At the end of one road, where the asphalt petered out in a jagged line as the village ended and the farmland started, I forced myself again to stop and breathe.
I blew out the dregs of air and tried to focus on the realities of the moment. I ran through my litany: You cannot change the past, in the present moment you are safe, you are not in control of the aircraft. But, for the first time, the realities of the moment were worse than my most catastrophic imaginings. Everything in this moment was worse than a nightmare. I was not safe, my baby was not safe, in fact, none of us were safe: I was in control, and I was crashing slowly to earth. Then I spotted a Haribo packet.
The blue square was tucked into the bottom of the hedge, a chubby-faced gummi bear pointing into the field. I followed the direction of its arm into the sodden grass and saw, shoved into the hedge on the other side, a shopping trolley. I reached out and fingered the severed chain that had once tethered it to the others but had been broken by an axe.
The field climbed to a stand of trees at its peak, about the size of the flattened mound where we had made our own camp, but higher and more exposed. I shifted the crowbar into a better grip and started up the path that ran along the hedge. The rain had stopped, and the earth steamed out misty specters that gathered in the hollows. The distance was deceptive: the land seemed to get steeper, and the trees higher and farther away the more I climbed. I was back in the nightmare, everything surreal and disordered. I put my head down and pushed my thighs up the hill, resisting the urge to scream Billy’s name.
The peak was marked by a scraggy barbed-wire fence decorated with baubles of sheep’s wool. I pushed it down to step over, and one fence-post collapsed in. A bird of prey, some kind of raptor, launched itself from the uppermost tree, making me jump. It cawed into the sky, leaving behind a silence like the one that filled the houses below. There was no discernible path between the trees, just places where the undergrowth was lower. This was no camp. I crossed the brow of the hill in a few minutes, reaching another field and another wool-webbed fence on the other side. From this vantage point I could see over the village, whose name I realized I didn’t even know, and across a valley to another similar stand of trees, and then south to another field, and another and another. All of them empty and vast. A Pacific Ocean of ditches and copses and ponds and outhouses. An infinite number of spaces where a small boy could be curled up, crying for a mummy who couldn’t hear him.
I saw no sign of the Wild Things, and eventually, the invisible thread drew me back to the last place I knew Billy had been—the supermarket. I pictured him cross-legged with a packet of crisps open on the floor, as though wanting it hard enough would make it happen. When I arrived, I lay down on the same empty spot and cuddled myself. Pain started to well up like blood rising to the surface of a deep cut. I was surprised to see the clock and find it was late afternoon already. I double-checked the time on my watch. So many hours had passed, and I had found nothing. Billy was missing. Don’t they always say the first few hours are critical?
Of course, there was no they anymore.
Now that I’d stopped moving, I shivered in my wet clothes. Sodden fabric chaffed under my arms and between my thighs. I peeled off my soaked trousers, but stopped before I stripped altogether, not sure if it was better to wear wet clothes or be naked. But it would be night soon. It would get cold and the wet clothes wouldn’t dry. And I would be lying here, freezing and useless, while Billy was—what? I closed my eyes and saw him being led away by the Wild Things, his face delighted by the attention of bigger boys, and then his eyes darkening with confusion as they turned on him, teasing and jostling, starting to push him about in the middle of their circle. “Don’t like it,” he says, but they laugh and jeer, and then he falls down and starts to cry, and they call him a crybaby, and one of them throws a stone at him, and this makes him call for his mummy, and they laugh harder, so one of the boys throws a bigger stone, and another, until they are all throwing stones at Billy, who stops trying to get up.
I saw it happening.
I had run off in a panic, not thinking straight, without any of the things I needed—not even a map or a coat—and sent away the car that I could be using to look for him. And I sent the others away to protect them—but for what?
What did I care about any of the others if I lost Billy?
I lay on the floor, arms bound up in the straitjacket of my half-off shirt, unable to make even the simplest decision.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said out loud. “I have no idea what to do.”
And for the first time in my life, I cried out for someone to help me.
But no one replied. So I got up off the floor. I took more painkillers. I ate something. I applied another layer to my hard surface—steeling myself, like I did when I got on a plane. When the mummy guilt set me rigid enough to bear the weight.
I settled into my racing pace along the road toward camp, and everything hurt, but it was good pain, running pain. I stopped at every building to check for signs of disturbance, but as my brain focused on the problem, and a plan started to form, I was increasingly convinced that the Wild Things must have a well-hidden base and, like us, were staying away from dead bodies. If I could see Joni’s map, perhaps I could narrow down the possibilities, define a search radius, and identify hideouts that would appeal to a gang of boys. Or even work out where all those kids had come from in the first place.
As I clattered over the wooden bridge that led past the ford to the camp, the sun flared low against the horizon, burnishing the underside of the few clouds that remained in the cried-out sky. Running made me brave again. I sprinted down the final slope, suddenly convinced that Billy would be there, that he had found his own way home. I turned the corner to the cars and barely heard a shout of warning before I sprawled full length into the long grass. Peter landed heavily on his feet at my side, having dropped from somewhere above, and a few seconds later Charlie arrived.
“Mum!” he panted. “You okay? Where’s Billy?”
“What just happened?” I rolled onto my back.
“Sorry, Mrs. Greene.” Peter managed to look both worried and delighted. “It worked, Charlie!” He scrabbled through the grass to pull free a long piece of wire.