The Dark Inside

by Rupert Wallis

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © 2014 Rupert Wallis

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Rupert Wallis to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor, 222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London

  WC1X 8HB

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  HB ISBN: 978-1-4711-1891-3

  PB ISBN: 978-1-4711-1889-0

  EBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-1890-6

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  www.simonandschuster.com.au

  For my mother.

  And for my father (wherever he may or may not be).

  Homo sapiens

  Latin for wise or knowing man

  Contents

  June 8th

  1

  2

  3

  4

  June 9th

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  June 10th

  12

  13

  14

  June 11th

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  June 12th

  20

  21

  June 13th

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  June 14th

  31

  32

  33

  June 15th

  34

  35

  36

  37

  June 16th

  38

  39

  June 19th

  40

  June 20th

  41

  June 21st

  42

  June 22nd

  43

  June 23rd

  44

  45

  June 24th

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  July 3rd

  56

  Acknowledgments

  1

  Run.

  And James did. Out the back door. Through the gap in the garden fence. Not stopping even after the bellowing of his stepfather had wasted in the wind and there was nothing but the whip of grass across his shins.

  He cut a silver channel through the meadow . . .

  . . . climbed the rotten, spongy stile . . .

  . . . dropped down into the lane and kept on going, fists pumping as the slope began to bite.

  The ‘house on the hill’ it was called. A small lead box on the skyline at a couple of miles. Inside, it was a musty, cobwebby place with peeling walls slick from damp. It had been there on the hill overlooking the village for as long as anyone could remember. Ever-present. Like a boulder left over from an ancient time.

  The kitchen was cool and smelt of sea spray.

  James leant against the old range cooker to catch his breath. His arm was sore, below the sleeve of his T-shirt, where his stepfather had punched him. James had not dropped the bottle. But his stepfather found it much easier to blame the boy for things.

  A bruise was darkening and rubbing only made it worse and more difficult to forget. So he walked on into a large hallway and stopped at the bottom of a wooden staircase with a wide, pale stripe up its centre. He waited, listening, until he was sure he was alone, then carried on up the stairs, accompanied by a tune of creaks and clicks he knew off by heart.

  Up on to the landing . . .

  . . . then straight on into a large bedroom.

  Rotten bay windows.

  Green hills beyond.

  A stub of chalk below them on the window sill.

  The long wall opposite was painted black with writing chalked all over that winked like frost. Wrapping his hand inside his T-shirt, James wiped away the final digit from a number written large in the centre of the wall that read

  1,642

  and rewrote it as

  1,641

  He mouthed the number like a prayer, shuffling backwards, then slumping down on the baggy green sofa behind him in a cloud of dust and sunlight. The fabric smelt, but the boy put up with it because the house was somewhere to be.

  He sat for a while, staring at the writing on the wall. And then he sighed and stood up, and placed the chalk back on the window sill and looked out at the canopy of blue sky overhanging the green hills.

  Sheep were grubs.

  A bird circling in the blue became a taut black line.

  He walked slowly round the top floor of the house, inspecting each room carefully in turn, because he was in no hurry to go home. Which was why he found the body. It was lying against a wall in the smallest of the five bedrooms.

  As if the sea had left it there for him to find.

  2

  It was wearing a blue wool greatcoat and black boots with eyelets and tractor-tyre soles. It was a man. Curled up into a ball on the wooden floor.

  James stood, watching for any hint of breathing. Listening out for any sound. But there seemed to be no sign of life. So he stepped closer. Just to be sure.

  The skin on the man’s hands was so white it was blue. Below the black, oily hair was a gash the size of a mouth on his upturned cheek. Bruises the colour of storm clouds on his neck.

  Something clicked behind him and James whirled round. But it was just the house, the walls and floor-boards, ticking over in the afternoon sun.

  When he looked down again, two blue eyes were staring up at him. James stepped back a few paces and stopped. When the man had been dead, there had been no need to think very hard.

  The whole thing could have been a dream.

  But it wasn’t.

  ‘I won’t hurt you,’ said the man. He was as weak as a kitten, his arms collapsing with the slightest weight, but he managed to prop himself up against the wall below the window, the sky all the bluer against his black hair. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘The house on the hill,’ replied James. ‘On the edge of Timpston,’ he added. ‘In Devon.’

  ‘Falconbury?’

  ‘About three miles away. Is that where you’re from? The town?’

  ‘No.’

  Outside, the leaves suddenly started chattering as though some great current was coursing through the earth into the trees. The two of them stared silently at one another as if waiting for a terrible shock to reach them. And then the wind faded as quickly as it had begun.

  Every note of James’s voice had been sucked from his chest making it impossible to speak.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ The man curled up into a ball again. Closed his eyes. Coughed. And then lay still.

  James backed all the way to the door.

  Walked quickly down the sta
irs.

  Left the house through the kitchen door.

  He stood nearby, flashing a stick back and forth over a patch of young nettles, making them shiver. He could be anyone, thought James. A homeless person. A prisoner on the run. Someone just down on their luck.

  I’ll be fine.

  Whoever he was, he didn’t want any help.

  The bruise on James’s arm began to creak and groan and ache, and he stopped wondering about the man, and who he might be, and drove the stick harder.

  Nettle heads flew.

  Necks opened.

  He mashed the stalks until the ground around him reeked of green.

  3

  ‘Where have you been?’

  James dug the toe of his trainer into a gap between two paving stones on the patio. But it wouldn’t open up and swallow him.

  His stepfather was sitting on the kitchen step at the back of their house, smoking a cigarette, shirtsleeves rolled up into thick white bands. His forearms looked bulky and golden in the early evening sunlight. The smoke around him was a tangle of blue. ‘Well?’

  ‘Just walking about.’

  ‘What? All this time? Just walk-ing about?’

  James nodded, because it was always difficult to say the right thing. He tried following the song of a blackbird, and when he noticed the yellow washing line, strung between its poles, he tried to remember all the clothes that had ever hung there.

  ‘What’s that on your arm?’ asked his stepfather, pointing at the bruise. The centre had become as black as coal, the rest of it raw and purple with mottling around the edges.

  ‘Nothing. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Course you will.’ The cigarette glowed orange. ‘Course. You. Will.’

  I’ll be fine. That’s what James had said. He knew he wasn’t. But it was what people said all the time. It was what the man in the house had said too.

  He was lying in bed under a single white sheet, staring up at the ceiling. Sweat crackled on his brow and in the dark private pits of his body. His tongue rang with salt and pepper each time he licked his lips and tried to think everything through.

  The man was not all right.

  He kicked back the sheet. Peered out of the window into the grainy dark.

  In the distance the house on the hill was blacker than the night sky.

  James knew what his mother would have done. He wondered if she might be watching him now, waiting to see what he would do. He hoped she was, and whispered to her, asking that she forgive him for not visiting her grave as often as he should. And then for all the other things she might be watching out for too.

  But the man could be anyone.

  He got out of bed.

  Dressed quietly.

  After finding the torch in the bottom of his wardrobe, he lit a spot on the wall and ran the light around the room. They had chosen the striped blue wallpaper together. And the porthole mirror. Even the chest of drawers opposite the bed.

  The light caught the glass and then the photograph of her in the little brown frame. She was smiling right at him.

  James clicked off the torch. For a moment, it felt just like the car accident all over again, until his eyes adjusted to the dark.

  4

  The church clock struck half past eleven.

  James clicked the front door shut as gently as he could, knowing his stepfather would be sitting on the back step by now, smoking like he did every night, after the pub had finished serving.

  But, walking the long way through the village to get to the bottom of the hill, he was surprised to see the windows in the bar of the pub still glowing. So he crossed to the other side of the street, staying in the shadows, wary of the laughter inside. When the door opened, he saw his stepfather, lit like an angel, before the man dipped his head and cupped his hands to suck alight a cigarette. The match hit the pavement with a tiny clink and died. And something inside James did too as he tried to understand why his stepfather was not at home.

  A woman with long blonde hair tottered into the doorway and when she placed a hand on the man’s shoulder to steady herself the two of them laughed. Then they left the pub and began crossing the road. James pulled back into the alleyway behind him and crouched down in the gloom, holding his breath, hoping for the world to keep on turning.

  Their voices were loose and loud. Stilettos rang. His stepfather raised his arms like the wings of a bird. When they reached the pavement, the woman stumbled on the kerb and his stepfather caught her, and they kissed and became one shape in the dark, the cigarette glowing like a red moon in orbit around them.

  James heard his heart and worried it would give him away. He shuffled further back into the dark of the alley, the soles of his trainers rolling the grit beneath him.

  The kissing stopped.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked his stepfather, his voice rosy and golden with beer. ‘Come on out!’

  The woman giggled.

  ‘My hero,’ she said. ‘My brave boy.’ But, when she touched him on the shoulder, he shrugged her hand away and his body stiffened like a sail. He took a big drag on his cigarette and threw it down and ground it out.

  ‘Come on out here. Now!’

  The woman looked away when she saw James. And then she turned back and whispered something and his stepfather nodded. Sighed. And folded his arms.

  She walked back across the road towards the pub, her heels clicking out of time, until she opened the door. Glasses were being stacked. Somebody laughed. And then she pulled the door shut behind her.

  James heard his breath rising and falling in his chest.

  ‘What were you doing spying on me?’ his stepfather asked.

  ‘I wasn’t spying.’

  ‘You were crouched down in the dark. Watching.’

  ‘I was going to the house on the hill.’

  His stepfather grunted. Cleared the crackle in his throat. Hawked a foamy, doughy ball that slapped the pavement.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘There’s a man there. He’s all beaten up.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I wanted to check if he was all right.’

  ‘Why?’

  James thought about that. And then he said it anyway.

  ‘Because that’s what Mum would have done.’

  His stepfather looked up into the night sky and growled at the stars. The alcohol made him sway. He rubbed his face with one big hand. Taking out his pack of cigarettes, he lit another and the smoke seemed to calm him.

  ‘So that’s where you go off to on your own?’

  The cigarette glowed. Smoke blew grey in the dark. His stepfather looked up into the sky again. Jabbed at the heavens with a finger.

  ‘Think she’s up there, watching us?’

  James shrugged.

  ‘No? You sure?’

  James shook his head. No, he wasn’t sure at all.

  His stepfather smiled, just enough to show the glint of his teeth. ‘Means there’s bugger all hope for the world if she isn’t.’ He took a drag on his cigarette then walked a few paces forward and screwed a finger into James’s forehead. ‘Life goes on for us the way I say it does, because that’s how it is now. You and me.’ He pushed James backwards, the whole of his weight in the tip of his finger. ‘All I’m doing is toughening you up for the world, boy.’ He took a final drag and flicked away his cigarette, and it arced like a meteor, and crash-landed and glowed and died.

  He looked back at the pub.

  And then he looked at James.

  His chest crackled gently as he breathed.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Show me this man of yours.’

  The village was silent below them. The odd orange light shimmered. In the distance was Falconbury. Bright. Like a spaceship had set down in the dark of the countryside. James looked out at it from the window, listening to his stepfather walking round the small bedroom in the moonlight, the floorboards creaking with his weight.

  And then the man stopped. ‘Well?’

  James just kept sta
ring out of the window. In the cold night light he could see an angry patch of ground below him, beaten raw. The stick was lying where he had left it. Like a bone picked clean. Suddenly, he wished he had it in his hand.

  ‘You made him up.’

  ‘No,’ said James, turning round, ‘he was, he—’ But James’s stepfather raised his hand to shush the boy.

  ‘You made him up because you were spying on me. Spying for her.’

  ‘N—’

  And then his stepfather was a ghost scudding through the dim, forcing James back until he was trapped in the jaws of a corner.

  ‘Now apologize.’

  James drew a breath. His body shuddered as his stepfather placed a large hand on the wall beside his head and leant in closer. His breath was beery, coarse with tobacco.

  ‘You’re a lucky boy. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to have a roof over your head. In fact . . .’ He shook as he took a deep breath that broadened his shoulders and neck. ‘You got all the luck.’

  James could feel his legs wobbling, but he stayed upright, looking straight back. ‘You were the one driving,’ he replied in a quiet voice.

  His stepfather’s eyes narrowed. His face flickered. And James knew his stepfather hated him as much as he hated him back, as though a fuse had been lit inside each of them that would never go out. But he knew of nothing in the world that would ever change it.

  ‘You think it’s my fault? That I should be apologizing to you?’ James’s stepfather unbuckled his belt and slid it out from the loops on his jeans. ‘I wasn’t driving the car that hit us, was I? Don’t you go blaming me for what happened, you little shit.’ He folded the leather belt in half and then pulled it hard from both ends, making a loud crack. Goosebumps misted over the back of James’s neck. ‘Now apologize for ruining my evening.’

  James shut his eyes. In the black he imagined the man in the greatcoat sitting on the floor, looking up at him. But, when the belt snapped again, James could only picture bright red sparks dancing hot over his skin. He opened his eyes and saw his stepfather wrapping the belt tight round his fist, swaying a little from the beer in his legs. And then he noticed someone else standing in the doorway. It was the man in the greatcoat, holding a green beanie hat, watching everything that was going on.

  James gasped.

  ‘There was someone here. He’s behind you.’