Scar Island(58)

“We’ve gotta hurry,” he said to Sebastian. “This whole place is gonna fill up and fall down.”

They bolted down the hall, their feet splashing through the rushing water. At the door to the Admiral’s office, Jonathan held the lantern up and stabbed the key into the lock. It clicked into place. Then turned. He shouldered the door open and they ran inside. The water rushed in with them.

The office was lost in shadows, but Jonathan remembered it vividly from that first, awful night. The Admiral’s sneering voice, his demonic eyebrows. The pain of the Sinner’s Sorrow. The letter home, full of lies. The Admiral’s acidic words as he’d read Jonathan’s paperwork: You have done terrible things, haven’t you, Jonathan Grisby?

Jonathan walked straight over to the standing file behind the desk where he’d seen the Admiral tuck his folder. He pulled it open. Inside were neatly ordered, identical manila folders, each stuffed with papers. He didn’t have to count to know there were sixteen files. On the tab of the first folder was scrawled his own name. His eyes scanned the rest. Colin Kerrigan. Sebastian Mortimer. And thirteen more.

He set the lantern down and grabbed half of the folders, then handed them to Sebastian. He tucked the other half under his arm and picked up the lantern.

“This should be enough,” he said, and they darted back out into the hallway. The water was even higher now. Jonathan winced and dodged a dead rat being washed down the hallway. Another one bobbed by, paws stuck out stiff into the air.

At the top of the lighthouse, the other boys and Patrick had half the wood piled in the big metal bowl with the ravaged remains of the Sinner’s Sorrow. They stood waiting on the raised platform around it, looking out at the world gone mad. Jonathan glanced quickly and counted the towers. Another had fallen. Only two were still standing. And the lighthouse. Another of the courtyard’s walls was mostly gone.

Jonathan looked at the name on the top file in his hands. Walter Holcomb. He handed the folder to Walter. Reginald Miller the next one said, and he gave it to Reggie. Sebastian started to do the same.

Eventually, Jonathan was left with one folder in his hands. Jonathan Grisby, it said. He opened it and words from the top page jumped out at him. Guilty. Criminal. Arson. He ground his teeth together and crumpled the paper into a ball. He stepped forward and shoved it under the waiting pile of wood.

He looked at the second sheet. More words swam up through the darkness and lightning. Death. Sophia. Injuries. Grief. Guilt. Tears scalded his eyes. His lungs shivered as they breathed.

He wadded the paper up into a tight ball. As tight as his fists could manage. And he added it to the unlit fire.

Around him, other boys started to do the same. Amidst the roar of wind and storm came the sound of ripping paper, of crumpling files. And all around the circle, fuel was added to the lighthouse fire.

Eventually, they all stood, hands clean and empty. Beneath the ready logs was tucked a white mound of twisted paper. A crumpled pile of crimes. A bonfire’s worth of guilt and punishment and dark history.

Sebastian took a candle from another boy’s hand. He leaned forward. But he stopped, the candle’s flame inches from the paper.

He frowned. He leaned back. He looked at Jonathan. Lightning flickered, showing his flooded eyes.

“I don’t want to go,” he said.

Jonathan blinked and didn’t answer.

“You wanna know why I never wrote letters?” Sebastian asked. “Because there was no one to send them to. I got no parents. I got no family. I’ve spent my whole life in places like this. Or orphanages. Group homes. Foster homes.” He looked out at the storm that was pressed in all around them, screaming and pounding the windows. “I don’t have anyone to read my letters. No one cares. I got no one to write to.”

Jonathan swallowed and took a step closer to Sebastian.

“You can write to me,” he said.

Sebastian’s eyebrows furrowed. His mouth opened, but he didn’t say anything.

“You can write to me,” Gerald said.

“You can write to me, man,” Walter called out.

“You can write to me, Thebathtian,” Colin said, just loud enough to be heard.

Sebastian sniffed. He nodded, looking around, then rubbed his eyes with his sleeve.

“Light the fire,” Jonathan said. Sebastian nodded again, one more small nod, then stretched the candle out and touched it to the nearest paper. Other boys stepped forward then with their own candles, holding the flames to the papers closest to themselves.

Climbing fingers of flames crept up through the crisscrossed wood. The papers flared and burned into bright flashes of yellow. The boys stepped back and covered their eyes.

There was a crackle and a snap as a piece of wood caught fire. A couple of wisping sparks rose up and flickered out.

The sound of the fire grew louder, the light brighter, the flames higher, the heat hotter. The boys stepped down from the platform and back to the lower floor. The room grew warm. Their soaking clothes steamed in the heat.

With a final flurry of crackling, the whole pile caught fire. Flames arced and danced six feet high. The round room, hemmed in on all sides by the stormy world’s fury, grew brighter than daylight. Jonathan stepped to the metal hand crank and muscled it into motion. With a shuddering, squeaking creak the gears and wheels attached to the mirror sprang to reluctant life. The mirror began to slowly rotate around the towering flames of their signal fire, magnifying and reflecting the light out into the clouds, the storm, the world.