The Boy Who Could See Demons (29 page)

‘Can I help you?’ I said politely.

He stopped, straightened up slightly, and smiled. I jerked back. Even for a man of his years, he was distinctly repugnant.

‘Your right hand is a little too staccato,’ he said, his accent difficult to place.

‘Didn’t you heed the phrase marks?’

I turned to the piece of music in front of me. ‘Do you mean this?’ I said.

‘I am the composer of the music you are playing.’ He bowed deeply. ‘I wished to introduce myself.’

I watched him as he turned and slowly closed the door behind him.

‘
You
wrote this?’ I said.

‘But of course I did,’ he said, stepping forward. ‘Do you like it?’

I stood, baffled, the hairs on my arms standing on end.

‘Who are you?’

He was circling the piano now, arms folded behind his back, stopping occasionally to peer inside it. I bent down to pick up my briefcase. When I looked up he was right in my face, suddenly tall enough to meet my eyes. Only, his eyes had no irises. They were solid, cataractous, like grey marbles. I gasped and took a step backwards.

‘Anya,’ he said, watching me inch away.
‘Anya.’

I could feel my heart pounding, my hands trembling. I glanced at the door.

‘Would you like this piano?’ he said, grinning. ‘Or one like it?’

He was pacing round the piano once more, tracing the black wing with his twisted fingers. I stood perfectly still, my body cold, my mind struggling to work out what was happening.

‘You said you wrote this piece?’ I said, curiosity rising up in me despite the feeling of threat he had brought into the room.

‘Aren’t you going to play some more?’

‘Someone else I know said he wrote it,’ I said. The man looked at the sheet of music and grinned.

‘Do you know Alex?’ I asked, watching him carefully as I edged towards the exit.

He glanced up at the door. I swear I heard it lock.

‘Just give me a moment of your time,’ he said, sitting down in front of the piano. ‘I promise you won’t regret it.’

I could feel sweat prickling my back and under my arms, and I was telling myself to stay calm, to stop freaking out as he was at least seventy-five years old and if I could not defend myself against a man his age then twenty years of circuit training had been a waste of time. But it wasn’t about physical combat. I felt myself being stripped, seduced somehow, and the light seemed to have dimmed, with shadows closing in on the corners of the room, thickening.

I remembered my mobile phone. My hands shaking, I fetched it out of my pocket and began to dial. A second later, the screen went black. The battery had died.

I looked up at him. ‘Alex says you’re a
demon,’
I said, the words sounding ridiculous in the heavy air. ‘Not a nice thing to call a family friend, now, is it? Any reason for that?’

He sat down in front of the piano and smiled.

‘You go to university for that, then?’ I said, inching for the door.

In a flash, he was behind me, against the door, his face menacing. I let out a sob. Something was very, very wrong here. For a moment I believed I was having a psychotic meltdown, my hands shaking quite violently now, the ground beneath my feet turning to water.

‘Are you all right?’ I heard him say.

I felt myself curl up into a ball on the floor, levelled by a dragging sensation in my heart that has only ever seemed as heavy once before. I felt the moment at which I saw Poppy at the window, and I lunged forward, but once again I am a half-second too late, my hands empty, the momentum of my reach continuing in everything I do now – her absence a space of reaching.

And then, it stopped.

My eyes still tightly shut, it was as though someone had filled my body with sunlight. The darkness retreated. Again and again there was the sensation of heat travelling through me and around me. I felt myself lift as if someone or something had scooped me up, then I felt weightless.

In my mind’s eye, I no longer saw Poppy at the moment of her death. I saw her anxious, beautiful face right in front of me, her hands on my shoulders, shaking me.
It’s OK, Mum. I’m here. I’m right here
. I wanted to open my eyes but didn’t in case she faded. Instead, I saw my own arms reach in front of me, cupping her face.

She turned her head slightly to kiss my hand.

Mum, you haven’t lost me. It’s all really OK, you know
?

I pulled her to me in a tight embrace, my chest heaving with both relief and disbelief. Eventually she leaned back and looked at me. She seemed older, teenage, her chestnut hair so long now, draped around her face in Botticelli curls, her brown eyes calm and without fear. Without darkness.

Go back, now
, she said.
I love you
.

When I opened my eyes, Melinda was standing over me, slapping my face and shouting my name. I felt myself take an enormous breath as if I had just surfaced from the depths of the ocean. My legs and hands were numb and my head fizzed like a bad hangover. I caught a strong whiff of Melinda’s heavy patchouli perfume and landed back on Earth with a sharp thud. The look on her face melted from horror to sheer relief when I sat upright.

‘Oh, man – sweetie, I thought you were dead!’ she cried.

I shook my head to confirm that, despite how I may have looked, I was pretty much alive. My body was tingling now, as if I’d just emerged from a warm bath or a day in the sun. ‘I saw her,’ I told Melinda. ‘I saw Poppy.’

She threw me an odd look. I reached a trembling hand to my mouth.

Melinda took off her cashmere cardigan and wrapped it around my shoulders. ‘It’s
freezing
in here,’ she exclaimed. ‘Did you open a window or something?’

I shook my head, though the concern in her voice made me smile. It reassured me that I was safe. She laughed nervously.

‘You’ll never guess what,’ she said as I rose to my feet, leaning on the edge of the piano for balance.

‘What?’

She folded her arms and grinned widely. ‘That piece you showed me. It’s
one hundred per cent genuine.’

I nodded in acknowledgement, glancing around the room.

‘That kid is a genius,’ she continued. ‘A total child prodigy!’

I looked at the piano, then searched around the floor.

‘What’s wrong?’ Melinda said, unfolding her arms.

‘It’s gone,’ I told her. ‘The music has gone.’

23

THE THINGS THAT ARE REAL

Alex

Dear Diary,

What did Pope Julius II say to Michelangelo?

‘Sure, come on down, son, we’ll paper it.’

I woke up really early today because today was a Saturday and I was going to see Mum at ten o’clock. It felt like Christmas morning. I set my alarm for seven so that I’d have time to get a shower before the others woke up and brush my teeth and clean out my ears and cut my nails. I was also afraid in case the laundry people forgot to wash my clothes so I made sure I’d have extra time to wash and dry them myself, but it was OK because when I checked my wardrobe my shirt and trousers and waistcoat were all there, really clean and nicely ironed.

I woke well before my alarm, so took a long, long time in the shower. I spent about an hour polishing my shoes and then I sat with a black marker colouring in all the scuff marks so they’d look extra clean. By this time it was only eight o’clock. So I rearranged all the photographs and drawings of our new house that I’d stuck to the walls and spent a while imagining Mum and me living there, cooking together in the kitchen, sitting in the garden when it got sunny, hanging up pictures of lilies and dolphins.

Then I drew Mum a picture and wrote a nice message inside. It said: ‘Mum, I hope you feel better soon because I love you, and if you felt as good as much as I love you, you would feel really good.’

Mum was waiting for me in the living room that she shares with the other people in her ward. She was dressed in a pair of new jeans and a blue T-shirt. She had some make-up on, too, a pale pink on her eyelids and cheeks and her eyelashes were black. I was so glad to see her that I almost cried, and I felt she could see that I was upset and she almost cried, too.

When she let go of me I sat opposite her and smiled.

‘How do you like this new school, then?’ she said, though she said it like she wasn’t glad I was going to a new school.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘It’s only temporary, isn’t it?’

She nodded. ‘What’s this you’ve brought?’

I was holding my sketchpad. ‘I’ve been doing lots of new drawings,’ I told her. ‘Anya said it’s good for my recovery. Shall I show you?’

Mum gave a frozen kind of smile and nodded her head.

I’d deliberately avoided doing any more pictures of skeletons as they seemed to upset people, so I had drawn things like the flowers growing outside my bedroom window and a scene from my classroom and a portrait of Woof. When Mum saw the picture of Woof her smile dropped clean off her face. She touched the picture for a long time and held her hand up to her mouth.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

She took a long deep breath and then held one of my hands in both of hers. ‘Alex,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry, but Woof has had to be moved to a new home, too.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

I didn’t hear all the words she said because my heart was thumping so loudly, like it was in my ears, but basically it sounded something like Woof had been placed in a home for dogs when Auntie Bev had gone back to Cork for a week or so because there was no one at home to feed or walk him and Auntie Bev couldn’t take him with her. When Mum said a home for dogs, I knew she meant the RSPCA. I thought of Woof being locked up there with all the other barking, miserable dogs, doing circles in a cage the size of our loo and wondering what he’d done wrong to end up in there.

I must have been panting because all of a sudden Mum put her arms around me and said, ‘Oh, Alex. I’m so sorry, this is all my fault.’

‘Can’t we get him back?’ I asked.

Mum hugged me tight and when she looked at me again her make-up was running down her face in wet black lines. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘I won’t make promises to you any more that I can’t guarantee. So it’s a maybe. If he’s still there.’

I wanted to ask whether she thought the people at the RSPCA might put Woof down, because I overheard someone say that they had to do that all the time because they had too many dogs. But I was afraid of upsetting Mum even more.

‘This is my fault,’ Mum said again. ‘If I hadn’t got myself in here we’d probably all still be at home.’

At last I remembered my manners and pulled my handkerchief out of my pocket. I handed it to Mum and she smiled and dabbed her face.

‘When
are
you coming home?’ I asked.

Mum looked away. ‘I don’t know.’

I thought for a moment about what I could do or say to make Mum happy. Immediately I thought of Ruen saving my dad, but I didn’t want to tell her the part about Hell because she’d definitely, definitely think I was loony.

So I said: ‘I know you miss my dad, Mum, and I know you’ve been very sad since he died. But I think that maybe someday we’ll be able to see him again. You know, in Heaven.’

Mum lowered my handkerchief from her face very slowly. She looked angry.
Oh no
, I thought.
I have made everything much, much worse
.

‘Alex, what do you mean,
died?’
she said. Her face was very twisted now.

‘I mean, when he died that morning that I found you in bed with all the pills, and Granny phoned the ambulance and …’

I stopped talking cos she was looking at me as if I’d gone mad. Her mouth was opening and her forehead had a line into it that started to turn into a letter V.

‘Mum,’ I said after a few moments. ‘I’m sorry, I suppose I shouldn’t talk about it.’

Then she lowered her hands and gave a sigh that was so big her shoulders stooped.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, which was her twenty-ninth apology since I arrived. ‘I thought you understood, Alex.’ She looked out the window again and the sun lit up her face and for a moment she looked young again. ‘Granny always said I treated you older than you were, that I expected too much of you. I suppose it was because you always
seemed
so much older. Did you know you were walking at ten months old?’

My stomach was starting to turn into a knot.

She was still talking as if someone else was in the room. ‘The health visitor said it was remarkable, said she’d never heard of a nineteen-month-old talk like that. Like a three-or four-year-old, she said, especially since boys are so much behind girls, usually.’ Her eyes smiled. ‘You made me so proud, Alex. I felt so scared when you were born. Didn’t know how I’d feed you, look after you. Didn’t know how I’d manage. Didn’t know how I’d give you what you needed. But you surprised us all.’

‘Do you mean Dad
isn’t
dead?’ I demanded.

‘You already know this, Alex. He’s at Magilligan Prison, remember? I tried to take you to visit him but you said you didn’t want to …’

I fell back as if she had just punched me in the face.

‘Alex?’ she said, leaning forward with her arms held out. I felt my head turn from side to side on my shoulders, as if someone was turning it for me.

‘It’s OK,’ she was saying, but then her mouth was opening and closing and I couldn’t hear anything because my heart was beating so hard and it was as if I had forgotten how to speak because I couldn’t get my feelings to come out as words. ‘He … but …’ Then: ‘Where’s Magilligan?’

‘It’s about seventy miles from here. Just past the Giant’s Causeway.’ My mouth was full of spit. Mum sighed and rubbed her head.

‘I want to tell you something, Alex.’

I got up and sat beside her but I felt like I was floating.

‘You didn’t deserve any of this,’ she said. ‘For a long, long time I’ve thought … well, that you didn’t deserve me. That you deserve a much better mother than me. And I thought that it was because of me that my foster parents abused me. That I deserved it all.’

I nodded, even though I still wasn’t really sure what she was talking about. Didn’t ‘foster parents’ mean people who weren’t your parents?