He looked up. He actually looked a bit nervous, like I was going to tell him to go away. The knot that Anya had made in my stomach started to get smaller and I smiled at him.
“I want to say thank you,” I whispered.
“You want to thank me?”
“Yes,” I said. I stood up then, feeling better by the second. After a few minutes I was bouncing up and down, thinking about our house. “Thank you thank you thank you! Our house is fan-flipping-tastic! How did you do it? Where did you find it?”
His mouth hung open a bit but he didn’t answer. I stopped jumping and started to cry again. He looked very confused. I sat down on the floor and held my face. My head felt like it was going to burst.
“I’m really, really sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be ungrateful or horrible. I just …” Really quickly my heart went from feeling ripped up like an old newspaper to feeling really warm, as if someone was hugging it. When I looked up, Ruen had vanished.
“Ruen?”
There was no one in the room but all of a sudden it seemed to fill with light, as if the sun had walked inside, and there was a smell of strawberries. I didn’t know what was happening. I just felt happy. And for some reason I thought of Granny, which made me cry again because I hadn’t thought about her for ages. This would make Granny happy, too, I decided, Mum and me moving into a new place. I was really, really young when she died but I remember her begging Mum to move into her house because she didn’t like the thought of us being alone. She used to shout at our neighbors, too, and they wouldn’t even shout back, they were so scared of her.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew I was in bed with all the blankets over me and it was no longer sunny. I looked over at the chair and saw Ruen sitting there. “Where did you go?” I said, but he didn’t answer.
I rolled upright. All the pictures of the house came back into my mind and I started smiling again.
“Ruen, I don’t even know enough words to say thank you for this.”
“You don’t?”
“There aren’t even enough words in the whole of the dictionaries in the whole world to tell you how grateful I am. In fact, I’m more grateful than a whole field full of grated cheese!”
He looked at me as I started going on about grated carrots and great big sausages and Alexander the Grateful. He wasn’t smiling his Alex Is Stupid smile but I didn’t care.
“How about showing me how grateful you are?” he said.
I stopped laughing. “Okay. I’m grateful this much,” I said, stretching out my arms. “No, this much,” and I ran to one side of the room and slapped the wall and then ran to the other side and slapped the other wall, “times a billion.”
Ruen stood up. “Can I make a suggestion?”
I nodded. He looked around. “Find yourself a pen and paper.”
I searched my closet for my sketch pads, then eventually found one under my pillow. The pen I found had been chewed up by Woof but after a few minutes I found a felt-tip pen in my sock drawer.
“I’m ready,” I said.
Ruen sat down again and made that triangle with his fingers, the way he always does when he’s deep in thought.
“I’d like you to write down the following questions. And when I tell you, I’d like you to ask them to Anya.”
“Okay,” I said, and he started to talk.
16
THE BITTER SIDE OF FREEDOM
ANYA
The weather has taken a turn for the better and I’ve started spending lunchtimes sitting on the grass in front of the city hall, watching new blood circulating through Belfast’s veins. It’s still stunning to me to see my homeland so transformed, to see faces from all over the world walking through its streets. The world has remembered Northern Ireland, and for the first time since I moved back I feel assured that my decision was the right one. I considered coming back home to Belfast when Poppy was about to enter primary school in Edinburgh. On the day that I had to decide on which school she was to attend, two car bombs exploded at an army barracks in Lisburn, about ten miles away from Belfast. The second bomb was deliberately targeted at medical staff treating those wounded from the first bomb. Poppy and I stayed in Edinburgh.
Still, my return home this time has coincided with the beginnings of real peace in this land. Better yet, old friendships I thought I had forever crippled by my move to Scotland have proved stronger than ever. My best friend, Fi, insists on crossing the Albert Bridge every lunchtime to catch up with me, determined to make sure I stay put in Belfast this time around.
I arrive at the city hall on the dot of noon after a morning spent talking with a new patient’s parents about their son’s dissociative identity disorder. A handsome, polite thirteen-year-old, Xavier is heir to his father’s multimillion-pound fortune, excelling at private school, and a national chess champion. The problem is, Xavier has twenty-two different identities—a creation of personas usually developed in the wake of abuse or trauma, or chemical imbalance, and a very disturbing illness for those who are close to the patient. The personalities can be of various ages, genders, temperaments, dialects, and disposition. Xavier’s identities are becoming increasingly difficult about coexisting in his mind, and some of them are severely depressed. He has no history of suffering physical or sexual abuse, no drug problem. He has a loving, supportive family, who are heartbroken to learn that their beautiful boy is extremely ill. Cases such as his remind me that the biological factors of mental health are foremost, and that urgent medical intervention is necessary. Michael, of course, would disagree.
I spread my coat on the grass, tuck my legs behind me, and nibble my sushi. Ten minutes later my phone bleeps with a text message.
Meeting with the boss pushed ahead—sorry honey! Meet up tomorrow? Will bring CAKE! Fi xx
Ten minutes later, as I get up to leave, I spy Michael sitting cross-legged on the grass beside the Titanic Memorial. He is wearing a white polo shirt instead of his standard bottle-green sweater. He sees me approaching and jumps to his feet, scattering a package of macadamia nuts.
“Dr. Molokova,” he exclaims. “Ursula’s stretching the leash a bit far today, isn’t she?”
“Can I join you?” I say.
He looks around him. “I’m alone, aren’t I? Have a seat.” Sitting, he pats the space on the grass beside him. I hesitate, recalling the tension between us at the review meeting. Still, I am anxious to ask him about demons and the supernatural dimensions that Alex invokes continually in constructing his fantasies. Michael has mentioned that he trained as a priest, before having a breakdown of conscience and switching to a career in social work. I think there’s more to it than that, but I don’t ask. I sink down on a spot a little farther from Michael than he had indicated. The grass is warm and soft. For a moment, the sensation is so intense that I want to fall asleep.
“Would you like one?” Michael holds the bag of nuts in my direction.
“Are you trying to kill me?” I hold out my talisman and give it a jiggle.
He rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah. Allergies. What, do you break out in a rash?”
“Something like that.”
He looks at me intently, carefully folding the plastic bag neatly into eighths, before slipping it into his shirt pocket. “No, seriously. How bad is it?”
I take a breath, recalling the last time I experienced anaphylactic shock. I was newly qualified as a child psychiatrist, attending a symposium at Cambridge for the British Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. I hadn’t had a reaction since I was in my teens, and so I’d been careless. The chocolate cake had ground hazelnuts in it, the chef admitted later. No more than a handful. Still, that delicious slice of chocolate cake was enough to start a reaction in just minutes. First the familiar tingling sensation around my gums, then into my teeth. Dizziness. It was the metallic taste in my mouth that made me start to panic. But by the time I tapped the person at the table next to me to tell them to phone a doctor, my airways had swollen so badly I could barely
breathe.
I tell all this to Michael. When I’m finished, he unzips his briefcase, takes out a packet of antibacterial wipes, and scrubs his hands. “Just in case,” he says.
I laugh. “I wanted to ask you about some of the religious undertones of Alex’s descriptions,” I say carefully. “Do you have a minute?”
He nods, his eyes lingering on my talisman. “Shoot.”
“Okay, so I’ve treated a handful of kids who’ve claimed to see demons, angels, what have you, but none of them has ever described the spiritual world with the depth that Alex has. There’s a specificity to his descriptions that I need to explore. You’re Catholic, aren’t you?”
“Recovering,” says Michael with a wink. “Doesn’t make me an expert but I’ll see what I can do. Define specificity.”
“Alex told me that Ruin is a Harrower.”
“A Harrower?” Michael repeats, frowning.
I tell him about my meeting with Alex a few days previously.
“You say Ruin is a demon, Alex,” I had asked gently. “What does that mean, exactly? Does that mean he’s bad? Does he work for Satan?”
Alex had glanced to a spot next to the window, leaning toward it as if he was receiving instructions. “Of course, I’ve seen a similar kind of attention to imaginary friends before,” I tell Michael now. “But it was what he said next that astonished me. I mean, he’s ten.”
“What did he say?”
I reach into my pocket and bring out my mobile phone. “I recorded it,” I tell Michael, hitting the PLAY tab on the screen. In seconds, Alex’s voice is audible over the blare of city traffic. He speaks slowly, stopping often.
“A Harrower is a job title bestowed upon the kind of demon that’s closest to the top of Hell’s hierarchy.” He pauses to take another attempt at pronouncing hierarchy. He continues. “After which is Satan and his advisers. Many demons are tempters, like worker bees, assigned the task of fishing impromptu ideas and suggestions in the rivers of human weakness, hoping someone will take a bite, but the more educated and experienced demons carry out the tasks of developing temptations into hobbies, habits. Into small axes that will eventually fell the whole tree.”
There is a pause as I let Alex recover from this wordy description.
“Why a tree?” I say.
Alex pauses, then attempts another metaphor.
“The ultimate goal of a demon is to take away choice. Choice makes for a very messy universe. Kind of like a garden that is left unattended for all the weeds to scatter wherever they want. Choice leads to all the bad stuff in our world. So we want to stop it.”
“We?” I ask.
I remember how Alex had glanced at the spot next to the window again. “Sorry, I was just repeating what Ruin said. Shall I continue?”
I make a note of the we and ask him to go on. He coughs loudly.
“We see the removal of choice as a noble purpose. Every demon’s existence is dedicated to the fulfillment of his or her role, for which he or she trains for hundreds or even thousands of mortal years. Every demon who has any sort of role in the human realm, even a role as menial as tempting or discouraging, is a scientist, steeped in millennia of knowledge on human frailty. If a demon fails to achieve his or her purpose at any time, the punishment is severe.” Alex stops. “That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?” he says to the spot by the window.
“What is?” I ask. He turns back to me.
“If a demon fails, he’s chained to the bottom of a pit a billion miles beneath the sun for a hundred years, and then he has to do his training all over again.”
I nod. “I’d say that’s harsh.” I refer to my notes. “What is a Harrower?” This term clearly has great importance for Alex, and I want to know all the meanings he has attached to it.
Alex looks down, as if listening, then returns his gaze to me.
“What is it, Alex?”
“Ruin wants me to repeat his own words, as if he’s talking now. Is that okay?”
I nod and watch him carefully.
“ ‘I am a Harrower. My job is to go in after the barriers have been broken, after the action has been taken, even after regret has sunk its fangs deep into memory. And then I rake the soul until it is ripe for the seeds of doubt and hopelessness for which no human language has adequate lexicon. I could give you a thousand translations of anguish in the various tongues of the human realm, because all of them differ, and yet none of them comes close to capturing its complexity. This is because there is no translation for the kind of work I perform. Nobody needs to be taken to Hell to experience it. We just grow despair inside the soul until it becomes a world in and around a human.’ ”
Alex takes another breath, his shoulders relaxed, his eyes flitting across the room as if he is bored. Then he continues.
“ ‘Harrowing is an essential part of cultivating the soul to reject the idea of choice. Contrary to popular opinion, the soul is not like smoke on water; it is somewhere between liquid and metal, like the earth’s core. When one strokes it, grooves are made, impressions formed. The soul can only be removed by God, that is true; but when the door is opened, when the path is made clear for my entrance, I can mold that slick substance into countless shapes and create hollows that channel through to eternity.
“ ‘There is much waiting around in this job. In order to do my work effectively, I must watch as other demons perform the complex tasks of analyzing, tempting, suggesting, then deftly plucking away the scales of human realization until remorse and horror pave the way for my entrance. It’s no joyride. I am virtually alone, and there is no one to applaud the work I achieve. There is only the sight of a human falling deeper and deeper within themselves, toppling through the distances created by my grooves and hollows.’ ”
When I am sure that Alex has finished, I hit the PAUSE and SAVE buttons on my phone. There is nothing more I want to ask at this point. I need time to process the information that has been given. Suddenly Alex says:
“Now shall I ask her the questions?”
He is speaking to the empty space by the window, not me. Still, I say:
“What questions?”
Alex nods. “Never mind. He doesn’t want to ask you just yet.”
I smile and thank Alex—and Ruin—for their time.
“Ruin says you are most welcome, my lady,” says Alex.
• • •
Michael sits in silence for a long time after I’ve played him the tape, twisting a stalk of grass between his fingers. Finally he says, “Man, that’s some serious stuff.”
“Is any of this regurgitated from a religious text?” I ask. “Is the concept of a Harrower part of any faith that you’re aware of?”
Michael scratches his head. “In ten years of religious studies, I never came across the term harrower. I’ll look into it and see if there’s any passages in the Bible that refer to it. Though, as far as I know, Alex’s family wasn’t religious.”
“We don’t know anything about his dad,” I remind Michael. “Maybe he was. In which case, most of what Alex is saying could be his working his way through a severely religious upbringing.” I pause to reflect on Alex’s bewildering comments. “What about that whole thing about choice?”
“Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. Old Testament, Isaiah chapter seven, verse sixteen. No, fifteen. Free will underscores most of Christian belief.”
“And you never found out about Alex’s father?”
He drops the mangled twist of grass, shaking his head. “Cindy refused to talk about him. The most Alex ever said was that his dad was dead and gone to Hell.”
“Hell?” I say quickly. “Not Heaven?”
“No. Hell. He was, as you say, quite specific about that.”
I sigh. “This kind of religious, intellectual thinking is not that of a ten-year-old.” I pick up my phone and look down at it for moment before putting it back in my pocket. “What do you make of the questions Alex said Ruin wanted to ask m
e? Has he ever wanted to ask you questions?”
“No, I don’t think so. Look,” he says, and there is something different about his tone, the look in his eyes. He leans forward and strokes my arm. I pull it back, a sudden reflex, and he looks alarmed. “What? I washed my hands.”
“No, it’s not that,” I say.
“So what is it?”
You are forty-three years old, I remind myself. You are quite capable of setting professional boundaries. Still, I feel bashful when I tell him what it is.
“I’d rather we be colleagues. And nothing more.”
He stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind, and I feel my cheeks burn. Still, in the past I’ve let men wander way past the iron gates of friendship, then watched their faces fall when I refused to reciprocate. I’d rather be up front about it. I don’t want anything to get in the way of Alex’s treatment.
“Well that’s a pity,” Michael says lightly. “I don’t go to the Opera House with any of my colleagues, and here I was thinking we could share a taxi to Alex’s performance of Hamlet tonight.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “I don’t mind sharing a taxi.”
He looks visibly pleased. “Good. I’ll be at your house around seven. Okay?”
I open my mouth to say, Actually, I’ll meet you there, but he has moved on, telling me about his garden, his brussels sprouts. How we should share a bottle of his homemade tomato juice sometime.
It is only when I try to find an outfit suitable for a visit to the Grand Opera House that I realize how much Alex’s case has eaten into my personal time over the last week or two—my apartment is still only partially furnished and filled with boxes, meaning that I have no cutlery, plates, chairs, and only a small rack of clothes. I dig deep into a box marked CLOTHES and pull a dozen outfits on to the red Mexican tiles of my living room. Each is black, and each is a variation of knee-length skirt or three-quarter-length shirt. Once I’ve assembled a row of possibilities along the floor, my mind turns to Poppy. The memory is sharp: She is standing in our Morningside flat, shaking her head as I pull garments out of my closet. While I have absolutely no fashion sense, Poppy had an innate sense of style before she could talk. I remember her fumbling in the laundry basket, picking out the colors and textures she liked before draping them around her head and shoulders, then staggering around our little flat in a pair of my high heels.
Boy Who Could See Demons Page 15