The Dark Inside (19 page)

He closed the door behind him.

The key turned in the lock again.

Footsteps padded away.

James picked up the bowl of broth and sniffed it. Hedgerows and mud. He swirled the spoon and pearl barley bobbed in the liquid. He was hungry enough to try it. It tasted slick and sweet and
wholesome, and he ate as much as he was able.

When he had finished, he picked up the wooden cup. It was empty, but when James tipped it up, as Billy had told him to do, water ran up over the lip and on to the floor. When he looked again,
the cup was empty. He tipped it up a few more times and, each time, water appeared at the lip. Yet, every time afterwards, the cup was empty. The boy stared at the wooden bottom and shook his head
because he did not understand it.

He wished he had not eaten the broth.

When the door opened again, it was the old woman who stepped through into the wagon. Billy stood behind her, waiting on the white steps, his outline clear in the bright
moonlight.

She glanced into the almost-empty bowl.

‘Good boy,’ she said, nodding.

After inspecting the wounds on James’s shoulders, she left the dressings off, folding them up and putting them in her skirt pocket.

‘There’s stories that the moon can heal creatures like you,’ she said, looking up at the sky through the bars. ‘You should bathe tonight in the waning moonlight. Draw as
much strength from it as you can.’

‘Creatures like me?’ whispered James.

And the old woman shone back a smile and nodded, and picked up the metal bowl and the spoon, and left.

Before he closed the door, Billy threw in a thin stripy mattress that flopped on to the floor like a dead fish. Two red blankets landed on top of it.

James sat alone on the dirty mattress and looked up at the moon. His shoulders and his neck were sore, and he turned to let the moonlight fall on them. But it seemed to make no difference.
Eventually, he lay on his side, staring at the wooden wall opposite, trying not to think about anything except for who he was.

When he rolled over, he felt something uncomfortable in the front pocket of his jeans. It was the small black torch he had taken from the farmer’s kitchen. He pressed in the rubber button,
and the light roared into the dark and lifted his heart. He started remembering everything he could about the farmer and his wife, and all the good in their faces, flashing the light around the
walls of the wagon to try and chase away the dark. But the night wouldn’t leave, only shrinking back and then creeping forward again as soon as he moved the beam.

The wagon was smaller than his bedroom in Timpston. For the first time since leaving home he wished himself back in his bed, safe under the covers. But then his stepfather’s face loomed up
inside him and made him shudder, and he stared into the shaky pool of light on the wall until his hand had stopped trembling.

After turning off the torch to save the batteries, and hiding it under the mattress, he lay down and fell asleep to the distant sounds of the fair. He conjured himself into a long, slow dream
wherein the world had ended and he was the only person left wandering through an ashen waste with no one left to speak to. All he could do was keep walking, hoping to find some way out of the
desolate wasteland where the silence was so loud it hurt his ears and the blood in his bones.

James awoke as soon as the door opened. The daylight and the quiet shocked him as he stared at the green field in front of the wagon, steaming gently in the early morning sun.
A blackbird took fright at something, trilling as it strobed past the black metal bars, its shadow ticking through the golden bands of sunlight lying evenly spaced on the wooden floor. He righted
himself on the mattress and huddled the blankets closer as the old woman walked towards him.

Billy waited on the steps like before as she inspected the boy’s wounds, sighing her disappointment when she saw they had not healed.

‘Some of these stories are so old,’ she said, ‘that no one really knows any more what’s true and what en’t.’ She tapped her chin. Tugged at the hairs
sprouting from one of her ears. ‘A child like you is a very rare thing,’ she said, smiling. ‘Valuable too.’ And she looked over at Billy who smiled back. ‘At least
we’ll have new stories to tell now,’ she continued, ‘and I’ll make sure they won’t get lost like before.’ She waved her hand at Billy and he threw her an old
black sweater which she caught in one bony hand. It was the one James had been wearing on the moor. But the holes in the back had been stitched up and the whole thing had been washed clean.

She applied new dressings to his wounds, and then rolled the sweater carefully down over James’s head and torso, trying not to hurt him.

When she stood up, James hooked his hand around her arm to stop her leaving.

‘Am I really different now?’ he asked. ‘Am I really cursed?’ The old woman nodded. ‘But I don’t feel different. Nothing’s changed inside.’

‘It will. The next full moon will make it happen.’

‘I never saw Webster on the moor.’

The old woman smiled. ‘He saw you though, didn’t he?’ she said.

‘I mean I never saw what he was. If he was really what you said.’

‘Would he have done this to you if he wasn’t?’

When she turned to go, he tugged on her arm again, pulling her back.

‘Webster was a soldier. He’s seen terrible things which upset him. Changed him. I think he might have believed he was cursed because that’s what you told him.’

‘And why would he have believed that, my love?’

James felt himself shaking. ‘Because . . .’ He licked his lips and took a breath. ‘Because he might have been confused about a lot of things.’

But the old woman just smiled.

‘Is that what you really think?’ She pointed at his shoulders. ‘Would he really have done that to you if he was only a man?’

James blinked back at her, remembering how Webster had promised never to hurt him. And then he looked down at the wooden floor. But there were no answers there.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I can’t say I know anything for sure.’

The old woman laughed. A dry, brittle sound.

And then she walked away.

Out of the wagon.

Down the steps.

And across the dewy, steaming grass.

Billy locked the door. And then he unhitched a pair of wooden shutters on the outside of the wagon at either end of the bars and began pulling across the one on the left.

‘Ma says the daylight’s not for someone like you no more. You best forget about it. Like the world out there’s gonna forget about you too. Yoo’se a whole different person
now.’

‘The world won’t forget about me. My picture’s in the paper.’

Billy shrugged.

‘You en’t the only news. Things move on. And what we got planned means the world en’t never gonna see you. Not like this anyway.’

‘What are you going to do with me?’

‘Work you. For a while. And then who knows after that? Depends on you.’ Billy thought about something as he brought round the left-hand shutter to the middle of the bars. Then he
smiled and stood looking at James. ‘See, what you got is a gift. One you can give to someone on a full moon. Now people’ll pay once to see a freak and be scared. But the next time
around they’ll be expecting something more. Double the thrill for double the money. And that’s where you come in, passing on yer gift to as many people as we need. There’s no
accounting for punters’ tastes. For what they want to see. And then there’s freaks fighting too. Which is where the real money is. Because everyone likes a flutter, don’t
they?’

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.

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.

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.