I stared at him. “Whatever. What about the thing you’ll do for my Mum?”
He sat down, coughed, and lowered his eyes.
“Has your mother ever mentioned your father, Alex? I mean, since he died?”
“No. But she was really upset about it, that’s what landed her here in the first place. So if you think I’m going to bring that up …”
Ruen held up a hand. “No, no. What I was going to suggest was … Well, you may as well know.”
“Know what?”
He looked away and sighed very deeply. “Your father is in Hell.”
I felt like I’d just walked into a wall.
“In Hell?”
“In the worst part of it, I’m afraid.”
My mouth opened and I went to speak but no sound came out.
“What’s wrong, Alex?” Ruen asked, and I shook my head because I couldn’t talk right then because my head was too full of memories about Dad.
And then I thought of the black mask and the blue car and the policeman. And I remembered what had happened after that. I remembered that Mum had cried and cried the day after and I knew that Dad had died. His face was in the newspapers and Mum warned me not to tell a single soul that he was my Dad because then we’d be split up as a family and the headlines called him a monster and evil and said he should rot in hell.
“Dad’s really in Hell, isn’t he?” I said to Ruen.
He gave me a long look that told me that I was right.
I thought I was going to throw up. Mum would be very, very upset if she knew this. I pulled the sheet around my face.
“Oh, worry not,” Ruen groaned. “You write this piece for me as a gift to Anya, and I’ll release your father from Hell.”
I let go of the sheet. “You can do that?”
He looked very offended. “Of course I can. Don’t you think that would make your mother very happy, knowing he isn’t in Hell? And I’m most certain your father would be grateful, too.”
“So he’ll go to Heaven?”
Ruen grinned so wide I thought his face might crack.
Then I had a thought. “Why did you write music for Anya?”
Ruen narrowed his eyes. “The title is ‘Love Song for Anya,’ my boy. Doesn’t that give you a clue?”
“But you don’t love Anya,” I said. “You don’t love anybody. You’re a demon.”
Ruen sniffed. “Penetrating as always, Alex. The simple truth is that reality lurks in the senses. If we are to prevent Anya from separating you and I then we must make her question what she believes to be real. Your questions have already begun that process, but what she hears when she plays this piece of music will surely finalize her self-questioning.”
“What the heck does that mean?” I said.
“Do we have a deal?” Ruen said.
I chewed my nails. I thought of Mum lying in that room, all by herself. She looked so small in the bed. I wouldn’t be able to tell her what Ruen had done for Dad, as she’d probably be very freaked out. But maybe, in a few years, I could. And she would be over the moon.
I nodded. “Deal,” I said.
20
A LOVE SONG FOR ANYA
ANYA
I grab a coffee on my way to the city hospital. I go into the interview room and look over my notes on Alex and the update from the hospital. Observations during administration of risperidone seemed fine, except for one, tiny, microscopic detail:
Last night, Alex ran away.
He made it all the way out of the hospital, across the courtyard, and into the adult unit, where he pounded on his mother’s door and sank his teeth into a security guard.
I close my eyes and try to fill my head with the sights and sounds of the Caribbean. This is bad, bad news. It not only suggests problems with the security in this place, but it also underscores Alex’s mental instability and a whole swath of negative reactions to his treatment. It will also look very bad on my report.
I look up to find Dr. Hargreaves, a cognitive behavior therapy specialist who works at MacNeice House two days a week, standing in the office doorway.
“Alex is your patient, isn’t he?” Dr. Hargreaves asks, glancing up over his spectacles. We’ve spoken only a handful of times, and from the direction of our previous conversations I’m aware that he thinks I’m a psychotic disorder fascist.
“Yes, he is,” I answer.
He nods. “And you do know one of the side effects of risperidone is akathisia?” Akathisia is extreme restlessness. It’s entirely doubtful that akathisia would have made Alex go to such lengths, but the possibility of it makes me feel dizzy. Dr. Hargreaves sees my reaction and smiles thinly.
I head to the interview room. Alex is seated in a daffodil-yellow armchair beside the shatterproof coffee table. His ankles are crossed and his hands are pressed inside his thighs. He looks very on edge.
“Hello, Alex,” I say cheerily. “Sorry I’m a little late this morning. Did you sleep okay?”
He shakes his head.
“No? Is that why you went for a walk?”
He shakes his head, still looking down.
“Why did you go for a walk? And at three in the morning, I might add. Were you just tired of being in hospital?”
He looks up at me. His eyes are hollow and tired. “I want to tell you something.” He ignores my questions.
“Okay,” I say, following his lead. I take out my notepad. He looks at it silently.
“Is my notebook bothering you, Alex?”
“I don’t care if you write it down or not. I just want you to listen.”
I set my pen down. He takes a deep breath.
“I know that you think I’m a danger to myself. But Ruin is real. And I have proof.”
He hands me a sheet of paper. It is a piece of music. The title “Love Song for Anya” is written at the top. The lines, notes, and clefs are very awkwardly drawn, with evidence of much erasing and rewriting. But there is precision in this composition. There are accurate phrase marks, a time signature and octave sign, and at two points Italian terms are used: andantino and appassionato. A quick scan through the score indicates that it isn’t a love song in the ballad sense.
But there is something else that causes my mouth to go dry and my heart to race before I tell myself that it’s nothing more than a coincidence: the opening melody is identical to the one Poppy composed on the night she died. A high B for three beats; a trilled A, G, A, each of them a quarter note before another B for three beats; A, G, A, then a G for three beats, A for three, B again; a simple melody, and one that I’ve heard time after time endlessly over the last four years, as if it held the secret to what happened the night she died.
“Where did you get this?” I ask Alex.
“Ruin told me that he composed it for you because you like music. He told me to write it down for you as a gift.”
“As a gift?”
He nods. “He said it’s only a short piece because I couldn’t manage to score a whole symphony, not yet.”
Alex’s voice is less animated than usual, and there is a firmness to his tone and manner that makes him seem to have aged several years since our last meeting. He seems reluctant, not excited, to show me what he’s written. I stare at the fragment of music. Alex leans forward.
“You ask my mum,” he whispers. “I don’t know how to play music, never mind write it. I can’t play any instrument at all. I can’t even sing. So how would I be able to write that then, huh?”
I put our interview on hold until after his schooling session with a private tutor. I run outside, dial Michael’s number, and leave a message to call me as soon as possible. He needs to know about Alex’s escape attempt.
Moments later, my phone rings. It is Michael.
“Why is Alex on risperidone?” are his first words. Aggressive and worried at the same time.
“Do you know he tried to run away last night?”
“Of course I do,” he snaps. “The hospital told me to come in immediately. I’m wo
rried that we’re being overly zealous with the medication, Anya. The last kid I saw with a risperidone prescription was eighteen and stoned out of his mind—”
“Alex’s condition requires medical intervention,” I say levelly, interrupting him. “Cindy shows no sign of getting out of the psych unit anytime soon. Would you wait a week before treating a broken leg?”
“Well, you should know that Cindy isn’t doing so well,” he replies stiffly. “Not since she heard she’d been found incapable of acting as Alex’s mother.”
That’s not my fault, I think, then immediately feel guilty. I have had less than ten hours’ sleep over the last three nights—a combination of stress and playing catch-up with my other cases. I would do anything right now for a long, hot bath and a comfortable bed. “I’m going to speak to Cindy later this afternoon,” I tell Michael. “And there’s something else—”
“What?”
I mention Ruin’s “gift.” I tell him about the piece of music, although I don’t mention anything about Poppy. “It’s quite an accomplished piece of music for a ten-year-old boy. I’m wondering what he’s up to … Has Alex ever had piano lessons?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Why?”
I tell him that, as a pianist, I am staggered by the piece’s complexity. Even if Alex has had some musical training, this is quite amazing. More important, the piece makes me wonder if Ruin is more than a projection—if he is a living person with whom Alex is having regular contact, and an adult who is genuinely threatening the boy’s safety and well-being.
“Where are you?” Michael says when I finish.
“Still at the adult unit.”
“Stay where you are.”
Ten minutes later, he’s striding toward me across the parking lot. I expect him to follow me inside the adult psych unit and grab a coffee or something while we kill time until I can speak to Cindy, but after inspecting the sheet of music he tells me to get into his car.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“I’ve arranged for us to speak to someone at the School of Music over at Queen’s University.” His voice is low and uneasy, his eyes resting on the musical score.
“Why?”
“You said you wanted to prove whether Alex could have written it. Didn’t you?”
“No, I …” I trail off and glance at his car, parked crookedly on the curb. “What was all that about the other night, Michael?”
“You mean Alex?”
“No. You. Stroking my face.” I’m embarrassed to bring it up, but I hate ignoring what must be confronted.
“Aye, there’s the rub,” he says with a crooked grin. “Look, I was just worried about you, okay?”
“Worried? I said I was just getting some fresh air …”
I let him find the words he is searching for on the ground. When he looks up, his expression is troubled. “It won’t happen again,” he says softly. “I promise.”
We head in Michael’s car to the School of Music at the university, directly behind the Botanic Gardens.
“How’s the running?” Michael asks.
I think of the fresh blisters on my soles from new track shoes, the suspicious bulge of fluid in my knee that suggests another steroid injection will be necessary this year. “Not nearly as exciting as gardening,” I say evasively.
I notice a flash of color in his cheeks at the mention of his garden. He proceeds to tell me how his Green Windsor broad beans got black-fly and a rogue rooster from a neighboring patch took umbrage at his beetroot, how he’s taken up horse riding just so he can collect manure and take it home afterward (“Couldn’t you just ask if you can clean out the stables?” I suggest, to which he responds with “I’m too polite to take it without paying something”), how his new potatoes were in his stomach an hour after being in the soil.
I find my thoughts turning to my paternal grandmother, Mei, whose English was limited to the phrase she used often: my yin and yang, the balance of my life. She would say Michael is my yang, my opposite. The one who has been sent to teach me, and vice versa. Listening to him describe his Sundays spent up to his knees in compost, I feel the habits of my own life—a supermarket cart filled with plastic-wrapped, pre-washed organic vegetables, a rented apartment, the ability to untether myself from the artificial wall of twenty-first-century life and drop into another at any moment—lose their appeal. The other night I dreamed I woke up in a solar-powered, wind-turbined house built entirely of wood, mud, and straw on an island in the Hebrides, my plate filled with produce from my own garden. Five years ago this would have been a nightmare. Now, to my astonishment, it feels like the kind of life I would embrace.
Michael’s friend is a beautiful blond Californian lecturer in musical composition with a PhD in Bach’s fugues and performance diplomas in oboe, tuba, piano, and kettle drums. She has so many letters after her name that it reads like a sentence. She tells me to call her Melinda, and we follow her into her office.
Michael hands her Alex’s piece of music. She puts on her glasses and studies it, then looks up.
“Gee, did you say this was written by a ten-year-old?”
I fumble for the right explanation. “Well, sort of,” I tell her. “He insists he wrote it on behalf of … an imaginary friend.”
Melinda raises her eyebrows. “Wow-ee, some imaginary friend, huh?” She glances at Michael. “Well, it certainly isn’t anything I’ve ever seen before. Some influences, here.”
She uses a short but immaculately manicured fingernail to point these out. “A little Chopin here. Maybe some Mozart in the closing bars. Of course, influence is highly subjective.”
She stands up, music in hand, and walks from behind her desk to an upright Yamaha piano against the far wall.
“You play it,” Michael says, nudging me. “It’s your song, after all.”
Melinda turns. “Oh, you play? Be my guest.” She pulls out the piano seat and gestures for me to sit down.
“I’m a bit rusty …”
“Come on …” Melinda urges, smiling and patting the seat. “Don’t be shy. Let’s hear this masterpiece!”
The truth is, I feel extremely nervous about playing the piece. I’ve already heard the melody in my head by cold-reading the notes, but I’m not sure how I will feel when I play those eight bars out loud. Poppy’s song. No, that’s surely only my imagination.
I take a seat in front of the piano, slide my fingers up the smooth white keys, and begin to play. I hold my breath as I chime out the opening melody, gritting my teeth against memories of Poppy’s dark head bent over the keys as she played the same tune. When I get to the second section, I allow myself to breathe. I focus on the technique of the piece. There is a simplicity and an impishness to it that grips me as I play it. The melody of the second half is technically demanding, lyrical, passionate. I sneak a glance at the title. “Love Song for Anya.” Then I note the smaller text beneath it: “Ruen.” Ruen. I had always thought the name of Alex’s so-called demon was Ruin.
When I finish, Melinda and Michael applaud me.
“I liked that!” Michael says.
“A very talented performer,” Melinda winks. She walks over to the piano and bends down to have another look at it. “Kid isn’t terrific with annotation, though. Needs a little practice with his treble clefs …” She turns to Michael. “You want me to run this through our software, check to see if it’s plagiarized?”
Michael nods. “Definitely.”
As I raise my hands from the keys, I see that they are trembling.
Outside the School of Music, we hesitate.
“You want a lift back to see Cindy?”
“It’s not far. I’ll walk.” I start toward the Botanic Gardens and, to my surprise, Michael follows.
“I’m parked this way anyway.”
“Of course. Thanks for contacting Melinda,” I say awkwardly. “She certainly was helpful.”
He searches my face. “Something about that music bothers you, doesn’t it.”
; It isn’t a question. “I don’t think you know me well enough to …”
“… is it because you suspect Ruen actually wrote it?”
I watch a car trying to park in a space close to us. It backs so close to the car behind that its reflection pours across the hood. We walk on.
“I wonder if Ruen is Alex’s father?” I ask.
“A demon?”
“No, I mean, if Alex is actually visiting with his dad. If the physical violence he experienced was at the hands of …” I stop. The thought that Alex’s father is not dead at all but has been meeting with the boy on the sly is ludicrous. But I have run out of answers. The music, the attack, the way he asked about my scar the first time we’d met … And then I think of Ursula. How she had urged me to abandon preconceptions.
We are at the foot of the Botanic Gardens now. A woman is jogging; two Dalmatians trot beside her. Michael sidesteps behind me so that he is between me and the dogs.
“Okay,” he says, pushing his hands in his pockets and grinning. “So let’s consider the possibility. Is Alex seeing demons?”
I turn to read his face. He is serious. This is a side of Michael I haven’t yet seen. How could this intelligent, perceptive man even consider that there is such a thing as demons, that there is even the slightest possibility that someone could see them?
“You’re kidding?”
We are close to the hothouses. I can smell the thick, warm air surrounding them. Students are inside, bent over the hothouse plants that flourish there.
Michael takes a step in front of me, tilting his head slightly to draw my attention away from the students. “When I studied for the priesthood, Anya, I did a lot of research into belief narratives. I read a lot of things by people who claimed they’d seen the unbelievable—angels, demons, God, what have you. People who swore they’d seen demons with forked tails, then realized that these tails were links that gradually grew fatter, binding them to the demon, destroying them.” He shook his head. “Crazy stuff.”
Boy Who Could See Demons Page 20