'What's wrong with you today?'
Cleve busied himself with re-making his bed, afraid even to glance at Billy. 'Nothing's wrong,' he said. 'I don't feel particularly well, that's all.'
'You have a bad night?' the boy enquired. Cleve could feel Billy's eyes boring into his back.
'No,' he said, pacing his denial so that it didn't come too quickly. 'I took your pills, like always.'
'Good.'
The exchange faltered, and Cleve was allowed to finish his bedmaking in silence. The business could only be extended so long, however. When he turned from the bunk, job done, he found Billy sitting at the small table, with one of Cleve's books open in his lap. He casually flicked through the volume, all sign of his previous suspicion vanished. Cleve knew better than to trust to mere appearances however.
'Why'd you read these things?' the boy asked.
'Passes the time,' Cleve replied, undoing all his labours by clambering up on to the top bunk and stretching out there.
'No. I don't mean why do you read books? I mean, why read these books? All this stuff about sin.'
Cleve only half-heard the question. Lying there on the bunk reminded him all too acutely of how the night had been. Reminded him too that darkness was even now crawling up the side of the world again. At that thought his stomach seemed to aspire to his throat.
'Did you hear me?' the boy asked.
Cleve murmured that he had.
'Well, why then; why the books? About damnation and all?'
'Nobody else takes them out of the library,' Cleve replied, having difficulty shaping thoughts to speak when the others, unspoken, were so much more demanding.
'You don't believe it then?'
'No,' he replied. 'No; I don't believe a word of it.'
The boy kept his silence a while. Though Cleve wasn't looking at him, he could hear Billy turning page. Then, another question, but spoken more quietly; a confession.
'Do you ever get afraid?
The enquiry startled Cleve from his trance. The conversation had changed back from talk of reading-matter to something altogether more pertinent. Why did Billy ask about fear, unless he too was afraid?
'What have I got to be scared of?' Cleve asked.
From the corner of his eye he caught the boy shrugging slightly before replying. 'Things that happen,' he said, his voice soulless. 'Things you can't control.'
'Yes,' Cleve replied, not certain of where this exchange was leading. 'Yes, of course. Sometimes I'm scared.'
'What do you do then?' Billy asked.
'Nothing to do, is there?' Cleve said. His voice was as hushed as Billy's. 'I gave up praying the morning my father died.'
He heard the soft pat as Billy closed the book, and inclined his head sufficiently to catch sight of the boy. Billy could not entirely conceal his agitation. He is afraid, Cleve saw; he doesn't want the night to come any more than I do. He found the thought of their shared fear reassuring. Perhaps the boy didn't entirely belong to the shadow; perhaps he could even cajole Billy into pointing their route out of this spiralling nightmare.
He sat upright, his head within inches of the cell ceiling. Billy looked up from his meditations, his face a pallid oval of twitching muscle. Now was the time to speak, Cleve knew; now, before the lights were switched out along the landings, and all the cells consigned to shadows. There would be no time then for explanations. The boy would already be half lost to the city, and beyond persuasion.
'I have dreams,' Cleve said. Billy said nothing, but simply stared back, hollow-eyed.' -I dream a city.'
The boy didn't flinch. He clearly wasn't going to volunteer elucidation; he would have to be bullied into it.
'Do you know what I'm talking about?'
Billy shook his head. 'No,' he said, lightly, 'I never dream.'
'Everybody dreams.'
'Then I just don't remember them.'
'I remember mine,' Cleve said. He was determined, now that he'd broached the subject, not to let Billy squirm free. 'And you're there. You're in that city.'
Now the boy flinched; only a treacherous lash, but enough to reassure Cleve that he wasn't wasting his breath. 'What is that place, Billy?' he asked.
'How should I know?' the boy returned, about to laugh, then disgarding the attempt. 'I don't know, do I? They're your dreams.'
Before Cleve could reply he heard the voice of one of the officers as he moved along the row of cells, advising the men to bed down for the night. Very soon, the lights would be extinguished and he would be locked up in this narrow cell for ten hours. With Billy; and phantoms -
'Last night - ' he said, fearful of mentioning what he'd heard and seen without due preparation, but more fearful still of facing another night on the borders of the city, alone in darkness. 'Last night I saw -' He faltered. Why wouldn't the words come? 'Saw - '
'Saw what?' the boy demanded, his face intractable; whatever murmur of apprehension there had been in it had now vanished. Perhaps he too had heard the officer's advance, and known that there was nothing to be done; no way of staying the night's advance. 'What did you see? Billy insisted. Cleve sighed. 'My mother,' he replied.
The boy betrayed his relief only in the tenuous smile that crept across his lips.
'Yes ... I saw my mother. Large as life.'
'And it upset you, did it?' Billy asked.
'Sometimes dreams do.'
The officer had reached B. 3. 20. 'Lights out in two minutes,' he said as he passed.
'You should take some more of those pills,' Billy advised, putting down the book and crossing to his bunk. 'Then you'd be like me. No dreams.'
Cleve had lost. He, the arch-bluffer, had been out-bluffed by the boy, and now had to take the consequences. He lay, facing the ceiling, counting off the seconds until the light went out, while below the boy undressed and slipped between the sheets.
There was still time to jump up and call the officer back; time to beat his head against the door until somebody came. But what would he say, to justify his histrionics? That he had bad dreams?; who didn't? That he was afraid of the dark?; who wasn't? They would laugh in his face and tell him to go back to bed, leaving him with all camouflage blown, and the boy and his master waiting at the wall. There was no safety in such tactics.
Nor in prayer either. He had told Billy the truth, about his giving up God when his prayers for his father's life had gone unanswered. Of such divine neglect was aetheism made; belief could not be rekindled now, however profound his terror.
Thoughts of his father led inevitably to thoughts of childhood; few other subjects, if any, could have engrossed his mind sufficiently to steal him from his fears but this. When the lights were finally extinguished, his frightened mind took refuge in memories. His heart-rate slowed; his fingers ceased to tremble, and eventually, without his being the least aware of it, sleep stole him.
The distractions available to his conscious mind were not available to his unconscious. Once asleep, fond recollection was banished; childhood memories became a thing of the past, and he was back, bloody-footed, in that terrible city.
Or rather, on its borders. For tonight he did not follow the familiar route past the Georgian house and its attendant tenements, but walked instead to the outskirts of the city, where the wind was stronger than ever, and the voices it carried clear. Though he expected with every step he took to see Billy and his dark companion, he saw nobody. Only butterflies accompanied him along the path, luminous as his watch-face. They settled on his shoulders and his hair like confetti, then fluttered off again.
He reached the edge of the city without incident and stood, scanning the desert. The clouds, solid as ever, moved overhead with the majesty of juggernauts. The voices seemed closer tonight, he thought, and the passions they expressed less distressing than he had found them previously. Whether the mellowing was in them or in his response to them he couldn't be certain.