The Boy Who Could See Demons: A Novel

by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

  I don’t think I’ve ever done any of the things Ruen tells me to do, so I don’t really know why I told Anya who he was when he asked me to. Sometimes his friends will come up to me and ask me to do things too, like steal from Mum’s purse so I can buy her a Mother’s Day card, or, once, one of them spent a long time plotting out how I can get back at our neighbours for breaking our window. I told them all to go away and leave me alone. I allowed Ruen to study me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a brain and will just follow what he says like I’m a stupid donkey or something.

  Plus, I know what happened to Mum. I don’t think Ruen realises this, and I don’t tell him. But sometimes, when she gets sad, I see some demons surrounding her and talking to her, and the more they talk to her the sadder she gets. I tell them under my breath to get out. Usually, they just laugh at me.

  I am very scared that they’ll keep talking to Mum and she’ll just keep taking tablets and never wake up. I want to tell this to Anya, but I’m not sure what she’ll make of it.

  Still, when Anya arrives at our front door, I am really pleased. I’ve made her onions on toast with a glass of milk and set it all on the table like she’s a guest. Auntie Bev is really smiley. She wags her finger at me and says:

  ‘He looks like a right wee Chaplin today, doesn’t he?’

  Anya looks at my clothes and says, ‘What a lovely suit, Alex, and the bow tie’s a nice touch, too.’

  ‘Alex dresses himself,’ I hear Bev whisper to Anya. ‘I found a whole wardrobe of stuff left over from the old man who lived here before. I think he’s supplementing his clothes with these old suits. I’m taking him to the shops tomorrow.’

  Him, I think. It’s rude for them to talk about me as if I’m not even here. I look at Auntie Bev’s silver shower rail in the doorway and try to pull my head up, but I can hardly reach it. I climb up on the sofa then on to the lamp table beside it. I hold on to the door frame and lift my foot up over the bar to hang like a bat, the way Auntie Bev did.

  ‘Alex?’

  I can see Auntie Bev and Anya but they’re upside down. Our dinner table looks like it’s floating and the blue chair looks like it’s stuck to the ceiling and everything looks so different I start to laugh.

  Anya steps forward and holds my shoulders. ‘Careful,’ she says, slipping my feet off the bar and catching me as I drop slightly. Then she turns me the right way up and I feel dizzy.

  ‘Well done!’ she says. ‘That’s not easy to do, you know. Though maybe it’s best if you warn me next time. Don’t want you falling on your noggin.’ She ruffles my hair and I feel surprised that no one’s yelled at me. Anya sits down at the table, waiting for me.

  ‘I’ll just be in here while you have your chat, is that OK?’ Auntie Bev tells Anya in a loud voice, pointing at the kitchen.

  Anya nods. ‘By all means. Are you making something nice?’

  Auntie Bev ducks back out of the kitchen and wrinkles her nose. ‘I’d love to, but all my sister has in the cupboards is ketchup and’ – she glances at me – ‘what the mice left behind.’

  ‘You could make a nice risotto out of that, surely?’ says Anya, though her face looks disgusted.

  Auntie Bev presses her hand against her forehead and then crosses herself quickly. ‘We’ll go to M&S,’ she tells me, then gives Anya the thumbs-up.

  ‘What’s risotto?’ I ask Anya.

  ‘Haven’t you had risotto before?’

  I sit down at the table and shake my head.

  ‘It’s like rice,’ she says.

  ‘Rice?’

  She looks at me with her face all blank then says, ‘You’ve not had rice either?’

  I shake my head. Mum says she only has sixty quid a week for all the bills, and the way I go through sketchpads and cans of dog food for Woof we’re lucky we don’t have to live on air.

  ‘Do you know you can buy enough onions for a whole week for less than a quid?’ I tell Anya, and her face changes. She says, ‘that makes sense.’

  She leans forward and pulls a notepad from her bag, then a pen, then a fat pencil case and a big sketchpad. She hands the pencil case and sketchpad to me.

  ‘What’s this for?’ I ask.

  ‘I know you love drawing,’ she says. ‘I’d love it if you could draw some pictures for me.’

  I unzip the pencil case and say, ‘Cool!’ because there’s pastels in there as well as pencils, and I like the pastels because I can lick them and make the colours blurry which looks cool.

  ‘What do you want a picture of?’ I say, though I’ve already started licking the back of my hand and dabbing a yellow pastel in the spit. Anya doesn’t say anything and just watches as I start drawing. I don’t even know what I’m drawing but it makes sense to use yellow. I start off by drawing a sun with spirals instead of rays because the rays sometimes look like a spider and spiders are gross.

  ‘Why don’t you draw your mum for me?’ Anya says.

  I take out a peach colour and a brown and start to draw. I begin with Mum’s face which is an egg-shape with quite hollow cheeks, and then her legs which are like sticks. When I finish, Anya tilts her head and points at my drawing.

  ‘Someone’s carrying your mum. Who is it?’

  I look at the picture and realise I haven’t given myself a bow tie. I quickly find a red and draw it in. ‘I’m carrying Mum,’ I tell Anya. Then I use a dark-blue for my eyes and find a light-blue for Mum’s eyes.

  ‘Why are you carrying your mum in this picture?’

  I’m not sure. ‘I think she might have a sore foot. Or maybe she’s too tired to walk.’

  Anya nods and frowns so I pick up a red pastel and dab some bits of blood from Mum’s foot to show why I’m carrying her.

  ‘What about Woof? Can you draw him?’

  I find some white and black and draw Woof with his head under Mum’s feet, because if I was carrying Mum like that he would definitely help me.

  Anya takes a big breath. ‘And what about your dad? Could you draw him?’

  I look at my colours. I don’t know what colour to use for Dad. I can’t even remember what colour his eyes were and for a minute this scares me. Then Anya says: ‘Even if you can’t draw a picture of your dad, can you draw something that comes to mind when you think of him? Even if it’s just a mark on the page?’

  I blink my eyes four times. I pick up the blue pastel again and draw.

  ‘Is that a car?’ Anya asks. I nod.

  ‘Did he drive a blue car?’

  I shake my head, and she just nods and I stare at the picture. My hands feel tingly and my heart is pounding.

  ‘I saw him in a blue car once,’ I tell her.

  Anya nods and smiles. ‘What about Ruin? Or any of the people you see. Could you draw them?’

  I had hoped she had forgotten all about Ruen. I wasn’t happy when Ruen asked me to tell her about him but I felt I needed to be honest with her, and she seems like the sort of person I can be honest with. I look around me. There’s a demon in the kitchen with Auntie Bev. You wouldn’t think she was a demon as she is wearing a white dress tied at the waist and she’s small with curly brown hair and looks like she eats a lot of cakes, but when she looks at me her eyes are black and I feel sick.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Anya says, pointing at the picture.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is that Ruin?’ she asks, tapping at the picture I’ve drawn of Horn Head, though I haven’t drawn his red horn properly and it looks squiggly. I shake my head and rub it out with my thumb.

  I fiddle with the scratchy corners of my bow tie and say:

  ‘I would tell you more about Ruen, but I think you just think I’m crazy and that Ruen is someone in my head.’

  She looks surprised. ‘Does Ruin live in your head?’

  I shake my head, very slowly. ‘I’m not sure where he lives. Hell, probably. But for a long time he’s lived mostly with me.’

  ‘How long, would you say?’

  I shrug. ‘Since my dad died.’r />
  She nods and writes something down in her notebook.

  ‘Where does Ruin sleep?’ she says, and she says it while she’s writing.

  ‘I don’t think he sleeps. He comes and goes. Sometimes he disappears and I don’t see him.’

  ‘How long does he disappear for?’

  I shrug. ‘Sometimes a few hours. I usually see him every day, at least three times. Sometimes he just walks up and down our hall.’

  ‘Why does he walk up and down the hall?’

  ‘I think he gets bored.’

  ‘What does he get bored of?’

  Just as I’m getting sick of answering for Ruen he appears in the corner of the room. So I lean forward and look at him and ask, ‘What do you get bored of?’

  This shocks both Anya and Ruen, who is the Old Man just then. Auntie Bev is still in the kitchen, singing. Ruen looks very weird, like he’s managed to crack his scowl into an open cave and his eyes are all droopy, like Woof’s.

  ‘Is he here now?’ Anya says, her eyes all wide and round.

  ‘He wouldn’t dare miss a conversation about him, would you, Ruen?’ I jeer at him and he scowls. ‘What. Do. You. Get. Bored. Of?’

  Eventually, he answers.

  ‘Not being seen,’ he says, and his voice is very hoarse like he’s been smoking.

  I thought as much. I tell this to Anya.

  ‘Not being seen?’ she says. ‘You mean, because only you can see him?’

  I say yes and then I remember something Ruen told me a while ago. ‘He says that demons are old-school angels of Hell, which is a culture as old as the Earth. Demons have souls but they don’t have human bodies. This is like a big deal to them so they get points for stuff they do.’

  ‘What sort of things do they do?’ she says, and she has to turn over her page because it’s filled up with scribbles. I pause for half a minute because there’s a demon right above Anya, and he’s so fat his skin drips down around his body like a mountain of ice cream. It’s like he’s lying on her shoulders, trying to get comfortable. He yawns and then he disappears and I take a big breath of relief.

  ‘I thought he was gonna squish you,’ I say by accident.

  ‘What?’

  I shake my head and remember what she asked me. ‘Ruen says he likes bringing a human to their lowest point. That’s when demons get a prize called a human likeness.’

  ‘They become human?’

  I shake my head. ‘No, they just look like a human. But even then they don’t really get seen by anybody, not really. And I think invisibility’s a very odd thing to be bored of,’ I tell Anya. ‘Being invisible would be so cool!’

  I start to tell Anya all the cool stuff I’d do if I turned invisible, and she writes some of it down and then holds her hand up.

  ‘Can I ask Ruin another question?’

  I glance at him and feel a bit annoyed. I’m sick of talking about him now and wish I’d never bothered telling Anya about him in the first place because he’s getting all the attention. He just stares. ‘Yeah,’ I tell Anya.

  ‘Wait, where is Ruin?’ she asks, looking around the room. I point at the spot he’s standing in, which is right next to the window and beside the blue armchair.

  ‘There,’ I say.

  Anya shuffles in her seat so she can make out the exact spot. She points. ‘There?’ Ruen looks taken aback by all this pointing and for a moment I think he’s going to disappear.

  ‘Yeah, there.’ I get up and stand next to him. He looks down at me, frowning. He doesn’t seem to be cross, just in a bit of a daze. I hold my hands out to my side. ‘Right here.’

  Anya nods. ‘Can you hold your hand up, Alex, right so it touches Ruin’s head? Just so I know how tall he is. Only you can see him, you see.’

  I stretch up on my tiptoes to measure Ruen’s height. My fingers brush the bald spot on top of his head and it feels cold and smooth.

  Anya smiles and writes something down. ‘Ruin seems tall for a boy,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you say he was a boy?’

  I shake my head. ‘He’s old.’

  More scribbles in her notebook.

  ‘Can you describe for me what Ruin’s wearing?’

  I tell her. I could tell her with my eyes shut: when he’s the Old Man he never wears anything else. Same dusty brown suit with the same smell of a dead dog. It makes me want to be sick. I don’t mention that he’s a monster sometimes, and I would never, ever tell her about Horn Head because when he’s the Horn Head he just freaks me out.

  ‘So you’re both wearing suits?’ She laughs. ‘Is there some wardrobe copying going on here?’

  I look from the straggling bits of black thread dangling from the hems of Ruen’s suit to the shirt collar, so green and crusty it looks like someone gobbed on his neck, and I say: ‘There’s no way I dress like that.’

  Then she asks something weird. ‘Can you tell me what Ruin is thinking?’

  I look at him. He looks at me and raises an eyebrow as if he’s curious about that, too. I look back at Anya.

  ‘Of course I can’t tell you what he’s thinking. That would make me a mind-reader, wouldn’t it?’

  She just smiles. Then it occurs to me: she thinks I’m lying. She really does think I’m making all of this up. I feel my cheeks get hot. I clench and unclench my fists. ‘I don’t want to do this any more,’ I tell Anya. ‘Can I see my mum now, please?’

  ‘Hold on a minute, Alex,’ she says quickly, setting her pen on her lap. ‘I was enjoying learning all about Ruin. Maybe you can tell me what his hobbies are?’

  And so I look at Ruen and he rolls his eyes. ‘Tell her I quite enjoy genocide,’ he says, and I go to say it but then remember what genocide means and think that she might look at me funny and so I stay quiet. When I don’t say anything Auntie Bev comes in from the kitchen with a big smile and bends down in front of me.

  ‘If you tell the nice lady all about the things you can see, we can go visit your mum. OK, Alex?’

  ‘Today?’

  Bev looks at Anya and then nods. ‘Yep. Today.’

  And I feel really excited then and tell Anya that I can see all Ruen’s friends, too, and that some of them are scary and look like dragons, and some of them look like human-looking robots with red eyes. ‘Like the Terminator?’ she says and I realise that yes, that’s exactly how some of them look. And so I start wondering whether James Cameron who directed the film sees what I see too and maybe she could speak to him as well.

  I hear Bev whispering something to Anya about ‘masculinity issues’ and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Anya nods and says, ‘Potentially.’

  ‘Let’s talk more about Ruin,’ Anya says, turning back to me. ‘What does he like to eat?’

  But I’m fed up now. I just want to see Mum. So I say: ‘Why do you want to know so much about Ruen, huh? He’s a miserable old fart who does nothing but make false promises and whinge about how crap our piano is.’

  I glance over at Ruen, expecting him to be cross at me for saying this. And he does look very cross, just not at me. He is looking right past me at the doorway. I follow his gaze but I don’t see anything.

  ‘Alex?’ I hear Anya ask.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I say to Ruen, but he doesn’t reply. He is showing his teeth like Woof does when he’s cross; his face is turning bright red. Then he changes into a monster right in front of me, his short skinny arms bursting out of his shirt and turning dark and shadowy and his eyes rolling back in his head. He grows so tall that his head bends against the ceiling and instead of his funny, purplish monster-skin he looks like thick black smoke with eyes and a hole like the middle of a tornado where his mouth should be. And in the middle of that hole are four long fangs. Then he turns and lunges towards me and I shout, ‘Ruen!’

  When I look up I see he’s launched himself across the other side of the room in a kind of twist and crashes into the doorway of the living room, and I am screaming.

  When he crashes, I feel very strange. There is such a sharp pain in my
chest that I fall to the floor.

  ‘Alex!’ I hear Anya shout, then Auntie Bev runs towards me and Ruen lets out a huge, deep roar and then there is nothing.

  10

  THE THIN EDGE OF BELIEF

  Anya

  At my last session with Alex I met his temporary carer, his aunt Beverly, who drove up from Cork on the evening of Cindy’s suicide attempt. I am relieved when I see her – she is lively, warm, and keen to put her all into helping Alex in whatever way she can. Beverly is Cindy’s elder sister by eleven years and she works as an ear, nose and throat doctor. She has no children of her own and, having had a somewhat intermittent relationship with Alex over the years, is anxious to make up for lost time and be a support for her sister and nephew.

  ‘I wish I’d come home sooner,’ she tells me over and over at the back of the house, her face twisting as she looks over the smashed window in Cindy’s kitchen, boarded up hapharzardly with cardboard and stickytape; the spots of mould above the sink. She pulls a cigarette from a fresh packet and asks if I mind. I shake my head and she opens the kitchen door, stepping out into the mossy yard.

  ‘I knew Cindy was struggling. I should have come back for good, helped her out. I love Alex to bits. Cindy and I haven’t always seen eye to eye but …’ She trails off, taking a deep drag. ‘We had such different childhoods. I’ve never understood Cindy. She’s always kept things to herself. My mum did a good job of pulling information out of her, but she never opened up to me.’

  I glance back at Alex, who is bringing his plate into the kitchen. He sets it on the bench and smiles at me. Bev waits until he is gone before she finishes.

  ‘I only have so much time that I can take off work to care for Alex,’ she says, giving up on her cigarette. ‘But I’m all he’s got until Cindy pulls herself round.’

  ‘What about Alex’s grandparents? Are they around?’

  She stubs out her cigarette. ‘Dad died when I was little,’ she says quietly. ‘Mum passed five years ago. She would be horrified by all this.’

  ‘And Alex’s father?’ I ask. ‘Does he have contact with him?’

  She steps inside, shutting the door behind her. It won’t close until she kicks it, making a dent in the base. She sighs. ‘You’d need to talk to Cindy about that. The identity of Alex’s father is something she chose to keep from all of us.’