Scar Island
Page 15
Sebastian rolled his eyes.
“Take him away,” he repeated.
“Ye’ve got to listen to me!”
“We’re in a stone castle,” Sebastian replied, his voice bored. “Built on a stone island. It’s been here for hundreds of years. Islands don’t sink.”
“Yes, they do.”
Everyone turned to Jonathan.
“It’s true. This place is crumbling. The island is getting smaller. There used to be a beach and everything.” He looked around at the silent faces. “It’s true! Think of those stairs leading down into the water from the gate. The whole bottom floor is already under water—that’s what the Hatch is!”
Sebastian blew his breath out through flapping lips.
“Uh-huh. Nice try. Shut up, Jonathan.” He looked back to the kids standing around Patrick. “Take him away. Now.”
The boys stumbled away, dragging Patrick roughly between them. Sebastian paced back and forth while they were gone, his feet splashing in storm-water puddles.
“Listen, man,” Miguel said. “You gotta calm down and—”
“Shut up,” Sebastian snarled with wild eyes. He shook the sword in his hand. “We’re gonna be fine. All of us. As long as you keep your mouth shut, you’ll be fine, too.”
When the boys returned from the coal room, Sebastian turned and cocked an eyebrow at Colin.
“Now. Back to you. And your punishment.”
Colin frantically shook his head. Gerald and Francis were holding him tight on top of the table, but now he was sitting up.
“Pleath don’t cut me, Thebathtian.”
Sebastian rolled his eyes again.
“I was never gonna cut you,” he snorted. Colin’s eyes narrowed doubtfully. “I wasn’t. Jesus. I was just trying to scare you.” Colin’s body visibly relaxed. Until Sebastian continued talking. “Besides, I have something better planned for you.”
The wind was an unending high howl now, as if the whole of the tortured sky was one great furious beast. It screamed through the broken window, bringing rain and chilling salty spray with it. The lightning was so constant that the moments of darkness between were more eerie and surprising than the flashes themselves.
“You two, bring him,” Sebastian said to Roger and Gregory, lifting his chin toward Jonathan. They grabbed him roughly by his elbows. “And you guys bring him,” he added to Francis and Gerald, still holding down Colin. He whispered something into Benny’s ear, who nodded and ran off to the kitchen.
Sebastian stalked off toward the darkened doorway that led into the interior of Slabhenge. He paused at the exit. He gripped the sword in his teeth while he used both hands to light a candle, then looked at the crowd of boys waiting at the tables.
“All of you, follow me. Bring a candle.” He smiled, a dangerous smile full of sharp, white teeth that glistened in the lightning. “It’s time to find out what Colin’s punishment is.”
They all followed Sebastian through the dark, winding tunnels of Slabhenge’s twisting corridors and staircases. It wasn’t clear where they were going, or even if Sebastian had a destination in mind. But whenever Sebastian came to a choice between two halls, he chose the darker and narrower one. Whenever he had to choose between staircases, he chose down.
In a winding, candlelit line they passed through the dip that went by the Hatch. It was only feet away, down that last cramped stairway and around a corner. It was a riot of violent, eerie noises, louder than Jonathan had ever heard it. Bangs and shudders and thirsty slurps and the high, pained squeaking of straining iron. Some boys slowed down on the landing that led down to the Hatch. Most shivered and sped up.
Finally, they came to a dark little windowless room, small and wet and cold at the bottom of a crumbling staircase. It was an especially desolate and forgotten corner of the madhouse island. Rats hurried out as the boys came in with their splashing feet and flickering flames, brushing past their feet, causing some boys to cry out and jump.
All together, the group nearly filled the room. The ceiling was low and dripping green slime. Even here, though, they could hear the storm raging away beyond the thick stone walls that surrounded them. It sounded far, and angry, and above them, like they were belowground.
“Here we are,” Sebastian said with satisfaction. “It’s perfect.”
The last kids in were Benny and James. Benny had a rope over his shoulder and a sack in his hands. James was carrying a wooden chair. Sebastian took the chair and set it in the middle of the little floor. Its legs wobbled on the uneven stone. Colin was thunked down in the chair and tied firmly to it with the rope.
“Make sure it’s good and tight,” Sebastian said. When the knots were all tightened and Sebastian had checked them, he stood back and looked at Colin.
“You wanted to sneak around and steal like a little rat. Fine. Benny came up with the perfect punishment. You get to spend the night with the rats. All by yourself.” Colin was panting, his forehead beaded with sweat. He pulled against the ropes binding him, but there was no give. “The bag, please, Benny,” Sebastian said, holding out his hand. He reached inside and pulled out a handful of something. “We want to make sure the rats know their new roommate is here,” he said, holding his hand up to the light. It was full of crackers and bits of cheese from the kitchen. Looking Colin in the eye, he scattered the food around Colin on the floor. He reached into the sack for another handful and tossed it on the floor leading to the stairs. Pulling out one more handful, he crumbled it together in his hand and sprinkled it onto Colin’s lap.
The boys all stood in silence, watching wide-eyed.
“That should do it,” Sebastian said, rubbing his hands on his pant legs. “You should have lots of little friends tonight. Come on, let’s go.”
“You’re jutht gonna leave me here?”
“You got it. Not forever. One long night oughta be enough to teach you a lesson, I think. We can talk more in the morning, you and I.”
The rest of the boys were already starting to plod back up the stairs. No one said a word. As each kid left with his candle, the room got darker and darker.
The last ones left were Sebastian, Benny, Jonathan, and the two goons holding him.
“Aren’t you going to leave me a light, at leatht?”
“Oh. Sure, Colin. Here you go.” Sebastian took a candle from one of the kids leaving and held it out toward Colin. His fingers opened, and the candle fell to the floor. It sputtered and hissed and went out in a puddle. “Oops. Sorry about that. Good night, Colin.”
“Sebastian, seriously, you can’t …” Jonathan began.
Sebastian’s head swung like a hunting panther to Jonathan.
“I can, Johnny,” he seethed. “I can. You had your chance. You picked your side. You’ll get yours after dinner. Don’t worry.”
Jonathan struggled against the boys holding him, but it was no use. He was dragged up the stairs behind Sebastian and Benny and the last candle. The last he saw of Colin, he was sitting in the growing blackness, eyes wide and lips trembling, all alone.
Jonathan tried to pay attention as they made their way back to the dining room. At one point he thought they were close to where the library was, but they never saw it. The Hatch, when they passed it, was making an unholy racket. Like an army of watery demons on the other side, raging to get in. No boys paused to listen this time.
They all stopped cold when they got back to the dining room. There were no longer puddles in the room—the entire floor was under an inch of water. It was black and dappled by rain blowing in through the window. The light of the candles still burning on the tables was reflected eerily on its surface.
Lightning crackled, filling the windows with blinding light. There was a great boom of thunder that made them all jump.
“No letter writing tonight,” Sebastian said, looking at the flooded room. “We can do it first thing in the morning, after the storm. Dinnertime.”
“Uh, Sebastian, this isn’t okay,” David said cautiously.
“Where are we gonna sleep, man?” Walter asked, pointing at their waterlogged mattresses still lying on the floor.
“You can bring your beds upstairs for tonight. There’s plenty of room.”
“Sebastian,” Jonathan said. “Remember what Patrick said about the storm and the surge and—”
“Shut up, Jonathan. No one cares what Patrick said. Don’t piss me off—I’m still deciding what your punishment is.” He looked at Gregory and Roger. “One of you keep your hands on him at all times. I know the little punk’ll run away to save his little friend first chance he gets.”
They ate dinner sitting on the tables, their feet on the chairs. The storm was so loud they couldn’t talk over it. They kept having to relight their candles, blown out by the hard fists of gusting wind that hammered through the room. Jonathan sat where Sebastian had been carving with his sword a couple of days ago, flanked by a guard on either side. He fingered the crudely notched letters Sebastian had inscribed on the wooden tabletop: S-C-A-R-S. He looked around at the soggy boys glumly eating, shivering and soaked, sitting in near-darkness with rain blowing in the broken window. His mind kept circling around Colin, bound in blackness, swarmed by giant rats. He couldn’t swallow a bite.
“We need to keep the furnace lit!” Sebastian shouted over the storm. “Jonathan—it’s your turn! You two go with him!” He tossed a stale roll to Roger. “You can give that to our prisoner. Don’t untie him, though!”
Jonathan managed to eat a dry bite of bread and slumped down to the coal room, Roger and Gregory right behind.
Patrick was tied to his chair in the middle of the room under a dangling lantern, surrounded by piles of coal. The furnace glowed and hissed behind him. His face was grim and he was drenched in sweat. Jonathan gasped and unbuttoned the top button of his own shirt. He’d forgotten how hot it was in the dark little cellar. There was a large puddle at the foot of the stairs. Jonathan frowned. He didn’t remember the coal room having any puddles.
“Have ye come to yer senses, then?” Patrick asked.
“We’re just here to feed the furnace,” Roger said. “Here.” He held out the roll.
Patrick looked at it, his hands tied behind his back.
“Uh, ye’ll have to untie me.”
“No way,” Roger answered. He tore a chunk off the roll and shoved it into Patrick’s mouth. “Get to work, Jonathan,” he said over his shoulder. “I don’t wanna be down here forever.”
Jonathan was looking at the puddle on the ground. It was spreading and growing as he watched. He looked closer and saw the little rivulets of water running down the stairs along the wall.
“Water’s getting down here,” he said, pointing. “From upstairs.”
“Who cares?”
“Well, that means—”
“Look, just get to work, okay? I’ll help.”
Jonathan and Gregory started shoveling coal into the wheelbarrow while Roger fed Patrick bites of roll.
“Ye boys are crazy,” Patrick said when they stood gasping for breath after dumping the first load into the fiery furnace. “Ye can’t keep going like this. Ye need to get outta here.”
“Quiet,” Roger said. “We’re fine.”
“What happened to yer nose?” he asked, looking at Jonathan. Jonathan sniffed and touched it gingerly with sooty fingers. It was still sore.
“Nothing. Just an accident.”
“Aye,” Patrick said quietly. “I bet plenty of accidents happen around that boy with the sword.”
“Come on. Keep shoveling. I wanna go to bed.”
They were just about to open the furnace doors for the second load of coal when they heard the crash from above them.
More than a crash. A shattering, shuddering explosion that echoed down the stairs. They froze in mid-motion, then turned to look at the staircase.
There was a moment of near-stillness. Then the water trickling down the sides of the stairs increased to a steady stream an inch deep from wall to wall, waterfalling into the coal room in dirty little cascades.
“What the hell?” Patrick breathed.
From upstairs came the sound of screaming.
Jonathan and Gregory dropped their shovels and all three boys tore up the stairs at a run.
“Wait!” Patrick called. “Don’t leave me down here!”
But they were already gone, up the stairs and through the kitchen and into the dining room.
The room was in chaos. The storm, which had already seemed impossibly fierce, was doubled in strength and fury. All the windows had blown out, every single one, and the door was ripped off its hinges, leaving one whole wall open to the raging wind and rain. All the candles were out, leaving the room in darkness except when it was lit by flashes of lightning. The boys were all huddled behind tables.
Jonathan, Roger, and Gregory stopped in their tracks. The water in the room was no longer an inch deep—it was over their ankles, and rising.
“Look at that!” Miguel shouted over the thundering storm. “In the courtyard!”
Ducking heads peeked from behind the tables. Jonathan’s eyes peered through the pelting rain into the darkness beyond the glassless windows. For a moment, there was only wet, howling blackness.
Then a bright white strobe of lightning lit the scene, and he saw it.
A boat, drifting in the courtyard. Sailing and bobbing right in the middle of the school.
Jonathan and Sebastian and a few others ran to the windows, standing a couple of cautious steps back and squinting into the darkness outside.
Lightning flashed again.
“It’s empty!”
“That’s the mail boat. The one the guy came in.”
“The gate must have blown open!”
Jonathan looked down the row of terrified faces.
“It’s floating out there,” he said. “There’s enough water inside for it to float.”
They looked out at the boat, rocking its way through the storm toward them, rising and falling with the waves.
“It ain’t just puddles out there,” Walter said.
“It’s flooded. The island’s underwater.”
They looked down at the water, now above their ankles.
From behind them came a wrenching, shrieking sound, followed by a thunderous bang. It rang out from the doorway that led into Slabhenge and for a moment overpowered even the sound of the storm raging around them.
Jonathan splashed through the water to the doorway. He took one step into the lightless corridor and listened. He heard echoes of banging, and rushing, and a wet slurping roar.
“It’s the Hatch!” he screamed, the wind whipping the words out of his mouth. “It opened!”
The boys came out from behind and under the tables. They gathered in the middle of the room, feeling for each other in the darkness. A few were crying. Questions were shouted by shaking voices.
“Everyone settle down!” Sebastian’s harsh command silenced the rising voices. “Just shut up, everyone! Let me think! We’re all fine!”
His words shook Jonathan with a realization.
“All!? What about Colin! He’s lower down than we are! We have to go save him!”
Sebastian shook his head.
“No way! We’re not going past that Hatch if it’s open!”
“We have to! He’ll drown!”
“So will we if we go after him. We’re staying right here until the storm stops. We can sit up on the tables.”
“No, Sebastian, we have to—”
“No, Johnny. We can’t save him.” Sebastian’s voice was as hard as the sword glinting in his hand. “We’re not gonna die trying.”
Jonathan swallowed. His whole body was trembling. With cold. With anger. With fear. He rubbed his arms with shivering hands, feeling the burns and scars through his wet sleeves. He imagined he could hear Colin crying for help. In his mind he saw soggy, water-ruined paper bird
s. Rain-soaked flowers.
“I’m going,” he said, and his voice was soft but at least as hard as Sebastian’s.
Sebastian blinked and breathed hard through his nose. His jaw muscles rippled.
“Fine. But you’re going alone. And you can’t save him.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Don’t go!” Tony said.
“Don’t do it, man,” Walter pleaded.
“It’s crazy!” Gerald yelled. The water was halfway up their calves now.
“Let me have a lantern,” Jonathan said into Sebastian’s eyes. Sebastian glanced quickly around.
“We only have three left.” Sebastian said. Jonathan kept his eyes locked on Sebastian’s, unblinking. After a moment, Sebastian blinked. “Fine. Take one. Better bring a candle, too.”
Without another word, Jonathan jerked a lantern out of the nearest kid’s hand. He yanked a candle out of the holder by the doorway. He was two steps into the corridor when a sudden thought stopped him.
“Patrick!” he exclaimed. “The coal room is flooding.” He looked to Roger and Gregory. They didn’t look tough at all. They looked soaking wet and scared. “Go get him and bring him up.”
The two boys didn’t move, except to look at Sebastian. After a moment, he nodded. They turned and jogged toward the coal room.
Jonathan adjusted his grip on the lantern’s slippery handle and took off into the darkness as fast as he could through the rising water.
“Good luck!” Walter shouted after him. Then another kid shouted the same thing. As he sprinted around the first corner and out of earshot, Jonathan heard a chorus of scared voices shouting the same thing. Their voices echoed behind him, following him into the black, flooded maze of Slabhenge.
“Good luck!”
As he ran, Jonathan tried to retrace in his mind the path they’d taken when they’d returned from leaving Colin to the rats and shadows. Rising up was all he remembered clearly. And passing the Hatch. He made his way there, holding the lantern out in front of him.