You’re smart, aren’t you?” she said to me. “Can’t you figure out what I was doing?”
I looked over the arrangement, at the rather haphazard way the daffodils had been planted into the compost, though their fat trumpets indicated they were healthy and being taken care of. A good sign. I noticed she’d painted the word HOPE on the bulge of the toilet.
“Well, you’re making a statement, aren’t you?” I said, winking at Alex. “Even when you’re in the gutter you can become something beautiful.”
Cindy gave a big cheer. “See, Alex? Told you she was smart. Daffodils mean hope. I thought that sticking them in a toilet bowl would be poetic, sort of. Plus they were throwing this out and I thought it would be a waste.”
Alex looked disgusted. “But it’s a toilet, Mum. That’s gross.”
As we headed back to the ward, Cindy put her arm around Alex’s shoulders and leaned her chin on his head, and Alex wrapped his arms tightly around her waist. Both of them had slowed down their pace considerably, until I was forced to stop behind them and pretend to remove a stone from my shoe.
Just as the side entrance came into view, the sky turned from cloudy blue to wet slate. In a matter of seconds, the wind had started to move so fast that all the small white flowers I’d collected from the tall grass flew out of my grasp as if someone had slapped them from my hands. I was about to shout to Cindy and Alex that it was time to go inside when I noticed something very strange. Both of them were gone. In fact, the hospital entrance was no longer in view; nor were the trees, the greenhouses, even the grass that had been at my feet only moments before. Stunned, I stood dumbly in a dark vacuum for a few seconds, rolling through a rapid list of possibilities: fog? a blackout?
Without warning, my surroundings had changed. It was as though I’d been transported into another realm. Instead of being outside I was in a hospital ward sitting in bed, the walls around me blank and white, the only sound a steady bleep from a heart monitor. I started to call out, but instantly I was back outside, Alex and Cindy ahead, ambling toward the entrance. The sky was feathered with white clouds, and all around me was green lawn and bowing trees.
Shaken, I quickly said good-bye. All the way back to MacNeice House I felt on edge, raw with shock.
I canceled a meeting with Harold, Ursula, and Michael, went straight to my apartment, and slept for nine hours straight.
15
THE GREATEST DREAM OF ALL TIME
ALEX
Dear Diary,
A sandwich walks into a bar and says, “a pint of Guinness, mate.” The barman replies, “sorry, we don’t serve food here.”
I have to write really fast ’cos I have a dress rehearsal for Hamlet and Jojo is going crazy about people who turn up late. Good stuff and bad stuff has happened. The good stuff is so good, though, that I’m not even sure I can call the bad stuff bad, it’s just not even important anymore. The first cool thing that happened was that Anya came and told me I could see Mum. I thought it would be a while before I could see her because she’s chilling out and getting her strength back, according to Auntie Bev. But when I saw Mum I couldn’t believe how much better she looked. Her hair had been washed and was shiny and soft and not like pasta that’s been in the fridge for a week. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes didn’t have dark bits under them and she was wearing a long white T-shirt that almost covered all the marks on her arms. It made me feel happy.
“Alex!” Mum said when I walked in, and her voice was normal and she hugged me so hard I coughed. “How have you been?”
Then, before I could tell her about Auntie Bev throwing out all the onions and about the play and how I would love her to come she said: “You know what’s weird? I had this dream about Granny last night and she told me I needed to give you a big hug.”
“Did she tell you to crack my ribs, too?” I said, rubbing my sides from her big bear hug and she laughed but I was serious.
Anya said she’d wait outside and Mum nodded and when Anya had gone she asked me if Anya was asking me anything that bothered me. I thought about Ruen but I didn’t want to say anything to upset her.
“Has Anya asked you anything that bothered you?” I asked her instead.
“No. But my therapist keeps asking about my childhood. All she wanted to know about was my favorite doll.” She made a clicking noise with her tongue then put on a voice as if she was imitating someone. “ ‘Why did you call her Ugly? Why did you dress her in a black dress? Why did you put her facedown when your foster dad came in?’ ”
“Why did you put the doll facedown when your foster dad came in?”
She looked at me funny. “Sorry, Alex,” she said, looking down. “I shouldn’t have let my mouth run off. Sometimes I forget you’re not an old man, you know? How are you, sweetheart?”
I shrugged. “When are you coming home?”
She bit her lip and ran her fingers through her hair. It was starting to go black again at the roots and I was about to tell her that if she came home I could help her put the sky-blue stuff in it to turn the roots yellow but she said:
“I don’t know.”
“Woof misses you.”
“Woo
f misses me?”
I nodded. She leaned forward and looked at me very closely and I touched my face in case I had a black mark on it or something.
“You’ve never … hurt yourself, have you, honey?”
I felt my cheeks turn hot. “Why do you ask that?”
“I just wondered if what I’d … I mean, you’re different from me, aren’t you? You’re Alexander the Great, aren’t you?”
Just then I had a flash in my brain of someone else saying the words Alexander the Great, and I could see our living room but from way up high. For a second I remembered my Dad saying Alexander the Great! and I was on his shoulders and he was bouncing me up and down, and then the memory was gone.
Mum started to say something but then a nurse knocked loudly on the door and came into the room.
“Sorry for interrupting,” she said though she didn’t look sorry. “Trudy thinks you should get out today, Cindy. Maybe take Alex here to the greenhouse, show him what you did with the horticulturalist?”
Mum nodded. “Okey dokey. Come on, sweetie, let me show you what you can do with a toilet.”
I didn’t see Ruen all day after that. I remembered he said that Anya would tell me that we’d be moving house by the end of the day, but she didn’t and I thought I’m definitely, definitely going to tell him I don’t want to be friends next time I see him. But he didn’t turn up, which was nice because I got to go back home that night and Woof licked my face and whined as if he’d really missed me and slept on my bed all night.
And then Anya came to see me this morning instead of the afternoon because it’s Saturday. She couldn’t stop smiling. I asked her what was wrong and she told me to sit down at the table, which I did, and she started taking lots of things out of her briefcase and spreading them across the table.
“This,” she said, “is your new home.”
I could not believe it. I watched her arrange photographs of our new house in front of me and Auntie Bev came in and asked all the questions I wanted to ask but couldn’t, like does Cindy know? How did this happen? Where is it? When can they move in? Is this for real?
Anya kept smiling and bouncing on the balls of her feet like she was moving, too. I think it was because she was just really happy for this to happen even though she didn’t even know that it was my Greatest Dream of All Time. Auntie Bev said things like, “well thank the elephant in the sky for that, then, this place is falling apart,” and “is it seriously a council property? Looks stunning.”
“And there’s more,” Anya said. “The reason that some of the photographs look as though the rooms aren’t finished is because this is a brand-new property.”
“Brand new?” I said, and I tried to think of the last time I had something that was brand new.
“Yes,” Anya said. “No one else has ever lived there before.”
“… my pencil case,” I said, because it was brand new. Anya was still talking about how it meant I could have a bedroom that no one would have had before and so there would be no old clothes or rubbish for me to have to throw out.
“You can even choose your own wallpaper,” she said, her smile growing wider. “And the front door can be whatever color you want it to be. The council are keen to ensure their residents have proprietorship over their accommodation.”
“What?” I said, because this made no sense.
Anya laughed. The sound was like bells and made me laugh even though nothing was funny. She turned to Auntie Bev, who was smiling and kept folding and unfolding her arms as if she didn’t know what to do with them.
“They’re calling the street Peace Street,” Anya said to Auntie Bev, and they both found this really funny and laughed for about a decade. Apparently the politicians had knocked down one of the old streets where they used to barricade people in their houses and have riots so they bulldozed the whole area and hired a poet to rename all the new streets and write a poem that would be carved onto a wall instead of a mural with gunmen.
“Which poem?” Auntie Bev asked.
“It’s called ‘Belfast Confetti,’ ” Anya said and she pulled out a page and read it out loud.
Suddenly as the riot squad moved in, it was raining exclamation marks,
Nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys. A fount of broken type. And the explosion.
Itself—an asterisk on the map. This hyphenated line, a burst of rapid fire …
I was trying to complete a sentence in my head but it kept stuttering,
All the alleyways and side streets blocked with stops and colons.
I know this labyrinth so well—Balaclava, Raglan, Inkerman, Odessa Street—
Why can’t I escape? Every move is punctuated. Crimea Street. Dead end again.
A Saracen, Kremlin-2 mesh. Makrolon face-shields. Walkie-talkies. What is
My name? Where am I coming from? Where am I going? A fusillade of question-marks.
“It’s by a poet named Ciaran Carson,” Anya said. “And they’re carving it in letters that will be three feet tall.”
I looked at the pictures for ages and ages as Auntie Bev and Anya talked. The house was big at the front and didn’t have other houses at either side and it had a garden. It had a big kitchen, which I knew would make Mum happy. There was a driveway at the front in case we ever got a car and didn’t want to leave it on the street in case someone slashed the tires. I thought of what it would be like if we got a car and all the places we could go to, like Helen’s Bay and portrush and the Giant’s Causeway. My mind filled with so many thoughts and wishes that I got a headache.
“Well, Alex,” Anya said to me at last. “What do you think?”
I didn’t say anything, not because I wasn’t thinking anything but because I was thinking too much, and I thought that if I opened my mouth all the words would just explode out like streamers from a party popper.
“You don’t seem very excited, Alex,” said Auntie Bev, and I saw Anya reach out and touch her arm as if she shouldn’t have said that. Auntie Bev said “sorry” with her mouth but no noise and then turned to say something else to me, but I stood up, still looking down at the pictures.
“There’s something very important I have to do,” I said. I walked out of the room, which I knew worried Anya and Auntie Bev because they looked at each other. When I reached the stairs I remembered something and went back into the room.
“Thank you,” I said to Anya, and then she asked me loads more questions about Ruen and about demons and whether I could see angels.
“There are demons everywhere,” I said.
“Are there any here now?” she asked. I looked at the fat man who’d appeared above her again. Sometimes I could only see a bit of him, like his toe or his belly with the belly button I could probably fit my head in. His eyes were black and when he grinned at me I saw his teeth were, too.
“Alex?”
I pointed up at him ’cos I could see all of him now. “He’s fat,” I said.
She looked puzzled. “Who is?”
“Your demon.”
She laughed. “I have a demon?”
He was stretching his arms out now like he’d had a really long nap, and the blanket that was covering up his penis almost slipped off. I looked away.
“Can you tell me what his name is?” Anya was saying. I looked back at him but he was disappearing.
I shrugged. So she asked me what demons looked like and why I thought I could see them and I was still so excited about the house that I can’t even remember what I said. It was like there was a film of the house in my head and I could see every room really clearly and it was beautiful, just beautiful. Then she asked me something crazy that made the film stop suddenly and I was back in my own living room.
“Alex, have you ever been involved in a terrorist attack?”
I asked her what she meant.
“Like a bomb scare? Or a shooting? Did you ever get hurt in a riot, maybe?”
I thought about it. Granny’s first husband died in a bomb and last year someone set a ca
r on fire and rolled it down our street. So I told her that.
Anya nodded and wrote all this down. “What about a policeman, Alex? Did you ever see a policeman get hurt?”
I felt sick and shook my head.
She looked at me very closely. “Are you sure?”
I saw the policeman’s face in my head, his mouth curling in a funny way as his head snapped toward me. I opened my mouth to say something but then I felt my hands make fists and I knew it was wrong to say anything, it was wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Deep breath,” Anya was saying, and when I opened my eyes I had both arms wrapped around me very tightly. When I felt normal again I said, “I saw people on TV at a policeman’s funeral. They were crying.”
She nodded. “Did you feel bad for those people?”
I started to cry. Anya reached out and touched my arm. “It’s okay,” she said. “Did you see what happened to the policeman? Did he get hurt?”
I nodded and wiped my eyes.
“Alex, was your Daddy a policeman?”
“I want to go lie down now,” I said.
“Did you see something on TV, Alex? About a policeman?”
Her voice was starting to sound very far away. I stood up and my legs felt like they were made of melting ice cubes.
“We’ll talk later,” Anya called after me, and I hoped she would just forget everything she had asked.
I ran upstairs to my bedroom. For some reason I knew Ruen would be there. As soon as I opened the door Woof ran out barking, then hid behind my legs and whimpered. I leaned down and stroked his head and I could feel he was shaking. I stood up and walked into my room.
“Hello, Ruen,” I said. He was Ghost Boy and was sitting in the chair by the closet as usual, his arms folded tightly like he was in a right huff.
I sat down on the bed and waved at Woof to come in, but he stood in the doorway looking at Ruen and growling. After a bit, he whimpered and ran downstairs. I thought of the photos Anya had showed me.
I looked at Ruen. “I want to tell you something.”
Boy Who Could See Demons Page 14