Skeleton Tower

by Vanessa Acton

  He lets go of my arm. In a low, unsteady voice, he says, “All I know is this. Emma Blake is part of the reason we have the skeleton tower. She pressured the Coast Guard for years. Pushed them to give Point Encanto an automated light. It was finally installed in 1967. And there haven’t been any deaths or injuries here since then. If there was ever a curse, I think the skeleton tower laid it to rest.”

  “What about the previous keepers?” I ask. “The people who worked here before Mom and Dad? Something scared them off.”

  Shen mumbles something.

  “What was that?” says Morgan.

  “Just little things,” he says more clearly. “Nothing truly dangerous. They had no reason to be alarmed. And neither do you.”

  I look over Shen’s shoulder, at Morgan. She doesn’t seem any more convinced than I am.

  But now Mom’s voice ripples into the lighthouse. “Hey, what’s the holdup?”

  “Just chatting,” I say, clattering down the steps. “No reason to be alarmed.”

  Chapter 10

  Mr. Shen wraps up the training session and heads home by sunset. Of course. “We’ll take care of locking up,” Dad says to us. “You two can get started on dinner!” He says this with an exclamation point, like it’s a huge adventure.

  Or we can work on breaking a curse, I think. I keep remembering how the atlas opened overnight. That didn’t seem like the work of the curse. It was too helpful.

  Morgan and I start up the back stairs of the cottage.

  “We need to drive into town tomorrow and get some real groceries,” Morgan says—right before we smell the smoke.

  We both swear and sprint up the rest of the stairs. The good news: the apartment door opens for us.

  The bad news: all four burners of the kitchen stove are lit.

  “Doesn’t this place have a smoke detector?” I shout. But I have a feeling the curse knows how to disable smoke detectors.

  We rush to the stove and each turn off two burners.

  They stay lit.

  “I’ll get the fire extinguisher,” says Morgan.

  She dashes off. I stay frozen, staring at the flames. Until I hear a bang downstairs. A few seconds later, Mom yells up, “Guys, I need the first aid kit!”

  I couldn’t remember the last time my mom sounded truly panicked. I forget about the stove. I run toward the bathroom, where the first aid kit is. “Mom? What happened?”

  “Hurry up, Jason!”

  Seconds later I’m downstairs in the visitors’ center, carrying the plastic box. Dad is half-lying, half-sitting on the floor near the door. Mom is crouching next to him. She’s pressing one hand to the side of his head.

  “Dad, are you okay?”

  “He needs some antiseptic cream and a bandage,” says Mom shortly.

  I open the kit and hand her the cream. “What kind of bandage? Sheer, tough strip . . . ?”

  “Actual gauze, Jason, not a little plastic one.” She snatches the kit from me. When she moves her hand away from Dad’s head, I see the gash.

  Yeah. A tough strip isn’t going to cover it.

  “What happened?”

  “Hit my head on the door,” says Dad. He sounds like he’s trying to laugh but can’t quite pull it off. “Or more like the door slammed itself on my head.”

  Mom starts unwinding a roll of gauze. Her hands are shaking. I’ve never seen her this agitated.

  “Do we need to take you to a hospital?” I ask. “You could have a concussion . . .”

  “No, no, it’s no big deal,” says Dad.

  Which is when all the information panels fall off the wall. They slam to the ground in perfect sync. In the tiny visitors’ center, the noise sounds like gunfire.

  Mom and Dad both flinch. Okay, I do too.

  And then all the display cases shatter.

  Bits of glass fly everywhere. I duck, but that’s pointless. I still get hit with a spray of shards. Mom screams. Another first.

  And Morgan calls from upstairs, “The fire extinguisher isn’t working either! And it’s spreading, Jason! The fire is spreading!”

  Chapter 11

  At this point, I call 9-1-1. So what if it’ll take the emergency crews forty-five minutes to get out here? I see zero other options. “Yeah, we’ve got a fire and some injuries at the Point Encanto Lighthouse . . .”

  As I end the call, Morgan tramps downstairs. “It’s out,” she says flatly. “Just went out by itself. It . . .” she trails off as soon as she gets a good look around. “Holy . . .”

  “Yeah,” I say. The visitors’ center looks like a war zone. “Better not come all the way down the stairs. There’s glass everywhere.”

  “You’re all cut up,” she says.

  “Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.”

  Actually, I’m only bleeding in a couple places. Mom and Dad don’t look too bad either, aside from Dad’s head wound. But their expressions—I almost don’t recognize them.

  For the first time that I can remember, they look scared. Lost.

  Like they have no idea what to do next.

  ***

  An hour later, the paramedics and firefighters show up. By now we’ve swept up the glass and patched up the bloodiest parts of ourselves. The paramedics make sure Dad doesn’t have a concussion. The firefighters test our fire extinguisher and find that it’s working fine. Ditto with the fire alarm. Then they leave us alone with the curse.

  The fire scorched the cabinets and pantry shelf but nothing else. Still, we don’t go near the stove. We eat cold canned vegetables in silence. Mom and Dad still seem shell-shocked. I can’t help thinking snarky thoughts. Don’t worry, guys, this wasn’t just a bunch of random terrifying accidents. It was actually part of a curse. Sweet deal, right? Just relax. We don’t need the negativity. We’re living the dream.

  I whisper to Morgan while we wash our dishes, “We need to find that diary.”

  “We don’t even know if it’s here,” she whispers back.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  ***

  By now it’s late. Especially according to parent time. On cue, Mom and Dad start yawning and decide to go to bed. I can almost hear their thoughts: Maybe a good night’s sleep will do the trick. Yeah, things will look better in the light of morning.

  I can’t sleep. So I pull up the Internet on my phone and type “Emma Blake lighthouse” into the search bar. I don’t expect any decent hits. But I get plenty. This lady has her own Wikipedia page.

  . . . spent much of her childhood at Point Encanto Lighthouse, where her father was the lighthouse keeper . . . known for her daring rescue of four shipwrecked sailors in 1887 . . . rowed out alone in the storm to collect the survivors of the Laura Lee . . . appointed keeper of the Martine Bay Lighthouse in 1895 . . . credited with saving more than twenty lives over her 52-year career . . .

  None of this is helpful as far as curse-breaking goes. But I can’t help thinking Man, this lady had balls. One other thing I notice: she died in 1967, at the age of ninety-freaking-six. The same year that the skeleton tower replaced the original lighthouse.

  ***

  It’s still dark when something wakes me. I grab my phone to check the time. 2:17 a.m. At least it’s past midnight. I don’t remember when I dozed off, but the house is silent. So everyone else is either fine or dead. I’m hoping for Option 1.

  I set my phone back on the bedside table—and freeze.

  There’s writing on the back of my hand, letters traced in thin pen strokes. Writing I didn’t put there. I’m sure of that, because it’s in cursive. I only have vague memories of learning cursive in third or fourth grade. And I’m defining “learning” broadly.

  For a solid minute, I hold my phone light over my hand, squinting at the cramped writing. Two words. I recognize a few letters—l, t, o, n . . . Slowly, my brain fills in the gaps.

  skeleton tower

  ***

  “Morgan. Morgan. Wake up!”

  She punches me in the shoulder. My sister has a prett
y strong right hook.

  “Gah! Take it easy, Captain!”

  “Oh. Jason.” She sits up slowly. “Sorry. Reflex.”

  “I’m sure it would’ve worked wonders on the crew of the Laura Lee.”

  She ignores that. “We under attack again?”

  “I don’t think so. Listen. I think there’s something else here besides the curse.”

  “Something else? Like one curse isn’t enough to deal with?”

  “I told you,” I say. “There’s being cursed, and there’s being haunted. They’re not the same thing. But maybe a place can be both at the same time.”

  “Uh, not following you.”

  “Look at this.” I flip on the bedroom light and show her my hand. “It’s different from the writing I saw on the mirror. And from the writing in the note. So who do you think wrote it? And why?”

  “I have no earthly idea,” she says.

  “Well, I have a theory,” I say. “Emma Blake. She’s telling us how to find her diary.”

  Chapter 12

  I feel less sure of myself once we’re standing outside. But I try not to show it. Morgan shifts from foot to foot. Dad’s keys jingle softly in her right hand. In her left hand she holds Mom’s toolkit. She doesn’t say anything. This is my idea. My show.

  “Okay, Emma,” I say out loud. “Where’s that diary?”

  I watch the skeleton tower’s rotating beam. Am I imagining it, or is it slowing down?

  Yeah, it’s definitely slowing down. And then it stops. Its beacon of light stands still, shining directly into the top room of the old lighthouse.

  One more glance at the skeleton tower. Thanks, Emma, I think.

  ***

  This time the lighthouse door isn’t already open. Morgan finds the right key and slides it into the lock.

  Up in the lantern station, the beam from the skeleton tower is still lighting up the floor. Except for one spot.

  Make that two spots. Two spots right next to each other, each the size and shape of a footprint.

  “Uh . . . Emma?” I say. “Is that you?” I look at the floorboards where the dark outlines rest. “X marks the spot—is that it?”

  As we move closer, the dark spots vanish. I kneel down and run my hand over the area where they were. The edge of a floorboard catches on my thumb.

  “I think it’s this one,” I say to Morgan.

  “Let’s find out,” she says.

  We pry up the floorboard with flat-bladed screwdrivers. It comes free in Morgan’s hand. And in the hollow space beneath it . . .

  One slim leather-bound book with weathered, yellow pages.

  Now this is what I was picturing.

  The beam on the skeleton tower slowly begins to revolve again.

  ***

  Morgan is better at reading cursive than I am. She skims through the book, turning the pages carefully. “It’s definitely Emma’s diary. The early entries are from 1880, when she’s nine.”

  “Can you skip ahead to 1887? Around October 25, the night of the shipwreck?”

  She flips forward, almost to the end of the book. “Found it. The exact date.” She starts reading out loud.

  Father was blind-drunk again tonight. I fear many poor souls paid the price for it. A wicked storm whipped up around sunset. Shortly afterward, Father let the light go out. I was watching from the cottage, as always. I saw the beam flicker and die. I ran up to the lantern station at once and got it going again. Father barely seemed to notice.

  Morgan trails off and keeps reading in silence.

  “So what happened?” I press. “What else does she say?”

  “She says she had seen the Laura Lee just offshore, close to the rocks. And it was gone by the time she got the light working again. So she knew it must’ve wrecked. She took a rowboat out in the storm and rescued four of the sailors. She’s writing about this super casually, by the way. Just saved some dudes’ lives, no big deal. Anyway . . . okay, this is interesting.”

  This will cost Father his position. He knows it, and he blames everyone but himself for it. He blames Mother for leaving. He blames me for tending his duties better than he does. He was actually angry with me tonight. Angry that I’d rescued these men. Because now these sailors will be able to report what happened. They are witnesses to his failure. So am I. So is the light itself. I fear he will never forgive any of us for that.

  “Sounds like Papa Blake had some issues,” I say.

  “Yeah. I mean, nobody back then knew that alcoholism is a disease, so he probably couldn’t get the help he—”

  “Morgan? Can you find anything else in there about the Laura Lee?”

  “Hold on, I’m looking.” Flip, flip, flip. “Okay, so they find out her dad’s getting fired . . .” Flip. “Dad’s super mad. Emma feels it’s only fair. The light deserves a reliable keeper. Sailors at sea deserve someone who can keep them safe . . . Huh.”

  “Huh, what?”

  She reads another passage out loud.

  Father says, “This light has brought me nothing but misery. It will bring only misery to its future keepers as well. It will test the others as it tested me. Show me a keeper who’s willing to risk his own life to save another’s.” He glared at me. “Besides you, of course,” he sneered. “Most people have the good sense to stay out of trouble instead of stir it up.” I’ve heard him use that tone of voice before. Mother called it his curse-casting voice.

  Morgan looks up at me. “I’m having a thought here.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Me too. But see if there’s anything else.”

  Flip. “That was the last entry.”

  “Seriously?”

  Flip. “Wait—there’s one more. But the writing’s way different. Oh—I think it’s just smaller. Like—like she wrote this when she was older.”

  I’ve come back after all these years. I feel as if Point Encanto still needs me. I know for certain that it is still cursed.

  People have always blamed the crew of the Laura Lee. But I’ve never believed they were behind the curse. Those four men I saved—they forgave us. They understood. I like to believe their less fortunate comrades did too.

  If anyone laid a curse on this place, it was Father.

  The old light is being retired at last. They will replace it with a light that doesn’t rely on human labor. Or fall prey to human frailty. This eases my mind. There will be no more keepers at Point Encanto. At least I hope not.

  But if I’m wrong?

  Just in case, I will leave this somewhere safe. The safest place I know.

  My father’s curse will always be here. But a piece of me will always be here too. Trying to protect you. Trying to help you. Whoever you are. Perhaps you will be the one who breaks the curse.

  Chapter 13

  “But she doesn’t say how!” Morgan bursts out. “All this, and we still don’t know how to break the curse!”

  I can’t argue with that. Or maybe I can.

  “Remember what Emma’s dad said when he was casting the curse?” I say. “Testing others? Risking lives?”

  She turns back to the page. “Yeah. Show me a keeper who’s willing to risk his own life to save another’s.”

  “So maybe that’s how we break the curse. By risking our or saving someone else’s life.”

  Morgan raises her eyebrows. “So we have to, what? Wait for someone to be in danger? That sounds a little morbid.”

  “Maybe. At the very least, maybe we need to do our jobs well. Go above and beyond the call of duty. Or something.”

  She sighs. “Your earlier suggestion seems more practical.”

  “What earlier suggestion?”

  “Leaving.”

  That catches me off guard. It feels wrong. Or at least, not satisfying to think about.

  “I don’t want to turn tail and run just because of some bitter dead dude,” I say. “Not without giving it our best shot first.”

  I think Morgan’s smiling at me. It’s hard to tell in the dark.

  ***
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  I sleep late the next morning. Around 10:30, I stumble to the kitchen. Mom, Dad, and Morgan are already there, drinking instant coffee. They stop when I zombie-walk in.

  “There you are,” says Dad—not in his usual chipper way. Guess the night’s sleep didn’t work as well as he’d hoped. “Good. Time for a family conference.”

  Mom clears her throat. “First of all, we got a call earlier this morning. Mr. Shen had a minor heart attack on his way home last night.”

  Morgan gasps. I groan, “Oh, man. Is he going to be okay?” I feel bad about badgering him yesterday.

  “He should make a full recovery,” says Dad carefully. “But of course, this means no training for us today. And the foundation wants to shut down the lighthouse museum temporarily. Obviously whatever happened last night left a lot of damage. And we’re not fully trained yet. So we’re not qualified to run the site by ourselves.”

  “Not yet,” I say. “But Mr. Shen can teach you the rest of the ropes when he’s better. And will the foundation let us stay here in the meantime?”

  “Yes,” says Mom. “They’d like us to wait it out. But we’re not sure if we should. All things considered.”

  I look at Morgan. Her face is grim. “What?” I ask.

  Dad takes a long, sad gulp of coffee. So Mom answers me. “Dad and I have been thinking. Maybe this place isn’t the best fit for us. Maybe we’re not really cut out for this job. And we haven’t put down roots yet. You kids aren’t registered in the new school district. We haven’t even finished unpacking. We could just . . . try something else.”

  Suddenly it hits me. They’re giving up.

  They’ve never actually done that before. Their plans have crashed and burned more times than I can count. But they’ve always had another plan ready. They’ve moved on, found new dreams. They’ve never just admitted defeat.

  I remember what Emma said about her dad. How he’d disappointed her. How she’d given up on him. I think about how alone they both must have felt, living here. But they would’ve felt that way anywhere, probably. There’s an entire atlas full of cursed places. The curses you bring with you, though? Those could probably work all over the world.