The Bone Snatcher

by Charlotte Salter

  And then, as fast as it came, the sea dropped away and left her strewn on the side of the path like a piece of rubbish.

  Sophie hauled herself up and ran toward the house. It grinned like an old man with no teeth. The ocean crowded around it, drumming against the island as though trying to smash it to pieces. She plunged into a pool that had started to run over the vanishing path. It was deeper than she’d expected, and she had to swim. Her foot caught on something with hooks, and as the water swelled again she wrenched her boot off and threw herself forward with only one shoe on. The next wave just missed her.

  And now she was on her feet again, the path illuminated by a cold and metallic moon, bits of broken shell cutting her, the wind lifting the water from her skin and making her body sting. Her fingers were frozen, clothes dragging her down, eyes nearly blinded by salt, and on top of all that, someone had extinguished the light on the island so she didn’t know where to run to.

  If I get out of this, if I ever see my parents again, they won’t have time to scream before I throw them into the water!

  But she knew nobody would pay for what they’d done. The thought made her clench her fists.

  The path had degenerated into a patch of sharp points. The driver had lied to her. The only way to escape was to drown.

  She turned to face the distant beach she’d run from. The sea slapped against her feet in merriment. Her other boot, which had come unlaced, was sucked off her foot and bobbed away. In a matter of minutes she’d be under.

  “Come on, then!” she screamed, raising her arms. Her voice bounced between the waves and returned amplified. “Come and get me, you pathetic creatures!”

  The water hit her in the knees. She gritted her teeth, which were chipped from her last fight.

  Then something cold hit the back of her neck, and she was wrenched from the water.

  * * *

  Sophie opened her eyes to a sky like spilled ink. She could have been asleep for an eternity.

  Her head hurt. Her arms and legs hurt. All she knew was that she should be angry or scared about something, but she couldn’t remember what. She lifted her head to check that the rest of her body was there. She was wearing an ugly old dress, the one her parents always made her wear. She’d made them upset for some reason. What did she do?

  She scraped through her memories. She was a storyteller. She lived in London. No, she used to, but it wasn’t her home anymore. Why was that?

  I got in the way of something.

  She remembered her mum calling her sarcastic and stupid. A freak, full of useless stories. A girl who hated dresses and liked wearing boys’ clothes and causing trouble. She didn’t mean to be any of these things, but she was.

  She rolled over and groaned.

  Maybe it was the way she looked. People used to sneak up on her in school, before everyone left and it closed down, and cut chunks of her long, snow-white hair off with scissors. After the third time she told everyone her hair was cursed, and they stayed clear of her.

  It could have been worse. They could have known about her extra toes.

  There was something else.

  Her parents had caught Sea Fever—the terrible epidemic that made everyone afraid of the water. Her pet fish had been thrown away. Even cups of tea became objects of terror. Her parents, in the grip of the fever, sold her off to buy boat tickets for the New Continent.

  She remembered the taxi driver, and the fog in her head began to clear.

  They got angry and forced me into his car. And after that—

  The sea, the moon like a guillotine in the sky. A gun and a bad-tempered squid.

  That’s right.

  She looked around. She was on Catacomb Hill, which rose steeply from the waves, and there was a dark, ugly building behind her. The memories struck her like a brick, and she rolled over to vomit weakly into the grass. From here, her cheek pressed to the ground, she could see everything.

  The house was made of wet, black stone, and where there should have been gargoyles there were stone fish and tentacled monsters leering at the sea. It was at least five floors tall and unimaginably wide. The whole building looked like it was about to slip into the water, with leaning walls and great holes in the roof that had vegetation poking out the top. Everything was made furry by a layer of moss, and there was a pervasive smell of damp and mold. It looked like a house lost in the jungle. It was terrifyingly grand and wild.

  The island itself was curved like a boomerang, stretching out on either side of her, a forest of overgrown scrubland. She was in an unkempt garden at the front of the house, where the plants were black and crispy as though they’d been burned. Everything in front of it sloped into the sea.

  Sophie raised herself to her knees, then ducked her head when she saw something move below. There was a clicking sound like a rusty wheelbarrow being pushed through the garden, and a low muttering like a radio nobody was listening to.

  “Only people going to cross the sea tonight is dead people. The sea’s mean and it’ll come after ’em like one of ’em beady magpies. Thought they’d bring someone over? Thought they’d buy another servant for me?”

  The voice barked laughter, coughed, laughed again. Sophie crawled to the edge of the bank, dragging herself through purple thistles, and peered over. Below her was an elderly man, his legs long and spindly like a spider’s, his head as bare as a rock. He was fishing in the sea with a monstrous grab-claw contraption on a pole. The claw snapped at things in the water while the old man struggled to hold it up.

  “They’ve sent another body to be fished out of the water by poor Mister Scree, that’s what they’ve sent, and he has to bow and scrape and pretend everything’s wonderful—‘oh yesh, Your Battleshipness, don’t worry, Scree loves fishing for the dead.’” Another coughing fit ensued. “Idiots.”

  The man—all sticks and papery skin, crunching when he moved as though he was preserved by salt—jabbed the claw at something in the water and dragged out a saucepan. He stopped just above the waterline and peered at the mainland, the smokestacks and factories, the boarded-up shops.

  “Pretty lights,” he cooed. Then he checked his barnacle-crusted pocket watch. “It’s feeding time soon, oh yes, pretty fishies. I haven’t forgotten you.” He took a cloth from his pocket and began to polish the pointed stones that almost ripped Sophie to pieces.

  Sophie crawled backward. This man was clearly as mad as a box of frogs. She glanced at the house, but the door looked impenetrable.

  “She’s woken up,” said the old man. Startled, Sophie turned back and found that he was looking right at her. “Welcome to Catacomb Hill. I was about to throw you back as fish food.”

  Unsure what to do, she climbed down the bank and fell over the pile of rubbish the man had collected at the bottom. She landed by his shoes, which were splitting and held together with string.

  “Am I dead?” she asked, scrambling up with her foot inside a copper kettle.

  “I wouldn’t know about stuff like that,” he said, dragging the claw through the water.

  “Did you pull me out?”

  He stopped to evaluate her, from her bruised legs to her white hair. She jutted her chin out and glared.

  “I might have,” he said finally. “Not that I’ll get thanks for it. You here to be useful, then?”

  “I don’t know why I’m here. I was kidnapped and dragged here at gunpoint—” she broke off to cough up more water. She felt like she’d been run over by a truck.

  “Where’re your shoes?”

  She looked at her feet.

  “The sea got them.”

  He chewed his tongue for a moment.

  “Yep, it’ll do that. Never heard no one talk to the creachers before, though. You’d better be nice to ’em, now you’ve charged past ’em without asking.”

  Sophie stared at him. She tried to replay the conversa
tion and got lost. Nobody apart from her had ever spoken about the sea as though it could hear them.

  “What’s your name?” she asked finally.

  “Her Battleship calls me the General.”

  “You’re in the military?”

  “No, she calls me that ’cause I’m so general,” he said. “Dogsbody, cleaner, feeder of fish—I’m not posh enough for military. My name’s Scree.”

  “I’m Sophie Seacove—”

  “Ha!” he barked, for no apparent reason.

  “—and I need to get off this island!”

  “You’ll have to wait. Tide’s swallowed the path, and it only comes around every six months. There’s only one person can cross the sea now, and I bet all the fish in the big blue wet thing that he won’t be of any use!”

  Sophie’s legs gave way and she sat down with a thump.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said angrily. “There must be a way back.”

  “The path ain’t coming back any time soon,” he repeated. “No sailing ’cause our boat’s been chewed up. Can’t swim, either. Too dangerous.” He leaned on the claw pole like it was a walking stick, while it snapped away at his foot. “I’ll tell you what you’re here for. The Battleship bought you to help me with my duties. I’nt that nice?”

  “What duties?”

  “Mealtimes.”

  “Is that a joke where it turns out I’m the meal?”

  But Scree had gone, trundling up the garden path, his knees making that rusty wheelbarrow sound.

  “Hey!” Sophie called. “Does that mean I . . . hello?”

  She ran after Scree, scrambling up the bank, pushing through overgrown thistles and tripping over weeds. The rubble turned into cobblestone, and then into steps. Out of the darkness loomed stone busts with smooth eyes and waterfalls of black ivy for hair. Strewn over the ground were bones—real-life, bigger-than-big bones. One of them rolled under her foot.

  “It’s okay,” she said to herself, a bit too loud. “This is completely fine and normal.”

  Scree stopped at the door. His eyes were glowing like wet fish.

  “Are you coming in?” he asked. “I wouldn’t wait too long to make your mind up. They’ll get hungry and come looking for you.”

  “The sea creatures?”

  There was a screech from the sea, and it bounced around the curve of the island. Scree’s eyes flicked toward the horizon, and Sophie realized that he was nervous.

  “I only want to know how to get out of here,” she insisted.

  “I’m not talking to you until we’re inside. They’re getting antsy, and I want to keep my legs.”

  He drew a huge bunch of keys from his pocket. They were so heavy they made him double up. He sorted through them until he found the right one, then wriggled it into the keyhole, twisting the key with both hands. There was a deep grinding sound, and the door shivered for a moment before opening. Behind it there was nothing, only a deep and colorless void.

  “I’m not meant to be here,” Sophie said, imagining the boats sailing to the New Continent without her. She ached to reach out and slam the door, to turn back and run into the sea.

  “But here you are,” said Scree. He tapped his foot as he held the door open. Sophie looked over her shoulder at the sea and the distant, dilapidated town. There was a low rumbling sound, and the water started to foam.

  “I’m coming,” Sophie said.

  She climbed the steps and the darkness reared up to greet her. Scree pulled her through by the shoulder before she could change her mind and slammed the door. They were standing in sudden, perfect stillness, the air heavy like a damp blanket. Already she felt the cloying need to wring her lungs out.

  “From now on, if you like your skin, you don’t go outside ’cept to do your job,” said the voice of Scree. Sophie raised her hands but there was nothing to hold on to, only the feeling of space. “You don’t even look through the keyhole, ’cause the sea creatures watch the hole like hawks. ’Cept they’re cleverer than hawks. Are you ready to meet the house?”

  Sophie wasn’t ready. Escape plans were knotting themselves together in her head, but she couldn’t sort them out. It felt like her tongue had turned to dust in her mouth.

  “Stop gawping,” Scree said. “I’ve got a tour planned and everything.”

  “And then we’ll talk?”

  “If you want,” he said. “But I don’t see what good it’ll do.”

  There wasn’t one part of him that she trusted, but she didn’t have a choice. Part of her was glad that she didn’t have to face the night again.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  Scree put a match to a lantern, and so began the grand tour.

  Chapter 3

  The Grand Tour

  The house on Catacomb Hill was as quiet as the bottom of the sea. Sophie was stranded in a circle of yellow light, her crooked shadow flickering uncertainly. Scree finished locking the door, which was crossed with pulleys and levers, and took the lantern from her cold fingers.

  “Your new home,” he said as the light sputtered and crept into the corners of the room. “It’s a bit damp, but you’ll get used to it.”

  They were standing in a cavernous entrance hall the length of Sophie’s entire home. The ceiling was so far away she couldn’t see it, and the walls were covered in peeling green wallpaper that made the house look ill. The carpet was also green, and wet, and something—it felt like a crab—crawled over her feet. There were suits of armor lined up against the walls, slumped like they’d been shot in the back. She tried to calculate the weight of their swords and wondered if she could swing one hard enough to decapitate a sea creature.

  “Well?” said Scree.

  Well what? It looked to Sophie like a place forgotten by the rest of the world. The kind of place where people went moldy if they stood still for too long.

  “It’s big,” she said.

  “It’s not for you. You’re living in the catacombs with me.”

  In the middle of the grand hall was a splayed-out staircase with black banisters sprouting wrought-iron tentacles and decorative oyster shells. Something stirred in Sophie’s memory, and then it was gone. Still, she had the lingering feeling that she knew this place, as if she’d seen a photo of a photo of a photo. The walls shivered, ever so slightly, like she was standing in the body of a great and dangerous beast.

  She went to touch the banisters, but Scree huffed and she stopped.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re making the carpet wet,” he said.

  The floor was shining with water as far as the end of the room. A fleet of tiny, bronze-colored fish skidded across the floor and vanished into a hole in the wall, through which another gray staircase disappeared, this time into the ground. A brass plaque with a green beard read: The Catacombs. By appointment only.

  She tore her gaze away and found Scree watching her craftily, like he’d figured something out.

  “What?” she said again, more perturbed than she wanted to be.

  “You can feel it, can’t you,” he said. “The house.”

  The walls shivered again. Yes, she could feel something, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. If she had to describe it, she would say that it breathed in time with the wash of the sea. But that was stupid. It was a house.

  “I sort of—”

  Scree twitched and raised a finger. Sophie froze, and he jerked his head toward the entrance of the catacombs with his lips curling upward.

  “The bones are getting restless,” he said. “They clatter around when they think I’m not listening, but Scree knows they’re there. Think if they sing and dance I won’t throw them to the monsters.”

  “I can’t hear anything,” she said.

  “You must have barnacles in your ears,” he said. “Don’t move until I come back. I know what you�
�re like. I can see the trickiness in your eyes.”

  He closed his calloused fist over the flame in the lantern, which went out and left the smell of burning paper. Suddenly blind, Sophie reached out again to grab onto something, but she was alone in the middle of the room.

  “Mister Scree?” she hissed.

  She took a step forward, and the wet carpet squished up between her toes. As her eyes adjusted, she began to see damp, flabby curtains with mold growing on them, and behind them, through the cracked and dirt-covered window, the white moon under a cloud.

  How long would the batty old man be gone for? Her eyes slid to the stairs that reached up and into the heart of the house. She’d never been any good at keeping still, and her feet were itching to move.

  She crossed to the stairs, trailing her hand over the lumpy banister, and began to climb. The spongy carpet announced her presence with a series of rude squelches. It occurred to her that the old man could be alone in the house, and “Her Battleshipness,” whoever she might be, was his imaginary friend. What then? What if Scree wasn’t just mad but totally, unspeakably insane?

  A hoot of laughter seesawed down the stairs, cut short by breaking glass. Sophie stopped with her foot in the air, and the noise happened again, this time with shouting. Two voices, identically high-pitched, howled curses at each other. The next crash dislodged a lump of plaster from far above.

  Sophie climbed swiftly to the top of the first flight and crouched behind the banister. The hall stretching off to her right was an unlit tunnel, but to her left it was lined with fat yellow candles, a Hansel-and-Gretel-style trail that stopped at a door. She knew that it would be stupid to creep up to the door, and even worse to press herself against the wall to listen. So that’s what she did, bending low as the candles danced beside her.

  Crash!

  “Three points!” someone shrieked, and there was a high giggle that rose and fell like a yo-yo.

  “Bonus five if you get it in the eye!” the second voice said, and there was more laughter, a thwack, the sound of shattering glass.

  “Gail, that’s her vase, you idiot. It’s priceless!”