A Dark and Secret Place

shooting up to be almost as tall as the man. If he was starved of human contact, he did not mind, or even think about it very much—he spent his days outside in the woods, or in the man’s library. He did drawings sometimes, although he was very careful to hide them, slipping them under his mattress in the early hours of the morning. Sometimes the woman who cleaned the big house came, and he would stay out of her way, listening for the sounds of her hoover or the faint sigh as she polished some piece of silver, and every now and then other men would come to the house; big, brash country men who brought a trail of cigarette smoke and the faint sour smell of beer. When they came around, Michael made sure to leave the house entirely, staying out in the woods all night sometimes, watching the lilac dawn light filter through the trees and tending his graves.

One afternoon, he returned to the house to find it filled with a new presence, something he couldn’t name. He hung in the doorway, sniffing carefully—there was a scent, something floral and exotic, and a different energy. The dog appeared across the hall and then was gone, and a second later he heard the man call out to him.

“Michael! We have guests. Come and meet them.”

It was summer. The living room was hot and still. Motes of dust hung in the air, making Michael think of old water moving slowly in a forgotten fish tank. The man was sitting in one of his wooden chairs, leaning forward eagerly to see Michael’s face. On the large green sofa two women were sitting—they were both older than Michael, but not as old as the man. One had chalky white skin with glossy pink lips, and her eyebrows looked as though they had been drawn on with a pen. She wore a tight blue dress with holes in the side; her pale flesh poked through like uncooked bread. The other had a lot of yellow hair that she had pinned up on top of her head and somewhat incongruously she was wearing a thick white fur coat over a short black skirt and a top with spots on it. Michael could tell from looking at it that the fur wasn’t real; it fluffed up around her as though she were sitting in the arms of a big white bear. This one smiled at Michael, revealing small neat teeth.

“This is your boy, is it? He’s a big lad.” The other woman laughed at this, raising her pretend eyebrows at some meaning Michael couldn’t grasp.

“Come and say hello.” The man waved him over. “These are friends of mine.”

Michael did not move. The weird floral scent was coming from these women, and in the confines of the hot living room it was overwhelming. There was too much to take in about them, and he could feel his heart starting to beat too fast; thick silver rings on bony fingers, shiny red shoes with heels like knives, the soft pouches of flesh that seemed to be seeping out from everywhere he looked. The girl with the eyebrows leaned forward, threatening to spill out of her tight top.

“He’s not frightened, is he? Not of us.”

“Of course not,” said the man, and Michael caught the look he gave him; interested, close to being angry. There was a path Michael was supposed to take here—just like with the chicks—and he was close to missing it. But quite abruptly, he didn’t care. He was disgusted by these strange colorful women and their strong smells. They were disrupting his home, turning the air strange and charged. For the first time he felt a flare of anger toward the man, a sense of betrayal. This place was supposed to be safe.

He left the living room, ignoring the trill of laughter from one of the women, and headed back outside into the lengthening afternoon. He walked and walked, taking himself down the paths he was fondest of, through Fiddler’s Woods and down through the fields and further, out past the hedgerows and thickets until he came to paved roads. He walked these, too, walking further than he ever had, with the sun pressing hot on his head and his mind carefully blank.

The sun was inching toward the horizon when he came to the outskirts of a small village. There were cars parked outside cottages set back from the road, and a little further in, he could see a pub sign swinging from a black and white building. There were people here, he realized. People who might wonder what a fourteen-year-old stranger was doing wandering by himself; people who might even know his family. Jumping as though he had been doused with a bucket of water, Michael turned to head back to the fields, suddenly feeling terribly exposed—he was the mouse out after dark, caught in the shadow of the owl—and that was when he saw her.

A figure in a red coat, standing just by a low drystone wall. She was leaning back, her pale face tipped up to the last of the sun, grinning. Her sharp white fingers were spread against the stone, but he knew that they could move fast. They could be touching him in moments.

He ran.

There was movement as he passed her, and he sensed her turning her head to look at him, sensed her sharp hands reaching out, and he knew that if he felt the feathery touch of her fingers he would faint dead away, and that would be it, he would be back there, in the cupboard, at the mercy of his family again—at the mercy of his mother, who beat him, his father, who hated him, and his sister … who came to him at night, with her red coat and her sharp smile.

She did not catch him. Instead he ran wildly out into the fields, running until he was back under the blessed trees again,