The Boy Who Could See Demons (7 page)

From a professional viewpoint, Northern Ireland’s social scars run deep, and not just through the psyches of those who experienced the violence first-hand. Although the politicians are celebrating what they call ‘peace’, those of us working behind the scenes are finding anything but. The history of violence here is usually measured in terms of its death count, but there is another silent, and more alarming, toll: one in five Northern Irish children will experience major mental health problems before their eighteenth birthday, with case studies flagging self-harm as a response to confrontation and shame for family involvement in violence. I empathise with Michael for wishing to keep Alex and Cindy as a family unit, but I have not returned to my homeland to perpetuate a failing system. I am here to begin rebuilding lives.

I pull up into the car park of MacNeice House at 8.59 a.m. For some reason I half expect to see Michael’s battered Volvo parked in my space, his tense, brooding stare forcing me to sign off Alex’s report as A-OK, as if he’s passed an exam to qualify for a decent family life. If only it were that simple. I should have realised it sooner – Michael perceives me as the enemy. He wants me close so he can have a better chance at keeping Alex out of – Michael’s terms – the ‘nuthouse’. And I suppose it is in this respect that Michael and I share a common goal – despite myself I have bonded with this child, sensed something very familiar about his predicament, something that lies close to the bone. And I feel I can help him – though it may not be in the way that Michael desires.

Inside my office, I flick the switch on the kettle and browse the few shelves of books I’ve finally managed to stack in my bookcases. My collection comprises psychiatric journals and textbooks, naturally, but also literature, drama and religious texts – the truth about the human psyche doesn’t always reside in the factual and academic tomes.

As I leaf through a handful of old, yellow-paged books by C S Lewis and John Milton, I reflect on Alex’s claim that he can see demons. As far back as the first century, the symptoms of mania and schizophrenia have been linked closely to superhuman manifestations and hallucinations. God, angels, superheroes, martyrs … they’ve all played across the stage of schizophrenia throughout the recorded delusions of the last two thousand years. Patients claiming to see demons are not entirely out of the ordinary, but Alex’s case strikes me as unusual. He claimed that a demon was his best friend. And he seemed to know about Poppy. At the very least, a ten-year-old with such powers of perception is extremely rare.

The kettle trembles with heat. Poppy’s voice rattles in my head.
It feels like a hole, Mum. A hole instead of a soul
.

The red switch clicks.

I think of Cindy at the hospital, her tired, thin face filled with the weariness of a woman maybe three times her age, how she had admitted that she did not feel good enough. I jot down some notes to the effect that Alex is struggling to understand his dark colours, and most likely those of his mother. I make another note to pursue aspects of shame and guilt in his character; why he feels both of these and how I might help him come to understand that they are natural elements of his being. How to deal with them when they cause him rage and potential self-harm, as well as the risk he may pose to others. Helping him understand why his mother turns to the pills and razor blades every time a black cloud passes will be much more difficult.

I stare at my page of scribbles. On the open textbook beside me I circle a passage from Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, not because of any insight it offers me into Alex’s situation, but because it clouds me in an overwhelming sense of déjà vu:

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n
.

I tap my pen on the desk for a few moments, trying to remember where I came across this quote before, and why it should feel so familiar, and then it all comes back. It was a gift from a fellow student during the first year of my psychiatric training, when the questions surrounding Poppy’s behaviour were pounding my brain, when I felt launched beyond the natural maternal impetus to make everything all right into a quest worthy of Superwoman: to make Poppy’s Hell a Heaven. It never happened.

That doesn’t mean it
can’t
happen, I remind myself. The Hell that psychotics live with can be relocated, if not redecorated, so to speak. ‘Hell’ is when no treatment is given – or the wrong sort – and when the mind is left to plummet into itself without proper intervention. My thoughts turn back to Alex. Michael wishes me to write a report that will enable him to give Cindy and her son the kind of family support they should have been receiving for years – counselling, better housing, care assistance. But something nags at me. Poppy’s voice in my head morphs to Alex’s when talking about Ruin:
He’s the bad Alex
.

There has already been some speculation in Michael’s notes that Alex is bipolar, but I am not convinced. With a deep breath I write ‘Schizophrenia?’ at the top of my notes as, in many cases, it has virtually been ruled out from the get-go on account of early onset schizophrenia affecting one in ten-hundred-thousand children under the age of twelve years old. Some psychotic disorders may be a result of physical and/or sexual abuse in childhood. I will ask after the boy’s father and other relatives who have played a part in his life so far. Has the mother had lovers, and how much have they been around Alex? Very often, mothers in Cindy’s position end up using their lovers as babysitters: has this been the case? Abuse will be my primary area of enquiry, although I need to explore the history of Cindy’s depression and its impact on Alex: a much harder thing to investigate.

First, I contact Alex’s school and leave a message with the secretary to speak with Alex’s teacher, Karen Holland. Then I Google the name of the theatre company that Alex belongs to – Really Talented Kids Theatre Company NI – and discover a sophisticated website with a photograph of several dozen children grouped on a stage, Alex’s smiling face among them. A cluster of logos for high-profile businesses in the region feature under the banner ‘Our Sponsors’, beside which is an attractive woman with sharp cheekbones, a melon-slice white smile and a wild nest of backcombed red hair. I recognise her as Jojo Kennings, an actress in a TV series I much admire. Like me, Jojo is originally from Belfast, and has returned after twenty years in London to boost regional participation in the arts, enlisting the help of her celebrity friends such as Kenneth Branagh to mentor the kids in the theatre company. I am impressed by her passion, and feel a sense of hope that Alex is involved in the project. I type a message into the ‘contact’ box on the website, delete it, and rewrite one that sounds less formal.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date: 08/5/07 09.21 a.m.

Dear Jojo (if I may),

I’m writing to ask if I might have a brief chat with you about one of the children involved in your production of
Hamlet
in Belfast next month, Alex Broccoli. 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 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 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, or, in other words, why the sudden incline in cases? 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 keen 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 dealing with a schizophrenic daughter, neither of which was ever properly diagnosed or treated, you tend to have a particular investment in the proper 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:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date: 08/5/07 09.25 a.m.

Yeah no worries – having a rehearsal at GOH 2night 4–5 p.m. – could speak to you just before, that OK?

JOJO xoxox

I glance at my diary. I can make it. I send an email straight back confirming the meeting and asking if ‘GOH’ means ‘Grand Opera House’. A reply zings back.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date: 08/5/07 09.27 a.m.

Yes, at the Opera House. See you then.

JOJO xoxox

I only half read her reply because the chime of the email hitting my inbox has chimed 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 brown 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 channelling energy that would otherwise spark into aggression, 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 looks up at me.

‘Thanks, Mum.’

I can see her face – heart-shaped like my mother’s, small dark eyes from our Chinese ancestry on my father’s side, and a high, intellectual forehead that she meticulously covers with a thick sharp fringe. Even at twelve years old she has the air of an older spirit about her; a soul burdened by its penetrative perceptions.

Several months previously, she began an intensive programme 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 had started to show signs of improvement since she returned. For the first time in many years, I knew what it felt like to have a ‘normal’ child – a child who tells me she loves me.

Nonetheless, the drill still stands – I glance across the open space of the living room before I leave to run her bath, assessing the room carefully for any sharps, wires, breakables or flammables. Poppy pauses, then strikes the B above middle C once more to begin her new composition.

I can hear her singing now. 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 go back and check she’s all right.
She is fine
, I think.
Let her play
. I remember the holiday we had booked that summer to Paris, of the possibility of picking up her piano tuition again with another teacher. I tried teaching her myself, but we had 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 immediately 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, an instinct shouting at me that I need to go back into the living room and check on Poppy. I wrench at the tap, shutting off the water. I look at myself in the mirror of the bathroom cabinet, frowning at the scar on my face that is still an ugly raw pink, not quite old enough to hide. A breeze from outside brushes my hair across my face, trapping itself in my lips. I lean over and shut the window.

The window
.