The Dark Inside Read Online Free PDF Page A

James could still see the outline of his face. Boots crunched broken glass and broke the silence, and the other traveller wearing the flat cap appeared with a shotgun.
He had come in the back way through the kitchen.
    Both of them stood listening for a moment.
    And then they began to make for the stairs.
    James eased back, keeping his head down, retreating on to the landing.
    A shout.
    The thump of boots.
    And James sucked his soul in tight.
    But neither of the men emerged.
    When James looked again, he saw Webster standing in the hall, arms raised, his green woollen beanie in one hand, swollen with berries. The traveller in the flat cap was pointing the gun at him.
The other one walked towards Webster and tore his woollen hat from him. When he saw the handle of the old kitchen knife sticking out of one of the pockets of the greatcoat, he drew it out and
handed it to the man holding the gun who dropped it into a jacket pocket of his own.
    ‘Whatchoo running out on us for?’ said the traveller in the flat cap. ‘Don’t we treat you nice enough? We got a cosy cage waiting for you.’
    ‘You’ll have to kill me first,’ said Webster.
    ‘We en’t gonna do that,’ laughed the traveller. ‘You can’t make us rich if yoo’se dead.’ He walked forward and jabbed the butt of the gun into
Webster’s face, dropping him to his knees.
    Blood.
    Spit.
    And wheeze.
    James shuddered as though he had been hit too.
    ‘There’s a cure,’ said Webster in short, wretched breaths. Both travellers laughed. ‘It’s true.’
    ‘Who told you that? The person who let you out?’ The traveller wearing the flat cap muttered something under his breath when Webster said nothing else. ‘There’s no cure
for what you got, my friend. It’s the work of the devil. It can’t be undone.’ And Webster took another hit between his shoulder blades and collapsed to the floor.
    ‘Please,’ he gasped. But the travellers ignored him as he lay coughing at their feet, curled up into a question mark beside them.
    ‘Go on and bring the car round, Swanney,’ said the one in the flat cap. ‘We need to get this one back where he belongs.’
    The man called Swanney disappeared out of the front door. The other one kept staring at the floor, the gun aimed at Webster, his back to James who was looking on like an audience member from the
balcony seats.
    Moonlight silvered the hallway and the stairs as clouds moved and shadows hardened. James could see the top of the traveller’s flat cap directly below him, like the solid top of a column
he could cat-leap down to. And then, in the next moment, he stood up and reached for the cracked white chamber pot sitting on the sideboard, which was set against the peeling wall.
    However hard he tried, he could not forget himself. The heartbeats deep and rich in his ears. The breathing in his chest. And he knew who he was, and what he might yet become, as he leant over
the wooden railing, his arms out in front of him, the pot clamped between his hands.
    He froze as the traveller man peeled off his cap and wiped his brow with his forearm as if the moonlight was warming him. There was a balding spot on his crown. So white it was pink.
    James’s heart wavered.
    And then he saw Webster staring up at him through the cold light.
    The traveller kicked out, catching Webster in the guts, making him gasp.
    And James did not close his eyes, he did not look away, as he released the pot and willed it through the air. Weightless. Not a chamber pot any more, its nature changing on its flight and
becoming something else entirely.
    And then it ceased to be anything at all as it broke over the top of the traveller’s head.

11
    James crept down the stairs even though the traveller was motionless.
    The man’s boots were connected at the heels like one black tailfin and in the dark he looked like the silhouette of some sea creature washed ashore. His cap was upturned like a giant
oyster shell. There were white pieces of