I hit the brake as he swung his feet out the open door. The car began to skid. The rage that had possessed me was gone. I just knew at that moment that I would do anything not to die. Yet I could not control whether I did or not. The car spun like a die, its back wheels mounting the kerb. It almost overturned. Then it stopped with a final crash against the side of a deserted bus shelter. The advertisement on the bus shelter exploded, shards of glass drumming down on the roof of the car.
FORTY-TWO
Joey
November 2009
Ifound I couldn’t move. There seemed to be no strength left in my body. It was a miracle that the bus stop was deserted and we had killed nobody. I had just committed the most irresponsible act of my life, and I felt so shocked that I didn’t care what happened to me. I would have sat there until the police came, but Shane got out and pulled open my door. He hauled me from the car.
‘Head case,’ he said, ‘You’re a head case. Now run.’
Still I couldn’t move. Then I heard sirens and an instinct for self-preservation took over. Suddenly I was running, even though furious drivers who had stopped their cars were trying to block my path. But nobody was going to catch me as I dodged them and raced into St Vincent’s Park. No matter how fast I ran, however, I could hear Shane’s footsteps behind me. When we were safely out of sight of Temple Hill, he lunged forward and rugby tackled me. I fell onto the roadway, with Shane on top of me, his knees pinning my arms, his fists aiming blows at my face.
‘You bloody fool,’ he said. ‘All I wanted was a friend. Maybe I invent things, but so would you if you saw your parents die in a house fire.’
Shane stopped hitting me and sat hunched beside me on the ground while I looked up through the film of blood from my busted nose.
‘My fists hurt,’ Shane said quietly.
‘My face hurts more.’
‘On our first day in school you were scared of your own shadow. I may have spun you a few lies, but I brought you out of your shell.’
I rose and wiped the blood off my face. My knees were badly grazed. I looked down at Shane. I wanted to walk away and never see him again.
‘I don’t believe a word from your mouth anymore,’ I said quietly.
Shane looked up as if sizing me up and coming to a decision. ‘Do you want the truth?’
‘Yes. What age are you for a start?’
He gestured as if this was the dumbest question he had ever heard. ‘Use your eyes, Joey. I’m sixteen. I’m a messer who likes to stir things up. I fed you the same lies that I knew the old man would feed you. He is crazy and probably actually believes he is me. But I was just messing with your head, winding you up for fun.’
‘Then why were you so terrified of me bringing you to his house?’
Shane looked pathetic, hunched on the tarmac. I was keeping one eye out for any sign of the police. ‘His house gives me the creeps; too many bad memories.’ He looked up. ‘I’m utterly alone in life, Joey, and when you’re lonely, you make things up. I’m trying to be good here, so stay away from me, you hear? But stay away from Thomas too. Don’t let him use you, Joey. He wants Geraldine. It’s grotesque, but he secretly fancies her. I wouldn’t trust him alone with her. I wouldn’t trust him alone with anyone.’
I walked away and left Shane sitting on the footpath. I felt sick from the vodka and the blows to my face, and deeply ashamed for having stolen that car. I desperately needed somebody to put their arms around me. I walked until I reached Geraldine’s house. I knew there was blood on my face. But, having cleaned myself up as best I could, I knocked. Her gran opened the front door quickly – far too quickly.
‘You’re Joey.’ She eyed me carefully.
‘Is Geraldine in?’
‘What’s after happening to you? Have you been drinking? Where’s my granddaughter?’ The woman peered anxiously down the path.
‘Why would I know where she is?’
‘Because she ran out the door at seven o’clock and I never saw her look so tense. She wouldn’t say where she was going, but I sensed she was going to meet a young man. Was she going to break it off with you?’
‘We’re not even going out,’ I said.
‘She talks about you often enough, she’s more than fond of you.’ The woman stopped. ‘Where is she? She was in such an agitated state and she’s been gone for hours. Think, Joey. Is there anyone else she might have gone to see?’
Shane’s words came back: he secretly fancies her. This afternoon I had fed her the mad fantasy which the old man had concocted, the notion that the boy she once loved was trapped inside his ancient body. Thomas had used me to lure her to his house. I couldn’t explain this to her gran. I simply turned and ran towards Castledawson Avenue.
FORTY-THREE
Joey
November 2009
When I reached Castledawson Avenue I scrambled over the tumbledown wall and landed in the tangle of sky-high nettles in the garden. I didn’t care how often I got stung; I needed to reach that house before anything happened to Geraldine. Maybe I was too late, and it would be my turn to find two bodies there. The back door was wide open, as if somebody had rushed in. The kitchen was unearthly quiet. Finding my way by whatever moonlight came through the grime-coated windows, I reached the back stairs with every nerve end in my body screaming at me to leave.
There was something unnatural about the weight of the silence surrounding me. I mistrusted it, sensing that it was not silence at all, but a babble of voices, if I could only hear them. Spectres trying to grab at my hair, screaming with rage, resenting my intrusion. I turned around and sensed that they had stopped too. They were not holding their breath because they had long since ceased to breathe. But they were watching, willing me to flee back out into the night air.
I felt scared without knowing what I was scared of. Two months ago I would not have allowed myself to be here. Back then, I had wanted to keep my head down. But Shane was right; his friendship had shaken up my life. I could almost visualise two versions of myself at war on that dark stairway. Behind me in the kitchen was the timid, bullied boy that I had been. He was begging me to leave. Ahead of me, scared but determined to continue, was the young man that I wanted to become: neither Shane’s sidekick nor a mirror image of my father, but an independent person who made decisions for himself. If there was a chance that Geraldine might be in this house, then, no matter what, I was determined to bring her out.
I entered the hallway, my eyes growing accustomed to the dark, my ears alert for any sound. I no longer felt surrounded by unseen presences. I felt utterly alone. If anything happened to me, I might never be found here. But what could happen? I was young and strong. Thomas was a feeble man whom I could easily overpower. Then I heard a sound as faint as a sigh or a drip of water. But I knew it was a human voice. I crossed the empty hallway and spied a glimmer of candlelight through the living-room doorway.
If Thomas was holding Geraldine imprisoned in there, I would kill him. If he had touched one hair on her head, I would tear his limbs apart. Softly, I pushed open the door. The old man sat in an ancient armchair, with Geraldine kneeling beside him, her hand reaching up to stroke his lined face. Both of them seemed to be in tears. Geraldine gave no impression of being trapped or coerced. They looked like lovebirds who had found each other again after a long separation. It was a sickening image, and all the more disturbing because Geraldine looked so wide-eyed and lost, like a character in a David Lynch film. I slammed my fist against the door. The sound must have startled them, because they both glanced in my direction.
‘What are you doing here, Joey?’ Geraldine’s voice sounded distracted, as if she was in deep shock, like she felt trapped inside a nightmare.
I stepped forward. ‘Come on, Geraldine, let’s go.’
The old man placed his hand possessively on Geraldine’s shoulder. ‘You brought her to me as I knew you would, Joey, and I thank you for that. Now stop trespassing in my house. This is none of your concern.’
‘You used me to lure her here. Take your hands off her.’
‘Go away, Joey,’ Geraldine said and her voice sounded as if she was hypnotised. ‘Can’t you see that I am free to choose where I want to be? I could never fully love you, because I loved somebody else – someone I thought I had lost. I didn’t understand this before tonight, because this is the first time I’ve been alone with Shane since the night the police found two bodies unconscious downstairs in this house. You can’t recognise the truth because you never knew the real Shane. But I loved him and he is not the person standing behind you.’
I turned to see Shane in the doorway. He was shivering, his eyes scared.
‘Where did you come from?’ I asked.
The old man tried to rise, but Geraldine forced him back into his chair. Shane shook his head sadly.
‘I warned you to keep Geraldine safe from him, Joey. Now look at what you’ve done. He’s like a spider weaving his web around a fly. I dread this house, but I followed you because I couldn’t see you enter here alone, and I couldn’t see Geraldine get hurt.’
‘Shane won’t hurt me,’ Geraldine said quietly.
‘I am Shane,’ the young figure in the doorway said.
‘You’re not.’
He brushed past me and entered the room. ‘Trust me, Geraldine; I am. Can’t you see that we both are: that we are two sides of the one coin? The Shane you once loved still exists as much inside of me as inside the old sack of bones in that armchair.’
‘You’re spinning lies again,’ I snapped. ‘Half an hour ago you told me this nonsense was make-believe.’
‘I told you what you needed to hear, Joey, after I realised that you could never accept the truth. I should not have tried to recruit you as a friend, but I got lonely. Anyone who has lived as often as I have would get lonely at the prospect of another lifetime on my own. But you cannot give me companionship – no mortal being can. So leave this house, and take Geraldine with you. I have put off this confrontation for too long. This is between me and him, and nobody else.’
‘Between you and who?’ I asked.
‘Me and my blood brother here, my other half.’ He laughed. ‘We’re related through bad blood that stretches back to when nothing existed around here except an outcrop of black rock marking the boundaries of Dublin. Back to when the first practitioner of this dark art learned how to cheat death by stashing his soul inside the body of each new victim, like a set of matryoshka dolls. I cannot tell you who I am, Joey, because I am no one person. I am sixteen and I am six hundred years of age. I am the carrier of a disease called immortality. That haggard old body shouldn’t still be here, but for two years I’ve been too weak to kill him. I have avoided this house, because I did not want to add another murder to the sins on my conscience.’
‘Conscience?’ The elderly figure snorted with disgust. ‘Where was your conscience when you let my father die in that house fire?’
‘It was regrettable, but necessary. Now, you wanted a fight to the death and here I am. When we are finished there will be no more confusion over who is who any more. It’s time you joined me in this new body; it is time that we were one.’
Geraldine stood in front of the old man.
‘I won’t let you touch him,’ she said.
The old man rose and shoved Geraldine to one side. She fell, and landed awkwardly, twisting her ankle as she slipped on the debris on the floor. He ignored her cry of pain as he produced a black-handled knife from his overcoat. ‘I knew I could lure you back here with the right bait,’ he taunted. ‘You always had a thing for Geraldine. “Step into my parlour, said the spider to the fly.” Your words on the night Geraldine and I broke in. Well, this time I’m the spider and you’re the fly. You stole my youth, you soul-snatcher, and now I want it back.’
‘There is only one way I can give it back.’ The younger figure circled cagily, beyond range of the knife. ‘You know this, because our minds are like one; we hear the same voices. But I gave you something the voices never meant you to have: continued life. I refused to do their bidding because your grandfather and I were friends once. I made the mistake of letting you live on inside my old body.’
Geraldine grimaced as she struggled to rise: but she couldn’t put any weight on her busted ankle that was already starting to swell. She begged me to separate them as the older figure sliced through the air with his knife.
‘This is not living,’ he shouted. ‘Two years ago I was a boy. Now look at me, trapped like this.’ He swung the blade again, summoning what little strength he possessed. ‘Why could you not have ended the curse by dying here alone?’
The teenage figure nimbly dodged the blade. ‘And why did you have to break in?’ he replied. ‘I bolted the front door and lived by the flames of two candles. Yet still your curiosity made you seek me out, your greed for money, a greed they could exploit.’
The older figure almost fell as he swung the knife again. The boy gripped his hand to steady him, making no attempt to confiscate the blade.
‘Seventy years ago, I made a wish to see the world. The voices granted me my wish a thousand times over. I knelt to bless hobos who fell from freight trains. I trawled for lost souls like a beachcomber trawls for driftwood. I fooled myself into believing I was doing God’s work, but I was not saving souls; I was keeping them trapped inside me, like bees buzzing in a jar.’
‘Then lift up your T-shirt,’ the old figure pleaded. ‘I will gladly cut out your heart and set them all free.’
‘If you stab this young body then you will kill us both and you’re not ready to die either. I admit that I stole your body. Now there is only one way to get it back. I know you’re frightened because I was frightened too when I found myself, as a fourteen-year-old boy, forced to live inside the body of a mute hunchback. It took four years for me to found the courage to liberate myself by allowing that changeling, that usurper, to slit the throat of the ancient body I was trapped inside. I remember the searing pain of the blade, but the pain gave way to liberation, and when I opened my eyes again I was staring out through my old eyes once more, and that mute had become merely another ghost living on inside me. Let me cut the throat of my old body, Shane: let me cut you free to inhabit your own body again.’
‘I want it back; I want my life back.’ The old figure lunged forward angrily. The younger figure circled, keeping beyond the reach of the blade.
‘Then lower the knife. There is no other way. Soon we will only possess one body between us. Thomas Mc- Cormack will be just one more voice in your head. Give me the knife.’
‘Who … are … you?’ Geraldine’s scared voice was barely above a whisper. The young figure glanced at her.
‘I am Thomas McCormack, a spoiled priest. I am Joseph Nally, a mute dogsbody for the nuns. I am Michael Byrne, the upstart gambler who built this house. I am Henry Dawson, the consumptive rake who gambled away Castledawson House. I am names vanished from history. I am a hive of jostling souls whose secrets are known only to me.’
As the voices inside the teenage body spoke, the old figure lunged forward with the knife and missed. The boy waited until he regained his footing, then calmly stepped forward to within range of the blade. He stripped off his Pixies T-shirt. Beads of sweat glistened on his naked chest.
‘If you wish for us both to die, then I will make it easy for you,’ he said quietly. ‘I will even point the blade for you. Just remember that it is pointed at your own heart. If you kill me, you will kill yourself, because the body you occupy is too old to live on for much longer. But if I cut your throat, we shall become one. We can dominate the other voices in this chain and, when the time comes, we can find the strength to end this curse together. You want to live, Shane; I know this, because I know every secret in your soul.’
‘What about this pair?’ The old figure glanced at Geraldine and me. ‘How do they fit into your plan?’
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ the teenager replied. ‘It is my own fault for making the mistake of wanting to hav
e a friend.’
The elderly figure lowered the knife wearily. ‘You have everything worked out. You’re such a convincing liar that the police will believe you broke in here and found all three of us dead. They will believe that a deluded old man knifed Geraldine and was disturbed by Joey. They will conclude that Joey and the old man stabbed each other to death in a tussle. Not only did you want a friend this time, you even schemed to make Geraldine your lover. But intimacy is too dangerous for the souls inside you. So you’ll add more corpses to all those who have impeded your path to immortality. I thought I had lured you here tonight, but you lured us all here. You had not finalised your plans until now, but the evil voices are taking you over. I know your plan. Your plan is to kill us all.’
FORTY-FOUR
Joey
November 2009
Holding the knife by the blade, the old man offered the hilt to Shane. ‘Kill me first, so,’ he whispered. ‘Then, together, we can deal with the others.’
I felt paralysed with fear, but Geraldine managed to rise to her feet. As the boy reached for the knife she hurled a cup at him. Instinctively, he ducked. As he did so, the elderly figure flicked the knife around and rammed the blade savagely into the boy’s stomach. The boy doubled up in agony, but he was not alone in this pain. The old figure dropped the black-handled knife and grasped his own stomach, as if he too had been stabbed. Both sank to their knees, doubled up in a mirror image of each other.
Geraldine tried to hobble past them, but the boy grabbed a handful of her hair. I punched him and he let go, sinking to his knees. He managed to grasp Geraldine’s leg, but I kicked his fingers until he released his grip. Geraldine was free and we could make for the door. But with her ankle injured, our progress was nightmarishly slow. We reached the dark hallway and hobbled slowly towards the back stairs.
I heard footsteps behind us – slow and feeble, but gaining ground. I lifted Geraldine into my arms as we reached the narrow stairs. The passageway was pitch-dark, but I would have kept my footing if a bony hand had not pushed me down the last few steps. I fell forward and, as we landed, I heard the sickening thud of Geraldine’s skull striking the flagstones. A stray black cat bolted from the shadows. The wrenching pain in my shoulder told me that I had dislocated it. A hand reached down to grab my jacket. It was the old man with the outward appearance of Thomas McCormack, but who claimed to be Shane O’Driscoll.
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