Sorrow didn’t wait for his response; she fled the house, her heels thumping on the wooden floor of the Oliver home. A cold rain began to fall as she burst out of the house and ran in the direction of the stables. If they wouldn’t give her the buggy back, she’d just keep running. She no longer cared about what she might face on the stretch to Ocean City. She cared only about putting Tidepool behind her.
“Sorrow! Stop!” Charlie’s running feet sounded behind her, and he grabbed her arm and spun her around.
“Charlie, I’m leaving. Right now.”
“Look. Let’s go get Detective Burnett and—”
“No!” She screamed the word at him. “I won’t stay here another minute. I won’t, Charlie.”
“But it was all a—”
“It isn’t a hoax!” She was still shouting. She thought she might never stop. “Every time I try to leave, someone detains me and then some other horrible thing happens here. I won’t be kept here any longer!”
Charlie’s fingers tightened on her arm. “Sorrow, I insist. Come with me to the inn. We wait for Detective Burnett.”
“And tell him what? That this ‘hoax’ got his partner gutted like an animal?”
Charlie took a deep breath and began looking around the area outside the Oliver house rather wildly. Sorrow thought she could actually see his mind working, trying to reconcile what he needed to be true with what he could see happening all around him.
She tried to pull her arm loose. He kept a tight grip.
Sorrow struggled to hold on to whatever small bit of calm might still have been lingering inside her. “Charlie. Please. I can’t force you to see the truth. But by that same token, you cannot force me to stay here. And I can’t help but feel that Detective Warner’s life might have been saved if I had been allowed to leave when I originally wished.”
“But Sorrow,” Charlie said finally, his eyes pleading. “The letter…”
“The letter is the hoax, Charlie.” The words made Sorrow’s throat ache as she forced them out. “I don’t know who wrote it or how, but Hal is dead. He died here. I’m so sorry. But if we don’t leave now, we will join him.”
As she spoke, she spotted a woman in black over Charlie’s left shoulder, walking towards them from the direction of Mrs. Oliver’s house. The woman looked too tall and thin to be Mrs. Oliver and she shambled oddly, as though she had sore feet. The veiled black hat she wore made it impossible for Sorrow to guess at her identity.
“Oh, Sorrow.” Charlie’s face fell, and Sorrow thought for a second that Charlie might faint into her arms. “What do we do?”
“We leave! As I’ve been saying.”
“But Detective Burnett could protect us if we go and find him.”
“Protect us?” She barked out a humorless laugh. “Did you not just see his partner in Mrs. Oliver’s house? They can’t even protect themselves!”
“We shouldn’t just leave him here,” Charlie said, stubbornness and determination filling his voice again. “He’s in danger too.”
Sorrow closed her eyes and shook her head. “If you wish to go back and get him, then godspeed. But I shall not remain in this town.”
“But I won’t leave you alone,” he said. And he stepped forward and pressed a lingering kiss against Sorrow’s lips. His own lips were rough and damp from the rain, and they tasted faintly of salt. Her pulse quickened as she kissed him back. For a fleeting second or two, warmth spread through her body.
“I’m sorry,” he said when he backed away. “I wanted you to understand why I cannot leave you behind.”
“It’s all right.” She wondered if he could see her blushing. “But this isn’t the time. When we get back to Baltimore and all this is behind us…”
Shish-shish. Shish-shish.
That noise. Sorrow would never, could never forget it.
“Sorrow? What is it?” Charlie’s eyes widened as he studied her face.
The black-clad woman drew closer behind them, and now Sorrow realized that under the long black gown, the woman’s feet were making that horrific moist slapping sound against the ground. The woman’s face was almost completely veiled, but the skin that Sorrow could see looked scaly and … green.
And then it hissed at them.
Lucy.
She’d been trapped in Mrs. Oliver’s basement with this thing and now it was out and it was about to chase down—
“Charlie!” she screamed.
“What is it?” He spun around and saw the creature closing the distance between them.
And he let out a disbelieving hoot of laughter.
“What the hell is this supposed to be now?” he said, and in that instant, the thing in the black dress hissed again and whipped razor-sharp claws across Charlie’s throat.
Charlie screamed and released Sorrow’s arm as he staggered backwards, clutching the wound.
“Sally…run…” That was all he could get out before he began choking on his own blood.
The creature lunged forward and slashed at him again and Charlie’s blood spurted forth from his torn throat and splattered across the creature’s veil. Sorrow screamed and tried to pull Charlie back as Charlie ripped the fiend’s veil off its inhuman face and its hat tumbled to the ground. Bulbous black eyes sat on either side of its scaly, green head.
The creature yanked Charlie away from Sorrow and sank what looked like hundreds of sharp yellow teeth into his neck. It tore a large chunk of flesh away and began to chew.
She had to escape.
I can’t. Can’t leave Charlie.
The creature ripped more bites of Charlie’s flesh out of his shoulder, and blood spurted from the new wound, spattering the thing’s green face.
“Get away from him!” Sorrow screamed, knowing it was useless.
The creature stopped tearing at Charlie, who sagged in its arms, and stared at Sorrow. It bared its bloodstained teeth at her and hissed again. The stench of decayed fish was now mixed with a strong metallic odor.
Sorrow felt as if she were observing the horrific scene outside of her own body. Her legs simply would not move no matter how much she urged them to start running, and her head felt as if it were full of helium, floating somewhere above this unspeakable sight.
The creature released poor Charlie at last. Charlie’s body dropped to the muddying ground with an awful, final thud, and Sorrow needed only one brief glance at the rain falling on his fixed hazel eyes to know he was gone.
Lucy bared her numerous teeth and began advancing on Sorrow, making that horrible shish-shish sound of wet footsteps once more. And something in that sound snapped her back to herself.
As Lucy lunged for her, Sorrow reached into her dress pocket, seized the knife she had stolen from the tavern kitchen, and buried it in Lucy’s chest.
Lucy screeched as Sorrow pushed the knife downwards. Fabric tore and fine bones snapped under the knife blade as she carved through Lucy’s chest and belly.
“Like gutting a fish,” she said to Lucy. “Just like gutting a fish.” And she laughed, a high-pitched mad cackle entirely unlike her normal laugh.
Lucy flailed a clawed hand around and slashed across Sorrow’s face. Intense pain seared through the wound, and her right eye throbbed so that she nearly dropped the knife. But she did not dare let go.
Sorrow pulled the knife out of Lucy’s gut and then stabbed into Lucy’s neck again as the fiend’s blood and viscera poured out onto the ground. Lucy let out a shriek like no sound Sorrow had ever heard from any creature, human or marine.
Sorrow had never quite understood the phrase “screaming bloody murder.” She did now, for she screamed until she thought her throat would bleed as she stabbed at Lucy again and again. The foul creature collapsed on the wet ground, only a few paces from Charlie’s body. Sorrow tumbled over on top of the thing, plunging the knife into its body until its black eyes filmed over and it went completely still and silent.
Sorrow’s breath came in rapid, shallow gulps, as if she had run a great distance. H
er arm throbbed. She attempted to calm herself and choked out a sob instead. Her vision grew dark and blurry at its edges as she scrambled backwards on her hands and knees from the carnage that now covered the street. Mud, blood, and the viscera that had spilled from Lucy’s chest slimed Sorrow’s hands.
She caught a glimpse of Charlie’s blond hair matted with blood, and she couldn’t look at him again. She struggled to her feet. The wound on her face burned as the cold rain struck it, and blood and mud stained the front of her blue dress.
“It was coming from up here!” Shouts sounded in the distance, and footsteps pounded up the hill. Sorrow seized the knife from Lucy’s chest, not wishing to face any further threats unarmed.
“Good lord in heaven!” Marshal Lewis, pink-faced and panting from the run, came into view on the sidewalk. His eyes bulged out as he saw the mutilated corpses on the ground. Another man Sorrow didn’t know hurried up behind him.
Marshal Lewis stared around madly as he took in the bloody scene. And then his gaze rested on Sorrow. His mouth dropped open as he spotted the knife she held.
“Miss Hamilton!” he said. “Dear God. Whatever have you done?”
“It killed Charlie!” she sobbed. “That thing killed Charlie!”
The two men looked at the bodies sprawled on the ground in rivers of blood. And then they looked at Sorrow again.
And Marshal Lewis pulled a gun from his coat and trained it on Sorrow.
“Marshal? What are you doing?” she said in a breaking voice.
“Drop that knife, Miss Hamilton,” he said.
“I had to do it!” she said. “It was coming after me. It got one of the detectives. He’s in there.” She couldn’t stop talking even as tears poured down her face, burning the slash across her right eye and cheek.
“A detective? You mean you’ve killed others?”
“But I didn’t!” She knew how this had to look, but surely he’d see the truth.
“I will not ask you again, Miss Hamilton. Drop the knife,” Marshal Lewis said.
Perhaps I should just let him shoot me, Sorrow thought. It might be more merciful than whatever else this hellhole has in store for me.
But that would kill Father, who has already lost one child now.
Sorrow let the knife fall.
“Good girl,” Lewis said, speaking slowly and carefully as though he were addressing a madwoman. He strode over to Sorrow, ducking around the two bodies on the ground.
“And now I will need you to come with me.”
“No! I’m not going back there. We’re in danger. All of us!”
“Miss Hamilton, the only danger I see is from you,” Lewis said, sounding colder now. He grabbed one of her arms, keeping his gun trained on her.
“The thing killed Charlie,” she said again. “I had to defend myself.”
“But I came up here and found you standing over two bloody bodies with a knife,” Marshal Lewis said.
“What should we do about this?” the other man asked, his eyes still wide.
“I’ll call on Conlan as soon as I get her stowed away.” Lewis began marching Sorrow down the wet street. “Go check in there and be sure Mrs. Oliver is all right, and keep watch on the scene here, Harris. Don’t want anyone happening on this site by accident. They’ll never sleep again.”
Harris shook his head and murmured something Sorrow didn’t hear as Lewis marched her implacably back into Tidepool.
“Damn you,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you just let us leave?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE CELL
The marshal turned to look at Sorrow.
“Why, Miss Hamilton, isn’t it obvious? You showed up in town and then a man washed up dead on the beach. I couldn’t just let you flee. And clearly, I was right to be suspicious. I only wish I had intervened earlier.”
He kept his gun trained on her as they walked. Sorrow wondered if she could knock it away from him and get a running head start before he recovered it and shot at her. Townspeople were peering out from shop windows as he marched her down Water Street, and they gasped as they took in Sorrow’s bloodstained, muddied clothes and bleeding face, and the gun the marshal held on her.
“Stop lying, Marshal. I know what’s really happening in this town. You know damn well I had nothing to do with that man on the beach.”
“Miss Hamilton, I do not appreciate the language,” he said stiffly.
“Then let me leave Tidepool and you’ll never have to hear it again.”
Lewis snorted.
“I’m afraid we can’t do that.”
“We who?”
“This town.”
The cold rain fell harder now, lashing at her wounded face. The marshal’s office came into view as they headed up Gull Street, and Lewis led her into the tiny cell in the back of the office. He released her arm but kept the gun trained on her until he’d backed out of the cell. He locked the metal door.
“Don’t you idiots understand?” She ran forward and grabbed the rusty bars.
“Miss Hamilton, what you don’t understand is that Mrs. Oliver is going to be terribly upset when she learns what you did to her daughter. You should be grateful I’m putting you in a place where she will be unable to get to you.”
“Is that so?” Sorrow snapped. “What do you think the authorities in Baltimore are going to do when they learn one of their own was slaughtered here? You’re letting that murderous woman doom all of you.”
Lewis regarded her. Something, perhaps a spark of fear, flickered behind his eyes for a second.
“If you truly understand what is going on here, you know that the ‘murderous woman’ is the only thing keeping this town from doom.”
“And I also know that your damnable secret is going to get more people killed, Marshal. Do you think Charlie Sherman’s parents are going to sit by idly and accept that their son was slaughtered here, without investigation or retribution? Or the detectives? If you had let us go when we asked…”
And then Sorrow had to break off, because Charlie hurt too much to think about, and her salty tears stung the slashing wound Lucy had left across her face. If only they’d been allowed to go, Charlie would still be alive. And she might still have hope that her brother was somewhere out there, false though that hope would be.
And if she had never come here, Charlie wouldn’t have come to Tidepool looking for her.
You were right, Father. I should never have come here. I’m so, so sorry.
Lewis avoided her eyes; he looked down and shuffled things in his desk drawer for a moment before producing a handkerchief, which he passed through the bars of the cell to Sorrow.
“You want to hold that to your face,” he said. He stared for another moment. “Be a shame if it leaves a scar. Pretty girl like you.”
Sorrow turned away from him and pressed the cloth to her cheek. The wound throbbed and the handkerchief came away red.
From behind her, Lewis spoke again.
“I’m going out to find the mayor and the deputy mayor and get all this squared away. Don’t try anything. You will regret it if you do.”
As if she could ever regret anything more than coming to Tidepool in the first place.
He left and slammed the office door behind him, and she felt helpless. She wanted to scream. She grabbed the bars and shook them, wondering how strong they were. As rusted as they were, they were still more than sturdy enough to keep her inside the cell.
She accepted that she was going to die in Tidepool, and feelings of grief and guilt spread through her as she thought of her father and the Shermans back in Baltimore, never knowing what had become of their children. Mrs. Oliver would keep killing any unexpected people who appeared in her town even if she no longer had Lucy to do it for her, and the townspeople would aid her by stalling any outside attempts to investigate the things that happened here. It was all part of the sick bargain they’d struck with that woman.
If only Sorrow had kept the knife. She could have tried to use
it to work the lock on the cell door loose.
Mother’s hatpin. What if that might work? She pulled her mother’s opal hatpin free from her hat and attempted to reach through the bars. But the padlock was at an awkward angle and she couldn’t manage to get the pin into the lock—and she had to admit that she wouldn’t know how to open the lock anyhow, even if she could get her hands in the proper position. It wasn’t as if lock-picking was a skill she’d ever been taught back in her school days.
She replaced the hatpin and then sat on the hard floor of the cell. Fatigue overtook her, but visions of Charlie’s slaughtered body filled her head every time she closed her eyes. The chill from her rain-damp clothing settled into her bones. She had no idea how much time had passed when Lewis returned.
“I don’t believe Mrs. Oliver knows what you did to her daughter yet,” the marshal told her. “Nobody has seen her since this morning. You should consider yourself lucky.”
She glared at him.
“When my father and Charlie Sherman’s parents find out what happened to their children here, your luck will run out, sir.”
“They’ll stay away if they know what’s best for them,” Lewis said coldly, sitting down behind the desk. “People who come here thinking they’re going to teach us a better way to live often learn that we’re quite happy the way we are.”
“Oh yes. Such a happy place this is! Just an occasional murder here and there,” Sorrow shot back. “Nothing that would hurt the conscience overmuch, right?”
“If that’s what you wish to believe, I do not care,” Lewis said, and then he turned back to the papers on his desk and ignored her.
The front door banged open and Detective Burnett stormed into the office. His dark brows were knotted over his prominent nose and his cheeks were flushed red. She scrambled to her feet and grasped the bars.
“What in the hell happened to my partner and the Sherman fellow?” he said to Lewis. All his jocularity from the morning was gone. “I see them at breakfast and two hours later, they’re mangled corpses. What is this place?”
Tidepool Page 19
