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 raining kittens and rottweilers. 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 into the hallway 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 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, too. He nods and asks, “temperature?” The nurse says something I can’t really hear but the doctor writes it down, too.
“Okay,” the doctor says again.
“Can I go now?” I ask.
This is apparently REALLY funny.
“No,” the doctor says, handing me a cup with pills in it. “You have to take two of these twice a day for a while. We need you to stay here to make sure they’re doing their job.”
I look down at the round white tablets in the cup. “What are they for?” I ask.
The doctor looks down at me through his glasses before walking out of the room. The nurse says, “to help you sleep better, Alex.”
“But I sleep fine,” I tell her.
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 have to take them.”
She says it like I should already know this. “Who’s Dr. Molokova?”
She looks confused, like I’m being stupid, then she says, “Anya?”
“Oh.”
I put the pills in my mouth and they taste very bitter so I drink the whole cup of water in one go. The nurse hands me a tray of food. It looks like Woof threw up on my plate.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Corned beef hash,” 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.
The nurse nods and slides a tub on the tray. “Dessert is either custard or rice pudding.”
I glance at Ruen. He doesn’t need to say anything. “Rice pudding, please.”
The nurse slides the tray onto 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, still 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 merely needed to discover a little more about her, that is all.”
Eventually my face goes cold again and my hands go still. That’s what happened last time I took the pills but then it went away after a few seconds. So I swing my legs around 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 and his voice is full of hate. “She’s trying to convince you that 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 from the other side of the room and the next he is crouching down beneath 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 right there on the spot and is about to fall over.
“Ruen?” I say, a little nervous.
He starts to grin. Then he starts to clap. And then—this is what really shocks me—he walks toward me rubbing his hands, reaches out, and ruffles my hair.
“What a clever boy,” he says, which is insane really because at that moment 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 hard he can’t speak. He walks up to the mirror above the sink and looks at himself. He straightens his back and looks tickled pink with himself.
“A costume,” he says. “Or a proxy.”
“What’s a proxy?”
He turns to face me, still grinning like an idiot.
“You’re no good to me in here, are you?”
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Never mind. How badly do you want to get out of here?”
“Very badly,” I say.
“Okay then,” Ruen says, and claps 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 rib cage in my head and then I open my eyes and feel better.
“Grab your clothes,” Ruen tells me. I wobble to the locker and pull on my shirt, trousers, shoes, and jacket.
“Ready,” I say.
“You might be needing your cap,” Ruen says. “And your scarf. You’d catch your death outside. And then what would I do?” He starts to laugh again.
Everybody else on the ward is asleep. At the end of the corridor Ruen holds a finger to his lips and I stop dead, then hide behind a door as a nurse wheels a boy in a wheelchair past us. Ruen gives a slight wave with his hand and I tiptoe after him. Ahead, I see the EXIT 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. The rain is so thick I can hardly see through it. This kind of rain is like chain metal, I decide. 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. 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 parking lot and then I see a lady in a long white coat walking toward 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 jacket 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.
“So what should I do?”
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 angry 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 I’m so not impressed with him and I turn around and start to walk through the curtains of rain toward 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 is 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 its liquid and 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 moron—I haven’t got any money! I’m only TEN!” I keep my eyes on the ground and walk around 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: There’s a picture of the last time I found her, curled up in her own vomit on our bathroom floor, her head really limp and her tongue hanging out like a dog. 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 dying to use the toilet and she wouldn’t answer the door and then I opened it and she was in the tub, 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 caramelized onion bruschetta and then gave up and made onions on toast.
“You’re so like him,” she had said.
“Like who?”
“Your dad.”
And then I think of coming out of the church that day when we were supposed to be practicing for the school Christmas concert. We were singing “Away in a Manger” and I remember I felt all hot and 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 potato chips across 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 a rubber 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 in Hell 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 a long time, like a needle that’s been stuck in a chair for ages and poking people in the ass all that time but they didn’t know what was hurting them.
It’s my Dad. He’s 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 the letters 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 anymore, and it’s like the link has split into 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. Another fire exit. I jiggle the door handle but it is locked.
“Be patient,” Ruen says, and steps back. I take a few steps back, too. A few minutes later, two nurses come outside. As the door swings shut I run forward and catch it. Then I slip inside.
I spot a toilet to my left and go inside, pee, then use lots of paper towels to dry 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 hallway. 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 around. My heart is racing and I feel sick.
At the end of the corridor is a list of signs. I read down the list and feel very confused. Where is Mum? 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, very quickly around the corner.
“Can I help you?”
I freeze. There is a long reception desk right there with the sign PSYCHIATRY hanging above and a blond 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, about four doors down, so I run past the fat 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 and 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 again and threatened to hit me if I did it again.
They took me to another area where a guard in a uniform 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 organized a beautiful home for you and your mother to move into once you both recuperate?”
I thought of the pictures of the house Anya had brought me, the big garden in back and the kitchen. I felt excited at the thought of it but didn’t want him to see, so I just nodded.
“And you said you would do something for me if I helped you find your mother this evening?”
I looked at him and glared. He could take a big hike off the tallest cliff.
“Well, I already told you that the something would be a gift to Anya. But there’s something else now. For your mum.”
“Don’t you dare talk about my Mum!” I snapped. “I didn’t get to see her. The door was locked. Now they’ll never let me see her!”
He swiped the air with his hand. “Oh, they will. You’ll see. Just wait until tomorrow morning, Anya will ensure that you get your visit. This is why we need to give her the gift.” He paused. “And if you give her this gift from me, I’ll do something else for you, too.”
“What gift?”
He stood up, glanced at the sketch pad in my locker, and said, “have you got a ruler?”
I nodded.
“And a pencil?”
“Yeah?”
He turned to face me, his face all serious. “I have composed for Anya a piece of music. She loves music so this will undoubtedly be a delight for her. It is composed in precisely the sort of style she prefers. When Beethoven and Mozart composed their opuses they always dedicated them to their friends, like Prince Karl von Lichnowsky and, on one occasion, Napoleon. I believe Anya should be pleased to possess a piece of music that is not only dedicated to her, but written especially for her. What I require from you is to write it out for me exactly as I dictate.”
Boy Who Could See Demons Page 19