James blinked himself steady. ‘It was different when Mum was about,’ he said.
‘Well, I’ve got some news for you,’ said the man, clicking his tongue and looking out of the window at the hills. ‘It’s not much better out there, unless you find a good spot.’
‘How do you find one of those?’
‘I’m not sure anyone knows. Or else the ones who do are keeping it a secret.’ He pointed a dirty finger at the writing chalked over the black painted wall. ‘So what’s all this?’
‘Ideas. For what I’m going to be.’
‘Doctor . . . Lawyer . . . Architect . . . Biologist . . .’
‘I’m still working it out.’
The man grinned. Folded his arms. Settled back in the sofa.
‘So running away would still mean school then?’
James shrugged. He looked out at the hills and tried not to think too hard about the future.
‘There’s a lot that isn’t on that wall,’ said the man.
James let out a long, slow breath. ‘No one knows how the world works, do they?’
‘No. They don’t.’
‘Do you think there’s someone in control of it all? Making up the rules?’
‘If there is, they’ve got a funny way of going about it.’
The two of them smiled. And the house seemed to broaden and breathe after that.
Sunlight began chasing itself over the floor and the walls. And the man watched it. And James watched the man. And it seemed to be enough for the moment that he was standing there.
‘Do you mind if I sit down for a bit?’ asked James when their eyes met.
‘It’s your house.’ He made to get up off the sofa, but James waved him back down and sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the wall with his backpack and blazer beside him. Then he stood up and picked up the piece of chalk from the window sill and rubbed off the last digit from the number on the black painted wall, changing it from
1,641
to
1,640
He put the chalk on the window sill and sat back down on the floor. The man stared at the wall as he dug out a plastic bottle of water from his greatcoat pocket that looked as though it had been refilled dozens of times, and unscrewed the top and took a sip. He shook his head.
‘Tell me. I can’t figure it out.’
‘It’s the number of days till I’m eighteen,’ said James.
‘So that makes you, what? Thirteen . . . and . . .’ He twirled his finger around beside his head. ‘Thirteen and . . . something now?’
‘Yeah.’
The two of them sat opposite each other for a while until James noticed the man’s hands were trembling ever so slightly as he held the plastic bottle in his lap and his brow was glistening with sweat. So the boy took an exercise book out of his backpack.
‘I’ve got an essay to write.’
‘What’s the title?’
James kept staring at the blank page, the biro spinning round his fingertips.
‘Why the Hell is the World Like it is?’ he said eventually. And both of them laughed.
‘What’s it really about?’
‘Are Blue-green Algae Really Bacteria?’ And they both laughed again and the man shook his head, muttering to himself that the world had gone mad.
He sat quietly as James began writing. And, after a while, his hands seemed to settle and his brow no longer shone, and he screwed the top back on the half-empty bottle of water and put it back in his greatcoat pocket.
When James reached the bottom of the page, he looked up and asked the man what he was thinking about, and he replied that he was daydreaming about someone.
‘Who?’
‘The person I used to be.’
‘Everyone changes,’ said James. ‘People just get older.’
‘Yes,’ said the man, nodding. ‘They do.’
When James looked down at the page again, he found he was unable to write because his hand was frozen.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
But there was. And James looked back at the wall, wanting to rub out everything that was written there.
‘Your mum’ll know somehow. She’ll be proud of you, whatever you do.’
James looked at him.
‘How will she know?’ he asked.
But the man could not answer that. So he closed his eyes and listened to the world turning. And, eventually, he heard the boy writing again.
When the sun disappeared over the backs of the hills, the sky flushed even more bloody and pink, and then began to darken. Clouds, stretched thin as bubblegum, broke. The light was too dim for writing any more.
James folded his book shut. Put it in his backpack. Pulled up the zipper.
The man stood up when he did. Brushed himself down. Held out his hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘What for?’ asked James as they shook. But all he got was a smile.
‘What’s your name?’
‘James.’
‘I’m Webster.’
James nodded as though approving of the name. And then he stood there in the failing light, following the shape of the hills, until he was ready to speak.
‘You’ll be leaving, won’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because of the men after you?’
Webster nodded.
James waited. He wanted to say something else, but the words were just out of reach. So he turned and walked towards the door. But, before he reached the landing, he stopped and looked back.
‘Thank you too,’ he said, realizing it had been a long time since he had sat with someone else and not felt alone either. Webster raised his hand like an Indian chief.
In the dying light he could have been a ghost, waving goodbye for the very last time.
10
James wandered down the road around the hill and clambered over the rotten stile into the field. But, instead of going home through the grass, he kept on following the hedge until he met a footpath he knew would take him into the centre of the village. He knew there’d be no food at home and he started wondering what he might be able to buy at the shop with the few coins he had in his pockets.
He stopped immediately when he recognized the men’s voices.
The two travellers were sitting outside the pub, on top of a wooden picnic table, the soles of their black boots planted on the long bench seat. They were talking to James’s stepfather. All three of them were drinking pints and smoking.
James stood at the end of the street, hidden behind the corner of a cottage, and watched them darkening in the failing light. He held his breath when the traveller wearing the flat cap drew out the drawstring bag and dropped a piece of gold into his stepfather’s outstretched hand.
His stepfather weighed the nugget.
Closed his fist.
Pointed at the house on the hill.
James turned . . .
. . . and ran . . .
. . . his backpack bumping him, his blazer bunched under his arm, until he dumped them in the field and sprinted on as fast as he could towards the stile.
He checked all the rooms in the house. But Webster was gone. James told himself it was the best thing that could have happened, even though he did not want to believe it.
When he heard a sound, he crept to the top of the stairs and peered down through the gaps between the wooden banisters into the hall below. One of the travellers was standing beside the front door. It was almost dark, but James could still see the outline of his face. Boots crunched broken glass and broke the silence, and the other traveller wearing the flat cap appeared with a shotgun. He had come in the back way through the kitchen.
Both of them stood listening for a moment.
And then they began to make for the stairs.
James eased back, keeping his head down, retreating on to the landing.
A shout.
The thump of boots.
And James sucked his soul i
n tight.
But neither of the men emerged.
When James looked again, he saw Webster standing in the hall, arms raised, his green woollen beanie in one hand, swollen with berries. The traveller in the flat cap was pointing the gun at him. The other one walked towards Webster and tore his woollen hat from him. When he saw the handle of the old kitchen knife sticking out of one of the pockets of the greatcoat, he drew it out and handed it to the man holding the gun who dropped it into a jacket pocket of his own.
‘Whatchoo running out on us for?’ said the traveller in the flat cap. ‘Don’t we treat you nice enough? We got a cosy cage waiting for you.’
‘You’ll have to kill me first,’ said Webster.
‘We en’t gonna do that,’ laughed the traveller. ‘You can’t make us rich if yoo’se dead.’ He walked forward and jabbed the butt of the gun into Webster’s face, dropping him to his knees.
Blood.
Spit.
And wheeze.
James shuddered as though he had been hit too.
‘There’s a cure,’ said Webster in short, wretched breaths. Both travellers laughed. ‘It’s true.’
‘Who told you that? The person who let you out?’ The traveller wearing the flat cap muttered something under his breath when Webster said nothing else. ‘There’s no cure for what you got, my friend. It’s the work of the devil. It can’t be undone.’ And Webster took another hit between his shoulder blades and collapsed to the floor.
‘Please,’ he gasped. But the travellers ignored him as he lay coughing at their feet, curled up into a question mark beside them.
‘Go on and bring the car round, Swanney,’ said the one in the flat cap. ‘We need to get this one back where he belongs.’
The man called Swanney disappeared out of the front door. The other one kept staring at the floor, the gun aimed at Webster, his back to James who was looking on like an audience member from the balcony seats.
Moonlight silvered the hallway and the stairs as clouds moved and shadows hardened. James could see the top of the traveller’s flat cap directly below him, like the solid top of a column he could cat-leap down to. And then, in the next moment, he stood up and reached for the cracked white chamber pot sitting on the sideboard, which was set against the peeling wall.
However hard he tried, he could not forget himself. The heartbeats deep and rich in his ears. The breathing in his chest. And he knew who he was, and what he might yet become, as he leant over the wooden railing, his arms out in front of him, the pot clamped between his hands.
He froze as the traveller man peeled off his cap and wiped his brow with his forearm as if the moonlight was warming him. There was a balding spot on his crown. So white it was pink.
James’s heart wavered.
And then he saw Webster staring up at him through the cold light.
The traveller kicked out, catching Webster in the guts, making him gasp.
And James did not close his eyes, he did not look away, as he released the pot and willed it through the air. Weightless. Not a chamber pot any more, its nature changing on its flight and becoming something else entirely.
And then it ceased to be anything at all as it broke over the top of the traveller’s head.
11
James crept down the stairs even though the traveller was motionless.
The man’s boots were connected at the heels like one black tailfin and in the dark he looked like the silhouette of some sea creature washed ashore. His cap was upturned like a giant oyster shell. There were white pieces of chamber pot scattered all around him on the hard stone floor and the shotgun lay by his side.
Not a sound. Except for the silence.
‘Is he dead?’ James whispered.
Webster wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Spat a gob of blood.
‘Maybe.’
James began to shake. His chest was gone. The ends of his fingers were drifts of smoke and he felt as though he was starting to float. When he closed his eyes, he saw his mother staring back at him, shouting something, which he could not hear above the ringing in his head.
At the sound of a car engine he opened his eyes, listening to the vehicle drawing closer as it rounded the road at the top of the hill. When the headlights shone shadows through the windows, Webster crouched down, dragging the boy with him, to keep him out of the light.
A black half-moon was appearing either side of the traveller’s green jacket, around his hips, leaking out of him like oil. Carefully, Webster lifted the body to look beneath it. His old kitchen knife had pierced the inside material of the jacket pocket and lodged in the man’s stomach.
Outside, the car stopped and the engine idled.
‘Come on then, Billy,’ shouted Swanney.
The traveller on the floor groaned. Shuddered.
Webster jolted back, keeping below the beam of the headlights. James scrabbled backwards too.
‘What’s the problem?’ shouted Swanney more urgently. And then a car door opened and clunked shut, and the engine rattled as it kept on running.
Footsteps picked their way over the rutty tarmac on the driveway.
The traveller, Billy, groaned again. One of his hands scrabbled at the flagstone floor as he tried reaching for the shotgun. When he attempted to shout out, all he could muster was hot air. He turned his head slowly and looked at James.
‘I tolllddd yooo,’ he wheezed, his top lip curling round like a dog’s. ‘I neverrr forrrggeettt ahhh faaacce. Nevvverrrr.’
James gasped.
He shivered.
He was not thinking.
And then he was. As though he had been plugged back into the world.
‘Come on,’ he said to Webster. ‘This way.’ And he ran quickly towards the kitchen and the back door.
They crept around the side of the house. The old brown car was parked in the large circular driveway, empty of its driver, with dim-lit holes for headlights, the engine purring as it idled.
‘Can you drive?’ James asked.
Webster nodded and hitched his greatcoat around him. The two of them ran to the car and opened the doors.
A voice rose inside the house. There was a shout.
James slammed the passenger door shut. Webster’s hands shook as he worked his feet and tried switching gears, but there was a nasty grating sound and then the engine stalled. He twisted the keys in the ignition, forcing the motor to churn over and over, and James’s stomach seemed to shrink, smaller and smaller.
And then the car started.
Webster released the handbrake and worked the pedals and the gears, turning the vehicle around until it was pointing back down the hill. A shout rang out behind them. And then a sound like the crack of a whip flashed in the dark and the wing mirror on James’s side of the car exploded with a bang. For a terrible moment he thought he had been shot too.
‘Get down,’ ordered Webster, who slumped down in his seat, keeping one hand on the steering wheel. There was another gunshot. The back of the car thumped and groaned, and James felt it through his bones.
Moths scattered in the weak beams of the headlights as the car hurled them down and round the hill.
When they reached the bottom, they came to a crossroads. The engine grumbled and the doors shuddered as the two of them sat staring through the windscreen. James gripped the edges of the seat and pushed himself up until he could see the rooftops of the village just below them silvered by an oval shaped moon. He wondered if this was the last time he would ever see Timpston. It was not how he had imagined his leaving.
Every blink was like a camera clicking.
‘You can’t come with me.’ Webster’s blue eyes were burning. His face was stone.
‘I can’t stay here,’ whispered James. ‘Not now. They’ll find me. Just like they found you.’ He thought he heard something and looked round, back into the dark behind them, thinking that someone was there. But all he saw was the house on the hill, up above them, as if floating in the dark.
/> ‘I’ll always be grateful to you. For helping me. I will. But it’s not safe being with me. I’m not like normal people. You heard them. They said it was the work of the devil. That it can’t be undone.’
‘What can’t? I don’t understand.’
Webster looked away. His fingers drummed the steering wheel. He sucked in his cheeks and let out a long, slow breath.
‘Do you believe in fairy tales?’ he asked. James opened his mouth. Then shut it again. And Webster turned to look at him. ‘Well, I didn’t either. Not until a few weeks ago. Now I believe in all sorts of things.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘I was attacked in the night.’ Webster squeezed the top of the steering wheel as he remembered. ‘I was attacked by something as close to me as you are now. But I still couldn’t tell you exactly what it was for sure. It all happened so fast.’
‘What did it look like?’
‘Like a man but larger, with teeth the length of your fingers. Knives for hands. Eyes the colour of wasps. I tripped. Fell all the way down a bank. When I came round in the morning, I couldn’t move for the brambles. I was bloody. Sore. Barely alive. The travellers found me walking down the lane in a state. They helped at first. But when I told them what had happened they locked me up. Told me I was going to make them rich. Because I’d been attacked on the night of a full moon . . .’ Webster’s voice tailed off.
‘By what?’ James saw the glitter of questions in his head. His tongue touched the roof of his mouth. ‘You mean by a—’
But Webster shushed him, as if he had the power to break the world in half with just a single word, leaving James’s heartbeats sounding louder than any statement he had thought of uttering.
‘I believe them too,’ said Webster, ‘because I’ve seen the travellers do things. Things you’d never imagine were possible.’
‘What sort of things?’
But Webster just shook his head and looked away.
James kept on trying to think of the right thing to ask.
The Dark Inside Page 3