The hungry dark, p.1
The Hungry Dark, page 1
THE HUNGRY DARK
Jen Williams
Copyright
HarperVoyager, an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2024
Copyright © Jen Williams 2024
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2024
Jen Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008617745
eBook Edition © April 2024 ISBN: 9780008617769
Version: 2024-03-05
Dedication
For the Penge Thelemites
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Acknowledgments
Keep Reading …
Also by Jen Williams
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
AT FIRST, ROBBIE stayed by the glow of the candles, caught in their light like a fish in a bowl.
The candles were tall and thick, coated in runnels of white wax that spilled over the sconces, which were screwed into bare stone walls. They were quite unlike the ones on Robbie’s last birthday cake; there had been twelve of those, blue and glittery. The light these cast seemed old, much older than the neat little electric lights at home, or the night-light by the side of his bed in the shape of a Minecraft creeper. This light belonged down here. Down in the tunnel.
He sat with his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around his legs. Beyond the candlelight, there was the wall opposite – more large grey stones, like every illustration of a castle Robbie had ever seen – and to either side there was a thick and syrupy darkness that sometimes had noises in it. Robbie sat there for hours, the cold seeping through the thin white shift he wore, turning his legs and his bottom numb. When he had first woken up in this place, he had shouted and cried and even slapped his hands against the wall, until his throat had started to hurt, and still no one had come for him. The noises got louder, though.
Eventually, he stood up shakily, a swarm of pins and needles flowing up through his feet right up to his rump. He shivered and wiped his face on his forearm.
‘Is anyone there? I don’t know what I’m doing here.’
There was no answer, but a sudden gust of air barrelled down the tunnel towards him, pushing his lank hair back from his face and playing with the candle flames. They flickered and stretched, close to being blown out, and Robbie realised that he could be stuck here in this tunnel in the dark.
‘Help! Please!’ He tiptoed towards the very edge of the circle of light and stopped there, the toes of his bare feet not quite touching the darkness. ‘Is anyone there? I’m … I’m sorry.’
He didn’t know what he was sorry for, but this had to be a punishment. Like the punishments in the old days that his teachers always spoke of so fondly: canings, beatings, going to bed without any dinner. Someone would come for him eventually. They couldn’t just leave him down here. It wasn’t allowed. Other questions nipped at his heels, but he avoided them, knowing they were questions too dangerous to look at in the dark.
Why didn’t he remember how he got here? Who had dressed him in this weird white dress? Where were Jill and Stewart, his foster parents?
Eventually, hunger got him to leave the candlelight behind. His stomach had gone from a grumble to a howl, and it made it difficult to think of anything else. Besides, perhaps the punishment was also a test. Perhaps they were expecting him to figure this out himself, and once he passed the test, they’d let him out, back up into the daylight. Whatever the answer was, he was sure it wasn’t going to be found here, sitting underneath these strange old candles. Taking a deep breath, he stepped beyond the circle of light, heading towards the place from which the gust of wind had come.
With each step the candlelight dwindled, darkness seeping around his feet like a dangerous riptide. Soon it felt like he was walking into a darkness so deep it was a solid thing, so he thrust out one hand and touched his fingers to the wall, scuffing his fingertips over its rough-hewn surface. Every now and then, he would call out again, mainly because he couldn’t bear the silence, or the distant noises that sometimes broke it apart.
‘Hello? Is anyone there? I need help.’
At that moment, his stomach growled so loudly that it made him jump, and then, as he was laughing shakily at his own foolishness, the ground under his feet vanished and he dropped sickeningly, arms flailing, only to hit the stone floor a moment later.
He lay where he fell for a few minutes, crying with pain and shock. Eventually, he realised that here the darkness was not so solid, and he could see a little better. Further up the tunnel, there was another set of candles, and their thin buttery light just about reached him. The small set of steps that he’d fallen down from was a couple of feet away, and on the edge of one step was a dark dash of blood where he’d bashed his knee. Slowly, Robbie uncurled himself and got back on his feet, wiping one grimy arm across his face again.
‘Bloody … stupid steps.’ He hiccuped, then his stomach growled again. He limped up the tunnel, his knees throbbing, heading towards the next set of candles, when he saw that there was something sitting on the floor beneath the candles, something shockingly red and wet and glistening. He approached cautiously, but once he got into the warm circle of light, he realised he knew what it was; it was one of the weird fruits that Jill sometimes picked up from the Turkish Food Centre. She seemed to like to find things that he hadn’t seen before, which was, Robbie had to admit, not exactly difficult. In his old home, they had considered bananas exotic enough. This was a pomegranate, cut in half so that the crimson jewel-like seeds were spilling out. His stomach roared at the sight of it. He’d picked it up and had his fingers wedged into the partitions before it occurred to him that it was weird to find a pomegranate here, that someone had to have placed it underneath the candles, and recently too.
He held up a rough handful of juicy seeds, his fingers already stained pink, and looked out into the dark again.
‘Is anyone there? Hello?’
There was a distant sigh, the wind moving down the corridor again, and then … nothing.
A tiny voice in his head, some half-remembered ancient instinct, was telling him that the food was dangerous, that it was a trap. Too good to be true, it whispered, this voice from the bad old days. Eat this and you’ ll never be allowed to leave.
But the voice was crushed beneath Robbie’s persistent hunger. He sat down under the candles and ate the first handful of seeds, his mouth filling with their sweet, tart juice. He crunched the tiny, gritty pips between his teeth. As he was popping more of the seeds out of the pomegranate, he noticed that he hadn’t grazed his knees after all; in fact, he hadn’t broken his skin anywhere, but his white shift was smeared with blood, big wet patches of it, as though he’d rolled around in it, or fallen into a puddle.
He looked up, seeking out the steps where he’d seen the smudge of blood, and that was when he saw the shadowy shape moving in the dark, coming towards him. It reached out its hand, and Robbie screamed.
CHAPTER
1
‘IS THE NAME John important to anyone here?’
Ashley Whitelam let her gaze flicker out across the audience. It was one of the smaller nights at the working men’s club, only around sixty punters or thereabouts, so it didn’t take long. She saw a handful of faces brighten, eyebrows raising, hands clutching handbags. Ashley felt as though she really could read their minds: Does she mean my John? Surely not my own John? Thanks to her brother Aidan’s quiet voice in her ear, she already knew who she was looking for.
‘Now, what I get when John is coming through is a sense of tightness here.’ Ashley pressed one hand to her chest, her eyes half closed. She wasn’t focused directly on the audience, but she could see hands rising hesitantly into the air. ‘This John, perhaps he had problems with his heart, or his lungs, later in life. John, who are you coming through for?’
Aidan’s voice came through in her earpiece. ‘Green scarf in the third row.’
Ashley let her head nod forward slightly, her long silvery-blond hair falling over her shoulders like a length of silk. She pictured in her mind how the audience saw her: a thin, frail figure, pale skin and hair, half a ghost herself. She was wearing one of the blouses her mother insisted on – cream with slightly puffy shoulders, buttoned up to the neck – with a pair of stonewashed jeans and a sober pair of white flats on her feet. Altogether, it gave the impression of someone only half of this world, a faded apparition, a soul in transit, a half-developed photograph. Only her eyes were dark, surrounded by expertly applied eyeliner and kohl pencil. Ashley insisted on the eye makeup; she wanted the punters drawn to her eyes so they could look into them and believe they were not being lied to. Her mother said she looked like God’s own angel, but then, she would say that.
Ashley moved down the left side of the stage until she was facing the woman in the green scarf, whose hand hung in the air, trembling slightly.
‘It’s you, my love, isn’t it?’ she said to the woman in the third row. She was older, in her sixties, and her face was pinched around the eyes and mouth. There was sagging skin on her neck and arms, and apart from her green scarf, the rest of her outfit was black. There was a gold wedding band on her ring finger. He’s gone recently, thought Ashley. And it was a shock to her. Not her dad then, that wouldn’t have been so surprising at her age, but her husband. The woman was nodding, her eyes already moist.
‘What’s your name, my love?’
‘Sandra.’ At first, her voice came out as a squeak, and she cleared her throat. ‘Sandra. John was my husband.’
Ashley smiled and nodded. It was always nice when they volunteered information, although it took some of the fun out of it.
‘John is here with me, Sandra. He’s looking out for you from the spirit world. He says he’s sorry to have left you with so much to deal with, but he knows you can handle it.’ Everyone always had a lot to deal with when someone passed away unexpectedly, so this was a relatively safe guess. ‘He had a problem with his chest, is that right?’
Sandra nodded tearfully. ‘His heart.’
‘That’s right, my love, his heart. And he’s sorry that he didn’t go to the doctor when you told him to, okay? John says he’s very sorry about that. Does that make sense to you, Sandra?’ This was another safe bet: men were always ignoring advice from their wives, especially when it came to doing something they didn’t want to do.
Sandra wrestled a hankie from her bag and dabbed it under her eyes. She let out a slightly strangled yes.
Aidan’s voice murmured again, and Ashley resisted the temptation to touch a finger to her ear. The new earpieces were expensive and nearly impossible to spot if you wore your hair long over your ears, like she did, but they also tickled slightly whenever her brother spoke.
‘Three kids according to her Facebook page,’ said Aidan. ‘Two boys, and a girl. Eldest son built like a brick shit house.’
‘John says – and he’s right here with me, Sandra, standing on this stage – John says that he’s proud of your boys and his special girl. Does that make sense to you, Sandra?’ Men always doted on their daughters. An image of her own father wandered into Ashley’s mind, and she fought against a grimace. ‘He was the stoic type, your John, never liked to make a fuss, but they do say still rivers run deep – he knew when to relax and have a laugh too, didn’t he?’ Sandra nodded into her hankie, and Ashley smiled warmly. These kinds of contradictory statements always went down well. Everyone wanted to believe that they or their loved ones were strong and resilient as well as the life of the party. ‘He wants you to know, Sandra, that he’s doing well in the spirit world, and that he’s here with … It’s faint, much fainter, but there’s another older man here who’s keeping John company. I can’t quite make him out … Who could that be, Sandra?’
‘My brother?’ Sandra looked a little less weepy. ‘My brother, Stan, he died … oh, eight years ago now.’
‘That’s right, it’s Stanley. John wants you to know that he has Stan with him and they’re having a fine time.’
‘Because they didn’t really get on, not when they was alive.’ Sandra sounded uncertain now. ‘John always said Stan was a flash git.’
‘They want you to know they’ve put all that behind them now,’ Ashley said smoothly, still smiling. ‘Thank you, Sandra. John and Stan are fading now, and someone else is coming forward.’
In her ear, Aidan was laughing quietly. Ashley moved away up the stage again, her head bowed slightly, and an expectant hush settled over the audience. In many ways, this was her favourite bit of the show. All eyes were on her, and for a while, the silence was all hers. No one would dare to break it, in case it shattered the spell – except Aidan.
‘Next one up is a real shit show.’
Ashley raised her head and looked towards the back of the room, a carefully cultivated faraway expression on her face.
‘The spirit that is with me now is someone who left us very young, when she’d barely even started in the world.’ Ashley held out one of her hands at waist height, as though she were about to take the hand of a child. A murmur of something – pain, excitement – moved through the audience. ‘Every loss is a source of great agony for those of us left on the mortal plane, but this girl’s passing was especially hard.’
Several people in the audience were tearful at this point. Ashley let the moment hang suspended in the air while Aidan whispered his next packet of info.
‘This one was easy to find; the poor woman has a memorial website set up. The kid was Marian Brooks – the mum is Jackie. Second row from the back, hair the colour of a bus, big gold cross. Can’t miss her.’
Ashley let her eyes wander to the back two rows. And there Jackie was. She even had a small soft toy clutched on her lap, a pale-pink bunny rabbit. Oh, this is too easy, thought Ashley.
‘The spirit – she only knows you as Mum, of course – but I’m getting a J name. Jenny? Jacqueline?’ The red-haired woman jumped as though she’d been pinched. ‘No, Jackie. Everyone calls you Jackie.’ Ashley settled her gaze on the woman with the rabbit. ‘Isn’t that right, Jackie love?’
The woman leaned forward, and one of the bar people skittered down the row with the microphone.
‘Is she all right? Is my little girl in heaven?’
Ashley nodded, still smiling, but inside it felt like her heart was contracting around a long sliver of ice. These were the hard ones, when the subject was a child, when the bereavement was still very fresh. When the parent was still carrying around some beloved toy, as though that kept some tiny link between them alive. It was the desperation that Ashley found hard to take. She could tell this woman anything, any tiny scrap of information, and she’d take it and hold it as close as she was holding that bunny.
‘What are you doing?’ Aidan hissed in her ear. ‘You’re losing them.’
‘Jackie, my love, your little girl is in the spirit world, and for her, it’s all playtimes and ice cream, I promise. She’s with the angels now. You’ll forgive me, but she had quite an old-fashioned name, didn’t she? Was she named after someone?’
Jackie’s eyebrows disappeared under her post-box red fringe. ‘Yes! My mother. We named her after my mum, and she died long before she was born. Marian, her name was Marian. But we … we called her Marie.’
