Brilliant (7 page)

Brilliant
was the busiest word in Dublin. It was the city's favorite word. Everyone in Dublin said “Brilliant” at least twenty-seven times a day, and more than a million people lived in Dublin. So “Brilliant” was whispered, shouted, roared, bawled, screamed, laughed, or just plain said at least twenty-seven million times a day.

It started first thing in the morning.

“I'm still alive. Brilliant!”

And it went on, all through the day.

“What's for breakfast?”

“The usual.”

“Brilliant.”

“Oh, look, it's stopped raining.”

“Brilliant.”

All day.

“Here's the bus.”

“Brilliant.”

“There's two of them!”

“Double brilliant!”

Wherever people met each other or just walked past, the “Brilliant”s filled the air. Even when there was no one around, a deserted corner or an empty shop, the echoes of the “Brilliant”s bounced and rolled along the walls or ceilings for hours after the people who'd said them had left.

“Brilliant.”

“Brilliant.”

“Brilliant.”

“. . . brilliant . . .”

“. . . brilliant . . . .”

“. . . . . . . . . . illia . . . . . . . . . .”

On the busy streets, in the places where people worked and played, in the schools and playgrounds and the cafes and churches—

“The Lord is my shepherd.”

“Ah, that's brilliant.”

The offices, the kitchens, the bathrooms, the nurseries, the shopping centers, the libraries—

“Brilliant!”

“Shuushhhhhhh!”

“Sorry.”

The football fields and tennis courts, the gyms and the swimming pools, the buses, the train stations, the petrol stations and inside the taxis, the hospitals—

“No bones broken, anyway.”

“Brilliant.”

The pubs and the clubs and the cinemas and theaters, the parks and the waiting rooms, anywhere where there were people, the air was stuffed with “Brilliant”s.

And that was on the quiet days.

“That was a great funeral.”

“Brilliant.”

It was a great word, really. It burst out of your mouth when you said it.

“How's the soup?”

“Brilliant!”

“Ah, look what you've done to me shirt!”

It was a handy word, very adaptable. It could be used in all sorts of ways.

“The car won't start.”

“Well, that's just brilliant.”

It made people smile, even when they didn't want to.

“My dog's dying.”

“Ah, no. What was his name?”

“Brilliant.”

“Ahhh, that's brilliant.”

And that was the problem.
Brilliant
was a brilliant word. It lit everything around it. It was hard to see the gloom when the word was constantly bursting all over the city, like a firework display that never ended. But sometimes—only for brief moments, when very few people were talking—the sadness was there to be seen, on the faces, across the shoulders, in the feet. The adults of Dublin were low. They were worried and sometimes angry. They worried about the future. They felt trapped, surrounded by bad news. There was no escape.

But then someone would say, “Brilliant.” And the gloom would disappear.

CHAPTER 6

B
rilliant,” said Gloria, and the word
popped open above them and filled the passage with a gentle yellow light that made the trash bins glow.

They knew the light wouldn't last long, so Raymond got going again and Gloria followed him out, past their dad's parked car, out to the street.

Raymond stopped. And so did Gloria.

“Where now, Rayzer?” she said.

They were at the gate. They could go left or right, or straight across the road.

“There are three black dogs on our road,” said Raymond.

“Yeah.”

“And they all live down this way,” said Raymond.

He pointed right.

“Come on.”

They ran.

There was something about nighttime. It seemed to make the noise of their shoes much louder. They could hear their steps bouncing off the walls of all the houses. It sounded like there were other people coming up behind them. Gloria looked, but there was no one else.

They ran past three more gates, to Mooney's house. The gate was open. They went—they tiptoed—to the front door. They got down on their knees. Raymond pushed open the letterbox, and, together, they looked through the opening.

They saw two black eyes—and a tongue. The eyes and tongue belonged to Lulu Mooney. The tongue tried to lick their faces through the mail slot. Raymond was very careful letting the flap of the letterbox back down. Lulu was licking his fingers, and he wanted to laugh. He pushed her nose away with a finger and shut the flap. They could hear little happy whimpers from the other side of the door.

“I don't think Lulu's the Black Dog of Depression,” said Gloria.

“No,” Raymond agreed.

Lulu started barking.

“Run!”

“I am!”

They dashed back to the street. They could hear Mr. Mooney from inside the house.

“Shut up! Or I'll go down there and take that bloody bone from you!”

Gloria stopped running.

“The funny bone!”

“No,” said Raymond. “It's just an ordinary bone. It's Lulu's. She's been minding it for years. And it isn't funny. It's disgusting. Come on.”

They ran to the next house, the Simpsons'. Gloria stopped again.

“They're not there,” she remembered.

Melanie Simpson was in her class at school.

“They've gone away for Saint Patrick's Day,” she said.

“Where?”

“Don't know. To the country.”

“All of them?”

“Yeah.”

“Amigo as well?”

Amigo was the Simpsons' dog.

“S'pose,” said Gloria. “They wouldn't leave him on his own. Unless they've trained him to use a can opener.”

“Okay,” said Raymond.

They hadn't moved while they were talking, and they both thought the same thing—it was better to keep moving. While they ran, they felt like they were hidden, or at least harder to see, if anyone—an adult—was looking out a window.

“Come on.”

They ran to the next house, the O'Driscolls'. The O'Driscolls' black dog, Fang, slept in a shed in the back. So this was a tricky mission, harder than just opening a letterbox.

They walked carefully to the side gate. It wasn't locked.

“Sweet.”

But it was creaky. The hinges were old and rusty. Raymond held the handle so he could lift the gate a little bit and slowly push it forward.

It worked. The gate made hardly any noise, but the noise it did make was horrible.

He stopped.

They waited.

No lights came on.

Raymond lifted the gate again and pushed till he thought there'd be enough room for them to slide through.

They waited again.

They heard no voices, or feet.

“Come on.”

They were able to squeeze through sideways, one at a time. Raymond went first, and they crept down the dark side passage. There was lots of stuff in their way: two bikes, a dead fridge, and smaller things that Raymond couldn't make out.

“Can't see properly.”

“Brilliant.”

The shed was suddenly bright.

“Now I can.”

It stayed bright till they got to the backyard, where it was already bright enough for them to see the things that were in their way: a lawn mower, a wheelbarrow, a fork, an empty bucket. The lawn mower was buried in the grass. The grass was really long, and a bit frightening because it seemed to be making noise and even grabbing at them as they walked through it to the shed.

Gloria spoke very quietly. She wasn't scared—not really—but she wanted to hear a voice, even her own, so the grass would just be grass again and everything would be normal.

“Mam says Mr. O'Driscoll has a bad back,” she said, quietly. “And that's why he never cuts the grass.”

“Dad says Mr. O'Driscoll's just a waster,” said Raymond, quietly.

They were at the shed now. The door was open, but they didn't go in.

“Here, Fang.”

They heard Fang's tail thumping the floor of the shed. But he didn't come out.

“Fang?”

His tail thumped the floor again. But his tail was the only part of Fang that moved. They went to the shed and looked in. It was pitch-black. The shed had no window. But they heard Fang—
thump, thump
—and then they could see him. He was lying on his rug, looking at them. It seemed warm in the shed, and the dog smell was nice. So they stepped in.

“Don't shut the door,” Raymond whispered.

“There is no door,” Gloria whispered back.

They stood there and looked down at Fang.

Fang was older than both of them; he'd always been old. He was a mix of about twenty different breeds, and most of them must have been big. Because Fang was huge.

Gloria remembered why they were there.

“Are you depressed, Fang?” she asked him.

Fang farted.

“Is that depression?” Gloria asked.

“Don't think so,” said Raymond. “Or if it is, Dad's really depressed. Here's the test, watch. Fang?”

Fang's tail walloped the floor—and stopped.

“Fang?”

The tail drumming started again.

“See?” said Raymond. “Fang's definitely not the Black Dog of Depression. He's too happy.”

He sighed. This job was going to be harder than he'd expected—although he hadn't really expected, or anticipated, anything. There was another black dog on the next street, but Raymond didn't know if there was any point in—

“What are yis doin'?”

The voice came from nowhere.

Gloria screamed, but nothing came out. She could feel the scream in her throat, but it was clinging there, too scared to climb out of her mouth.

Raymond might have screamed too—he wasn't sure. His face was an exploding red ball—that was what it felt like. His heart was in the middle of his head. He couldn't see a thing.

Gloria had never had been afraid of the dark. But it wasn't the dark that had frightened her. It was the voice. A voice with no body.

Her scream finally came out.

“. . . ohmygod . . . !”

Then she saw the head.

Raymond saw it too.

An upside-down head.