Nightingale, Sing

by Karsten Knight

  While dreaming of black spots,

  Islands, and gold.

  As my light passed over the walls and the library shelves, I struggled to find anything that made sense of those lines. Not the carpet, not the moldings, not the portrait over the fireplace.

  The words “black spots” haunted me as I rifled through the desk, an old memory clawing to get out. I closed my eyes and zeroed in on the image that was drifting just out of reach.

  Then it all clicked.

  The memory that surfaced was of a movie I’d watched in grade school years ago. One of pirates, adventure, distant islands, and golden treasure. A story about a one-legged cook aboard a ship who organized a mutiny. A story that began with an aging pirate receiving a death sentence—a black spot.

  Treasure Island.

  I ran a search on my phone to confirm this theory. The results were promising: According to the top article, one of Widener’s favorite authors was Robert Louis Stevenson, and his private collection contained several first editions of Stevenson’s works.

  I jogged over to the bookshelves and meticulously scanned the titles. My search paid off when my flashlight illuminated a sage-green text with Treasure Island on its spine.

  My gloved hands trembled as I opened the glass case and withdrew the novel. Despite being 130 years old, it remained in good condition, though I feared that the old book might flake apart, its binding withering to ash under my touch.

  My care of the book became more frantic as I failed to find any sign of the ninth riddle. I fanned through every page in case it was wedged between them. I ran my fingers over the endpaper to see if it might be hidden beneath. Nothing.

  I cursed, tempted to throw the book across the room in my frustration. I was about to reshelve it when I glimpsed something inside the front cover. It was an antique book plate. I was sure that plenty of the library’s volumes bore Widener’s name—

  Only this one was embossed with golden vines.

  This one had a splotch of black ink in the corner.

  And where the signature should have been, this one contained a four-line poem, written in the same jagged scrawl as the other riddles.

  I held my flashlight closer to the page.

  The cinders stop smoldering

  The flames now effete

  But his gaze watches, vigilant,

  While his gilded heart beats

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose. A riddle within a riddle?

  You can figure this out, I coached myself. You don’t need Atlas’s help on everything. I traced my finger through the stanzas and isolated the keywords.

  Cinders.

  Flames.

  Gaze.

  Gilded.

  Something else caught my attention. At the end of the word heart, the cursive trail extending from the letter “t” was looping and misshapen, as though the pen had trailed on too long. When I squinted at the page, I realized it wasn’t accidental at all. That squiggle was actually the letter “h.”

  The word was hearth.

  My head snapped to the left. There was the fireplace, cold and unused—its cinders no longer smoldering, its flames long since dead. There was the portrait of Harry Widener gazing vigilantly.

  And sandwiched between the portrait above and the fireplace below was a golden inlay in the wood.

  A gilded hearth.

  I knelt in front of the fireplace. My hands groped around the gold ornament for any sign of weakness, but it was firmly attached to the wall. However, when I slipped my arm inside the flue, I discovered a loose brick directly behind it.

  I dug blindly, raking at the loose mortar with my nails, until at last the stone popped free into my hand. On its exposed side, it was a normal brick, its craggy surface stained with soot. But when I flipped it over, I found that someone had carved out the middle and placed a rolled up page inside.

  The ninth riddle.

  I tucked the journal page into my pocket, brick and all, and drew my hood tight around my face. Then I walked briskly down the main staircase, inhaled a deep breath, and unlocked the library’s front doors.

  The alarms sounded instantly. Outside, a group of freshman girls standing on the quad turned in surprise. When they saw me barreling down the stone steps with all but my eyes concealed, they shrieked and ran in the opposite direction.

  The university police had a better response time then I’d anticipated. I turned the corner just as a public safety van came barreling across the quad.

  But they wouldn’t find me. By the time I heard the car doors slamming and the chatter from the officers as they hurdled up the stairs, I was already disappearing through a side gate. I cast off my hood as I stepped out onto Mass Ave. so I wouldn’t look suspicious, before making my way back to the subway station.

  I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until the train car jerked forward, heading away from the platform and back downtown, toward the safety of the Dollhouse. The car was empty except for a blind man with a seeing-eye dog, who’d boarded right before the doors hissed closed. Still, I resisted the urge to take out the riddle and read it. I kept one hand delicately draped over the bulge the brick formed in my pocket.

  With the car in motion, I finally remembered to text Atlas. Chill the champagne, I wrote, just enough to put his anxiety to rest.

  Only a few passengers boarded over the next few stops, and I tried my best to avoid eye contact. Before long, I developed this strange, unshakable feeling that somebody was watching me. I felt this way sometimes late at night, walking alone through Dorchester after a pedicab shift. Usually, in those cases, it turned out to be nothing. But tonight …

  I subtly glanced from passenger to passenger, profiling anyone who might be a threat. An elderly man with two bags of groceries in his walker. Three college girls wearing thigh-length cocktail dresses beneath their pea coats, gabbing about some party. A boy who couldn’t have been older than middle school, his earbuds cranking out music so loud that I could recognize the tune. He seemed far more interested in ogling the female undergrads than checking me out.

  That left only the blind man across the aisle. He was middle-aged, with a receding hairline that had gone gray at the temples. He had one hand wrapped tightly around his dog’s harness and the other tucked into the pocket of his leather jacket. At first glance, I had believed he was gazing unseeingly up at the ceiling, but behind the dark tint of his aviator sunglasses, it was impossible to know for sure.

  Hadn’t Drumm, before he died, called an accomplice on his radio—someone with hounds? Was it possible that same man had picked up my trail, and was biding his time to steal the riddle I’d just uncovered?

  Maybe it was paranoia. I had just broken into one of the most famous libraries in the world, so I had a right to be on edge.

  To put my fears to rest, I took out my phone and opened the camera app. With no warning, I clicked the shutter button.

  The flash went off. The hound whined in discomfort. And in that sudden burst of light, even with the aviators covering his eyes, I could see the corner of the man’s eyes crinkle as he winced.

  Blind, my ass.

  My stomach somersaulted. I tried not to look at him, pretending that the camera flash had been a harmless accident. The train slowed down as it rolled into Park Street Station. I waited for the doors to part and then, seeing that the man had made no move to get up, I darted out onto the platform.

  I didn’t turn around at first. Instead, I approached a street meat vendor and ordered a sausage. Ordinarily, I’d never buy anything cooked in a dirty subway station, but a wild, desperate idea was brewing in my brain.

  As I traded a five-spot for the sausage, I casually glanced behind me. Sure enough, the man and his dog were idly skulking nearby. He was pretending to ask for directions, but the Rhodesian ridgeback stared fixedly at me. It dipped its nose to the ground then sniffed the air, clinging to my scent trail.

  I set a fast clip for the opposite end of the platform. While I walked, I tore off a piece of the c
harcoal-grilled meat and dropped it. As I suspected, the dog handler had resumed his slow pursuit. He’d cast off his sunglasses and his eyes homed in on me. The dog stopped to eat the piece of sausage I’d tossed, but its handler cursed and urged it forward.

  Fifteen yards down the platform, I dropped another piece. This time I heard the dog yelp in pain when the man jerked on the leash, robbing it of its snack.

  A robotic voice announced over the loudspeaker, “Attention passengers: The next train to Ashmont is now approaching.”

  Ahead, the sounds of the incoming train echoed out of the tunnel. My path would soon be obstructed by a wall. For better or worse, that would be where I made my last stand.

  When I reached the dead end, I spun around to face my pursuer. The dog handler quickened his pace, sensing victory.

  “Don’t take another step,” I warned him. My voice sounded feeble and terrified and barely carried over the clatter of wheels on steel tracks.

  The dog handler responded by pulling a black object from his pocket—a gun. Its silencer glinted under the approaching headlights from the train.

  I had never wanted to see my crazy plan through. But given another few seconds, I had no doubt that this degenerate would put a bullet between my eyes and steal the journal page from my corpse.

  What I was about to do wasn’t solely for my own survival. It was for Echo.

  This time, I steeled my voice as I said, “You should really learn to treat that dog better.”

  Then I threw the rest of the sausage over the tracks.

  The hound, underfed and ravenous, instantly leaped after the airborne meat. It was a sinewy, muscular dog, and its pounce safely landed it on the opposite platform, out of harm’s way.

  The same couldn’t be said for the dog handler. To keep the hound on task, he’d wrapped his hand so firmly around the leash that when the hound hurdled the tracks, it pulled the man right along with him. My pursuer lost his balance on the edge of the platform and toppled over the safety strip, falling onto the steel rails.

  Only a fleeting, doomed moan escaped his mouth before the incoming subway car plowed right over him.

  Even though I knew it was coming, I wasn’t fully prepared for the ugly cacophony of steel trampling flesh and bone. I hunched over and vomited onto the concrete.

  Screams erupted farther up the tracks, as the train pushed whatever remained of the mercenary past the smattering of late-night passengers. Their hysterical shrieks could be heard even over the subway car’s screeching brakes.

  When there was nothing left in my stomach for me to throw up, I wiped the spittle from my mouth and whispered, “Why? Why couldn’t you have just left me alone?”

  Another noise interrupted my stupefied horror. It was the whimper of the Rhodesian ridgeback on the opposite platform, searching for its master. I could hear it shuffling around, its harness jingling as it dragged behind the dog. When the hound realized that it was truly alone, it let out a forlorn, bloodcurdling howl.

  Somehow that sound was so much worse than anything else.

  I exited the station as quickly as possible, keeping my hood up and my head low so the cameras wouldn’t catch my face. As much as the man deserved it, as much as I’d do it all over again in the same situation, one thought haunted the long, cold walk back to the safe house:

  I had just killed another man, and this time, I didn’t even know his name.

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. CUMBERLAND WARWICK

  Charleston, South Carolina | February 14, 1865

  Dearest Adelaide,

  My resourceful companion overcame many obstacles to find himself on our shores. Yet there remained at large one vital clove of information, the absence of which threatened to render his struggle futile: the location of his son. The slaves in the region’s cotton fields number in the thousands, so I nearly wrote off our journey as impossible before it had even begun.

  However, Malaika had obtained one indispensable lead. The slave ship that his child had been forced onto bore a crest on its sails of a winged lion and fleur-de-lis. This heraldry belonged to the Gold Coast Company of Charleston, the offices of which were tucked away in the Cannonborough district, not far—much to my alarm—from the Citadel military academy.

  So it was that Malaika and I returned to the city where the first shots of this cursed war rung righteously. For the purposes of camouflage, we assumed the roles of slaver and slave, costuming ourselves in vesture we purloined from a clothesline outside city limits. On our journey through the Charleston streets, Malaika kept his head bowed and concealed the Sapphire hidden beneath his tattered cloak.

  Upon our arrival, we were greeted by the Gold Coast proprietor, a man by the name of Lourde with snow-white muttonchops. I introduced myself as a proxy for a wealthy plantation owner from Goose Creek, who had sent me to acquire new labor for his tobacco fields.

  The promise of money makes fast friends, and so we retired to his study to conduct business, while Malaika remained outside. The slaver’s office was richly furnished, the spoils of a sordid trade, but my keen eye glossed over all these extravagancies in favor of his library of leather-bound manifests. “I see your bookkeeping knows no bounds of meticulousness,” I said.

  He grinned. “Organization is, after all, the foundation of success.”

  “I wonder then,” I told him, “if your records are so thorough that you would be able to ascertain the specifics of a particular transaction for me: a boy of twelve years from Africa’s eastern coast, sold in the summer of ’64.”

  Lourde’s good will transformed to suspicion. “Forgive me, sir, but the only transaction of my concern at present is the exchange of your gold for four of my finest brutes.”

  “I have in mind a more lucrative deal.” I brandished the pistol I’d pilfered earlier from the Citadel. “Your life for one name.”

  Lourde blanched at the sight of my pistol, but recovered quickly. “I have made a career of working with some truly squalid men. And I don’t believe you have a killer’s constitution.”

  “Perhaps not,” I agreed. “But when my companion finishes with you, you shall wish I weren’t such a pacifist.” Malaika, who had silently scaled up to the second-story window, emerged from the shadows behind Lourde and clamped his impressive hands down on the proprietor’s shoulders. So stricken was he with terror, and so hard did Malaika squeeze, that I quite thought his head my burst like a tomato.

  “Malaika and I respectfully invite you to assist us in our endeavor.” I smiled at the proprietor. “And we thank you in advance for your utmost cooperation.”

  In the valley of a river swift,

  Four set down roots to make a home,

  But when thirst insatiably cursed the land,

  The great flood swept in to drown them all.

  Four ghosts now stand at water’s edge,

  But one mourns loudest to the east,

  A lonely siren calling you

  To her long-since-vacant watering hole.

  So tread carefully, friend, off the cornerstone

  Ten paces to starboard, and thrice that to bow,

  Then two down to willingly bury yourself

  In the land of the dead, abandoned.

  The bereft cry of that dog punctuated my fitful sleep and the succession of nightmares that plagued it. In the worst and final dream, I found myself lying paralyzed on a pair of train tracks. With my cheek pressed against the steel rail, I couldn’t look away from the dismembered corpse of the dog handler lying at my side. Soon, the noise of the approaching train grew from a susurrus into a deafening roar. My body refused to move, no matter how much I struggled. With the engine’s headlights growing brighter and only seconds to go before impact, the dog handler’s decapitated head rolled to the side and gazed into my soul. “There is a darkness in your heart, Sabra Tides,” he croaked.

  I awoke with a start to a net being dragged over my body. I defensively rolled onto my back, expecting the worst, that Horace Nox had infiltrated the Dollhouse.<
br />
  But when my bleary eyes focused, I saw that it was Atlas, his face softly lit by the muted television as he tucked a blanket over me. I must have unintentionally passed out on the living room sofa while I was studying the journal page.

  I had avoided the concierge desk on my way upstairs, because I knew Atlas would pepper me with questions. I was nowhere near ready to relive the gruesome confrontation in the subway.

  “Oh, look,” I muttered drowsily. “My overprotective roommate is home, right on time.” I waved an imaginary flag. “Hooray.”

  Atlas held up the ninth journal page. “You must have been studying hard, since I found this stuck to your cheek.”

  “I hope none of the ink smudged off on my face.”

  Atlas’s mouth opened like he was about to ask a question, but a news report on the television caught his eye. I recognized the images of the subway station that I’d narrowly escaped hours ago. According to the closed captions, a man had been crushed to death by an oncoming train after his dog had dragged him onto the tracks.

  Whereas I should be relieved that the police weren’t looking for a fugitive murderess, I felt a wave of nausea as the news report sucked me right back to that platform.

  Atlas pointed to the TV. “Please tell me that doesn’t have anything to do with …” His sentence trailed off as I began to cry.

  “He had a gun,” I whispered.

  I expected a lecture from Atlas, maybe an I-told-you-so for pursuing the ninth riddle without him. He surprised me by reaching out and affectionately drawing me to him. I let it happen, pressing my tear-stained cheek against his shoulder.