Belinda Bauer - Blacklands

Steven passed the butter and was gripped with a sudden certainty that someone else would find Uncle Billy first.

Now that he had Avery’s map, it seemed so obvious! Blacklands! Of course! So close he could almost see it from his own bedroom window!

Even Lewis had worked it out. Next time I come, I’m digging up at Blacklands…

What was to stop someone else working it out too?

Someone who didn’t have to go to school today?

Someone who would beat him to it?

Someone who would push open the door of opportunity and whose life would be transformed by the discovery instead of his, leaving him trapped forever between his nan and his mother and the dim, undersea room where his own piss still stained the carpet. Steven went cold and felt his middle empty as everything inside him pressured out towards his throat and his bowels.

He got up from the table with a loud scrape.

“Where are you going?”

“School.”

“You haven’t eaten.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Lettie looked as though she was going to make an issue of it, then bound his sandwiches viciously in clingfilm and banged them into his lunch box without even caring about a chocolate bar.

Steven didn’t care either. Chocolate bars were for children, and today he would become so much more than that. He might not know how sex or relationships worked, but by nightfall he hoped his family would be a whole thing, instead of this cracked, crumbling half-thing that left him nervous and sad.

Steven glanced round at his mother, Davey, and Nan—all of them unaware of how he was about to change their lives.

He turned to go, but only got two steps before his mother said sharply: “Wait for your brother.”

And so instead of digging up the body of a murdered boy, Steven had to wait for his brother and walk him to school and then go straight to double history, where Mr. Lovejoy made them draw cross sections of the pyramids, showing all the dark, secret ways the Egyptians employed to ensure that their ancestors remained undiscovered and undisturbed for thousands of years.

Steven had still not been taught the meaning of irony, but once more he could hardly fail to understand it when it reared up in front of him and smacked him in the face.

All day long, he felt like screaming.

ARNOLD AVERY’S ARM BLED ON AND OFF ALL DAY LONG ON FRIDAY.

Now and then he felt dizzy, but wasn’t sure if it was because of the blood loss or the ebbing sugar rush of the cherry Bakewells.

He’d walked until it was dark on Thursday night, and then tried to sleep, but the cold was having none of it. After an hour of sitting hunched, teeth clattering, wrapped in the too-small green cardigan, Avery had got up and continued walking in the dark. It was slower going, but it was going, at least.

Could be worse, he thought. Could be raining.

He felt better for walking. He needed to get to Exmoor before his postcard did. The thought of SL finding WP without him made him feel sick and fluttery.

In the early hours of Friday morning—at about the same time as Uncle Jude had been picking up his truck keys and leaving quietly so as not to wake Steven and Davey—Arnold Avery had reached Tavistock and stolen a car.

It was surprisingly easy.

He’d found several parked cars with their doors unlocked in the driveways of various homes. That’s the countryside for you, he’d thought as he ran his hands around their interiors and inside their glove compartments.

One driveway held a scuffed BMW parked behind a small red Nissan hatchback. The hatchback had the keys under the sun visor. The car started on the first turn of the key and, with the BMW blocking his reverse exit, Avery had simply swung the hatchback in a juddering L-plated arc across the front lawn and through the token fence.

In seconds he’d been driving north, hunched spiderlike over the wheel in a seat that was adjusted for a very small woman, his knees banging the dash, his heart racing in time to the engine, which—for some panicky reason—he couldn’t kick out of third gear.

In a lay-by he’d levered the seat into a more comfortable position and searched the car. On the backseat was a child’s picture book— The Weird and Wonderful Wombat —and a box of tissues. There was a tool kit in the boot, along with a towrope and a plastic bag of women’s magazines. He took the magazines out of the bag and put the towrope in it, along with the wheel brace. He almost closed the boot, then leaned in and picked up a copy of Cosmopolitan . He might have a long wait.

As he shut the boot, he was overcome by dizziness and fatigue. It took a huge effort to get back in the car and find the ignition with the keys, but he did it in the end. He turned the Nissan off the main road and drove jerkily down a series of haphazard lanes until he could pull into a field behind a hedge.

Then he crawled into the backseat and slept.

When he woke it was late afternoon and he felt a lot better. His arm still throbbed but had stopped bleeding entirely. His shirtsleeve was stuck to his arm but he decided to leave well alone.

He drank more water, ate a cheese-and-tomato sandwich, and pissed with abandon into the hedge, enjoying the sensation of the gentle afternoon breeze caressing his penis. It felt like freedom.

Reinvigorated, Arnold Avery set off again, this time triumphing over the vagaries of the Nissan Micra gearbox. Without the scream of the straining engine, his heart slowed to the point where he could think clearly once more.

He tried not to think about what his immediate future held. It was just too distracting. Too exciting.

Instead he tried to concentrate on relearning to drive; on the smell of the hedgerows that slapped against the passenger window now and then; on the smooth black ribbon of road that presented mostly forgotten sights around every corner.

That was exciting enough.

For now.

SATURDAY DAWNED SO STILL AND SHROUDED IN MIST THAT IT deadened every sound.

Steven was awake. Had been awake for hours.

He felt sick. He felt happy. He felt butterflies in his stomach, and prickles in his knees that made his legs jump with wanting to run. To run up the track to Blacklands and stake his claim to the body of his dead boy-uncle Billy.

He felt sick again—this time enough to go and bend over the toilet bowl and retch a little. Nothing. He spat into the bowl but didn’t flush in case it woke anyone.

He dressed in his favorite clothes. His best socks were ruined—although he hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw them away—but everything else was his favorite. The Levi’s his mother had got in the charity shop, still dark blue with lack of wear, and the perfect weight on his hips; the red Liverpool shirt with the number 8 on his back and his own name in white over the top of that. It had been a birthday present two years ago. Nan had bought the shirt and Lettie had paid for it to be printed when they went to Barnstaple, ten pounds for the number, two pounds for each letter. She had joked it was lucky that they weren’t called Lambinovski and they’d all laughed—even Davey, who didn’t know what he was laughing at.

As he dressed (clean underwear and everything), Steven was a little embarrassed to admit even to himself that these were the clothes he wanted his photo taken in for the newspapers when he revealed his find.

This was how he wanted himself to be for posterity.

He looked out of the window. The mist was down but he could tell that behind it the sun was shining. By midmorning it would have chased the gloom away. Probably. He tied the sleeves of his new boot-sale anorak around his waist anyway. It was the moor; you just never knew.