Ralf pushed her closer to the fire, so close that she couldn’t see anything but impossibly bright light. It scorched the side of her face, her lips drying like bits of paper, her eyelashes singeing. She’d never imagined being burned to death before, but now the possibility was so frighteningly close that she saw in a flash how it would happen: She would go blind, and her skin would burn, and her bones would crack in the heat. She wanted to believe that Ralf wouldn’t kill her, that he didn’t have the guts, that she was just being frightened by a stupid game; but the flames were hot, and she couldn’t reason her way out of it.
“Take a good look at what you’re doing, Gail,” she croaked. “Standing there, watching Ralf hold someone over a fire. Don’t you think you’ll get what you deserve one day? Do you think it’ll be nice?”
Gail looked miserable. “Ralf, I don’t like this game. You said she’d be easy.”
“Stop being such a soggy mattress,” snapped Ralf.
“It’s ‘wet blanket,’ you idiot,” Sophie snarled at Ralf, and regretted it immediately.
Ralf twisted her arm and she screamed, then she bit him on the hand and he let go. She rushed to Gail, about to grab the ticket from his limp hand, but he caught her with the same surprising strength as his brother.
“As I was saying,” Ralf continued as though nothing had happened, “I think it’s time we moved to the next act. You want something that we have, and we don’t want you to have it. But the odds, dear Silverfish, are heavily stacked in our favor. We’re clever, and strong, and cunning and . . . clever. You’re not going to win. Sooner or later, we’ll end up having to get rid of you. But first, we’re going to play a game.”
“I’m sick of your games,” she said. “Your father would be turning in his grave.”
“He doesn’t have one,” said Gail. “Silverfish, you broke our toys. And the robot man. We spent ages on the clockwork room.”
“Gail did all the tricky wiring,” said Ralf. “He’s very upset. What are you going to do about it?”
Sophie was struck by the same weird feeling she’d had when she was hiding behind the roll of carpet, the twins looking at their portrait. It was like they’d let their masks slip.
“I’m going to break everything that you send after me,” she said. “Machines, knives, fire, whatever. And now I know exactly how you work. The whole thing was a decoy, wasn’t it? You knew I was going to break into the clock room, so you set it up especially. But why go to all that effort?”
“Fun,” said Ralf, flashing his nails so she could see how sharp they were. “What else are we meant to do around here? You’ve been entertaining. You even tricked Gail to get into the clockwork room, and he’s usually a wonderfully loyal guard dog.”
“What, I wasn’t really guarding anything?” said Gail, looking briefly poisonous.
“Of course you weren’t. You’re useless.”
“You’re sick,” Sophie growled.
“You’re sick,” mimicked Ralf, twisting his face so for a moment she was looking into the eyes of her own doppelgänger. For someone who was bad at acting, he was sometimes shockingly very good.
Sophie stepped forward, and Gail, muttering angrily about Ralf under his breath, let her go.
“I’d like to know,” said Sophie quietly, leaning in close to Ralf. His eyelids flickered, and she knew he was just a tiny bit perturbed. “There must be a reason you put so much effort into tormenting me. Why are you so scared of me? Is it because I’m cleverer than you, or is it because you know I’m going to beat you?”
From the corner of her eye she saw Gail’s face change. He was terrified of what was going to happen. He looked at his brother as though Ralf was going to eat a puppy.
“Scared,” repeated Ralf. He rolled the word around his mouth as though tasting it for the first time. So close, his breath smelled disconcertingly like peppermint. “Scared . . . no, I don’t believe I am. This island is our world, and we pull all the strings. It’s our universe you’re stepping in.” He leaned in as well, so his nose was grazing Sophie’s. She felt a wave of nausea, but forced herself not to withdraw. “You’ve opened the floodgates now, Silverfish.”
She looked right into his sharp blue eyes, forcing herself not to blink.
“Game on,” she said.
Ralf gestured to Gail and he snatched both of her wrists up, holding them in a tight, twisted grip. The moment shattered, and Ralf looked pleased again.
“As I was saying,” he continued, “we’re going to play another game with you. Scree managed to ruin our script, so we need a little help reconstructing it. You’re going to be Ophelia, Silverfish. Say your lines.”
“I don’t know any lines.”
Ralf raised the ticket to his mouth, tore a lump off, and chewed slowly.
“I don’t know any lines!” she screamed.
“Get them right or I’ll swallow all of it.”
As her fury spilled over Sophie realized she’d had a plan all along. Without thinking she drove her elbow into Gail’s stomach, and he made a soft noise that sounded like oomph. With her other arm she reached behind her and snatched the torn ticket from his clammy palm. Gail dropped to his knees, wailing. Ralf ran at her, but in the two steps it took him to reach Sophie she’d ducked under his outstretched arm and risen behind him. He stopped for just a moment, and his hesitation was long enough for her to throw her weight into the center of his back. He made a noise like his brother and also dropped to his knees.
“You little ball of slime!” he shrieked. Sophie grabbed the ticket from his hand. Both the twins were back on their feet now, and they moved so that Sophie was sandwiched between them and the fire. The smile on Ralf’s face grew bigger as the flames scorched Sophie’s back.
“You’ve got gall, I have to admit that,” he said. “If you weren’t a girl, I’d almost want to be your friend.”
“You wouldn’t,” she said. “Trust me.” And then she jumped into the fire.
Gail let out a strangled scream, but the sound passed her by as almost incidental, something outside of her world. There was a searing flash of heat, a wall of hot air. The sound of flames breaking and cracking the broken furniture under her feet. For one moment she thought she’d made her final move. But then she was out of the fire, and running, trailing sparks and charcoal behind her.
She used to play with candles when she was little. She’d swipe her fingers through the flame, thinking how like a magic trick it was that she wasn’t burned. It didn’t scale up so well. She could smell her own burnt hair and the bottoms of her trousers were on fire again. Her feet felt like they’d had knives stuck through them. But the bonfire wasn’t as big as it was in her imagination, and if she had anything it was speed. She’d outsmarted the twins again.
Then she remembered the tickets between her fingers, and looked down at her hand, which was empty. She opened her fingers. They were stained gold. A thin strand of paper withered and curled in on itself, turning to ash. The rest of the ticket, black and burned beyond recognition, fluttered out behind her like moths.
It was very quick, the total destruction of hope.
She staggered to a halt and reached out for support. She hung on to a thick, black branch, half-wreathed in smoke. Behind her, the twins cackled.
“Silverfish loses this one,” said Ralf, his voice twisting through the gloom. “But there’s a bonus round: Silverfish now realizes she’s been a pawn all along.”
The forest grew bigger and darker. A spider dropped onto her forehead, and she let it slide down her nose. Her skin was numb.
“The bonus round ends,” continued Ralf as his brother giggled beside him, “when Silverfish asks Cartwright what happened to all the other servants. I suspect she’s been avoiding the question, dear audience. She knows that there have been many boys and girls on the island before her, but does she know that they’ve all helped Cartwright look for his box?
Everybody loves Cartwright.”
Gail clapped his hands delightedly.
“You’ve done well, Silverfish,” continued Ralf. “You’ve done much better than any of the others. But your end will be just as sticky as theirs.”
“They ran away,” Sophie managed to say, through teeth that seemed to be cemented together. She couldn’t feel or hear or see. “They went home.”
“They definitely tried to,” said Ralf. “But did they make it? How hungry do those monsters look to you, Silverfish? Did those other servants actually get across the water? Do you think we would let them get away that easily?”
“Poor Silverfish,” said Gail, not without some sadness. “Look at her. I think she’s crying.”
“Let’s leave her be, then. All alone, out on the island where nobody loves her.”
“How sad.”
“How sweet.”
“Maybe she really will go mad and drown herself.”
“We can only hope,” said Ralf, “that we’ll be there to watch.”
Chapter 20
All of Them Eaten
Cartwright was picking his nails with a piece of glass. He was in his bedroom, one long leg draped over the other, perched on a velvety chair in front of a dusty mirror. Sophie opened the door so hard it bounced off the wall, and although Cartwright didn’t jump, she saw that his fingers had slipped and there was a small drop of blood hanging from the end of his thumb.
When he realized who it was he grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a silver hairbrush, and held it up like a weapon.
“Put it down,” Sophie commanded. “Drop it!”
“Drop it? You psychotic, stabbing, scissor-wielding—”
“Shut up,” she said, and much to her surprise he did. She snatched the hairbrush from him and flung it across the room. Something smashed.
“I think you owe me an apology,” he said, folding his arms.
“You’re a liar, Cartwright. Everyone told me you were trouble, and I ignored them. But it was true all along. You’re a dirty, cheating, scummy liar.”
“What have I done?”
“The deal’s off. I’m not helping you find the box anymore. I wouldn’t help you if you paid me.”
“I have no idea,” he repeated, leaning away from her, infuriatingly calm, “what you’re talking about. Have the twins done something to you? Whatever they’ve said, they’ve done it to make you angry. Besides,” he added, “we have a deal. You need a ticket.”
“There are no tickets,” she said. “Happy? They were burned.”
“The twins burned them?”
“They got burned.”
Cartwright smirked.
“So you destroyed them. How did you manage to do that?”
“It’s not funny,” she hissed, and Cartwright scrambled up and backed against the wall as she marched right up to him. “I don’t know why you’re sniggering, because it means you can’t go to the New Continent either.”
“I’m not laughing,” he said, holding up his hands. “In fact—”
“Don’t change the subject!” The anger rose again, hot as a spill of lava. “The twins did say something to me, actually. And I know they were telling the truth, because suddenly it all makes sense.”
“Maybe you should sit down,” suggested Cartwright.
“Maybe you should be quiet and listen,” she said.
“Will you stab me if I don’t?”
“I swear to Neptune—”
Cartwright dodged her fists, which were raised to hit him.
“Fine! I’ll listen.”
She glared at him and sat on the bed, right next to the sword he kept hidden under the duvet. The sword she found for him. Cartwright, eyeing her like she was a wild animal, removed himself from the wall.
“People have been working here as Bone Snatchers ever since your uncle died,” she said. “They get sent over, Scree trains them, and then one day they disappear, leaving behind little notes telling your aunt that they’ve run away. It makes sense, because who would want to be here unless they had no choice?”
She glared at Cartwright until he nodded again.
“But something you forgot to mention,” she said, “is that every Bone Snatcher has been doing the same thing as me, looking for this Monster Box. Every time a new one comes to the island you conveniently appear and offer the same deal. A box for a ticket. And when they disappear without finding the box, you wait for another one to turn up.”
“All right,” said Cartwright. “You’re not the first. Maybe I should have mentioned that. It was a bit unfair of me, but—”
“There’s more,” she said, tightening her hands on the bedcovers. “I saw their running-away notes the day I came here. I knew there was something weird about them, but I was too naive or stupid to see the truth. They didn’t run away, Cartwright.”
“Of course they did,” said Cartwright. “They disappeared in the middle of the night, as soon as the tide was low.”
“The tide’s only low twice a year! I know you can storm over it on your mad horse, but what chance does anyone else have? There’s no boat and there’s a pack of monsters baying for blood. There’s no way dozens of people decided to casually stride across.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” said Cartwright. He had his arms folded, but there was a hint of panic that he couldn’t quite hide.
“The notes are fake!” she said, her voice rising uncontrollably. “The twins were pushing them into the sea! All those people are dead because of you, and you’re too stupid or immoral to stop it happening again!”
“I’m not immoral!”
“Did you ever read the notes?”
“My aunt had them all.”
“How convenient!”
“I would know,” he said, standing up. He took the piece of glass from the dresser and fiddled with it nervously. “Ralf and Gail are little monsters, but they’re not capable of killing anyone. Can you actually see them doing it? They play with their food, for crying out loud.”
“I think they’re worse than that,” she said. “I think they’re only pretending.”
“Pretending what?”
“To be idiots.”
She could see the color draining from his face.
“You’ve got to believe me,” he said. “I thought they went back to their homes. I still think that.”
“You’re not thinking hard enough.”
“I wouldn’t have asked for help if I thought anyone was going to get killed, Sophie.”
“Don’t try to be nice.”
“Just listen! Have I ever suggested you do something dangerous? You’re the one who went poking around the clock room. You’re the one who antagonizes the twins, and it’s you who stabbed me with a pair of scissors! You want to have an adventure, because it’s more of a life than sitting around and taking your pet poodle for walks or whatever you did at home. Admit it. You enjoy all the near-death experiences.”
“I didn’t have a pet poodle,” she snapped. “And stop trying to twist your way out of this.”
“If I didn’t care at all,” he plowed on, “would I have come after you in the night when you stole Manic? He came back to shore by himself. I could have left you there in the sea, and as you so eloquently put it, waited for another one to ‘turn up.’”
Sophie slowly released her grip on the bed. She wanted to believe him. He was as wriggly as a ferret, but for some reason she wanted to think he was a good person.
“Are you going to ask about the tickets?” she said.
“Do I want to know?”
“Ralf and Gail stole them. I managed to grab them and escape through a fire—yes, you heard that right—but they were completely destroyed. There’s no New Continent for either of us, just the same old world we’re used to, box or no box. I mean, really. Y
our sock drawer?”
“They’ve never done that before,” he said quietly.
“Once is enough,” she said. Scree’s pocket watch began to play a jolly tune, an old ditty about a drunken sailor, vibrating and clicking against her heart. She’d have to feed the monsters in fifteen minutes.
She bared her teeth at him, channeling her inner sea creature, and left.
* * *
The catacombs were bare, all the bones sucked to the bottom like they’d gone down a drain. The bits of smashed-up bone chair had disappeared. The creatures had already eaten them, boldly creeping into the caves and drawing them into the sea.
As the watch played its tune Sophie ran onto the beach and started shoveling stones into the water, but the monsters didn’t want stones today. They converged on the oyster racks, pulling the last spindly legs into the water and crunching the barnacle-crusted wood noisily. The tide was a long way out, like the sea was taking a huge breath. Another storm was on the way.
Sophie paced the shore. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t get to the New Continent because the tickets were gone. The monsters were getting hungry, and she was running out of bones. And she felt stupid, really stupid, for not wondering what had happened to all the Bone Snatchers before.
Even Scree hadn’t said anything about it. That hurt most of all. He must have known all those people were disappearing under weird circumstances, but all he said was to be careful. She’d started to think of him as a friend, but she felt bitterly hurt, no matter how hard she tried not to think about it.
For the first time in a long while she felt tears pricking her eyes. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and swallowed. Crying was stupid and it didn’t achieve anything. But all the same, her eyes kept leaking.
She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked along the beach to distract herself, looking for scraps that she could toss to the monsters. She noticed a row of pearls by the shore. Curious, she edged closer. The monsters were too busy with their feast to bother with her. She picked the shining object up and dropped it with a yelp. Sitting by her feet was a row of false teeth, large and polished, a shining half grin. She would know those teeth anywhere.
The Bone Snatcher Page 14