Scar Island(51)

Sebastian blinked and breathed hard through his nose. His jaw muscles rippled.

“Fine. But you’re going alone. And you can’t save him.”

“Yes, I can.”

“Don’t go!” Tony said.

“Don’t do it, man,” Walter pleaded.

“It’s crazy!” Gerald yelled. The water was halfway up their calves now.

“Let me have a lantern,” Jonathan said into Sebastian’s eyes. Sebastian glanced quickly around.

“We only have three left.” Sebastian said. Jonathan kept his eyes locked on Sebastian’s, unblinking. After a moment, Sebastian blinked. “Fine. Take one. Better bring a candle, too.”

Without another word, Jonathan jerked a lantern out of the nearest kid’s hand. He yanked a candle out of the holder by the doorway. He was two steps into the corridor when a sudden thought stopped him.

“Patrick!” he exclaimed. “The coal room is flooding.” He looked to Roger and Gregory. They didn’t look tough at all. They looked soaking wet and scared. “Go get him and bring him up.”

The two boys didn’t move, except to look at Sebastian. After a moment, he nodded. They turned and jogged toward the coal room.

Jonathan adjusted his grip on the lantern’s slippery handle and took off into the darkness as fast as he could through the rising water.

“Good luck!” Walter shouted after him. Then another kid shouted the same thing. As he sprinted around the first corner and out of earshot, Jonathan heard a chorus of scared voices shouting the same thing. Their voices echoed behind him, following him into the black, flooded maze of Slabhenge.

“Good luck!”





As he ran, Jonathan tried to retrace in his mind the path they’d taken when they’d returned from leaving Colin to the rats and shadows. Rising up was all he remembered clearly. And passing the Hatch. He made his way there, holding the lantern out in front of him.

He ducked under the rope and started down the stairs, then cried out and slid to a stop.

Three steps down, the stairs disappeared into black, bubbling water.

The lantern nearly slipped from his fingers. He caught it and fell against the stone wall, panting.

The Hatch had cracked open. And the ocean it had been holding back had broken out of the dungeon.

He held the lantern out. He could just see, through the water, where the ceiling flattened out above the landing, now lost under murky seawater.

“I can make it,” he told himself. His voice sounded tiny and hollow in the echoing gurgles of the flooded stairwell. “Just a quick swim down, then up.” There was an iron hook on the wall by his hand and he hung the lantern on it. He felt in his pockets and pulled out the book of matches that Sebastian had given him earlier, when he’d first sent him out to join Colin. It had been only a few hours before. It felt like forever.

He spit and blew, drying out his mouth. Then he tucked the book of matches into his mouth and closed his lips tight, holding the matches on his tongue. Clutching the candle in his hand, he dove into the dark water before his fear could get strong enough to stop him.

The water was freezing. His muscles tightened and shook and he almost turned around, but he shook his head and kept going. He kept his eyes open and the chilled, salty water burned. He swam with his arms and kicked with his legs and the light from his hanging lantern got dimmer and darker and more distant and then it was all the way gone. Jonathan swam through freezing blackness. He tried not to think of the skull that rolled and knocked somewhere in the dark water there with him.

Down he swam, under the ceiling ledge. He stayed near the top, bumping and scraping on the rough ceiling stones. The water wasn’t still; it swelled and moved with currents and surges, no doubt coursing in and out through the Hatch with the rise and fall of the waves in the storm outside.

He swam along the level landing ceiling, his lungs beginning to burn. His lips were pressed together as hard as he could to keep the matches dry. A strong surge of water from below crushed him against the ceiling and pushed him back. He fought against it, digging his elbow into the corner where the wall and ceiling met, then kicked on desperately.

Finally, he felt the ceiling begin to slope upward. He was swimming up the far staircase. It suddenly occurred to him that he had no guarantee that the far side was above water. Maybe the other side of Slabhenge was all already underwater. Maybe he would swim up and up without ever finding air and then drown in some dark and flooded corridor, a book of matches in his mouth.

But at last his head broke the surface and he gave a final kick and gasped a mouthful of cold, delicious air. His feet found the stairs beneath him and he stumbled up, out of the water. He staggered, dripping and shaking out of the stairwell and into the hallway.

He was in utter blackness. Just like the first time he’d come here, when he’d dropped his lantern by the Hatch. He shook the water off his hand and pulled the matches out of his mouth.

The hallway was filled with the wet sounds of storm and flood. His gasping lungs added their own noise. His hands shook as he struck the first match.

It lit, a beautiful yellow flame in all that looming darkness. He smiled and held it to the candle’s wick.

Nothing happened. He kept holding it, waiting for the flame to grow and the wick to take light. But the match burned down to his fingers and then out.

“Damn it,” he cursed, his voice tight with shivering. “Of course, idiot. The wick’s wet.”