The Boy Who Could See Demons (20 page)

Alex takes another breath, his shoulders relaxed, his eyes flitting across the room as if he is bored. Then he continues.

‘Harrowing is an essential part of cultivating the soul to reject the idea of choice. Contrary to popular opinion, the soul is not like smoke on water; it is somewhere between liquid and metal, like the Earth’s core. When one strokes it, grooves are made, impressions formed. The soul can only be removed by God, that is true; but, when the door is opened, when the path is made clear for my entrance, I can mould that slick substance into unlimited shapes and create hollows that channel through to eternity.

‘There is much waiting around in this job. In order to do my work effectively, I must watch on as the other demons perform the complex tasks of analysing, tempting, suggesting, then deftly plucking away the scales of human realisation until remorse and horror pave the way for my entrance. It’s no red carpet. By this stage, I am virtually alone, and there is no one to applaud the work I achieve. There is only the sight of a human falling deeper and deeper within themselves, toppling through the distances created by my grooves and hollows.’

When I’m sure that Alex has finished, I hit the ‘pause’ and ‘save’ buttons on my phone and scribble down a few notes. There is nothing I want to ask at this point. I need time to process the information that has been given. Just then, Alex says:

‘Shall I ask her the questions now?’

He is speaking to the empty space by the window, not me. Still, I say:

‘What questions?’

Alex nods. ‘It’s OK. He doesn’t want to ask you just yet.’

I smile and thank Alex – and Ruin – for their time.

‘Ruen says you are most welcome, my lady,’ says Alex.

Michael sits in silence for a long time after I’ve played him the tape. Finally he says, ‘Man, that’s some serious stuff.’

‘Is any of this regurgitated from a religious text?’ I ask. ‘Is the notion of a Harrower part of any faith that you’re aware of?’

Michael scratches his head. ‘In ten years of religious studies, I never came across the term
harrower
. I’ll look into it and see if there’re any passages in the Bible that refer to it. Though, to my knowledge, Alex’s family isn’t religious.’

‘We don’t know anything about his dad,’ I say. ‘Maybe he was. In which case, most of what he’s saying could be working through a severely religious upbringing.’ I pause to reflect on Alex’s comments. ‘What about that whole thing about choice?’

‘Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good
. Old Testament, Isaiah, chapter seven, verse sixteen. No, fifteen. Free will underscores most of Christian belief.’

‘And you never found out about Alex’s father?’

He leans forward, shaking his head. ‘Cindy won’t talk about him. The most Alex ever said was that his dad was dead and gone to Hell.’

‘Hell?’
I say quickly. ‘Not Heaven?’

Michael shakes his head. ‘He was, as you say, quite specific.’

I sigh. ‘This kind of religious intellectual thinking is
not
that of a ten-year-old.’ I pick up my phone and look down at it for a moment before putting it back in my pocket. ‘What do you make of the questions Alex said Ruin wanted to ask me? Has he ever wanted to ask you questions?’

Michael considers it. ‘No, I don’t think so. Look,’ he says, and there is something different about his tone, the look in his eyes. He strokes my arm. I pull it back, a sudden reflex, and he looks alarmed. ‘What? I scrubbed my hands.’

‘No, it’s not that,’ I say.

‘What is it?’

You are forty-three years old
, I tell myself.
You are quite capable of setting professional boundaries
. Still, I feel bashful when I tell him what
it
is.

‘I’d rather us be colleagues. Full stop.’

He looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind, and I feel my cheeks burn. Still, in the past I’ve let men wander way beyond the iron gates of friendship, then watched their faces fall when I refuse to reciprocate a pass. I’d rather be upfront about it in case it gets in the way of Alex’s treatment.

‘Well, that’s a pity,’ he says lightly. ‘I don’t go to the Opera House with any of my colleagues, and here I was thinking we could share a taxi to Alex’s performance of
Hamlet
tonight.’

I breathe a sigh of relief. ‘I don’t mind sharing a taxi.’

He looks visibly pleased. ‘Good. I’ll call past yours around seven. OK?’

I open my mouth to say,
Actually, I’ll meet you there
, but he has moved on, telling me about his allotment, his Brussels sprouts. How we should share a bottle of his homemade orange juice sometime.

It is only when I attempt to find an outfit suitable for a trip to the Grand Opera House that I realise how much Alex’s case has eaten into my personal time over the last few weeks – my flat is only partially furnished and filled with as yet unpacked boxes, meaning that I have no cutlery, plates, chairs, and only a small rack of clothes. So far, I hadn’t noticed. I dig deep into a box marked CLOTHES and pull a dozen outfits on to the red Mexican tiles of my living room. Each outfit is black, and each is a variation of knee-length skirt or three-quarter-length shirt. Once I’ve assembled a row of possibilities, my mind turns of its own accord to Poppy. In my memories, she is standing beside me in our Morningside flat, shaking her head as I pull garments out of my wardrobe. Whereas I have absolutely no fashion sense, Poppy had an innate sense of style before she could form sentences, fumbling in the laundry basket, picking out the colours and textures she liked before draping them around her head and shoulders, then staggering around our little flat in a pair of my stilettos.

‘What about this one?’ I recall myself saying, holding another black dress against me. She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

‘Everything you own is black,’ she said, fishing through my wardrobe. ‘Why not anything red? Or orange or even yellow?’

‘Are those my colours?’

She flicked her eyes at me. ‘Your skin tone is olive, your hair and eyes are dark brown.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

She found a white dress lurking in my shoe rack. ‘Aha! Here we go.’

I glanced it over, noticing the price tag still hanging from the label. A Stella McCartney, bought on a whim. Back then, my motto was, ‘If you can live without it, live without it – unless it’s Stella.’ These days, I’ve trimmed the motto down a little. Poppy thrust the dress against me.

‘
This
is it,’ she said.

I shook my head. ‘It’s far too tight.’

More eye-rolling. ‘Mother, you’re skinny. Flaunt it, OK?’

And right as her precocious words chime in my ears, I spy something at the bottom of the box. Something I hadn’t even remembered packing. A white puddle. I reach in and pull it out, noticing the label. It is the same dress. I didn’t wear it the night that she insisted upon it. It wasn’t
me
, I’d argued.

I strip down to my underwear and slip the dress over my head. Cut elegantly below the knee, one-sleeved, with a modestly straight neckline just under my collarbone and a discreet gold zip at the side, the dress still fits perfectly. And it still isn’t me.

At seven o’clock a car horn sounds outside. I grab my briefcase and talisman and run outside to find Michael standing outside the taxi. He is wearing a navy suit and a clean white shirt without a tie, his hair combed back. He is holding the car door open.

‘Evening,’ he says.

I pause, certain that I’ve chosen the wrong outfit.

‘You look lovely, Dr Molokova,’ he said, giving me a small bow.

I smile back at him and jump into the back seat.

At the Grand Opera House I tell Michael to go ahead and find our seats while I search for a member of staff to take me backstage to ensure that Alex is all right. I spot Jojo’s red head bobbing amongst the hordes in the foyer and shout her name. She turns at the sound, and I wave.

‘Is everything OK?’ I asked once we’d found a corner close to the stairwell. ‘With Alex, I mean.’

Her face looks strained. ‘Absolutely fine with
Alex,’
she says. ‘Only we’re a man down. Well, a girl, really. Katie, who plays Hamlet? I mean, thank the Lord we’ve an understudy to fill her shoes, but can you imagine? On opening night?’

‘What happened?’

She presses a hand against her forehead. ‘Had an accident, poor thing. Broke her leg in six places falling down a flight of steps. Anyway, we’re sorted now.
And
there’s a casting director from London here tonight. Roz Mardell, you heard of her?’

I shake my head. She tisks in disapproval.

‘Roz is casting for the new Tarantino
Hamlet
, can you imagine?’ She fans herself. ‘I think Alex has an excellent chance.’

‘You do?’ I feel a sudden mixture of excitement and dread. Excitement at the opportunity this would afford him, but dread at what impact it might have on his emotions.

‘You know his aunt Bev is here?’ she tells me quickly. ‘She’s upstairs in a box if you want to say hello.’

A teenage boy in a black T-shirt bearing the REALLY TALENTED KIDS logo waves at Jojo from the other side of the foyer.

‘I better go,’ she says. ‘You look beautiful in that dress, by the way.’

‘Thanks,’ I say, watching her squeeze her way to the other side of the foyer before I headed up the stairs to my seat in the Grand Circle.

Along the crescent of filled seats I spot Michael’s blond head. I inch my way across handbags and legs and find my seat next to him just as the lights began to dim.

‘Everything all right?’ he whispers, leaning towards me. I catch his smell – the lime tang of aftershave, turf, and macadamia nuts – and forget why he should be asking me if everything is all right. I smile and nod, tugging the hem of my skirt self-consciously across my knees.

The curtain rises to the sound of a drumbeat from the orchestra pit. A soft mist brushes across the stage, where a figure holding a gun is wandering in a state of fear.

‘Who’s there?’ a boy’s voice calls. Another figure backs its way across the stage in the direction of the boy, a hand drawn to a holster at its waist. The figures collide.

‘Bernardo?’

‘Francisco?’

‘What are you
doing
out here in the dead of night?’

‘Taking over guard duty from you, you plonker. It’s past midnight.’

‘It is?’

Another figure crosses the stage, a boy I recognise instantly as Alex. Dressed in a camouflage suit, his brown hair slicked into an old-fashioned side parting and his feet in heavy black boots, he no longer resembles the nervous, timid boy with whom I have been consulting. Instead, he walks with an air of authority, and when he speaks, his voice is deeper, shot through with command. A wind whips up the mist around him, the sound of strings rising up from the orchestra pit.

‘Francisco – where are you off to?’

A moment’s banter. ‘Bernardo’s on guard duty. Good night.’

A second figure appears behind Alex, thumping his hand heavily on his shoulder to make him jump.

‘Marcellus!’ Alex shouts. ‘Speak first, next time!’

Marcellus raises his gun to indicate he is armed, then nods at Bernardo. ‘You’re more on edge than usual, Bernardo. Has the ghost been spotted?’

Bernardo shakes his head. ‘Not tonight.’

Marcellus turns to Alex. ‘Horatio says he won’t believe what we’ve seen ’til he’s seen it himself. Isn’t that right, Horatio?’

Alex pulls the strap of a rifle over his head and sets the weapon in foliage by his feet. He settles down as if to sleep. ‘No such thing as ghosts, you idiots.’

‘There
is,’
Bernardo says, crouching to gather leaves and twigs together before creating a fire – or, in this case, a strip of red material blown upwards by a small wind machine, lit from behind. ‘We saw it last night, just before one, looks just like the King.’

Marcellus crouched, too. ‘It
is
the King.’

From the corner of my eye I see Michael turning to me, half his face in darkness, the other illuminated by the spotlight on stage. He throws me a smile in praise of Alex, which I return. The worry that had tugged at my heart on behalf of Alex – this being his first public performance, and at a time when his private life was anything but calm – is subsiding now, and at the sound of a slow piano melody rung out in the orchestra pit, a familiar song rose up in my head. Poppy’s song, the one she was composing the night she died. My mouth turns dry. The events on the stage before me slide into the periphery of my thoughts, Poppy’s face rising back into my mind.

But instead of recalling her by my side, instructing me on the rudiments of fashion and laughing at my decision to wear
that
top with
those
shoes, I feel her absence keenly.

‘
There it is!’
I hear Alex shout.
‘A ghost! Oh, it harrows me with fear and wonder.’

My thoughts enter a territory that is fenced off with rolling barbed wire, with armed guards at various posts keeping trespassers at a considerable distance. I ignore them, crossing beyond the familiar planes of my memories with Poppy to the day I learned I was pregnant. Poppy’s father was an acquaintance from medical school: Daniel Shearsman, an American researcher spending a semester at University College London. We were never involved, at least not beyond a memorable weekend in Switzerland which started off in the lobby of a tatty convention centre for a postdoctoral conference and ended up in a minimalist hotel overlooking Lake Geneva. Daniel never knew about Poppy. I was eleven weeks pregnant before I found out, and, when I did, I kept her to myself like a guilty secret.

‘
This ghost,’
Alex shouts on stage, his voice trembling. ‘
This ghost is an omen. A sign that something is not right in our nation. Something troubles it.’

I walk on past the guards, recalling – with a mild astonishment – months of sleeping on friends’ spare mattresses throughout my pregnancy, in case my mother – in the thick of her own psychosis – harmed the baby; then the birth; Poppy’s small, creamy face presented to me in the nurse’s arms, as if she was closing her eyes against bright sunlight; bringing her home to my new student flat, both of us curling up each night in a small bed against the window; Edith, the eccentric old spinster downstairs who swept the stone stairwell of our apartment block every single day, offering to look after Poppy while I finished my studies; the first day I noticed something was wrong with Poppy. Not wrong;
different
. It was the day Edith said she couldn’t look after Poppy any more.