The Boy Who Could See Demons: A Novel

by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

  I take a gulp. The coffee is much too hot and I struggle not to splutter.

  ‘You say it like I’m a lion tamer.’

  ‘Not far off, though,’ he says, grinning. He sets down the sugar pourer.

  ‘That’s the common assumption, isn’t it? That us psychiatrists are all trying to tame the wild imaginings of damaged kids …’

  ‘No, it’s just I …’ He loosens his tie with a flick of his thumb under the green knot at his throat. ‘My parents sent me to a shrink when I was wee. Made me apprehensive about the profession ever since.’ The admission makes him clear his throat and cross his legs.

  ‘Apprehensive in the sense that you don’t believe I can help Alex?’

  He throws me a look. ‘No, I do. It’s just … well, my stance on treatment is a little more grounded in the theory that medication only works on a short-term basis. In the long run, if we’re to ensure Alex has a future in society, I believe we need to work with him and Cindy. And his Auntie Bev. I believe Bev is going to play an important role in his life now.’

  ‘Doesn’t she have to return to Cork?’

  He shifts in his seat. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  I retrace my train of thought. ‘Oh. Long story. The short version is that I got a scholarship to medical school, then further funding to pursue child psychiatry.’

  ‘Two scholarships?’

  ‘Three, actually.’ Usually I am self-deprecating, but not about my scholarships.

  ‘Three?’

  ‘I grew up in Tiger’s Bay.’

  Michael gives a whistle of surprise and raises his eyebrows, and I find myself heartened by the response. Tiger’s Bay meant nothing to anyone in Edinburgh. To a Belfast boy, it means something akin to the Bronx in New York City, or South Central in Los Angeles. It means that, in all likelihood, I should have ended up at the other end of the social scale. The truth is, my childhood has earned me an invaluable amount of self-respect. Or, rather, what it took to climb out of there.

  ‘How on earth does a girl from Tiger’s Bay end up a child psychiatrist?’ Michael presses his fingers against his head as if he’s trying to stop it from exploding.

  ‘The government was keen to give kids from single-parent families in the north Belfast area a head start to grammar school. Scholarship number one. Then a medical degree at Edinburgh University, scholarship number two. Followed by a scholarship to train as a child psychiatrist.’

  He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘If that’s the short version, I can’t wait to hear the long one.’

  I rub my scar without realising. He notices. ‘Has the long version anything to do with that scar?’ he asks, half-jokingly. When I hesitate his smile fades.

  ‘Sorry, that was rude of me.’

  Before I can reply, a waitress approaches, asking if we want anything else to eat or drink. The café is starting to fill with couples on dates, friends meeting up for after-work drinks. Michael holds up a hand to indicate we’re fine with coffee. He looks appalled at himself for the reference to my scar, a look of self-mortification so intense at his rudeness that I immediately let the comment go with a sense of relief.

  I have a very convincing, very rehearsed story for this scar. It is so deep and oddly situated, running from my cheek to my neck, that make-up doesn’t cover it fully. It is the reason I grew my hair so long, though since turning forty it has started to thin at the ends. More and more I use this lie when my hair fails to conceal it. The lie I concocted – which revolves around an unfortunate coral encounter whilst snorkelling in Fiji – was to engineer ensuing questions (Is Fiji beautiful? So you snorkel? What kind of coral?, etc.) that deflected entirely from the truth and towards a much more pleasant direction of conversation.

  Only, right now, I’m not in a lying mood.

  ‘Actually, you’re right on the money, Michael,’ I say breezily. ‘My daughter has … had … early onset schizophrenia.’ I tap my scar. ‘This was a result of my agreement to put her in an inpatient unit.’

  Michael nods and clasps his hands, his face soft. ‘I’m sorry.’ There is a pause as he holds my gaze, fitting the scar to its imagined origin. ‘It’s one thing to treat other people’s children. But to see your own child suffering, especially when you understood so intimately …’ He shakes his head. ‘I can’t imagine how that must have felt.’

  I open my mouth to explain how it felt, then find I am lost for words. The fact is, schizophrenia doesn’t affect every sufferer the same way. Hallucinations, unshakable delusions and muddled thoughts are the most striking symptoms. In Poppy’s case, her delusions were of a frightening physical nature. She’d see walls right in front of her that stretched up to the moon. She’d see bridges; vast, swelling rivers and oceans channelling down Princes Street. This was the cause of her outbursts. And she became increasingly convinced that she was stuck in a hole or being buried alive. She might have been sitting on the sofa watching television when suddenly she’d begin to scream for dear life, convinced that she was falling into a bottomless pit. ‘Help me, Mum!’ she’d yell, her nails dug deep into the arms of her seat, as if they were the sides of the hole she was sinking into.

  It took me a long time to understand what was happening when she did this. And when I wouldn’t believe her, her reality would shift again: I was trying to kill her. She would become violent.

  Michael’s stare brings me back into the present. I clear my throat and remember where I’d got up to. ‘She was the reason I trained in child psychiatry. My mother had suffered with what I now believe was schizophrenia. It was never diagnosed, of course. The GPs gave my mother all sorts of prescriptions for depression, told her to chew Valerian Root …’

  Michael snorts. ‘Fobbed her off, you mean.’

  I nod. ‘I heard there was a genetic link to schizophrenia. By the time Poppy was three, I had seen things in her behaviour that none of the paediatricians could explain. So I retrained. Three years basic psychiatry, then six months in child psychiatry.’

  ‘As a single mother?’

  I smile. ‘Yes. I had a kindly neighbour who helped out with childcare. And I can live on four hours’ sleep.’

  ‘You must have seen an improvement in her after the treatment,’ he says. ‘If you still advocate inpatient units.’

  ‘She did improve. Before that, she had no life. No friends, no ability to make friends, no hobbies … but the problem with schizophrenia is it’s unpredictable. Too many riddles for one person to solve.’

  He lifts his head and looks at me, searching my expression. ‘Riddles frustrate you. Don’t they?’

  I blink. ‘Don’t they frustrate you?’

  He leans back in his chair, crossing an ankle over one knee. ‘Riddles I can live with. Battered kids, I can’t. Man, the stuff I’ve seen … I mean, I know you probably deal with the most terrifying psychological nightmares ever … but social work,’ he grins, though his gaze stretches far into the distance, ‘someone shoulda warned me. Someone shoulda warned me.’ He uncrosses his legs. ‘I bought an allotment for that reason.’

  ‘You bought an allotment for what reason?’

  ‘To detox,’ he says, using his hands for emphasis, as if he’s brushing an invisible cloud of smoke off his chest. ‘To free myself from the tangle of all those messed-up families. Nothing like a turf fire and slug repellent to take your mind off a teenager who starved her baby to death because she was out dealing crack.’

  The image makes me shudder and he sees it. The shadow of a smile returns to his face. ‘So what do you do, then? Swim? Jog?’

  I nod. ‘Both. And I play.’ I run my fingers up and down the table as if it’s a piano.

  He raises his eyebrows. ‘Ah, the merry Joanna? Jazz?’

  ‘Classical. Or post-impressionist, if you want specifics.’

  ‘Always.’

  I feel the conversation slide in a direction that makes me nervous. I change the subject. ‘I read the notes from the primary consultations with Alex, but I doubt very much
that he has attachment disorder,’ I tell him.

  ‘No?’

  I shake my head. ‘He’s not bipolar either. I won’t rule it out, of course, but it’s my feeling, and I haven’t been wrong in quite some time.’

  He taps a spoon against his cup. ‘What about childhood schizophrenia?’ I sigh, and he looks up. ‘What, that’s a possibility?’

  I am tentative. ‘From what I’ve seen, yes. But a proper diagnosis requires admission and observation.’

  His face looks heavier all of a sudden, his shoulders slumping. ‘If Cindy gets home and finds Alex has been shipped off to some … and forgive me, but nuthouse … I don’t think she’ll be able to deal with it. I think it might be the final straw.’

  The child’s interests must come first, I think. But, clearly, much is at stake, and I am willing to give Michael’s approach a little longer.

  I look out over the darkening skyline, rush hour traffic forming a necklace of red brake lights across the bridge. The birds swarm and swoop as they settle in for the night. I meet Michael’s gaze across the table, wincing at the concern in his eyes.

  ‘For now, I’ll assess Alex at home.’

  9

  INVISIBILITY

  Alex

  Dear Diary,

  A convict escapes from prison by digging a tunnel which comes up outside the prison in a school playground. The convict is so happy when he crawls out of the mucky tunnel that he starts shouting, ‘I’m free, I’m free!’

  A little girl walks up to him in the playground.

  ‘So what?’ she says. ‘I’m four.’

  I’ve been sent back to school, which hasn’t been good because all the other kids seem to have heard about Mum and they’re starting to make up stories, like she’s loony and I tried to kill her, or she tried to kill me and then herself. When Auntie Bev picks me up at the front gates all the other parents look at me and smile but really they are talking and saying horrible things about Mum.

  Also I’m not speaking to Ruen. When he promised me the special thing for letting him study me I was happy with it, but the other day I asked him why he still hadn’t given me what he promised and he looked like he had forgotten all about it.

  OK, so I know I said it was a secret but the special thing was a new house for me and Mum. When we first became friends and he told me I could have anything I wanted, I thought of asking for a new bike. I remember Mum was in my bedroom which was unusual and Ruen was the Old Man and he was standing over me with his arms behind his back as usual and his face in that tight fishy frown. I could see the bike I wanted in my head – it would be black and say ‘Killer’ on the side and the tyres would be thick and the seat would be a silver skull. Mum was scrubbing the windowsills with a liquid that smelled just like Ruen.

  ‘You could grow mushrooms on these sills,’ she said, and even though she was scrubbing hard enough to make her T-shirt all wet the black stuff wasn’t coming off. The windows always looked like liquid, even when it wasn’t raining.

  ‘The council sticks people like us in places like this and forgets about them,’ Mum said, and her voice rattled because she was now on her knees rubbing the metal brush up and down and I hated the sound. I drew a picture with my fingertip in the wet glass of the window. Mum stopped to press the towel closer to the bottom of the wall to catch the drips. ‘I mean, it’s not like I want Buckingham Palace. A place that’s not likely to kill us both from live wires might be nice.’ She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. ‘Punishment, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Punishment for what?’

  She tucked one of the long pink threads in her hair behind her ear. Some of the foam sat on the top of her ear like a cloud.

  ‘For not being a perfect citizen. For living off benefits. For reminding the establishment of how it failed.’

  ‘Who’s the establishment, Mum?’

  She nodded at me. ‘Exactly.’ She bent down to drip the metal brush in the bucket, then wiped the other side of her face and another little cloud of foam sat on her other ear. I tried not to laugh.

  ‘That reminds me,’ she said. ‘I saw Fatty Matthews talking to you at the corner shop last night.’

  I thought back to it. I didn’t even know who Fatty Matthews was. I’d been buying milk and some big bald fat bloke came up to me and starting asking about school.

  ‘… you tell me, OK?’ she was saying. ‘Because that powdery stuff isn’t talc. Not even if he offers you lots of money.’

  I nodded and finished my drawing on the window. After a few minutes Mum leaned back and stared at it and her face looked confused.

  ‘What’s that, Alex?’

  ‘What’s what?’

  She stood up and the metal brush splatted foam on the floor. ‘Your picture. What is it?’

  I looked at it and thought, Crap, Mum doesn’t know who Ruen is, and then I tried to think of a lie but Mum was staring at me.

  ‘It’s a man.’

  ‘I can see that. Why did you draw it?’

  I opened my mouth for a long time and said, ‘Because I was bored,’ but she was wiping her face now and knelt down in front of me.

  ‘Alex, is there something you want to talk to me about?’

  I shook my head, then thought better of it. ‘I’m hungry.’

  She tightened her hands on the tops of my arms. ‘You know, what Dad did – it wasn’t anything to do with you.’

  I was thinking of asking Ruen for a burger now. Forget the bike. I’d seen someone eat a burger through the window of a shop in town: at first I thought it was like a totem pole or something, but no. It was a burger, with two fat round brown juicy slabs of burger meat and salad and a thick pink strip of bacon and cheese sliding on to the plate and it was so tall someone had stuck a flag in it like Mount Everest.

  ‘… with chips, too,’ I said, and Mum stopped whatever she was saying and looked at me with her eyes wide. She looked like me when she did that, because normally her eyes are small and puffy and sad.

  ‘Alex, did you hear what I said?’

  My arms were really hurting now. I nodded.

  ‘Repeat it. Repeat what I said.’

  I tried to think back, though my stomach was growling and I could actually smell it now, I could smell that burger. She kept asking me to say what she’d said and so words came rising up in my mind like chips in a deep fat fryer, police and Dad and blood and got what he deserved.

  ‘There are some things you’re too young to understand,’ she said, her voice growing softer, and I took a big breath because finally she’d let go of my arms. And then she raised a hand to her mouth and her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Oh, Alex,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I looked down and where she’d held me on each arm was a big red mark in the shape of her hand. She tried to rub the mark with her palms but it didn’t go away. So she pulled me close to her and my head was between her jaw and her shoulder and she was rubbing my back. I could smell cigarettes in her hair and also sweat and then Mum’s smell which is quite nice. After a long time she leaned back and looked at me and there was a big smile on her face, which didn’t happen very often.

  ‘If you could have anything in the whole world, what would it be?’

  ‘A burger with a slice of bacon and cheese.’

  ‘No, really, Alex. What would it be?’

  I looked at the picture I’d drawn in the window, which was starting to look like it was melting. For Dad to come back, I thought, but I didn’t say that because I knew it would only upset her.

  ‘What would you have?’ I asked. She looked shocked and blinked three times.

  ‘No one’s ever asked me, I don’t think,’ she said. She stood up and stared at the windowsill.

  ‘A new house,’ she said then. ‘Yeah. A brand new house. With a garden. And three … no, four bedrooms, with a guest bedroom and everything. Maybe a gym.’

  She started pacing up and down, describing every single room in microscopic detail, right down
to the fact that we’d have no crappy attic with mould and no dead person’s things all over the place and no mice and no drug-dealing neighbours either.

  Later that day I told Ruen that the sort of house we’d like would have a garden at the back that gets some sun during the daytime, a kitchen big enough for two people to move in with an oven that works and hopefully a tap that doesn’t drip, a toilet that flushes and walls that don’t look like the last person living there took a pickaxe to them.

  ‘Consider it arranged.’

  ‘What?’

  He narrowed his eyes at me in his Alex Is Stupid look. ‘I’ll sort it out, Alex.’

  ‘How will you sort it out?’ I asked. ‘Do you have lots of money?’

  He smiled and winked. ‘I have powers of which you are unaware. A mere house is a trifle, my boy. If you’d asked me for a planet, it might have taken some time. But I could accommodate.’

  I just laughed. A planet, I thought. What would I need a planet for? He’s like that, Ruen. A bit of a snob, at least when he’s the Old Man. He rolls his eyes when I play football and tells me my drawings of skeletons are inept, which means they’re crap. According to Ruen, I should be reading something called Chekhov and am very uncultured for not learning the piano.

  But then he tries to do what I see all the other demons doing: he suggests I do something mean, like drop the light in the Opera House on Katie’s mum’s head. I was too scared to do that. He told me later I was dumb for not doing it because really it would have been Terry dropping the thing and because Katie’s mum hits her because she’s a drunk and is jealous of Katie. How can a mum be jealous of her own kid? I asked him and he gave me The Look again, like I’m stupid.

  And then last night Katie only came to rehearsals to tell Jojo she couldn’t stay and when I saw her at the door she had a big black bruise on her cheek and her face was swollen and Jojo put her arms around her. She gave me a wave and ran off and I looked up at that light and thought, Ruen was right. Sometimes bad people need bad things to happen to them otherwise the bad things just go on and on and on.