Dead Dogs by Joe Murphy Read Free Book Online

and saddest munchkin in the whole chocolate factory.
    I look hard at his profile and I say, ‘Seán, you have to tell me what’s wrong.’
    He’s ignoring me and his great liquid eyes are studiously avoiding mine. He wags his head like a cart horse yoked under a huge weight and says, ‘I can’t tell you. It’s too hard. I’ll show you the camp. Then you’ll see.’
    I can feel the unease creep back into me. It’s sliding under my skin until my skin feels taut and gelid. I’m frowning now and I’m going, ‘What camp?’
    Seán doesn’t say anything. He just keeps plodding onward, his head rocking on its thick neck.
    When we get to the road Seán turns right. This takes us away from town and out toward the Milehouse. I stop just as Seán starts to walk out along this road. He’s about two yards in front of me and his back is a broad orange and black wall under the road lighting. I can see the still-wet fabric of his army surplus jacket stretch across the drumlin mounds of his deltoid muscles. I don’t know why Seán wants to walk out the Milehouse Road at quarter-to-nine at night. I don’t know what he’s done to scare and disgust him so much that his throat closes and he nearly gags when he tries to tell me. I don’t know what this camp of his is. All I know is that I’m suddenly a bit scared.
    And in the back of my head Judas gibbers, Another fucking first .
    Without looking at me he’s saying, ‘It’s not far. It’s not even as far as the school.’
    I stare at his back for longer than I probably mean to and then I’m saying words and I’m hating the whine that they come out in. I’m saying, ‘If I’m too late, Da’s going to fucking murder me. I don’t even have my phone.’
    Seán turns around then and in his face I see an enormous sadness. It’s like his whole big frame is one giant cistern of tears. Picture how you’d feel if every bad thing you thought about yourself was suddenly proved to be true. Every failing, every flaw was there in front of you clear as day. Everything unvarnished and burred with ragged edges and all slimed over with failure. Can you picture how you’d look? Well, this is how Seán looks. I see all this in Seán.
    He says, ‘Please.’
    Looking at him I heft my gear bag, and looking at him I’m going, ‘Ah, fuck it. Go on. Da won’t mind that much.’
    For a moment it’s like Seán is going to smile but he doesn’t. Instead he just turns around and starts heading on up the road to where the lights run out and the dark chokes the road between ditches the same colour as Seán’s jacket.
    With every step away from town it’s like he’s drawing further and further into himself like a neutron star slowly caving in. With every step Seán is becoming a black hole. He’s not saying anything and he’s not looking at anything and he’s sucking all the light and life from around us. The whole world is background to Seán’s misery.
    I don’t say anything. I have nothing to say. Whatever Seán wants to show me he’ll show me and then we can decide what to do about it. I hope, I really hope, that the guards can be kept the fuck out of it. I also hope that there’s some other brand of tablets that Dr Thorpe can put Seán on. The little red ones, they aren’t worth a curse.
    About a hundred yards after the lights die out there’s this big ragged tear in the footpath and this big ragged tear in the ditch. The tears are the works entrance to one of those half-finished estates that stagger up out of muddy fields and dirty lakes of rainwater all over the country. All over the place there’s ragged concrete boxes, empty as rotten teeth and they chew the sky and collect rain and empty cans and their rebar rusts and colours the puddles like blood.
    The gap in the ditch leading to this particular jumble of abandoned concrete is sealed off through the foolproof expedient of throwing two steel mesh barriers across it. No locks. No chains. Just two galvanised lattices of