The Dark Inside

by Rupert Wallis

  He looked down at James.

  Then back to the Land Rover.

  And then back down at the boy.

  ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. And then he left quietly, walking on to the moor, and soon he was lost from sight.

  31

  James heard a man’s voice shouting at him to wake up. It was his stepfather, the man’s face looming and distorting like the reflection in a fairground mirror.

  He woke with a start and found himself staring into the soft brown eyes of a man with a weathered face and grey hair who was holding the newspaper cutting between a rough-hewn finger and thumb.

  James panicked.

  Stood up.

  Looked around.

  But there was no sign of Webster.

  And then he noticed a small portion of tiny wild strawberries and raspberries heaped in the straw near his foot.

  The man, who was watching him, held up his hands, and shuffled a few steps back and crouched down again.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said gently. ‘I’m a farmer. This is my barn. I came here to fetch that trailer.’ And he pointed to a small metal trailer standing in the far corner.

  James kept looking around, trying to work out where Webster might be. But he already knew, in his heart, what had probably happened as he found himself staring out across the moor.

  He bent down and picked up a raspberry, and turned it slowly through his fingers, thinking hard about what he was going to do now.

  ‘You’re that missing boy, aren’t you?’ said the farmer. ‘The one in the newspaper.’ He held up the cutting.

  ‘Maybe,’ said James, staring at the picture of himself in his blazer.

  The farmer thought about that as the boy stood before him in his dirty sweater and jeans. And then he folded up the cutting and offered it back.

  ‘It’s James though? Isn’t it?’

  The boy put the cutting in his pocket and nodded.

  The farmer sank back on his haunches and rubbed his chin. ‘So what am I supposed to do now?’ he asked.

  James shrugged.

  ‘There’s people worried about you. Your stepfather for one. The police. But it seems to me like you might not want to be found.’ He pointed out through the doorway at the moor. ‘That’s as good a place as any to hide yourself in.’

  James nodded as he rolled the raspberry back and forth between his fingers, still unsure about what to do next.

  ‘Even so, you won’t find what you’re looking for out there,’ continued the farmer.

  ‘How do you know what I’m looking for?’

  But the farmer did not seem to hear. He shifted his feet, and sat down with his legs straight out in front of him and leant back on his arms. The soles of his black wellington boots were worn and scraped and caked with mud.

  ‘When I was about your age, I lost my dear old mum. Cancer. Got a taste for her guts then her bones. And there was no stopping it after that. I said goodbye to her when I was ten. I’m not sure she knew much about it towards the end, but we’d spent a lot of time not saying goodbye when she was still well enough and that probably counted for a lot more. At least that’s what I like to think.’

  ‘What happened to you, after she died?’ asked James.

  ‘Life went on. And here I am to prove it.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘I reckon my old mum’d be pretty proud of that.’

  James looked down at his hand when he felt something sticky and wet. The raspberry between his fingers had burst, turning their ends red. He crouched down and started rubbing them clean in the straw. And then he stopped suddenly.

  ‘You read about my mum in the paper,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I did. And?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said James when his fingers were clean again.

  ‘Well then.’ The farmer studied the boy crouched in front of him. And then he looked away. ‘I was unhappy for a very long time after she died. The thing was, I couldn’t understand who’d flicked the switch inside me.’

  ‘Flicked the switch?’

  ‘Yes. From on to off.’

  ‘You think there’s a switch for people?’

  The farmer nodded.

  ‘For their happiness. I couldn’t think of any better way to explain it back then. Still can’t. And now, years later, I know it’s true.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because all the way through it’s been on and then off. On. Off. And the good bits have been things like meeting my wife, having my own children, working my farm and making friends.’

  ‘What about when the switch was off?’

  ‘Well, certain things are my business and not yours. But I can tell you it’s a hard life being a farmer and having children, and watching them growing up and being responsible for them.’ He looked out across the moor and stared at something James couldn’t see. ‘I had a grandson once. He almost grew up to be as old as you.’ And then he looked at James and smiled. And the boy smiled and nodded back because speaking didn’t seem the right thing to do.

  ‘Who is it that flicks the switch?’ asked James eventually.

  ‘Who indeed? I’ll leave that up to others to work out. People better qualified than me. But I’ll tell you this. It tells me how to live. Because when that switch is off I know it’ll come on again eventually. And, when it’s on, I know to enjoy the moment because it’ll be going off again sometime in the future.’

  James looked out at the moorland, watching the shadows of clouds sliding over it.

  ‘I know someone who might like to listen to what you’re saying.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  James kept looking out at the moor. ‘Gone,’ he said.

  The farmer nodded. ‘You look like you could do with a wash and a brush-up. And those berries aren’t much of anything for a growing boy. If you want to come back with me to the house, I’m sure my wife’ll feed you up and see to you. Then you can decide on what you’re going to do next.’

  ‘How do I know I can trust you?’

  The man pulled out his mobile phone, and leant forward and gave it to the boy.

  ‘I’m not sure how the stupid thing works anyhow half the time. Smartphone they call it.’ And he shrugged and shook his head.

  James hit a button and the screen glowed. It was eight-fifteen in the morning on June 14th. There was one bar showing for reception. He weighed the phone in his hand. It seemed as though the whole world was waiting for him to speak.

  ‘Do you believe in creatures that only appear on the night of a full moon?’ he asked quietly.

  The farmer studied him and then let out a long sigh.

  ‘Well, there’s a question,’ he said, and looked up at the vaulted wooden ceiling of the barn and thought for a while. ‘I’m not sure there’s enough for me to say either way on that. Enough clues, I mean.’ He smoothed back his grey hair with one hand. ‘There’s a full moon tonight though. So if you’re planning on seeing something then I reckon you’d be in luck, if such things are really true.’

  32

  The kitchen in the farmhouse had bright pine cupboards and a dark slate floor. An old black Rayburn was set into an alcove in one of the whitewashed walls, and James watched the heat wobbling off it as he sipped his tea and ate the breakfast the farmer’s wife had cooked for him.

  The phone stayed close to his elbow on the table the whole time.

  He could see the farmer out in the yard tinkering under the bonnet of a tractor and, after he had finished eating, he went outside and gave the phone back. The man thanked him and put it away in the pocket of his waxed jacket.

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’ James asked. ‘In return for breakfast.’

  The farmer lowered the bonnet and slammed it shut.

  ‘What are you good at?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never really tried this kind of thing before.’

  ‘Follow me.’

  He showed James the outbuildings and what needed tidying, and pointed out a hole in the fence, around the chicken coop,
that needed repairing. There were the goats and the pigs to feed too. And James decided to help with that. Lugging the feedbags. Filling the troughs. And scattering potato peelings over the grass. The animals came to him without fear and ignored him once they started eating. James watched them until the farmer returned from fixing a gatepost in the yard.

  ‘What are you watching?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said James. The farmer stood beside the boy, elbows resting on the gate, watching the animals too. Chewing. Grooming. Peeing. Gradually, they wandered off to bask in the sun.

  The farmer stretched his arms and legs. ‘Maybe we’ve got it all wrong,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But that’s not the point.’ James looked up at the farmer. ‘The point is how do we put it right if we have?’

  The three of them ate a cold lunch of ham and leftovers and pickles and cheese. In the middle of the table sat a dark loaf of rye bread like a stone.

  When the farmer’s wife asked James about his stepfather, her husband clicked his tongue, saying there was a time and a place for everything, and she nodded and said nothing more. They ate in silence for a while longer until James cleared his throat and told them he knew he had caused a lot of trouble, but did not know what to do about it.

  ‘Going home might be a start,’ said the farmer, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know what to do about things if I went back.’

  ‘Do about what?’

  But the boy said nothing. And the farmer and his wife exchanged a look that said everything.

  ‘There’s something more important I need to do,’ said James.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked the farmer, slicing an apple into quarters.

  ‘It’s a secret.’

  ‘Well, if you need any help then you just ask.’

  They ate in silence for a few minutes more and then James decided he should wash up.

  As he swished his hands through the warm soapy water, the farmer’s wife placed a pile of dirty plates beside him and whispered that her husband had not been this happy for a long time. Not since before their grandson had died. And James whispered back that he was glad he had made a difference in some small way.

  When he had finished and put the clean dishes away, James approached the farmer who was sitting on an old chair outside the house, running a rag back and forth through the top and bottom barrels of a Lanber shotgun with a walnut stock.

  ‘Can we go up on to the moor?’ he asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to see it.’

  ‘Is this to do with your secret?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The farmer looked along the Lanber, as though aiming for something only he could see, and then pulled the trigger. It dry fired once and then he tried again, but the trigger jammed halfway with a strange, dull click.

  ‘Well, I’m damned if I know what’s wrong with this bloody gun anyway,’ he said, leaning the weapon against the wall and wiping his hands on his trouser legs. ‘We can go, but I have a condition. That we make a deal of some sort.’

  ‘If I go home afterwards, you mean.’

  The farmer shrugged.

  ‘Thinking about it won’t do you any harm,’ he said.

  ‘OK.’

  The farmer clapped his hands together and beamed.

  ‘So what bit of the moor do you want to see?’

  ‘All of it,’ said James and the farmer smiled. ‘The landmarks anyway. And the tracks and roads across it.’

  The farmer looked at him for a while and sucked in his cheeks.

  ‘It can be a dangerous place if you don’t know it. Bogs that’ll suck you in. Sheer drops that’ll snap your ankles or worse. The mist up there can turn you round and round, and slip inside you till it’s fogging up your brain.’ He took the boy by the shoulders. His eyes burned. ‘It’s not the place for games.’

  They spent the rest of the afternoon in the Land Rover, driving along tracks the farmer knew by heart. James followed them on the Ordnance Survey map across his knees. They stopped a couple of times. Once for the farmer to clear up a stream of tissues and crisp packets hikers had dumped in the heather, and then to check on a ewe, recently shorn, sitting in an awkward position. There was a bite mark on one of its hind legs, which looked new and raw.

  ‘Fox having a go most likely,’ said the farmer as he held the sheep steady between his legs. ‘A young’un trying its luck. Got a kick for its troubles I expect. We need to keep an eye on that bite, mind.’ And the farmer hauled the ewe into a cage in the flatbed of the Land Rover to take it back to the farm.

  The other sheep watched. And chewed. And went back to their grazing as James and the farmer left.

  When they returned to the farmhouse, the sun was setting and the sky was red and bloody.

  ‘Useful trip?’ asked the farmer. James nodded his head. ‘But you’re still not going to say why?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And what about our deal?’

  ‘I’m thinking about it,’ said the boy.

  The farmer leant in close and listened.

  ‘Yep, I think I can hear the cogs,’ he said and smiled.

  They ate supper and talked about the day. It seemed to James the three of them were completely safe from the world outside in the warm rosy glow of the kitchen as the windows slowly darkened around them. The farmer laughed and told stories, and his wife scolded him for drinking too much red wine. James was polite and offered up all the conversation he could, telling them he could not imagine anywhere he’d rather be. But deep down he was thinking about later and what he was going to do. The farmer shot him the odd glance, but James kept his secret safe until he went to bed.

  He lay on top of his covers, still dressed, listening to the house go quiet after the farmer and his wife had turned out the lights and gone to bed. When he saw the full moon through the gap in the curtains, a thin sweat broke out over his brow, but he wiped it away. Swinging round his feet and planting them on the floor, his legs felt too soft to take his weight. His breath was lean and smoky. He told himself not to be scared.

  Sitting on the bed, he stared at the old woman’s leather pouch, which he’d placed on the bedside table, and thought carefully about the things he’d seen her do. And then he took out the pages from the pocket of his jeans, leafing through them until he found the note he was looking for, and read it and reread it in the moonlight. According to a German legend, rye bread protected people from being attacked. James looked out of the window at the moon and kept on looking until he had convinced himself that he did not need such a thing to be true. And then he put the notes back into his pocket and let himself out of his room. The last thing he saw before closing the door was the leather pouch sitting on the table.

  From the kitchen dresser he took a small black torch that he had noticed earlier when putting the dishes away and picked up the Ordnance Survey map he had left on a chair. As he made for the back door, he stopped and stood quite still when the full moon slipped free from its covering of cloud and began frosting everything in the kitchen with a cold, iron light. It seemed to chill his heart. And even the hope within it.

  He turned back round. In the pantry he found the rye bread they had eaten at lunchtime in the bread bin. He weighed the quarter loaf in his hands, listening to the thoughts in his head. And then he tucked the bread under his arm.

  He left the farmhouse and walked across the yard to one of the barns. The night was thin and grainy in the bright moonlight, and it pulled at the corners of everything he could see. Beneath his feet the hard mud looked like concrete.

  He had noticed the old bicycle in the barn earlier in the day. The map and the rye bread went into the basket on the front and then he picked the bicycle off the wall and wheeled it out into the night.

  He rode it slowly out of the yard, careful not to make too much noise.

  After he had gone far enough, James began to pe
dal harder down the track, out towards the heart of the moor.

  33

  It did not take long for the night to swallow him whole. There was no light on the bicycle and no way of fixing the torch to the handlebars, so James tucked it into an armpit. But this was uncomfortable and the beam was pitiful. So he turned it off and threw it into the basket on the front, and pedalled on through the moonlight that ebbed and flowed as clouds moved, and the world turned, and the moon rose up steadily through the sky.

  After a couple of miles, he stopped. Listened. But there was nothing but the swish of his own blood in his ears. It was as though he was standing at the bottom of a lifeless ocean. Or even on the moon itself.

  ‘Webster!’ His voice cannoned around the rocks and then sank into the dark patches of heather and gorse. ‘Webster! Where are you?’ But nobody shouted back to him.

  He clicked on the torch again and consulted the map. He decided to stay on the track he had taken because he knew it would rise up eventually and give him a better vantage point across the moor.

  The dirt on the track muttered as he rode over it, crackling and spitting. Small rocks squirted out from under his tyres without warning and sent him skidding for a second, until he righted himself and kept on going. Occasionally, he stopped and listened, looking all around for anything moving on the moorland below him. But it was difficult to see clearly with the moon muted by the clouds, which shone iron and silver and creamy grey as they swept across it.

  When James reached the top of the hill, he stopped and studied the map again. Further on, the track split and he decided he should take the left fork, which would take him out towards the stream he had seen during the day. He told himself that every living thing needed water.

  Five minutes or so after the fork, James saw something off the track that did not look right and he stopped. Laying the bicycle down, he walked on, the torch lighting spots in the gorse for his feet.

  He paused when he saw it.

  The hairs on the back of his neck fizzed as he stood listening, waiting, until he was satisfied he was alone, and then he shone the torch over the body of the dead sheep in front of him, its shorn body glassy and smooth in the beam.