Nightingale, Sing

by Karsten Knight

  Echo giggled. “Maybe you can shampoo with whip cream.”

  I squinted at her. “I don’t exactly know where you’re going with this—but I like it.”

  My sister’s happy expression swerved into nausea. I reached for the bedpan but Echo shook her head. She swallowed and wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m fine,” she protested.

  “You’re not a good liar like your older sister.” I set down the bedpan. “Seriously, you’d make, like, the worst poker player ever.”

  This time Echo didn’t laugh. “You are a liar. You promised you were going to visit last night. I waited up for you.”

  There were few feelings worse than disappointing Echo. “Sorry, kiddo.” I tried not to picture yesterday’s grisly events. “I had to work.”

  “Mom says your job is stupid,” Echo said. “Mom says that a smart girl like you shouldn’t waste her nights dragging tourists around like a … like a horse pulling a stagecoach.”

  The invisible knife in my gut twisted. If Calista Tides wanted to criticize my life choices, she should do it to my face, rather than venting to a sick eight-year-old.

  I warehoused that anger for now so that I could focus on the task at hand: explaining to my sister why I might not see her for a while. While my initial instinct had been to tell Echo what I was really up to—that I was on the trail of something that might save her life—false hope and unfulfilled promises could be as deadly to a young psyche as cancer was to the body. What if the Serengeti Sapphire wasn’t real? What if I never found it? What if I got killed and Echo realized with despair one day that her sister was never coming back to save her?

  “I have to tell you something,” I said. “Something difficult to hear. I have to go away for a little while. Could be a few days, could be a few weeks. But I promise that when I get back, I’m coming straight here. I’ll walk barefoot through a blizzard if I have to.”

  With a dispirited sigh, Echo pressed her face into the pillow. “Why is everyone in this family always leaving?” she asked, her voice muffled through cotton and feathers.

  I grimaced. I rolled Echo back over so she’d have to look at me. “The truth is,” I said, “that Jack was looking for something before … before he passed. Something that could be very important to our family.”

  Echo perked up. “Treasure?” she asked hopefully.

  I laughed. Knowing her, she was probably picturing a pirate’s chest overflowing with gold doubloons and gem-encrusted chalices. “Something like that. But I won’t know exactly what that treasure is until I follow the clues he left behind. Now, if you want to help me find the treasure, you have to do one thing for me.”

  Echo lingered on my every word with bated breath. “Anything,” she whispered.

  I glanced toward the door. “You can’t tell a soul about what I told you tonight. Not your doctors. Not the police. Not even Mom.” Echo narrowed her eyes. “I know this is hard to understand, but when she gets frantic, thinking I’ve gone missing, you need to let her think that.”

  And this was the critical conclusion that I’d reached earlier, as I stared pensively into a crackling fire at the Dollhouse. Tomorrow was Monday. While my mother had spent too much time at the hospital to notice that I hadn’t slept in my bed since Friday night, my high school would eventually call her to report my unexplained absence. She would then call me, only to discover that my cell phone had been disconnected. The night before, I had tossed it into the Mystic River so that Detective Grimshaw couldn’t use his resources to triangulate my location.

  Later, she’d get the message I dropped in the hospital mailbox, saying that I couldn’t take it anymore, that I’d run away.

  In order to keep my family safe, I needed my mother to think I’d gone off the grid. I needed her to call the police, because eventually that information would make its way to Detective Grimshaw. If her distress seemed sincere and unrehearsed, they’d hopefully rule out the possibility that she knew anything about my quest to track down the Sapphire.

  So while it broke my heart to think of Mom frantic with worry, and so soon after Jack’s death, it needed to be done.

  Echo frowned at me. “You want me to lie to Mom. Didn’t you just call me a horrible liar?”

  I gazed into her keenly intelligent eyes, marveling, unsure whether to cry or laugh. Most days, Echo seemed so much younger than eight. Spending more time in the hospital than at school around kids her age had seemingly stunted her ability to grow up. But there were other times, like now, when I realized how damn smart and cunning my sister was—and how brilliant she’d grow up to be, if only the disease that had swept through her body like a typhoon would leave her the fuck alone.

  “I hate asking you to lie,” I said. “Most of the time, lies only hurt people. But every once in a while, you need to hide the truth to protect the people you love.”

  This last part went over Echo’s head, but I could see her fading fast again anyway. She nestled sleepily back into her blankets. “Tell me another story before you go?” she asked.

  Even knowing full well that Nox could have men roaming the hospital, no goon was going to stop me from reading my sister to sleep for what might be the final time. I picked up the book of Greek myths from the nightstand and flipped through, until I saw an illustration with a harp on it. A story about music seemed benign enough to read to an eight-year-old.

  I got partway through the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice before I realized that it was just as dark and depressing as the other myths, but it didn’t matter. Echo was softly snoring by the time I reached page two. Still, desperate to buy more time with her, I read the story aloud until the very end. Orpheus tried to lead his beloved Eurydice out of the underworld, playing his harp so that she would follow his song—but he prematurely gazed back at her, breaking his pact with Hades and casting Eurydice’s spirit permanently into the land of the dead.

  I set the book down. I leaned over Echo, pushed aside her hair, and pressed my lips to her ashen cheek. Even in sleep, her smile twitched.

  “Promise me something,” I whispered into her ear. “Promise me that you’ll hang on.”

  Then I turned and strode toward the door. Much like Orpheus, I broke my own heart when I made the mistake of looking back as I left.

  As I stood in front of the museum, I could see why my brother had followed the seventh riddle here. Bathed in spotlights, the MFA’s imposing castle-like façade gleamed bright against the night sky. Four pillars towered like golems over the entrance, draped with crimson banners fit for a royal court.

  A bronze statue stood in the center of the lawn, a Native American in a headdress, riding a horse with his hands spread wide and his face upturned to the heavens as he searched for answers. I remembered Jack calling it The Appeal to the Great Spirit when he dragged me here.

  I paused in front of the statue. “Did the Great Spirit answer your prayers yet?” I asked. When it didn’t respond, I flicked my eyes skyward. “Mine neither.”

  I camouflaged myself in the midst of a pod of tourists entering the museum, in case Nox had posted men here. Inside, as I climbed the grand staircase up to the golden-hued rotunda, I couldn’t tear my eyes from the mural over the archway. The painting depicted a helmet-clad Athena, goddess of wisdom, sheltering three mortals under her shield. Behind her, Death lurked with his scythe wound up to unleash a killing blow should Athena remove her protection. I shuddered. From now on, wisdom would be my only haven from death, too.

  My destination was the Art of Europe wing. I’d memorized the museum’s floor plan prior to my arrival, so I could make a beeline for the painting on Jack’s postcard. One moment lingered too long in hostile territory could spell the end of me.

  My first impression of the gallery was that the nineteenth century must have been a bleak time for Europe. All the paintings conveyed dark themes. Warriors hunting lions. Moses raining hail and fire down on the city of Thebes.

  And there, front and center, was the one I’d been se
arching for. In person, The Slave Ship was far more impressive than on a postcard. As soon as I set eyes on it, the hairs on the nape of my neck rose. I sat down on the wooden bench in front of it and pulled out the battered postcard with a trembling hand.

  Jack was meticulous to a fault—even in his haste, he would have purposely chosen this postcard. I also knew that when it came to historical landmarks in New England, my brother was a sponge. So while I could accept that Jack, being human, had made a rare error in following the clues to the MFA, there was no way he believed The Slave Ship was the answer to the seventh riddle. It made zero sense given the poem’s final stanza. There were no gardens in the painting, no fountains or roses.

  He must have realized that Nox’s men were onto him, and visited this room to throw their scent off the real trail. I could picture him in this gallery, putting on a performance as he stared in fake vexation at this painting, while sitting in this seat.

  “This seat,” I repeated aloud.

  If Jack sent me that postcard, it meant that for some reason he wanted me to come here, to look at what he was looking at.

  To sit where he had been sitting.

  I ran my fingers along the bottom of the bench. To my disgust, I immediately encountered a mountain range of old gum pressed into the wood. But when I reached back far enough, my fingertips grazed the corner of a piece of card stock.

  Bingo.

  It was a business card that had been adhered to the bench with a wad of gum. The embossed name read “Charlotte Shepherd, PhD—senior lecturer in history at Boston University.” Just as Jack had done in the Greek mythology book, he’d pencilled a little nightingale in the corner, his signature so I’d know it was from him.

  The fact that he was carrying this historian’s card could only mean that they’d met before he died. By leaving it for me, he was indicating that I should make her acquaintance as well. After all, Jack knew I wasn’t a history buff like him, which dramatically diminished my chances of finding the Sapphire on my own. He had no way of knowing that I’d team up with his brilliant roommate. Maybe he’d hoped the postcard would put me on the trail of the eighth page, while giving me a resource to turn to if the seventh riddle stumped me.

  I was so entranced by my discovery that I didn’t register the heavy, limping footsteps until it was too late. The hulking form stopped directly behind my bench, and it took all of my willpower not to turn around. I slowly stuffed the business card into my pocket.

  A tense minute later, an enormous man with the build of an NFL linebacker shuffled past the bench, edging closer to The Slave Ship. As soon as I saw him in profile, with bandages crisscrossing his broken nose like crime scene tape, I recognized him as Drumm—the one that I’d drilled in the face with a metal tank during my escape yesterday. He had one hand tucked into his sweatshirt; in his other, he held three steel stress balls. He rolled them around his palm and between his salami-sized fingers. They clinked unnervingly every time they collided with each other.

  As tempting as it was for me to see what Drumm did next, I knew that it would only take him one good look at my face and I’d be finished. I casually stood up and walked toward the gallery’s exit. Still, as I crossed the marble floor, every step echoed like the thunderous gait of a T-Rex.

  At the threshold of the next gallery, I chanced a quick look over my shoulder.

  Big mistake.

  Drumm had been studying The Slave Ship, but the motion of my turning head was enough to rouse his attention. In just the two seconds that I looked back, his eyes darted to my face and focused. Even with my new hair color, I could see his eyebrows draw taut with recognition.

  Shit. I tried to maintain a casual pace, hoping Drumm might second-guess himself. No dice. I heard his limping footsteps resume in double time. The shark smelled blood in the water and he wasn’t about to let an injury get in his way.

  I kept my face forward and walked as fast as my stride would allow. What would Drumm do if he caught me? Had Nox ordered my capture, alive, so they could force me to divulge the latest riddle? Or would he simply erase me from the equation and try to find the page on his own? The museum was a public place, but with closing time approaching, the halls were emptying out fast. With four floors and a hundred rooms, there were plenty of quiet corners for Drumm to finish the job and leave me to bleed out in the shadows …

  The image of a “withering body” gave me a crazy idea. My memories of the MFA from field trips were mostly a blur of art and mild boredom, but there was one room that had made a big impression on me.

  I waited until I reached the entrance to the glass stairwell, then broke into a run. I descended the stairs two at a time, and still I could hear the lumbering trail of Drumm keeping pace behind me. At the bottom, I darted across the central atrium that connected the various wings, setting a course for “The Art of the Ancient World.”

  The Egyptology exhibit was exactly as I remembered it. A giant glass case contained an old mummy and the various layers of the sarcophagus that once entombed it. Animal-headed canopic jars lined the walls, each containing the bodily organs of long-dead pharaohs. But the object I sought wasn’t behind glass at all: the outer stone shell of a sarcophagus, etched with reliefs. A lid was suspended eight inches above it, casting shadows over the coffin’s interior. I recalled staring into its dark recesses during my last visit, overcome by panic at the thought of being buried alive inside of it—not afraid like a normal person at the prospect of suffocation, but because more than anything I was terrified by the idea of true dead silence.

  Now, with the Egyptology room momentarily to myself and Drumm’s footsteps fast approaching down the corridor, I willingly thrust my body through the gap between the lid and the sarcophagus and dropped into its dark embrace.

  The hardest part was not making a noise when I landed on my elbow. I listened as Drumm’s steps slowed outside. Come on, I urged him. Go check the next room like a good dog.

  He grumbled a curse and I heard the electronic chirp of a walkie-talkie. “Canary sighting in the building,” he said. “Be ready with the hounds out on Huntington in case she tries to run for the Green Line.”

  After a few tense moments, the clinking of Drumm’s metal balls drifted away as he moved his search into the Greek and Roman exhibits. I peered out over the lip of the sarcophagus.

  I’d barely raised my head when a piercing scream resounded through the Egyptology room. In another stroke of bad luck, a five-year-old boy and his mother had entered right in time to see me rising up out of the coffin.

  I was playing the world’s deadliest game of hide-and-seek and a kindergartener had totally blown my cover.

  I propelled myself out of the sarcophagus and barreled past the family, dodging the swing of the mother’s pocketbook. I abandoned all attempts at stealth and fled through the atrium in a full-out sprint. A security officer shouted after me. Since Drumm had instructed his dog handler to patrol Huntington Avenue, I set a course for the rear exit, which emptied out into the tangled marshlands of the Fens.

  I stumbled down the museum’s steps and crossed the desolate street. The Fens lay silent, and as I darted over the footbridge and into the park, I acknowledged the gamble I’d made. Sure, there were no hounds to sniff me out back here, but there would be no witnesses either if anything happened to me. As beautiful as the Fens were during the daytime, they were a favorite ambush point for muggers, so most people avoided it after sundown.

  The trees fanned out and the park opened up into the war memorial. When I glimpsed the well-lit neighborhoods beyond the Fens, a thrill ran through me. Maybe I’d escaped Nox’s clutches once again.

  I heard a strange whooshing sound behind me. If I didn’t know any better, it sounded like someone was twirling an object around their head over and over again and—

  Something snagged around my ankles, tethering them together. Before I could extend my hands to break my fall, I landed chin-first in the grass. The half-frozen ground raked my face. My body skidded to a
halt in front of the sixteenth-century Japanese temple bell that belonged to the Fenway War Memorial.

  The old bell was a symbol of peace and I was about to be slaughtered in front of it.

  My ankles were bound tight by several lengths of wire, anchored with the three metal balls Drumm had been rolling around in his hands. Not stress balls at all, but bolas, a projectile snare used by hunters to bring down their prey.

  I fumbled in my pocket for my Swiss-army knife keychain, but time had run out. With uncanny strength, Drumm hoisted me to my feet. He clamped my body to his with one bear-like arm, pinning my elbows at my sides. With his other hand, he pressed the unforgiving metal tip of something to my neck.

  A syringe.

  “Listen carefully,” Drumm whispered into my ear. “You get one shot to tell me where the journal page is. Not two, not three—one shot. If you even begin to say, ‘I don’t know,’ I inject this concentrated dose of Blyss straight into your jugular. I promise it will feel real good, right up until your heart stops sixty seconds later.”

  I closed my eyes. I pictured seeing Drumm in the buzzard’s cage yesterday and at the museum tonight. I listened in my mind to the rhythm of his limp, the shortened, tentative step every time one of his sneakers hit the floor. Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Clip-clop. One of his legs was injured, but which one? I thought harder, envisioning the moment I’d gazed back at him as he followed me through the atrium.

  Left-right. Left-right. Left-right.

  I was pulled so tight against Drumm that I could actually feel the slight bulge of the bandage wrapped around his left leg.

  Drumm sighed. “No one will be surprised when they find your body tomorrow. Just another junkie who didn’t know her limits, taking after her big brother—”

  I drove my thumb into his bandage. With a sickening twist, I felt the stitches cinching the wound together snap.

  Drumm howled and slackened his grip on me, dropping the syringe in the process. Without him to hold me upright, I flopped to the grass. I instinctively snatched the syringe out of the dirt. Then I thrust the needlepoint up into my captor’s good thigh and depressed the plunger, expelling its lethal contents.