The presents were small things: little boxes of chocolates, a set of flavored lip balms. One girl, Sarah, had given her a Boots voucher, of all things.
“When I was a kid, teachers were lucky to get an apple,” she murmured to the empty classroom.
One of the presents didn’t have a gift tag on it and wasn’t attached to any of the cards. The wrapping paper was curious; a slightly old-fashioned paisley print, like the lavender smelling paper from her nan’s wardrobe, and there were two wilted pink flowers set on top of it.
Frowning slightly, she unwrapped the parcel only to find a large, smooth pebble. It was cold to the touch and made her think of the seaside. Someone, not very artfully, had scratched the shape of a heart into one side of it.
“Huh.” Fiona’s frown deepened, trying to think of who might do something like that. You did get the occasional artistic kid, the child who savored the role of being the one to do something shocking or different. But then, in all honesty, very few of them ended up in an A-Level PE class. They were all doing Art or Drama.
In the end, she lined up the cards along the front of her desk, and set the pebble down next to them, scratched side facing the class. And then she went home.
CHAPTER7
BEFORE
THE MAN TOOK the boy to his house, although it was not a house in the sense he knew. It was a vast, sprawling place with shining floors and old, dark furniture, warm with polish. It was clean and cold and silent, with no marks on the walls or dirty cutlery lying around. The big black dog trotted across the wooden floor briskly, its claws clattering the quiet into pieces, and the man came in behind them, taking off his hat and hanging it on a hat stand.
“You can stay here now, Michael. It is Michael, isn’t it?”
The boy didn’t reply. He was watching the dog, which had passed in front of a tall mirror on the wall, and briefly there were two black dogs, eyes like amber fires. The boy followed the animal and saw another creature in the mirror—a filthy stick figure with a shock of black hair, a dark thing smeared with dark matter. Abruptly, he could smell himself, and the thought of being in this clean place and making it dirty forced a noise of distress from his throat. His skin felt hot and prickly.
“Nuh. Unh …”
“Come on. I’ll run you a bath.” The man came up beside him and looked down, and for the first time the boy saw that one of his eyes was wrong—the white was a little too white, the brown of his iris too smooth. “You’ll feel better, lad.”
The man left him alone in a bathroom with a bathtub filled with hot, soapy water. He circled it for a time, unnerved by the slippery white enamel and all the unfilled space in the room. Crisp, yellow light filtered in through a frosted window, and he felt exposed. He did not look in the mirror over the sink. Eventually, after listening at the door for a time, he peeled off his sodden shirt and shorts—chucked in a pile on the floor, they didn’t look like clothes at all—and sank into the bath, making small huffing noises as the hot water inched up over his chest. He stayed there until the water was utterly cold, and a thick brownish film had ringed the sides.
Later, he sat at a long table in a set of pajamas that were slightly too big for him, while the man put plates of food in front of him. Soft white bread and pink bacon, crispy brown at the edges; a pat of yellow butter, a jar of pickles, half empty and filled with mysterious murky shadows. A tall glass of milk.
“When I’m away, the woman who cleans the place brings her son to stay,” he said. “He’s about the same age as you, I’d say, but he’s got a bit more meat on his bones. I don’t reckon he’ll miss a set of pajamas, do you?” The man’s voice was warm and soft, unconcerned. The boy thought of how he had smiled at him in the grass, smiled down at the ruined body of his mother. “You can eat the food, lad. It’s safe.”
Was it safe? The boy wasn’t sure. Hesitantly, he curled his hand around the glass of milk but didn’t pick it up. Food was a tease, a punishment, a myth.
“How did you get those scars on your neck, Michael? The marks around your wrists.”
The boy looked up. The man was still smiling, but the light from the big windows collected in his false eye, turning it into a flat piece of opaque glass. There was a clatter of claws against polished wood, and he knew that the big black dog was behind him again.
“There’s always a family everyone whispers about, in every town,” continued the man. He sounded faintly amused. “I know that better than most. A family that keeps its secrets, keeps to itself. Rumors and tales grow from those families, like ivy on a house, and most of the time the stories are just nasty gossip, a load of vicious nonsense from old women with too much time on their hands. And then, sometimes, the stories are true, aye, Michael? Something else I know a little about.” He took a slow breath in through his nostrils. “You’re safe now, lad.”
“I can’t stay here.” It was the first complete sentence he’d said in months, and it felt strange
