The Color of Darkness

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  In memory of C, an inspiration

  I haven’t brought a spade.

  He stands in the moonlit woods, a thousand miles from anywhere. How can you make a hole in the earth when you’ve nothing to dig it with?

  Perhaps I should go home.

  Perhaps I should call my dad and ask him to come and fetch me.

  Perhaps I should go back to bed, where the rest of the world thinks I am.

  Perhaps I should—

  Keep it?

  It is burning a hole in his pocket, trying to break through the material and cling to him like a limpet.

  I am yours, it says.

  Danny shudders, and a breeze picks up through the thinning leaves of the autumn treetops. There’s rain on the air, soft and damp. Rain that might fall lightly or lash down from the growling clouds of a storm.

  Storms, he thinks. If a storm comes—

  And he is on his knees, tearing at the earth with his fingers, gouging shallow scoops from the soft patch at the base of a tree. The leaf mold is sticky and grainy, and smells of bitter coffee. The soil underneath is more compact, but his fingernails cut through the layers, scrape by scrape, until his hands are sunk up to the wrists in loose soil.

  Not deep enough. Not nearly deep enough.

  He drags the loose soil away and keeps digging. His nails pack with grit. Tiny thorns drive themselves into his fingertips. Twice he catches his thumb on something so sharp it makes him gasp with pain, but the hole needs to be deeper and he knows that the next time he stops he’ll feel it there in his pocket, talking to him, and it will say, Please don’t bury me. Keep me. I’m yours. You’re mine. We belong together.

  He closes his eyes and shuts it all out. The wind whispers away to stillness, the hooting owl closes its beak. Even the scraping of fingers through soil is without sound, as though the soil has begun to move itself silently out of the hole it knows must be dug.

  * * *

  At last it’s done.

  It is so deep he can put his arm in it up to the elbow. It must be deep enough.

  He stands back, puts his muddy hand into his pocket, and pulls the thing out. And without looking at it, he pushes it down into the earth at the bottom of the hole.

  He fills the hole quickly, his head turned away, looking into the shadows lurking around the silver trees. When the hole is full, he kicks dry leaves over it and smooths them down with his shoe.

  The thing has gone. It’s out of his pocket. It’s out of his world. It’s at the bottom of a deep hole and it’ll never see daylight again.

  He widens his eyes to look for the path home, and it’s a clear path, bright with moonlight, welcoming him toward it.

  Out of the woods. One step, and another, and another, and each step takes him farther away from this place.

  He goes as quickly as he can, and the forest watches him leave.

  * * *

  Under the earth, a call begins. The days and weeks pass. Autumn falls prey to winter’s claws; spring’s green teeth gnaw away at the frozen armor of winter, and then summer sweeps yellow over the land.

  And still it calls. Only one person hears it, but to him, it roars as loud as thunder.

  Danny, it says.

  Danny.

  Danny.

  Danny.

  CHAPTER 1

  TOM

  “Get down! They’re coming!”

  Johnny White barely whispered the warning, but Tom Fletcher instantly ducked his head behind a tree root and pressed himself flat to the forest floor. A flapping of wings beat up into the treetops, and a few leaves rustled as a creature crashed against a branch, then the dark woodland inhaled all sound with one giant breath and held it, leaving only the light air of a summer night, the gentle gray of a thin moon, and silence.

  Next to Tom, hidden away in the moon shadows, Johnny pressed his pale face down into the leaf mold. No one would see his black hair against the night and the shadows of the birch trees. They had better not see it. If Tom and Johnny were seen … if Johnny was recognized …

  Tom pulled his woolly hat farther down over his ears and waited. Stupid blond hair. He should have put camouflage paint on his face, but there hadn’t been time to get any.

  His keen ears scanned the woodland again. An owl let out the faintest whisper of a hoot, telling its chicks to be quiet. From the bank across the clearing, a few short grunts let Tom know that the badgers were shuffling around just inside the entrance of their sett, thinking about venturing out. Two of them tonight: the old boar and the heavily pregnant sow. His favorites.

  And then the tiny crack of a dry holly leaf snapped halfway down the hill. Footsteps kicked leaves, and the damp scent of decay floated up on the breeze.

  “Is the shotgun loaded?” Johnny barely breathed out the words.

  Tom nodded. “Yeah. But there’s loads of them. One warning shot won’t—”

  “Sssh!”

  Tom was silent for long enough to hear the pounding of his own heart. Why had the forest gone so quiet? Once the men got up here, they’d hear his heartbeat and they’d find him. Why couldn’t something squawk or cry out or flap around? Why had everything become so unnatural?

  Three sets of footsteps tramped up the slope toward the clearing. The tiny pattering dots of a terrier’s paws jogged beside them. And then the sliding, scraping rakes of bigger paws, straining at collars, scrabbling toward their prey.

  They came into the clearing. Seven shadowy shapes.

  Three men armed with spades and shovels, a terrier small enough to scramble down a badger sett, two squat fighting dogs ready to set upon whatever poor badgers the terrier flushed out, and a much bigger dog—a Rottweiler, or something like it—with a chain for a collar.

  Johnny tugged at Tom’s jacket. They had to get out of here. Those dogs would smell them, and they wouldn’t care what kind of animal they were sinking their teeth into, as long as it had flesh.

  But Tom shook his head. He couldn’t go now, not when he knew what was about to happen. He had to at least try and stop it—that was the point of bringing the shotgun.

  If he fired a shot …

  He reached around to get hold of the shotgun. Small twigs snapped off a bush, crackling out into the still air.

  The dogs’ heads shot up.

  “What’s that?” one of the men hissed.

  They listened for a couple of seconds.

  “Nothing. An animal. Let’s get Julie down to work.”

  The tallest man leaned down to unclip the terrier.

  Tom cursed himself for not having got the gun to his shoulder before the men had arrived. Now he’d have to wait until the dogs were distracted, which meant he’d have to wait until they’d flushed out a badger and started fighting it.

  Johnny trembled beside him. When he’d found Tom at school and told him that some of the men from the Sawtry buildings were baiting badgers, he’d been boasting like crazy abo
ut how he was going to hunt them down and “give ’em as good as they gave.” “It’s sick!” he’d said. “Sending them dogs in, tearing animals apart just for fun. It’s sick. Someone’s gotta stop ’em.”

  But out here, he seemed hardly able to move.

  For a second, the moon flashed out from a thinning gap in the clouds. The terrier shot forward as the leash came away. It scrambled down into the earthy entrance of the badger sett and disappeared.

  Tom heard the growls of the badgers. If it has to be one, he prayed, please let it be the old boar. He was a fearsome creature, and he’d at least have a chance of fighting for long enough that Tom could get a shot fired in time to save him.

  But it was the snarling of the pregnant sow that he heard loudest, as the terrier’s hindquarters came powering backward up the tunnel and out into the clearing. The dog was dragging the badger by the scruff of her neck, and the badger was roaring in anger. As soon as they broke out into the open air the badger began to swing her head around, snapping her jaws around the terrier’s legs, biting at its sides. But she was heavy, her pregnant belly holding her down.

  “Get some light on ’em!”

  One of the men switched on a bright light, directing the beam toward the fight. A laugh rang out as the terrier began shaking its head, trying to force the breath out of the badger.

  “Go on, let Tyson go!”

  Another leash unclipped. A bigger dog hurled itself into the fight.

  Tom could stand no more. He grabbed the shotgun and yanked it up to his shoulder, not caring how much noise he made.

  Johnny leapt up and pelted away into the darkness, crashing through the bushes.

  Tom let loose both barrels of the gun.

  His aim was wild against the glare of the light and the shots thumped into trees, but the deafening crack of the gun made the men yell startled curses. One of them ran forward to grab the terrier, kicking away, pounding his foot into the snarling fight until the animals broke apart and the barks of the terrier rose shrieking over the echoes of the gunshots.

  “Run!” The man with the terrier rushed out of the clearing, but the others ignored him and stayed, standing over the panting body of the badger, gazing around into the night.

  Tom kept his head low, watching them. The shorter of the two had a tough face with a double chin. The taller, with a fat paunch and dark hair, had eyes as silver-cold as knife blades.

  “It ain’t gamekeepers,” said Cold Eyes. “There ain’t keepers here.”

  “Let Elvis go,” said Double Chin. “He’ll flush ’em out.”

  “Go on, then.”

  Tom was on his feet and running before he heard the rush of the dog’s paws, but he knew it was the Rottweiler, unchained. It didn’t waste breath barking, simply bounded toward the sound of him sprinting away through the undergrowth.

  He felt no fear. Tom knew this landscape better even than the sounds of the midnight woods: this was his farm, his work, and his life. He broke from the edge of the woods out into the fields and made for the stream at the bottom of the hill, slinging the gun over his shoulder as he ran. His legs were strong and fast: he had a head start, just enough of one, if nothing hampered him.

  Behind, he heard the thudding of the dog’s paws against the black grasses. Not far now. Not far. And then he was at the shallow stream, splashing through the widest point, running a few steps along the bank and back into the stream again, back out, back in, back out. He heard the dog splashing, stopping, listening, and he leapt out of the stream, hared across a narrow strip of grass, and vaulted over the fence into the lane.

  His bike was where he’d left it; he pedaled away into the night, gripping the handlebars with a fury that kept him pedaling at top speed long after there was any further danger of being caught by the dog. He would go back there in the morning, just to check if the badger had survived, but in his heart he knew that she hadn’t stood a chance.

  And the baiters would be back. Tom knew how men like that operated—how violent and brutal they were, intent on finding ways to carry out their disgusting sport. He could call the police, but it would only be Tom’s word against theirs—Johnny would never get involved.

  The baiters would be back, and they’d kill more badgers unless he could take away the cover of darkness and shine bright lights onto their horrible cruelty.

  I’ll find some way of stopping them, he thought as he wrenched the bike up the drive to the farmhouse, his wheels spinning against the gravel. I’ll catch them and I’ll let them see that I caught them, and that it’s my badgers on my farm that I’m protecting.

  And then I’ll make them pay.

  CHAPTER 2

  DAD

  The dogs had dumped on the carpet again.

  Cath Carrera woke up and didn’t even have to sniff to know that they’d done it, right in the middle of the living room, close to the couch where she slept. The smell was rising, hot and eggy, into her nostrils. As she breathed, it shot into her empty stomach like a poison-tipped stick.

  She sat up and gagged. “Yuck!”

  Then she froze. She shouldn’t have made a sound. If Dad or Macy woke, they’d make her clean up the mess before she went to school. Even if one of the other kids came into the living room and started screaming about the rotten smell, Cath would still be the one who had to clean it up.

  She didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t fair that Macy’s kids got a bedroom while Cath didn’t, and it wasn’t fair that Dad had kicked the dogs into the living room late last night when Cath had already shut the door, so it was even less fair to make her clean up after them. But if she tried to say no, Macy would probably have a fit and shove her onto the pile of crap, and then she’d have to go to school stinking, like last Thursday, when that English teacher with a neck like a string bag had taken her aside and suggested that she go into the washroom to see if she’d trodden in anything, and was everything quite all right at home?

  Cath listened to the sounds of the apartment. One of the dogs was snoring in the corner. Macy was snoring in her and Dad’s room, grunts muffled by the closed door. The kids didn’t snore, but they always woke up early. There wouldn’t be much time before someone else appeared.

  She swung her legs off the side of the settee, looking carefully at the floor to avoid the mess. The snoring dog had a clump of pale gray hair stuck to its soggy jaw. Badger hair again, for sure.

  Reaching for her school clothes, Cath tried not to breathe as she put them on. If she managed to get out of the apartment and didn’t come back till late, someone else would have to clean the carpet. They wouldn’t be able to sit in the living room all day with that horrible smell.

  * * *

  She got as far as the hallway, and then the door to the kids’ room opened and Sadie stuck her head out. Her blond hair was across her face, but her hard little eyes shone through the white strands. She looked at Cath.

  For a second, neither of them spoke. Cath clenched her fist.

  “Why are you going out now?” said Sadie, very loudly. “It isn’t time for school yet.”

  “Shut it!” Cath hissed, grabbing for her schoolbag.

  “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” yelled Sadie, looking at the door of her parents’ room. She pushed away the hair from her mouth and smiled at Cath.

  Cath yanked the bag up from under the other schoolbags and turned the key in the front door. She pulled it open just as the bedroom door at the end of the hall opened.

  “What the—?”

  It was Macy, nightie strap hanging off her shoulder.

  “Mum, Cath’s going out!” said Sadie.

  Cath went out. Running as fast as the walls and stairs would let her, she crashed into the angles of the stairwell and leapt down the floors.

  “CATH! YOU LITTLE COW! GET BACK HERE!”

  The yell bounced off the walls and zoomed past her ears. She ran, jumped, careered down the seven flights of stairs, slapping her hand on the metal handrail, swinging her bag around the corners of the landing. Mac
y wouldn’t catch her. Macy wouldn’t even bother to run—what did she care? Cath’s own mum had disappeared ages ago, long before Cath could remember, and the only thing Cath knew about her was that she was “wild.”

  “Enough sense to leave you, anyway,” Macy liked to say when Dad wasn’t around.

  * * *

  Cath shot outside into the early-morning drizzle. The Sawtry estate was quiet and cold, exhausted apartment buildings sagging toward the earth. Behind the thin rain, a stillness in the air spoke of a world that hadn’t yet learned to move.

  She slowed to a walk and looked up. She liked the Sawtry in the early morning. If only the day never got old. If only the sun never slunk its way up into the sky, shining light on all the dirty cracks of the earth below. If only nothing ever had to carry on—just to begin, and begin again, and go on beginning, and all the things that began badly wouldn’t matter because you’d know they weren’t going to carry on any more than just the beginning.

  If that was the world—but that wasn’t the world. Not this world, anyway.

  She shrugged and grinned, baring her teeth to the silent clouds. For a second, she could almost feel the fangs of a wolf growing long from her gums, flashing white against the day. If her fingers were wolves’ claws, if she could prowl and spring and sink her teeth into Macy’s neck …

  Shaking the wolf from her shoulders, she dropped the imaginary fur onto the pavement and was just about to turn the corner of the alley that went toward school, when a voice made her stop dead.

  “You little…”

  She knew the voice at once. It had said those words to her often enough.

  Dad. Outside in the early morning, prowling around the Sawtry. It wasn’t unusual, but it wasn’t good.

  Cath shrank back against the wall. Her chest contracted, trying to hold in the swelling beat of her heart. Her lungs bulged.

  And then—somebody else.

  “No! Please! Please! Don’t!”

  The second voice was whining and thin, and it came from down the alley. Johnny White, who lived four floors below. He did stuff for Dad sometimes, though he didn’t seem very good at it: only last week he’d turned up at the door, soaked and shivering, with a panicked story about losing money.