There were not many people in the café after school. Fortunately, in addition to the dance music being played in the background, there was a lot of noise and laughter from the table next to ours. Fortunate, because we were talking about stuff that would have sounded mad if anyone could have overheard us.
‘That was amazing, Liam. You drew with a grandmaster. Nice one, I wish I had that moving universes trick.’ Zed glanced at Tara. ‘You know about Liam’s ability, right?’
‘Yes.’ Tara nodded.
‘But listen.’ I shook my head, ‘I really shouldn’t have done it. Something’s going totally wrong. Where I should be able to see millions of universes there are just these black lines.’
‘Black lines?’ asked Tara, quizzically.
‘Yeah, like rips or something, huge gaps between the universes.’
For a while we said nothing; all at once, our table was silent, though the café itself was lively enough. Over by the door a sixth-year boy was waving around a ticket to the Trinity Ball, showing off that he’d been able to get one.
‘And I’m getting blackouts too. Yesterday afternoon, as I came home from school, I fell asleep on the bus and woke up an hour later sitting on the steps at the Garden of Remembrance.’
‘You don’t remember getting off the bus?’ asked Zed, more curious than worried.
‘No. I don’t remember anything, except maybe the smell of detergent. What do you think’s happening to me?’
‘I don’t know, but we could go see Master Halpin and get his help,’ Tara suggested.
‘Master Halpin?’
‘Tara has this friend,’ I explained, ‘Geoffrey Halpin, he’s a Buddhist. It was him who realised that a hungry ghost was after me. You know, that demon we looked for in the Long Room Library.’
‘Yeah, creepy day that.’
‘Come on then. We can talk on the way to Master Halpin’s.’ Tara started packing her bag.
‘What, you mean go right now?’ I was reluctant to go over to Kilmainham. My head hurt and I just wanted to hurry home for my dinner and bed.
‘I think we should. He ought to be told about the gaps and the memory loss. They sound serious.’
‘All right then. I’ll text home.’
Tara was right and it would be a relief to share my concerns with Geoffrey. Although I’d only met him once, I appreciated the way he had listened to me and believed me.
‘I’ll come too.’ Zed took out his phone. ‘You’re in serious trouble, dude, and you are going to need someone around with brains. No offence, Tara. I mean, someone else with brains. Our boy here is good at sports and messing but not so hot on logic.’
She smiled. ‘I know.’
The slagging didn’t bother me. In fact, it felt good to have the two of them at my side.
***
Everything about the bus journey to Kilmainham was as it should be. The weather, typically, was overcast. The people on the bus were exactly what you’d expect: office workers and shop workers, coming home from a full day, texting ahead. So, why did I feel something was wrong?
Because whenever I rested my eyes and felt for the universes around me, I could see that the voids had grown again, had become thicker. They were widening crevasses. Didn’t anyone care that a cancer was spreading through the metaverse? Of course not; only I could see it. I felt like standing up and shouting though, to alert them. Crazy I know, but I was tired and fraught. They just didn’t seem right, the routines of everyday life, when my world was falling apart, perhaps literally. In that moment, I felt I understood what it must be like to be seriously ill while travelling through a city of people who took their health for granted.
Once at Master Halpin’s house, though, my sense of being at odds with the world completely changed. He, at least, seemed to share my sense of fear as he looked at me through a narrow space between door and frame, a safety chain carefully in place.
‘Liam, is that you?’
‘It is, of course.’
‘Tara.’
‘Hello, Master Halpin. This is Zed, Zimraan. He wants to help us too.’
‘Hello, Zimraan.’ Geoffrey closed the door a moment, to unlatch the chain, and then opened it wide. Even so, he hesitated, his body an obstacle to entering.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
He met my eyes, staring hard at me, before eventually standing aside. ‘Come in, I’ll tell you.’
Once we were gathered around the table, mugs of green tea in front of us, a plate of biscuits in the middle, Geoffrey held up his hand and we looked at him expectantly.
‘Last night the hungry ghost came here, to my house, and tried to get in.’
‘So, it’s true? There really is a hungry ghost at large?’ Tara almost whispered the question.
‘Unfortunately yes. Our interpretation of Liam’s dream was correct.’
Tara gave a long sigh. ‘I knew that something was wrong, but to be honest, I wasn’t sure about the ghost. I didn’t really believe it, until now. What did it look like?’
Geoffrey nodded towards me. ‘It looked exactly like Liam.’
They turned to look at me.
‘What happened?’ My voice was dry and I shivered, remembering the twin version of myself I’d seen in the library.
‘It was about four in the morning. When I heard a knock on the door, I went to see and it was Liam, sounding exactly the same as he does now. I very nearly let him in, but something in his expression stopped me. It was demonic, triumphant. Then it tried to destroy me. Just by looking at me, it was trying to suck the life out of me. It was like someone was holding a sharp narrow tube towards me, at the other end of which was a powerful vacuum. I could feel the chill and the fact it was pulling at me, trying to break me down so that I would be drawn into the darkness.’
If what he was telling us was frightening, even more disturbing was that an intelligent middle-aged man was talking about demons with such sincerity none of us doubted the story.
‘So, what did you do?’ asked Zed, in a hushed voice.
‘It needed to eat. A hungry ghost is a creature that is entirely appetite. It had no patience to stay, to try and wear me down. As for me, I was reminding myself that I had nothing to fear: all life is suffering. Had I died at that moment, I would have simply lost this particular body. I’ve lived as well as I could, more or less. I’ve no reason to fear death. It wasn’t easy, faced with those malignant eyes, but I kept myself calm and that, I think, was why it left. This ghost eats fear and other emotions. You have to defend yourself by avoiding such feelings.’
‘Jays’, not easy,’ exclaimed Zed.
‘No. Not even for me, who has had thirty years of practice.’
‘Where is it now, I wonder?’ I mused aloud.
‘I’m relieved that you are here, Liam.’ Geoffrey relaxed a little and gave us a smile. ‘I thought that it had eaten you up and was walking around in your body.’
‘Nope. This is me. The full shillin’, as me da’ would say.’
Everyone looked a little more cheerful.
‘All right, let’s do this scientifically.’ Zed got out his rough book. ‘When has this hungry ghost been around?’
‘The Valentine’s card was probably the first time.’ Tara became excited. ‘You remember Jocelyn said she’d seen you early in the morning? That must have been the ghost. Right?’
‘Right. February fourteenth, about eight am.’ Zed wrote it down carefully. ‘Next?’
‘That would be the time Kenny drew on my face. I didn’t see the ghost, but it must have been near, because somehow it fixed the universes so I couldn’t escape.’
‘That was when, exactly?’ He paused, pen held above the book.
‘Well, it was double English, so it must have been Thursday afternoon and it was right before Easter break.’
‘So it was. That’s March tenth, about two thirty pm. Next?’
‘A few weeks later, when we went to Trinity and I told you that I could move. For a moment there, up in the library, I saw it, like looking in a mirror.’
‘Right. Janey Mack, but that was scary. Not that I saw it, though.’
‘Mid-April?’ I hazarded.
‘Yeah.’ Zed was writing. ‘It was the eighteenth, because we were going to look at games for my brother’s birthday present. Around four thirty pm.’ He looked up at me again. ‘And after that?’
‘Remember how an elephant ran into the school yard yesterday?’
‘It was deadly.’ Zed laughed.
‘Well, that was supposed to be the school performance day. Inextreme were going to play and we had shaved our heads. Except that instead the ghost attacked me, tried to humiliate me and I fought back. So we ended up in some bizarre, out-of-the-way universe.’
‘You fought back?’ interjected Geoffrey.
‘I did,’ I replied proudly. ‘I nearly found a perfect universe, but at least I got away from the ones it was surrounding me with.’
‘Anyway, that’s May sixth, around two pm.’ Zed wrote it in. ‘And then there’s last night, May seventh, around four am. Any more?’
‘Not that I know of,’ I responded glumly. ‘But maybe my blackout on the bus was significant?’ How much more damage was this creature going to do? And how on earth could I stop it?
‘Right, could be. We need to keep the list going, see if there’s a pattern.’
‘Perhaps there already is. One in February, one in March, one in April, now two in May already and we’ve half the month to go. It could be that they are getting more frequent,’ Tara pointed this out with a rather sombre tone to her voice.
Zed on the other hand was positive. ‘Maybe, but it’ll become clearer with more examples. Now, on this page, let’s write down what we know about the hungry ghost. I’ll begin with the fact it looks like Liam.’ Zed underlined the words ‘hungry ghost’ and then underneath wrote ‘1. Looks like Liam (pig ugly).’ He winked at me. ‘What else?’
‘I’ve been getting hold of all the books I can that might help.’ An armchair stood near the main window, beside which lay half a dozen books. Geoffrey stood up and picked one up. ‘This has stories from the life of Yo-Kong Shen, a Chinese Buddhist from the sixteenth century. Two of them involve hungry ghosts. I think you should hear them.’
‘Go ahead.’ Zed remained poised to write.
The pages of the book had folded corners to mark the passages that Geoffrey wanted to read. This surprised me; surely Buddhists would take better care of their books? There was a smile on Tara’s face. She had noticed my expression and guessed my thinking.
‘I’ve had to translate it, so this is only the gist, except when we get to the ghosts, then I’ve tried to be more accurate.’