Here Are the Young Men Page 26

  Rez followed, fascinated. Kearney veered towards the drum circle, then he stumbled through a gap in the ring of a dozen kneeling drummers. He was inside the circle, just Kearney and the looming blaze. The drummers looked up at him, stoney-faced, lit up by the bonfire. As if feeding on Kearney’s frenzied energy, their drumming intensified, pounding and pounding, faster and faster. Amazed, Rez fell to his knees on the edge of the circle and watched.

  The drumming fused with the beat of the techno and Kearney danced, licked by the flames, a streak of motion, a strip of coiled lightning.

  Nobody but Rez could see the changing expression on Kearney’s sweat-slick face – the distress that now flooded it. Still he danced. And now he began to emit a noise: a weird, inhuman shriek, unbroken as it rose over the pounding of the drums and the techno beat.

  Then Kearney was screaming, clawing at his glistening face with the look of a man on fire. The drums pounded hungrily; it was as if the drummers knew they were present at a dreadful ceremony, a sacrifice.

  Kearney leapt up once more, high into the air. When he landed he stood still for a moment, perfectly upright. Then he clenched his fists and roared: ‘FALLEN HENRY, DON’T LEAVE ME!’

  And with that he spun on his heel, his back now to Rez, facing the flames. His head jerked up and he fell to his knees, eyes rolling and face turned to the sky. He wobbled in front of the fire, and it was unclear which way he would fall. The tottering kept up for a few charged seconds as the murder-drums reached their climax, a frenzy of pounding.

  Kearney fell into the flames, his head and torso swallowed up by a surge of fire.

  No one reacted. Everyone watched Kearney, face down in the maddened blaze.

  Somebody roared. Men scrambled up and dragged him out, hands clutching at each splayed limb. Out of the fire, he was flopped over on to his back. Rez stood up and looked down at Kearney as the drummers crouched around him and cried out for help.

  Kearney’s entire face was charred black, with pink globs dripping over the singed, smoking mass of flesh. His hair was still ablaze. One of his eyes had burst in the heat, but the other gazed up at the night and all its stars. Overcome by wonder and love, Rez felt he had never seen Kearney looking so beautiful, so serene.

  He stepped back, unnoticed but witnessing everything. Commotion had swept across the beach, pulsing out from the charred and smoking centre in concentric waves.

  Rez sat down on the sand, his legs crossed beneath him, and contemplated the corpse. He felt magnificently peaceful. He turned his gaze from dead Kearney to the flames that danced on, indifferently; the fierce desire arose in him to stand up and walk into the blaze, to let it consume him. There was no rage or guilt in this impulse, only a wild, effusive joyfulness.

  He stayed where he was and the urge to incinerate himself faded. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The universe shimmered in ecstasy. He imagined he could feel the presence of powerful spirits.

  The crowds swarmed all around them and there they were, Rez and Kearney, two points of stillness in the heaving techno night.

  54 | Matthew

  I held Elena’s hand as we leapt down from the rocks and walked back towards the rave. There were blue and red flashing lights now, and sounds that weren’t part of techno or trance or drum ’n’ bass.

  ‘Shit, it’s looking like a raid,’ said Elena.

  ‘Yeah, maybe that’s it,’ I said quietly. ‘Throw your grass on the stones, just in case.’

  When we reached the emptying dance area, the blackened body was sprawled out on the ground like the corpse in an American cop show. I let go of Elena’s hand and walked ahead of her, stepping across the stones until I was right above Kearney. It seemed to me that Kearney’s expression under the layer of curling black flakes was one of elation. I felt a gushing of affection and tenderness for smouldering, horror-movie Kearney.

  Then the medics came and waved me away. They moved slowly because they knew they had no work to do. The police were there too, and everyone at the rave was rounded up, taken in to be searched and questioned. Camera flashes lit up the beach like sheet lightning, reporters already on the scene.

  At the police station, through the commotion I caught a glimpse of Rez, who met my gaze and looked serene as we were led past each other in a crowded anteroom. Cocker was in a corridor with his face in his hands, shaking his head and understanding nothing – or maybe he knew it all. Maybe he always knew more than we thought he did.

  I didn’t see Elena again. I was one of the last to leave the police station, along with Rez and Cocker, after it was established that we were Kearney’s friends.

  We told the gardaí almost everything of relevance: we were frank in admitting what drugs Kearney had taken, how much he’d drunk, informing them that he hadn’t suffered from any heart defects that we knew about. We were helpful in almost every regard. The only important thing we neglected to mention was that we had killed him.

  ‘We’ll be contacting you soon, boys,’ the kind-of-pretty policewoman said to the three of us in a compassionate voice. It was near dawn and Rez’s parents were in the waiting room, ready to drive us all home. Kearney’s ma was in another room, screaming till she tore her vocal cords and repeating, ‘He’s NOT! He’s NOT FUCKIN DEAD!’ to the solemn coppers.

  But he was dead. Kearney was as dead as the fucking dodo.

  55

  DUBLIN DEATH-DRUG SHAME

  An illegal rave on the beach at Greystones ended in tragedy late on Saturday night when Joseph Kearney, an eighteen-year-old from South Dublin, died as the result of an ecstasy overdose. He had also sustained severe burns after falling on to a bonfire in the commotion immediately preceding his death. Police and paramedics were called to the scene but the victim was already dead when the first ambulance arrived. The state pathologist told the press after the autopsy that ‘a substantial quantity’ of the illegal drug had been consumed, adding that Mr Kearney’s heart had become overworked before rupturing in his chest, causing a heart attack.

  Mr Kearney had attended the rave in the company of three friends: Gary Cocker (17), Matthew Connelly (17) and Richard Tooley (18). The teenagers were said by gardaí and eye-witnesses to be ‘devastated’, ‘incredulous’ and ‘numbed’ by the death of their friend and former classmate.

  The lord mayor of Dublin has today expressed his ‘deepest condolences’ for the victim’s family, and called for tougher measures to be adopted in ‘our continuing efforts to weed out this scourge that is, as we have once again so painfully seen, a serious and fatal threat to the brightest hope that our nation has, its young’.

  I kept that clipping, along with a few others from the tabloids and broadsheets. I put them in the small wooden box, alongside the pictures of Becky. The irony in some of the headlines, articles and editorials was of a kind that Kearney would have appreciated – if only his heart hadn’t exploded in his chest.

  RAVED TO HIS GRAVE

  TRAGIC DEATH OF ‘ANGEL’ JOSEPH AT TWISTED DRUG ORGY

  That cracker was in The Sun.

  The Independent had this to say, heading an opinion piece a few days after the event:

  HOW MANY MORE LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER?

  Pusher Fat Cats Profit While Our Young Perish – And Politicians Do Nothing

  Et cetera, et cetera.

  I stayed away from Rez for a long while afterwards. The only time I saw him during the period directly following the death was at the funeral, the day before the Leaving Cert results came in. He looked solemn and respectful, handsome in his black funeral clothes, his hair slick and immaculate with gel. His skin had a healthy glow to it – he looked like he’d awoken after a long rest. Everyone there knew what he’d tried to do to himself before Kearney died, and treated him with appropriate awkwardness.

  I met him outside, at the bottom of the church steps. It was a crisp, sunny morning. Our parents and others were close so there was no way we could have talked openly, had we wanted to. But beyond the bland, excruciating words we exc
hanged for the sake of appearances, there was a sole, secret message that passed between us.

  I had said, for the benefit of any nearby listeners, ‘I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe he’s not here any more.’

  ‘I know,’ said Rez, nodding solemnly.

  Our eyes met, and then it happened: a smile broke out over his face, triumphant and gleeful, like he couldn’t contain his delight. Had anyone looked at him for that moment, while he was smiling, they might have guessed the rest.

  Then the smile vanished and the conventional mask of anguish and concern fell back into place. We shook hands, ridiculously. Then we walked away.

  First published in 2014 by

  The Lilliput Press, 62-63 Sitric Road, Arbour Hill, Dublin 7, Ireland

  www.lilliputpress.ie

  This paperback edition published in 2014

  This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © 2014 by Rob Doyle

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