The Dark Inside (23 page)

He thought about all these things for a long time. Until he decided what he was going to do.

It was late morning by the time he found the problem with the Lanber.

Then he went outside and climbed into his van, and drove over the grass field to Billy’s caravan with its bright green lettering.

When he knocked on the door, Billy opened it and yawned before fixing Gudgeon in his sights.

‘I’ve got to go into town to get something for your gun to fix it,’ said Gudgeon, glancing at all the paperwork on the table behind Billy.

‘Lovely job.’

‘And I’ll get you a proper padlock there too. I’ll fit it on the wagon before it gets dark.’

‘Thanks,’ said Billy as Gudgeon turned to go. ‘You’re a star, Gudge. A real good man.’ Gudgeon raised his hand without turning round, and got back into his van and
drove away out of the field.

In town, after asking around, he found a field sports shop and bought a new mainspring for the top barrel of the Lanber. Then he went to the nearest hardware shop and chose the
biggest steel padlock he could find, with a cadmium coating, and bought a stout black hasp. He also had a third key cut for the padlock to match the two in the packet, which he had opened.

It was late afternoon by the time he returned to the traveller camp and saw the big rides of the fair ready and waiting for the evening trade, motionless against the blue sky. He drove across
the field right up to the wagon, its shutters still closed, and took out the power drill from among the tools in the back of his van and went about fitting the hasp, putting two self-tapping wood
screws into the wooden door frame and two self-tapping metal screws into the steel door. When the hasp was secure, he opened the padlock and pushed the arm of it through the eye of the hasp and
snapped it shut. He pulled hard on it to check it was locked.

There was no sound from within the wagon. And Gudgeon said nothing either. After he had finished, he put the power drill back in his van. Then he inspected the wagon, checking the shutters and
its underside, as Billy had asked him to do.

‘I’m gonna let you out,’ said Gudgeon quietly as he walked slowly around the wagon, pressing his hands on the wooden sides. ‘I’ll do it. But I’ve gotta come
up with a plan so’s I don’t get caught.’ Although there was no reply, Gudgeon knew he must have been heard.

Afterwards, he drove back across the field to his caravan and then worked on the Lanber, replacing the spring for the top barrel with the new one he had bought. When he’d finished, he
fired off both barrels to check they were working.

The sun was setting by the time he walked up the steps to Billy’s caravan. The fair was already pumping music into the sky. He could just pick out the Orbiter, raising the clusters of cars
on its arms, as it started to rotate. Faster and faster it spun, creating a whirring, humming corona of pinks and blues that made his eyes sing and he had to look away.

Billy was not there. So Gudgeon went to his ma’s caravan and knocked on the door. When the old woman opened it, he nodded his head.

‘All right, Esther?’

‘Gudge.’

‘I got these two keys for your boy. He’ll know what they’re for,’ he said, holding them up by their tiny metal ring. The old woman nodded, and took the keys and placed
them on the counter just inside the door. A black pot was bubbling gently on the stove behind her, blowing out steam whenever the lid lifted off with the heat. He could smell sage and aniseed and
lavender. ‘I fixed this gun of his too. Needed a new spring. That’s why he was having trouble with the upper barrel.’ The old woman nodded, and took the gun and stood it inside
the door.

‘You need paying?’

Gudgeon shook his head.

‘All sorted.’ When he turned to go, she grabbed his elbow with her bony fingers.

‘Money doesn’t always do what it should. You look tired. I’ve got a tonic if you want it. Help you sleep better.’

Gudgeon nodded. ‘Thank you.’

He followed her into the dim-lit caravan and waited, looking up at the bunches of herbs dangling from the ceiling, as the old woman rooted through a collection of jars in a cupboard.

When he heard the sound of a rocking chair, he looked up and saw a wooden man sitting on the seat, its undersized legs swinging, one of them bandaged from the knee to the hip.
Swinging like
a child’s legs,
thought Gudgeon as he felt a chill on his neck and looked away.

‘It’s in here somewhere,’ said the old woman without looking back. Suddenly, the simmering pot on the stove bubbled over and water gushed down over the sides. Quickly, Gudgeon
reached across, and lifted the lid and turned down the heat. As the steam cleared, he saw a piece of grey meat bobbing in the water, reflecting the light.

‘Supper for your boy, is it?’ he asked as she appeared beside him.

‘Oh, it’s too good for him. It’s just my business,’ she said and Gudgeon nodded and smiled because he knew not to ask any more. He leant forward over the pot, and
breathed in and closed his eyes. He saw a face surrounded with golden blonde hair in the deep dark of himself and smiled.

‘My wife used to stuff them with sage and onion. Or put them with other pluck to make haggis.’ Gudgeon opened his eyes. ‘A sheep’s heart for my ram she’d always say
when she served it up.’ He blushed a little. ‘Of course, we were much younger then,’ he said, putting back the lid.

The rocking chair suddenly stopped its creaking, but Gudgeon didn’t look. He kept his eyes firmly on the old woman as she handed him a small brown bottle of tonic. Then he watched her lift
the lid and look down into the pot, and stare at the heart rolling in the water. Her eyes were misty and red. The eyelids almost see-through.

‘You all right, Esther?’

She looked over at the gun standing by the door.

‘Problem with his gun, you said?’

‘That’s right,’ replied Gudgeon. ‘Misfire on the top barrel making it jam.’

The old woman put down the lid on the pot and turned off the heat. She held out a pair of oven gloves to Gudgeon.

‘Why don’t you take it for yer supper, Gudge?’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ she said, nodding her head. ‘I don’t need it any more.’

After scoring a ninth mark in the wooden wall, James sat quietly in the dark, thinking about Webster and Billy, and what had happened on the moor.

He remembered how the single gunshot had echoed up out of the gully and over the gorse and the heather. He recalled seeing the heart in Billy’s hand as the man had sat down in the car.
There had been an iron smell of blood. The whiff of the shotgun. The bitter stench of boggy mud clinging to Billy’s boots. The gleam in the old woman’s eye had been as bright as a
sunbeam as she’d wrapped Webster’s heart in her black shawl.

James turned everything over and over in his mind, and came to the same conclusion every time. Webster was dead. But then Billy’s worried face loomed up in front of him and persuaded him
to think through everything again.
Why would the man who killed Webster think he was still alive?

Eventually, James had become tired and dozed, dreaming that Webster had two hearts, but Billy had only taken one of them, allowing Webster to live out his days on the moor because he had felt
sorry for the man who was cursed to live as something else.

James had woken later to the sound of a drill. He listened as someone worked on the wagon door, not knowing who, because he could not see anyone through the crack in the
shutters. So he sat. Listened. And tried to work out what was happening.

When he heard Gudgeon walking around the wagon, whispering that he was going to let him out, James just nodded. He was too relieved to speak. And he wanted the old man’s words to linger
all around him in the dark because they were a comfort.

After Gudgeon had left, James drank from the wooden cup until his throat was cool. And for the first time he noticed a warmth inside of him, which he realized was hope.

After Billy had rolled back the shutters to reveal the stars, James heard him walk up the steps and pause at the door. And then the man walked back down and looked up through
the bars.

‘You’re locked up doubly tight now, boy,’ he said. ‘You want yer food?’

‘Yes.’

Billy folded his arms.

‘You’re sure?’ And James nodded. ‘I’ll go get it then.’

After Billy had disappeared, James listened to the distant noises of the fair. The sounds of faraway voices made his heart shrink and he closed his eyes. And then he thought he heard someone
moving in the dark across the grass. He watched carefully and glimpsed the outline of a person beside a section of the hedgerow running around the field. He wondered if it might be Gudgeon. He
whispered quietly into the night, hoping that he might hear him on some secret wavelength and come to set him free before Billy returned.

But the old man did not appear.

Gudgeon stood in his caravan, in the lamplight, and laid two keys on the table in front of him. One was the large iron key for the steel door of the wagon, which had been in
his possession since he had been a young boy. And one was for the padlock, which had been with him for less than a day.

He rooted around in a drawer until he found an old circular key fob made of brown leather which was sun-cracked and worn. And he slid both keys on to the metal ring of the fob, and put them back
down on the table and stared at them again.

‘So, Gudge,’ he said to himself. ‘What’s the plan?’

He stood for a long time, thinking about what he was going to do next. It had been risky enough letting out Webster, the man who had been his friend for a while, who had suffered from nightmares
as loud and as frightening as his own, which was why they had got round to talking in the first place.

But it would be much more difficult to free the boy. Billy was watching the wagon. Gudgeon sighed and shook his head. The heart the old woman had given him made his whole caravan smell as it sat
cooling in the pot on the hob. It made him shudder, and he closed his eyes and stared into the dark until he saw his wife.

‘The boy’s an angel’
she whispered.

Gudgeon nodded his head.

‘Yes,’ he whispered back.

A sharp knock at the door startled him and his eyes snapped open.

‘Gudge?’ shouted Billy. ‘You there, old man?’

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.

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.