The Dark Inside

by Rupert Wallis

  Gudgeon put the key fob in his pocket. When he opened the door, Billy was smiling.

  ‘Looks a good padlock. You got the keys? I need to get in there.’

  ‘Left ’em with your mam. The gun too.’

  Billy pursed his lips. Made a thin, wet sucking sound. Nodded.

  ‘Right then.’ He turned and walked away.

  Gudgeon shut the door and turned round to lean against it.

  ‘It’s his ma I should be scared of,’ he whispered, looking at the pot. And then he shook his head. ‘But if that boy’s an angel then there’s nothing to be afraid of at all, is there?’ He stood there as if waiting for a reply. ‘Not if I’m doing the right thing.’ He looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes.

  49

  His ma’s caravan was dark inside. But Billy saw the gun leaning against the wall as soon as he opened the door. Then he saw her outline. She was sitting by the window in her rocking chair. Not a sound.

  ‘Ma?’

  He turned on the light, but she did not look up at him. Her eyes flickered beneath their pale, papery lids. Bony shoulders twitched beneath the back shawl. Her lips moved wordlessly as she clutched the leather pouch hanging from her neck. Billy watched her, wondering where she might be. And then a little piece inside of him dropped away for he knew one day she would leave him for good and never come back.

  Rubbing away the goosebumps on his forearms, he noticed the two keys on the table, attached to their tiny metal ring, and guessed they were the ones for the padlock that Gudgeon had bought. So he picked them up.

  The rocking chair started to tick. His mother looked old and disappointed when she opened her eyes and watched Billy crouch down in front of her.

  ‘Been somewhere nice, Ma?’ But all she did was blink as though coming round from a deep sleep. ‘Well, I hope so.’ He picked up a blanket beside the chair, and tucked it round her knees and smiled. But, before he could stand up, she slapped him hard round the face, leaning forward and grabbing his wrist as he reeled backwards.

  ‘He’s here,’ she whispered.

  ‘Who is, Ma?’ he asked, frightened now.

  ‘Webster. In the woods.’

  Billy opened his mouth and then shut it. He looked away and saw the empty mason jar sitting on the worktop beside the stove. The heart was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘You’ll bring the boy to me first, and then you’ll go and find him. And this time you’ll use both barrels whether you need to or not. And you’ll show me his body and I’ll cut out his heart myself.’

  Billy nodded. He looked down at the floor. His lips trembled.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ma.’

  She reached up and took his hands in hers, and looked him in the eyes.

  ‘Do it right this time, son.’

  ‘Why’s it so important, Ma? For me to kill a man.’

  ‘Because there’s a cure to the curse, in the old talk, that’s been handed down. A secret.’ She paused, as though remembering something she had been told a long time ago. ‘If the maker kills themselves out of grief for what they’ve done, then the one they’ve cursed will be cured.’ She squeezed Billy’s hands. ‘If Webster ever did that then the boy wouldn’t be cursed no more. Then we’d have nothing. Not Webster. And not the boy. And then what would have been the point of it all?’

  ‘And do you believe it, Ma?’

  ‘I can’t not. And neither can you. Not if you want the fair to be what you need it to be to prove yer da wrong and so you can get on living yer life, starting a family, and giving me the granddaughter I need so the old ways don’t stop with me.’ She smiled and looked over at the wooden mannequin which was sitting on the floor against the wall, its bandaged leg stretched out flat beside the other. ‘Once he’s healed, he’ll be just perfect for her like he was for me.’

  Billy glanced at the wooden man and then stared at the ends of his boots, thinking about things until they were all just a blur and the tingling in his cheek from her slap had vanished. And then he nodded.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ll find him.’ And then he stood up, and turned round and left, picking up the Lanber as he went out of the door into the dark.

  ‘I love you,’ she shouted after him.

  Billy reappeared in the doorway a heartbeat later. Cracked a little smile.

  ‘I know.’

  But then his mother shrugged and folded her arms. ‘And that’s why you lied to me,’ she said.

  Billy bit the soft inside of his cheek and looked down at the white floor until shapes began to swirl.

  50

  Gudgeon shut the door of his caravan and walked to the edge of the traveller camp. He drifted out of its glow into the dark and followed the hedge around the field, keeping low, so his outline did not appear to anyone. He stopped when he came to a black tangle of brambles and scanned the open grass. Flat and sheer in the dark. Like the surface of a reservoir. The woods behind the wagon were nothing more than murk, while the lights from the fair splashed across the green canopy from time to time like electric rain. Above the fairground the sky was pearly and bright, like a great arch of marble.

  Gudgeon looked up above him. Stars twitched and shimmered.

  ‘You better be watching,’ he whispered and then started moving again alongside the hedge. After a few strides, he stopped and crouched low to the ground.

  A figure was running over the field towards the wagon. Judging by the shape and the gait, it was Billy. Gudgeon guessed the black stick in one hand was the Lanber.

  He looked up at the sky again and nodded.

  ‘Guess I’ll wait then.’

  Suddenly, Billy stopped in the middle of the field as though listening for something. Gudgeon kept still. Held his breath, afraid it might give him away.

  Then Billy ran on and reached the wagon.

  Gudgeon did not hear the padlock being opened or the hasp being pulled back. But he saw the steel door opening, glinting in the moonlight.

  And, as Billy opened it, someone flashed out from the woods behind the wagon. A man, judging by his size.

  The figure was sprinting.

  Gudgeon leant forward.

  He saw what was going to happen even before it did. As though he had imagined this moment in his sleep and was now watching it for real.

  Billy half turned in the open doorway before the moving figure collided with him.

  There was a muffled cry. The steel door banged. Both men fell through into the wagon. And then there was nothing except for the sound of Gudgeon’s breath behind his ribs.

  51

  Two men tumbled through the doorway on to the hard, wooden floor of the wagon.

  James shrank back.

  One of the men was Billy.

  And the other was Webster, scrambling to his feet in the grainy dark. Wild black hair in knots. Chest heaving. Clothes ripped and torn beneath his greatcoat. He kicked out at the shape that was Billy, leaving him coughing on the floor.

  Picking up the Lanber, he stretched out his other hand to James.

  ‘We need to leave.’

  But James did not move, his bare feet stuck to the floor. When he opened his mouth to try and speak, he inhaled the warm dark around him. The corners of his jaw winked, but the words he wanted were hidden down too deep. So he shut his eyes and looked for his mother in the dark inside, hoping she might guide him. And there she was. Smiling. Ready to do what he wanted, to ask Webster all the questions he couldn’t about what had happened on the moor.

  ‘Come on,’ urged Webster. When James opened his eyes, it was just the two of them again. And Billy. He stepped back when Webster reached out his hand further towards him.

  ‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said gently. ‘I promise.’

  But on each dirty fingernail pointing at him, James noticed there was a full moon slowly rising and it made him shudder.

  Billy grabbed his ankle, making James gasp. But Webster kicked it away, stamping down on Billy’s forearm, and he held out his hand again, waiting for the boy to
take it. James looked from Webster to Billy and back again. He heard the fair in the distance, and the wagon seemed to shrink with every heartbeat until he shuddered and blinked, and found himself staring at the marks on the wall. He counted them one by one. All nine of them. And then he read the words he had scratched into the wood.

  UTRINQUE PARATUS

  Webster saw them too. And when he nodded the boy nodded back.

  James steeled himself, trying to forget about the night on the moor and what happened. But he couldn’t.

  ‘I can’t forgive you,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t, like you couldn’t forgive Cook.’

  ‘I know,’ whispered Webster, his hand holding steady. ‘It’s hard. Just like that vicar said.’ And, even though James kept nodding, he found himself edging slowly towards Webster, his only friend who had come to rescue him. Who had come back, despite everything that had happened. Who was alive and not dead, as he had thought.

  The boy smelt bog and sweat and brambles as he grasped Webster’s hand. But this time he didn’t falter.

  Webster guided him out of the wagon and slammed the steel door behind them. He turned the key that was still in the lock and then flung it away into the darkness. He clicked the padlock shut too. And threw away both keys on the metal ring. He stared at James with fierce blue eyes.

  ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’

  And James nodded.

  Webster popped out the two cartridges from the Lanber and hurled the empty gun as hard as he could into the dark field.

  ‘Webster!’ shouted Billy through the bars of the wagon. ‘Webster!’

  They turned and ran.

  The woods swallowed them up. Dark canopies covered the sky and took away the stars. Trunks closed up behind them until they could no longer see the field or the wagon, or any of the lights from the fair. The trees stood silently around them.

  Webster stopped when he heard something, and James held his breath and listened to the night.

  Somewhere an owl hooted.

  A dark shape skimmed between the branches above them.

  They watched it wheel round.

  ‘Come on,’ said Webster, dragging James, who looked behind him and saw a tawny owl gliding low between the trees. He stumbled as he turned back round and fell to the ground. Leaf litter laughed in his ears. And then claws hooked his hair. A beak hammered on his skull. James gasped. He screamed.

  Webster flung out his arms at the owl, and the creature tried to take off with its claws still caught in the boy’s black jumper. James screamed again, and Webster tore off the jumper and flung it away with the bird still attached. He threw his arm around the boy and they stumbled on.

  When he looked back, the owl was gone. But the bitter smell of the old woman was all around them as they gulped in the fresh night air.

  52

  Billy stood at the bars, swaying with rage. Gudgeon looked up at him.

  ‘I thought I heard some—’

  ‘The bloody keys, Gudge,’ shouted Billy, pointing out into the dark field. ‘Find the bloody keys.’

  Gudgeon unhooked his hands from the bars, and walked away and stood staring at the ground. But he was not looking for the keys. He was searching for something to make sense of what had happened.

  He had not recognized the man who had attacked Billy and rescued the boy. It had been too dark to see anything clearly.

  But he knew who it was just the same. Because he had heard Billy shout out the man’s name. Twice.

  It was Webster. Webster came back.

  ‘Gudge, over there,’ screamed Billy. ‘Look over there!’

  Webster’s back. He rescued the boy.

  Gudgeon’s brain ticked.

  They know each other then.

  So they must have talked to each other before now.

  Told each other things.

  Just like I talked to Webster.

  And told Webster things too.

  ‘Gudge, can you see them? Can you see the keys?’

  Gudgeon’s scar was on fire.

  The boy knows the things that Webster knows.

  So maybe the boy’s no angel after all.

  ‘Gudgeon!’ screamed Billy again.

  But the old man barely heard him.

  Maybe the boy’s no angel after all.

  The leaves on the trees laughed as a gentle breeze caught them. The grass under his feet prickled. Stars winked down, and the cold space between him and the sky yawned wider. Gudgeon panicked suddenly and put out his hands to steady himself. He took a deep breath.

  ‘Gudgeon!’

  I got to know for sure.

  He turned and marched back to the wagon, fingers searching in his pockets for the leather key fob, and fitted the smaller key into the padlock and turned it. The large iron key crept into the steel lock and the door opened. But, before he could ask Billy anything, a tawny owl skimmed past him, hooting, making him turn and duck. He stared into its eyes as it passed, recognising them immediately, for the last time he had looked into them they had been staring at him in the old woman’s caravan.

  Billy patted him on the arm as he ran down the steps.

  ‘Good man, Gudge,’ he said as he sprinted towards the woods, following the owl as it hooted again, before disappearing into the canopy.

  ‘I’ll come with you!’ Gudgeon cried out.

  ‘Come on then,’ roared Billy as he made for a gap in the trees.

  And Gudgeon followed him because he wanted to know the truth.

  Just as he had always done.

  53

  Webster and James stumbled between the trees, Webster pulling the boy until his arm ached and his legs burned. He turned round to yell at James to work harder at keeping up, but the barefooted child was thin and dirty and wretched. Tears had cut bright paths through the grime on his face.

  Webster stopped. Dug down into a pocket of his greatcoat. Found the battered plastic bottle of water that was always with him and offered it to James after unscrewing the top. The boy looked at the bottle and said nothing for a moment, and then took it and drank deeply, and wiped his mouth.

  ‘Where are we going?’ James asked, shuddering as the water trickled through him.

  ‘Away.’

  ‘Away where?’

  Webster took the bottle back, and screwed the top back on and dropped it into his pocket.

  James was still looking at him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ whispered James.

  ‘Maybe I should be.’ Webster could not stop staring at the scars on James’s back. ‘Did I do all of that to you?’ he asked quietly. When the boy said nothing, Webster looked away. ‘All I remember is your voice. Calling me across the moor.’ His shoulders bunched, then dropped and shivered. He began to sob. ‘It wasn’t me. It wasn’t.’

  James wanted to shout. To scream. But he didn’t. All the anger inside him had gone. And so had his fear. He took a deep breath.

  ‘I know,’ he said, and slid his hand into Webster’s and squeezed it.

  Webster wiped his eyes. Stared at the ground. Shuffled through the leaf litter with a black boot as if looking for something beneath the mulch. James noticed he was wearing an old trainer on his other foot without any laces.

  ‘We’re the same now, you and me,’ whispered Webster. ‘And there’s no cure for it. That’s what the old woman said. There’s no way out of this life we have now.’

  ‘But . . . it isn’t . . .’ And suddenly James took a step back, shaking his head as his stomach prickled, for he could feel a panic growing there. ‘I don’t feel any different. Are you sure? Is it really true?’

  Webster nodded. ‘You’ll know what I know at the next full moon.’

  James kept staring up at him, trying to think up questions to ask, but all that came to him was the memory of how life had been after his mother had died. That none of it had felt true, but he had come to accept it was, even though he coul
d not make any sense of it all.

  They heard footsteps nearby.

  Webster crouched down, pulling James close to him, as a figure emerged in their eyeline, drifting between the tree trunks. The black shape of a man.

  ‘Who is it?’ whispered James as he began to shiver. Webster said nothing, watching as another figure appeared. When he noticed a tree trunk lying close by, he pulled the boy after him and they lay down on the ground, tight behind the log. They listened as the two figures came closer. And then the footsteps stopped.

  ‘You see ’em, Gudge?’ said a voice.

  ‘No.’

  It was quiet for a while and James wanted to look up, but Webster held on tight when he felt him trying to move.

  ‘They’re here somewhere,’ came Billy’s voice again. ‘We’ll find ’em.’

  ‘What are you going to do with them?’

  ‘The boy goes back to the wagon. The other one . . .’ Billy’s voice trailed off. He hawked and spat. ‘Well, me ma wants him dead.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because it’s important.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because she says so. And that’s all you need to know, Gudge.’

  ‘Is it cos he’s not cursed no more?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Billy’s voice sounded surprised. ‘What you say that for? What’s all that to you?’

  ‘And the boy?’ gasped Gudgeon. ‘What about the boy?’

  All James and Webster could hear was a boot drifting back and forth through the leaves.

  ‘You’re the one who let him out,’ growled Billy’s voice. ‘En’t you? You’re the bastard who let Webster go. It weren’t nothing to do with Smithy at all. Whatchoo let him out for, you dopey old sod?’

  Suddenly, there was a scuffle in the leaves. Heavy breathing. A whimper. The sound of someone in pain.

  ‘Whatchoo let him out for?’ shouted Billy again.

  ‘To help him!’

  ‘Help him? You stupi—’

  ‘Aggh! No! Stop! I’ll help you get ’em back,’ shouted Gudgeon. ‘I will. But just tell me about the boy. What is he? What is he really?’