Cover

Dedication

For Juliet,

the devil on my shoulder who whispered:

‘write a scary book’

1

Before

Light from the doorway fell across the boy’s face, and for the first time he did not turn away from it. His arms and legs were too heavy, the cuff at his throat too solid, too tight. And it wasn’t as though turning away had ever saved him before.

The figure in the light paused, as if noting this change of habit, then knelt to undo the leather strap with sharp, jerking movements. The cuff fell away and she reached for his head, grasping a thick handful of his black hair, close to the roots.

Years later, he would not be able to say what had been different about that particular time. He was starved and tired, his bones heavy and his flesh bruised, and he had thought that every inch of him was resigned to the reality of his existence, but that time, when her fingers twisted in his hair and her fingernails scraped against his scalp, something in him woke up.

‘You little brute,’ she said absently. She filled the cupboard doorway, blocking out most of the light. ‘You filthy little brute. You stink, do you know that? Dirty little shit.’

Perhaps at the very last moment she did realize what she had woken, because for the briefest second a flicker of some emotion animated her pale, doughy face; she had caught something in his eyes perhaps, a look that was alien to her, and he saw quite clearly the panicked glance she gave the cuff.

But it was too late. The boy sprang to his feet, his jaws wide and hands hooked into claws. She leapt backwards, yelling. The landing stairs were directly behind her – he dimly remembered this, from the time before the cupboard – and they went crashing down them together, the boy howling and the woman screaming. It was so brief, that moment of falling, but for years he would remember several sharp impressions: the hot searing pain as she ripped a fistful of hair from his temple, the yawning sensation of falling into space, and the wild delirium of gouging her skin with his claws. His nails.

They hit the floor. There was silence. There was, the boy realized, no one else in the house; no raised voices, no sharp fingers, no alarming flash of red. The woman, his mother, lay underneath him in a collection of strange angles, her throat cocked and bared as though she were trying to appease him. Her right arm had snapped halfway down her forearm, and a bone, shockingly white against her greyish skin, pointed towards the window. The sleeve of the yellow smock she wore was caught on it.

‘Muh?’