Page 25

James

August 2001

The man whistles quietly as he drives.

James stares out of the windows of the camper van, eager for sensation but also overwhelmed by it. His gaze darts here and there—one side then the other; up through the windscreen—watching the woods outside the vehicle flashing past. There is almost too much for him to take in right now. The trees at ground level form an intricate brown-green blur of texture. He has become so used to his world being static—living in the center of a universe that turns around him, if it moves at all—that it is a shock to find himself in motion.

This is the first time he has left the farm in over three years.

James doesn’t remember much of those years. There is too much pain, too much horror, for him to recall any of what he’s experienced in detail. But the man has absorbed him into his world by increments. He made him dig the graves before he made him bury the bodies afterward. He made him listen before he made him watch.

He made him take photographs of his own.

James thinks of the image he has in his pocket right now: of the boy in the back of the camper van when the man brought him back to the farm yesterday. James has never taken part in the killing itself. The man has been waiting for him to be broken before trusting him to do that. But that boy is waiting in the end pen back at the farm now. And tomorrow morning, he will be James’s first.

The man continues to whistle as he drives.

James has no idea where they are going today or why. What does it matter? The man is God, and he will reveal himself when he is ready. They drive through woodland and then join the motorway. It is difficult to keep track of time, but it’s perhaps an hour after they left the farm when the man finally indicates and takes a turning off the motorway. They drive into a rest area car park and come to a stop. The man unclips his seat belt. He indicates for James to do the same.

James’s heart starts beating a little harder.

This can’t be real, can it?

Outside the camper van, the air is as fresh as it has ever tasted, and the slight rush of the breeze suggests a landscape he might run in forever. He pictures a kite trailing in the blue sky behind him—and then gets distracted. Because there are people here! The sight of them all around causes him to blink in surprise. Aside from the man and the boys, he hasn’t seen anyone since he was taken from the beach. He’s been in a different world. But now he’s back in the real one. As he turns to look, this way and that, it feels as though everything is turning around him instead, and the sensation makes him dizzy.

This can’t be happening!

“Nobody sees,” the man tells him. “And nobody cares.”

He slams the camper van door.

“You’ll see.”

And then the man sets off for the building at the end of the car park. James follows dutifully behind. But the man must be wrong, he thinks. He’s going to wake up from the nightmare after all. He looks down at himself. He is thin and disheveled, unwashed. He knows there are bruises on his face. And he still remembers enough of the real world to believe that someone must notice those things.

Because despite the man’s best efforts, he has never quite lost hope .

Even after everything he has gone through, there is still something of him left inside. A part of him that believes he might mean more to the world than the man has tried to convince him. A part that wants to go home. That hope is small and fragile, like a faltering pilot light in his heart, but it is there. He isn’t brave enough to challenge the man alone, but if someone were to ask him if he was okay, or approach him and offer to help, James would tell them everything in a heartbeat. He still has just enough courage left to do that.

And surely someone will.

A young man is smoking a cigarette outside the hotel at the side of the car park. James stares across at him as they walk, willing him to look up. And then he does! James’s heart flutters as the two of them lock eyes.

Notice me , he thinks.

Please.

But then the young man looks away.

“Keep up,” the man tells him.

The flower van first. The woman working inside is young and pretty, and she has a kind face. Help me , James thinks. But not only does she avoid looking at him, she even turns away. And the same thing happens when they go inside. The student behind the food counter is too distracted; the man at the amusement arcade is too angry; the boy in the shop watches him with open hostility. Person after person, the horrible realization settles inside James that nobody is going to help him.

Everything the man has told him is true.

Nobody sees.

And nobody cares.

And then, finally, the bathroom at the end of the concourse.

The man locks himself away inside a toilet stall, whistling to himself. James is suddenly alone and untethered. He feels the air beginning to sing with tension.

Run , he tells himself.

But his body won’t respond. It’s the same sensation he remembers having on the beach—a lifetime ago now—but it’s so much worse. He is long past the point of helping himself; he is only a little boy, one who somehow feels even younger than he was back then. What he needs is for someone to take his hand and lead him to safety. Away from the man. Away from the boy waiting back at the farm.

All it would take is someone—

And then James hears the door open behind him.

He turns slowly. The boy who walks into the bathroom a moment later is about his own age, and the sight of him takes James’s breath away. It is like staring at his own reflection—or into a mirror that shows what he could have been if things had been different. They stare into each other’s eyes for a second. And the boy sees him—he’s not like the others here. The boy knows instantly that something is wrong. Perhaps it’s because he’s a child too. Maybe it takes someone who hasn’t quite grown out of their own nightmares yet to recognize when they’ve just walked into someone else’s.

Help me , James thinks. Help us.

Because if you won’t then nobody will.

The boy stares back at him, and the hope in James’s heart flickers a little more brightly. Even just the eye contact, just being seen , gives him courage, and he starts to take a step forward. But then the man stops whistling, and James stops and glances sideways at the closed door. Doing so breaks whatever spell exists between him and the other boy. When James looks back again, he sees the boy is already ducking into the far stall.

Pulling the door closed.

Locking it.

Hiding.

And that last little flicker of hope inside James gutters out.

The man emerges from his own toilet stall a moment later. Even after all this time, James still knows better than to look at the man’s face, but he can sense the expression of triumph there right now.

The man ruffles his hair as he walks past.

He stops briefly outside the stall where the other boy is cowering. James walks past it afterward, dutifully following the man out, and he reaches out to the door as he does. His fingertips touch the wood so softly that the boy inside cannot possibly have heard, and yet James senses him flinching.

You could have saved us , he thinks. But you didn’t.

And after a moment’s hesitation, he takes the photograph out of his pocket and places it on the floor.

So that’s yours now.

When they arrive back at the farm later, the man takes James to the house. A few of the chickens flutter about frantically in their cages, but the man seems indifferent. He doesn’t look down the patchy yard either. Past the pens of animals, to the enclosure at the far end, where the slumped shape of the boy waits in the early evening gloom.

But James does.

Inside the house, the man leads him through to the dirty kitchen at the back, then unlocks the heavy padlock on the door there. It opens onto a set of flimsy wooden stairs descending into absolute blackness below. James has never been down here. The man’s heavy boots tap solidly on each step as he descends. James’s own land more softly behind as he follows him down into this cold, dark space underneath the world.

At the bottom, the air smells of mold and earth.

There’s a click as the man pulls on a cord. The single bulb flickers on and buzzes gently, illuminating a small, makeshift storeroom.

James looks around. Every visible surface is thick with dust, and cobwebs trail down from the wooden ceiling. There are bags stuffed full of old clothes against one wall. Open cardboard boxes against another, filled with an assortment of random objects. Crumpled handbags. Broken toys. Indistinct photographs curling at the edges.

Souvenirs , James realizes.

The wall directly ahead is lined with rusted filing cabinets. Above them are a series of handmade wooden shelves the man has nailed into the brickwork. James’s gaze moves over the items there. An old kerosene lamp and a crumpled box of matches; the rusted handles of wrenches and hammers; an ornate silver picture frame with no photograph inside. Metal hooks have been screwed into the fronts of the shelves, keys hanging from them at intervals all the way along.

The man opens one of the drawers. It makes a rasping, scraping sound.

“Come and look,” he tells James.

James steps across and peers down. The first thing he notices is the money. It has been a long time since he has seen money, and there is almost too much of it here for his mind to make sense of. Hundreds of rolled-up banknotes, held in tight coils with dirty rubber bands. James has no idea where the man got it from, but the implication of what he’s being shown is clear.

Look at how powerful I am.

How powerful I can make you be.

His gaze moves to everything else in the drawer.

“Take some of it out,” the man tells him. “Look through it.”

James hesitates for a second, then reaches in and begins to pick items out at random, one by one. Passports; bank cards; birth certificates; driving licenses. The blank faces of strangers stare back at him, and the details begin to merge as he looks through them. But again, the implication is clear. The man has dark magic. He can change his name, his age, his face. There are so many identities in this room, each one a door that the man can step through, moving from one to the next at will. He is anybody and nobody. He is whoever he wishes to be. He is hurt and trauma passed on from body to body.

And that is what James can be too.

Nobody sees. And nobody cares.

The man has spent so long convincing him of that, and he’s proved it to James today. But down here, finally, he is teaching him something else as well.

Nobody except me.

James hears the familiar tune whistled softly in the air.

It takes a moment for him to realize that it’s coming from him now.