Free The Dark Inside by Rupert Wallis

his head.
    ‘Things would be a whole lot simpler if we did.’
    When they started walking again, Webster noticed a figure standing in a deep, dark doorway on the opposite side of the street, smoking a cigarette. The shadows were too strong to see the face
clearly. Smoke was gathered like wool around it. He thought nothing of it at first because he was too busy thinking about the future. But, when he looked back after a few paces, the person was
gone.
    His blood sharpened. He looked out of the corners of his eyes to see more clearly in the moonlight.
    ‘We’re going to split up at the end of the street,’ he said quietly. When James stopped to ask him why, he laid an arm around the boy’s shoulders and pushed him on.
‘Keep walking,’ he whispered. James did as he was told, eyes flicking from side to side. He was unsure exactly who, or even what, he was looking for. And then he realized. Something
dark licked up into the back of his throat and he swallowed it down.
    ‘It’s them, isn’t it? How did they find us?’
    ‘I don’t know, but it’s me they want,’ said Webster as they neared the end of the street. ‘Go. I’ll meet you back at the car. Wait out of sight until I get
there.’ James nodded without looking up as they parted on the corner.
    Eventually, he glanced back.
    Webster was gone.
    James kept going, planning a route back to the car in his head. When he reached the end of the street, he waited for a bus to pass. The engine noise caught between the gaps in his bones and made
him shudder.
    ‘Hello, boy,’ said a voice. A warm hand gripped the back of James’s neck before he could turn around. Hot breath cooled in the whorl of his ear. ‘I told ya. I never
forget a face.’ The hand left James’s neck. Something sharp pushed up into his spine. ‘I’ll pull the trigger if you so much as make a squeak.’
    When he heard a growl beside him, James looked down. A big black dog was staring up at him, teeth bared, straining on a metal chain.

18
    Webster walked quickly through the moonlight without looking back. Eventually, rounding a third corner, he stopped and lay flat against the wall of a house. Street lamps
dropped down cones of orange light that shimmered as he breathed.
    Moments later, a man appeared. Walking fast.
    Webster caught him square in the face with a fist and heard the nose crack. His knuckles were still ringing as the man dropped to the ground and a shotgun clattered to the pavement from beneath
his long waxed coat.
    Webster picked up the gun. Listened for a moment.
    Nothing except for the man cursing into his hands. Something black was trickling between his fingers as he rolled from side to side. Webster brought down the butt of the shotgun on the back of
his head. Then, in the silence that followed, he listened again.
    The sound of a television burbling.
    A cat mewling outside a door.
    The beating of his heart.
    He opened the neck of the shotgun. Two red cartridges with their copper-coloured ends. He clicked the gun shut and listened again, then rolled the man over with his boot.
    It wasn’t Billy.
    It was Swanney.
    His eyes fluttered open and he looked up at Webster from either side of his broken nose, and swore and spat and kicked out. Webster’s finger tightened on the trigger. A great screw seemed
to turn in his jaw, hardening it. There were clean, gleaming thoughts about what he should do next. They seemed without question, or consequence, as the trigger grew big against his finger.
    But then his arm began to shake.
    The harsh metal smell of the gun came up at him in waves. Suddenly, the trigger was so hot he had to let go. His brow was burning. Wet. He tried to wipe it clean.
    ‘I knew you was touched,’ growled Swanney. Webster was shaking. Blinking faster as his eyes began to sting with sweat. Swanney’s legs and arms seemed to be lengthening.
Unwinding. Reaching out for him. ‘I knew it!’
    Webster took a step back. He guessed that Swanney was standing