The Boy from the County Hell Read online

CHAPTER FOUR

  The blanket pulled back over his face and he threw his swinging fists at whatever the hell it was. He swung and he punched and he dived off his bunk and found himself soaking wet from a stream of sticky sweat that ran down the length of his back from a recess in fore of his head.

  And he cursed out into the air.

  “Settle down Shane, settle down,” said Officer Ryan as four officers pinned down his arms and sat upon his legs, putting some needed restraint on his kicking and punching until Shane eventually tired himself into a dull whimper.

  “Ya have ta let me out a here,” said Shane.

  “It’s ok Shane, we just want ta ask a few questions is all,” said Officer Ryan.

  His mind flashed with dark brooding ambiences splashed with dark reds; the image of a beaten and bloodied body lying on a checkered floor beneath a full pint of Guinness.

  “A full pint,” he said to himself.

  “What?” said Officer Ryan.

  “Yer man. Da Landlord. I swear I didn’t touch a single hair on is head. I didn’t fuckin touch em. Are ya recordin dat?” said Shane.

  “What landlord Shane? That’s not why you’re here” said Officer Ryan.

  He felt like a young boy again, standing by the edge of a pool, his hair soaking wet, his toes, wiggling and jiggling with excitement and goose bumps dancing all over his wee body with a heavy set look of disappointment, staring out towards his father who was staring at a clump of snot he had picked from his nose pants and had missed his dive.

  He felt like that boy.

  “Shane, dere’s been an accident. It’s yer mammy. We need you to come with us” said Officer Ryan.

  Shane froze. He already knew the meaning of the words gone unspoken, the little gaps that Officer Ryan took between every syllable; they hid the truth in what he had not the courage to say outright.

  “She’s dead, I know it,” said Shane.

  He couldn’t contain himself. His mother was everything and though he grown into a man being the height of a man, the sound of a man and the smell of a man, he had the feel of a young boy who had never stopped being anything but, to his doting mother; she who kissed away the hurt from the middle of his forehead, she who scared away the monsters that hid beneath his bed, she who stood outside his door and hummed until he fell asleep, she who loved him like none would or had ever before.

  The officers picked Shane up and carried him gently out of the empty cell. They walked along the row of caged rooms and out into the pouring rain.

  “Here put dese on,” said Officer Ryan, handing Shane a pair of pants and a shirt.

  Shane dressed himself and he was like that young boy again, complaining every time he put an arm through a sleeve, wanting to just curl up on his bed and wake, only when things were apparently more normal.

  He sat in the back of the car with an officer on each side of him, an officer driving and Officer Ryan, sitting in the front passenger seat, nursing a shotgun in his lap. The rain was no kinder, beating against all sides of the car and very quickly, the windows in the car fogged and outside became a loud blur.

  “What da ya want ta know?” asked Shane.

  “About what?” said Officer Ryan.

  “Ya said ya had some questions, about what?”

  “What do you know about da IRA?”

  Surprise took over his mind like an icy chill.

  “Da fuckin army? You tink I’m wit dem?”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Dey hurt me, mammy?”

  “We tink so, yeah”

  “What da fuck do da IRA want wit me and me, mammy?”

  “Dere’s a bomb, Shane. And da code ta stop it, it’s in one yer songs” said Officer Ryan.

  “Why da fuck? Ah fuck it” said Shane giving up.

  “Dey hid it in yer memories. A place nobody would find it” said Officer Ryan.

  “And it’s a fuckin song?” Dat’s what all dis carryin on is about?” said Shane.

  “It’s the greatest song ever written apparently. You should be proud.”

  “Dere’s a lot o shite I can’t remember. Me mammy, she always said it was for a good reason. Dat Jesus hid me taughts, put a blanket on me mirror ta stop me from scaring da shite out o meself wit da tings dat I done.”

  “Do you remember how it goes?” asked Officer Ryan.

  “You workin wit dose men? Da ones in da cream coats?”

  “What men?”

  “When ya picked me up, dere were a bunch of men chasin me.”

  “We found ya by yerself Shane, lying in the fuckin street like a tinker.”

  “Yer man, in the terrific shades?”

  “Dere was no one, Shane. Just you.”

  “What do dey want?”

  “Who?”

  “Da IRA. Dere da ones wit da fuckin bomb yeah?”

  “We tink so. Maybe not. Probably not, no, definitely not den, forget it”

  “Ya tink so? Forget it? Why da fuck did ya say it den?”

  “Dere’s a bomb, but we don’t know who made it.”

  “What da fuck is wit da whole IRA ting den?”

  “We got a call from London.”

  “Dat’s where da bomb is?”

  “Aye. And if we don’t get the code in da next 24 hours. Da world is fucked.”

  “You tink I’m workin wit dem? You tink I did dis?”

  Officer Ryan didn’t respond. He just started humming to himself, light and whimsically, but loud enough to draw upon Shane’s ears, as if he wanted him to hear, to join in and to hum along and maybe, if he remembered the words, to sing it out loud; if of course, he was humming the right tune.

  Shane stared out the window, watching his breath paint against the glass, embossing the image of droplets running down the outside of the window and as his warm breath spread like cancer on a rotting lung, his eyes fell upon some scribbling that someone other than he had done with their greasy fingers; the words ‘come and see’.

  The car pulled up at the hospital and the officers all got out carrying their pistols in their hands with Officer Ryan still nursing the giant shotgun. They circled Shane as they walked into the building and coursed their way like a last shot through a dying man’s veins, towards the heart of the hospital.

  “She’s through dere Shane. But just a warnin. It was a pretty rough crash” said Officer Ryan.

  Shane walked into a white room surrounded by shiny silver beds and he was amazed at how shiny they were. He could see his reflection on a thousand varying angles and in each he saw a breath that was not his own, trailing like a tail behind him.

  He pulled back the white sheet on one of the two trays sitting covered in the centre of the room.

  “Dat’s not her,” he said. “Dat’s not me mammy.”

  He threw back the sheet completely and on the table laid a woman, savagely beaten by the wreckage of a car, but the woman was not his mother.

  Officer Ryan looked at the honest confusion on Shane’s face and then sternly at his own men, slapping them with his eyes.

  “Are ya sure Shane? Yer in shock. It’s yer mammy.”

  Shane looked back and the women lying still on the shiny silver tables were still as strange to him as the events of this day. When he turned back to the door, Officer Ryan was loading shells into his weapon and his eyes were trained on Shane.

  “Dat’s not me mammy and you’re not a fuckin copper.”

  The glimmer from the shiny silver tables got caught in every part of his eye and in every part of his eye he saw a stranger’s breath manifesting behind him and he thought of something The Old Man had told him.

  “Put da needle down Shane,” said Officer Ryan.

  “Where is she? Where me mammy?” said Shane, holding the needle threateningly to his veins.

  “Don’t do it. Please, Shane. Listen, it wasn’t my idea. Dey taught, if you believed your mammy was dead, you’d remember da song.”

  “Who took her?”

  “Da Musical Madman.”


  “Where is she?”

  “She’s in London. He has her wit da bomb man. I’m sorry. It’s for da good o da world. Please Shane, put da needle down” pleaded Officer Ryan.

  “On junk” Shane Said. “Every ting seems small and insignificant.”

  “Shane, no” screamed Officer Ryan.

  Shane pushed the needle into his veins and his eyes flashed as his pupils turned to pinpoints, his blood warmed, his throat shivered and it felt like a hot blanket had been wrapped against his brain.

  The officers all screamed as their muscles tightened, their bodies contorted and they all shrank to the size of peas and though they kept on shrieking and screaming, they sounded no louder than a disgruntled mouse as Shane stepped over them one and all and picked up their guns and walked out of the hospital with not a penny in his pants and a wretched thirst itching at the inside of his mouth that only a cold pint could scratch.