Blacklands

by Belinda Bauer

  “Mr. Jacoby,” she said neutrally so that she could smile or frown as the ensuing occasion required.

  To her surprise, Mr. Jacoby held up the paper in shaking, newsprint-blackened hands, opened his mouth as if to tell her something of great importance—and burst into tears.

  Davey was surrounded by legs. It was nothing new; when you’re five, legs are your constant companions. When you’re five your whole experience of gatherings consists of pulled seams, rubbed crotches, bulging thighs, scuffed knees, trailing hems.

  But this was extreme. He was on the pavement outside his house trying to stay at his mother’s side as people pressed all around them to see the Daily Mail. Legs nudged him, bumped him, propelled him this way and that.

  Now and then a hand would reach out to steady him and apologize, but nobody spoke to him or looked at him—everything in this jungle of legs was going on in the canopy over his head. He gripped Lettie’s ratty blue towelling robe and felt her warm thigh under his knuckles.

  His mother wasn’t crying but Mr. Jacoby was. Davey had never seen a man cry before—never imagined that such a thing was possible—and found it so disturbing that he tried not to see or hear it but couldn’t stop looking. Big Mr. Jacoby in his green Spar shirt and his wobbly chest and his hairy arms, crying. Davey laughed nervously, hoping it was a joke—but nobody joined in. He gripped more tightly onto his mother.

  People were talking grown-up talk very forcefully but very secretly and Davey could only catch fragments. The fragment he heard most often was “It’ll kill her.”

  Kill who? thought Davey desperately. What will kill who?

  “Can’t keep it secret … has to know sometime … don’t show it … it’ll kill her …”

  And through it all, Mr. Jacoby cried his strange, wheezing, blubbery cry, while Lewis’s dad patted his shoulder, looking cross, but not with Mr. Jacoby. To Davey it looked like Mr. Jacoby was a giant toddler that someone had bullied off the swings and Lewis’s dad was taking care of him while trying to spot the culprit to give him a good telling-off.

  “Don’t tell who what?”

  They all looked up guiltily at Nan. Davey couldn’t see her through the legs but knew it was her. No one said anything.

  “Don’t tell who what?” she said again, a little more suspiciously.

  Davey thought someone was clapping. A slow, sharp slapping sound getting closer and closer, and suddenly the sound skidded to a halt as the people around him surged and parted to reveal a red-faced, wild-eyed Lewis.

  Lewis could barely speak. He saw his father.

  “Dad!”

  “Quiet, Lewis. We’re talking.”

  “But Dad!”

  “Lewis, go home!”

  His father looked away from him and the gathering turned its back on the boy and reshaped itself, nudging him to its edge like an amoeba egesting waste.

  Mr. Trewell, Skew Ronnie’s dad, was holding the Sun and Lewis saw the face on the front of it. It wasn’t right, but somehow he recognized it. Those red, red lips gave it away. Lewis sucked air into his depleted lungs and shouted “FUCK!” as loudly as he could.

  The word skittered off the walls and everyone turned and looked at him angrily. He just jabbed the picture.

  “That’s him! That’s the man who’s on the moor!”

  There was a stunned silence while anger turned to confusion, so he took advantage to explain further.

  “With Steven.”

  Chapter 39

  STEVEN FLINCHED WHEN AVERY PUT A HAND ON HIS SHOULDER but he turned it into a shrug and thought he got away with that.

  He answered Avery’s question with “Nothing.” Then he turned away so he wouldn’t have to look into Avery’s strangely flickering eyes.

  Instead Steven looked longingly back down the moor to where he knew Shipcott was hiding in the mist. Not being able to see even the church spire made him feel very alone.

  As he stood with his prickling back to the killer, the jigsaw pieces in Steven’s mind whirled and spun. Bits he recognized: a slice of Uncle Billy’s wide grin; a shakily traced map; a dent made in the moor by the blade of a blunt spade; on the box it said it was a fillit. He wrote a good letter. The pieces floated and scattered; he didn’t know where to start with them. So, like all good jigsaw builders, he started by finding a corner.

  And that corner—to his utter surprise—was anger.

  He’d thought his fear was all-embracing, but the anger was good. It anchored him and trumped fear for a moment and made him feel stronger.

  Lewis was gone. Safe. Steven felt a pang that the last words he’d said to his friend had been harsh but shoved the pang aside. He’d done what he had to. This was his mess and so he’d taken care of Lewis.

  Now all he had to do was escape the clutches of the psychopath who had baited his own little trap and then—in some crazy, nightmarish way—magicked his way out of prison and come here to kill him.

  Harry Potter with a chain saw.

  Steven laughed and shuddered at the same time, and felt bile sour his throat.

  He swallowed hard and felt weak. He knew that if escape was all he wanted, he’d have taken his chance by now. He’d started this thing; he’d set it in motion. Now it was moving too fast and out of control, but Steven still felt a burning, jealous need to keep hold of it. All the thinking, all the digging, all the planning, all the good letters he wrote. He was so close that the thought of letting go now was at once unconscionable and so alluring that it made him think of tongues and Chantelle Cox. It would be so easy to let go, feel his cramped fingers creak open and release the burden he’d picked up so casually and carried for so long without ever really having a good grip on it.

  But the stubborn streak that had kept him soaked, sunburned, and callused on the moor for three long years elbowed its way to the fore, trampling the dizzy panic Steven felt at overriding every instinct he possessed.

  Now that it was just him and the killer alone, one thread of thought separated itself and pulsated more urgently than any other: He’d tried so long. He’d come so far. He’d done so much. He was so tired and he wanted to know. He needed to know. He had to know.

  Which meant that—instead of hitting him with the spade and running for his life—he smiled at Avery.

  “Fuck him.” He shrugged. “You got any more sandwiches?”

  Steven watched the mist creep up the heather towards them. It was only forty or fifty feet below them now, moving so sluggishly it was almost imperceptible. By ten, it would be summer.

  Avery had put down a second plastic bag for him to sit on—so close that their hips and shoulders were touching and he could feel the warmth of the man through his jeans and bloody shirt. It made him itch to move away, but he didn’t.

  Now Steven stared at the last bit of Avery’s sandwich and knew that if he didn’t speak soon, his chance would be gone.

  “You live around here?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Yeah. Down in Shipcott. Over there.” He waved a vague hand at the sluggish mist.

  Avery made a grunt of noninterest, then looked round at Steven. “I heard there’s bodies up here.”

  A jolt of pure electricity pulsed through Steven. His heart flared with it and he felt the tingles and crackles all over his skin.

  Avery smiled with his mouth. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” said Steven. “Bodies. Creepy.”

  He concentrated on a piece of tomato dropping out of the back of the crust and took his time stuffing it into his mouth, licking his fingers and chewing without tasting the watery mess. He waited for his heart to stop pummelling his chest, but it didn’t slow.

  This was what he wanted. What he’d been waiting for. And he hadn’t even had to ask. Bodies. He was excited and terrified in equal measure.

  “Yeah,” said Avery. “I heard some nut killed some people—kids—and buried them out here.”

  “Oh yeah. I heard that.” He wished his heart would stop pounding—he was scared Aver
y would hear it.

  “He strangled them.”

  Steven nodded, trying to stay calm.

  Avery lowered his voice. “Raped them too. Even the boys.”

  Steven tried to clear his throat. Tomato stuck in it. “Did they find them all?”

  “No.”

  Steven felt faint. Not “I don’t think so”; not “I’m not sure.”

  Just “No.”

  “There’s a few still out here, I reckon,” said Avery.

  A few.

  Paul Barrett, Mariel Oxenburg. William Peters.

  “Yeah?” he said. “Like where?”

  Just like that, Steven asked the question. He felt giddy with anticipation.

  Avery looked off towards Dunkery Beacon. “Why do you care?”

  Time slowed into a strange sucking vortex for Steven as the reasons why he cared nearly overwhelmed him. A spinning wheel of fortune and the suffocating press of frozen mud around a small boy’s lonely bones.

  “I don’t care,” he said, and his voice cracked in his tense throat. “I’m just interested in … I mean … if you were going to bury a body out here, where would it be?”

  He’d hoped for casual but his question sounded horribly loud and desperate to his ears as it hung over them in the still morning air. He felt sick that he’d asked it. Sick and clammy.

  Avery turned to look at him carefully and Steven met his eyes, hoping the man couldn’t see through them into the dark pit of fluttering fear that lay behind.

  The silence stretched out around them until Steven could swear he felt it creak under the strain.

  Then Avery merely shrugged. “Around. About. Who knows?” He smiled a little smile at Steven and dug about in the bag. “You want something to drink?”

  Steven wanted to kill him.

  He jerked to his feet. He picked up his spade to go, but Avery gripped the shaft hard and looked up at him, his face suddenly cold and dangerous.

  “I’m going to need that,” said Avery quietly.

  And when he looked into the man’s milky green eyes, Steven knew he’d lost the battle to keep the book of his mind closed—and Avery’s ruby lips split into a crooked white grin as he read the boy like a billboard.

  Steven cried out as if he’d touched something dark and slimy.

  He let go of the spade, making it rebound hard into Avery’s bloody arm.

  Then he turned and ran.

  As he hit the track, he heard Avery come after him—close, too close, he should’ve made his move before, when he’d have had a head start!—then he felt a sharp pain in his back and fell to the ground, winded.

  He felt Avery grip the back of his best T-shirt and lift him like a bad puppy; his feet scrabbled for purchase as he almost staggered upright, then collapsed sideways to his knees against the man’s legs.

  Still gripping his shirt, Avery stooped to pick up the spade and Steven’s remote brain informed him dully that that was what had hit him in the back. Uncle Jude’s spade. Felled by his own weapon just as he’d been caught in his own trap.

  Because he was just a stupid, stupid boy. Not a sniper, not a cop, not even a grown-up. He’d played at being a grown-up and this was how it was ending. Him dead on the moor in his best red T-shirt with LAMB on the back. And the papers reporting not his triumph but his pathetic, lonely, weak little-boy death. A death that would reduce him to initials on a map and a blurry old photo in a fading newspaper. Not even a good photo, he’d bet. Probably the one from school that Mum had on the mantelpiece, which made him look like a refugee. Not the photo he’d dressed for this morning when he still thought he could be a hero.

  Fear, shame, and nausea mingled inside him and he sagged against Avery’s cold jeans.

  Avery pulled him away and slapped his face.

  “You know who I am?”

  Steven nodded dumbly at Avery’s black rubber-soled shoes.

  “Good.”

  He yanked Steven to his feet and half pushed, half dragged him back up the mound, wincing and cursing at the newly opened pain in his arm. Halfway up, Steven started to sob. He wished he didn’t know about Arnold Avery. Knowing was worse than not knowing. Knowing what he’d done to the others. Knowing that he’d do that to him too. It didn’t even seem possible—what Avery had done—but he’d read it in the papers so it must be true. He was about to find out. The thought drew fresh tears of fear.

  “Shut up,” said Avery. “And get down.”

  Steven just stood, arms slack, head down, hitching with sobs.

  “I said get down.” Avery shook him again and pointed at the patch of white heather where he’d been sitting, back when Steven had still had a choice; still had a chance of escape.

  “Down?” Steven sounded confused. He was confused; the word “down” seemed just a noise to him. It did not compute.

  “Down. On your knees.”

  Steven nodded stupidly but did not get down.

  Avery leaned forward and put his lips close to Steven’s ear, making him shudder.

  “Get down or I’ll make you.”

  “Okay.” But he still didn’t move. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Standing up was better. Getting down was worse. The lower he got, the less chance he had. He’d prefer to stay standing. These thoughts were simple and definite in Steven’s head. Once he got down, he felt sure he’d never get up again.

  “Down, I said!”

  “Okay.” He stopped sobbing on a soft burp that brought tomato-flavored bile to his throat.

  But he still didn’t move. Maybe if he just kept agreeing to get down but didn’t actually do it, Avery would get bored with asking.

  Avery did get bored with asking. Steven only heard a small grunt of warning before the spade swung into the backs of his knees, making him roll into a ball, clutching at his legs in agony.

  “You little shit!” Avery clutched and grimaced at his own arm—wet with fresh blood.

  Then once more Avery pulled him up by the scruff, positioning him carefully on his knees.

  “Now stay there. Understand?”

  Steven nodded and swayed but stayed where he was. He could feel a little trickle down his back and thought it must be sweat or blood where the spade had hit him when he tried to run. No sooner had he thought about sweat than he felt his face go tingly as sweat broke out on him. He swayed again; he wanted to lie down in the heather where it was cool and he wouldn’t feel so dizzy. But kneeling was bad and lying down would be lower and therefore even worse. He had to try to hang on, although quite what he was hanging on for, he was afraid to examine too closely. He had to hang on, and he had to try to make Avery move as slowly as possible towards killing him. Not because he thought he could avoid it entirely, but because delaying his own death seemed the sensible thing to do.

  His own death.

  He was going to die. He had nothing left to lose, not even his life; it was a foregone conclusion. The thought brought with it a kind of perverse freedom.

  “Did you kill my uncle Billy?”

  “What do you think?”

  Steven looked up at Avery in surprise. He hadn’t expected to be asked his opinion.

  “I think you did.”

  “You want to know how?”

  Steven didn’t. He felt sick at the thought of knowing how. But it was another delay.

  “Yes.”

  Avery stood in front of him now and touched his hair with one hand, almost gently.

  “He’d just come out of the shop. I asked him for directions. I had a map …”

  He stopped and Steven looked up and saw the gleam of fond memory in Avery’s eyes.

  “I had a map. I asked him to show me on the map. And he leaned in the window and I … just … grabbed him—”

  Steven cried out as Avery’s hand tightened around a chunk of his hair.

  “It was so easy. So fucking easy. And he was so scared. I had to hit him straight away to stop him screaming. You should’ve seen his face when I did! Like he’d never got a good smack befo
re! It was very funny.”

  He grinned at Steven, then looked away across the moor of his memory again.

  “I played with him, you know? I played with all of them first. Before I killed them. Just like I’m going to play with you.”

  Steven twisted as the grip on his hair tightened again. He bit back his whimper of pain; he didn’t want Avery to remember he was here, kneeling before him; the longer he was remembering Uncle Billy and the others, the longer he, Steven, would stay alive. But it was hard. The pain in his head was more than discomfort and he was still shaking and nauseous. But he had to do it. He had to stay still and quiet and keep hoping for a way out. There was only one alternative and Steven didn’t want it. Didn’t want to find out what it was like to be “played with” and tortured and killed while he cried for his mummy. Just that thought made tears roll easily from his eyes again. Not crying with shame or fear; this time he really was crying for his mummy; but quietly—so as not to distract Avery.

  “He wanted it. You know that? Your uncle Billy was a fucking little slut just like you. I could tell.”

  Pure anger bubbled up in Steven in defense of a boy he’d never liked even though he’d never known. All his good intentions to stay invisible disappeared in an instant.

  “You’re a liar!”

  Avery shook him by the hair, making Steven yelp in pain.

  “You what?”

  “You’re a … fucking liar!” The tears were coming thick and fast, but now they were tears of fury, and fury made him feel stronger. He knew he was stupid to challenge Avery but he no longer cared, and that was liberating. He put his hands up to try to control the grip Avery had on his hair and Avery slapped them roughly away, but he kept trying to grapple free of the tight knot of pain. The tugging on his hair made him think of the way it pulled and twisted up inside the green living-room curtains while he and Davey waited for Frankenstein to come find them. Well, he’d tried to be Frankenstein’s friend and he’d blown it, and the pain of his hair being pulled now was far greater, just as the hammering of his heart at the back of his mouth was so much more—so much bigger it seemed impossible. It was as if that vital organ were being squeezed up his throat by the sheer force of the terror that had exploded in his belly.