The Dark Inside Page 9

  ‘What do you want with them?’

  ‘It’s Webster we want. The boy’s just bait.’ Billy raised his eyebrows as something occurred to him. ‘For now anyway.’

  ‘What’s Webster done?’

  ‘It’s what’s been done to him is more important.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  But Billy did not seem to hear the question.

  ‘Yoo’se gonna speak to him when he comes back. Tell him he’s coming with us because he’s got no choice. Because we got the boy.’ Billy winced as the tip of the knife went in too deep beneath a nail. ‘And we don’t want him hurting himself neither or doing nothing stupid. Webster’s a valuable man to us. Special.’

  Billy reached for a holdall on the floor beside the sofa and drew out a pair of handcuffs which he laid on the glass coffee table in front of Cook.

  ‘He’s to lock himself up in these.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t want to?’

  Billy shrugged.

  ‘My ma is the one who’ll do it. She’s got those skills. And she won’t have an ounce of guilt if it comes to using them on the boy.’

  Cook thought about that. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry.

  ‘Webster’s his own man. He won’t do what I say.’

  ‘Then you’ll both be to blame for what happens to the boy.’ Billy placed the penknife down on the coffee table away from the handcuffs. ‘The world’s a tough old place for sure,’ he sighed, ‘but I reckon you know that better than me.’ He set the penknife spinning on the glass top and watched the blade flashing back the daylight. ‘I know you en’t always lived here on yer own. Not in this big old house.’ Billy grinned and lowered his voice. ‘My ma can still smell her in the curtains and the furniture.’ The knife stopped, the blade pointing directly at Cook. ‘We all take our turn eventually, don’t we? En’t nothing we can do about that.’

  Cook stared at the penknife. And then looked away, remembering his wife. Her golden hair. The shape of her mouth. The pinch of the Cupid’s bow. The hollow in the small of her back where he would lay his hand.

  ‘You tell Webster to stay nice and calm. We want him without a scratch. He’s a special man.’

  ‘So you keep saying,’ said Cook. ‘What’s so special about him?’

  Billy smiled. Folded his arms.

  ‘He was attacked on the night of a full moon.’

  ‘So?’

  When Billy saw Cook’s blank stare, he threw back his head and howled at the ceiling, his throat gobbling like a turkey’s. Cook began shaking his head as soon as he realized.

  ‘He’s got the marks to prove it,’ said Billy, ‘the story to tell too. That’s why he’s come back here. To try and undo what happened to him in the park before we found him and made him ours. My ma’s seen it and the boy told her too when she asked him. Webster’s got this notion he can forgive the creature what attacked him so he don’t become one neither.’ Billy smiled. ‘They spoke to a priest about it.’ He shrugged as though it was all beyond him. ‘I en’t so sure there’s any way to undo what’s happened.’ He picked up the penknife and folded the blade away, stowing it in his trouser pocket. And then he looked up at Cook and smiled. ‘Just like there en’t no way of bringing yer wife back to the world neither.’

  After Billy had left, Cook sat for a long time, pondering what he believed to be true about the world and what he did not. About Webster. And about the old woman too.

  Eventually, James awoke and Cook described everything Billy had told him. When he finished, the boy bowed his head.

  ‘I’m sorry. We didn’t mean for this to happen. We should never have stayed with you.’

  ‘Do you really believe that Webster was attacked by something most people think belongs in stories?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  Cook sighed and shook his head. James looked away and said nothing.

  ‘What does he remember about that night in the park?’ asked Cook.

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘I think he only believes he was attacked by something terrifying because that’s what these people want him to believe.’

  James tried moving his wrists because they were sore. The washing line creaked. His mind ticked over.

  And over.

  ‘No,’ he said eventually, shaking his head. ‘He must have been attacked. There are two scars on his back. Claw marks. I’ve seen them.’

  Cook looked round the room and nodded over at the small round table beside the window. ‘See that newspaper? The local one?’

  James nodded.

  ‘Have a look at the whole of the front page,’ Cook said to him.

  James rocked back and forth and lurched up off the sofa. He worked his way over to the table, and bent down over the newspaper. A headline ran across the lower section of the page:

  Third Knife Attack In Local Park This Month

  He read the whole article, and then he shuffled back to Cook and sat down on the sofa.

  ‘Last night,’ he said eventually, ‘what you said about war. Can it change people enough to make them believe in things that aren’t true?’

  ‘I think it probably can, yes.’

  ‘Can they ever change back?’

  But Cook didn’t know what to say.

  James touched his face and felt the tiny bumps of the scars on his cheeks, and remembered how Webster had used the ointment to heal him.

  ‘I’ve seen things that don’t make sense,’ he said, ‘but they were definitely real. What about the old woman? The things she’s done to us?’

  Cook shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know how to explain what she’s done or the things you say you’ve seen,’ he said.

  James tried not to think about anything because it was too confusing to know what to believe or what he wished to be true for Webster. So he ran his eyes round the living room, over the furniture and the walls and the windows, happy just to see things for what they were.

  Then something occurred to him.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what we believe, does it?’ he said.

  Cook thought about that. And then he nodded. ‘You mean as long as Webster finds the person he thinks attacked him then he can cure himself by forgiving them, and hang whatever we think.’

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘As long as he forgives them like the vicar told us. Then the travellers wouldn’t want him any more. Not if Webster tells them he’s cured. They’d leave us all alone.’ James sighed and closed his eyes, trying not to think too hard about what he might be saying about Webster.

  Cook could see the tiny pulse in the boy’s throat. All he could think about was how, when he had been young, the rest of the world had always taken care of itself. But now, it seemed to him, children were plugged directly into everything in it, the evil as well as the good. He remembered what Webster had said about James, that his stepfather beat him. That James and Webster were friends because the boy had no one else.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Webster’s looking for me,’ he said quietly. James sat up and stared at him. Cook could see himself in the black marble stones of the boy’s eyes. ‘I’m the one Webster needs to forgive. You have to tell him.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if I believe you or not, does it?’ James whispered.

  ‘No.’

  And James took a deep breath and nodded.

  ‘OK then.’ And he looked down at his knees, saying nothing for a while, thinking about Webster and the war. ‘We need to escape,’ he said eventually. ‘Find Webster. So we can tell him.’

  ‘The windows,’ said Cook. ‘Maybe we can get out that way.’

  But, before James could even stand up, the door opened. Billy stood there, looking at them.

  ‘Thought I heard voices,’ he said.

  He made sure their wrists were still bound tight. Then he ran his hands over the two big windows to check they were secure. When he turned back to the old man and the boy sitting on the sofa, he stared at them for a while.

  Event
ually, he pulled them to their feet and walked them towards the door.

  ‘Let’s have a change of scenery,’ he said. ‘Yoo’se must be bored stiff sitting here.’

  25

  It made no difference whether Cook’s eyes were open or shut. The blackness was just the same. Deep and impenetrable. Unwinding him into nothing. He kept on reminding himself what he was.

  A man.

  A man in a cellar.

  A man in a cellar in the dark.

  But uncomfortable thoughts still flickered up inside him. He had to keep telling himself that death would never be like this. And he did this until he was no longer afraid.

  ‘We need to get out,’ said James from somewhere out of the void.

  ‘We will,’ said Cook. ‘Just stay where you are.’

  He started to shuffle, slowly, with his hands bound, because the dark threatened to trip him up and send him spinning. His mind kept up its tricks. It told him, if he lost his footing now, he might never stop falling.

  It took Cook ten minutes to work out which wall he had bumped into. He slid slowly to his left and found nothing so then he moved to the right. Just cold brickwork at first and then something hard struck him in the ribs, just below his right armpit. Unsure at first what it might be, he moved his right leg gingerly until his shin hit something else. His thigh bumped something too, almost simultaneously. Cook guessed that he must have found one end of the wooden shelves he had attached to the wall when he had first moved into the house. Now they served a different purpose, as his guide. He slid down their wooden edges and came to their sharp corners. Then he worked his way carefully over the front of the shelves. Something wobbled. A jam jar maybe. He smelt turpentine. Oil. Rust.

  After negotiating the shelves, he kept going round the wall to the right, mapping his position in his head.

  When something soft touched his face and clung to him, he panicked and stepped back from the wall. It was a moment before he realized it must be a cobweb, the dead, hard bodies of tiny creatures draped over his lips. He sucked it all in then spat and waited in the pitch dark for his blood to cool.

  Unsure which way he was facing, he asked James to call out.

  The wall was behind him.

  Cook turned around and shuffled back to it, connecting up the ends of his toes. He lay against the musty brickwork for a quite a while, listening to the boy whispering softly to him in the dark. When James asked if he was all right, Cook said yes and started moving again.

  He came to a corner, shuffled round the right angle and then pressed his body as flat as possible to the wall. He knew it was not much further. When his chest bumped up against the light switch, he lowered himself down until his chin slid on to the button. He pressed it down.

  The strip light blinked and flickered on.

  They said nothing at first.

  It was enough to see each other.

  They searched the cellar for anything to cut the washing line around their wrists. But it was difficult without the full use of their hands.

  They used their elbows.

  Their faces.

  Their mouths and feet.

  Working clumsily but quietly.

  Looking through cardboard boxes.

  In tea chests. Under blankets. On shelves.

  There were magazines in stacks.

  Jars of pennies. Old clothes in bin bags. Nails in tins.

  Paint pots with their lids glued down hard.

  James asked Cook to check his watch. It was three-thirty.

  ‘Webster will be back soon,’ said the boy. Cook nodded. They had found nothing to help them.

  James began to rub the washing line around his wrists backwards and forwards over a nail protruding from the wall. Cook watched him until he gave up and slumped against the brickwork.

  ‘I might know a way to get us out of here,’ said Cook.

  When they had agreed on what to do, James walked across the cellar and managed to pick up the small can of oil from the basket on the front of a bicycle that Cook’s wife had used a long time ago. He tilted it slowly.

  ‘How much in there?’ asked Cook.

  ‘About half.’ He held it out to the old man. ‘Can you help me with the cap?’ It was stuck tight, but they managed to prise it off. And then James tiptoed up the stairs.

  He put his ear against the cellar door and listened to the rest of the house. Just a gentle creaking in the walls. He did not bother twisting the handle. Billy had locked the door after turning off the light.

  James took a step back down and then aimed the nozzle of the can at the topmost stair and squeezed a golden arc on to the old wood. The oil pooled like treacle and then began to spread, making the grain shine. A sticky finger dripped down on to the stair below.

  There was enough for the first five steps. James soaked as much of the wood as he was able.

  When the can was empty, he walked quietly back down the stairs and pushed a tea chest across the floor with his knees until it was underneath the strip light. Then he picked up a screwdriver from a shelf and wobbled up on to the top of the chest.

  ‘Wait,’ said Cook. After struggling to pick up a small black torch with a rubber grip, he managed to click in the orange button with his thumb and the bulb shone. Then he turned it off and moved to the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘OK. Watch out for the glass. And the powder.’

  James nodded and steadied himself before jabbing the end of the screwdriver into the strip light.

  Nothing but black again and the after-image of the cellar fading slowly in front of their eyes.

  Cook soon lost his sense of where everything was after the boy had crouched down on the tea chest and slipped back on to the floor.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he whispered.

  ‘Fine. You?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Neither of them said anything else as they waited, trying not to think about what the dark meant to each of them in their own peculiar way.

  26

  When he heard the key clicking round in the door, Cook felt his blood thicken.

  ‘This is it,’ he whispered. He heard James’s breathing, the shuffling of his feet, and Cook guessed he was standing up.

  The door at the top of the stairs opened. Framed in the pale light of the doorway stood Billy. All James and Cook heard was the sound of the light switch snicking up and down. And then it stopped.

  ‘Webster’s on his way, me ma says,’ announced Billy from the top of the stairs. ‘We need you up here, old man.’ Cook bit his lip. Said nothing. Didn’t move.

  But Billy didn’t move either.

  Cook kept waiting. ‘I need some help up,’ he said.

  But still Billy did not come down the stairs.

  Suddenly James cried out.

  ‘You can’t do this!’ he shouted. ‘Webster! Webster! We’re down here!’

  ‘He can’t hear you,’ said Billy from the top of the stairs. ‘He’s still a way off, so shut up.’

  ‘Webster!’ screamed James so loudly that the deep black corners of the cellar seemed to vibrate.

  ‘Shut up,’ hissed Billy.

  And then he took a step down.

  Immediately, his foot slipped and shot out in front of him as if someone was yanking it up on a string. The dark line of his standing leg crooked, then wilted, and an arm whipped out towards the wall for balance. Four splayed fingers and a thumb.

  There was a click. The torch beamed a white tunnel up the staircase with Billy gasping at the end of it. His face crumpled. Both palms came up. And then he skidded forward as though a giant hand had pushed him without warning.

  He thumped down the stairs and landed in a silent heap at the bottom.

  Cook held the torch as steady as he could, watching the body steaming dust motes into the light. And then his mind was whirring.

  ‘He has a knife.’

  James dropped to his knees and started fumbling through Billy’s pockets, not stopping his frantic search until he had found the penknife
.

  ‘Hold out your hands,’ he said to Cook.

  Cook did so, as well as he was able. And James took the torch and stood it between his feet to give him enough light. At first, the blade slipped on the waxy skin of the washing line because it was not jagged. So James pressed down harder until it bit and he began to saw.

  When he was free, Cook took the knife from James and began cutting away with his one good hand to release the boy.

  ‘What do we do next?’ asked James. But the old man just kept sawing and, when he was free, the boy held Cook’s hands between his own and they were silent for a moment, bowed like statues in a crypt.

  Then they heard something.

  ‘Look,’ said Cook, and James stared up at the open doorway at the top of the stairs. Silhouetted in the daylight was a person no taller than the boy’s knees. The figure crouched and tried taking a step down, but its foot kicked up into the air. The tiny person regained its balance, quicker than Billy had done, planting a small hand on the floor beside it. It stayed there for a moment, looking down the staircase, and then it hauled itself back up the step and into the doorway. As it turned, James picked up the torch and flashed it up the stairs. He saw a wooden face with painted lips and eyes. As the tiny man looked down, James thought he saw it smile, but he couldn’t be sure. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure of anything except for the cold, damp air in the cellar. It seemed to have grown fingers that were reaching their way through his skin to his heart.

  The marionette gripped the door. Started trying to push it shut.

  James took a breath. He thought he could hear Cook shouting, but everything in the dark was soft and muffled, and the cold, chill fingers around his heart were squeezing tighter and tighter, forcing him to breathe faster and faster, making the blood pump louder in his ears.

  ‘It can’t reach the handle on the other side,’ shouted Cook. ‘Hurry, James! Do something.’

  Suddenly, James heard the words. He felt Cook shaking his arm and it seemed to set his mind free. He heard himself screaming back at Cook and then he was running up the stairs, the torch in his hand marking out spots for his feet.

  The oily top steps glistened. James stepped as carefully and as quickly as he could.