Creature of the Night (2 page)

It was June and the weather was warm but the house felt
cold because of the damp and my ma set about lighting
the fire. I put on the kettle and went out the back door.
My ma heard me go out.

'Where you going?' she called after me.

'Back to Dublin,' I said.

'You are not!' she screeched at me. 'Come back here!'

'You can't watch me every minute of the day,' I said,
and closed the door behind me.

I went round the front and had a look at the Skoda.
One of the back tyres was low on air and there was
green moss growing on the rubber round the door
frames, but apart from that it looked OK. I wondered
how long it had been sitting there waiting for the
mystery man to come home. I wondered whether there
was any charge left in the battery. The drive had a bit of
a slope and the road did, too, if you turned left. I would
probably be able to get up enough speed to jump-start it,
once I'd got in and got the wiring sorted. I'd have to pick
my moment, though; some time when my ma wouldn't
miss me for a while. I hoped PJ wouldn't be in too much
of a hurry to move the car.

Beside the house was a small grassy kind of yard
with a hayshed and a block of little stone sheds. Behind
them, on the other side of the fence, was the first of the
two big meadows between our house and the two up at
PJ's. They were the only houses in sight. In every other
direction there was nothing but boring farmland.

I lit a fag behind the hayshed, out of sight of the
house. My ma smoked herself so she never got the smell
of it off me. I sometimes wondered why I bothered to
hide it from her. It didn't bother me when she went
ballistic. Not any more, anyway. I just ignored her. But I
couldn't handle it when she got upset and cried. That
happened a lot. It made me want to break things. Sometimes
it made me want to break her.

The cattle in the far field lifted their heads to look
at something, and I seen someone coming over. She was
a long way off but I could see grey hair, a brown dress
and wellies. I had a good idea who she was. I stepped
into the shadow of a big green bush and took out my
phone.

how do u hotwire a skoda

I sent the text to Beetle, then finished my fag and
went back into the house.

My ma was in a rage. She had unpacked the bag of
groceries we brought with us and all the eggs were
broken. Now she had the sausages on the pan but she
couldn't get the gas to light.

'I can't find a meter or anything,' she said. 'You
look, will you?'

I looked at all the walls and then I leaned over the
cooker and looked behind it.

'It's not going to be down there, is it?' she said.

It wasn't, but there was an orange pipe that disappeared
into the wall. I went outside and found a gas
bottle there and flicked the switch on top of it. The fat
old woman was crossing the near meadow now, and I
could see she had a dog with her.

'It's working!' my ma said. She was cheered up now.
'What did you do?'

'Turned it on,' I said. 'And we're getting a visitor.'

'Who?'

'Mrs Dandy, I suppose.'

'Mrs Dandy?'

'PJ's ma.'

'Dooley,' she said. 'It's not Dandy, it's Dooley.'

'Yankee Dooley Doodle Doody Dandy,' I said.
'Who gives a fuck?'

She laughed and I turned away so she wouldn't see
the smile on my face. I wasn't ready to forgive her yet for
dragging me down here.

Miraculously, Mrs Dooley had brought us a box of eggs.

'You must be psychic!' my ma said, showing her the
broken ones in the bin.

'Good riddance to bad rubbish,' Mrs Dooley said.
'These ones are from our own hens, fresh laid. Save your
scraps in a bucket and send the young lad up with them.
Bits of old bread or potatoes or cabbage. They'll eat
anything.'

Dennis stood in the doorway, watching the dog. It
had gone under the table and laid down like it belonged
there.

'Watch him,' I said. 'He'll have your hand off.'

'What, have your hand off,' Mrs Dooley said.
'Don't take any notice of him. That dog wouldn't hurt
a fly.'

Dennis smiled, but he didn't come in.

'You might have to hunt him out of here the odd
time,' Mrs Dooley said. 'He's always lived here and he
doesn't get on with our own dogs above. Just send him
home.'

She took a carton of milk out of her bag and gave
it to my ma.

'And did your cows lay that as well?' I said.

Mrs Dooley looked at me a minute, then looked at
my ma. 'We don't keep milking cows no more,' she said.
'Too much trouble.'

Dennis decided it was time to chance his luck. He
came in and stood in front of Mrs Dooley.

'I don't want a bedroom,' he said.

'Of course you do!' Mrs Dooley said. 'Why
wouldn't you? Big boy like yourself.'

Dennis gaped at her.

'What age are you?' she said. 'You must be five or
six at least!'

'He's only just four,' my ma said. 'But he takes age
six in clothes.'

'He does, I'd say,' Mrs Dooley said, talking to my
ma but still looking at Dennis. 'He's very tall.'

'They both are,' my ma said. 'Robert's only just
fourteen.'

Mrs Dooley gave me a quick look over. 'Well,' she
said. 'If you ask me they both need bedrooms and
they're lucky to have them. Do you know how many
children I reared? And my house no bigger than this
one?'

Dennis just stared. He had no idea what she was
talking about.

'Eleven,' she said. 'Eleven children in a house no
bigger than this one. And there was no talk of any of
them having their own bedroom!'

'Don't want a bedroom,' Dennis said again, but
quieter this time.

My ma said, 'Did you really have eleven kids?'

'I did,' Mrs Dooley said. 'But there was only ever
one child in this house, more's the pity, and she was
never allowed out.'

'Why not?' I said.

Mrs Dooley looked at Dennis. He was staring at her
with big, wide eyes.

'It's a very strange story,' she said, 'and a very sad
one. But it can wait. Your dinner's nearly ready. I only
came down to leave you the eggs and to make sure you
put out a drop of milk for the fairies.'

'The what?' my ma said.

'Oh, I know you'll scoff,' Mrs Dooley said, hauling
her fat frame out of the chair. 'But the truth is there was
never a time since this house was built that there wasn't
milk left out for the fairies. It's set on a fairy path, they
say, between the fort over there' – she pointed out the
window, across the road – 'and the other one over on
our land.'

I couldn't look at her. I turned away and faced the
cupboards, messing with the flex of the kettle. A grin
was splitting my face. I wished the lads were here to see
this.

'You might laugh,' she said to my back, 'but it's bad
luck to disregard them.'

I heard her open one of the presses beside me and
out the corner of my eye I seen her put a little green
bowl on the table.

'About this much,' she said, pouring milk from the
carton. 'Leave it on the windowsill when it gets dark.'

'All right,' my ma said. I could tell she was trying
not to laugh as well.

'Lars used put it out every whole night,' Mrs
Dooley said. 'And if he was away he would tell me
and I'd come down and do it. That's why it's so strange.
Him to disappear like that without telling a soul.'

My ma was stirring sausages beside me. I could see
the smile on her face and I didn't dare look at her.

'I'll leave you to it, so,' Mrs Dooley said. 'Be sure
and call over if there's anything you need.'

'I will,' my ma said.

'Come on, Bimbo,' Mrs Dooley said to the dog. But
the dog was very comfortable under the table and it
wasn't going anywhere.

It was more than I could take. I burst out of the
back door, raced to the hayshed and laughed until my
ribs hurt.

Mrs Dooley stayed for another few minutes, but
I didn't go back into the house until I'd watched
her, minus the dog, plod all the way across the first
field. By then I'd done enough laughing and remembered
that I was still mad at my ma. When I went back
in the first thing I seen was the dog, still under the
table.

'She says he'll go home when he's hungry,' my ma
said, 'so long as we don't feed him. He used to belong to
the old man who lived here and he still thinks it's his
home.'

'What old man?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'But after he died they took
the dog away with them, and then when Lars moved in
he came back here.'

'The doggy likes it here,' Dennis said.

'Lars put in the dog flap,' my ma said. She was
pointing at the hinged panel in the back door. I seen it
there before but I didn't know what it was.

'I bet all that stuff with eggs and fairies was just an
excuse,' I said. 'I bet she really came here to get rid of the
dog. Scabby old thing.'

'Bimbo!' Dennis said. His mouth was full of hot
sausage. 'His name is Bimbo.'

'Weird, isn't it?' my ma said. 'Can you believe it? In
this day and age?'

She laughed. I gritted my teeth, determined not to
join in. I picked up the little green dish and swallowed
the milk.

'Hey!' Dennis said. 'You can't have that! You're not
a fairy!'

'How do you know?' I said.

'Because I do.'

'I might be,' I said, and made a scary face at him. 'In
the night . . .'

My ma put down my plate and poured me some
tea. I was suddenly starving and I dragged up a chair. My
ma put down her own plate and sat down.

'Bimbo!' Dennis said. He dropped his fried egg on
the floor. The dog snapped and it was gone.

'Hey!' I said. 'You're not supposed to feed him!'

'I don't like the egg,' Dennis said. 'It's too strong.'

'But he'll never go home if we feed him. He won't
get hungry.'

My ma surprised me. She said, 'I wouldn't mind
keeping him. I never had a dog before.'

'Yes,' Dennis said. He dropped Bimbo a piece of
bread. 'Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!'

'What do you think?' my ma said.

I almost said yes as well, but I caught myself just in
time.

'I don't care,' I said. 'I'm not staying.'

I told the lads that as well, when my ma landed me with
the news.

'I'll just come back,' I said.

'Course you will, Robser,' Beetle said, and Fluke
said, 'Where would we be without you?'

He was my cousin and I met the others through him
when I was eleven, and they were all fifteen or sixteen. I
couldn't believe it when they let me hang around with
them. I couldn't believe I was in. But I was, well and
truly. After that, me and Beetle and Fluke and Psycho
Mick did almost everything together.

Weekends and school holidays we worked the
streets, robbing bags and iPods and phones and stuff. I
did most of the robbing because I was small and fast,
and when we were making our way back out towards
our own part of town, I carried all the stuff we'd robbed.
There was a good reason for that. If the guards caught
us, the others could all act innocent. I was Fluke's cousin
and we just met up in town. How should they know
what I was up to?

The guards never believed it, of course, but what
could they do? They only caught us a couple of times,
anyway. They dragged us off to the station and raked us
over the coals and told us what kind of scum we were,
but we just ignored it all. They called in our parents if
they could find them and gave them a bollocking and
told them to keep us off the streets. My ma tried, she
really did, but what could she do? She couldn't make me
a prisoner.

Nor could the guards, and that was the beauty of
our system. I was too young for prison, and St Pat's and
the other young offenders' institutions were all bursting
at the seams with lads way worse than me. If we ever got
caught in the cars it would be a different story, but we
never did. Only the small stuff. We felt like no one could
touch us.

One time when we were caught I got sent to some
fella, a youth worker or something. I had to go and sit in
his office and he asked me all these stupid questions
about my home life and school and how I felt and all
that shite. He said the other lads were exploiting me
because of my age, but he didn't understand. I knew my
place in the gang and I was happy with it. The others all
had their places as well. Fluke was the oldest and kind of
the leader. He called most of the shots, and he had the
contacts for selling the stuff we robbed. Beetle knew
where to score the good gear, and he had a talent for
nicking car keys off pub tables or out of jacket pockets.
And Mick was the psycho. He was seriously hard. One
time when I was legging it with a woman's bag a fella on
the street tried to stop me. He never knew what hit him.
Mick moved in and slammed him up against the wall
and knocked his teeth out, and then jumped on his head
a couple of times when he was down. It scared me a bit,
but the others said that fella was a stupid bastard and he
should mind his own business. They said he had it
coming, and we all got a great laugh reading about it in
the papers.

So when Fluke said, 'Where would we be without
you?' I knew he meant it. We were a fighting unit, an
oiled machine, and every one of us was needed.

I kept checking my phone but there was no answer from
Beetle. Maybe he was off his head, or maybe he was
looking up Skodas on the Internet or something. After
our dinner my ma took Dennis upstairs and began to
unpack his stuff in his little bedroom. The floors in that
house were as thin as the walls and I could hear every
word they were saying. She asked him where he wanted
to keep his Lego and his football jerseys and where Jimjam
the pyjama rabbit was going to sleep. Her questions
were happy and bubbly but his answers were nervous
and quiet. He still wasn't sold on the bedroom idea.

He never had his own one in Dublin. We had a poky
little two-bed place. A while ago my ma wanted Dennis
to move into my room with me but I wasn't having it. He
was her brat, I told her. If she didn't want him she should
have thought twice about getting herself pregnant.

She chucked me out when I said that. I was
supposed to be grounded at the time so it was just what
I wanted. I met up with the lads and we went and got a
couple of cars. That was a good night, that was. One of
the best. It made me smile to think about it.

I could only get one channel on the TV, and that
was RTE2. All the others were just fizz and white
scratches. I turned it off and looked at my stuff piled in
the corner and decided I might as well unpack it, even
though I wasn't staying. I wouldn't be taking much of it
with me when I left, anyway.

I went upstairs, dragging two bin bags behind me. I
heard Dennis say: 'I sleep in here tomorrow, Mammy.
Just stay in your bed tonight.'

I paused on the stairs and waited for her reaction. I
knew she really really wanted her bed to herself.

'All right,' she said. 'But only tonight. And if you
wet the bed I'll murder you.'

Which, I thought, pretty much guaranteed that he
would. I remembered that from when I was his age.
Lying awake in terror, afraid to go to sleep in case I wet
the bed. At that time I was still afraid of my ma's rages.
They don't scare me now, but they scare Dennis. Poor
little bollix. I almost felt sorry for the little rat.

'I won't,' he said. He was delighted with himself
now. 'Jimjam bunny will wake me up in time.'

I remembered that trick of my ma's, too. My old
Fuddy bear was lost years ago, but he still wakes me up
sometimes when I need to piss.

Dennis was dancing around on the landing. When I
got to the top of the stairs he said, 'Bobby! I sleeping
with Mammy tonight. And then tomorrow—'

'Aren't you lucky?' I said. I pushed him out of my
way. 'And listen, snotface. My room is out of bounds,
OK? If I catch you in there you're dead meat.'

I went into it, leaving him staring after me. My ma
came out of his room.

'Don't you talk to your brother like that!' she yelled
at me.

'He's not my brother!' I yelled back, and slammed
my door behind me.

Something swished and swung on the back of it. A
pair of jeans and a denim jacket were hanging on a
hook. I put down my stuff and went to look through the
pockets. There was nothing in the jacket but in the
left pocket of the jeans there was twenty euro and a
handful of loose change, and in the other was a car key
on a ring with a small little Swiss Army knife.

The key said
SKODA
.

I couldn't believe it. I punched air with my fist and
stuffed the key and the money in my pocket, quick, in
case my ma came in. I could see, now, what had
happened. The chimney breast ran up through my room
and the door, when it was open, rested flat against it. No
one had closed it since Lars disappeared and the jeans
and jacket had been missed. So if it was true that the
guards had been called in, they hadn't done a very good
job of searching the place. Why didn't that surprise me?

I didn't care. It was a gift. I didn't need to wait for
Beetle's answer now. I would go that night, as soon as
my ma and Dennis were asleep. I would still roll the car
down the hill and as far away from the house as I could
get before I started the engine, but there would be no
messing around with clothes hangers or smashing steering
locks. I would make a silent getaway, and by the time
my ma noticed the car was gone I would be in Dublin.

Home.

I texted Beetle:

found key forget hotwire c u soon

Then I texted Fluke:

c u 2nite

I was bursting out of my skin with energy but I needed
to be careful and not look too happy or anything. My
ma would know something was up. So I took my time
unpacking, yanking at the sticky drawers and hammering
them back in. By the time I went back down I was in
control of myself and giving nothing away.

My ma watched RTE2 all night, wrapped in a duvet
with Dennis on her lap. The wind had got up and blew
draughts in through the window frames and under the
door. The fire blazed like there was a big vacuum
cleaner up the chimney, sucking all the heat into the
night. My ma kept putting more wood on it but the
room was still cold.

I sat in an armchair, my eyes on the telly and my
face set hard, but inside my head I was doing somersaults.
I couldn't wait to get going in the Skoda. I hoped
the radio worked. It would be tempting to put the foot
down and boot it all the way up to Dublin, but I wasn't
going to do that. I was going to chug along gently, sticking
to the speed limits and stopping at red lights. I wasn't
going to draw any attention to myself.

The air in the back tyre was a worry. I hoped it
would get me there. No way I was going to stop at an air
pump. If I had to get petrol it would be risky enough. I
know I was tall for my age but I still didn't look
seventeen.

'I wonder where we get the firewood?' my ma said
when the ads came on.

'There's big logs in the hayshed,' I said. 'I'll cut
some for you.'

'Will you?' She smiled at me. 'It's great having a
man around the house.'

I stared at the ads, raging inside. I hated it when she
talked to me like that. Trying to get round me.

'What will you cut it with?' she asked me.

I shrugged. 'Don't know. Can you lend me your nail
file?'

She laughed. I leaned forward, put my hand in my
pocket for some chewing gum, felt the car key in there. I
smiled at my ma. She was over the moon. It was a long
time since she'd had a smile from me.

She got it wrong, of course. She always did. She
thought it meant I'd changed my mind and I liked it
here. Liked being the 'man about the house'. She beamed
back at me.

'Time you were in bed,' she said to Dennis.

'No!' he wailed.

'Do you want to sleep in my bed?' she said.

'Yes.'

'Then you go up now and wait for me.'

He didn't dare complain. She took him along to the
bathroom and then up the stairs. Above the noise of the
TV I could hear the wind thumping the roof. The whole
house was creaking and grinding. Dennis would be
terrified up there, but he wouldn't dare come down. My
ma would kill him if he did.

When she came back she said: 'Why don't you get
yourself a duvet? There's probably a late film on or
something.'

She'd like that. The two of us snug and cosy on the
sofa, watching a film. Herself and her little man. Like it
was before Dennis came along.

'I don't want a duvet,' I said.

I didn't want to watch a film, neither. I wanted her
to go to bed and go to sleep and leave the coast clear for
me and the Skoda. A documentary came on and she rang
her sister Carmel and talked for twenty minutes. When
she was finished she rang her friend Maura and went
over all the exact same stuff again. I don't know where
she got the money for the credit. When she finally got off
the phone she said to me: 'I think this is nice. This place.
The countryside and all. And the dog.'

I didn't say anything. I watched more ads. My
favourite cider. I could have murdered one.

'I don't know why you say Dennis isn't your
brother,' she said.

My thoughts went haywire. Why did she always
have to do this? She had this stupid idea that if we
weren't screaming at each other it was a good time to
'talk about things'. But 'talking about things' always
ended up with us screaming at each other.

'Because he's not,' I said. We'd been here loads of
times before.

'He is,' she said. 'He's your half-brother. It's the
same thing.'

'It's not,' I said.

'It is,' she said. 'You're my son and so is he.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'But we don't have the same da, do we?'

'What difference does that make?'

'Because he knows who his da is, doesn't he? And I
don't. Because you won't tell me. That's why.'

We'd been here before, too. A million times. She
must have known we'd get here, once she started 'talking
about things'. We always did.

She made a miserable face, like she was the one who
was hurt by it and not me.

'When are you going to tell me?' I said.

'When you're older.' She always said that.

'I'm older now,' I said. 'I've been older for years!
And I'm fed up with you telling me that. I don't see why
it has to be such a big deal!'

Dennis called from upstairs. 'Mammy!'

Stupid kid. He'd get it in the neck, now. My ma was
torn between tears and fury. I could see it in her face.

I couldn't stand any more. I did what I always did
when she got like that. I stood up and went out.