Chapter Nine
It’s a game, just a game. This is what I told myself as I went methodically aisle by aisle, shining my torch into unlit corners and the recesses of cleared shelves. In the gap behind cereal boxes and up on the top shelf where he could be hiding—surprise!
“Are you in here, Billy?”
My voice was so loud in my ears, I couldn’t tell if I was screaming or whispering. My walking footsteps turned to running footsteps, and I went round and round the same shelves and the same aisles and ended up back at the beginning, a mouse lost in a maze. Squeak, squeak went my rubber boots on the linoleum as I turned round and down the aisles again: squeak, squeak, round and round until I forgot what I was searching for; lost in the dark tunnels of the shelves; where is he, where is it, squeak, squeak, where is my cheese? Squeak, squeak, squeak.
I forced myself to stop. Listen.
Someone was crying, and it was me.
Come out, Billy.
Please, Billy.
Try the loading area again. I pushed through the half-plastic swing doors. Not on the forklift. Not crouched, delighted by his own brilliance, behind a pallet of decaying bread. Not up the corridor, or in the office, or in the staff toilet. Not hiding behind the side door. Not in the street.
“Where are you, Billy?”
I ran the length of the railings, scanning the pavement below, but he wasn’t there. Not hiding, not distracted by something gross, not fallen and bleeding and unable to answer. Not there at all.
“Where are you, Billy? Where the fuck are you?” I screamed his name up and down the street, over and over, until I couldn’t stop screaming. I ran out of words and just carried on screaming, my arms raised above my head, my fingers clawing at the blank sky, which must have been able to see my boy somewhere. The echo continued to spread the message long after I ran out of breath and collapsed to the paving stones, gasping out pitiful bribes.
“I’ve got crisps, Billy,” I whispered. “If you come back, you can have the crisps.”
“Where’s the blood coming from?” Joni said.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re covered in it.”
“Am I.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jeez, Marlene—”
“Get off me, just, get off!”
Joni stepped back and held her palms up. “Okay, I’m going to look inside then.”
“He’s not inside.”
“We should retrace our steps, Aunt Marlene, and then fan out,” said Lola. They went together into the supermarket, calling Billy’s name.
I cradled my left hand, which I’d somehow slashed across the underside of all four fingers right on the middle joint. I opened my fist and blood pulsed out to drip off the end of my fingertips. The boys came running, followed by Maggie. “Where’s Billy?” said Charlie. I shook my head. Maggie held her hand under mine, thrilled by the drops of blood on her palm.
“He didn’t come past us, so he must have gone that way or that way.” Peter pointed up and down the main road. I looked at the two boys and chewed the inside of my lip. Then I dispatched them to search along the road, under strict instructions not to split up and to turn back at the brow of the hill in one direction and the pub in the other. They set off at a jog, sticks in hand. I sent Maggie to get the Lost Boy and search the car park, looking down into the drainage ditches at the sides.
With everyone busy, I stood alone, redundant. Billy had been right there. I could have picked him up and thrown him onto my hip. I could feel his hands bunching up my shirt and his strong little thighs pressing into my belly. He had been right there. And now he was gone, and the numbing pain in my gut was worse than when he’d first arrived.
“Bill-ee,” called Maggie from across the car park, dragging the Lost Boy along by the neck of his shirt. His lips moved in a silent plea.
“Billy! Billy!” shouted Charlie and Peter in curt bursts that rang out down the road like a bird’s warning cry.
From inside the supermarket: “Billy? Are you there, Billy? Billy?”
“Billy.”
“Billy.”
“Billy.”
The word lost its meaning, disconnecting from the soft little boy who must be here, somewhere. Somehow not hearing us or not able to answer. I crouched down and held my head in my hands. It didn’t make sense. If he were hiding, he would have come out by now. So he must be hurt. He must have run off to find a safe place to eat his crisps and fallen, and now he couldn’t answer. My stomach contracted with the certainty that he was stuck or trapped, perhaps by something heavy that was squeezing the breath from him. Squeezing the life from him, even as we stood here, wasting time. Or water, he was in water, his eyes wide and startled just beneath the surface, looking up at the sky for someone to bail him out, unable to comprehend the seriousness of the situation. I could see his eyes pleading for me under the water. I could feel him in my stomach. He was here, and we couldn’t hear him because we were all running about screaming his name.
“Billy.”
“Bill-ee.”
“Billy.”
“Stop! Stop it! Stop, all of you!” I ran into the supermarket, just as Lola and Joni came round from the side door. “Shut up! Shut her up.” I pointed over to Maggie and her plaintive “Bill-ee.” We had to shut up and listen, and then we would hear him. He was here somewhere, and we should listen for a give-away sound, a tiny splash, maybe just his eyelids blinking underwater, that would tell us where he was. “Shut up and listen for him.”
The wind carried a buzzard’s cry. Sometimes when I was on the phone, Billy would creep up and fling his arms around my legs so I couldn’t move. His white teeth would shine with delight at this surprise. “You made me jump,” I would say, “you little tinker.”
I stood still, waiting, in case that was his game. When he comes, I thought, I can grab him and tickle him, hearing his laughter turn wild, and carry on tickling until his giggles go breathless, and when he whines that he doesn’t like it anymore, my fingers slip from soft belly to hard ribs, and he begs me to stop because it’s hurting a bit, but I carry on tickling him through the hysteria because I’m so relieved to have my hands back on his flesh, and I honestly don’t know how to let him go.
A buzzard rode the updraft. From the road, two sets of footsteps belonging to Peter and Charlie pattered on the wind. A gust rose in a sudden burst, and a stand of tall poplar trees on the other side of the road bent and swirled as though they’d been waiting for the opportune moment: now they thrashed back and forth like an unruly crowd, a baying mob yelling out curses of “creak-a-wish, creak-a-wish.”
Burn-the-witch. Burn-the-witch.
An echo of the boy who’d stood on this spot, pale hair wild in my headlights. Holding up my axe. Taunting me.
Fat drops of rain crash-landed, helpless and winded, on the paving stones around my feet. A first foray that presaged the onslaught to come. The sky was furred with a dark underbelly of clouds. It spat in my face, glutinous drops that I tilted back my head to receive, even while Joni and Lola and the others ran squealing for the car. And then the rain fell with a sound like dustbin lids.
If Billy had crept up behind me, I couldn’t have heard him. I closed my eyes and felt the water course through the gullies of my body: down my spine, between my breasts, into armpits and buttocks, running down my legs and out between the crevasses of my toes. I spread my arms to let it have its way.
The image of that boy in my headlights occupied my mind. Where had the Wild Things appeared from so suddenly last night? Are they here now? Could Billy have spotted some children and run after them; would he do that? Or—I opened my eyes and wiped them clear of rainwater—they could have lured Billy away. The Wild Things have taken him. Why, I don’t know, but Billy didn’t wander off, that wasn’t his style; someone has taken him. And the only people we know are alive are the Wild Things.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” I told Joni moments later in the car. “They must have grabbed him.”
“So we split up and go find them,” she said.
“No way. You take everyone back to the camp, and I’ll find them.”
“But we’ll find them quicker if there are more of us,” said Lola.
“And what if they grab Maggie next? Or the Lost Boy?” Even as I spoke, Lola was shaking her head. “Or you?”
“All right, we go in groups,” she said. “An adult in each group.”
“There are only two adults.” I spoke over Lola’s objections. “Two. Adults. And I’ll move faster on my own.”
“I could stay with you, and Mom can take the kids back.”
“No, Lola. I need to concentrate on finding Billy without worrying where you are.”
“But that’s stupid! I can help you—”
“You can help me by shutting the fuck up and doing what you’re told.”
Lola spun round in the seat to turn her back on me. Joni told me to calm down. I pushed the Lost Boy’s feet aside so I could scrabble about in the foot well for the crowbar and torch. I opened the door and slid back out into the drenching rain.
“If you’re not at the camp by nightfall, I’ll pick you up here,” said Joni.
“Mom!” Lola spun round in her seat to confront Joni.
Joni ignored her and pointed at me. “Can you walk that far with your leg? You should bandage your hand too.”
“What the fuck?” Lola jabbed her mother in the breast.
“Don’t speak to me that way, Lola,” said Joni.
“It’s only a mile or two to the camp. I’ll be fine.”
Lola shook her head and ran both hands over her dark hair to push out the water. “I always thought you humored her, Mom. Keeping the peace, like you said. But you’re her doormat.” As the door closed out her voice, Lola was telling her mother that she was pathetic.
I ran back to the supermarket and wrapped the torch in a plastic carrier bag. The crowbar was comforting, so I kept it in my hand. Behind the counter was a display of medicines, and I swallowed down two different painkillers and added the silver packets to the carrier bag. The wall clock told me it was past lunchtime, so I scooped some energy bars and chocolate into my bag, a packet of crisps for Billy. Outside in the car park, the Beast splashed through the puddles, and I heard it growl away down the main road.
The dark sky made it feel much later in the day, like I should be heading home to roost, not setting out on an expedition with no obvious destination and, certainly, no resting place. I had several hours to find Billy and get back here for our lift home.
I set off in the direction the Wild Things had gone with their stolen trolleys.
The invisible thread that remains after the umbilical cord is cut tugged at my core. I felt Billy as acutely as a contraction, a sign that I had to deliver him back again. But the empty streets and blank windows rendered me so alone that I longed to hear another human voice, anyone; there had to be someone out there who could help. I tried the police on my mobile, but the electronic voice just repeated a single word: “Sorry.” I ran to a red phone box farther down the main road. It contained only a defibrillator. “Saving lives in your community.” I picked up the emergency phone, which automatically dialed 999. Waited. Listened to a hollow line. Was someone listening back? “Hello? Hello?” Maybe this was an elaborate joke at my expense. A studio audience laughing at my confusion and then going “aw” at an image of Billy’s kissy-lip face. Or maybe I was already dead, like in a TV program I’d watched once, and this was my own personal purgatory. An eternity of trying to reach my kids. I slammed the handset down, then picked it up and slammed it down again. Or maybe it was real, and I was alive, and Billy needed me. I shouldered open the iron door.
The village was bigger than it seemed, a web of streets stretching from the main road in arcs and squares. No rhyme or reason to the layout. I jog-crouched up the driveway to each of the houses, checking for signs of life. Some of the front doors swung open at a touch. I couldn’t bring myself to enter, as though the spaces were congealed with dead air. The tangible silence told me they were uninhabited by anyone living. Some revealed the buzz, and I sprinted away. There were many cats, unperturbed. A few croupy dog barks. At every catatonic house I berated myself for wasting more time, each failure opening a new chink in my facade of determination until it crumbled altogether, and I ended up running up and down the streets, screaming Billy’s name and thrashing under hydrangea bushes as though he were a strange boy in a fairy tale who might have inexplicably curled up to sleep.
At the end of one road, where the asphalt petered out in a jagged line as the village ended and the farmland started, I forced myself again to stop and breathe.
I blew out the dregs of air and tried to focus on the realities of the moment. I ran through my litany: You cannot change the past, in the present moment you are safe, you are not in control of the aircraft. But, for the first time, the realities of the moment were worse than my most catastrophic imaginings. Everything in this moment was worse than a nightmare. I was not safe, my baby was not safe, in fact, none of us were safe: I was in control, and I was crashing slowly to earth. Then I spotted a Haribo packet.
The blue square was tucked into the bottom of the hedge, a chubby-faced gummi bear pointing into the field. I followed the direction of its arm into the sodden grass and saw, shoved into the hedge on the other side, a shopping trolley. I reached out and fingered the severed chain that had once tethered it to the others but had been broken by an axe.
The field climbed to a stand of trees at its peak, about the size of the flattened mound where we had made our own camp, but higher and more exposed. I shifted the crowbar into a better grip and started up the path that ran along the hedge. The rain had stopped, and the earth steamed out misty specters that gathered in the hollows. The distance was deceptive: the land seemed to get steeper, and the trees higher and farther away the more I climbed. I was back in the nightmare, everything surreal and disordered. I put my head down and pushed my thighs up the hill, resisting the urge to scream Billy’s name.
The peak was marked by a scraggy barbed-wire fence decorated with baubles of sheep’s wool. I pushed it down to step over, and one fence-post collapsed in. A bird of prey, some kind of raptor, launched itself from the uppermost tree, making me jump. It cawed into the sky, leaving behind a silence like the one that filled the houses below. There was no discernible path between the trees, just places where the undergrowth was lower. This was no camp. I crossed the brow of the hill in a few minutes, reaching another field and another wool-webbed fence on the other side. From this vantage point I could see over the village, whose name I realized I didn’t even know, and across a valley to another similar stand of trees, and then south to another field, and another and another. All of them empty and vast. A Pacific Ocean of ditches and copses and ponds and outhouses. An infinite number of spaces where a small boy could be curled up, crying for a mummy who couldn’t hear him.
I saw no sign of the Wild Things, and eventually, the invisible thread drew me back to the last place I knew Billy had been—the supermarket. I pictured him cross-legged with a packet of crisps open on the floor, as though wanting it hard enough would make it happen. When I arrived, I lay down on the same empty spot and cuddled myself. Pain started to well up like blood rising to the surface of a deep cut. I was surprised to see the clock and find it was late afternoon already. I double-checked the time on my watch. So many hours had passed, and I had found nothing. Billy was missing. Don’t they always say the first few hours are critical?
Of course, there was no they anymore.
Now that I’d stopped moving, I shivered in my wet clothes. Sodden fabric chaffed under my arms and between my thighs. I peeled off my soaked trousers, but stopped before I stripped altogether, not sure if it was better to wear wet clothes or be naked. But it would be night soon. It would get cold and the wet clothes wouldn’t dry. And I would be lying here, freezing and useless, while Billy was—what? I closed my eyes and saw him being led away by the Wild Things, his face delighted by the attention of bigger boys, and then his eyes darkening with confusion as they turned on him, teasing and jostling, starting to push him about in the middle of their circle. “Don’t like it,” he says, but they laugh and jeer, and then he falls down and starts to cry, and they call him a crybaby, and one of them throws a stone at him, and this makes him call for his mummy, and they laugh harder, so one of the boys throws a bigger stone, and another, until they are all throwing stones at Billy, who stops trying to get up.
I saw it happening.
I had run off in a panic, not thinking straight, without any of the things I needed—not even a map or a coat—and sent away the car that I could be using to look for him. And I sent the others away to protect them—but for what?
What did I care about any of the others if I lost Billy?
I lay on the floor, arms bound up in the straitjacket of my half-off shirt, unable to make even the simplest decision.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said out loud. “I have no idea what to do.”
And for the first time in my life, I cried out for someone to help me.
But no one replied. So I got up off the floor. I took more painkillers. I ate something. I applied another layer to my hard surface—steeling myself, like I did when I got on a plane. When the mummy guilt set me rigid enough to bear the weight.
I settled into my racing pace along the road toward camp, and everything hurt, but it was good pain, running pain. I stopped at every building to check for signs of disturbance, but as my brain focused on the problem, and a plan started to form, I was increasingly convinced that the Wild Things must have a well-hidden base and, like us, were staying away from dead bodies. If I could see Joni’s map, perhaps I could narrow down the possibilities, define a search radius, and identify hideouts that would appeal to a gang of boys. Or even work out where all those kids had come from in the first place.
As I clattered over the wooden bridge that led past the ford to the camp, the sun flared low against the horizon, burnishing the underside of the few clouds that remained in the cried-out sky. Running made me brave again. I sprinted down the final slope, suddenly convinced that Billy would be there, that he had found his own way home. I turned the corner to the cars and barely heard a shout of warning before I sprawled full length into the long grass. Peter landed heavily on his feet at my side, having dropped from somewhere above, and a few seconds later Charlie arrived.
“Mum!” he panted. “You okay? Where’s Billy?”
“What just happened?” I rolled onto my back.
“Sorry, Mrs. Greene.” Peter managed to look both worried and delighted. “It worked, Charlie!” He scrabbled through the grass to pull free a long piece of wire.
“Yeah!” Charlie punched the air and rushed off to locate the other end of the wire, which they fixed back into place across the entrance to the camp. I pulled up to a sitting position, ignoring my newly skinned knees, which were a drop in the ocean of my soreness.
“We’ve secured the camp,” Charlie explained as both boys carried on bustling about, “and Peter’s standing sentry by the gate. If he whistles, I pull the wire up over there. Didn’t realize it was you, though. Peter’s going to stand here all night, even when it’s dark, because he’s not scared of the dark. But I’m scared of the dark, so I’m over there in the camp doing the wire. Why have you got no trousers on, Mum? Where’s Billy?”
“He isn’t here?” I asked.
Charlie didn’t reply, so we both had our answer.
I got to my feet. Charlie was still bustling. I went over to him, crouched down on my heels, and hugged him from behind. He froze for a few seconds and then turned and folded into me. “I’m sorry I lost Billy,” I said into his hair. “I’m going to get the map now and work out where he is and then find him.”
“Can we help, Mum? Please. We want to help.”
“It looks like you are helping,” I said, getting up to inspect the trip wire. “This is brilliant.”
“Peter’s idea.”
“Good work, Peter. You two are my knights, defending the fort.” I limped up the slope to the tents, where Maggie was sitting, scratching a picture into a big round of bark with a piece of charcoal. She was telling a story to the Lost Boy. I went over and stroked her hair, but she shushed me before I could interrupt her. I sat and listened for a minute or two, watching the Lost Boy’s rapt eyes move over the bark picture.
Charlie was still behind me, gnawing away at a hangnail on his thumb. The dusk seemed to rush us like a riptide, soaking the camp in darkness. I wondered why Joni didn’t have the fire going.
“Where’s Joni?” I asked.
“That’s the thing,” said Charlie. “Lola’s gone, too.”