Page 17

James

August 1998

Click.

James is lying on the dirty mattress when the key turns in the lock. The sound makes him draw his knees up to his chest. It’s instinctive; it won’t do anything to protect him. But when faced with danger, we all have a desire to curl up. To make ourselves small and unseen.

The door opens slowly.

In the first few months after he was brought here, James was kept in one of the wooden pens outside, tethered by his ankle to a post in the ground. He would lie there shivering at night under a black sky full of implacable stars, and there were moments when he thought he would die, and then ones in which he thought he might already have.

But at some point in the last few weeks, the man had brought him inside. Now he sleeps up here, in a small, windowless room on the first floor of the house. It had been a relief at first. And yet there was also the crawling sensation that all of this was happening by design. That the man had waited until a part of James really had died outside—lost somewhere between winter and spring—and that the man was now intending to fill the gap that dead part had left .

The door creaks to a halt.

It’s pitch black in the room, so whenever he’s locked in here, it’s impossible to tell if it’s day or night. But there’s a window at the far end of the hallway outside the door, and the dim light in the corridor right now suggests to James that it’s either dawn or dusk. He doesn’t know which; time is difficult to keep track of. It feels like the man usually only keeps him locked in here overnight, but James has the impression that he has been left alone for longer this time.

That’s not good.

Because despite the fear and horror, he is alive. The man hasn’t killed him. But any shift in routine could mean that is about to change.

The man steps into the doorway.

As always, James avoids looking at his face. The man doesn’t like that. But the truth is that there is nothing to see there anyway. Even lying in the darkness, with nothing to distract him, James finds it impossible to picture his features. Ever since that first day at the beach, he has been a black space in James’s mind, not so much a presence as an absence. The man is as vast and unfathomable as that night sky outside.

But even out of the corner of his eye, James can see it.

The man is usually empty-handed when he arrives on a morning. There have been times when he brings a camera with him: a bulky old Polaroid contraption. He will hear a click and a whir and then become aware of the man wafting the photograph in the air.

But today, he’s holding a knife.

James closes his eyes quickly. Instinct again; if we can’t see the monster then it isn’t really there. That was something his mother used to say sometimes when he woke up scared in the night. A lot of growing up, she’d tell him, gently stroking his forehead, is about pretending there’s no such thing as monsters until you eventually realize that it’s true.

Except she was wrong. There is such a thing.

His heart patters in his chest.

“Get up,” the man says. “Follow me.”

Despite his fear, James knows better than to disobey.

“Yes, sir. ”

And when he opens his eyes, the man is already gone. James listens to the heavy sound of his footfalls moving away down the corridor, then scrabbles quickly off the mattress and through the doorway. The man’s enormous frame fills the hallway ahead. He leads James past the closed doors up here, then downstairs, then through the stale, smoky air of the front room.

And then outside.

Something about the quality of the light in the trees tells James that it’s nearly dawn, and he blinks a little as he follows the man down the wooden steps from the house’s rickety porch. The camper van is parked at an angle in front of him. Beyond the vehicle, the rest of the farm stretches away, still draped for now in the night’s receding shadows.

The farm.

James always thinks of it as that, even though it’s really a compound, somewhere deep in the woods, with tight webs of barbed wire strung between the trees. There are wire cages in which the man keeps chickens, and a row of wooden pens where emaciated animals are tied to posts. The air stinks of petrol from the generator that’s constantly putt-putting away close to the tree line. A farm though. It’s easier to think of it as that than some of the other things he might call it.

Prison.

The place he’s going to die.

The man walks around the side of the camper van, striding confidently over the dry ground, his boots raising misty puffs of dust. He’s holding the knife loosely down by his side. And he doesn’t look back—because even though he’s leading James to his death right now, he also knows he’ll follow. And James does, of course. Because what choice does he have? There’s nowhere to hide here. No chance of escape. No use in shouting for help.

Because nobody is coming to save him.

He remembers his first few days here at the farm. Back then, he had tried to convince himself it was a nightmare that he would wake up from soon. When he accepted it was real, he still thought it was going to end. Because the police would be looking for him, wouldn’t they? He remembered the shows he and his mother used to watch on their little television: the ones in which the detective never gave up hope, and the victim was always rescued in time. Away from the farm, the whole world knew that James was gone, and so everyone would be searching for him. His father might never have replied to the letter James wrote, but his mother wouldn’t forget about him. She wasn’t going to rest until she found him and brought him back home where he belonged.

You and me against the world, James.

But then the days passed.

And then the weeks.

And nobody came for him.

During that period, there were times when the man left the farm. On each occasion, James had watched the old camper van disappearing down the trail between the trees, waited until the sound of its engine had faded, and then screamed with all the strength he could muster. Calling out for his parents. Shouting for someone—anyone—to come and save him. But his calls disappeared into the trees, and his voice failed him, and there was only ever the insistent putt-putting of the generator in reply.

And each time, it was only the man who returned.

Nobody sees.

And nobody cares.

He follows the man across the farm now. Past the lines of wooden pens, where the animals stand motionless inside. Toward the empty pen all the way down at the end. The one closest to the woods, which used to be where he slept. Its gate is open. Perhaps the man has decided to move him back out here? Perhaps that’s all that’s happening? Except he knows it isn’t. Because the man is turning the knife around in his hand, and there’s a sense of purpose to him: a kind of dark energy buzzing around him like flies.

There’s a dirty old shovel leaning against the post in the center.

James falters. Even with his back to him, the man seems to register it.

“Get in there,” he says. “Pick up the shovel. ”

James walks past him slowly, and then into the pen. He takes hold of the shovel. He can barely lift it. The wooden handle is old and soft, but the metal blade at the bottom is heavy. It’s caked with mud and rust.

“Start digging,” the man says.

James stares down at the surface of the ground.

And he wants to cry. He doesn’t need to be told what he’s digging here. It’s his own grave. But the thing that sickens him the most is how ashamed he is. Because he feels so weak, and the earth here is hard and solid. His shoulders begin to hitch a little as he tries to keep the tears in. How worthless he is. Everyone has forgotten him. All that’s left is the man, and all the man wants is this one final thing from him, and he can’t even manage to do that right.

“Start digging,” the man repeats.

James gathers himself together. He plants the tip of the shovel against the earth as best he can. Looks at the metal edge at the top of the blade. And then he stamps down on it with the arch of his bare foot as hard as he can.

As James digs his own grave over the next few hours, he forgets about the pain in his body. The trembling muscles. The heat of the sun as it begins to burn his shoulders. The fact that his right foot is so badly hurt now that it won’t support his weight. He’s determined to do this. He will keep going.

The whole time, the man is whistling softly behind him.

The tune is the same one as always, as maddening and strange as ever. James hates the way that it has begun to worm its way into his mind. Every night in the darkness of his room, it plays in his head, and sometimes he’s even found himself humming it without realizing. It’s as though the tune is an infection that’s gradually spreading to him from the man.

He doesn’t want it to be the last thing he ever hears.

But he knows it will be.

Eventually the whistling stops. James assumes that’s the man’s way of signaling that he’s done enough and that the grave is ready. With his hair bedraggled and sweat running down his face, he leans on the spade and looks down at the hole before him. A shiver of pride runs through him. His body is weak and the ground is hard, but he’s done a good job. The hole is long and deep. And he’s so exhausted now that he just wants to lie down in it, and for this all finally to be over.

Except… that’s not quite true.

He looks up at the sun streaming through the mist between the trees, and for a moment he thinks he sees his mother standing there, half illuminated by a ray of light. It’s only his imagination—a vision driven by the delirium. He knows that. But he still feels a small fire burning inside him. He wants to go home. He doesn’t want this monster to beat him.

He wants to live so very badly.

He leans there, breathing heavily, his body trembling.

Waiting.

From back up the farm, he hears the sound of the camper van door slamming shut, and he realizes the man is no longer standing behind him. He hadn’t even been aware of him moving. But that’s no surprise—it’s one of the powers the man has. He seems able to appear and disappear at will.

James risks glancing in that direction.

And what he sees there catches his breath.

The man is walking back toward him again. As always, his face is a black absence, but James’s gaze is drawn instead to the figure beside him.

The little boy that the man is dragging by the arm.

With his heart pounding, James looks down at the hole he has dug. Not his own grave at all. The relief that understanding brings washes through him like ice-cold water. But it also brings a burst of shame. He only saw the boy for a second, and he looked nothing like James, but it still feels as though he was seeing a reflection of himself.

But he’s done a good job, hasn’t he? He needs to cling to that.

He is still alive.

A part of him knows that’s what the man wants him to think. That there is a purpose to everything he’s doing. That out of all the words James might use to describe this place, the worst one of all might be this :

Home.

But all that, along with the shame, is overwhelmed by the relief. He is still alive! He hears the man and the boy approaching. And as he looks up again at the trees ahead of him, he sees that his mother is gone now.