Blacklands: A Novel

by Belinda Bauer

  “Yeah,” said Steven. “Bodies. Creepy.”

  He concentrated on a piece of tomato dropping out of the back of the crust and took his time stuffing it into his mouth, licking his fingers and chewing without tasting the watery mess. He waited for his heart to stop pummelling his chest, but it didn’t slow.

  This was what he wanted. What he’d been waiting for. And he hadn’t even had to ask. Bodies. He was excited and terrified in equal measure.

  “Yeah,” said Avery. “I heard some nut killed some people—kids—and buried them out here.”

  “Oh yeah. I heard that.” He wished his heart would stop pounding—he was scared Avery would hear it.

  “He strangled them.”

  Steven nodded, trying to stay calm.

  Avery lowered his voice. “Raped them too. Even the boys.”

  Steven tried to clear his throat. Tomato stuck in it. “Did they find them all?”

  “No.”

  Steven felt faint. Not “I don’t think so”; not “I’m not sure.”

  Just “No.”

  “There’s a few still out here, I reckon,” said Avery.

  A few.

  Paul Barrett, Mariel Oxenburg. William Peters.

  “Yeah?” he said. “Like where?”

  Just like that, Steven asked the question. He felt giddy with anticipation.

  Avery looked off towards Dunkery Beacon. “Why do you care?”

  Time slowed into a strange sucking vortex for Steven as the reasons why he cared nearly overwhelmed him. A spinning wheel of fortune and the suffocating press of frozen mud around a small boy’s lonely bones.

  “I don’t care,” he said, and his voice cracked in his tense throat. “I’m just interested in … I mean … if you were going to bury a body out here, where would it be?”

  He’d hoped for casual but his question sounded horribly loud and desperate to his ears as it hung over them in the still morning air. He felt sick that he’d asked it. Sick and clammy.

  Avery turned to look at him carefully and Steven met his eyes, hoping the man couldn’t see through them into the dark pit of fluttering fear that lay behind.

  The silence stretched out around them until Steven could swear he felt it creak under the strain.

  Then Avery merely shrugged. “Around. About. Who knows?” He smiled a little smile at Steven and dug about in the bag. “You want something to drink?”

  Steven wanted to kill him.

  He jerked to his feet. He picked up his spade to go, but Avery gripped the shaft hard and looked up at him, his face suddenly cold and dangerous.

  “I’m going to need that,” said Avery quietly.

  And when he looked into the man’s milky green eyes, Steven knew he’d lost the battle to keep the book of his mind closed—and Avery’s ruby lips split into a crooked white grin as he read the boy like a billboard.

  Steven cried out as if he’d touched something dark and slimy.

  He let go of the spade, making it rebound hard into Avery’s bloody arm.

  Then he turned and ran.

  As he hit the track, he heard Avery come after him—close, too close, he should’ve made his move before, when he’d have had a head start!—then he felt a sharp pain in his back and fell to the ground, winded.

  He felt Avery grip the back of his best T-shirt and lift him like a bad puppy; his feet scrabbled for purchase as he almost staggered upright, then collapsed sideways to his knees against the man’s legs.

  Still gripping his shirt, Avery stooped to pick up the spade and Steven’s remote brain informed him dully that that was what had hit him in the back. Uncle Jude’s spade. Felled by his own weapon just as he’d been caught in his own trap.

  Because he was just a stupid, stupid boy. Not a sniper, not a cop, not even a grown-up. He’d played at being a grown-up and this was how it was ending. Him dead on the moor in his best red T-shirt with LAMB on the back. And the papers reporting not his triumph but his pathetic, lonely, weak little-boy death. A death that would reduce him to initials on a map and a blurry old photo in a fading newspaper. Not even a good photo, he’d bet. Probably the one from school that Mum had on the mantelpiece, which made him look like a refugee. Not the photo he’d dressed for this morning when he still thought he could be a hero.

  Fear, shame, and nausea mingled inside him and he sagged against Avery’s cold jeans.

  Avery pulled him away and slapped his face.

  “You know who I am?”

  Steven nodded dumbly at Avery’s black rubber-soled shoes.

  “Good.”

  He yanked Steven to his feet and half pushed, half dragged him back up the mound, wincing and cursing at the newly opened pain in his arm. Halfway up, Steven started to sob. He wished he didn’t know about Arnold Avery. Knowing was worse than not knowing. Knowing what he’d done to the others. Knowing that he’d do that to him too. It didn’t even seem possible—what Avery had done—but he’d read it in the papers so it must be true. He was about to find out. The thought drew fresh tears of fear.

  “Shut up,” said Avery. “And get down.”

  Steven just stood, arms slack, head down, hitching with sobs.

  “I said get down.” Avery shook him again and pointed at the patch of white heather where he’d been sitting, back when Steven had still had a choice; still had a chance of escape.

  “Down?” Steven sounded confused. He was confused; the word “down” seemed just a noise to him. It did not compute.

  “Down. On your knees.”

  Steven nodded stupidly but did not get down.

  Avery leaned forward and put his lips close to Steven’s ear, making him shudder.

  “Get down or I’ll make you.”

  “Okay.” But he still didn’t move. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Standing up was better. Getting down was worse. The lower he got, the less chance he had. He’d prefer to stay standing. These thoughts were simple and definite in Steven’s head. Once he got down, he felt sure he’d never get up again.

  “Down, I said!”

  “Okay.” He stopped sobbing on a soft burp that brought tomato-flavored bile to his throat.

  But he still didn’t move. Maybe if he just kept agreeing to get down but didn’t actually do it, Avery would get bored with asking.

  Avery did get bored with asking. Steven only heard a small grunt of warning before the spade swung into the backs of his knees, making him roll into a ball, clutching at his legs in agony.

  “You little shit!” Avery clutched and grimaced at his own arm—wet with fresh blood.

  Then once more Avery pulled him up by the scruff, positioning him carefully on his knees.

  “Now stay there. Understand?”

  Steven nodded and swayed but stayed where he was. He could feel a little trickle down his back and thought it must be sweat or blood where the spade had hit him when he tried to run. No sooner had he thought about sweat than he felt his face go tingly as sweat broke out on him. He swayed again; he wanted to lie down in the heather where it was cool and he wouldn’t feel so dizzy. But kneeling was bad and lying down would be lower and therefore even worse. He had to try to hang on, although quite what he was hanging on for, he was afraid to examine too closely. He had to hang on, and he had to try to make Avery move as slowly as possible towards killing him. Not because he thought he could avoid it entirely, but because delaying his own death seemed the sensible thing to do.

  His own death.

  He was going to die. He had nothing left to lose, not even his life; it was a foregone conclusion. The thought brought with it a kind of perverse freedom.

  “Did you kill my uncle Billy?”

  “What do you think?”

  Steven looked up at Avery in surprise. He hadn’t expected to be asked his opinion.

  “I think you did.”

  “You want to know how?”

  Steven didn’t. He felt sick at the thought of knowing how. But it was another delay.

  “Yes.”

/>   Avery stood in front of him now and touched his hair with one hand, almost gently.

  “He’d just come out of the shop. I asked him for directions. I had a map …”

  He stopped and Steven looked up and saw the gleam of fond memory in Avery’s eyes.

  “I had a map. I asked him to show me on the map. And he leaned in the window and I … just … grabbed him—”

  Steven cried out as Avery’s hand tightened around a chunk of his hair.

  “It was so easy. So fucking easy. And he was so scared. I had to hit him straight away to stop him screaming. You should’ve seen his face when I did! Like he’d never got a good smack before! It was very funny.”

  He grinned at Steven, then looked away across the moor of his memory again.

  “I played with him, you know? I played with all of them first. Before I killed them. Just like I’m going to play with you.”

  Steven twisted as the grip on his hair tightened again. He bit back his whimper of pain; he didn’t want Avery to remember he was here, kneeling before him; the longer he was remembering Uncle Billy and the others, the longer he, Steven, would stay alive. But it was hard. The pain in his head was more than discomfort and he was still shaking and nauseous. But he had to do it. He had to stay still and quiet and keep hoping for a way out. There was only one alternative and Steven didn’t want it. Didn’t want to find out what it was like to be “played with” and tortured and killed while he cried for his mummy. Just that thought made tears roll easily from his eyes again. Not crying with shame or fear; this time he really was crying for his mummy; but quietly—so as not to distract Avery.

  “He wanted it. You know that? Your uncle Billy was a fucking little slut just like you. I could tell.”

  Pure anger bubbled up in Steven in defense of a boy he’d never liked even though he’d never known. All his good intentions to stay invisible disappeared in an instant.

  “You’re a liar!”

  Avery shook him by the hair, making Steven yelp in pain.

  “You what?”

  “You’re a … fucking liar!” The tears were coming thick and fast, but now they were tears of fury, and fury made him feel stronger. He knew he was stupid to challenge Avery but he no longer cared, and that was liberating. He put his hands up to try to control the grip Avery had on his hair and Avery slapped them roughly away, but he kept trying to grapple free of the tight knot of pain. The tugging on his hair made him think of the way it pulled and twisted up inside the green living-room curtains while he and Davey waited for Frankenstein to come find them. Well, he’d tried to be Frankenstein’s friend and he’d blown it, and the pain of his hair being pulled now was far greater, just as the hammering of his heart at the back of his mouth was so much more—so much bigger it seemed impossible. It was as if that vital organ were being squeezed up his throat by the sheer force of the terror that had exploded in his belly.

  He flailed wildly with his hands and caught Avery on the bloody wound inflicted by the son of Mason Dingle. Avery yelped and, for a glorious second, let go of his hair. Steven almost fell with the release of his head.

  Then the punch caught him unawares and knocked every bit of air and every bit of fight clean out of him.

  He lay dazed, only aware that his face was in the cold wet heather, then—from a long way off—he felt his body being manhandled onto its back, floppy as a fish.

  Hands tugged at his jeans.

  A wave of blackness made his stomach clench—and he doubled up and vomited violently all over himself and Arnold Avery.

  In the split second of still silence that followed, he noticed a chunk of guilty tomato on Avery’s sleeve, before the man recoiled from him with a shout of disgust, flicking puke off his hands and scrubbing himself with the pale green cardigan.

  “You little shit! You dirty little bastard! I’ll fucking kill you!”

  But Steven was running. Running before he even realized he was on his feet. Running downhill through the wet, slapping heather, stumbling over tufts and roots, missing the track! Where was the track? He turned right anyway and blundered on through the rough terrain. Heard nothing but a faint squealing sound which, he realized, was the noise that terror made in the throat of a boy running for his life.

  Steven threw a wild look over his shoulder; Avery was above him and behind, but was catching up. He’d found the track and the running was easier there. He was faster; Steven couldn’t go any faster. Not here; not in the deep purple heather.

  He angled up again to try to rejoin the track, slowing still further in the process, Avery gaining. If only he could get to the track, he’d make it. He was sure. Fuck it! He turned sharply and bounded up the hill back to the track, then skidded onto it and kept running.

  Avery was only twenty yards behind him when Steven ran into a wall of fog so thick that he flinched. He hesitated momentarily, fought the instinct to slow down, and rushed headlong into the whiteness.

  He could hear Avery behind him, cursing in breathy spurts. He sounded close, but everything did in the fog.

  And then he heard nothing.

  He stopped, panting and wheezing, and turned circles, ears hurting with the strain of listening over the thudding of his own blood. Nothing.

  Steven decided to keep running but then realized that stopping had been a terrible mistake. Before he’d been running the right way simply because he was running away from Avery. But now he’d stopped, he’d lost any sense of direction. He looked down at his feet and the ground around him. Heather barred the way he would have chosen. He shuffled sideways quietly and found only grass and patchy gorse with his feet. With a panicky tingle he realized he’d lost the track. He stood for a long moment, listening to his heart pounding in his ears, trying not to breathe and give himself away.

  Steven sucked in his breath and held it as he heard a rustling sound. He couldn’t tell where it came from or how far off. He turned. A quiet—strangely familiar—squeak and a bump. He spun the other way.

  It was the wrong move.

  His head was jerked back and he lost his footing and fell. Something warm around his neck; a knee in his ribs pumped the breath out of him and Avery was over him, on him, staring down into his face with his teeth bared and his eyes narrowed into glittering slits.

  Something soft but tight was around his neck; Steven realized he was being strangled with the pale green cardigan. He could smell his own vomit on it.

  He couldn’t breathe. His head felt huge and about to pop; his lungs spasmed and screamed for air. He had to breathe.

  He focused on Avery’s eyes, inches from his own. Please, he said in his head, but his lips just moved silently; no air to form the sound of the word. He kicked feebly and tried to push the man off him but only had the strength to lift his fists against Avery’s denim thighs and rest them there, like the two of them were old friends and this was a game they played.

  Please, he tried again, but there was nothing there.

  This was what it felt like to die.

  It seemed to take forever, and it hurt even more than it scared.

  Uncle Billy hurt like this. Uncle Billy looked into these same shiny eyes and hurt like this. Uncle Billy had left no clues, and neither had he, he thought distantly; he understood now about having no idea that this might be the last day of his life; he’d put on his favorite shirt to be murdered in.

  The pain in his chest was unbelievable and his own blood squeezed through his eyes and started to blur his killer’s face behind a misty red curtain.

  Please.

  He was unsure of whether he was trying to beg for his life or for his death.

  He thought vaguely that either would be okay.

  And the darkness covered him like a cold black wave.

  Chapter 40

  THERE WAS BREATHING AND FEET, BREATHING AND FEET.

  The moor did its worst.

  Twisted roots tripped and tangled, wet heather slapped and gorse whipped and prickled. Mud gripped and slid.

&nbs
p; The mist was a thick white veil. Or a shroud. It chilled the eyelids, slid up the nose, and pooled in the gaping mouth—its damp fingers stroking the senses with a seaside memory of childhood and a portent of death.

  But through it all there was breathing and feet, breathing and feet.

  With a purpose.

  Chapter 41

  THERE WERE VOICES AND SUDDENLY STEVEN COULD BREATHE. IT wasn’t dramatic; there were no gasps, just a ragged little whining sound as he started living again instead of dying. He stared up into the streaky pink sky, wondering what had happened to Avery. He thought vaguely of getting up and running again but his head felt like lead and there was a great weight across his legs, pressing him into the moor.