The Bone Snatcher

by Charlotte Salter

  The voice was hushed by another, and they both giggled. Her fear was replaced by a wrench of disgust. The twins.

  “I know it’s you,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “The question is,” said Ralf’s voice, suddenly very close by, “what do you want? We know why you’re up here. We know what you’re after. But you won’t find it. It’s ours.”

  “What’s yours?” she said as she started to tiptoe toward the door, crawling her hand toward a pair of silver scissors that were abandoned on a dresser.

  “We’re not stupid,” said the invisible Ralf. “You want the Monster Box. Cartwright has sent you to look for it, hasn’t he? You’re not the first. You won’t be the last, either. Now get out of our room and get away from our house, before we drive you into the sea.”

  “You’re not driving me anywhere,” she said, then grabbed the scissors and ran into the corridor. It was empty, but the door that had been boarded up was now hanging open like a hungry mouth. Red light flickered in the room beyond it. Footsteps pounded away, followed by a noise like a stone being rolled over a tomb. Silence again.

  “Do you want me to follow you?” she said, holding the scissors out in front of her. No answer. “Is this a game?”

  Still nothing. She looked back to the room full of junk. Then at the false floor under the table, imagining the long, slippery climb down.

  She walked toward the light.

  Chapter 12

  The Red Rabbit Run

  The walls on the other side of the broken door were bathed in red. There were red lanterns on the ceiling and red candles attached to the walls on long bronze arms. The carpet was red and streaked with deep grooves like someone had been dragged across it.

  Hidden somewhere far in front of her in the twisting, cramped corridor, Sophie heard one of the twins whistle a lazy tune.

  “I get it,” said Sophie, treading toward the sound like she was approaching a wild animal. “You’re trying to scare me away. What are you so afraid of me finding?”

  The whistling continued.

  “You said something about a box,” she said, tightening her grip on the scissors. “First I’ve heard of it. But I’m interested now. There must be something awfully good inside it, if Cartwright wants it, too.”

  The whistling stopped. So did she, standing in the middle of the red corridor. There was no sound. Nothing moved.

  “When I see you, I won’t think twice about using these,” she said, holding the scissors blade-out, throwing her voice into the emptiness. When there was no reply her anger rose like a tentacle emerging from the sea. “Tell me what you want or stop messing around!”

  The sound of scraping furniture, two people giggling. There were gaps inside the walls, Sophie realized, and the twins were sliding through them like termites. It was all theater tricks—the red light, the secret passages, that stupid whistling—but somehow she couldn’t make it feel like make-believe. She gritted her teeth and walked down the corridor, through patches of black and into pools of red light. Black, red. Black, red. She couldn’t see more than three feet in front of her.

  The footsteps started again, thud-thud-thud, as the twins bolted through the pools of darkness in front of her. For a second she saw their shadows, stretched thin with hands raised like claws. She stuck the scissors in her pocket and ran after them.

  She rounded a corner and emerged in another wonderland of junk. It rose on either side of her, forming a maze built of salvaged treasure. Sophie entered the maze, which stretched across the whole room, and turned left, left, left again. She fought through cramped gangways, hands raised to grab one of the twins should they dart in front of her.

  “You won’t catch us, Silverfish,” said the voice of Ralf, or at least she thought it was Ralf. He appeared on top of a stack of furniture, the flickering light throwing red shadows over his face. “But don’t worry. We won’t hurt you too much.”

  “You can’t hurt me,” she said, but she found that her hand was on the scissors. “You’re overgrown children.”

  “We’re very mature for our age,” said Ralf. Gail grew out of the shadows beside him, crouching on top of a cupboard. “Besides, we’re older than you. And I’m an hour older than Gail, of course.”

  “Ten minutes,” corrected Gail, and he echoed his brother’s smile.

  Sophie slid around the corner of a stack. Ralf swiveled to watch her.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked. Her eyes slid around the mess, looking for a way out. “Are you teaching me a lesson?”

  The twins both rose, their shadows growing like monsters behind them. Sophie pressed herself against a tower of books, trying to work out how she could push them and run.

  “You shouldn’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong,” said Ralf. He strolled over the top of the maze, stepping neatly from stack to stack. Sophie scrambled away as he passed over her head.

  “This is our house,” said Gail. “Our stuff. And nobody can take it away from us, not even Cartwright.”

  “All of this is because you’re jealous of your cousin?” said Sophie. “You’re pathetic. He’s not trying to take anything away from you.”

  “He is!” hissed Ralf, and swung down suddenly so his face was upside down in front of hers, stretched like a mask. “He wants our box! Just because our father gave it to him, it doesn’t mean it’s his.”

  Sophie fled through the stacks of books and found herself blocked off by Gail.

  “It’s ours by right,” said Gail. “He can’t have it. He’d ruin everything.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about!” she yelled. She wrenched a book from the pile and threw it at Gail’s head. He ducked neatly and the book vanished in a cloud of dust behind him.

  “Don’t lie to us,” said Ralf behind her. “You don’t want to know what happened the last time a servant made us angry. It was very messy.”

  Sophie took off again, and the twins cackled delightedly, but they weren’t following her anymore. Within minutes she had fought her way through the maze to the door at the other end of the room. Sophie knew that something was very wrong, that she got away too easily, but she was already pushing the door open. She could feel the weight of something above it and ducked, but not quickly enough.

  The contents of the bucket hit her with a visceral slap, and she was drenched in thick, nose-burning paint. It was old and sticky and—she looked at her hands, and nearly shouted with horror—it was crimson, bloody. She tried to get it out of her eyes, which were sticking together, as she ran into the next corridor.

  “Go on, Silverfish,” sang Ralf. “Try and get away. We know this place like our own faces.”

  “That’s enough!” she screamed, but she was running, and there were doors slamming behind her, more laughter, and those incessant footsteps. She rattled the handle of one of the doors, but it was locked. The twins knew she was going to come down here, just like they knew she would end up exploring the house and coming across the Room of Remains. They’d been herding her through it like she was in a rabbit run, and she’d been stupid enough to fall for it. She hurtled down the corridor, burning with fury and horror, dripping what looked like blood but felt like syrup, trying each door and finding them all locked, until finally one swung open.

  The twins had grown quiet now. Only their footsteps tap-tap-tapped toward her. For a second, Sophie hesitated outside the room. Then she slammed the door shut again and continued down the corridor, leaving the room empty, squeezing herself against the wall and praying that she was invisible.

  She heard Ralf and Gail stop outside the door. They whispered something to each other and giggled.

  “We know you’re in there, Silverfish,” said Ralf to the empty room. “There’s no way out but through the window, and nothing underneath but the sea and our wriggly, ravenous, carnivorous friends. Can you see them? Are you scared?�
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  “How long shall we make her stay in there?” Gail whispered. “Shall we make the monsters angry, so they try and come through the window?”

  Sophie continued to creep down the corridor and, reaching a dead end, opened a cupboard and slipped inside.

  A dim yellow light flickered on, humming gently. The first thing she saw was her own face a hundred times over. She reached out with a hand, and the other Sophies reached out to her, until their fingertips met coldly on the mirror. Four of them, one on every side, covered in paint, bouncing her back into infinity. She almost laughed when she realized that the paint wasn’t red at all, but white. It was only the light that had made it seem that way.

  She could see her back, her torn and ragged clothes, and for the first time, the marks on her skin.

  She pulled down the shoulder of her dress and saw the row of circles across her back, dwindling in size until they reached a point on her shoulder blade. Purple, perfectly neat, raised like brand marks. She was covered in the scars from the squid that peeled her off the rock the other day. And her jagged hair, her hollow cheeks, the bruises all over her body—she looked insane. Dangerous.

  She kind of liked it.

  There was a row of brass buttons on the cupboard wall, the inscriptions next to them faded into obscurity. She ran her fingers over them but couldn’t make out anything except, maybe, numbers.

  Farther up the corridor, Ralf knocked on the door of the room.

  “Silverfish?” he said. “Why are you ignoring us?” She heard the door creak open. “Silverfish?”

  Through the crack in the cupboard doors she saw Gail turn and look straight at her. Without thinking, she jabbed one of the buttons on the wall. The twins shouted furiously and pounded toward her, and she hit her fist against the whole control panel as they loomed out of the dark.

  The cupboard jerked like it’d been shot awake, and Sophie fell against one of the mirrors. There was a click as the doors locked themselves together, and the twins fell against the other side of them, howling. Then it felt like she was falling, her stomach plunging into her mouth, the whirr of invisible machinery shaking her skull, the sound of the twins flying away like they’d been dragged off by a malevolent spirit. This time, Sophie did scream. Words appeared before her as the light sputtered:

  WELCOME TO LAUREL’S PATENT LIFTING ROOM!

  The bottom of the cupboard hit something and bounced. Sophie dropped to the floor. The doors clicked open. And then, just like that, she was facing the oyster beach, just inside the mouth of the catacombs where she usually emerged to feed the creatures. Without a backward look she flew out of the cupboard, which whirred and took off again.

  She staggered away and onto the beach, gasping in the fresh air. Her legs were uncontrollable with the shock of flying.

  She staggered to a halt beside a rock pool and looked back. Hysteria bubbled up her throat and she bent over, clutching herself, laughing maniacally like one of the twins. She was safe. There was nothing to be scared of. She looked up at the trail of footprints she’d left, glowing like a path back to the catacombs.

  With a last hiccup she peeled her shoes and socks off, storing the scissors carefully inside them—just in case—and wriggled her toes in the cool water. The twins were somewhere upstairs, shouting at each other, their voices drifting through a smashed window, then fading as they retreated. She stepped into the rock pool and waded in up to her knees, and the paint bled from her skin, turning the water cloudy. She sluiced water over her shoulders, then lay down so she was floating faceup, her skirt billowing out from her with trapped air.

  She stayed there for a long time, until her whole body felt numb with the cold and the moon was printed on her eyelids. She wondered what her parents were doing now. Were they sucking the meat off a huge lobster or drinking cocktails in the shallows of a warm pool? Were they wondering what she was doing now? Whatever they imagined, it couldn’t be this.

  Something touched her toes. She withdrew her foot quickly, then sat and watched as an octopus with a head no larger than an egg undulated over her skin. It wrapped its tentacles around her foot and began to squeeze, making her toes click like they were popping out of their sockets. She tried to pry it off, but the harder she pulled the tighter it stuck, until it felt like all the blood was leaving her foot.

  “Stop it,” she said hopelessly. “I’ve just escaped a pair of psychotic morons. I’m not going to be hurt by a—ow!”

  It suckered itself to her whole foot with a pop.

  “I’m being attacked by a very small octopus in a rock pool,” she said to herself. The creature wound a tentacle around her sixth toe, prodding it and flattening its body to her skin as though it were trying to hug her. It gently waved a tentacle toward the sea.

  Suddenly, she understood what she was meant to do. She scrambled out of the pool and, hopping awkwardly on one foot, went down to the sea and put her foot in. The octopus released itself with a cloud of ink. Before it left it spread its bluish tentacles and wound them around her toes again, weaving from her big toe to her tiny sixth one, as though counting, then, satisfied, shot off in a cloud of bubbles.

  “See you later,” Sophie said, and the sea whispered back its approval, touching her ankles like an old friend.

  Chapter 13

  Breakfast Time

  “Avast!”

  It wasn’t the feeding bell that woke Sophie but the Battleship’s cry, echoing along the tunnels and going through her head like a drill. She fell out of bed, where she’d gone to sleep soaking wet, and started pulling on her shoes and coat before she’d properly woken up. She was halfway out of the tunnels before she heard the cry again.

  “Avast! Avast!”

  She ran onto the oyster beach, shoelaces flapping, to see the Battleship struggling with something in the water. Up to her knees in the waves, the huge woman was having a tug-of-war with a sea creature, heaving on the end of a long, white rope. She was clearly losing. Sophie hit the water and tried to pull her away, but it was like shouldering an iceberg.

  “It’s going to pull you under,” she panted. “It’s bigger than you!”

  “It won’t win,” the woman growled, and grinding her teeth heaved on the rope again. It started to rip loudly, and Sophie realized that it wasn’t a rope after all: the monster had the Battleship’s twisted, stretched petticoat in its mouth. It finally broke, the Battleship fell back, and the creature howled triumphantly. It snapped up the petticoat and dove under the water, releasing an odor of rotten eggs.

  “What are you doing out here?” Sophie asked. “How did it get your petticoat?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” the Battleship said shortly, her skirt wallowing around her. She didn’t make an effort to get up. “I wanted to see the monsters. They used to listen to me. They respected me.”

  “I don’t think they respect anyone,” Sophie replied.

  “Ha! You would say that. You’re young. They like young girls. They have softness for them, you’ll see. But it’s gone for me now. Everything’s gone for me.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Sophie, though she had no idea what the Battleship was talking about.

  “You don’t know. I haven’t slept well in years. My bed is a funny shape. It feels like I’m sleeping on a bomb.”

  The Battleship got up, water pouring off her like a beach ball.

  “Breakfast,” she said. “It’s time. You may join us if you wish.”

  With that she glided off, the back of her ruined skirt rustling. Sophie turned toward the sea, where the creature was eyeing her hungrily with a piece of petticoat between its teeth. She stomped into the water and kicked a stone at it.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” she told it. “I know you can’t understand me, but I’m telling you anyway. And that was your breakfast, by the way. I’m not feeding you again.”

  A flat-headed octopus the si
ze of a horse lunged from the water. It sucked the bottom of Sophie’s coat into its mouth, which was full of teeth as small and brown as apple seeds. Sophie was spun around and pulled backward, but she regained her balance just in time and pulled back as hard as she could.

  “I said NO!” she shouted, and to her surprise it let go and shot back into the water. She gathered her coat around her and stormed back to the catacombs, surrounded by the bubbling, inhuman laughter of the creatures. There was a large hole in her coat, and the bottom half of her skirt was missing, too.

  “You didn’t win,” she called over the water. “I wanted a change anyway.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later Sophie kicked through the doors of a wardrobe that had been glued shut with grime and barnacles. Everything else in the abandoned bedroom had fallen to pieces, but the wardrobe was like a time capsule, perfectly sealed and dry. It was the fifth one she’d tried that morning. And unlike the others, this one contained exactly what she needed.

  She took a pair of black trousers, a shirt, a pair of boots, and a frock coat. Looking in the mirror, she thought she looked like a pirate. Yes, this outfit was much better than her foul old dress. She threw it out the window toward the sea, and for good measure tossed her old shoes out, too.

  “I changed my mind,” she called out the window. “You get seconds!”

  She slammed the window as the water began to seethe and the monsters started fighting over the scraps.

  Sophie marched down to the dining room, where breakfast was being served by Scree. She could hear the twins inside, gobbling their food and slurping their tea, and the entirely one-sided conversation Cartwright was trying to politely have with his aunt. She took a deep breath. There would be no more hiding from Cartwright or the twins.

  She threw the doors open. The sun was streaming in, and dust motes pirouetted around her. From the windows, the sea glittered like something from the poster of the New Continent. This tiny moment threw her. When she looked back she saw the twins, their faces blank and polite, and Gail pushed a plate of toast over to her.