The Wicked Deep

by Shea Ernshaw

  Several girls from school have gathered on the outdoor deck, sipping coffee and popping bits of blueberry muffin and biscotti into their mouths, chatting loudly even though it’s the middle of the night and they can’t possibly be fully awake. I examine their features, the hue of their eyes, the chalky porcelain of their skin. I am looking for something unnatural, a gossamer creature suspended behind human flesh. But I don’t see it.

  The waitress brings us our drinks without even a smile. “How could Gregory Dunn have been led into the harbor without anyone seeing?” Bo asks, keeping his voice low, holding his coffee between his hands but not yet taking a drink.

  I lift my shoulders, biting my lower lip. “The Swan sisters don’t want to be seen,” I say. “They’ve been doing this for two hundred years; they’re good at it. They’re good at not getting caught.” I circle a finger around the rim of my white cup.

  “You say it like you don’t want them to get caught, like the town deserves it.”

  “Maybe it does.” The anger I feel for this town, these people, burns inside me—it beats against my skull. So many injustices—so much death. They’ve always treated outsiders cruelly, cast them off because they didn’t belong. “The sisters were killed by the people of this town,” I say, my voice weighted with something that doesn’t sound quite like me. “Drowned unfairly because they fell in love with the wrong men. Maybe they have a right to their revenge.”

  “To kill innocent people?”

  “How do you know Gregory Dunn didn’t deserve it?” I can hardly believe my own words.

  “I don’t,” he says sharply. “But I doubt every person who’s been drowned did deserve it.”

  I know he’s right, yet I feel inclined to argue the point. I just want him to understand why it happens. Why the sisters return every year. It’s not without cause. “It’s their retribution,” I say.

  Bo stands up straight and takes a sip of his coffee.

  “Look, I’m not saying it’s right,” I add. “But you can’t start thinking that you can prevent it or change what happens here. Gregory Dunn was just the first. There will be more. Trying to stop it has only ever made things worse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The town has killed innocent girls because they thought they were inhabited by one of the sisters. It’s just better to leave it alone. There’s nothing you can do.”

  The sun starts to edge up from the east, dull and pink at first. At the marina, fishermen begin slogging down the docks to their boats. And then I spot Heath, walking down Ocean Avenue, returned to give us a ride back to the island.

  Bo doesn’t speak, his mind likely wheeling over thoughts that don’t line up: trying to resolve what he’s seen tonight. A dead body. A two centuries–long curse. A town that has accepted its fate.

  It’s a lot to take in. And he only just got here. It’s going to get worse.

  We start down the pier, the light changing, turning pale orange as it streaks over the town. Two girls are walking toward us, headed to the Chowder. My gaze slides over them briefly.

  It’s Olivia and Lola—the best friends who danced around the bonfire at the Swan party shortly after the singing started. They are both fully dressed, no pj’s or messy hair, as if the death of Gregory Dunn were a social event they wouldn’t dare miss. One they were expecting. Lola’s dyed-black hair is woven back in a French braid. Olivia’s is loose across her shoulders, long and wavy. Her nose ring glints against the encroaching sun.

  And when my eyes meet hers, I know: Marguerite Swan is occupying her body.

  The white, spectral image of Marguerite hovers beneath Olivia’s soft skin. Like looking through a thin pane of glass, or beneath the surface of a lake all the way down to the sandy bottom. It isn’t a clear, crisp outline of Marguerite, but like a memory of her, wavy and unsettled, drifting inside this poor girl’s body.

  I’ve found her.

  A part of me had dared to hope I wouldn’t see them this year, that I could avoid the sisters, avoid the ritual of death that befalls this town. But I won’t be so lucky after all.

  I wish I weren’t staring through Olivia’s snow-white skin at Marguerite hidden beneath. But I am. And I’m the only one standing on Shipley Pier who can. This is the secret I can’t tell Bo—the reason why I know the Swan sisters are real.

  Her lurid gaze settles on me, not Olivia’s—Olivia is gone—but Marguerite’s, and then she smiles faintly at me as they stride past.

  I feel briefly paralyzed. My upper lip twitches. They continue down the pier, Lola chatting about something that my ears can’t seem to focus on, oblivious that her best friend is no longer her best friend. Just before they reach the Chowder, I glance over my shoulder at them. Olivia’s hair swings effortlessly over her shoulders and down her back. “You all right?” Bo asks, turning to look at Olivia and Lola.

  “We need to get back to the island,” I say, spinning back around. “It’s not safe here.”

  Marguerite has found a host in the body of Olivia Greene. And Marguerite is always the first to make a kill. Gregory Dunn was hers. The drowning season has started.

  PERFUMERY

  The Swan sisters might have dabbled in witchcraft in the years before they arrived in Sparrow—an occasional hex or potion to detour jealous wives or bad spirits—but they certainly wouldn’t call themselves witches, as the people of Sparrow had accused.

  They were businesswomen, shop owners, and when they arrived in Sparrow two centuries ago, they brought with them an array of exotic scents to be crafted into delicate perfumes and fragrant balms. At first the women in town gathered together inside the Swan Perfumery, swooning over scents that reminded them of the civilized world. They purchased small glass bottles of rose water and honey, lemongrass and gardenia. All perfectly blended, subtle and intricate.

  It wasn’t until Marguerite, the oldest of the sisters at nineteen, was caught in bed with a ship’s captain, that everything began to crumble. The sisters couldn’t be blamed. It wasn’t witchcraft that seduced the men of Sparrow—it was something much simpler. The Swan sisters had a charm that was born into their blood, like their mother: Men could not resist the softness of their skin or the gleam of their aquamarine eyes.

  Love came easily and often for them. While Marguerite liked older men with money and power, Aurora fell for boys who others said couldn’t be seduced—she liked a challenge, typically falling for more than one boy at a time. Hazel was more particular. Precise. She didn’t delight in the affection of numerous men, like her sisters, yet they adored her anyway, a trail of heartbroken boys often left in her wake.

  The sisters brought about their fate like someone stumbling into a poison ivy bush in the dark, unaware of the consequences that would befall them by morning.

  SEVEN

  For three awful weeks, tourists and locals will accuse nearly every girl of being a Swan sister. Any offense, any deviation in behavior—a sudden interest in boys they used to despise, spending too many nights out late, a twitch or flick of an eye that seems out of place—will make you a suspect.

  But I know who the sisters really are.

  Heath gives us a ride across the harbor, and when we reach the island, we all say a swift good-bye, and then Heath chugs back to town.

  Bo and I don’t speak as we walk up the path, until we reach the place where the walkway splits. A mound of old buoys and crab pots that have washed ashore over the years sit just to the left of the walkway. A decomposing heap. A reminder that this place has more death than life.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “We never should have gone out there.” I’m used to the gruesome shock of death, but Bo isn’t. And I’m sure he’s starting to consider leaving this place as soon as possible. And I wouldn’t blame him if he did.

  “It wasn’t your fault.” His eyelashes lower, and he kicks a pebble from the walkway. It lands in a patch of yellow grass and vanishes.

  “You should get some sleep.” We’ve both been awake all night, and the delir
ium of exhaustion is starting to feel like a freight train clamoring back and forth between my ears.

  He nods, removes his hands from his coat pockets, and heads up the path to Anchor Cottage. He doesn’t even say good-bye.

  I won’t be surprised if he starts packing as soon as he gets back to the cottage.

  Mom is already awake and listening to the radio in the kitchen when I walk through the back door. It’s a local station that announces storm warnings and tide reports, and today the host, Buddy Kogens, is talking about the body that authorities pulled from the water early this morning.

  “This town is black with death,” she says morosely, facing the kitchen sink, her hands gripping the white tile edge. “It’s saturated with it.” I don’t answer her. I’m too tired. So I slip out into the hall and upstairs to my bedroom. From the window, I see Bo moving up the path, almost to Anchor Cottage near the center of the island. His gait is slow and deliberate. He looks back once, as if he feels me watching him, and I duck back from the window.

  Something nags at me. I just can’t put my finger on it.

  * * *

  The afternoon sky shatters apart, revealing a swath of milky blue.

  Last night we found Gregory Dunn’s body in the harbor.

  This morning we watched the sunrise from the pier as his body was brought ashore.

  Day one of the Swan season: one boy dead.

  I slip from bed, rubbing my eyes, still groggy even though the sun has been up for hours, and dress in an old pair of faded jeans and a navy-blue sweater. I take my time. I stand at the dresser, not meeting my own gaze in the mirror on the wall, running my fingers over a meager collection of things. A bottle of old perfume—Mom’s—which I bring to my nose. The vanilla scent has turned sharp and musty, taken on the tinge of alcohol. There’s a silver dish filled with pebbles gathered from the shore: aqua and coral and emerald green. Two candles sit at one corner of the dresser, the wicks hardly burned down. And hanging by a length of yellow ribbon from the top of the mirror is a triangle piece of glass with flowers pressed between it. I can’t dredge up the memory of where it came from. A birthday gift, maybe? Something Rose gave me? I stare at it, the small pink flowers flattened and dried, preserved for eternity.

  I turn and lean against the dresser, taking stock of the room. Sparse and tidy. White walls. White everything. Clean. No bright colors anywhere. My room says little about me. Or maybe it says it all. A room easily abandoned. Left behind with hardly a hint that a girl ever lived here at all.

  Mom is not in the house. The floorboards groan as I walk down the stairs into the kitchen. A plate of freshly baked orange muffins sits on the table. That’s two mornings in a row she’s made breakfast. The two mornings that Bo’s been on the island. She can’t help herself, she won’t let a stranger starve, even though she’d easily let herself or me go hungry. Old habits. The social decorum of a small town—feed anyone who comes to visit.

  I grab two muffins then head out onto the front porch.

  The air is warm. Calm and placated. Seagulls spin in dizzying circles overhead, swooping down to the steep shoreline and snatching up fish caught in the tide pools. I catch the silhouette of Mom inside the greenhouse, walking among the decomposing plants.

  I peer across the island to Anchor Cottage. Is Bo still inside? Or did he pack his bag and find a way off the island while I slept? A knot tightens in my stomach. If I find the cottage empty, cold, and dark, how will I feel? Despair? Like my gut has been ripped out?

  But at least I’ll know he’s safe, escaped this town before he wound up like Gregory Dunn.

  A noise draws my focus away from the cottage. A low sawing sound—the cutting of wood. It echoes over the island. And it’s coming from the orchard.

  I follow the wood-slat path deeper into the island, but before I’ve even stepped into the rows of perfectly spaced trees, I can tell that things are different. The wood ladder that normally rests at the farthest row against a half-dead Anjou tree, protected from the wind, has been moved closer to the center of the grove and has been positioned beside one of the Braeburn trees. And standing on the highest rung, leaning into the thicket of branches, is Bo.

  He didn’t leave after all. He didn’t do the smart thing and flee when he had the opportunity. Relief swells inside my chest.

  “Hey,” he says down to me, holding on to one of the low branches. The sun makes long shadows through the trees. “Is everything okay?”

  He takes several steps down the ladder, his hat turned backward on his head.

  “Fine,” I answer. “I just thought maybe you’d . . .” My voice dissipates.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m just glad you’re still here.”

  He squints and wipes at his forehead. “You thought I would leave?”

  “Maybe.”

  The sunlight catches his eyes, making the dark green seem like pieces of emerald glass, an entire world contained within them. His gray T-shirt sticks to his chest and arms. His cheeks are flushed. I watch him a moment too long.

  “Have you slept?” I ask.

  “Not yet.” He smiles from one side of his mouth—his mood seems to have lifted slightly since this morning. While I was curled up in bed, sheets pulled over my head to block out the sun, he’s been out here working. Sleep probably seemed like an impossibility after last night, after what he saw. “I wanted to get started on the orchard.” He hooks a wide-toothed handsaw over a low, crooked limb then climbs down the ladder, brushing his hands across his jeans.

  I hand him one of the freshly baked orange muffins. “What are you doing exactly?”

  He cranes his head up to the tangled limbs above us, squinting. The scar beneath his left eye pinches together. “Cutting out any new growth. We only want the oldest limbs to stay because those are the ones that produce fruit. And see how some of the branches grow straight up or down? Those also need to go.” He blinks away from the sun then looks at me.

  “Can I help?”

  He sets the muffin on a rung of the ladder then lifts the hat from his head and scrubs a hand through his short hair. “If you want to.”

  “I do.”

  He drags out a second ladder from the old woodshed and finds another, smaller handsaw. He places the ladder against the tree next to the one he had been pruning and I climb carefully to the top, a little unsteady at first as it wobbles beneath me. Once I feel settled, I realize I’m shrouded by a veil of limbs, hidden in a world of branches, and then Bo climbs up behind me, standing one rung down. He extends the handsaw up to me and then wraps his arms around my waist, gripping the ladder to keep me from falling.

  “What do you see?” he asks, his voice at my neck, my ear, and I shiver slightly at the feeling of his breath against my skin.

  “I’m not sure,” I say truthfully.

  “The trees haven’t bloomed yet,” he explains. “But they will soon, so we have to take out all the branches that are crowding the older limbs—the old wood, it’s called.”

  “This small one,” I say, tapping it with my finger. “It’s growing straight up from a thicker branch, and it still looks a little green.”

  “Exactly,” he praises. And I lift the saw, holding it to the limb. On my first stroke across the branch, the saw slips out, and I lurch forward to keep from dropping it. Bo tightens his arms around me, and the ladder teeters beneath us. My heartbeat spikes upward. “The saw takes some getting used to,” Bo adds.

  I nod, gripping the top of the ladder. And then I feel the sharp stinging in my left index finger. I turn my palm up so I can examine it, and blood beads to the surface along the outer edge of my finger. When the blade slipped, it must have cut into my skin where my hand was holding the branch. Bo notices it at the same time, and he leans closer into me, reaching around to grab my finger.

  “You’re cut,” he says. The blood drips down the tip of my finger and plummets all the way to the ground, six feet below. I notice Otis and Olga sitting in the swath of sun between ro
ws, orange-and-white heads titled upward, watching us.

  “It’s okay,” I say. But he yanks out a white handkerchief from his back pocket and presses it to the cut, staunching the bleeding. “It’s not that deep,” I add, even though it stings pretty good. The white fabric turns red almost instantly.

  “We should clean it out,” he says.

  “No. Really, I’m fine.”

  This close, with his face directly beside mine, I can feel each breath as it rises in his chest, see his lips move as he exhales. His heart is racing faster than it should. Like he was worried I might have just cut my entire hand off, and it would have been his fault for allowing me to wield a saw.

  He lifts the handkerchief away to inspect the cut, leaning into me.

  “Do we need to amputate?” I ask lightheartedly.

  “Most likely.” His eyes slide to mine, the corner of his mouth lifting. He tears off a small strip of the handkerchief, holding my hand in his, then ties the narrow piece of fabric around my finger like a makeshift tourniquet. “This should keep the finger from falling off until we operate.”

  “Thanks,” I say, smiling even though it still burns. My lips so close to his I can almost taste the saltiness of his skin.

  He slides what’s left of his handkerchief into his back pocket and straightens up behind me so that his chest is no longer against my back. “It’s probably safer with just one person on the ladder,” he amends.

  I nod, agreeing, and he climbs down, jumping the last couple feet to the ground and leaving me weightless atop the ladder without him.

  He scales back up his ladder, and we work side by side, sawing away the unwanted limbs on each tree. I’m careful to keep my fingers out of the way, and soon I feel confident with the saw. It’s a tedious, slow process, but gradually we work our way down the first row.

  This becomes our routine.

  Each morning we meet in the orchard, moving our ladders to a new row. Bringing the fruit trees back to life. I don’t mind the work. It feels purposeful. And by the end of the week my hands have a roughness like I’ve never felt before. My skin has browned, and my eyes taper away from the midday sun. It hasn’t rained once all week, and the summer air feels light and buoyant and sweet.