The Dark Inside

by Rupert Wallis

  He began pulling across the right-hand shutter. ‘You’re a licence to print money, boy. For now anyway. You be a good lad and we’ll let you live. We could end up being one big happy family.’ Billy paused and ran a thumb up and down the edge of the shutter, and peeled off a splinter of wood. ‘If you get half the love I got from my ma, you’ll be just fine, boy. She’ll be better than yer first one. That one in the paper. You saw how gentle she was with you just now. You love my ma ’n’ she’ll love you right back.’

  ‘Never,’ said James. ‘She could never be like my mum.’

  Billy bent the splinter in half and flicked it away. ‘It’s either that or end up being scared shitless of her like most of ’em around here and I know which I prefer. He shrugged. ‘My da was a hard bastard. And I know that stepdad of yours is too after what you told us at the farm when Ma was fixing you up. That’s why you ran away, en’t it?’ Billy grinned. ‘Mothers and sons are more than just special, en’t they?’

  The right-hand shutter banged against the black bars and the wagon became darker and darker until there was just a seam of light between the two shutters where they met in the middle. And then the light narrowed further as Billy locked them together.

  James tried to shout out that he was still just a boy, that they had made a terrible mistake. But as he formed the words he stuttered, remembering the night on the moor. The grainy moonlight. The dead sheep. He heard the skin splitting on his shoulders and the click of his fingers snapping up out of their joints.

  James could not be sure what Webster had been.

  Or what he himself might become at the next full moon.

  It was dark and cool in the wagon after Billy had left. To James it seemed as though he had been buried alive. Or been spun up in a cocoon. He sat thinking about the clues he could remember, trying to fit them together. Webster had been a soldier. He had seen terrible things. His mind had become unhinged. That’s what Cook had believed. And that’s what James had grown to think too.

  But Cook had not been out on the moor.

  James reached round and found he still had his pages in the back pocket of his jeans. They were muddy. Torn. The ink had run in places. He smoothed them out and held them up beside the gap in the shutters, studying the bits that weren’t smudged, hoping to try and understand something further about what had happened to him. About Webster. About everything that had occurred since the afternoon he’d found the man in the house on the hill.

  But he could not find any answers.

  When he discovered the newspaper cutting of himself, he stared at his picture for quite some time. And then he stood up and picked up the empty bucket, and placed it by the seam of daylight running between the shutters. He poured water from the wooden cup into the bucket until it was almost full, then waited for his reflection to appear.

  He saw a raggedy face. Dark and brooding and dirty. And James muttered and shook his head, and broke the surface of the water. But, when the ripples settled, the face he saw again was not the face of the boy in the newspaper cutting.

  He sat looking into the bucket for a long time, questions circling within him, and he could find no way of chasing them away.

  Eventually, he stood up and tipped the water through a gap at the bottom of the shutters on to the grass below. Then he rooted around on the floor for a small stone, choosing one with the sharpest edge he could find. He gouged out a vertical line in the wooden wall opposite the bars because one night had passed since Webster had attacked him.

  Afterwards, he picked up the pages again, scanning through them until he knew for certain how many more nights it would be until the next full moon.

  Twenty-seven.

  He would know for sure then what he was. All the doubts about what was true and what was not would be over for good.

  He picked up the stone again and began gouging blond-coloured letters into the wood. And, with each one done, the keener his mind became. And when he had finished he stepped back and observed what was written there.

  UTRINQUE PARATUS

  Taking out the torch from underneath the mattress, he pointed it at the wall, clicking the button on and off repeatedly, lighting up the letters then making them disappear. Every time he saw them, it was a message to himself to be ready, as he repeated over and over that he would try his utmost to escape from the wagon.

  It wasn’t long before he had started to work out a plan.

  39

  He had to get stronger first. Once he was out of the wagon, he knew he was going to have to run as fast as he could. But, for now, his body felt like it was made of glass.

  He discovered he could walk ten short paces from one end of the wagon to the other before turning round and walking back. Walk. Turn. Walk. Again and again, as long as he could, until his legs and arms became tired and he had to rest. Then he would set off again. Gradually, he started walking with his eyes shut, learning to keep in a straight line, counting every ten steps until it was automatic.

  After a while, he found he could be walking anywhere.

  Wherever his imagination took him.

  He was determined to get there.

  And whenever he arrived it was exactly how he wished the place to be. A graceful desert. Or a beautiful beach. Or a hotel with stunning views.

  The first time Webster appeared by his side after closing his eyes, James shouted at him to go away, telling him they were no longer friends. But, after he had gone, James was left miserable and empty. So he was glad when his mother appeared soon afterwards.

  He told her he was confused, that he wanted Webster far away from him, but close by too. So he asked her to speak to the man and explain how he felt, as well as ask all the questions James needed answering, to help him understand why his friend had done what he had on the moor. There was so much he wanted to know that he was breathless with all the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’.

  So they would walk behind James.

  Talking.

  His mother’s soothing voice explaining things, asking questions and, every now and then, the mumble of Webster’s deeper, whispered tones. And even though James felt his anger welling up inside, as bright and clear as a bead of water clinging to the lip of the wooden cup Billy had given him, it never broke and he did not shout at Webster to leave again.

  James never walked back to the wagon. But, whenever he opened his eyes, he would reappear there, as if by magic, standing in the soft semi-darkness, with light cutting through the cracks in the shutters. Separate from everyone. And everything.

  Occasionally, he heard voices in the distance. But he had given up shouting at them because no one ever replied. And no one ever came to see him except for Billy.

  Every night the man would appear after sunset, and fold back the shutters and let in the night. He would deliver fresh food and empty the bucket that served as a toilet bowl. Then he would leave James looking out through the metal bars at the sky, watching the stars, if the night was clean and clear, and listening to snippets of sounds from the fairground whenever they caught on the breeze. Electric notes. The whoosh of rides hurling people into the air as they screamed. The bass hum of generators. And, each morning, Billy returned to perform the same duties and then shutter up the cage for the duration of the day.

  This was how James lived now.

  Perpetually in the dark.

  Like an antique in an attic.

  But all the time he could feel himself getting stronger.

  Walking.

  Eating the food brought to him.

  Walking again.

  Ready for the moment he could escape.

  40

  It was on the fifth night after being attacked on the moor that James decided to break out. He knew this because there were already four vertical lines in the wood. He wasn’t going to make it five nights in the wagon.

  He sat on his mattress in the dark, waiting for Billy to appear and open the shutters. When he heard the man tramping over the grass, coughing and spitting, James took out t
he torch and held it in one hand. In the other was one of his socks, the end of it filled out with stuffing from the mattress to make it into a ball, and then lined with the small stones and bits of gravel he had found on the floor of the wagon. Coins from his pockets were in there too. And so were the two batteries from the torch.

  James watched the shutters roll back. Billy stared at him.

  ‘All right, boy?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, one hand clenched around the neck of the sock as he let it dangle out of sight behind his right leg.

  As soon as Billy came round to the end of the wagon and thumped up the small set of steps, James ran towards the door. When it opened, he held up the torch, pointing it at Billy’s face, and clicked the button. But there was no bright light in Billy’s eyes. The man started laughing when he realised, shaking his head, as James clicked the button repeatedly, gasping frantically through clenched teeth.

  ‘You en’t catching me out this time.’ Billy held out a hand for the torch, as the metal bowl of soup steamed in the other. When James offered it up to him in the flat of his palm, Billy reached forward, leaning down, grinning at the boy until he noticed James’s black shoes standing in a corner and peered down at the boy’s bare feet.

  James swung the sock in his other hand as hard as he could.

  The coins and stones and batteries chattered excitedly as they flashed through the air before striking Billy on his cheek, sending him off balance and crashing against the wall.

  The metal bowl of soup fell with him to the floor.

  James hurdled Billy and jumped off the steps on to the grass. His legs and arms started to pump as he ran barefoot across the field towards a dark border of hedge with a gate silhouetted in the far right corner.

  He could hear Billy cursing, and then roaring, as the man righted himself, but James did not look back as he aimed for the gate, the quickest way out of the field. The dewy grass was cold, slick beneath his feet, and he skidded, just managing to keep his balance, as he ran. Excited voices rose from the fairground beyond the caravans away to his left as though cheering him on.

  Billy was puffing and shouting behind him, his boots thundering. But James knew he would make the gate in time and began to judge how best to climb it.

  But, before he reached it, he saw a pair of headlights sweeping down the lane on the other side of the hedge. A car turned in towards the gate and stopped, shining two full beams of light into the field, making James put up his hands before veering out of their glare. Blinking the light from his eyes, he looked again and saw the driver’s door open, and the silhouette of a man stood in front of the car between the headlights, laying his arms over the top of the gate.

  James heard a shout for help ready in his throat, but before he could cry out he heard the man laughing and James gasped instead, knowing what it meant.

  Another traveller was sitting in the passenger seat, lit up by the interior light of the car, laughing too.

  James backed away from the gate, looking along the hedge, trying desperately to find another way out through the dense band of bramble and hawthorn. When he thought he saw a small gap, he ran towards it. But, as he tried to push and then pull himself through, the brambles tore at him. Nettles stung his hands. And soon his jumper was snagged in the hawthorn. The more he struggled, the harder it became to get free.

  And then he heard Billy cursing behind him.

  A moment later, the man’s warm hand closed over James’s ankle and yanked him backwards on to the wet, slippery grass.

  41

  The next morning the old woman visited James again. As Billy prepared the shutters for the oncoming day, the sunlight glinting off the plum-coloured bruise on his cheek, the steel door opened to reveal her standing on the top step wearing a red apron.

  She studied the four vertical lines in the wood and the Latin inscription, but said nothing. Her leather pouch had been mended and restrung on a new leather cord, and it clinked against her chest. She smiled at the boy and then took out a small glass jar from her skirt pocket. After twisting off the black plastic lid, she dug out a fingertip of ointment.

  ‘Let me put this on yer shoulders,’ she said. ‘I’ve made it for yer wounds, to help them heal.’

  James sat quietly as she rubbed it gently into his skin. It was soothing and cool, and the smell reminded him of the ointment that Webster had used to heal the cuts on his face.

  Billy stood watching them through the bars with his arms folded.

  ‘I told him if he loves you then you’ll love him back.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ replied the old woman and smiled at her son. Then she leant in close to James and whispered, ‘You belong to me and Billy now, and that’s the end of it. We made a bargain, remember? That farmer and his wife are still alive because of it.’

  After she had finished, she slapped her hands together and rubbed them clean on her apron. From its front pocket she drew out a small paring knife, and went over to the wall and scored a horizontal line through the four vertical ones that James had already drawn.

  And then she left, locking the door behind her, leaving the boy sitting in the dark, shuttered wagon as she and Billy walked away over the grass.

  42

  The heart was kept in a mason jar, full of salted water and herbs, which sat in the dark of a cupboard in the old woman’s caravan. Occasionally, she would take out the jar and hold it up to the light, spinning rainbows in the water. Billy would look away whenever he saw it.

  ‘Put it away, Ma,’ he told her finally, after seeing the grey thing once too often, bumping against the inside of the glass, as he sat and drank his tea. ‘It en’t no thing to be looking at, let alone keep in a jar. Whatchoo holding on to it for anyway?’

  But she smiled and shushed him.

  ‘A heart from a man like that is far more useful than gold or money. Least that’s what’s clear from the stories told before either of us was born or even thought about.’

  ‘So what are you gonna do with it then?’

  ‘Lots of things.’

  ‘Well, I just wish you’d hurry up and get rid of it.’

  The old woman stowed the jar in the cupboard and then looked into her son’s eyes. ‘You freed him,’ she said, patting his shoulder. ‘You didn’t kill him.’ Billy stared back at her. He smoothed out the lines on his forehead with the back of a hand.

  ‘Yeah? Well, it’s still a burden, “freeing” a man, if that’s what you want to call it.’ He stood up from the table and opened the door, and let the sunlight warm his face before he left.

  After he had gone, the old woman went to the rocking chair and picked up the wooden mannequin from its seat. She inspected the bandage on its broken leg, before sitting it on the worktop beside the stove. And then she took out the jar again. She scrutinized the heart for some time, rotating the jar, observing the mechanism that had pumped life through Webster. She had seen human hearts before, but this one was slightly larger than the others.

  ‘Powerful though,’ she whispered to the little man as she held the jar up close to his face, ballooning its painted eyes in the glass. Then the jar went back into the dark of the cupboard because they had many things to pickle and prepare on such a special day.

  For it was the summer solstice.

  43

  It had been seven nights since the full moon and now the eighth was beginning.

  In the gloom, James counted the seven marks on the wooden wall again before turning round and sitting back down on his mattress to look out through the bars at the new view in front of him.

  Earlier in the day, he had heard shouting in the distance, carried on the wind. When he had rushed to the bars and peered into the thin vertical line of light between the shutters, he had been unable to see anything except for the usual green strip of field. Later, when he heard sounds outside the wagon, he got up from his mattress to look through the gap in the shutters again and saw Billy backing a dirty green Land Rover past the bars.

  He wobbled whe
n the wagon jolted suddenly, wondering what was going on. And then he guessed.

  When the wagon started moving, he heard the hiss of grass below him and stared out through the shutters at the traveller caravans as they swung into view. Beyond them he could see the fairground being picked apart by people the size of ants and caught sight of the roller-coaster track being winched down in its various parts.

  Soon the wheels were picking up speed over a road and James managed to stand up, planting his hands on the shutters to steady himself, and look out through the gap again.

  Blue sky.

  A hedgerow ticking past.

  Trees.

  An old white road sign flashed by with the name Froggington written in black letters. It meant nothing to James.

  At first, whenever a car passed, going the other way, he shouted out, but it soon became obvious no one could hear him. A red sports car did overtake them on a stretch of road. Top down. A middle-aged man wearing a dark suit sitting behind the wheel. But, when James yelled out as the car roared past, the man only looked round momentarily and then focused back on the road.

  James could not be sure how long they travelled for.

  It seemed like hours, the wagon wobbling and making him sick, his nose and forehead becoming numb against the shutters as his single, staring eye ached.

  They stopped once, at a junction, and James saw a young woman pushing a pram along the narrow path beside the road. He yelled as loudly as he could. But, when the woman looked up, she seemed to stare straight at him, without seeing him behind the shutters. He tried wiggling his fingers out through the gap. But, by then, they were already moving again and picking up speed.