The Dark Inside

by Rupert Wallis

  It was lying in the springy heather, as though washed up on a beach of weed. Its throat was a black gaping maw, which became red and bloody in the beam of the torch. James shone the light into the dead creature’s face. Bulbous pinks and blacks for eyes, like marbles too big for the sockets. Eyelashes in rows like tiny bones.

  The ground around the sheep was spattered with blood. James decided it must have been killed where it lay because there was no trail of blood that he could see and no sign of the animal having been dragged through the heather. He reached out and touched the creature’s bony shoulders. The sheep was lukewarm. A shiver ran through him and James turned off the torch.

  He crouched down and remained still for a long time, listening to the dark. But the only thing he heard was the hum of the moon and the stars, and the drum of his heart in the soles of his feet.

  When his legs grew numb, he stood up to let the blood back into them. Then, in the quiet, he walked back to the bicycle and carried on down the track, ignoring one half of all the thoughts in his head.

  Eventually, James heard the water below him, its distant musical notes.

  He stopped.

  Laid the bicycle on the ground.

  And walked to the edge of the track.

  The stream cut a black winding groove in the moor and he looked along it from above, following it first to the left, all the way to the horizon of stars, and then to the right.

  ‘Webster! Webster, it’s me, James.’

  His voice echoed out over the dark landscape and faded into nothing.

  He looked at his watch. It had been two hours since he had set out from the farmhouse. The night was more than half gone. As he turned to pick up the bike, he saw something moving on the plain below.

  The silhouette of a figure.

  Hunched over.

  Following the line of the stream.

  The boy crouched down and watched the shape until he lost sight of it behind what he thought must be a set of boulders that blipped in the dark as he stared at them. He waited for the figure to reappear, but it did not.

  James turned on the torch and began to make his way down on to the moor below, picking his way between rocks and bracken. After a moment, he stopped and turned around and went back to the bicycle. He bent down and ripped a fistful of rye bread out of the loaf in the basket, and held it in his hand and stared at it. And then he hurled it away as hard as he could into the dark, and closed his eyes and whispered to himself that there was nothing to be afraid of at all. Then he walked back down on to the moor.

  He followed a rabbit run, which took him some of the way, until it dwindled into nothing.

  As he descended, James lost sight of the stream. But he could still hear it so he navigated his way by following the sound. Gradually, the ground turned damp and sucked at his black shoes, making it harder to walk. Cold water seeped through and soaked his socks, turning them coarse and heavy.

  Suddenly, the ground gave way and his front foot plunged knee-deep into a bog. He cried out as his arms windmilled, trying to keep him upright, and the torch flew from his hand and landed on the ground, lighting up a small relief of bracken stalks and stones. The muck sucked greedily at James’s leg as he tried to pull it free, but then his other leg began to sink too as it took more of his weight.

  He allowed himself to fall on to his front, and then stretched out his arms and grabbed at the tough bed of heather growing round him. The short roots tore then snapped. Clumps of soft green came away in his hands. As he scrabbled for more, his fingers found a rock, embedded in the soil, around which he clasped both hands. He hauled. Strained. And the rock held his weight as he pulled himself out of the bog and kicked his legs free. When he was clear of the mud, he lay panting on the ground, staring up at the stars that winked back at him, until he was ready to stand up.

  The stream was close by and it was impossible to hear anything else but the suck and run of the water. James picked the torch out of the bracken and wove his way carefully towards the bank, his wet feet rubbing inside his shoes.

  When he played the light from the torch across the water’s surface, he saw the brown backs of stones and white eddies circling above them. He sat with his legs hanging off the bank and let the stream lick the mud from the soles of his shoes. Then he followed the water towards the set of boulders he had seen from the track.

  Drawing closer, James covered the torch with his hand, making his fist glow a phantom red, and allowing himself only the thinnest of light to walk by. He neared the boulders, veering away from the stream, listening for anything moving or breathing.

  When he thought he heard footsteps behind him, he whirled round. But there was no one there.

  ‘Webster?’ he said softly. But there was no answer.

  Cloud curdled over the moon, culling the light around him. James rotated the torch methodically. Eyes sharp. Chest as taut as a drum. And then he saw it.

  A figure.

  Flitting through the beam.

  The black shape of it.

  Nothing more.

  James flashed the torch around him, trying to pick it up again.

  ‘I saw you!’ he shouted. ‘Webster, I saw you. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s me, James. Your friend.’

  The torch’s beam wobbled as his hand shook.

  And then a low growl uncoiled around him.

  ‘Webster?’ said the boy softly. ‘It’s not true. None of it is.’ But the growling grew. It did not sound human at all, like something drawn from a distant time.

  James turned off the torch and the night engulfed him.

  There was a dark shape standing off to his right. Its outline seemed taller than Webster had ever been. Maybe he was standing on a rock? James’s heart wavered. The constant growling seemed to suck up his courage, turning it thin and watery inside him.

  He took a step towards the shape and a loud howl unfurled into the sky. When he heard footsteps, he brought up the torch and pressed in the rubber button as a figure loomed up in front of him and lashed out, catching his arm, as it leapt past.

  The torch went flying, end over end . . .

  . . . but all James saw was a flash of white pain behind his eyes. As soon as his right hand started to throb, he held it up and saw two fingers twisted out of their knuckles.

  The boy gasped. Wet blurred his eyes. He stumbled forward, looking for the torch, but he could not see its light anywhere. A growl behind hurried him on and he came up against the set of large boulders.

  A narrow mouth running diagonally between the rocks was just wide enough. James felt into the dark with his good hand and then slid forward through the gap.

  Feet thundered.

  The turf shook.

  And James squeezed himself tighter and tighter to try and slip through.

  He cried out as a great weight barrelled into him from behind and a sharp pain raked his shoulders. The force knocked him through the opening and he landed in a heap on the floor of a small cave bounded on all sides by the boulders.

  Something scrabbled at the narrow entrance and then stopped.

  James heard the pitter-patter of feet above him. Growling dropped down through the tiny cracks in the stone and filled the cave until the boy buried his head in his arms and began to sob. In the dark, questions flashed and spun. But he had no answers for any of them.

  When he finally looked up and listened again, the growling had gone. The night seemed perfectly still. He was alone except for the skeleton of some small animal, which gleamed in the moonlight slanting through the tiny gaps between the boulders. The pain in his two crooked fingers was ugly and dull. A fire licked down his shoulders. Stretching round, he saw that his sweater was ripped and raggedy, with the skin beneath it black and sticky.

  James wondered what it was that could have done such a thing. He sat thinking about it for a very long time. But no true answer came to him. He was not sure what to believe about what had happened. Slowly, his body grew colder and he started to shiver. It
became harder to think things through as the pain in his shoulders spread like a tangle of roses growing up over his back, catching hold with their tiny barbs. When he closed his eyes, he saw his mother and Cook, and shouted at them, asking why they had left him here in this world on his own. But they said nothing and, as soon as James could no longer stand their mute, staring faces, he opened his eyes and tried to breathe away the pain. He could not imagine anyone feeling more alone than him, trapped in a prison made of cold stone and moonlight.

  Every time he thought about leaving, he heard a noise outside and shrank back from the opening into a ball, wondering if it might be Webster, the one person in the world who had promised never to hurt him and whom he had trusted with all his heart.

  James stayed in the hollow until dawn, the moonlight ebbing and flowing around him.

  In the clean, early morning light he hauled himself back through the narrow opening in the rocks and stood looking over the moor, which was wet and gleaming, as if a tide had washed over it and rubbed it clean for the new day.

  When he found the torch lying face down in the heather, the wire in the bulb glowing pale orange, he switched it off and put it in his pocket. Then he stumbled slowly back to the track, and picked up the bicycle and wheeled it beside him. His shoulders felt lumpy and stiff, and hurt with every step. His crooked fingers were numb. It was slow going and he knew it would take a long time to get back to the farmhouse.

  When he saw a bird appear in the sky, wheeling effortlessly above him in the blue, he gawped like a much younger child, wishing he had its wings.

  After a while, James saw the farmer’s Land Rover appearing over the skyline, bumping towards him along the track. James stopped and waited for it to reach him. He did not know what he was going to say, but he remembered how safe he had felt with the farmer and his wife in the kitchen eating supper the night before, and willed the vehicle on faster towards him.

  Sky slipped over the windscreen as the vehicle drew closer. When it stopped beside him, James began to shake. He leant against the side of the Land Rover and saw a pair of red-rimmed eyes staring back from the wing mirror. His face was so white it was grey and it shone with a sickly, waxy sheen. The night was still inside him and he threw it up on to the stones at his feet. A crow scudded down into the heather beside the track and cawed as James heard the driver’s door open.

  Footsteps walked round the front of the vehicle and stopped beside him.

  ‘Yoo’se in a state, boy,’ said a voice.

  It was not the farmer.

  James was looking up into the face of Billy.

  34

  James tried to run, but his back was too sore. His legs and arms were wooden. So Billy caught him easily, and lifted him up and manhandled him into the cab of the Land Rover.

  He was too tired to move and lay curled up on his side against the seat, listening, as Billy threw the bicycle into the flatbed. Then the man came round and got into the cab, and sat quietly beside him for a moment while he caught his breath.

  ‘Where’s Webster?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said James. ‘I don’t know anything.’ Tears nipped at the edges of his eyes, making him blink, and he said nothing more.

  Billy lit up a cigarette, and opened the window and blew the smoke out into the early morning sunshine. Picking a strand of tobacco from his tongue, he rolled it between his fingers and flicked it away.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure it matters now anyway.’

  He started the engine and turned the Land Rover round. On the bumpy journey back to the farmhouse, James tried to understand what Billy had meant. But his mind kept slipping because of the pain in his shoulders and the throbbing in his fingers. His thoughts were nothing more than air that drifted up and out of him across the moor.

  When they reached the farmhouse, Billy parked next to a sky-blue Ford estate, and helped the boy out of the Land Rover and over the muddy yard. They opened the door and went into the kitchen where the old woman was sitting at the pine table, a white mug in her hands, waiting, as James had expected her to be. Lying in front of her was her leather pouch. She set down the mug, and picked up the pouch and held it in her palm for James to see.

  ‘Every charm and talisman in here is mine and a part of me,’ she said to him. ‘They know that. We belong to each other.’

  She asked Billy to bring the boy over to her as she placed the leather pouch in the pocket of her skirt.

  ‘Where’s the farmer and his wife?’ asked James in a tiny, cracked voice. The old woman ignored him and inspected the marks on his shoulders beneath his ripped and ragged sweater, and then asked how he had come by them.

  James told her nothing.

  ‘They’re both safe,’ she said. ‘Asleep upstairs.’ Then she waited for James to tell her what she wanted to know.

  ‘I don’t know how it happened,’ he said.

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I think I do. It’s all written here, with blood for ink.’

  She made James sit down beside the warm stove, and then took a pair of scissors and cut away carefully at his sweater until she could peel it off him. His bony white shoulders were covered in dark-red blood.

  The old woman gave him a cup of sweet black tea to drink as she washed his wounds tenderly, whispering to him all the time. When he asked again about the farmer and his wife, the old woman shushed him, her fingers working delicately over his skin until all the pain had vanished, leaving him warm and woozy, as though he had slipped loose from the real world into a dream, unable to remember quite when or how it had happened.

  ‘I thought you were gone forever,’ he said, staring into the old woman’s eyes where the grey colours looked as soft as wool. He reached out with his good hand and clung on to her fingers as if never, ever wanting to let go. ‘But you were watching all along, Mum, weren’t you? So you know he hates me now. Hits me. Because all he had left after the car accident was me and he can’t do anything about it, and neither can I. We’re all we’ve got.’ James edged closer to the old woman on the seat of his chair. ‘What’s it like, Mum? What’s it like where you are? Is it safe?’

  When he asked again, the old woman shushed him until he sat back in his chair. Out of the half-thinking and broken thoughts, James suddenly announced that the old woman must have been a good mother to Billy, kind and gentle, just like his mother had been to him when she had been alive. The old woman nodded and then glanced at Billy, and something wordless passed between them in a smile.

  Then, as gently as she could, she took hold of James’s two dislocated fingers and snapped them back into their joints one after the other. And, although it was no more painful for him than watching it happen to someone else, he began to remember where he was and what had happened to him on the moor.

  After fixing his hand, the old woman prepared a poultice. She selected various herbs, which looked to have been freshly picked, from her pockets, and dropped them into a black casserole dish she had found in a cupboard and boiled them gently on the stove. A sweet, oaty smell swelled in the room and fogged the windows. She soaked a dishcloth in the thin water then laid it over James’s wounds and left it there.

  All three of them sat in silence until the old woman removed the poultice, dressed the wounds and informed Billy they could leave.

  Billy stood up. Helped the half-naked boy from his chair and led him towards the door.

  When the old woman picked up a knife from the drying rack beside the sink and turned to go upstairs, James halted, despite Billy trying to push him on.

  ‘I won’t go with you if anything happens to them,’ he said. But Billy just started dragging him towards the door. And James yelled and grabbed at the door frame and clung on. ‘If you hurt them then I’ll know there’s something good in the world. Something really good!’

  The old woman motioned to Billy and he stopped trying to pull the boy out through the doorwa
y.

  ‘Why would you think that, my love?’ she asked.

  James wiped his eyes and coughed to clear his throat. He drew in a breath and shuddered. ‘Because how else could there be something as horrible and as evil as you?’ he said.

  When she waved her hand, Billy wrenched James out through the doorway into the yard despite his crying.

  She stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching the boy being dragged towards the sky-blue Ford. Then she turned and went upstairs, the leather pouch clinking in her skirt pocket.

  The farmer and his wife were lying on the crimson eiderdown covering their bed. Dressed in their clothes. Fast asleep. Chests rising and falling. The old woman’s eyes flicked back and forth between their soft white necks and the knife in her hand.

  She could hear James outside, screaming and shouting, and Billy cursing out loud. As the noise grew louder, she walked to the half-open window and looked down at James, who was clinging on to the car door as Billy tried to shove him inside. The more he kicked out, determined not to go in, the angrier and rougher Billy became until he raised his arm to strike the boy.

  ‘No!’ she cried out. The two of them stopped and looked up, blinking in the sunlight at her. ‘We don’t want to go hurting him! You’re not yer da!’

  Billy slapped the top of the car. ‘He says he won’t go in! How else is he gonna learn to do what he’s told?’

  The old woman stared down at them.

  Clouds drifted.

  A bird drummed past the window.

  Her knees creaked.

  ‘They’re going to be all right,’ she shouted eventually. ‘As long as you get in the car. You’re gonna have to trust us.’ And with that she walked away from the window and back to the bed. After stowing the knife in her waistband, she leant over the sleeping couple and blew into her fists, opening one each over the face of the farmer and his wife, and waited for their eyes to flicker open.

  ‘We’re leaving now,’ she said to them. ‘So you best come and wave us off.’