Page 45 of Demon

Ciara stopped, looking at the old man, her mouth dropping open. I didn’t miss the look of realisation cross her face, or the sudden sparkle of tear-filled eyes caught in the streetlights. And I definitely didn’t miss that look of pain. I’d seen it before.

Chapter Twenty One

Ciara

Blue light was everywhere. Bouncing off the walls of the other houses, lighting up the faces of the people that gathered in the street. I counted the vehicles as we got closer. Five. Two police cars and three ambulances. All with their lights flashing furiously. Deep down my stomach tightened, a sickly dread creeping over my skin.

A hand caught me. Tentative. Careful.

“It’s Trevor,” old Jimmy said, his voice catching in his throat. He didn’t need to say anymore. I knew what had happened the minute I counted the combination of police and ambulances. I just didn’t know who. And now I knew.

“He’s dead.”

I heard the words, like a whisper caught on the drift of air. I knew what Jimmy was saying. Yet, for a moment, all I could do was stare into the hypnotic pulsing blue, the colour smudging to a blur in front of my eyes. A tear rolled down my cheek. Slow and warm. The only one.

Fingers entwined against mine, looping between each one tentatively. I squeezed my hand round his, grateful for that little action, for the feeling of someone there for me, for the first time in my life.

“How? What happened?” I croaked.

“Topped himself.”

“Suicide?”

Jimmy nodded; his face strained. Pain and loss. It was in his eyes. I didn’t have to look far to see it.

“Why?”

“He couldn’t take anymore. The electricity being off again was the last straw. You know we’ve lived here for ten years,” Jimmy said sadly. “Ten years. My family didn’t want to know me anymore. Trev was all I had left. But each time this happens, it takes Stu longer to pay the bill. And each time it gets harder and harder to get through the day without the distraction of a TV or even light to read by. The blackness got Trevor eventually. It’s hard keeping depression at bay when you can’t even turn a fucking light on.”

Those words. They hit me like a punch in the solar plexus and took away any response I could think of. And the sadness was like a virus. I felt it too, radiating from Jimmy, enveloping every inch of me. Demon squeezed my hand, but I didn’t look up at him. I couldn’t look anywhere, except stare straight ahead at the activity of bodies up and down the front steps.

“Come on, darlin’,” Demon said eventually, his voice a soft rumble in the low thrum of hushed voices around us. “There’s nowt we can do here tonight.”

I nodded, helplessly, letting him lead me from the crowd and back to where we’d dumped my car and his bike.

“Follow me, Ciara. Let’s get out of here.”

I didn’t fight. I had no energy to put up a fuss or make a scene. With sadness and despair came tiredness, hitting me like a sledgehammer.

*****

The ride to Demon’s place was little more than ten minutes. Making our way through the one-way streets leading down to the Ouseburn Valley and taking us out of the city centre. Demon led the way, his noisy bike sounding even louder as it roared through sleepy streets, until they gave way to industrial units and takeaway shops. And then at the last street of workshops and commercial buildings, he stopped.

The signage at the front was a twist of barbed wire painted on a red background.Poison.Even with the black roller shutter pulled down over the window, the tattoo shop we’d stopped at was obvious. There were two doors in the red brick. One covered in the same black roller shutter, the other with13Bnailed into the middle of the black painted wood. But Demon didn’t approach the door, instead going to the next set of shutters and throwing the rattling metal up above his head. The clatter from the shutter echoed around us, the noise rebounding four times before fading away into the night.

There were no neighbours in this cluster of commercial shops and industrial units. No houses or apartments. Only Demon. He pushed the bike forwards, wheeling it into the garage beyond the shutter.

“You can pull your car in too,” he said, waving his hand over the space next to him and then waiting for me to do as I was told.

I wanted to say no. Just to re-establish this relationship of me antagonising him. But I didn’t have the energy, mental or otherwise. Once the car was tucked inside the garage, Demon slammed the metal shutter down, locking us away from the street outside.

“You live above a tattoo shop?”

“Yeah. Makes it really easy to get to work in the morning.”

“You work there?”

“Yeah. It’s mine, Ciara. My shop.”