“What made you so interested in that?”
He takes his hands out of his pockets and gestures toward a bench facing the green lawns of the university. We sit. He takes a breath and combs his hair with his hand.
“When I was little I saw my sister. My parents have never spoken about her. I only found out she even existed last year. My grandmother let slip that there’d been complications during my birth because of the other dead baby inside my mother.” He seems to shudder, leans closer to me. I sense that he is revealing something that has made him feel lonely for years.
“I grew up knowing that I had a sister named Lisa,” he continues. “That she looked just like me, only she was a girl, and that only I could see her. My parents took me to psychologist after psychologist. And then when I was about eight and they were getting really sick of it, my dad threatened to put me through a glass window if I mentioned Lisa again. He said she wasn’t real. After that, I stopped seeing her.” He chews his bottom lip. “But I know she was real. She was.”
I nod, keenly aware that I am probably the only person he has ever told about this, and wondering why. I don’t ask—instead, I choose a response that fits within the boundaries of our professional relationship.
“Is that why you studied psychiatry?”
“Sort of. Probably. I just …” He pauses to clarify his thoughts. “I suppose I needed to understand what the difference was between seeing things of a spiritual nature and having a mental health issue. Does that make any sense?”
“You needed to explore whether you had a dissociative disorder as a child or were playing with the ghost of your twin.”
“Bingo. And here’s the thing: I’m an atheist.”
“Yet you were going to be a priest?” I am surprised.
“There’s a whole difference between the religious and cultural motivations behind that career path. Few of the guys I met on that route were convinced of the great gig in the sky.”
“I guess both career paths are about believing in the unseen.”
“I know I saw my sister,” he insists. “Mentally ill or not … you say ‘tomato.’ I say ‘tomayto.’ ” He grins uneasily, his wariness returning. “I think there’s just some things you can’t explain away by science.”
“You think Alex is really seeing something?”
“Did Hamlet see the ghost of his father?”
“Hamlet is a play, Michael …”
He reaches out to touch my arm. “I’m not saying he’s channeling the dead, Anya. There’s got to be a reason why Alex has latched on to such a specific identity. What did Poppy claim to see?”
I think back to the moment that Poppy had tried so desperately to describe to me what it was like to be her. We were in a restaurant close to the Golden Mile in the center of Edinburgh, her favorite place for steak. I wanted to break the news to her gently, in an environment where she felt comfortable and happy: She was going to spend two months at the Cherrytree Haven Child and Adolescent Inpatient Facility.
“The doctors say that you’ll have your own room there, Poppy,” I’d told her. “You’ll be home weekends. There’s a swimming pool, a park outside, and lots of other kids there …”
I faltered. Despite training as a child psychiatrist, my professional expertise only got me so far when it was my own twelve-year-old daughter on the receiving end of treatment. The thought of putting my little girl in a psychiatric unit for eight weeks was breaking my heart, but I had absolutely no reservations that it was in her best interests.
But she had started to sob. Her face had gone bone white and she was gripping the arms of her chair.
“I’m falling, Mum …,” she said.
A waitress approached with two plates in either hand. “Who’s got the medium-rare?”
I looked helplessly from the waitress to Poppy. “I’m falling, Mum,” my daughter insisted, her voice rising to a shriek. “Why aren’t you helping me?”
I should have listened. I should have taken more time to understand …
People were starting to stare. “Is everything okay?” the waitress whispered, and I nodded, bundling my wallet and phone into my handbag and searching for a quick way to get Poppy out of there without more noise.
“You don’t understand what it’s like!” she’d shouted. “What this feels like, Mum! Have you ever even asked what this feels like?”
No, my love. Tell me now.
“Poppy, it’s time to go home,” I whispered.
“No.” Her voice was firm, threatening.
The waitress stared, the plates in her hand like cymbals.
“Come on, Poppy,” I said, a little firmer this time.
And that’s when she grabbed a steak knife from the table and plunged it into my cheek.
It could have been worse; later she told me she was aiming for my throat.
• • •
It takes a moment to untangle myself from the memory’s dark tentacles. Poppy’s absence is a continual ringing in my ears of all the things I should have said to her, all the things I should have done.
Michael has said something to me. I raise my eyes to his, and he repeats it.
“I said I’m worried that you see Poppy in Alex,” he says. “I know what it’s like when a case hits close to the bone. At times like that you have to be sure you’re keeping the right amount of distance. It’s only human to get involved.”
Ironically, he says the right amount of distance just as he moves closer to me, reaching out to touch my arm. I look down at his hand, and he draws it back as if his fingertips have brushed something hot.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, but for some reason my mind is churning, returning to my past. I am in the kitchen of our Morningside flat, ironing Poppy’s school shirt. “Keep your distance,” I tell her.
“What did you say?” I ask Michael distractedly, my voice a whisper. He has moved back now, unsure of what to do with his hands.
“When? About Alex?”
“When you asked about the reason he claims to see Ruen.”
He blinks. “I said he was channeling the dead.”
“You said he wasn’t channeling the dead.”
He looks on, his face full of confusion.
My darling, I’m sorry. I’m sorry …
Words I can never tell her now. Unless …
I smile at Michael and start to walk away. A thought has snagged itself on my heart. A thought that violates every ethical and professional standard I pride myself on.
What I wouldn’t give to tell you I’m sorry.
Not a thought.
A temptation.
21
HELL
ALEX
Dear Diary,
What do you call a boy with sticky-out ears, a big fat nose, and no chin?
Names.
I started at my new school on Monday. It’s a bit crap, just like that joke. I have to sleep at MacNeice House and even though my new bedroom is bigger than the one at Mum’s house, I don’t like it. Everything is white and the windows don’t open and someone said the doors are built so that if you try and hang yourself they’ll fall down. I run through all the doorways now just in case they fall over, which makes the other kids laugh.
My bedroom in the new house will be cool, though, so I suppose it’s okay in the meantime. Most of the teachers here aren’t very friendly, though I like one of them. She’s called Miss Falls, and she smells like a used-book store though she seems nice. She’s my personal tutor and she meets with me after school every day in my bedroom for one hour. I get to go to her if I have any problems and we talk about stuff like math and 2B pencils and Hamlet. Our classes only have ten other kids in them, which is cool because it’s quiet and no one makes fun of me. But nobody talks to each other and some of the other kids are psycho. One of the girls is a year older than me and she says we’re actually in a zoo and that there’s a tiger on the desk and stuff like that. Yesterday she said I couldn’t sit on the seat behind her ’cos there was a giraffe on it
and I looked at Ruen to check there wasn’t and he just rolled his eyes and yawned.
I’m really glad to have Ruen around because I miss so many things now, not just Mum. I miss waking up in the middle of the night and finding Woof asleep on my head. I miss onions on toast. I miss the way our faucet drips all night and sounds like a heartbeat. I miss Auntie Bev and Jojo and the theater. I miss the way Mum wiggles her toenails on the footstool when she’s drinking tea and watching Coronation Street. I miss Mum even when she’s sad. I miss our house, even though there are no broken windows in this place and it’s clean and warm.
I asked Ruen if Mum and I are going to lose the new house since Bev has gone home and there’s no sign of Mum getting out soon, and he said that it was up to Anya now because she’d put me in here and even though Ruen could help me escape, I’d have nowhere else to go. For a moment, I thought, why don’t I just go home and you can look after me? But then I remembered that Ruen is a demon and he can’t really do normal things, like cook and clean. Which is a pity.
But I’m all excited and freaked out and curious about my dad. What was it like getting freed out of Hell? Is he really really happy? Is he grateful? Is he in Heaven? Or somewhere else? I really don’t understand the afterlife, and when I ask Ruen about it he doesn’t like to talk about it too much, particularly Heaven. He says it is “overly conceptualized and idealized” and that Hell is “pejoratively dismissed” and gets “bad press.”
Every time I ask about death he just looks at me like I’m stupid.
“It’s the end, dear boy,” he says, tutting. “No more body. No more chocolate cake. There are some advantages, but it depends where you end up.” And then I ask about where I might “end up” and he starts going on about the idealization of Heaven and the denigration of Hell.
Tonight, however, I want to ask him about my dad. I’ve never really found out much about how or why my dad died. I didn’t go to his funeral and Mum has never taken me to his grave, and she has no pictures of him in the house. I’m not to tell anyone about him, she said. Only his name, because it’s also my name. Alex. When I think of whether Dad is happy to be out of Hell I have a memory of me and Dad and Mum. We are sitting at our table in the living room and Mum brings in some rolls on a plate. Dad takes two of them and sticks his fork through one and his knife through the other and starts bouncing them up and down the table as if they’re feet doing a little dance. I remember the way the sunlight was strong and lit up the side of his face and the lines at the side of his eyes when he laughed. I remember Mum flicking him with a kitchen towel, laughing and telling him to stop. Mum used to laugh loads back then.
When I think of this it makes me sad, but more confused than sad. I’m confused because when I think of him making the rolls dance and then I think of what I saw that day, of dad shooting those policemen—it just doesn’t make sense. Aren’t evil people evil all the time? Aren’t funny kind people who bring toy cars for their little boy funny and kind all the time?
I was sad for a long time when I learned Dad had died. He just vanished one day, right after what happened at the checkpoint. I never asked Mum if he fell down a mine shaft or got run over or got the disease that Granny had; she was too upset all the time. She just cried and cried one morning and said “your Dad’s gone,” and I said “for how long?” and she said, “for life.”
And then she went upstairs and didn’t come down, which I thought was weird because I needed her to walk with me to school because I was only five. So I waited for hours, then went upstairs, checked the bathroom, then Mum and Dad’s bedroom, and she was in bed. I gave her a push and shouted Wake up! But she didn’t move. So I pulled all the covers off and stomped my feet and clapped my hands and tickled her feet. And then I noticed some boxes under the duvet covers. I knew what they were for because I was with Mum when she picked them up from the doctors. All the pills were gone and I felt funny, like scared. Then Mum started coughing and I felt my heart pound because I was glad she made a noise. “Are you awake now?” I said, but she just leaned over and puked all over my feet.
I remember I ran downstairs and opened the front door by standing on the piano stool and then I ran all the way to Granny’s. I told Granny that Mum was sick and there were white boxes in the bedsheets and that I was really hungry. Granny’s face went shocked and her eyes were sad and wide and she told me to go make myself some toast and she made a phone call, and then she walked quickly with me back to our house but instead of letting me go inside she said go to school, go to school. I went to school but I had a knot in my stomach the whole way which got tighter and tighter. And that was the day I first saw Ruen.
“Ruen,” I say when I’m sure that no one is around to hear me, which isn’t very often. He is sitting on my bed and I am sitting on the floor of my room doing math homework. When he’s the Old Man he is starting to sit more and more, like he’s tired. When he walks he sort of drags his feet now and his scowl is becoming so pronounced that it’s like his face is melting. After a few minutes he looks up.
“What?”
“So did you get my dad out of Hell yet?”
He grunts.
“Is that a yes?”
He grunts, and then starts to cough. He thumps his chest. “ ’Course I did.”
I sit upright. “You did?” My heart is knocking in my chest and I feel like I need to pee. “So what happened? Did you have to, like, break him out of there? Was there a big fight?”
He coughs again. “Yes, yes, all of that.”
My thoughts are racing now. I see Hell in my mind, a red, fiery place with loads of people. There is lots of screaming, and it’s a city, only the city walls are pouring with orange lava and mega-blasts of flame keep shooting out of windows, and there are creatures there like the demons I see all the time, only worse; these are like zombies with their flesh ripped off and blood pouring down their faces. Dragons are circling in the red sky and there’s big black clouds of smoke there, too. I see Ruen striding toward a big black building with fire pits burning around the front door. There are big mean security guards outside holding long spears and wearing full-body armor. Their helmets have horns sticking up out of the top like a rhino, and their armor is studded with spikes. When Ruen approaches they cross their spears to prevent him from entering. He stares at them, and his eyes are red. He tells them he’s a Harrower. They fall to their knees, shaking in front of him. He lifts his leg and kicks the door open.
Inside the building it looks like the biggest cathedral you’ve ever seen, all naked stone and gargoyles and a ceiling so high you almost fall over when you look all the way up at it. There are horrible creatures with vampire fangs shrieking and hiding and swiping at him with their claws, but Ruen calmly goes toward the place where he knows my dad is being kept: the room at the very top of the tallest tower. He has to duck and dodge past loads of foul creatures but eventually he gets there, and my dad is so grateful, and when Ruen tells him “your son sent me,” Dad cries. And then Ruen fights his way out of there with my dad close behind, only at this point Ruen is starting to sound German and is wearing a leather jacket. Outside is a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. He and Dad jump on the back and ride off to Heaven.
“Whoa!” I say to Ruen. “That’s just like Terminator!”
He looks at me very confused.
“Wait … did you fight Satan, too?” I say, standing up. “Was he riding a dragon and did giant hailstones of hot coal come falling out of the sky?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Saving my dad!” I shout.
I hear footsteps walking quickly down the hall so I lower my voice. “Was he really grateful? Did you tell him about me?”
Ruen looks down as if he’s thinking about it. Eventually he stands and smiles. “Your father was released from Hell yesterday, on my command, of course. He was extremely grateful to me and told me he would remain indebted to me for the rest of eternity. In fact, he said he hoped his son—you, Alex—would attempt to pay some of
that debt by remaining faithful to me and assisting in my research.”
I stare at him. I haven’t a clue what he’s just said. I’m still really buzzed that he’s done what he said he would do. And I think about Katie then, of what her Mum did. That Ruen was right all along.
“Will you, Alex?”
“What?”
“Will you remain faithful to me and assist in my research, just as your father requested?”
“Yeah. Yeah, sure. So did my dad seem happy, then? Did he like Heaven? And did he ask about Mum and were there angels in Heaven?”
Ruen grunts.
Then something occurs to me. Something I should have told Ruen to tell my dad.
“Did you tell my dad that I love him?”
Ruen’s face looks like a knot. “Did you wish me to?”
I nod and suddenly my buzz wilts a little, like a goal I almost scored but didn’t. “Maybe he already knows. Do you think he knows I love him?”
He shrugs. “How would I know?”
“Did you … just get a sense that he knew that I loved him? You know, because I sent you to get him out of Hell? Did it show in his face?”
Ruen’s face tightens even more. You could probably hide stuff in between the folds of skin. When I think of this I remember the time I hid a fiver behind the radiator in my room and I wonder if it’s still there. Ruen snorts and flares his nostrils.
“My dear boy, love is a very human thing. I know nothing of love. And if I did, I should be very, very angry.”
I sweep my hand over my head to show that everything he’s just said is a bit psycho. He looks at the door. For a minute I think he’s going to leave and I suddenly feel like pleading with him not to. But he just grunts and sits back down.
“You know, Ruen,” I tell him. “In a way, you’re like my dad, too. I don’t mean that I don’t love my dad, it’s just …” Suddenly I don’t even know what I mean. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
Ruen raises one of his fuzzy white eyebrows and snorts. I climb into my bed and pull the covers around me. Just as I do this all the lights shut off and it is pitch black. They do this every night, even though I HATE the dark.
Boy Who Could See Demons Page 21