Nicola Barker - Darkmans

‘Did you meet the pretty lady?’ The boy ignored his question, smiling mischievously. ‘The pretty lady, over there,’ he indicated towards the far side of the cathedral, ‘by the altar?’

Kane’s cheeks flushed as he remembered his dream.

‘John loves to hide,’ the boy confided, peering inside the cathedral now, through its half-finished southern entrance, ‘to creep up, very slowly and then… WAH !’ he turned, springing forward, with a yell.

Kane almost tipped over, backwards, in surprise. The boy cackled, delighted. ‘He’s always doing it to Mummy,’ he chuckled. ‘It’s funny …’ He chuckled again, but then after a few seconds his smile faded into a frown. ‘I wonder where he’s taken Daddy this time,’ he murmured.

‘John?’ Kane echoed, struggling to regain his former composure. ‘Is he one of the contractors?’

‘Who?’

The boy began scratching at his arms, irritably.

‘One of the builders?’ Kane reiterated (remembering how Elen called out this same name a short while earlier, in the kitchen). ‘Is he one of the people working on the house?’

‘ No , stupid…’ The boy shook his head, smiling, and then, ‘ Yes ,’ he rapidly changed tack, nodding his head, a sly look flitting across his face. He continued to scratch.

Kane glanced down at his hands again — still slightly paranoid — but once again his skin felt smooth to the touch. It felt fine.

‘So did your daddy build this?’ he asked, turning towards the cathedral.

‘ Him? ’ The boy snorted, contemptuously, his scratching growing ever more intense. ‘ He couldn’t build this.’

‘Don’t do that,’ Kane instructed him, reaching out to restrain him, ‘you’ll draw blood if you’re not careful.’

The boy knocked his hand away, still scratching, defiantly.

‘Show me your arms.’

Kane grabbed a hold of one of the boy’s wrists and pulled up the sleeve of his pyjama top. The right arm was covered in a mess of tiny, bleeding bites. He grabbed the left arm, pushed back the sleeve and paused. On the soft flesh of the left forearm (punctuated by yet more bites) was a birthmark. A pale, pinkish birthmark. He stared at it for a moment, surprised.

‘Are these bites of some kind?’ he demanded, after a short pause. ‘Flea bites,’ the boy nodded. He indicated towards a glass jar on the table. Kane glanced over at the jar. He remembered seeing the jar before: it was the same jar Lester had been carrying — the jar of nothing.

‘It’s empty,’ he said, but even as he said it he remembered his conversation with Geraldine, the conversation about…‘No it isn’t!’ the boy grinned, delighted. ‘It’s all full of fleas. We’ve been training them to live in the cathedral. We glued cotton to them. Invisible cotton…’

‘ Invisible? ’

‘Yes. Lester brought it. It’s special cotton…Look…’

The boy opened a small drawer in the side of the table and withdrew a normal-seeming spool of black thread.

‘Now you see it,’ he said, beginning to unwind a dark strand from the spool. ‘And now you don’t !’

Kane looked down at the cotton. The boy was right. As soon as a strand was unwound it all-but disappeared.

‘How odd …’ He drew in closer, intrigued. The boy handed him the spool. Kane took a strand of the thread between his fingers and tensed it against the reel. ‘I’ve never seen this stuff before. It’s almost like a very fine kind of fishing twine.’

‘Lester says his mummy uses it.’

Kane inspected the end of the spool: ‘Coats 100 % Nylon Invisible Thread,’ he read, ‘200m. Matches All Colours.’

‘Give it back now,’ Fleet demanded. Kane passed it over. The boy returned it, punctiliously, to its place in the drawer. While he did so Kane picked up the empty jar. He peered inside. Sure enough, on closer inspection he was able to see dozens of tiny black dots with a series of fine, floating strands attached.

‘So how do they breathe?’ he asked. ‘I mean with the lid screwed on?’

‘I don’t know,’ the boy shrugged.

‘Perhaps there’s just enough air trapped inside…’ Kane mused.

‘We must feed them,’ the boy said, taking the jar from him.

‘Feed them?’ Kane echoed.

The boy rolled up his pyjama sleeve. Kane was horrified. ‘You’ve been feeding them on your arm ?’

The boy nodded, unperturbed. ‘Daddy put powder on Lester’s dog,’ he explained, indicating towards the spaniel. ‘We was using her to feed the fleas, but now we can’t …’

‘Lester’s dog?’ Kane echoed.

The boy glanced over at him, in alarm, as if he’d been unintentionally caught out. Then his face closed up.

‘So Michelle is Lester’s dog?’ Kane reiterated.

The boy shrugged.

‘Does your mother know?’ Kane wondered.

‘Know? ’ the boy surveyed him, haughtily. ‘Know what ?’

‘About the fleas. And about who Michelle actually belongs to?’

‘Don’t be stupid !’ the boy exclaimed.

Then he paused for a moment, another sly look crossing his face. ‘John needed some money, so he made a special powder for killing fleas,’ he announced, ‘but it wasn’t really a special powder — it was just chalk. And on Sunday he sold it for a penny to all the wives at church. Then after a few weeks the wives came to find him. They was cross. They said, “Your powder doesn’t work. The fleas are worse than they ever was.” But John says, “Of course the powder works.” The wives say, “No. It doesn’t. We want our money back.” So John says, “Well how did you apply the powder?” And the wives say, “We shook it from the jar — on all our clothes an’ our sheets an’ our blankets — that it might kill the fleas.” Then John begins to smile as if they are very foolish. So they say, “ Why are you smiling?” and he says, “But of course it won’t work if you shake it from the jar! You must feed it to the fleas on a little spoon, one by one, and then, when they have eaten their fill they will lie down and die — but only if you feed them one by one.”’

Fleet put his hand to his mouth and sniggered. ‘The wives was very cross with John, but there was nothing they could say.’

Kane watched the boy, closely, as he told the story.

‘That’s a very funny story,’ he said, once the tale was finished, ‘John must be extremely clever to fool all those women like that.’

‘He is,’ the boy nodded.

‘Does your daddy like that story?’ he continued, in exactly the same light tone. ‘Does he think John’s funny, too?’

The boy looked surprised by this question, then confused.

‘No,’ he answered, looking down. ‘I don’t know.’

‘And your mummy?’

The boy glanced over his shoulder, nervously. ‘Mummy doesn’t like me to talk about it,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ Kane nodded. ‘So Mummy isn’t too keen on John, then?’

The boy took a step back. He shook his head, conflicted. ‘She does like him,’ he said. He lifted his hand to his mouth and began stroking his finger along his upper lip ‘…but sometimes…’

The stroking grew more frantic.

‘Right…’ Kane glanced around him, wanting to mollify the boy. ‘So how will we go about feeding these fleas?’ he asked.

The boy continued to stroke his upper lip. He glanced up at Kane, but he didn’t speak.

‘I suppose we could always use my arm,’ Kane volunteered, taking off his jacket and rolling up his sweatshirt sleeve.