Scar Island(5)

“Yes, sir.”

“I will see you in the morning, Jonathan Grisby. Do try to get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a very hard day for you.”





“Got on the Admiral’s bad side, did ye? Ya idiot.” Mr. Warwick hawked up a mouthful of snot from his lungs and spit it onto the floor. He was guiding Jonathan through a twisting labyrinth of dark hallways and steep, shadowy stairwells. The whole place—floor, walls, stairs, and ceiling—was made of the same huge blocks of gray stone. Their way was lit only by a hissing lantern that swung from Mr. Warwick’s outstretched hand.

“Ye all do, nearly. Bunch of scum, ye are. The Admiral knows ye fer what ye are, aye.” Jonathan stumbled on a slippery step and Mr. Warwick jerked him roughly back up to his feet. “Still, ye got it better’n some. You get a blanket, at least. More than ye deserve, likely.”

“Lucky me,” Jonathan muttered.

Mr. Warwick spit again and flicked Jonathan in the ear hard enough to make his eyes burn.

“Don’t ye be gettin’ smart, now. Smart gets ye nowhere good ’round here.”

“Look, Mr…. Warwick, or whatever,” Jonathan started, rubbing his ear. “Could I get something to eat, something small, even? A biscuit or an apple or something? I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

Mr. Warwick scratched between his legs and snorted. “Ah, me heart’s just a-breakin’. Poor little criminal’s got ’im an achin’ tummy!” He coughed out a mean, small laugh.

Suddenly, he pulled to a stop and grabbed Jonathan’s arm. “Ah, now look here, boy.” His voice was tight and breathless. He held up the lantern to show a narrow stairway leading down from the corridor they were in. The stairs curved down and around a corner before they were lost in darkness. A low rumbling, gurgling sound and the salty, rotten smell of stale seawater wafted up to where Jonathan and his guard stood. A frayed rope stretched as a flimsy gate across the stairway opening.

“Don’t ye never stumble down this wretched staircase, boy,” Mr. Warwick whispered. He leaned close to Jonathan’s face in the yellow lantern light. For the first time, Jonathan saw his wrinkled face and his one puckered, empty eye socket. He shivered and pulled back.

“Why? What’s down there?”

Mr. Warwick’s lips pulled back to show a toothless smile. “Why, the Hatch, me boy! A door, of sorts. And beyond it: death and despair and darkness! It be a door that holds back a monster. Ancient she is, and dark, and hungry, and just barely held back. She’s there, though, knockin’ and waitin’ and bidin’ her time! Not locked in, boy, but locked out—and not for long, I’d wager!”

Mr. Warwick stared into Jonathan’s face with his one eye for a breathless moment before breaking into a wheezing cackle. “Aye,” he said, running his tongue over his toothless gums. “Death himself is yer downstairs neighbor. Yer room be straight up here, with the other no-goods.”

Mr. Warwick stumbled ahead with the swinging lantern. Jonathan stood for a second longer, his eyes peering past the rope and down the darkened stairs. He knew the morbid cyclops was just trying to scare him, the new kid, with his ghost stories. And Jonathan was past believing in most kinds of monsters. But up from the stairwell came a thump and a rattle, then a slurping growl. He shivered and hurried after the retreating yellow light.

They rounded a corner and then stopped before a large metal door. At eye level, just above Jonathan’s head, was a small rectangular opening crossed with metal bars. Mr. Warwick rapped on the door with his knuckles. The knocking echoed in the cold hallway. Water dripped all around them in the darkness, and there was occasional scurrying, off in the shadows.

Through the opening in the door came the sound of shuffling footsteps punctuated by the steady thwock of a cane hitting the stone floor. A bald forehead and a glaring pair of eyes appeared in the little barred window.

“It’s I, Mr. Mongley,” Mr. Warwick said to the eyes. “I’ve got me the new one here. No pillow for ’im, either, so you know.”

The half face disappeared and there was a jangling of keys and then the door swung open. Mr. Warwick pushed Jonathan through the doorway and stepped in behind him.

Beyond the door was nothing but darkness, but Jonathan could tell from the echoes and the movement of the air that the room was large, with a tall ceiling. Besides the smell of ocean and mold and wet stone, there was also here the smell of sweat and bodies and the unmistakable odor of an overused bathroom.

The man who must be Mr. Mongley stood glaring at him sideways, one shoulder hunched over. He shielded his eyes from the light of the lamp.

“It’s all-dark,” he rasped. His voice was a scratchy hiss, like his throat was stuffed with cotton. He was wearing the same blue uniform that Mr. Warwick and Mr. Vander had. Without another word he turned and limped off, thumping away into the darkness on a crooked black cane.

“Go on, go on,” Mr. Warwick grunted, poking Jonathan in the spine.

Jonathan’s eyes darted around the shifting shadows as he followed the hunched form of Mr. Mongley. There were puddles on the floor here, too, big and small. He could just make out, on both sides of him, openings in the walls. Large rectangular doorways, each with a lightless room behind it, each blocked with the sturdy metal gate of a jail cell. They were jail cells, he realized. Or, he reminded himself, madhouse cells. They were cells built to hold the criminally insane of the previous century.