When he heard the old woman and Billy laughing, he looked up and saw them staring back at him.
‘We was wondering what to do with you, boy,’ said Billy. ‘Now we know. Cash you in. Yoo’se worth a bit of money.’ James heard gears clicking round in his head as he looked at them. But his mind was too hazy and it was difficult to understand what was happening.
‘He looks a bit too awake to me, Ma,’ said Billy.
‘I dosed him up good. He’ll most likely sleep the rest of the way.’
‘If that’s what you say.’
‘I do.’ The old woman fished out her black shawl from beneath her and handed it to James. ‘Wrap yerself in this,’ she said. James did what he was told and snuggled against the shoulder of the seat. Billy leant round and perched an old herringbone cap on the boy’s head, and pulled the front down over his eyes.
‘Sweet dreams,’ he growled with a smirk.
29
James kept his eyes shut, but the grey mist drifting through him did not swallow him asleep as it had done before. But his thinking was slow. Ungainly. In the odd clear moment his mind quickened, allowing him to consider what was happening and what he should do. But each one of these passed quickly.
Gradually, as the car rattled on, the mist melted away, leaving nothing but blackness inside him, which felt clean and pure and hard. He stared into it for a while, listening to the soft hammer falls of his heart and the gentle washing of his breath, remembering who he was and what was happening to him.
He opened his eyes a crack, peeking out from underneath Billy’s cap. The car was old and the leather back of the driver’s seat in front of him was scuffed raw. A starry sky filled the windscreen. Billy and his mam were staring right into it.
To his left was Webster, his back to the boy, hands for a pillow.
James sat quietly. Listening to the drone of motorway traffic.
His mind began to make plans.
Ideas came and went.
The car was travelling too fast on the motorway for him to open the door safely. And he did not want to leave Webster behind. He had no pen or paper to write a message and hold it up to the window. Leaping on Billy might cause the car to crash and kill them all.
He was trapped in a box of metal and glass hurtling along at speed.
What the future held he did not know.
‘So then,’ said Billy, stretching his neck and pushing back into his seat, making the springs creak. ‘What’ll we tell the police about the boy?’
‘Nothing,’ said the old woman. ‘He’ll do the talking.’
‘You’ll dose him up to say a story?’
‘I will. And then some. I’ll fix him up with nightmares that’ll rot his brain to mulch. The only thing we got to worry about is who hands him in.’
‘Me?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘No. You won’t.’
‘Then who?’
‘I’m thinking about it. But I know the rest of it.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes. Old man Willshaw is perfect.’
‘Willshaw who’s soft on kids?’
‘Willshaw who’s soft on kids. Because if you know it then the whole world knows it. We’ll hide the boy in one of the cages he uses for his dogs.’ The old woman shifted slightly in her seat. ‘Yer da had some business with him.’
‘He did?’
‘He did. Some business that went bad. That yer da never put straight before he passed away.’
‘So we get two birds with one stone.’
‘Yes, we do.’
Neither of them spoke for a while after that. James listened to the swish of passing cars. He wanted to scream and hammer on the window, but he didn’t. He had to think of something better. But nothing better came to him.
So he waited.
And waited.
Hoping for a chance.
‘I need to stop,’ said Billy eventually.
James heard the tick-tock-tick of the indicator a moment later.
The car slowed as it came off the motorway.
‘Put us somewhere away from the rest,’ said the old woman.
Billy ran the wheel through his hands, looking for a space on its own in the car park. Out of the glare of the lights.
He chose a spot and slid the car up a slight incline between two white lines, and clicked up the handbrake and killed the engine.
‘You’ll be all right with them?’ he asked his mother.
‘Of course I will. They’re dosed. I told ya.’
‘Right then. Two minutes. Unless I get lucky.’ And Billy laughed at his own joke.
‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ said the old woman. ‘A man only gets to know himself through his children.’
‘Is that right?’ Billy leant forward. Pointed up at the big moon. ‘Well, Ma, once the punters start flocking to our new attraction, and the money’s flooding in, I’ll be beating off the ladies with a stick. Mebbe you can help me choose the right one?’
‘As long as she gives me a granddaughter, you can choose whoever you want.’ She lifted the marionette out of the red bag by her feet and sighed, peeling off a curly white splinter the width of a hair from its cracked leg. ‘This’ll be hers one day and she’ll love it the moment she sees it, just like I did.’
When she looked up and saw Billy staring at the wooden man, she reached out and held his hand and squeezed it. ‘Little boys and girls are different. It’s just how it is. They’re all still loved the same.’
James kept his eyes shut as Billy opened the door. And he did not open them even when the door banged shut, making the car rock. He waited, listening to Billy’s footsteps fading along the asphalt. But when he looked deep into himself for a plan there was nothing there.
And then the other door opened.
And closed.
He opened his eyes just enough to see through the webbing of his lashes. The old woman was standing beside the car, holding up the wooden man against the night sky and inspecting his damaged leg.
‘Webster,’ whispered James. ‘Webster?’
A turn of the head. A bleary look. The man stared at James as though waiting to be told what to do.
James looked back at the old woman, who was lit by the waxing gibbous moon as it slipped out from behind a grey slab of cloud.
When he was ready, he removed Billy’s cap and started to lean forward slowly into the front section of the car, towards the passenger door, his hand outstretched. But she sensed him moving immediately and turned round, so he lunged the rest of the way, banging down the small metal button with his fist.
The lock clunked.
The old woman flung herself at the door and pulled at the handle, but it snapped back out of her hands. James did not wait. He scrambled over the seat to the driver’s door and locked that too. The old woman went to each door in turn, but all four of them were locked. She observed James through the glass for some time, the wooden man crooked in her arm, and James was careful not to look at her for too long.
But the old woman did not start to mutter. There was no whisper of her voice in his head or a dark haze unwinding. And then he realised why. Her leather pouch, wrapped around with string, was sitting in the tray between the two front seats. And when he looked up at her she was staring at it too. She smiled, and shrugged her shoulders and looked away, talking softly to the marionette and pointing towards the buildings at the far end of the car park.
A lone figure was emerging through the sliding doors.
Billy was coming back, walking through the sticky orange glow of the car park lights.
A cloud covered up the moon and the interior of the car dimmed. It seemed to cool James’s heart too.
He stared at the empty ignition in the beige plastic casing beneath the steering wheel and then looked up at the old woman. She was smiling at him again, shaking her head. He had no plan. No thought at all about what he might do next.
‘What now?’ he whispered as
Webster watched him from the back seat. The man licked his lips. Tried to speak. Then tried again.
‘Bra-ke,’ he mumbled and then shuddered as if the weight of just one word was too much. James looked at the pedals. ‘Bra-ke,’ rasped Webster again. James pressed the pedals with his feet, making them clunk.
Suddenly, he looked up.
Billy was running through the half-dark towards them.
‘What do you mean?’ James shouted at Webster. ‘What should I do?’
The cloud lifted. Moonlight streamed into the car.
It shone off the steering wheel.
Caught the handbrake.
And Webster pointed a trembling finger.
James stared at the glint of the silver button and blinked, and then pressed it in and let the handbrake down.
Nothing happened at first.
And then the car began to trickle backwards ever so slowly.
The old woman slapped a hand on the roof of the car and James heard it squeaking as it slipped away. She banged on the windscreen. Shouted. But James turned away, looking out of the rear window, manoeuvring the steering wheel to follow the slight camber of the car park.
The car kept to a slow pace as James guided it, until it started rolling backwards more quickly towards the slip road coming off the motorway.
Billy was sprinting. But he did not seem to get any nearer as the car picked up speed.
A horn blared. An oncoming car, its lights flashing, swerved to avoid a collision as it came up the slip road off the motorway. James kept going, as straight as he could, jiggling the steering wheel as the hiss of motorway traffic became louder. He plugged in his seat belt. Hit the button for the hazard lights. And banged on the horn as the green car slipped backwards on to the motorway.
Cars swerved.
Horns jammed.
Brakes squealed.
And then there was a thump from behind.
James heard the rear lights shatter. The bending of metal.
The shunt of it was like being hit in a dodgem, the force of it centred in his chest and his neck, knocking out his breath and forcing his eyes shut.
He felt the steering wheel shudder, the tyres skidding as the vehicle spun.
And then the rear of the car hit the central crash barrier and everything stopped.
The breathing in James’s chest was electric. And he tried not to remember when he’d last felt like this, in that moment when his life had changed forever.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring across three lanes of motorway at the hard shoulder on the other side.
He looked right and saw that another car had stopped in the middle of the motorway, facing the wrong way, nose crumpled, its front bumper lying on the road. Plastic orange pieces glowed like embers, scattered over the tarmac.
When he panicked and looked to his left in the direction of the oncoming traffic, James saw cars stopped in their lanes, their headlights glaring at him.
He peeled his hands off the steering wheel. Took off his seat belt. And popped the lock on the driver’s door and opened it. But, before stepping out, he checked back, and picked up the small leather pouch in the tray beside him and gripped it hard, wishing himself and Webster somewhere safe. But all he heard was the idling engines from the waiting cars. And James shuddered. For it seemed there was nothing for him to trust or believe in as he staggered out of the car into the road, the pouch gripped hard in his fist, as he kept trying to wish himself and Webster away.
Nobody else in the other cars seemed to know what to do. Or maybe time had somehow stopped for everyone but him. He was shaking, but he managed to come around the car and open Webster’s door.
The man half stepped, half fell on to the road.
James noticed the newspaper lying in the front passenger footwell of the car beside the old woman’s red leather bag. There he was in his school uniform, staring back, and a photograph of Timpston too. The picture of the village was so small, yet so powerful. And James knew immediately what he had to do. He stopped wishing for anything magical to happen, and hooked his hands into Webster’s armpits and dragged him up on to his feet.
He helped Webster over the crash barrier in the centre of the motorway.
They walked across the lanes.
Stumbled down the embankment on the far side.
And disappeared into the night.
30
The two of them found a barn after it seemed they had walked forever under the stars, Webster stumbling and holding on to James. They stripped apart a bale of hay, covering themselves over with golden threads.
Webster slept fitfully, lashing out with his arms. Crying out for people that James did not know. The boy stared silently up at the rafters, trying not to worry about what was going to happen next. Eventually, his hand crept into the pocket of his jeans and curled around the leather pouch, despite not knowing what to say or do.
It was still before sunrise when Webster awoke, and sat up and rubbed the blood back into his face. It was cold and he pulled the straw up around him like a blanket.
‘How are you feeling?’ asked James.
‘Too much champagne,’ joked Webster weakly and the boy grinned. Looking out from the barn, all Webster could see was a landscape of moor lit by the moon and it looked like the bare bones of the world. ‘Where are we?’
‘Somewhere.’
‘Do you know where we’re going?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t worry,’ smiled Webster. ‘That’s how it is for almost everyone, I reckon.’ But his grin faded as he stared at the moon because he could see it was almost full.
James took out the pages from his back pocket. Unfolded them. And set about scanning the handwritten notes in the margins.
‘That old woman’s wrong,’ he said. ‘It says here there are other cures we can try. Wolfsbane, which is a plant. Exorcism. Maybe even—’
Webster held up his hand.
‘I’m not sure we’ll find any of them before tonight, do you? Not out here. This is a place to get lost in, nothing more. It’s probably the best place for me.’
‘But wha—’
Webster held up his hand again and closed his eyes.
James folded up his pages and balanced them next to him on the hay. He took a deep breath, thinking very carefully about what he had discussed with Cook, before Billy had put them both in the cellar.
‘Most people don’t believe what Billy and his ma do.’
‘I wish they were right.’
‘In those pages it says anyone thinking they’ll transform into something else on a full moon is just plain . . .’ James weighed different words in his mouth until he found the right one. ‘Wrong.’
Webster opened his eyes. ‘Do you think I’m cuckoo?’ he asked. ‘Mad?’
‘No.’
‘Billy and his ma don’t either.’
‘No, they don’t.’
‘And what about Cook? You said he was the one who attacked me, so it must be all true.’
‘That’s what he told me,’ said James, nodding, because he did not want to fight.
‘So why bring up what it says in those pages then?’ asked Webster in an angry voice.
‘I don’t know. I was just thinking out loud. Wondering about it all. About everything,’ shouted James and he thumped the straw. ‘Why couldn’t you have forgiven Cook?’
Webster hung his head.
‘It’s a difficult thing to do,’ he said. ‘That vicar was right. Forgiving’s not easy at all. You have to be brave.’
Neither of them said anything for a while. The moonlight seemed to freeze everything. Even their breath.
‘I’m sorry I raised my voice,’ said Webster.
‘I’m sorry too,’ James said, reaching across and lifting the pieces of paper off the hay and putting them back in the pocket of his jeans. ‘We should start over. Work out what to do next.’
Webster nodded. He got up and walked round the barn and the boy watched h
im, waiting to hear what he had to say. But Webster did not say anything and eventually he sat back down beside the boy.
‘Any ideas?’ asked James.
‘I thought I might sit here and see what happens next.’
‘Isn’t that the same as giving up?’
‘I don’t think so. Not if there’s someone else in control of things.’ Webster pressed his hands to the earth and motioned to James to do the same. ‘Can you feel it?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘The world turning. Doing what someone must have wanted it to do.’
‘Yes,’ said James, even though he couldn’t, because he knew it was what Webster wanted to hear.
When the man smiled, James smiled back.
Gradually, the moon set and disappeared, and the light began to change and harden into a dark blue. When Webster asked him if he was hungry, James nodded, and Webster told him he would try to find something in the copse they had passed on their way to the barn. Before he left, he told the boy to keep out of sight and watch for anyone coming.
James sat quietly in the twilight, listening to the dawn as it broke. He heard the occasional high-pitched shriek of a fox echoing across the moor, a thin breeze wasting through the gorse. He pressed his hands flat on to the ground either side of him for a second time, and tried to feel the world turning like Webster had done, but again he felt nothing. Even when he held his breath.
He took out the notes, sifting through them until he found the newspaper cutting of himself. And he laid the picture on his lap and stared at it in the briny, early morning light with the moorland panning out in front of the barn, studded with boulders that reared up in the sunrise as the ground caught fire in patches of purple and green and yellow.
When Webster returned with his hands cupped full of berries, he saw that the boy was asleep, the newspaper cutting soft across his knees. He was careful not to wake him as he sat and ate his share, watching the sun rising steadily and warming the land.
When he heard a noise in the distance, he looked up and saw a Land Rover, a long way off, rocking over the mud track that led up to the barn. Webster watched it until he could see who was driving and then stood up.
The Dark Inside Page 11