Blacklands

Pure anger bubbled up in Steven in defense of a boy he’d never liked even though he’d never known. All his good intentions to stay invisible disappeared in an instant.

“You’re a liar!”

Avery shook him by the hair, making Steven yelp in pain.

“You what?”

“You’re a … fucking liar!” The tears were coming thick and fast, but now they were tears of fury, and fury made him feel stronger. He knew he was stupid to challenge Avery but he no longer cared, and that was liberating. He put his hands up to try to control the grip Avery had on his hair and Avery slapped them roughly away, but he kept trying to grapple free of the tight knot of pain. The tugging on his hair made him think of the way it pulled and twisted up inside the green living-room curtains while he and Davey waited for Frankenstein to come find them. Well, he’d tried to be Frankenstein’s friend and he’d blown it, and the pain of his hair being pulled now was far greater, just as the hammering of his heart at the back of his mouth was so much more—so much bigger it seemed impossible. It was as if that vital organ were being squeezed up his throat by the sheer force of the terror that had exploded in his belly.

He flailed wildly with his hands and caught Avery on the bloody wound inflicted by the son of Mason Dingle. Avery yelped and, for a glorious second, let go of his hair. Steven almost fell with the release of his head.

Then the punch caught him unawares and knocked every bit of air and every bit of fight clean out of him.

He lay dazed, only aware that his face was in the cold wet heather, then—from a long way off—he felt his body being manhandled onto its back, floppy as a fish.

Hands tugged at his jeans.

A wave of blackness made his stomach clench—and he doubled up and vomited violently all over himself and Arnold Avery.

In the split second of still silence that followed, he noticed a chunk of guilty tomato on Avery’s sleeve, before the man recoiled from him with a shout of disgust, flicking puke off his hands and scrubbing himself with the pale green cardigan.

“You little shit! You dirty little bastard! I’ll fucking kill you!”

But Steven was running. Running before he even realized he was on his feet. Running downhill through the wet, slapping heather, stumbling over tufts and roots, missing the track! Where was the track? He turned right anyway and blundered on through the rough terrain. Heard nothing but a faint squealing sound which, he realized, was the noise that terror made in the throat of a boy running for his life.

Steven threw a wild look over his shoulder; Avery was above him and behind, but was catching up. He’d found the track and the running was easier there. He was faster; Steven couldn’t go any faster. Not here; not in the deep purple heather.

He angled up again to try to rejoin the track, slowing still further in the process, Avery gaining. If only he could get to the track, he’d make it. He was sure. Fuck it! He turned sharply and bounded up the hill back to the track, then skidded onto it and kept running.

Avery was only twenty yards behind him when Steven ran into a wall of fog so thick that he flinched. He hesitated momentarily, fought the instinct to slow down, and rushed headlong into the whiteness.

He could hear Avery behind him, cursing in breathy spurts. He sounded close, but everything did in the fog.

And then he heard nothing.

He stopped, panting and wheezing, and turned circles, ears hurting with the strain of listening over the thudding of his own blood. Nothing.

Steven decided to keep running but then realized that stopping had been a terrible mistake. Before he’d been running the right way simply because he was running away from Avery. But now he’d stopped, he’d lost any sense of direction. He looked down at his feet and the ground around him. Heather barred the way he would have chosen. He shuffled sideways quietly and found only grass and patchy gorse with his feet. With a panicky tingle he realized he’d lost the track. He stood for a long moment, listening to his heart pounding in his ears, trying not to breathe and give himself away.

Steven sucked in his breath and held it as he heard a rustling sound. He couldn’t tell where it came from or how far off. He turned. A quiet—strangely familiar—squeak and a bump. He spun the other way.

It was the wrong move.

His head was jerked back and he lost his footing and fell. Something warm around his neck; a knee in his ribs pumped the breath out of him and Avery was over him, on him, staring down into his face with his teeth bared and his eyes narrowed into glittering slits.

Something soft but tight was around his neck; Steven realized he was being strangled with the pale green cardigan. He could smell his own vomit on it.

He couldn’t breathe. His head felt huge and about to pop; his lungs spasmed and screamed for air. He had to breathe.