Crying in the Dark

by Shane Dunphy

  She spoke through her fingers, as if confining herself to darkness would make it somehow easier.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Tell me it’ll be okay. That we’ll be fine and they’ll be better afterwards.’

  ‘I can’t. But whatever comes, we’ll deal with it as best we can.’

  ‘I don’t think I really want to know what happened to them. I think I’m better off not knowing.’

  I looked about us at the acned, greasy-haired, bespectacled young people, engrossed in their sci-fi and role-playing games and cult television shows.

  ‘It’s part of our job, unfortunately, to know things that other people don’t,’ I said. ‘It’s the toughest part of what we do, without a doubt. You’re right, you probably are better off not knowing. You could live the rest of your life in perfect happiness without ever giving it another moment’s thought. By going with me this afternoon, you’ll see things and hear things that will stay with you and haunt your dreams and maybe a little bit of you will remain in the old house with whatever we find there. I’m not going to lie to you about that. But by doing it, we’re giving Larry and Francey a chance to heal. With a bit of luck, they’ll come out the other side happier and more at peace, because we’ll have helped them to exorcize whatever demons are inside them. And that’s what makes it worthwhile. That’s how you do it, see? By remembering why you do it.’

  She sighed deeply and spun back around to the computer and its glowing screen.

  ‘I’ll be at work this afternoon,’ she said. ‘I need to finish this now.’

  I nodded and stood up, taking the heavy bundle of keys with me.

  ‘I’ll see you later.’

  She didn’t look at me or respond. She was back where she was happiest, in a place where the monsters weren’t real.

  The Byrne house nestled like a tumour into the hustle and bustle of Oldtown. It had been there before the ghetto had developed, a remnant from another time, somehow still clinging to its otherness. An ugly wreckage, it was a three-storey townhouse, surrounded by walls on three sides and with iron railings out front. An overgrown field of maybe half an acre backed onto the property – had probably belonged to it at some point in the past. I wondered who owned it now. It made no sense that no one had built apartments or an office block on it. But then, who would want to live or set up a business next door to this nightmarish house? It exuded a palpable atmosphere of being somehow off-kilter. I was reminded of the house of cake in Hansel and Gretel. This structure was just as strange and out of place.

  Larry and Francey sat in the back seat of the Austin, craning their necks like meerkats to see out of the windows, looks of strange excitement on their faces. They seemed eager to be off; there was no trace of the worry or anxiety I had expected. I had gone straight to Rivendell after meeting Olwyn, and told the children of my plans. I was worried about their reaction and wanted them to have time to prepare themselves. But they shrugged off the news, apparently unconcerned.

  ‘Why d’you want to go to that ol’ place?’ Larry demanded. ‘There don’ be nu’in there no more. Mammy and Daddy is goned.’

  He had got over the fright he’d experienced during the storytelling, but had retreated back into the ‘everything is fine and I’ll be going home soon’ fantasy. It was as if his veiled disclosures had never happened.

  ‘I want you to show me where you lived,’ I said. ‘Me and Olwyn.’

  ‘Whatchoo bringin’ her ’long for?’ Francey asked. ‘She bes a fierce dumb girl. We don’ need her ’tall.’

  ‘I’ve asked her to come. I can’t take you in the car on my own; it’s not allowed. Anyway, it’s not nice to call someone dumb, especially someone who has only ever tried to be nice to you.’

  ‘Let ’er come, Francey,’ Larry said.

  ‘She messded you up, Lar,’ Francey said guardedly. ‘You did go all funny on me, an’ it was cause o’ her.’

  ‘No ’twasn’t,’ Larry countered. ‘I was messded up ’fore she comed along. She’s alrigh’.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘But nu’in. I don’ wanna talk ’bou’ it no more. She bes a nice ’nough person an’ I don’ mind ’er comin’.’

  Francey gave him a poisonous look and sulked for the rest of the morning, but when Olwyn arrived, and had finished the usual handover meeting with the staff coming off the previous shift, we all got into the car and made for Oldtown, and the bad moods were forgotten.

  I parked outside the railings, which had been painted black sometime in the past twenty years, but were now rusted and peeling. The front gate was chained and padlocked, and I sorted through the huge bunch of keys and found the right one. The gate creaked open. No one moved for a second, then with a whoop the twins bolted past Olwyn and me and disappeared around the side of the main building.

  ‘I don’t like the feel of this. The vibes are really bad,’ Olwyn said, gripping my arm tightly.

  ‘We’ll be lucky if bad vibes are the worst things we’ll have to deal with,’ I said. ‘Come on.’

  There was a small patch of dirt in front of the house, which had probably been intended as a lawn but had never been properly seeded, now dotted here and there with weeds and some foul-looking fungi. A path, cracked and subsided, ran across it.

  The rear of the property consisted of a large yard, covered in concrete with reeds and scutch grass poking through the cracks. A wooden shed with a roof of corrugated iron sat off to one side. A section of the rear wall had been knocked through to allow access to the adjoining field. The house appeared to have a basement, because steps led below ground level in two flights, one to the back door of the house and then down from that again to another door. There was no sign of the children, but cries and shrieks told us that they had gone right through the yard and into the field.

  They were up an old tree in the west corner, laughing and calling to one another. Olwyn and I approached slowly. They knew we were there, but ignored us. They seemed to be in a state of heightened excitement now, teetering on the brink of losing control, the stimuli of being back home almost too much for them. Language had been abandoned, giving way to animal cries and gestures.

  I let them play for ten minutes or so, as they acclimatized themselves to their old stomping ground, then jangled the keys loudly.

  ‘So where’ll we go first? The house? The shed?’

  That silenced them, and they sat on their perches, eyeing us solemnly. Then in a clatter of rapid movement they were back on the ground.

  ‘Le’s go to the house,’ Francey said. ‘C’mon. I’ll show ya.’

  I wanted to go and see the shed, which I believed would bring back the most vivid memories, but I was conscious of this being their home, and that we were there as guests. They would show us at their own pace. The exercise was about their needs, not mine.

  They led us down the narrow steps to the back door. A damp, thin coating of moss made the going treacherous. Moisture seemed to have caused the frame to swell, and the door stuck at first, but then gave and stiffly opened. A blast of foul air assailed us. Larry and Francey, seeming not to notice, shoved their way inside and were off again into the bowels of the building. We followed less enthusiastically.

  The Byrnes’ old home was as cluttered and gaudily bedecked as their new one was spartan. Every wall creaked with paintings and ornaments, each mantelpiece and shelf loaded down with clutter. Nothing matched, not a single item complemented those about it. It was like whoever had chosen them had purposefully set out to construct a look that set the nerves on edge and offended the eye.

  ‘Oh – my – God,’ Olwyn said, her eyes wide. ‘This is fucking insane.’

  ‘Why’d they leave all their stuff?’ I asked. ‘Their new place looks as if they barely own the clothes on their back. They’ve just abandoned everything.’

  ‘Maybe they’re not planning on staying away for very long,’ Olwyn said.

  ‘Vera, the mother, told me that she wouldn’t be k
ept from what was hers. Maybe she meant this place, too. She did say they’d be coming back eventually.’

  ‘Why’d they leave, then?’

  ‘They claim to want the children back. The Health Executive told them the building wasn’t fit for human habitation, and if there was to be any chance of reunification, they’d have to move somewhere safe. I think the Byrnes are playing a game with us: follow the rules and then, when the family’s together again, go back to things as they were.’

  ‘Could they be that calculating?’

  ‘Mrs Byrne certainly could.’

  The house had been empty for only a couple of months, but there was dust and filth that spoke of years of neglect. The floor of the kitchen we stood in was covered in grease and grime. Crumbs and scraps of mould encrusted a heavy wooden table by the window; a chair blanketed in spiders’ webs huddled against the wall. We walked through the kitchen area into a hallway that ran the length of the house. The floorboards, once burnished oak, were now frosted with dust and grooved with deep scratches and scuffs. A grotesque animal head hung over the front door. I couldn’t tell what creature it had originally been – the taxidermist was a talentless amateur. The skin hung in furry flaps, and bone showed through in pale patches. I pulled my gaze away from it and turned to the staircase. It was a beautiful piece of work, seemingly carved from a single piece of wood. It curved around majestically, travelling up through the levels of the house. A trapdoor at my feet told me that it also went down through the boards to the basement levels below. Placing my hand on the banisters, I realized this was the spine of the building.

  Looking upwards, I saw Francey standing stock-still above us on the first landing. She looked very pale, but a sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. The house had already left its mark on her – scum and filth were ingrained into her once clean clothes and a scratch, possibly from the branches of the tree, ran across her cheek.

  ‘Come up,’ she said, and then was gone from view.

  We followed their voices along the corridor to a room overlooking the street. In it were two children’s beds and nothing else. The plaster on the wall was cracked and the boards were bare and unvarnished. There were no toys, no books, no sign that anyone had ever done anything but slept here. It was a dead, empty room. Everywhere else in the house vibrated with the foreboding personality of those who had gone before: generations of Byrnes. But not this sad little alcove.

  Larry sat among the dusty blankets on one of the beds. Francey stood by the door, watching him.

  ‘This was our room, so it was,’ she said when we came in.

  ‘It’s … lovely,’ Olwyn said, and I cringed inwardly. The children were not stupid. The room was anything but lovely, and they knew it.

  ‘They said it was our room,’ Larry intoned gently, as if he was talking to himself. ‘But we never sleeped here. Not hardly ever, anyway. I don’ ’member sleepin’ here. Do you, Francey?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Where did you sleep, then?’ I asked. ‘Can you show me?’

  They said nothing for a while. Larry was gently rocking, the filthy bed linen wrapped around his shoulders. Francey seemed in a kind of trance, her hair lank, covered in dust-devils. Finally Larry stirred and seemed to see us for the first time.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘they’d put us down to bed here. Not much, but sometimes. We knowed, though, that she’d come for us ’fore too long.’

  Francey laughed, but it was an uncomfortable sound.

  ‘She used say: “Get up, lazybones”,’ Francey giggled. “Get up, lazybones. I wants my fun.” ’

  ‘And we’d have t’ go t’ their room wit the big bed.’

  Francey laughed and, turning on her heel, skipped through the door. I followed her onto the landing, and when I got there she was dancing up the next flight of stairs.

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you,’ she said happily. Larry walked past me slowly, as if some irrefutable force was drawing him. ‘You had to go when she told ya,’ he said as he went towards the stairs. ‘You’d be whipped anyway, but it was worse if you di’n’t go when she said.’

  The master bedroom was right at the end of the top floor. I could hear Francey singing inside: Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. She was using a strange, sing-song melody, her voice rising and falling lightly, until she got to the line: Jack fell down and broke his crown, which she shouted with all her might.

  The room was dominated by a four-poster bed of enormous size, complete with drapes. Francey sat in the centre of it, singing. Larry was on the floor, his knees up at his chin, rocking again.

  ‘This bes where we’d be took,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘This bes where Mammy sleeped wit Daddy in this here bed.’

  ‘Why did they take you here?’ Olwyn asked, her voice shaking.

  Francey smiled, a glint in her eye. She knew the discomfort this was causing both of us, but was relishing Olwyn’s inability to hide it.

  ‘She liked Lar to do tings to her sometimes. Or she made Daddy have sex on me. And she had me and Lar do stuff to each other now ’n’ again. Other times, she’d lock us up in that.’ She pointed at a door set into the wall.

  I tried the handle, but it was locked. Again I fumbled through the heavy set of keys, and finally one fitted and turned. Inside was a cupboard. The shelves and poles had been removed to create a small space, and the wooden interior was covered with what looked like the scratches of fingernails. A substance was encrusted onto the floor and the lower parts of the walls. I could guess what it was, but didn’t ask for confirmation. There was just about enough space for the two children in there, but with barely any room to move inside. It was like a coffin.

  ‘How long did they keep you in there for?’

  ‘Not long, like when they put us in the shed,’ Francey said. ‘But ’twas always dark inside, so ’twas hard to tell if ’twas daytime or nigh’time. We’d only get lockded up in there if we was really bad. Once, they pu’ Lar in there by hisself. He screamed and screamed and banged and I thinked he was goin’t’ break the door off.’

  ‘I din’ like ’t in there on my own,’ Larry said. ‘I was fierce scairt. Mammy dragged me out and she took a belt to me till my back was all cutted, then she put me back in.’

  ‘You din’ scream that time,’ Francey grinned. She stood up and bounced off the bed in two leaps. ‘Come on, I wants to show you our shed.’

  I was never so glad to feel fresh air on my face. Olwyn looked as if she were on the verge of being sick. I took her hand and squeezed it. She smiled sheepishly and squeezed back.

  The door of the shed swung open without any need for keys: the police had broken it open when the children had been seized and taken into care, and it had never been fixed. Inside I could see it had been a commonly used dwelling place over many years. The floor, which was bare dirt, was worn smooth with use, and clumps of desiccated faeces lay here and there. Despite the door being partially open there was still a powerful smell of urine in the air.

  ‘Sometimes, when we knowed they was asleep, we used get ou’ this away,’ Larry said, pushing aside a loose board.

  ‘To play with the cat?’ I asked.

  ‘You telled him ’bou’ the cat?’ Francey snarled, colour rising in her cheeks. ‘We said we wouldn’t never – ’

  ‘I only said we used play wit ’im,’ Larry said as she bore down on him. ‘I din’ tell th’ udder stuff.’

  The little girl was suddenly furious. She had treated the whole visit like a game up until then. Even her mention of sexual abuse had been in an airy and frivolous tone. But now she was angry, and terribly so.

  ‘We said we’d never, ever talk ’bou’ tha’ again, Lar! You promised me! Why’d you tell?’

  ‘I din’ tell, really I din’,’ Larry said, tears streaming down his face now at his twin’s rage.

  ‘Francey,’ I said, completely surprised at her response, ‘all Larry said was that there was a nice cat who would come and sit at the win
dow of the shed, and that you would watch him catch birds and play with him. If there’s more to the story, I never heard it.’

  She turned on me, a fury that was raw and visceral in her eyes. There were no tears. She was beyond them.

  ‘You shouldna’ bringed us back here,’ she screamed at me. ‘You had no righ’ to bring us to this here place!’ With that she kicked the loose board aside and sprang out through the opening.

  Through the yellow filth of the window I saw her leap over the wall and vanish into the field. Olwyn was holding Larry, who was sobbing inconsolably.

  ‘I’m sorry, Larry,’ I said to him, squatting down beside them. ‘You never said not to talk about the cat. I didn’t mean to make her mad like that.’

  He didn’t answer, just buried his face in Olwyn’s shoulder.

  ‘Go and get her,’ Olwyn said through her own tears. ‘She can’t have gone far.’

  I left them.

  Francey was in the tree they’d been in earlier. I stood at the base and gazed up at her. She hadn’t climbed very high, just a little above my head. She watched me approach, and I saw that the rage had mostly burned out already.

  ‘You leave me ’lone,’ she said sulkily. ‘I don’t wanna talk ’bou’ it.’

  ‘I’m sorry I upset you, Francey. I don’t know what I said that made you so mad, but whatever it was, I apologize. I’d like you, when you’re feeling a bit better, to say sorry to Larry too. He’s really sad, and I know you don’t like it when he’s unhappy.’

  ‘He shouldn’t telled you ’bou’ tha’ cat! It was our secret and he telled!’

  ‘What’s so terrible about playing with a cat?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s so awful! They found out and they killded it!’

  She screamed the words at me, the ejaculation followed by a string of shrieks that left her hoarse. I waited until she’d finished, then climbed up beside her. As an adult, I always feel stupid up trees, and this time was no different. I sat a little away and said nothing. She was crying softly now, beating her fist gently off the branch. Finally she said: ‘We used love tha’ cat. We din’ have no friends, but we had him. He likeded us an’ ev’ry time we was in tha’ shed he’d come and keep us comp’ny. He teached us to feed ourselves.’