Scar Island

by Dan Gemeinhart

  “When’s the—last time you saw them?”

  The old man shrugged and looked away, scanning the shelves. “Don’t know. Three. Four, maybe.”

  “Four days? Without seeing anyone?”

  The librarian smiled a wide, staying smile. He looked up at Jonathan in his strange, sideways way.

  “No, no. Four years. Four years without seeing. Anyone. At least.”

  Jonathan’s mouth dropped open.

  “What … how … don’t you get—lonely?”

  The man cackled a dry, coughing laugh. “No. We have our books. We have our stories.”

  “What do you eat? I mean … how do you get food?”

  “We go down. In the very dark middle of the night. And we bring back. What we need. The Admiral leaves us alone. And we leave him alone.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  The librarian pulled a book from the shelf and pressed it into Jonathan’s hands.

  “Here. Start. With this one.”

  Jonathan looked down. The book was thick, with a red, pictureless cover. In plain gold script on the cover was the title: Robinson Crusoe.

  “It’s about getting stuck. On an island.” The librarian winked at him. “With bloodthirsty natives.”

  “Uh. Thanks.”

  The old man just nodded.

  As they walked back toward the door, the man stooped down to pick up a large cat off a chair. He held it in one arm and stroked it with his other.

  “Read it. Bring it back. When you’re done. And then you can have another. Book.” He patted Jonathan on the shoulder and left his wrinkled hand resting there. “We’ll be here.”

  “Okay. You and your cat?”

  “No. Me and Ninety-Nine, here.” The old man smiled and held the cat out toward him.

  “Right,” Jonathan said, reaching out to pet the cat. “You and your c—” Jonathan gasped and jerked his hand back. The animal he’d been reaching out to pet was not a cat at all. It was a rat. A beady-eyed, pink-tailed, black-coated rat that was bigger than most cats he’d seen. Its eyes glittered up at him above two huge top front teeth that poked sharply out of its mouth.

  “God! It’s a rat! It’s huge!”

  The librarian laughed, a deeper laugh than before. His eyes closed when he laughed.

  “Yes. Yes,” he giggled and stroked the rat gently from its head to its naked, ringed tail. “My big, beautiful boy. Ninety-Nine. Is his name.”

  “That’s the biggest rat I’ve ever seen. By a long shot.” Jonathan was backing toward the door.

  The librarian giggled again and nodded. “Yes. Very big. Years and years. It took me. A lifetime. Always bigger.” The monstrous rat leaned back into the librarian’s scratching fingers.

  “You … made him that big? How?”

  “Oh, time. Patience. Attention. Years. I found the very biggest. Rats. One boy. One girl. And I put them together.” The rat’s tail curled lovingly around his arm. “I let the babies grow. Just a little. To find the biggest. And I let the others go. After I cut off their tails.”

  “You cut off their tails?”

  Another smile spread across the librarian’s lined face. “Of course. So I would know. Who they were. Brothers and sisters can’t make babies. You know. And I would find another. Big one. With a tail. And make more babies. And again. And again. So many times. So many tails. And always bigger.” A cloud passed over the old man’s face, erasing his smile. “I almost lost it all. With Seventy-Six. She wouldn’t. Have babies. Couldn’t, I was afraid.” His smile returned and the cloud lifted. “But then she did. And they were beautiful. And big.”

  Goose bumps rose on Jonathan’s arms.

  “You mean—this is your ninety-ninth rat?”

  “Oh, no,” the man chuckled. “Much more. Than that. I just stopped. Counting. One Hundred sounds so ugly. It’s no kind of name. For a beautiful rat.”

  “Oh. Right.” Jonathan put his hand on the doorknob and turned it.

  “You’ll come back? To us? And another book?”

  “Yeah. Sure,” he answered, opening the door to the inky blackness of the passageway.

  “We hope so. How are things going? Out there?” The librarian’s white eyebrows cocked out at the darkness looming past the doorway.

  Jonathan licked his lips. He smelled lightning, saw bodies in a freezer, heard a monster rattling an iron door and a bully taking control.

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “Oh. Well.” The librarian sighed again, wearily. “It never stays fine. For long. Things always go bad. Out there. So much evil. And darkness. And so much more always coming. That is why we stay here. Keep your wits. About you.”

  Jonathan eyed the waiting corridor. At the edges of the light, furry shadows scrambled and hid. He wondered how many of them were missing tails. He licked his lips.

  “Can I borrow a candle?”

  When Jonathan got back to the light and the world and the rest of the Scars, Sebastian was sitting in the Admiral’s chair with his feet up on the table. In his hands was the Admiral’s sword. The very one the Admiral had been holding high in the storm, the one that had brought down lightning and death for himself and all of the grown-ups (except one).

  Most of the boys were hanging out in the dining room. Some were munching on great mouthfuls of food. A few had found a deck of cards and were playing at a table. Most were just sitting around or lying around or standing and looking out the windows into the courtyard, which was once again dripping with a drizzling rain.

  Benny, Roger, Gregory, and some other kids were seated around Sebastian, looking eagerly to their leader’s smirking face like baby birds hoping for a worm.

  “Hey! Johnny! Come here,” Sebastian called when he saw Jonathan enter the room with his candle in one hand and the book tucked under his arm. Walter and Colin had jumped up when they saw him and they followed him to Sebastian’s table, their eyes full of questions.

  There were crumpled-up candy wrappers on the table and little dark smears of chocolate in the corners of Sebastian’s mouth. He licked at them like a cat. Sebastian looked Jonathan up and down with a frown.

  “Where’d you get that book?”

  Jonathan shrugged.

  “Found it.”

  Sebastian sniffed and picked at something between his teeth.

  “We’re divying up the grown-up’s rooms,” he said. “I got dibs on the Admiral’s. But there’s four more. Which one do you want?”

  Jonathan looked around at the other boys. Their eyes were wide, waiting. Benny’s reptilian eyes were narrow, glaring.

  “Five? There’s sixteen of us. Why would I get one?”

  Sebastian frowned and shrugged.

  “Whatever. Maybe I like you. Who cares. Don’t you want one? Or do you want to keep sleeping in your little cell?”

  Jonathan eyed the other kids. There were seven, counting Benny, waiting on his answer. Most of the kids were older—and bigger—than he was.

  “Uh, no, thanks. Someone else can have it, I guess.”

  Sebastian screwed up one eye thoughtfully, then scowled and snorted.

  “Fine. Whatever. Suit yourself. I’ll give it to someone else.”

  “Maybe we thould take turnth in the roomth, Thebathtian. To be fair,” Colin suggested.

  Sebastian’s eyes dropped into angry slits.

  “Maybe you should thut up, Colin.”

  Colin furrowed his brow and looked down at his feet. Jonathan turned to walk away.

  “Hey! They said you went to look at the Hatch.” Sebastian pointed with his chin at Walter and Colin.

  “Yeah.”

  “So? What is it?” Sebastian’s voice still wore its bitter coat of “who the hell cares,” but there was a sharp edge of real curiosity to it.

  “It’s … it’s …” Jonathan’s voice faltered. He almost spilled it all, almost spit out everything about the eerie door with its ominous sounds and freezing spray and moss-covered skull.

  But he stopped.

  I
f he told them everything, they might want to see it for themselves. And if they went to see it, they might continue up the other staircase, and they might find the librarian. He didn’t want them to. He wanted to keep the library a secret, just for himself. Like the key in his pocket. And the reason he was sent to Slabhenge in the first place.

  “It’s just a door,” he said, with a shrug and a roll of his eyes.

  “A door?”

  “Yeah, like an old metal door. It’s locked, though.” He shrugged again and turned to walk away. “No big deal.”

  Walter and Colin followed at his elbow as he walked away into the kitchen. He was starving. Once they were away from Sebastian’s ears and safe in the empty kitchen, they peppered him with questions.

  “Where were you, man?”

  “What took you tho long?”

  “We waited for you at the top of the stairs! Where did you go?”

  Jonathan looked around and grabbed the end of a loaf of bread someone had left sitting out. He took a big bite and gnawed it on one side of his mouth.

  “I got lost,” he answered with a shrug. “Went the wrong way.”

  “Where’th your lantern? What’th with the candle?”

  Jonathan shrugged again and looked away.

  “I broke my lantern. Then I found this. No biggie. What have you guys been up to?”

  Walter rolled his eyes. “King Sebastian out there is really living it up. He’s claimed the Admiral’s room, of course, and most of the best food. He’s called some big meeting in a few minutes, before dinner. I don’t like that guy, man.”

  Jonathan grabbed an apple that was sitting on the counter and bit into it.

  “You thould have thaid yeth to the room, Jonathan.”

  Jonathan crunched an especially big bite and chewed it loudly.

  “What? Why?”

  Colin sighed and scratched at his arm.

  “Becauth. Now Thebathtian ith mad at you.”

  “Why would he be mad? I said no to be nice.”

  Colin shrugged. “He gave you a room. It wathn’t to be nithe. It wath to thow that he’th the bawth. You made him look bad.”

  “I did not!”

  Colin looked up at Jonathan with worried eyes.

  “I don’t think that’th how he theeth it.” Behind them, through the door, Sebastian hollered for everyone to gather for the meeting. Colin pinched at his neck and started for the door with his pigeon-toed walk. “He’th only the king if we let him be. And you didn’t let him.”

  Jonathan swallowed his apple and gave Walter a questioning look. Walter shrugged.

  “The kid’s weird. But he’s smart, you know?”

  “Yeah. I think he is.”

  In the dining room, Sebastian was sitting on a table, the blade of the Admiral’s sword resting on his shoulder.

  “All right, boys,” he said to the last few boys grabbing chairs or a spot on the floor. “Time to get some stuff squared away. Some of us are taking the rooms upstairs. The rest of you can sleep wherever you want. Whenever you want. There’s no all-dark tonight.” There was a low murmur of approval from the group.

  “We’re gonna meet together every day,” Sebastian continued. “Like, every night and every morning. To make sure everything’s still fine. We’ll meet right here.”

  “Every day? But … when are we going to inform the authorities?” Francis asked. “You said this was just for a couple of days, Sebastian.”

  Sebastian tucked the chocolate-stained corners of his mouth down. “Yeah. Or whatever. We’ll see. There’s no rush.” Benny jumped up and hissed something in Sebastian’s ear.

  “Oh,” he said. “This is important. Did anyone find a key lying around?”

  No one answered. Jonathan’s mouth went dry and he fingered the Admiral’s key through his pocket.

  “We can’t find the key to the Admiral’s office,” Sebastian went on. “Benny says the Admiral always carried it with him, but I—checked, and he doesn’t, uh, have it. And the door is too big to break down.” Jonathan thought of his one time in the Admiral’s dark office. He remembered the smell of alcohol and the papers and files that the Admiral had, the papers that held the secrets of the crimes the boys had committed to get sent to Slabhenge. His grip on the key tightened through the fabric.

  “Why do you need to get in there?” Miguel asked.

  Sebastian shrugged. “There’s paperwork and stuff that Benny wants. Plus, a bunch more of the Admiral’s chocolates. And”—Sebastian smiled and cocked his eyebrows—“the Admiral’s booze, of course. That could be fun.” Some of the boys giggled nervously. “Well, if you find an old key, hand it over. It’s around here somewhere. Whoever finds it gets a room upstairs and a handful of chocolates.”

  Sebastian rose to his feet and pointed with the sword toward the kitchen. “Meeting’s over. You know where the food is. Dinnertime is whenever you’re hungry. Same with breakfast. Any questions?”

  “What can we eat for dinner?” another kid asked.

  “Whatever you want.”

  “What are we doing tomorrow?”

  Sebastian shook his head in exasperation.

  “Whatever you want,” he repeated impatiently. “Look, no more questions. Do what you want. That’s the point. They’re not here anymore. We are. It’s us. Just us. The Scars.”

  “We thould have thome ruleth.”

  Sebastian clenched his fists and gritted his teeth.

  “We don’t need any rules,” he seethed. “We don’t want any rules.” He held his hands out to the group. “Do we?”

  There were some shaking heads, some grumbles of agreement, a few loud shouts of no!

  “What about food?” Colin persisted.

  “What about it?”

  “If we all jutht eat whatever we want, we’ll run out. We need to plan it out.”

  Sebastian smoldered like a dynamite wick. He opened his mouth to spit out an answer, but Jonathan beat him to it.

  “He’s right, Sebastian. The Admiral probably didn’t order enough food for us all to eat like this. We’re gonna run out.”

  Sebastian’s eyes clouded with doubt. His dynamite wick sputtered. He licked his lips.

  “Well … fine, then. We should—be careful about eating too much, I guess. Don’t go crazy. Hell … go back to eating oatmeal if you want. But I’ve eaten enough oatmeal.” He popped another square of chocolate into his mouth and chewed it loudly to make his point. Benny murmured something to him and he grinned a sticky brown smile. “And the supply boat comes in two days. Then we’ll have plenty of food.”

  A thought shot into Jonathan’s head.

  “What about the mail boat?” he asked.

  “The mail boat, Johnny, comes every day.”

  “So it’ll come tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  Jonathan looked around. He didn’t want to make Sebastian look bad in front of the group.

  “Well … so … we’ll need something to give to it, right? Wouldn’t it be suspicious if we didn’t?”

  Sebastian stopped chewing with his mouth stuck open.

  “Oh,” he said after a moment. “Yeah. Right. I was gonna get to that.” He chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds before continuing. “We all still need to write letters every day, just like we were. No one eats dinner until we have your letter.” Benny jumped up again and whispered something to him. Sebastian nodded. “And I’m reading every one. No one says anything about the grown-ups or the lightning or anything. Everything’s just A-okay here at Slabhenge, right? Walter, go grab a bunch of paper and pens.”

  They all sat in silence, writing their letters home.

  Jonathan stalled, looking around at the other boys bent over their papers. Tongues poked out of mouths. Eyebrows crinkled. Pen tips scratched on paper. Out through the windows, the sky was darkening toward night. It was raining hard now, the afternoon’s drizzle turned to a steady pour. The boys around him were squinting to see their own words.

  When each boy
finished, he walked up and handed it to Benny, who read it over. He’d nod and hand it back and the boy would address the envelope and it would go in the mailbag.

  Jonathan stared at his blank sheet of paper, trying to find words in the darkness. Colin sat beside him. He’d already handed in his letter, but he’d gotten another piece of paper and his hands were fluttering busily around it.

  “What are you doing?” Jonathan asked him in a whisper.

  “Origami,” Colin answered. He made a few more quick folds and then held up the paper, now folded into an intricate shape. “Thee? It’th a bird. A crane.” His smile rose and then flitted away. He handed the paper bird to Jonathan.

  “Cool. Thanks. Where’d you learn to do that?”

  Colin shrugged. “I thtole a book.” They grinned at each other. Jonathan took a breath and went back to his own blank piece of paper.

  Benny sneered at Jonathan when he walked up with his letter. He was by himself at the end of a long table, a tall white candle lighting his face. His eyes skimmed over Jonathan’s letter.

  “Looks good enough, Johnny. I guess. Who’s Sophia?” His eyes flashed up to Jonathan. In the candlelight, they looked hungry and black, like a cobra’s. But less honest.

  “She’s … a friend.”

  A venomous smile rose like oil at the corners of Benny’s mouth. The points of his teeth showed like fangs. He lowered his voice to a taunting hiss so the boys at the other tables couldn’t hear.

  “No, she’s not. I saw your paperwork, Johnny. In the Admiral’s office, the day you got here.” His foul smile widened. Jonathan’s breaths got shallow and fast. His mouth went dry. “I know what you did. I know. You better do everything Sebastian says. And everything I say. Or I’ll tell. And you don’t want me to tell, do you?”

  Jonathan shook his head, one small shake side to side.

  Benny grinned. He handed Jonathan an envelope. When he spoke, his voice was loud again.

  “Here you go, Johnny. Write Mommy and Daddy’s address right there.” He flashed a smile like a knife blade in the dark and turned back to his own letter.

  Jonathan had to steady his shaking hand to write down his parents’ address. The librarian’s warning echoed in his mind: Things always go bad. Out there.