The Storm King(106)

They circled the basement in opposite directions. Far from the mirrored alcove and overhead lights, some nooks were almost entirely hidden by shadow. Under his palms, the soundproofing material fixed to the walls and most of the ceiling felt almost organic. He groped and probed and hoped, but didn’t find anything useful.

“I’m sorry about the other night, you know?” Pete said when they both returned to the center of the room. “We were going to tag your grandma’s house. I mean, nothing really bad, I guess, but we shouldn’t have. So…” Pete trailed off and stared at his feet.

Nate waved away Pete’s apology. It was hard to imagine he’d spent a moment worrying about graffiti or broken windows.

“There’s nothing good down here,” Pete said. “Nothing to even fight him with. I mean, there are a couple forks and things in the kitchen. But—”



“There’re a lot of unhealthy-looking foods in the cabinets, and probably more in the fridge. See if you can skim off some fat and spread it on the drop cloth at the base of the stairs. Cream from those snack cakes could work, too,” Nate said. “Maybe he’ll lose his footing when he comes down and we can jump him from the sides.”

Pete appeared to like this idea and hopped into action. At least it gave the kid something to do. Nate supposed that Owen might indeed slip on something greasy, but this wasn’t the clumsy oaf Nate recalled from high school. Perhaps Owen had never really been like that in the first place. Nate remembered him only through the eyes of a raging, narcissistic teenager, and that boy had already been proved wrong about so much. He’d thought he could do as he pleased and not reap the slightest consequence.

While Pete tore through the kitchen, Nate returned to the mirrored alcove and kicked at the gleaming walls. He earned decades of bad luck before he knocked loose a long, glittering shard that he liked the look of. It might not do much to slow someone the size of Owen, but if Nate aimed for an artery or key tendon…It wasn’t ideal, but it was something.

Nate took off his suit coat, bundled it around the base of the makeshift weapon, and rolled up his left sleeve. He traced the letters from the crook of his elbow to halfway up his forearm. Then he dug in with the tip of the shard. It was a clumsy blade for such work and Nate sliced as shallowly as he could, just into the dermis so that the lines and curves of the letters slowly filled with blood. The pain was noticeable but only a ghost of the torture reverberant from his torqued thumb.

When he was finished, he watched his final words weep crimson across the newborn skin on the underside of his forearm.

O’S BSMNT

A message written in flesh was one that could not be ignored. Owen might kill him and all the others, but he wouldn’t get away with it. The lake returns what it takes, and if it drowned Nate, it would also deliver this last message for him.



Nate considered leaving more notes across the canvas of his body. He could tell Tom and the chief that Owen had killed Lucy, and Mr. Liffey and Mr. Vanhouten, too. He could apologize to Tom and Johnny for every way in which he’d poisoned their lives. He could pare missives of love to Meg and Livvy and Grams onto skin that might not have the time to scab, much less heal.

The burn of the cuts caught up to Nate, and he rolled his head upward with a grimace. When he did, he noticed that an edge of foam soundproofing material had come loose from where it met the ceiling. One corner of it dangled like an earmarked page. He walked to it and ripped it aside. He tore loose a panel six feet long and three feet high. When the last foot of the section fell away it revealed part of a window. A curtain of rain rippled down its glass.

The window was small: not more than a foot high. Nate’s rib cage wouldn’t fit through, but Pete was all height and no width. They’d break the window, clear aside all the glass, Nate would boost Pete up and through, then Pete would get help.

He should have been happy, but instead Nate cursed himself. He’d never in his life been in a basement without any windows. Even Just June’s shack had them. Looking for them should have been the first thing he’d done. People depended on him, and he couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes.

Nate set aside the shard, and wrapped his hand in his coat. He hammered his fist into the glass. If the children at the Night Ship were still alive, they had little time left.





Twenty-three

Night had taken the town along the shore.

The only light was the electricity that flickered among the ranges of Medea’s clouds and a few generator-powered homes that struck out from the black like ships at sea. The storm’s percussions of thunder and rain were so loud that Nate couldn’t hear his own steps as he waded through the flooded streets running for Tom’s house. They had to go to the Night Ship. They had to finally face the debts of their youth.

After clearing the narrow basement window of glass and lifting Pete through it and into the muck of a brimming flower bed, Nate had spent long minutes waiting for the boy to reenter the house and unlock the basement door. He and Pete hadn’t known each other long, and their history before the basement was not encouraging. The teen might decide to leave Nate to Owen, and maybe Nate would deserve it.

“He’ll come back,” Nate told Mrs. Liffey as much as he told himself. “Then we’ll all get out of here.” Whatever future waited for Mrs. Liffey beyond this stinking basement would be an improvement, though how much of one, Nate didn’t know.