BILLY
“We loves you, Billy Catchpole. Your mum and dad loves you, you know that, don’t you?”
Billy sat cross-legged in the gloomiest corner of the cellar. Mum, as she liked to be called, was sitting in one of the old moldering armchairs he’d rescued from a bombed-out house. Its once bright floral pattern was faded to a pale yellow and gray.
“We loves him, don’t we, Dad?” she said, turning her eyes to the man sitting in the matching chair across from her. The man’s head was tilted upward. He was clearly distracted, as if not completely present in the room. Billy could see the sharp edge of his Adam’s apple in his scrawny neck. It bobbed up and down as he tried to form words.
“That’s right, Mum,” the man said, in a hoarse whisper, his white, sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling. “We loves him very much. And we loves his little sister too.”
Billy looked over to the corner where Meg was playing with a filthy rag doll. She looked no more than six years old, but appearances were deceptive for their kind. She had likely looked that age for a very long time—certainly from before he’d found her, anyway. Her hair stuck up in dry, jagged clumps, and her soft round face was grimy with dirt, but her eyes shone, and it made Billy’s heart melt to see them.
Mum licked her lips, and the corner of her mouth twitched into a grimace as she tried to form a smile. Billy knew exactly what was coming next, and the thought of it made his stomach flip.
“You know what I’d like, Dad?” Mum said.
“No, what’s that?” Dad replied.
Billy’s shoulders and neck tightened, as if tensing for a blow.
“Something nice to eat. A snack, maybe.”
Dad frowned, then his face started to twitch and become more animated. He swung his head around on his stalklike neck and looked toward Mum.
“A snack,” he whimpered, his hands clenching the armrests of his chair.
“Just … just something small,” said Mum, licking her lips again. She started to drum her bony fingers against the arm of her chair.
“That’d be nice,” said Dad, turning hopefully, desperately, in the direction of Billy.
Billy stood up, his eyes going to the book he was holding. It had been nice reading it. It was a book about pirates and treasure on a mysterious island, and it made him feel as if he were there on that island, and not here in the damp and the gloom of the cellar with the Catchpoles. The book was written by someone called Robert Louis Stevenson. It was wrapped in a ragged and torn red dust jacket. There was a pirate on the cover. He held a blood-stained sword and was looking at a smoking ship on the horizon.
“What would you like?” Billy sighed, barely able to look at them.
“Something small,” wheedled Mum.
“A snack,” said Dad.
“Just a little one.”
“But warm.”
“And juicy.”
“And alive.”
Dad rubbed a hand across his chin in an effort to wipe away a long string of drool that had been slowly dripping down from the corner of his mouth.
Mum leaned her head in Billy’s direction. Her whole spindly body was quivering.
“What about a nice suckling pig?” she said, clapping her hands together with glee.
Dad responded with some vigorous nodding.
“I’ll try,” said Billy, feeling the great weight of their expectation.
Mum smiled, revealing a mouthful of yellow, sharpened teeth.
Dad looked suddenly crestfallen. “But not a dog. I hates dogs. Awful stringy things. Sour tasting they are. I hates them,” he shouted, banging a hand down hard on the arm of his chair.
“No dogs,” said Billy.
Dad’s eyes widened. “You promises?”
“I promises,” said Billy.
Mum clasped her hands under her chin and squealed, her feet tapping the floor with delight. Meg looked up sharply from her doll and frowned at her.
“We’ll stay in and watch the telly while you go about your business,” Mum said.
Billy looked at the old television set that he’d positioned between them. Its screen was caved in, and its casing was scarred and burnt. It too had been salvaged from the ruins of another house in the London streets above.
“Telly, yes. We’ll watch us some telly before tea,” Dad murmured, his tongue licking his long incisors, his gaze returning to the ceiling.
Both of them settled back in their chairs, their breath rasping in the gloom as they returned to a state of what looked like semihibernation. Billy watched them for a moment. Secretly he called them the Worms. Years of hiding underground had bleached them both to a deathly pallor, and they reminded him of white twisting maggot-like things, blind and panicked, oblivious to the world around them, caring about nothing else but their next meal. Nevertheless, he felt some measure of pity for them. It was hard not to after knowing no other company for so long.
They didn’t speak of their past, but sometimes Billy would catch Dad rambling deliriously in his sleep about being banished by their family for the sin of hunting humans. About having broken something called the Covenant. They’d taken the name Catchpole years ago. Slowly but surely they’d started to imitate the ways of the people who lived in the world above. The telly had been one way of doing this, the furniture another. Soon he was calling them Mum and Dad. It was easier that way. Easier to pretend that how they lived was normal. He could have left them a long time ago, but he had no one else. He was alone. Even in his first couple of years with the Catchpoles he’d still felt alone, but at least he could imagine he was part of something bigger. A pretend family wasn’t a real family, but pretending was better than nothing.
Meg was the only person in Billy’s dark little world he truly had something in common with. He’d found her hiding in a rubbish heap. One look at her was enough to tell him that she wasn’t human. She too had obviously been abandoned. No doubt for the same reasons he had. He’d offered her food, but she clearly had no interest in it, and being in sunlight didn’t seem to bother her either, just as it didn’t bother him—unlike the Catchpoles. He’d taken her home that very night, and their “family” had been complete.
Billy went over to Meg and knelt before her. He cupped her face in his hands.
“You behave now, Meggie. Stay here and look after Mum and Dad. Billy’s going to see if he can get some food for them. I’ll read to you when I get back.”
Meg rubbed her nose vigorously with her hand. Billy smiled at her.
Text copyright © 2022 by Pádraig Kenny.Illustrations copyright © 2022 by Annie Carbonneau-Leclerc.
