The Boy Who Could See Demons Read Free

eejit after all. Maybe he actually has a point . Some rain is like little fish, some is like big globby chunks of spit, and some is like ball bearings. So I started to borrow books from the library to learn some words in lots of cool languages, like Turkish and Icelandic and Maori.
    ‘Merhaba , Ruen,’ I said to him one day, and he just sighed and said, ‘It’s a silent “h”, you imbecile.’ So I said, ‘Góða kvöldið’ and he snapped, ‘It’s still only mid-morning,’ and when I said, ‘He roa te wā kua kitea,’ he said I was as obtuse as a gnu.
    ‘What language is that?’ I asked.
    ‘English,’ he sighed, and disappeared.
    So I started reading the dictionary to understand the weird words he uses all the time, like brouhaha . I tried using that word with Mum about the riots last July. She thought I was laughing at her.
    Ruen also told me all this stuff about people I had never heard of. He said one of his best mates for ages was called Nero, but that Nero preferred to be called Seezer by everyone and still peed the bed when he was like twenty years old.
    Then Ruen told me he’d stayed in a prison cell with a guy called Sock-rat-ease when Sock-rat-ease was on a death sentence. Ruen told Sock-rat-ease that he should escape. Ruen said that he even had some of Sock-rat-ease’s friends offer to help him escape, but Sock-rat-ease wouldn’t, so he just died.
    ‘That’s mental,’ I said.
    ‘Indeed,’ said Ruen.
    It sounded like Ruen had loads of friends, which made me sad because I didn’t have any except him.
    ‘Who was your best friend?’ I asked him, hoping he’d say me.
    He said Wolfgang.
    I asked, Why Wolfgang ? and what I meant was why was Wolfgang his best friend and not me, but all Ruen said was he liked Wolfgang’s music and then he went quiet.
    I know what you’re thinking: I’m crazy and Ruen is all in my head, not just his voice. That I watch too many horror movies. That Ruen’s an imaginary friend I’ve dreamed up because I’m lonely. Well, you’d be incredibly wrong if you thought any of that. Though sometimes I am lonely.
    Mum bought me a dog for my eighth birthday that I named Woof. Woof reminds me of a grumpy old man cos he’s always barking and baring his teeth and his fur is white and tough like an old man’s hair. Mum calls him the barking footstool. Woof used to sleep beside my bed and run down the stairs to bark at people when they came into the house in case they were going to kill me, but when Ruen started appearing more often Woof got scared. He just growls at thin air now, even when Ruen isn’t there.
    Which reminds me. Ruen told me something today that I thought was interesting enough to bother writing down. He said he’s not just a demon. His real title is a H arrower .
    When he said it he was the Old Man. He smiled like a cat and all his wrinkles stretched. He said it the way Auntie Bev tells people that she’s a doctor. I think it means a lot to Auntie Bev that she’s a doctor, because nobody in our family ever went to university before, or drove a Mercedes and bought their own house like Auntie Bev.
    I reckon Ruen is proud of being a Harrower because it means he is someone very important in Hell. When I asked Ruen what a Harrower was, he told me to think of what the word meant. I tried to look it up in my dictionary but it described a gardening tool, which makes no sense. When I asked again, Ruen said did I know what a soldier was. I said, Duh, of course I do , and he said, Well, if a regular demon’s a soldier, I would be comparable to a Commander General or Field Marshal . So I said, Do demons fight in wars, then ? And he said No, though they are always fighting against the Enemy . And I said that sounded paranoid, and he scowled and said, Demons are perpetually vigilant, not paranoid . He still won’t tell me exactly what a Harrower is, so I’ve decided to make up my own definition: a Harrower is a manky old sod who wants to show off his war medals