The Dark Inside (24 page)

‘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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 could 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?’

‘He’s cursed too! Just like Webster. What do you think?’

The two men were breathing hard as they struggled. And then someone thumped heavily to the ground with a grunt and rolled in the leaf litter.

Webster felt the boy’s heart hammering in his own chest as they lay wrapped in each other’s arms.