The Boy Who Could See Demons: A Novel

by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

  And then Ruen came back, but he was no longer the Old Man. He was Ghost Boy, and as he crossed the stage he turned around to me and gave me a smile and his eyes were black. The lights went down and everything went dark until my eyes adjusted. Gareth and Liam stumbled across the stage, with guns, towards Ruen and I almost cried out, thinking they were going to run into him.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Liam shouted. The smoke machine started dribbling out a blanket of silvery fog. A projector above me started to whir, but a second later James turned on some music to cover the noise. The projector threw a movie of a man – who’s one of Jojo’s famous friends – on the wall just behind Liam. The projection was shadowy and the man’s face was hard to see and he really did look like a ghost. He was walking though he never got any closer. Liam didn’t see him.

  It was my turn to go on. I stepped forward through the black curtains of the wings. ‘What’s all this talk of ghosts, then?’ I said in a big voice, and Gareth and Liam almost jumped out of their skins.

  ‘We thought you were it,’ Liam said. He spun round, pointing his gun at blank space. ‘Two nights in a row now we’ve seen this … thing.’

  ‘Thing?’ I said, and as Liam told me about the ghost the fog grew thicker. Ruen was on the other side of the stage, right beside the projection of the ghost. He was just standing there, smirking. And then his voice appeared in my head.

  Alex, he said.

  I blinked, trying to ignore him. The ghost turned and started to walk again, but it looked like he really was coming towards us.

  ‘Aye, this ghost, demon, whatever you call it,’ Liam said fearfully, fluffing his lines a bit. ‘You’ll think I’m crazy, but I think it looks like the dead king.’

  I took a step beside Liam, remembering what Jojo said about keeping my shoulders turned to the audience at all times. I knew my line, as it’s important because it’s straight from Shakespeare’s play and Jojo said it was vital to the men with money that we keep some of Shakespeare in the play and so I made sure I learned those bits really carefully.

  ‘It harrows me with fear,’ I said, but my voice sounded really far away.

  Liam looked at the projection of the man walking towards us, and as he walked, Ruen marched beside him too and I felt dizzy at seeing double. Liam started to yell and the music got louder and sounded like a heartbeat – ba-dum, bad-dum, ba-dum – and I was supposed to lift up my fake gun and point it. But instead I looked down at it in my hand, and when I looked up at Ruen standing about ten feet away I saw he had one, too.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said as he lifted his gun, but he just grinned. The gun shone in the spotlight. The music got louder. Someone shouted.

  Ruen lifted his gun higher and aimed it at Liam, and I felt the crack of the gun deep in my gut. Liam’s head snapped back. Blood shot out of his forehead. He dropped to the ground.

  ‘Liam!’ I yelled, and I ran to him and fell to my knees beside his body. The blood was coming out and making a shiny puddle around his arms but it wasn’t really red like in films. It was black.

  Then the music stopped and the lights went up.

  I looked around. Ruen wasn’t there, and the projection was less ghostly and more like a home video against the wall on the stage. Liam leaned forward and I saw there was no blood on his body. He looked at me funny.

  ‘You’re shaking,’ he said as he sat up, and I went to answer but I was panting so heavily that I couldn’t form any words.

  Jojo ran on stage and she looked really shocked. ‘Alex!’ she shouted. ‘That was brilliant! So real, so convincing! Did you just make that up on the spot?’

  ‘I … I …’ was all I could say, and then I saw the gun in my hand and I dropped it. Jojo was using her hand to talk to the lights team. ‘Let’s go again. Same, please, Alex,’ she said, but I shook my head.

  ‘I don’t want to.’ I felt dirty and horrible and like I wanted to take a really hot bath.

  Jojo looked up. ‘Are you OK?’

  I shook my head. ‘I need to go,’ I told her, and she nodded like she understood.

  ‘OK, everyone, back to Plan A. Act Three. Assemble!’

  I whispered, ‘Thanks’ to Jojo and then, ‘Sorry’ and she told me, ‘It’s all right, Alex, just take it easy,’ but already I was running off stage and pulling open my locker and when I got home I sat in a hot bath until my fingers turned pink and squidgy.

  8

  DEMON HUNTING

  Anya

  Yesterday I had the opportunity of meeting Jojo Kennings and seeing a run-through of the adaptation of Hamlet she is putting on at the Grand Opera House in a couple weeks’ time. Alex seemed comfortable, if not a little shy, though I saw him beaming over at me once or twice when Jojo applauded his efforts. Admittedly I hadn’t been inside the Grand Opera House for many, many years – my memories were still fresh of when they pulled the shutters down and scheduled the beautiful building for demolition at the height of the Troubles. Jojo remembered this, too. ‘It’s one of the reasons I pushed so hard for this project,’ she explained, during a brief tour of the auditorium and the stage. A teenage kid was attempting to reposition a light overhead, and although Jojo assured me that he was trained and equipped to be hanging precariously from a height of some thirty feet above, the clanks and creaks made me look up frequently.

  I followed Jojo down the small narrow steps from the Grand Circle to the front of the stage. A young girl with a long pink wig and a shell suit – Bonnie, Jojo told me, who was cast as Ophelia – ran up to Jojo and asked her for change for the vending machine. Jojo sighed and dug her hand deep into her enormous jacket.

  ‘There you go,’ she told Bonnie, who wrinkled her nose as she smiled. ‘Don’t tell the others, mind.’

  ‘You give the kids money?’ I said, once Bonnie had gone out of earshot.

  Jojo gave a dramatic sigh. ‘I can’t help it, they’ve started to feel more like family than my cast.’ She stopped and looked up at the ornate ceiling above us. ‘None of these kids recall anything beyond the Stormont Agreement, and most of their home lives are so colourful that the outside world is alien and insignificant. They aren’t in touch with their heritage.’

  I felt there was a little more to her drive for the project than heritage – the power that lies in handing people their dreams, for example. ‘What about Alex?’ I asked. ‘Why did you pick him for this project?’

  ‘Talent is a difficult thing to put into words,’ she said, bending down to pick up an abandoned microphone. ‘But Alex is gifted. He has a way of seeing right into the human soul, though I don’t even think he knows he’s doing it.’

  ‘How so?’

  She dusted down the mic. ‘Despite his young age, Alex has the ability to perceive the angelic and the demonic in a human being. He sees the good and the bad and he understands a lot more than your average ten-year-old.’ She paused. ‘Though now I think I know a little more about why that might be.’

  ‘How has he taken to working as part of a group of children? Have there been any fights? Outbursts?’

  She looked at me knowingly. ‘We had a team of social workers here for the first few weeks. You’ve met Michael, I presume?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He usually comes to check up on Alex, make sure he’s hunky-dory. And the parents are always welcome.’ She glanced at a handful of men and women seated at the top of the auditorium. ‘Alex’s mother has never been. And to answer your question, Alex has been the most affable and easy-going of the bunch. I was very concerned when I found his mother in that state, of course. I didn’t even realise he had a problem until …’ She looked down. ‘Until your email.’

  I could see my email had unsettled her. Suddenly her plan to pluck Belfast’s diamonds from the rough and put them into the spotlight had revealed a flaw – what if one of them cracked on opening night?

  At that, Alex made an appearance on stage, directly under the spotlight, which was starting to sound as if it was going to fall off any minute. Jojo shield
ed her eyes and looked up at the boy amongst the rafters.

  ‘Everything OK up there?’

  A voice shouted down. ‘Fixed it.’

  ‘One more thing,’ I said quickly. She fixed a pair of silver eyes on me. ‘Could I get a copy of the script?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ She jogged backstage and returned a couple of minutes later with a scrolled-up bundle of white paper. ‘Here you go.’ She paused, nervous for the first time during our meeting. ‘You think you can fix it?’

  ‘Fix what?’

  She fluttered her fingers as if ‘it’ was an ethereal concept. ‘Whatever it is … that’s bothering Alex?’

  I nodded and held up the script she’d given me. ‘This is wonderful, thank you very much.’

  Alex looked down at Jojo intently. ‘Are we ready to start again?’

  She threw me a smile. ‘See? He was born for the stage.’ Then she clapped her hands together and shouted: ‘Everyone back for the third act!’

  I thanked her for her time and waved up at Alex. He stood stock-still in the centre of the stage, lit up by the spotlight, his eyes fixed ahead.

  I spent the rest of the evening reading Jojo’s script. From my limited memory of the original play – about a young prince who’s devastated by his father’s death and his mother’s hasty remarriage – I was able to pick out those parts of the play that Jojo had retained intact and those she had tweaked to comment on contemporary Belfast. Some of the more heavy-handed alterations – ‘To riot, or not to riot,’ Hamlet says at one point – made me wince, though parts of the retained original made me wonder whether Alex’s participation in the play was doing him as much harm as it was good. He was confident and believable on stage, no doubt about that.

  But there was a scene in there that made me wonder, a scene that could easily provoke a young boy’s sense of reality and fantasy: when Hamlet and Horatio see the looming ghost of the dead king, Horatio cries out, ‘It harrows me with fear and wonder,’ comparing it to a demon. ‘I swear,’ Horatio adds in Jojo’s version, ‘I wouldn’t believe that I could see this demon without the sensible and true guarantee of my own eyes.’

  The reasons for Ruin’s presence in Alex’s life are becoming clearer. But the answers for his eradication are not yet in focus.

  So today’s task is to venture to Alex’s home and meet his aunt Beverly, and also to scope out Alex’s immediate surroundings. I am never satisfied with the picture of a patient that a general assessment affords me: Poppy was so much more than the individual she portrayed in psychiatric interviews. Alive in the Scottish Highlands, confident and thoughtful at Arthur’s Seat, she was a product of her environment. In a way, I find myself considering Michael’s push for Alex to stay at home, in a place where he obviously feels safe and more at ease. But I have learned there are ways to make the transition from home to residential unit much smoother, if one takes the time to understand exactly where a person has come from.

  I put on my talisman and head towards the city on foot. I make it as far as St George’s Market close to the Belfast Waterfront before my phone rings. It is Michael. I consider ignoring him. I feel awkward about meeting him again, given our conflict over Alex. I stare at my phone for a moment, then press ‘Answer’ on the screen.

  ‘Man, you walk fast,’ Michael says on the other end. He’s panting and I can hear the drone of traffic in the background.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Can you wait where you are for a sec? Am almost there.’

  I look around me. A tall, blond-haired figure in a billowing black raincoat waves at the other side of the road. It’s Michael. I frown and wave back. When the traffic lights turn he jogs across the road, his face beaming. A far cry from our encounter at the hospital. Though, as he draws closer, his smile fades into concern, then into a look of apology. He sticks out his hand, and when I shake it he pulls me gently towards him, pecking my cheek.

  ‘How are you? Better than last time I saw you?’

  I nod. ‘Much.’

  His eyes are searching. ‘Look, I’m sorry about … well, getting so worked up the other day.’

  I felt myself soften. ‘I know this case is important to you. And I should probably reassure you that I have only Alex’s interests at heart.’

  He nods. ‘I know things probably seemed a lot simpler in Edinburgh. But it’s different here. None of the kids I’ve witnessed being separated from their families have fared particularly well …’

  We start walking, his voice drowned out by the hustle and bustle inside the market. We take a side street towards the City Hall where a man is busking. Michael stops to throw some change into the small red cap on the ground. As a result, he rises two notches in my estimation.

  ‘Maybe you didn’t hear me when I said I had no interest in separating Alex and Cindy,’ I say lightly. ‘And I actually meant it. But a spell at MacNeice House would ensure that Alex receives the correct treatment …’

  Michael looks ahead, his hands deep in his pockets. ‘Once bitten, twice shy, I guess,’ he says.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He hesitates, thumbing the corner of his mouth in thought. ‘There was a guy who worked there a few years ago, same role as you. Manson. One of my cases was a twelve-year-old girl. Nina. Cute little blonde thing. Suffered from Asperger’s, and also this rare disease called Cigarette Burns. Her dad even owned up to it. Mother kicked him out, pleaded with us to let Nina stay with her. But as soon as Manson finished Nina’s treatment he sent her off to a foster family.’

  We reach the end of the side street, the blare of the city traffic inching closer. I stop to let him finish.

  ‘Was she reunited with her mother?’

  ‘Yes, but there was a lot of unnecessary heartache caused. And I guess I’m just a sceptic anyhow. I think a lot of these kids make things up to get attention.’

  It’s at this point that my heart sinks. The team involved in assessing Alex’s needs consists of a jocular, doughnut-obsessed occupational therapist, Howard Dungar, who remains mostly in the sidelines as a signature on the report; Ursula, whose presence in the case is surprisingly in the form of a stony silence of disapproval at meetings, her head firmly turned towards the event of her retirement; and Michael the skeptic, who doesn’t believe in what I do.

  ‘So what are you out here for, anyway?’ he says, visibly forcing a smile on to his face.

  I step out towards the road, waiting for a break in oncoming traffic.

  ‘Sightseeing.’

  ‘Sightseeing? I thought you grew up in Belfast?’

  ‘Demon hunting, then,’ I say with a smile. ‘I’m investigating Alex’s environment.’

  Just then, he steps towards the road, sticks an arm out, and a few seconds later we’re both bundling into a taxi.

  ‘Just up the road, please,’ he tells the driver.

  ‘Where’re we going?’ I ask Michael.

  His green eyes are serious, unsmiling. ‘You said you wanted to hunt demons. We’re hunting demons.’

  The taxi pulls around the front of the City Hall and leads us out of town, taking us along a sprawling, congested street that has large murals on either side, some of them spreading across three or four walls. Michael leans across me, eyeing the rows of shops and houses.

  ‘Alex’s old school is around here,’ he says.

  ‘We’re going to Alex’s old school?’

  He shakes his head. I catch a whiff of aftershave as he leans close. There’s tobacco, too, lingering in his clothes. It is oddly reassuring. ‘This is the route he used to take to walk there. Look.’

  He taps the taxi driver on the shoulder and asks him to pull over. Outside, he jogs across the road towards one of the biggest murals. This one has an enormous oval in the middle in which are painted the words UVF FOR GOD AND ULSTER. There are five named faces above and four gun-wielding figures at the bottom, all featureless, all dressed completely in black. But one mural makes me double-take. It is a demon holding a gun, snarling at the view
er and stalking across the graves of dead Republicans.

  ‘You never seen this before?’

  ‘There are murals all over the city. I’ve seen dozens like this.’

  ‘But not with demons in them?’

  I look up at the portrayal above me. There is no denying that such a striking image witnessed daily by an impressionable boy could have an impact.

  ‘There’s more,’ Michael says, tapping my arm and heading back to the taxi. Inside the cab he leans forward to the driver and gives directions. The driver does a sharp U-turn and pulls us through streets that show Belfast is in the process of being rebuilt: old, graffitied buildings en route to demolition, spewing the contents of interior rooms as if a giant axe has chopped them in half; smaller, newer buildings with silver cladding and artwork on the exterior. I am still undecided as to whether this is a good thing or not.

  Finally, we pull up alongside a pub on a busy road, prompting some angry car horns behind us.

  ‘Come with me,’ Michael says, jumping out of the car and racing round to the other side to help me out. Despite myself, I’m warmed by his chivalry.

  ‘What do you think?’ he says, nodding at the wall in front of me.

  Another mural. This time, it’s a wall-sized portrait of Margaret Thatcher. Only, she has red eyes and blood trickling from the corners of her mouth. Another demon.

  ‘So, can I ask a personal question?’ Michael says, reaching for the sugar pourer. We are at a café on the Waterfront overlooking the River Lagan and the usual clouds of starlings looping around the Albert Bridge. An early evening coffee is the furthest distance I will travel in a professional relationship.

  I stir my coffee and watch, amazed, as Michael dumps sugar into his with abandon. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘What made you want to become a child psychiatrist?’