Scar Island(57)

The top of the tower was a round room. On all sides were windows, sturdy double-paned glass crisscrossed by metal bars. The lightning filled the sky all around them. They were surrounded by the storm, teetering in the angry heavens. On all sides were windows to the black clouds and whipping wind and sideways rain.

In the middle of the room, on a raised stone landing, was a great black iron bowl, big enough for Jonathan to have stretched out and lain down in. A massive curved mirror stood on the far side of the bowl, mounted on a mechanism of gears and bars and wheels that circled the bowl. To Jonathan’s right was a large metal handle.

“The lighthouse,” Jonathan whispered. “Just like he said.”

The boys stood in silence, looking out the windows at the hurricane that raged all around them, inches away. It was almost deafening.

They could see all of Slabhenge when the lightning flashed. The courtyard, flooded now halfway up the windows into the dining room. The boat still rocked between the walls.

They could see the roof that covered the rest of the school, rising and falling with the confusing ramblings of the mazelike building. They could see the other towers poking stubbornly up into the black skies.

“Look!” Miguel shouted over the storm. “Look at the towers!”

They all crowded to the windows.

“What?”

“What about them?”

“There’s only three! One’s missing!”

They all looked and saw it then. The far tower was gone. Simply gone. They could see where the stone walls led to the space that it should occupy, but the walls stopped in a jagged, sawtooth break. A loose pile of stones was all that remained of the tower, avalanching down into the white-capped sea.

Jonathan looked at Colin. Colin was staring at the pile of rubble with wide eyes. It was Colin’s tower. The tower with his mattress and his papers and his three lonely candlesticks. Somewhere among those waves bobbed dozens of white paper cranes. And a few shiny gold chocolate wrappers.

“There! Look at the gate!”

They all spun back to the courtyard with its ghostly boat. The far side, with the watery stairs and the gate through which they had all entered Slabhenge, was crumbling before their eyes. The arch above the gate crashed into the water with a massive splash. The gigantic waves poured relentlessly through the gap, pushing and pulling at the hundred-year-old walls. They fell apart, stone block by stone block, as the water coursed through. Soon the whole wall was gone, a heaped mound of stones just below the water’s surface. The courtyard was left with walls on only three sides.

With the one wall gone, the waves rushed unhindered into the courtyard, rising above the level of the dining room windows. It wouldn’t be long before the rest of the walls succumbed to the ravenous, storm-fueled waters of the sea.

“The whole dining room’s under now,” Walter said, his voice hollow with shock.

“The kitchen,” Tony said.

“The freezer,” David added. They all stood and stared.

“We should light the lighthouse,” Jonathan said, watching Slabhenge fall apart. No one heard him over the wind and the thunder and their own openmouthed amazement.

“We should light the lighthouse!” Jonathan shouted, and stricken faces turned toward him.

“Why?”

“So they know we’re here!” he answered. “So they send help!” He looked into Colin’s eyes, then Walter’s, then Patrick’s. “I want to go home.” His voice cracked at the end and got lost in the mad confusion of noise. He said it again, from the bottom of his lungs. “I want to go home!”

“If ye light it, they’ll know to come!” Patrick yelled from behind them. “When they can, anyway! This old thing ain’t been fired up since before I was born! They’ll notice it for sure, and they’ll know to come!”

Jonathan ran to a large wooden bin that lined one of the walls and threw open the lid with all his strength.

Inside, neatly stacked, were rows of split logs. Firewood. Stowed, dry and safe. By a man who began as a madhouse baby and ended as a forgotten librarian. In between, though, he was a lighthouse keeper.

“We need paper!” he shouted, turning to face the group.

“The school office is underwater by now!” Benny yelled back.

“What about the Admiral’s room?”

They all looked at Sebastian. He shook his head.

“None in there! He didn’t even have a book!”

Jonathan’s mind flashed. “The Admiral’s office!”

“It’s locked, remember?”

Jonathan smiled. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the rusty metal key that had fallen out of the dead Admiral’s jacket. Sebastian’s mouth dropped open.

“Come on,” Jonathan said to him, tossing his piece of the Sinner’s Sorrow into the great iron bowl. “The rest of you, get the wood in the fire pit!” He took the lantern from Colin, then pulled Ninety-Nine gently from his shoulder and handed him to Colin. Colin grimaced and held him with two hands, out away from his body.

Jonathan and Sebastian ran back down the lighthouse stairs. When they got to the old door, Jonathan swore.

There was an inch of water running like a river down the stairwell, pouring in from the hallway. The water was even higher than he’d imagined. It was already to the second story.