The Dark Inside (11 page)

James tried again, focusing on the flower’s black centre, which had the texture of velvet. The hum of insects began to fade. And somehow, as though a spell had been cast over him, he was
filled with a sense of hope. The idea of it seemed so fragile he could not describe it to Cook, fearful it might break apart with the weight of words.

When the moment left him, leaving just a notion like a vapour in his head, James looked up to ask more about it.

‘You should go inside,’ said Cook, nodding up at something over the boy’s shoulder. ‘They’re all nosy parkers around here.’

When James looked round, he saw the face of a middle-aged woman disappearing from a bedroom window in the house next door. Before he could ask about the neighbour, a bird flapped across his
eyeline, landing on the branch of a nearby tree. The crow looked down, studying them like a person might, and it seemed to darken a spot in James’s heart although he wasn’t sure why. He
raised his arms and hissed, and the bird took off, flying low over the fence and disappearing. Breathing hard, all James could think was that Webster would have done exactly the same.

Cook was looking at him.

‘They’re bad luck,’ said James before the old man could ask him anything.

After the boy had gone back inside, Cook pottered in the garden without his walking stick, deadheading flowers as well as he was able, throwing the old brown heads into a
basket hanging from a cord slung diagonally across his chest. When he reached the far end of the garden, he stopped and mopped his brow with a white handkerchief that bore the blue stitching of his
initials in one corner. Retreating into the shade of a willow, he stood admiring everything around him. He was comforted by the presence of every tree for he knew that, in his old age, he would
never have to say goodbye to them as he had done to his wife and so many of their friends.

It took ten minutes until he was cool again and the hammer of his heart in his head had vanished.

As he turned to walk back to the house, he heard a sobbing, from beyond the cedar fence at the end of the garden, which backed on to the lane. Cook slid back the bolt on the door and stepped out
on to the shimmering black asphalt. Insects buzzed in the heat in flimsy clouds. The verges on either side of the lane were stacked with tall grasses and coloured with wild flowers, as though a
rainbow had cracked and fallen to the earth in shards. A woman of roughly his own age was standing at the side of the road, bent over, staring at something in the grass that Cook could not see. As
she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, the leather pouch dangling from its cord around her neck swung gently from side to side.

‘Are you all right, my dear?’ he asked her.

When she saw him, with his droopy mouth and his basket of deadheads hanging from his chest, she pointed at the verge beside her, saying nothing.

In between the weave of stems and roots, Cook saw a dead blackbird. Like a drop of tar, its beak two yellow triangles set slightly apart.

As he stared, he began to lose the sense of the heat of the world around him until all he knew was a profound sadness licking his insides cold. It was as though he had caught his unhappiness
from the woman beside him. He shivered as he looked into the bird’s black eye and could not help but think about the corpse of his wife when he had found her in the garden that day.

‘I don’t know what came over me,’ said the woman, wiping her face with her sleeve. ‘But it’s just so . . . well, it’s just so sad.’

Cook nodded.

‘It is.’ He tried to say more, but he had no breath. He wiped a cold, thick sweat from his brow. The woman smiled and touched his arm. The dark inside him broke apart and he felt the
heat of the sun on his neck again, the beats of it coming up off the road into his face. He smiled back at her.

‘Can I offer you a cup of tea?’ he said and blushed.

She toyed with the little leather pouch around her neck and Cook thought he heard something tinkling inside.

‘Only if I can make it for you, dear,’ she replied, picking up her red leather bag, sitting half hidden in the grass, and hitching it over her shoulder. Cook nodded without even
thinking. The darkness in him had been replaced by a sense of joy. And then he realized why.

It would be just like having his wife in the house again.

‘I’m Esther,’ she said to James as he stared at her grey gums and rickety teeth. Webster had warned him to be on the lookout for anything odd or strange. But
it was Cook who had invited her into his house, assuring the boy it was fine and telling him how sad the woman had been in the lane.

‘Where are you from?’ he asked as she bustled about the kitchen, the kettle close to boiling, the brown leather pouch around her neck clinking against her chest. She found the mugs
without asking where they were and James wondered if it had been luck or not.

‘Oh, down the lane. What about you, dear?’

‘I’m visiting my grandfather,’ he said, but the old woman kept staring, waiting for the answer to her question. ‘I’m from a village in the middle of nowhere,’
said James and shrugged. She nodded then pointed at Cook sitting out on the patio, admiring the garden.

‘You can tell your grandfather the tea’s nearly ready.’

After James had left the kitchen, she undid the zip on the small outside pocket of her red leather bag and took out a bouquet of herbs and grasses which she pushed into the white teapot. Then
she poured in the hot water from the kettle and secured the lid.

As she did so, something moved inside the main body of her bag, squirming and making the sides bulge, but she gently shushed whatever was in there and the red leather stopped creaking.

They all sat on the patio in the sun.

James and Cook drank a mug of tea each, and they tasted vanilla and mint and sunshine, and both of them approved. They listened to the old woman’s stories about herself as a girl and how
different the world had been when she was young. At one point, James found he was not really listening any more. He looked over at Cook and saw him laughing, agreeing with everything being said.
And then, quite suddenly, a drop of blood appeared, wobbling at the edge of one of the old man’s nostrils. Before James could say anything, the woman leant forward and wiped it away with a
paper napkin without missing a beat of what she was saying. James wondered about what he had seen. Questions inside him immediately gave rise to others.

He turned to ask the woman who she really was.

But the words burst in his throat as he opened his mouth. He gagged on them and, as he caught his breath, all he could manage was to look up at her.

She was muttering to herself, one hand clutching her leather pouch, the fingers rippling back and forth. He tried to hear what she was saying, but his ears were full of the drone of insects and
the ticking of the sun on the patio table and chairs.

Cook had stopped laughing. His left hand was clamped to his head as he rocked gently back and forth in his chair.

James leant forward across the table and stared into the old woman’s eyes. When she smiled, James knew that all the good around him had been sucked clean away. He heard someone laughing
and followed the sound until he saw the painted face of a small wooden man, peering up out of the red leather bag, its hands gripping the top.

James tried to cry out.

But he could not make a sound.

She took James and Cook by the hand, and led them into the house and sat them on the sofa in the living room. Then she bound their wrists with lengths of washing line which she
had unhooked from the two wooden posts in the garden. When she was satisfied that all was in order, she drew out a mobile phone and tapped out a text message with one bony finger. And then she
knelt down in front of James.

‘What are you doing here, my darling?’

James struggled to speak. It was difficult to focus on her. He wanted to tell the old woman the exact truth, but all he could manage was spit and hot air. She muttered something under her breath
and then laid a hand on his knee. A weight released inside him. The fog in his head cleared. He was able to speak.

‘We’re looking for whoever attacked Webster,’ he said.

‘And why’s you doing that, my love?’

‘So Webster can forgive whoever’s done him wrong and cure himself of evil. Forgiving is the only way to do it. That’s what the vicar in the church said.’ The old woman
smiled.

‘Hmmm,’ she purred. ‘I’m not sure it’ll make any difference, my darling.’

When she took her hand away from his knee, James felt his throat closing, as if someone was pulling a thread tight around it.

After she had clicked the door shut behind her, he tried screaming out loud for someone to hear. But it was impossible to make a sound.

When his mother appeared on the floor in front of him, bloody and broken like a corpse, he tried to speak to her and ask for help. But all James could manage were tiny grunts like the noise of
some shuffling thing at night in the leaf litter of a forest.

She crawled up on to the seat beside him and held the boy until he closed his eyes and lost himself in her arms. She began whispering that he should never have left home, constantly so, until
James tried to wish her away, saying that she wasn’t real. But she told him she was and that he did not really want her to leave at all. And, in the end, he just nodded and said nothing else
as she kept berating him in her soft, gentle voice until the dark of her embrace swallowed him up.

‘Jesus, Ma, whatchoo done to them?’

‘Don’t you fret at yer mother,’ she said, slapping Billy on the meat of his arm. ‘They’re fine as we want them for now.’

Billy crouched down in front of the sleeping Cook. The lines on his face were so deep it seemed he might break apart at any moment.

‘He’s old. Look at him.’

‘Stop fussing.’

Billy reached forward and touched Cook on the wrists as though venerating him.

‘I won’t ever get like this,’ he said, lifting the old man’s hands and inspecting them before laying them carefully back down on his knees.

His mother clapped three times and muttered something, and touched Cook on the elbow. His eyes flickered open. He licked his lips. Blinked. Shuddered.

‘Tell him what’s going to happen,’ she said to Billy as she shuffled out.

It took a few moments for Cook to come round fully and for his cheeks to fill with colour. When he understood what was happening to himself and the boy, who was still asleep beside him, he began
to struggle, the waxy knots of the washing line squeaking as they rubbed. Billy watched him, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He took a penknife from his pocket and pulled out the blade from the
brown wooden handle and began cleaning his fingernails, flicking black dirt on to the carpet.

‘What do you want?’ asked Cook eventually.

‘How long have you got?’ replied Billy and grinned.

‘I don’t have any money in the house.’

‘I know,’ said Billy, shrugging.

‘Who are you?’

‘A man, like you, but beyond that then we’re both struggling, en’t we?’

‘Let my grandson go.’

‘He en’t yer grandson.’

Cook watched Billy move on to the other set of nails.

‘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.’