Boy Who Could See Demons Read online

  First, I find the website for Alex’s school. I send an email to his teacher, Karen Holland, asking if we can meet. Then I Google the name of the theater company that Alex belongs to—Really Talented Kids Theatre Company—and discover a surprisingly sophisticated website with a photograph of several dozen children grouped on a stage, Alex’s smiling face among them. A cluster of logos for local businesses are featured under the banner of OUR SPONSORS. Below that is the photograph of an attractive woman with sharp cheekbones, a melon-slice white smile, and a wild nest of back-combed red hair. I recognize her immediately as Jojo Kennings, an actress in a TV series I much admire. Like me, Jojo is originally from Belfast. She’s returned after twenty years in London to encourage regional participation in the arts, enlisting the help of celebrity friends such as Kenneth Branagh to mentor the kids in the theater company. I am impressed by her passion, and feel a sense of hope that Alex is involved in the project. Her email address is on the website. I type a message, delete it, then rewrite one that sounds less formal.

  From: A_​Molokova@​macneicehouse.​nhs.​uk

  Date: 05/08/07 09:21 AM

  Dear Jojo (if I may),

  I’m writing to ask if I might talk briefly with you about one of the children in your production of Hamlet next month, Alex Connolly. I’m a consultant with the CAMHS team at MacNeice House and am assessing Alex in the light of some recent changes at home. I’d be keen to find out more about his involvement in the play, and about the performance in general. Might there be a suitable time to meet?

  Kind regards,

  Dr. Anya Molokova

  I hit SEND and return to my notes. I glance at the word SCHIZOPHRENIA, and I sigh. I’ve made myself very unpopular in some circles because of the number of children on whom I’ve slapped the label of early-onset schizophrenia like a dentist’s smiley-face sticker. How come all these kids are suddenly coming out of the woodwork? is the heckle I normally get at conferences. Is it because kids as young as three really are exhibiting the hallmarks of schizophrenia—severe confusion between fantasy and reality, extreme moodiness, violence, mental disturbances, paranoia, and unusual perceptual experiences—or is it just that doctors like me are overly eager to define a set of disorders that might just be, say, characteristics of a dreamy kid or merely a childhood phase?

  The thing is, when you spend eighteen years of your life dealing with a schizophrenic mother and twelve years struggling to help a schizophrenic daughter, neither of whom was ever properly diagnosed or treated, you tend to have a deep investment in the correct diagnosis of what is an absolutely horrific, crippling, and misunderstood mental illness that shatters families with the force of a bomb.

  My computer bleeps a tone—B natural—that indicates a new email has come through. The sender is Jojo Kennings.

  To: A_​Molokova@​macneicehouse.​nhs.​uk

  From: jakennings@​rtktheatre.​co.​uk

  Date: 05/08/07 09:22 AM

  Sure no problem—having a rehearsal at GOH 2night 4-5 PM—

  could speak to you just before, that OK?

  JOJO xoxox

  I glance at my calendar. I can make it. I send an email confirming the meeting and asking if GOH means “Grand Opera House.” A reply zings back.

  To: A_​Molokova@​macneicehouse.​nhs.​uk

  From: jakennings@​rtktheatre.​co.​uk

  Date: 05/08/07 09:24 AM

  Yes, Opera House. See you then!

  JOJO xoxox

  I only half read her reply because the chime of the email hitting my inbox has sounded another tone, its echo threading back, back into the past. The curse of perfect pitch. In a heartbeat my senses have returned to the moment a B natural key of the piano in my Morningside flat was struck by my daughter four years ago.

  In my mind’s eye I see Poppy’s dark head behind the gleaming lid of the baby grand piano, singing out the melody in her head. I had taught her piano as, first and foremost, a family tradition. You aren’t a Molokova if you don’t play, my mother used to say. But Poppy’s dabblings with music—and they were, sadly, no more than dabblings—achieved something more important. They worked wonders in calming her, in channeling energy that would otherwise spark into aggression. They succeeded in keeping her focused for more than a handful of seconds. And she loved music.

  “Try a note higher, baby,” I call to her, and she glances up at me.

  “Okay, Mum.”

  I can see her face—heart-shaped like my mother’s, dark eyes from our Chinese ancestry on my father’s side, and a high forehead that she meticulously covers with thick blunt bangs. Even at twelve, she has the air of an older spirit about her, a soul burdened by its uncannily mature perceptions.

  Several months before, she had begun an intensive program of treatment for EOS—early-onset schizophrenia—including a stay at a residential psychiatric unit. She hated me for it. But to my relief, she started to show signs of improving after she returned. For the first time in many years, I know what it feels like to have a “normal” child—a child who tells me she loves me.

  Nonetheless, I can’t break the habit—I glance across the open space of the living room before I leave to run her bath, checking the room carefully for any sharps, wires, breakables, or flammables. Poppy pauses, then strikes the B above middle C once more. I can hear her singing. Satisfied that she is calm and content, I head through the kitchen to the bathroom, shutting the door tightly behind me as I turn on the taps.

  The rushing bathwater drowns out the chime of the piano and for a moment I wonder if I should turn back and make sure she’s all right. She is happy, I think. Let her play. I think of the vacation we had booked that summer to Paris, of the possibility of getting her piano lessons with another teacher. I tried teaching her myself, but we always ended up laughing.

  As I rummage through the bathroom cupboard for bubble bath I feel a sensation of warmth flood across my skin, seeping into my heart, my lungs, telling me that something is wrong. Something is wrong. I scan the contents of the wall cabinet—no pills or sharps. Nothing is wrong, I think, and I chide myself for letting my emotions dictate to my logic. It was a core part of my training, and essential to the success of Poppy’s treatment—that I heed science and not my feelings.

  But the sensation grows stronger. Instinct shouts at me that I need to go back into the living room and check on Poppy. Shaken, I lean down and wrench at the tap, shutting off the water. I look at myself in the mirror, frowning at the scar on my face. It is still an ugly raw pink, not quite old enough to hide under makeup. A breeze brushes my hair across my face, trapping it against my lips. I lean over and shut the window.

  The window.

  Earlier that day the sun had made a rare visit to Edinburgh in all its glory, filling Princes Street Gardens with shirtless workers and sunglass-wearing women, forcing me to open our living room window for a gust of cool air. Of course, the window has a safety catch. And Poppy has turned a corner, her doctor has assured me. Her treatment is working.

  The window.

  I glance toward the door. “Poppy?”

  There is no sound of her music. I see the wing of the piano, shining with the pink and blue lights from the city. In the distance Edinburgh Castle sits at the top of black volcanic rock, as if it has evolved from tectonic clashes to become a status of Scottish victory. When Poppy’s medication made her too weak to walk up the steep hill there, I would point at the castle from our living room. To her, it was more than beautiful. It was a symbol of hope.

  I step out of the bathroom into the narrow hallway that leads to the living room. Our long L-shaped sofa is empty, the corner lamp beaming. I see movement at the window, a flash of white curtain.

  “Poppy?”

  She is on the windowsill, a silhouette obscured by the night sky, her bare legs curled up to her chest. I feel a shiver of alarm.

  “Poppy, there’s no need to sit so close,” I say quickly. “Come on, honey, move back. You could fall.” I stop. “And why is
the safety catch off?”

  I move forward, but as I do, she swings both legs over the ledge and looks at me. Her face is a blank.

  My heart clangs in my chest. I hold up both hands. I am no longer talking to a twelve-year-old girl. I am talking to a child who suffers from schizophrenia. All that matters now is keeping her calm.

  “Poppy,” I say. “Can you play your music for me again?”

  “Someone built a bridge last night,” she says, smiling. “From our window to Edinburgh Castle. It’s cool.”

  I stretch out my hands to her.

  “It’s bedtime,” I hear myself say, though my voice sounds far, far away from the panic in my head. “Poppy, love, come away from that window.”

  She leans forward, brushing her leg against the cool air, and I cry out.

  “Mum, it’s fine,” she says. “There’s a bridge. It’s made of solid iron. I won’t fall.”

  “Poppy, there is no bridge,” I say firmly. “Come back inside.”

  But her face has changed. “You don’t believe me.”

  My mind is racing with ways to distract her. “Come inside and I’ll make you supper. What would you like, sweetheart? Pizza? Does that sound good?”

  I am walking slowly toward her, careful not to charge lest I startle her into tipping herself right over that ledge. There is no balcony, no fire escape—nothing to break her fall onto pavement ten stories below.

  “Pizza, yes,” she says, and I feel dizzy with relief.

  “Tell you what,” I say, gently, inching past the piano. “I’ll make you a cheese-crust pepperoni with olives if you come inside right now.”

  I am close enough to feel the cool night air rushing in. If I move very quickly, there’s a chance I could grab her.

  “I love you, Mummy,” she says, smiling.

  And then I lunge at her. She leans forward and drops, she drops into the black depths, and I am scrambling halfway out of the window, screaming as I lean forward after her. For a split second she is almost close enough to my fingertips for me to grab her hand. But despite my reaching she is beyond me, and by some deep instinct of survival I remain half inside, half outside the window, crying and reaching as my daughter shrinks into the distance.

  7

  THE GHOST

  ALEX

  Dear Diary,

  Okay so I have a new joke I tried out tonight and everyone laughed though according to Jojo it’s incorrect politically. There’s an Irishman, an Englishman, and a Scottish bloke washing the side of a skyscraper. Every day at lunchtime they sit on their balcony overlooking the city and eat their sandwiches. One day the Englishman opens his lunchbox and gets really angry. “Ham again!” he says. “If my wife packs me one more ham sandwich I’m going to throw myself off this balcony.” The Scottish bloke opens his lunchbox and finds a cheese sandwich. “Cheese sarnies again!” he says. “If my wife packs me one more cheese sarnie I’m going to throw myself off this balcony.” The Irishman opens his box and finds a tuna sandwich, and he threatens to throw himself off, too.

  The next day, the Englishman opens his lunchbox and finds a ham sandwich. “That’s it,” he says, and he throws himself off the balcony.

  The Scottish bloke opens his lunchbox and finds a cheese sandwich, and he throws himself off the balcony. The Irishman finds a tuna sandwich and shouts “you stupid woman!” before throwing himself off, too.

  At the funeral, the English, Scottish, and Irish wives are consoling each other. “I thought he loved ham,” says the English wife. “And I thought my husband loved cheese,” says the Scottish wife. “I don’t understand it,” sobs the Irish wife. “He always packed his own lunch.”

  Jojo said she didn’t like the joke but then she said actually the sinister undertones probably matched similar ones in Hamlet. She said it’s important for us to tell our own jokes because comedy is actually a way of working out stuff that bothers us. I told her I didn’t like ham, cheese, or even tuna so I don’t think I’m really working through anything.

  Though tonight something weird happened and it wasn’t just because Anya was there or because Katie McInerny kissed me.

  Tonight was a full run-through of Hamlet and I was very surprised and pleased but also nervous because when I arrived I saw Jojo talking to Anya. Anya looked very happy when she saw me walk in and her eyes went big and her smile was huge and red because she was wearing lipstick. She looked pretty. I could see her silver necklace—the one that tells people she’ll fall asleep if she eats peanuts—flashing in the spotlight, as the technician James is an idiot and is always pointing the lights the wrong way.

  “Hello, Alex,” Anya said to me, and Jojo said “aren’t you lucky to have a groupie, Alex? A sign of things to come.”

  “Anya is a psychiatrist, not a groupie,” I said, and Jojo didn’t seem to know what to say, which I thought was interesting because Jojo always knows what to say. Jojo is tall and thin and she always wears a bright pink leotard and leggings with black legwarmers and an army jacket big enough for three people to fit inside. She sounds like she’s reading the ten o’clock news on television even though she’s from north Belfast and is really superstitious about things like saying the word Macbeth on stage and putting our shoes on the dressing room table and forgetting lines during rehearsals. If any of us forget our lines we are to improvise, she says, not just stand there in the spotlight with our mouths open like dumb twits. I gave a thumbs-up to Jojo and Anya and they smiled back.

  I dumped my rucksack in the cloakroom and saw that Katie McInerny was in the male dressing room again which she says is important because she is playing a boy, which is weird. Katie is two years and one month older than me but about seven and a half inches taller. A little bit taller would be okay but seven and a half inches is like she’s half giant or something. What’s really wick is that she never brings her script and always asks to share mine, and I can’t even open a can of Coke without her wanting some and I bet you like a million quid she’s forgotten her locker key tonight and wants to share mine.

  “Hiya, Horatio,” she said as I walked into the dressing room.

  “Hiya, Hamlet,” I said, and I noticed she was wearing a white bandage around her wrist. “Did you get that from fencing?”

  She looked down at it as if she had forgotten she was wearing it.

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t get it from fencing.” Her eyes had that look in them that I used to see Mum give my Dad, as if there was something she wanted to say but wanted me to guess it instead of just coming out with it. I hate games like that.

  Just then, Ruen appeared. He was his Old Man self, short and baldy and his face all scrunched up like balled-up paper. I could even smell his disgusting tweed jacket. It smells like a wet dog that’s been dead for about ten years.

  “Are you okay?” Katie said.

  “Do you want to share my locker?” I said. I needed to get rid of her and find out why Ruen was there. Her face glowed like a Christmas tree.

  “Yes, that would be great …” And she leaned over to kiss me but I moved my face so instead of hitting my cheek she kissed my ear. No one’s ever kissed my ear.

  I took the key out of my pocket and pressed it into her sore hand and she yelped but I didn’t say sorry because Ruen was walking away. I ran after him. He walked onto the stage and looked up.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Look, you silly boy. Use your God-given eyes,” he sneered. And so I looked up and I saw Terry the technician unscrewing the old loose screws from the big brass spotlight and holding the new screws in his mouth.

  “Bad idea for a boy with an attention deficit disorder to be fiddling with the set, don’t you think?” Ruen said, clasping his hands behind his back.

  “So?” I whispered, careful not to let anyone see my mouth moving. I saw Anya down below but I didn’t say anything, though I noticed Ruen staring at her. “So what?” I asked him again.

  “So. He would be easily distracted. Doesn’t Katie’s mother always mak
e a big fuss at the end, coming on stage and hugging her in front of everyone on purpose?”

  I thought about it. There’s something about Katie’s mum that I don’t like. She always claps the loudest when she comes to see Katie but her smile is fake and sometimes she smells of alcohol. And even though she’s small and works as a school patrol lady, Katie looks scared of her.

  “I’m not doing it,” I told Ruen.

  “Please yourself,” he said, walking away. “Only I bet Katie’ll miss out on her big night.”

  My legs thought they were jelly for a total of nine seconds. I watched after Ruen and opened my mouth to shout after him because suddenly what he meant dawned on me like someone just poured a bucket of ice down the back of my collar. He meant that if I didn’t do something to Katie’s mum, Katie’s mum would hurt Katie on purpose so she couldn’t perform.

  Just then I saw Jojo waving at me with her arm as if she was cleaning windows too high to reach. I blinked.

  “Oh, you’re back with us, are you?” she said, though I hadn’t been anywhere.

  I nodded my head.

  She grinned. “Got a new joke for the rap scene, Alex?”

  I said uh-huh and tried to remember it. I told the joke, though suddenly I felt that the word Irishman sounded weird inside this place and Jojo wasn’t laughing like she normally did. I remembered the time last week when she came by my house to pick me up for rehearsals and instead she had to phone an ambulance for Mum. I thought of the way her hands shook when she tried to find Mum’s pulse.

  • • •

  Jojo shouted at us all to regroup and run through Act Three. I ran after Ruen.

  He was in the wings now, his face in the shadows.

  “You could always help Katie out, couldn’t you?” he said calmly. “All it would take is for you to shout up at Terry at just the right moment.”

  I could feel my heart beating really quickly. Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum.

  “Alex?” I heard Jojo call.

  I stepped closer to Ruen. “But wouldn’t that hurt Katie’s Mum?”