The Wicked Deep

by Shea Ernshaw

  “So you believe in the sisters now?” I ask.

  “I haven’t decided.”

  The beam of light slides across his face, and I follow it out to sea, where it cuts through the storm and the impending rain, warning sailors and fishermen that an island lies in their path. “You shouldn’t go into town if you don’t have to from now on,” I tell him.

  Both his eyebrows lift. “Why not?”

  “It’s safer if you stay here on the island. You can’t trust anyone in town. . . . Any girl you meet could be one of them.”

  His eyelids lower, partly concealing the dark tint of his green eyes. Verdant and rueful. He is familiar in a way I can’t pin down. Like seeing someone you knew a long time ago, but they’ve changed in the passing years, become someone different and new. “Even you?” he asks, like I’m joking.

  “Even me.” I want him to understand how serious I am.

  “So no talking to girls?” he clarifies.

  “Precisely.”

  The right side of his mouth turns up into a grin, a fractional parting of lips, and he looks like he might laugh, but then he takes a sip from the bottle instead. I know it sounds absurd, maybe even a little irrational, to warn him against speaking to any girls. But I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. Most local boys—if they truly believe in the legend—will steer clear of all girls until the summer solstice. Better to minimize the risk. But Bo, like most outsiders, won’t take it seriously. He’s in danger just by being in this town.

  “That’s three!” Rose bellows from the window, and Heath shakes his head. Apparently, Rose is winning the ghost-hunting game. As usual.

  “Where are you from?” I ask Bo, after the beam of light passes around the lighthouse a full three times.

  “Washington.”

  I arch an eyebrow at him, expecting him to narrow it down to a city or county or nearest proximity to a Starbucks. But he doesn’t. “That’s extremely vague,” I say. “Can you be more specific?”

  His cheekbones tighten, a rivulet of tension. “Near the middle” is all he offers up.

  “I can see this won’t be easy.” I rub my tongue along the roof of my mouth.

  “What?”

  “Figuring out who you really are.”

  He taps his fingers against the side of the bottle, a rhythm to a song, I think. “What do you want to know?” he asks.

  “Did you go to high school in this fictional, near-the-middle town?”

  Again I think he’s going to smile, but he stifles it before it escapes his lips. “Yeah. I graduated this year.”

  “So you graduated then promptly escaped your make-believe town?”

  “Basically.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  He ceases the tapping against the bottle. “My brother died.”

  A blast of wind and sideways rain sprays the windows, and I flinch. “I’m . . . sorry.” Bo shakes his head and tips the bottle to his lips. The minutes pass, and the question resting inside my throat starts to feel strangled, cutting off the air to my lungs. “How did he die?”

  “It was an accident.” He swirls the bottle, and the carmine wine spins up the sides. A mini cyclone.

  He looks away from me, like he’s considering heading for the door and leaving. Saying good night and vanishing into the storm.

  And although I’m curious exactly what kind of accident, I don’t press it any further. I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about it. And I don’t want him to leave, even though our conversation feels tightened along the edges, tugged and constrained because he’s holding things in. I’m also not quite ready for this night to be over. There are things I like about him—no, that’s not right. It’s not him exactly. It’s me. I like how I feel standing beside him. Eased by his presence. The steady buzz along my thoughts, the ache in my chest tamped down. Softened.

  So I take the bottle from him and sit cross-legged on the cold floor, staring out at the storm. I know what it is to lose the people around you. And I take a long, slow drink of the wine, warming my stomach and making my head swim, wiping away the hangover. Bo sits beside me, forearms resting on his bent knees.

  “Have you been in a lot of fights before?” I ask after a stretch of silence.

  “What?”

  “On the beach last night, with Lon, you seemed like you weren’t afraid to fight him.”

  “I don’t like fighting, if that’s what you mean. But yeah, I’ve been in a few. Although not because I wanted to.” He exhales slowly, and I think he’s going to change the subject. His lips stall partway open. “My brother was always getting himself into trouble,” he continues. “He liked taking risks—jumping into rivers in the middle of winter, climbing bridges to watch the sunrise, driving his truck too fast down the centerline just for the rush. Things like that. And sometimes he’d say things he shouldn’t, or hit on girls he shouldn’t, and find himself in a fistfight.” Bo shakes his head. “He thought it was funny, but I was always the one who had to step in and save him, keep him from getting his ass kicked. He was my older brother, but my parents were always asking me to keep an eye on him. But since he died . . .” His gaze dips to the floor, voice trailing, memories sliding through him. “I haven’t had to defend him.” I hand him the bottle of wine, and he takes a long drink. Holding it between his knees with both hands, he asks, “Do you ever think about leaving this town?”

  I lift my chin. “Of course.”

  “But?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  His thumb taps the neck of the bottle. “Isn’t that what people say when they just don’t want to admit the truth?”

  “Probably . . . but the truth is complicated. My life is complicated.”

  “So after you graduate, you’re not going to leave Sparrow—you’re not going to college somewhere?”

  I shrug. “Maybe. It’s not something I think about.” I shift uneasily on the floor, wishing we could change the subject back to him.

  “What’s keeping you here?”

  I almost laugh but don’t, because the answer isn’t funny. Nothing about the reasons why I’m stuck here is funny. “My family,” I finally say, because I have to say something. “My mom.”

  “She doesn’t want you to leave?”

  “It’s not that. She’s just . . . she’s not well.” I look away from him, shaking my head. The truth slips between the edges of the lies.

  “You don’t want to talk about it?” he asks.

  “Just like you don’t want to talk about where you’re from,” I say softly. “Or what happened to . . .” I almost bring up his brother again but stop myself.

  He makes a low exhaling sound then hands the bottle back to me. We’re swapping sips of wine instead of sharing the truth. Like a drinking game we just invented: If you don’t want to talk about something, take a drink.

  “There’re always reasons to stay,” he says. “You just need to find one reason to leave.” His eyes hold mine, and something familiar stirs inside me—something I want to pretend isn’t there. A flicker that illuminates the darkest part of my insides. And I absorb it like sunlight.

  “I guess I haven’t found that reason yet,” I say. I know my cheeks are blazing pink, I can feel the heat against my skin, but I don’t look away from him.

  The storm blows against the windows, rattling the glass in the casings.

  Bo looks out at the rain, and I watch his gaze, wishing I could pluck more thoughts from his head. Pain rests behind his eyes, and I feel myself suddenly wanting to touch his face, his skin, his fingertips.

  Then, like a machine being switched off, the wind outside stops, the rain scatters and turns to mist, and the moody black clouds begin to push farther south, revealing a backdrop of black sky with pinhole pricks for stars.

  Rose hops up from the floor and twirls herself in a circle. “We need to go make wishes,” she announces. “Tonight.”

  “The shipwreck?” Heath asks from his place still sprawled out on the floor.

  �
�The shipwreck!” she repeats.

  “What’s the shipwreck?” Bo asks, flinching his gaze away from mine for the first time.

  “You’ll see,” Rose answers.

  * * *

  We tromp through the darkness and down the wood path to the dock. Heath insists we take his boat, and we pile into the small, narrow dinghy. Bo takes my hand, even though I don’t need it to keep my balance—I’m as steady on the water as I am on land—and he doesn’t let go until I’m seated beside him on one of the benches.

  The interior is sparse and tidy, a stack of orange life vests strapped to the gunwale. Heath pulls on the engine cord once, and the motor revs to life.

  Maybe I shouldn’t go with them. It’s late, and my head rocks gently with the sloppiness of wine purring through my bloodstream. But the looseness is also addictive; it rounds out the rough edges of my mind, the worry that is constant there, that lives beneath my fingernails and at the base of my neck.

  So I grip the edge of the bench seat, and slowly we chug across the eerily calm harbor. It’s as if the water has died, surrendered after the storm. The ruins of sunken ships are like tombstones jutting up from the water ahead of us, jagged spikes of metal, rusted, turning to sand from the relentless tide.

  “I wish we had more wine,” Rose murmurs, but her voice is soft and unconcerned, so no one responds.

  The green mast, covered in a layer of moss and algae, rises the tallest of all the wreckage in the harbor, the flag that once hung from its peak long ago disintegrated and blown away.

  Heath slows the boat as we approach then kills the engine entirely so that we drift within only a few feet of the mast. Dark, murky outlines of the rest of the ship sit beneath us, close enough to tear apart the propeller on Heath’s boat if he didn’t shut off the motor when he did. It’s dangerous to be this close to wreckage, but it’s also why kids come out here, to test their nerve. If it weren’t dangerous, it wouldn’t be fun.

  “Did anyone bring coins?” Rose asks.

  Bo looks from Rose to me. “For what?”

  “To make a wish,” I tell him.

  “This was a pirate ship,” Heath explains. “The legend says that if you drop a coin down to the dead pirates who still haunt the ship, they will grant you a wish.”

  “There’s probably hundreds—no, thousands of dollars in quarters down there,” Rose says, waving a hand in the air as if she were a magician.

  “Or just a pile of pennies,” I say.

  Heath checks his pockets and produces a dime and a quarter. Bo pulls out three quarters and several pennies. “The higher denomination the coin, the greater the chance that they’ll grant your wish. Pirates are greedy, obviously,” Rose says as she snatches the quarter from Heath’s palm.

  Bo and I each take a penny, and Heath holds the dime. Apparently, Bo and I aren’t very optimistic about our wishes actually coming true.

  But still, I know what my wish will be—the same wish I’ve always had.

  We each extend our arms over the side of the boat, fists clenched, and Rose counts us down from three. “Two . . . one,” she says, and we all open our palms and let our coins plop into the water. They flit down quickly, reflective at first as they sink among the serrated, cavernous angles of wreckage, and then they’re gone.

  We are still for a moment, holding our breath . . . waiting for something immediate to happen. But when nothing does, Bo lets out a breath of air, and I cross my arms, feeling chilled. Anxious even.

  We shouldn’t be here, I think suddenly. Out on the water so soon after the sisters have returned. It’s dangerous, risky for Heath and Bo. And something doesn’t feel right. “We should head back to the island,” I suggest, trying not to sound panicked, looking up at Heath, hoping he’ll start the engine.

  The ocean seems too calm. The singing now gone, the storm passed. Only a ripple laps up against the side of the boat.

  I sense it even before I see it: The temperature drops; the sky yawns open so huge that the stars could swallow us like a whale drinking down a school of fish. The sea vibrates.

  My eyes lock on something dark swaying with the current. A body is drifting faceup only a couple yards from the boat, eyes open but lost of all color. The first dead boy.

  * * *

  “Oh my God,” Rose screeches, eyes bursting to globes, finger pointing at the corpse.

  The arms are spread wide, the legs half-sunk beneath the water, and a navy-blue sweatshirt hangs from the torso like it’s two sizes too big.

  “Shit,” Heath mutters under his breath, like he’s afraid to speak too loudly or he might wake the dead.

  The moon breaks through the clouds, shining over the water. But it’s not a milky white, it’s a pale red. Blood on the moon—a bad omen. We shouldn’t have come out here.

  “Who is it?” Rose asks, her voice trembling, fingers reaching for something to grab on to. Like she’s reaching for the body.

  The face comes into view: ashen, hollow cheeks. Short blond hair swaying outward from a pale scalp. “Gregory Dunn,” Heath answers, wiping a palm over his face. “He graduated this year. Was going to college out east in the fall. Boston, I think.”

  Bo and I are completely silent. He touches the side of the boat, blinks, but doesn’t speak.

  “We have to do something!” Rose says, standing up suddenly. “We can’t leave him in the water.” She takes a step forward, toward the starboard side of the dinghy, which has now drifted closer to the body. But her movements shift the boat off center, and it rocks toward the water.

  “Rose,” I bark, reaching out for her. Heath makes an attempt to grab for her too, but the momentum has tipped the boat too far and she stumbles, her legs unbalanced, hands scrambling to brace herself on something. She pitches headfirst into the icy water.

  Bo, for the first time, reacts. He’s at the side of the boat before I’ve even had time to process what’s happened. Ripples cascade outward toward the corpse of Gregory Dunn. Thankfully, Rose didn’t land on him when she went over.

  Bo leans over the starboard side of the boat, plunges his arms down into the frigid water, wrapping his hands beneath Rose’s arms, and hoists her in one swift motion back into the boat. She collapses instantly, knees pulled up, shaking and convulsing uncontrollably. Health grabs a blanket from under one of the seats and wraps it around her. “We need to get her to shore,” Bo says in a rush, and Heath starts the motor again. I crouch down next to Rose, an arm wrapped around her, and we race toward the marina, leaving the body of Gregory Dunn behind.

  When we reach the shore, I walk quickly up the docks to the metal bell that hangs from a wood archway facing the harbor. The Death Bell, everyone calls it. Whenever a body is discovered, someone will ring the bell to alert the town that a body has been found. It was installed twenty years ago. And during the month of June, up until the summer solstice, the bell becomes the tolling sound of death.

  Each time it rings, locals wince and the tourists grab their cameras.

  I reach for the rough fiber of the rope and clank it twice against the inside of the bell. A hollow tolling sound echoes up through town, bouncing among the damp walls of shops and homes, waking everyone from sleep.

  * * *

  It takes an hour for the police and local fisherman to finally head back into port, having retrieved the body of Gregory Dunn from the water. They took their time collecting any evidence, of which there will be none. No blood, no marks, no sign of a struggle. There never is.

  Rose is shivering beside me, sipping numbly on a cup of hot chocolate that Heath retrieved from the Chowder, which opened early—three a.m.—to serve the townspeople who awoke to come see the first body pulled from the sea.

  We all wait on the docks, watching the parade of boats slice through the water. People stand in their pajamas and wool caps and rain boots. Even children have been pulled from bed, stumbling down with blankets slung over their shoulders to see this annual, gruesome event.

  But the local police have learned
to minimize the spectacle. And when they move the body onto a stretcher on the dock, they make sure it’s completely covered. But people still snap photos, kids still begin to cry, and people gasp then cover their mouths with gloved hands.

  “You were right,” Bo whispers against my ear when the ambulance whirls away with Gregory Dunn’s body strapped onto a cold metal stretcher in the back. “You said it would happen tonight, and it did.”

  I shake my head. It’s not a contest I wanted to win.

  The crowd around us slowly dissolves, and people begin tromping back to their beds or to the Chowder to discuss this first drowning. Heath approaches, eyebrows cut sharply into a grave frown. “I’m going to take Rose home,” he says. “She’s pretty shook up.”

  “Okay.” I glance to Rose, who has already slipped away from my side and is walking up the dock, the striped red-and-gray blanket from Heath’s boat falling from her shoulders. She looks stunned, and I know I should probably go with her, but she seems to only want Heath right now, so I let him take her.

  “I’ll come back to take you guys over to the island,” Heath says before walking after Rose.

  I nod. Then Bo and I follow the drowsy stream of people to Shipley Pier, where a waitress at the Chowder is wearing blue polka-dot pajamas and fuzzy Ugg boots. “Coffee?” she asks us. I scan her face, settling on her eyes, but she looks normal. Human.

  “Sure,” Bo answers.

  “Black tea, please,” I tell her.

  She frowns briefly and makes a snort sound, like my request for tea will require more effort than she’s willing to give at this hour, but she shuffles away in her boots, and Bo and I stand at the end of the pier, leaning against the railing and facing out to sea, waiting for the sunrise.

  Voices murmur all around us, and speculation begins to circulate almost immediately. Over the next couple weeks, we will be in the middle of an all-out witch hunt.