The Dark Inside

by Rupert Wallis

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ Webster squirmed in his seat and pulled back the collar of his greatcoat to reveal two large scars disappearing down the back of his neck, the skin still tender and pink around them. ‘You tell me then. What else could have done that?’ And James kept staring because he had no answer. And then he remembered how the gash on Webster’s face had healed so quickly, wondering how such a thing could have happened to any normal man.

  ‘They told me it’ll happen at the next full moon,’ said Webster, releasing his collar.

  ‘What will?’ whispered James.

  ‘That I’ll change.’ Webster’s breath became shorter. ‘Transform.’ His fingers attached themselves to the steering wheel, and then he peeled them off and drew his arms tight around him, as though guarding against his body splitting apart there and then. Slumped in the seat, he seemed smaller than James remembered him being before. ‘I’m not a bad person. But I’m not the person I used to be either. That’s why you can’t come with me.’

  James thought he heard a sound again, behind the car, and looked round. But there was nobody there. As he stared through the rear window, into the dark, he saw playing out in the void what would happen if he stayed in Timpston, and he looked away. His eyes met Webster’s, the two of them staring in silence, until the fear inside James became too much to bear.

  ‘You told them there’s a cure. I heard you.’

  Webster nodded.

  ‘An old traveller broke me out of the cage I was in. He told me I should pray to God. Ask to be led to one of his saints. St Hubert. Because he said that way I might find a cure, a key I could use to banish evil.’ He shrugged and blew out a long, slow breath. ‘That’s it. That’s all there is.’

  ‘Don’t you believe in God?’

  Webster sighed. He dropped his head back and looked up.

  ‘Do you?’

  They sat there not speaking for what seemed like an age, with the dark pressing all around them, and the car engine rumbling. And James began wondering if Webster was scared too, but couldn’t say it out loud because the world of men was not built that way. When he saw the moon reappearing from out of the cloud, he cleared his throat and spoke.

  ‘How long until the next full moon?’

  ‘A week, I think.’

  ‘Then I’ll help you try and find a cure before then.’

  Webster sat up purposefully in his seat. His fingers gripped the steering wheel tight. And then he sat perfectly still for a moment.

  ‘So you believe what the travellers told me too?’

  James nodded. ‘Because we can’t not, can we? At least not until the next full moon.’

  And Webster looked at him for a moment and then shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘we can’t.’ He sighed and looked down at his knees. ‘Are you sure you want to leave? With me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because of your stepfather?’

  ‘Because of everything.’

  Webster said nothing else for a while and James gripped the seat, steeling himself for what he was going to say next if the man said no.

  ‘What if we don’t?’ asked Webster finally.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t find a cure in time.’

  ‘Then it’s not meant to be. None of it.’

  ‘And if we do?’

  ‘Then it is. And we’ll decide what to do after that.’

  Webster sat listening to the car engine.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘A week. A week and we’ll see if anything good comes of it. Because no one knows the future, do they?’

  ‘No,’ said James. ‘No one knows how the world works at all.’

  And Webster nodded and let off the handbrake, and put the car into gear and turned the steering wheel, and Timpston slid slowly out of sight.

  The rear lights of the car glowed like the ends of cigarettes and eventually vanished into the dark.

  Up on the hill, a figure emerged from the house. It was Swanney. The shotgun was crooked over his arm and the smell of gunpowder was still ripe in the air. He was speaking quickly on a mobile phone.

  12

  James clicked the link to print. Somewhere near the front of the Internet café a printer warmed and whirred, and he followed the click-clack sound of the pages until he was standing over them.

  The warm paper smelt of bleach.

  He paid for ten sheets of A4 and folded them over to fit more easily into his hand. Two pounds for the printing and a pound for an hour on the Internet didn’t seem too much at all for finding out what they wanted to know.

  And it was easier than asking God.

  During the night, James had secretly tried praying to find out more about St Hubert. And Webster had admitted to doing the same. But neither of them knew if their questions had even been heard. And then James had thought of using the Internet.

  He sat on a bench outside the café and made notes in the margins of the pages, periodically looking up to see if Webster had returned to the car parked across the road. By the time he looked up to see the man standing waving at him, James had read everything through. He narrowed his eyes until Webster was just a man trying to attract his attention.

  A man who could be anyone he wanted.

  ‘There’s a few cures mentioned,’ said James as he sat beside Webster in the car, looking through the pages. ‘Wolfsbane. Exorcism. There’s even one about addressing somebody three times by their Christian name.’ Looking up, he smiled. But Webster didn’t seem to notice as he sipped from the old plastic bottle of water he’d taken from his greatcoat pocket.

  ‘What about the one we’re after? St Hubert.’

  ‘That’s here too.’ James ran his finger across a block of text. ‘St Hubert is the patron saint of hunters. His key was supposed to be a cure for rabies. It was a metal bar or nail with a decorative head. Priests would heat up the key and place it on the wound to cauterize and sterilize it.’

  ‘My wounds have all healed up. You’ve seen the scars.’

  James looked up from his pages again.

  ‘An old traveller woman worked on them,’ explained Webster. ‘Open and red the first day, closed the next. She used an ointment which I was supposed to keep rubbing on.’ He stood the bottle of water in the well between them and dug out a small glass pot from a trouser pocket and twisted off the black plastic top. Spots of granular yellow paste were dried out around the rim. James smelt hints of beeswax and sugar and olive oil. ‘It worked for my face too,’ said Webster, running a finger down the scar on his cheek. ‘I caught it on a fence in the dark after I escaped from them.’

  James studied the scar on the man’s face as though still unable to believe it. And then he smoothed down the fold in the pages, making them crackle.

  ‘It says here the key was used for other reasons too. To cure all sorts of evil,’ he said, sifting through the pages until he found what he was looking for. ‘The nearest church dedicated to St Hubert is in Dorset. I printed out directions. It’s a couple of hours according to Google.’

  ‘A church? I haven’t been to one of those in a while.’

  ‘Neither have I. Not since I went with Mum. We used to go most Sundays. She said it made a difference.’

  ‘Did it?’

  When James didn’t answer, Webster screwed the cap back on the bottle of water, and put it in his greatcoat pocket along with the ointment, and gripped the steering wheel. ‘Your seat belt,’ he said as he turned the key in the ignition and pushed up the indicator to turn out on to the road. James reached round for the belt and dragged it down and clicked the metal head into the plastic socket below his hip. He ran a hand up and down the line of grey webbing across his chest.

  ‘Do you think he’ll be glad to see us?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know.’ James jabbed a finger at the ceiling of the car. ‘It’s a church after all.’

  Webster thought about that for a while as they trundled up the road and then he turned and
looked at the boy.

  ‘As long as you haven’t done anything to piss him off,’ he said and smiled. But James did not smile back. He bunched up his shoulders then dropped them down as he sighed so it seemed to Webster that he was melting into nothing.

  ‘He pissed me off first,’ James said.

  Webster nodded. He listened to the car wheels grumbling in the springs of his seat.

  ‘Yeah. I guess he did.’

  They kept to the minor roads. Sometimes the hedges running beside them opened up and they could see great expanses of fields blocked out in different colours and shapes, rising and falling according to the land. Pylons ran empty tramlines in the blue. Telegraph poles broke the horizon at intervals like staples punched by some giant hand to prevent the earth and the sky from breaking apart. James touched the scar beneath his hairline, which was all that was left of the accident, and it was like pressing a button that fired up thoughts in his head. He tried not to think what his mother would say about him sitting in another car, in another time, having left Timpston far behind.

  Webster was still nervous about the travellers. Occasionally, he would pull the car into a lay-by and turn off the engine and wait, scrutinizing any vehicle that passed them. James had given up asking him how the men would know where they were.

  Eventually, they stopped for petrol. A small garage on the edge of a village with three white pumps the size of refrigerators in the forecourt and potholes in the asphalt, full of black rainwater.

  Inside, the grey linoleum floor was scuffed with years of footsteps. Paperbacks with sun-bleached spines were racked in a wire tower that squeaked when it turned. The man behind the counter watched James and Webster as they picked out cans of Coke and a loaf of bread and a packet of rolled pink slices of ham.

  Webster paid, peeling off a note from a wad he kept in his trouser pocket. James had no idea where the money was from. And it never seemed the right time to ask.

  The man behind the counter wore half-moon glasses on a chain. He tapped the keys hunt-and-peck style on the old plastic till and each number appeared in digital green on the narrow screen. His face was lean and lined, the colour of an estuary at low tide. Black strands of hair were combed crossways over the white dome of his head.

  ‘Nice tat,’ said Webster suddenly, nodding at the inside of the man’s wrist. James tipped forward and saw the beginning of a word in black gothic script. The man pulled up his shirtsleeve to the elbow for him to see.

  ‘See much action?’ asked Webster.

  As the man picked out the right change from the till, he rapped his right thigh with a knuckle and there was a hollow, hard sound as though he was knocking on a door.

  ‘You?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Webster. ‘You could say that.’

  ‘And now here we are,’ he said, handing Webster his change. ‘Here we bloody are. At least you got your boy.’ He smiled at James.

  ‘Yes,’ said Webster. ‘I’m glad to have him.’

  ‘You gonna be a para too, son? Like your dad?’ James shrugged. ‘No? Well, I don’t blame you. Stripping down your SA80 ain’t much use out here in the real world.’ The man cocked a finger at Webster and pulled the trigger. ‘Ready for Anything. Anything but Civvy Street, right?’

  ‘Ready for anything but life,’ replied Webster and the man cackled a laugh that flopped strands of black hair down over his forehead.

  As they drove away, James looked back at the garage. The man was hobbling across the forecourt, pulling up a wire chain until it was hanging between four metal posts. Eventually, he disappeared from view as the road bent round.

  ‘Ready for anything,’ said James. ‘Is that what the Latin said?’ Webster nodded. ‘Is that what they teach you in the army?’ Webster nodded again. ‘Isn’t it impossible? To be prepared for everything, I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Webster. ‘But you have to try.’

  13

  The church was on the outskirts of the town, hidden from the main road by a screen of chestnut trees. Webster parked the car in a side street lined with redbrick houses set back from the pavement, each one an echo of the one beside it. When James opened his door, he smelt newly-cut grass. Diesel. Dirt in the drains.

  The afternoon was starting to lengthen and they walked through shadows that crept from walls and corners like outriders of the night. Kids buzzed around the street, screaming and shouting.

  When Webster noticed a little girl clip-clopping towards them in red high heels and wearing a set of black beads, he stepped off the pavement and waved her by with a low bow. She was pushing a buggy, its four orange wheels crackling like pepper grinders. A naked plastic baby was strapped in the seat, sitting with its arms outstretched.

  After walking past them, the girl wheeled the buggy around and started back down the path, shushing and cooing as she went.

  ‘She won’t settle,’ she said, going past again.

  ‘She will,’ said Webster and grinned at James.

  But she shook her head. Pointed at the other kids playing. ‘Not with all that noise,’ she sighed.

  Webster watched her tottering in the heels until he heard something that made him start. When James looked up, he realized the kids playing in the street were shooting each other with imaginary guns. Lobbing imaginary grenades. Dying horribly and eagerly in their made-up world. Webster took a deep breath and started walking, plunging shaking hands into his pockets.

  James trailed behind. When they stopped to cross the road, he stepped up beside Webster. ‘Did you ever fight in a war?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Iraq.’

  James cleared his throat as the man checked for traffic. He lined up his toes on the edge of the kerb and waited until his shoes were perfectly matched.

  ‘Did you ever kill anybody?’

  Webster said nothing. A car passed. They stood there for a moment longer and then they crossed the road in silence.

  James kept behind Webster the rest of the way, cursing himself.

  The church was locked. The large oak door was arched and silvered and ancient, and quartered into four sections by two thin pieces of brown metal, one laid across the other in the shape of a cross.

  They walked around the building and tried another smaller door. But that was locked too.

  ‘We’ll get in tomorrow,’ said Webster as they came back round to the main oak door. James gave him a look. ‘Sunday. They must be open on a Sunday, unless the rules have changed.’ And he tapped at the service sheet pinned to the cork board in the porch.

  James just nodded.

  Sunday?

  The past couple of days seemed to have passed outside of ordinary time. As though he had dreamt them. He was supposed to have double maths on Monday morning. There was going to be an algebra test.

  ‘You all right?’ Webster was staring at him.

  ‘Yeah,’ said James. ‘I’m good.’

  ‘Well, all right then.’ And both of them smiled.

  The plastic tables in the café were white. The floor was like a giant-sized chessboard and James tried plotting moves in his mind, with imaginary pieces as big as him, while chewing his burger and dipping his fries in ketchup. But, after one night sleeping in the car, he found it hard to concentrate, as though somewhere inside a valve was gradually tightening. When he started watching other people, laughing and talking, he suddenly became aware of his skin feeling dirty and how much his school shirt and trousers smelt of the travellers’ car. As he blinked, gravel seemed to churn at the backs of his eyes.

  ‘Where are we going to sleep tonight?’ he asked.

  Webster took a slurp of tea.

  ‘We’ll get a room. With proper beds. We can’t spend another night in the car. I’ve got enough money.’

  James sucked on his Coke. ‘Where’s it all from?’ he asked, trying not to sound too interested.

  ‘The old boy who helped me. He gave it to me. After he let me out of the cage.’r />
  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘Because he wanted to help.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  James wasn’t sure what to think about that. And he tried not to think too hard about what might happen when the money ran out.

  ‘Thanks for the burger,’ he said and rubbed at his tired eyes with a knuckle.

  ‘You saved my life. Remember? That’s a whole lot of burgers in my book.’ And Webster grinned.

  ‘You saved me first,’ said James, wiping his mouth clean with a paper napkin and crushing it into a ball. ‘Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘One good thing leads to another.’

  Webster clicked his fingers. Smiled.

  ‘You’ve cracked it,’ he said. ‘The answer to life.’ And, with his mug of tea, he toasted James who beamed because Webster seemed genuinely happy, as if a weight had been lifted from somewhere deep inside. For a moment, the future didn’t seem to matter at all.

  They sat in silence for some time, watching the street through the freckled, grimy windows, full and content with the world. And then James noticed that Webster was looking carefully at anyone who walked past. Following them down the street.

  ‘You think they’ll find us, don’t you?’

  Webster nodded.

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘They will.’

  ‘We’ll find the key first,’ said James.

  ‘I hope so.’ But he kept staring at the world outside.

  The two of them walked side by side along the pavement like father and son. They stopped outside the window of a charity shop when Webster pointed at a mannequin dressed in a black two-piece suit.

  ‘You’d look good in that,’ he said. ‘Sharp.’

  James swallowed down something stuck in the back of his throat. It might have been a hair. Or grease from the fries.

  ‘I’ve only worn a suit once,’ he managed to say before clearing his throat again. And Webster’s smile wavered slightly as he nodded.

  James looked the mannequin up and down. When he half closed his eyes, the figure looked like a normal person that could have been him.