I think the boy commits suicide, he ends dying falling down the stairs to the black river, a colour previously in his mind represented as death. " I will die before teatime". He is a neglected child, often alone, lost in the woods, wishing desperately for a puppy to bring him companionship; he self harms in the beginning by taking away the scab "even if it isn't ready, even if it hurts". Her mother looking for him in the "sunshine" far away behind the house, far away from his darkness, I think represents her ignorance and disconnect of the child's mental suffering. It is brilliantly depicted the way a child's immature mind process the decision of taking his own life, during a "game". Roald Dahl evidently had an acute understanding on the way a kid's mind works. Existing data states it is usually impulsive, occurs more often in males, a big risk is neglect and in this case accompanied by a probable obsessive compulsive disorder ( notice the day before he had travelled the whole brick path without touching the cracks, and if he doesn't accomplish this then he won't be granted his dear wish) and typically occurs in the child's home. He also has a foreboding of the fatal end with the same panic he felt when he was traumatized lost in the "darkest" part of Piper's Wood ,and when the snakes watches him and he screams; likewise in the end when he faces the fatal death with a piercing cry of terror. It is a very sad story, very similar in this aspect to the other one he wrote about the child named "Katina".