Taken Away (16 page)

‘Nan? Her name is Cheryl. Cheryl Finnerty . . . er . . . yeah, Finnerty is her married name. Dunno her maiden one. She's our nan.'

He sighed in tired exasperation. ‘I don't know any Cheryl.'

‘She's senile. She doesn't know anyone . . . '

‘She knows
me
!' he cried. ‘She said my name! She said
Francis
! You heard her!' He groaned and laid his head back again, as if shouting had given him a headache. ‘This world is so full of noise and colours,' he moaned. ‘It hurts.'

‘I'm going to get you out of him,' I told him evenly. ‘You can't stay.'

‘Urgh!' He whacked his head back against the glass in frustration and glared at me without lifting his head from the window. ‘Why can't you remember? You knew me before! When I found you in the bed; when we were talking in the garden! When the soldier came and you were frightened! Why can't you remember now?'

‘That was Dom!' I yelled. ‘You were talking to Dom! And he
didn't
know you! He thought you were me! Don't you remember? When you had him by the hand and you were rabbiting on about moonlight and you looked up and you both saw me? Don't you remember how scared he was?'

‘He . . . he was scared of the bad man . . . The bad man was leaning out the window.'

‘It was
me leaning out the window
!'

‘Lorry was frightened . . . '

‘Dom!
Dom
was frightened! Because he realised I was upstairs! He realised he was holding hands with a frickin'
ghost
in the frickin'
garden
in the middle of the
night
! Of course he was scared!'

He grabbed his head. He was getting upset again; I could tell by the way the temperature was plummeting. My breath began to fog in the air and, even through my three jumpers, I felt needles of cold chill my arms.

You can't freeze a tomato
, I thought.
Jesus.

I hunkered down cautiously by his side. I tried to make my voice low and unthreatening.

Listen,' I said, ‘Isn't it obvious that you don't belong here? ‘Just think about it for five seconds and it'll be obvious. This isn't your life. This can't be anything
like
your life! This is
Dom's
life.' He groaned, the heels of his hands pressed to his temples.

‘I thought that when I finally found you, we'd get everything back; that we'd be alright again . . .I thought . . . ' He gasped, leaning back. Frost bloomed with an audible
hiss
across the glass behind him. I watched in horror as its jagged icy pattern fanned out around his head. He looked like a religious icon, with his tormented face and his frozen halo, outlined against the vivid blue sky.

‘You have to calm down,' I whispered.

He flashed me a look that was all goblin-boy and nothing of Dom, and when he bared his teeth at me I was surprised that they weren't yet black against his white lips. ‘Calm down?' he snarled. ‘I finally get out of the grey. I finally find my brother, and when I do it's just
lies
and
noise
and damnable
colours
. And
you
. . . you don't even
know
me.'

‘All I'm saying is . . . don't get so upset.'

He chuffed out a bitter little laugh. ‘You're one to talk.' He looked over my shoulder, and when I followed suit I saw that my assault on the bed had loosened the plaster on the wall. Several big chunks of it had fallen onto the blankets.

‘Shit,' I said.

‘Your language is terrible,' he whispered.

It was my turn to half laugh. ‘You've met me on a bad day.'

My laugh seemed to surprise him, and I felt him relax a little. His eyes lost some of their midnight-blackness, warming a shade closer to Dom's usual chocolate brown. I lowered myself to my knees beside him. It felt like I was edging my way around a tiger. The two of us were so volatile.

‘Are you cold?' I asked him. He shook his head in surprise. ‘Look at the window behind you.' He did and pulled back, shocked at the ragged silhouette etched in frost on the glass. ‘Look at my hands.' I held them out to him, palms out. The flesh was pinched, pink and raw. ‘I burnt them when I grabbed you downstairs.' He was appalled, and I leant forward to press my advantage. ‘You're hurting my brother. Just by being in his body. You're going to kill my brother. Please. Please, please, please just leave Dom alone.'

‘But . . . ' He looked down at himself, then back at me. ‘What are you asking me to do?'

‘You know.' I made a shooing gesture with my hands. ‘Get out of Dom's body. Let him take control again. Just . . . ' I made that ineffectual motion again.

‘Lorry,' he said, seemingly torn between being amused and bewildered. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘Let Dom go!' I shouted. ‘Get out! Just leave him!' I shoved at his shoulder, knocking him into the glass, and his lip curled in warning.

‘Don't hit me again,' he said. His eyes began to darken. That fog began to curl up from his shoulders.

Calm down
, I told myself.
Softly. Softly.
‘I tell you what,' I said. ‘Just let me
talk
to Dom. You don't have to leave. Just . . . please just let me talk to Dom.'

Bright angry splinters of frost glittered on his mouth as he answered me.

‘There is no Dom. I'm Francis.'

I shot to my feet, my hands clenched. I had to gather every stitch of patience I'd ever had and wind it around myself just to keep from flying to the four corners of the room. ‘I know you're confused,' I ground out. ‘But listen to me now. My brother, Dominick Finnerty, lives in this body. You, Francis . . . something-or-other . . . have taken it over. You are
inside my brother's body
. He's in there with you. You have to . . . '

He stood suddenly and came very close, looking up at me from Dom's ever so slightly shorter height. He was glaring into my eyes, reading my face. Looking for what? Deceit? Malice? Something hidden behind my words? I held his eye, and it wasn't long before his expression softened and I saw him start to consider the impossible.

He looked down at his hands, the too-smooth hardness of his flesh, the blue marbling of veins beneath his milky skin. He turned and watched the last of his frosted silhouette dispersing from the window.

‘Let me talk to Dom,' I whispered.

He didn't seem to hear me. He began turning from left to right slightly, as if looking for an exit. His movements became jerky and stiff, and he began to crackle with cold – literally. It was as if I could hear the cold off him, the brittle sound of hundreds of needles hitting a tiled floor. Tendrils of fog began to curl from his hair.

I wrapped my hands in the ends of my scarf and grabbed the tops of his arms. I yelled into his face, ‘Calm down before you kill Dom!'

He desperately met my eyes, his legs starting to buckle. ‘Can't. Too scared . . . Can't . . . '

‘Jesus. Jesus
Christ
.' I was angry all over again. I dragged him, stumbling, to the bunk and flung him onto the bottom bed. I reefed all the blankets off the top mattress and piled them on top of him. I rifled through all the drawers and just piled everything on him: jumpers, undies, pyjamas – everything I could lay hands on. I bent down to him, snarling into his frightened face, ‘Calm down. Calm the hell down.'

‘Y-you . . . calm down,' he whispered, his lips barely moving. He sounded so like Dom that I nearly shouted for joy. But the terror in his eyes brought me to my knees.

‘Dom?' I asked.

My heart fell when he managed a tiny shake of his head, his eyes desolate. Still Francis. His lips were blue now, and though there was ice starting to form on the top layer of blankets, he wasn't even shaking – he was too cold.

‘Help me,' he managed, and then all that came from his lips was the hollow whistle of his breath on immobile lips.

I pushed myself away from the bed and staggered to the hall. I had no idea what to do. Downstairs, Ma had come back from the old biddies' place; I could hear her and Dad in the kitchen. She must have just come through the door, because Dad was telling her about us.

‘. . . on the floor like gurriers. I nearly killed them. I swear, if they'd've said a word to me, I don't think I could have contained myself.'

I put one foot on the stairs, then another, an indecisive downward movement.

Ma's shadow passed across the wall at the turn of the stairs as she crossed from one side of the kitchen to the other. ‘The girls aren't coming for Easter,' she said. ‘They're afraid they'll get caught by the bloody bus strike.'

‘Ah babe, I'm sorry.'

‘S'alright,' she said, not quite managing to hide her disappointment. ‘Sure, they'd only be underfoot anyway.'

I have to calm Dom down
, I thought.
I have to calm him down.

I thought of Ma and Dad, of calling them up to witness what had become of Dom. I thought of the yelling, the panic, the chaos that would follow. I imagined them dragging Dom's body out of the bed, stumbling with him to the car. The frantic lunatic search for a hospital or doctor. And all the time Francis, trapped, rigid and frozen, more and more afraid in a world less and less familiar, with people who had no clue – it would kill him. It would kill Dom. I couldn't do that.

I backed quietly up the steps and stood perfectly still and silent on the top landing. Then I turned and went through Ma and Dad's room to the adjoining room at the far end of the house. Nan's room.

I never actually made a conscious decision, if you can believe it. There was no moment of,
Hey. What if I do this?
I just went straight to the little wooden box on Nan's dresser and emptied Nan's medicines out onto her bed. There were a lot of them: packets and boxes and vials of stuff. But there were two in particular that I was looking for. There, Nan's sedatives, a bottle of little yellow tablets and a bottle of green – both full. No one would miss any.

I weighed them in my hands, trying to decide which ones to give him. I decided on the green ones. Nan took three half-tablets a day. They kept her calm. I wondered how much I should give him to keep him calm. A whole tablet? He was pretty bad. How fast would it work? If I gave him a whole tablet, would it work faster than a half one?

Shit. I was wasting time. I pocketed four of the little green pills and shoved all the boxes and bottles and vials back into Nan's wee box. I didn't even pause to make sure everything was in order. I just crept back across the top floor, hoping to God that no one downstairs heard me creaking about overhead. My hands were shaking as I filled Dee's night-time bottle with water in the bathroom. I sloshed half of it on the floor while crossing the landing.

His lips were solid curves of blue marble by the time I got back to him, and I thought I was too late. But then his eyes moved under his half-closed lids, seeking me out and fixing on me as I dropped to my knees by the bed. I balanced the bottle of water and rooted in my pocket for the drugs.

I cradled a little green pill in my palm for a moment, wondering if I should cut it in half. Then I just slid the whole thing between his lips, lifted his head a little and dribbled some water in after it.

‘It's called librium,' I said. ‘Swallow it.' His eyes found mine, and I knew he was scared to. ‘Swallow it, for Christ's sake, or I'll kick your arse.' I dribbled more water down his throat for good measure, laid his head back on the pillow, and then sat on the floor, watching his face and waiting.

THE MONSTER OF PELADON

THE GREY. YES
. That's such a good description of it. You always had a way with words, didn't you, Fran?

I SNORTED AWAKE
, my face mashed into the blankets, drool drying in sticky strings under my cheek. My mouth was gluey, and I had that foul-breath feeling of having been in a deep sleep. My eyes found his before I was with it enough to remember where we were, and I got the feeling he'd been watching me for a while. I was still sitting on the floor, my head lying on the bottom bunk. I blinked rapidly and sat back, working my tongue about to get rid of the glue. Dee's bottle was still a quarter full, and I drained it in a couple of swallows before clearing my throat and coming to full consciousness. ‘Jesus,' I mumbled.

‘You were asleep,' he whispered. He was pale, pale, milky pale, but his flesh had lost all the icy hardness of before and his eyes were just brown – Dom's clear, brown eyes. He was lying on his side, a mountain of assorted covers over him, his hair a messy tangle on the pillow. He quirked his mouth, knowing what I was thinking. ‘It's still me,' he croaked. ‘Still Francis.'

I couldn't hide my disappointment, and he couldn't hide a bitter twist of his lips at my reaction.

‘How do you feel?' I asked.

He made a face and turned his head a little. ‘Wash your teeth,' he said mildly.