The Wicked Deep

by Shea Ernshaw

  I stand up before our words tear apart the fragile air between us. Before he demands truths I can’t give. I never should have asked him why he came to Sparrow, unless I was willing to give up something of myself. Otis blinks at me from the gray cushion, stirred by my movement. I walk past Bo to the door, and for a moment I think he’s going to reach out for me, to stop me, but he never actually touches me, and my heart wrenches. Spills onto the floor, seeps into the cracks between the wood boards.

  A burst of bright morning sun pours into the cottage when I open the door. Otis and Olga don’t even attempt to follow me. But before I can pull the door closed behind me, I hear something in the distance, beyond the edges of the island. There is no wind to carry it across the water, but the stillness makes it audible.

  The bell at the marina in Sparrow is ringing.

  A second body has been found.

  TAVERN

  The Swan sisters were never ordinary, even at birth.

  All three were born on June first, exactly one year apart. First Marguerite, then came Aurora a year later, and Hazel the year after that. They did not share the same father, yet fate would bring them into this world on precisely the same day. Their mother had said they were destined for one another, bound by the stars to be sisters.

  And so upon their birthday, during their first year in Sparrow, they closed up their shop early and strode down to the White Horse Inn and Tavern. They ordered pints and a bottle of brandy wine. The liquid was dark and red and bittersweet, and they passed it among them, drinking straight from the bottle. The men in the tavern shook their heads and whispered of the sisters’ boldness—women rarely entered the tavern, but the sisters were not like other women in town. They laughed and spilled wine onto the damp wood floor. They sang songs they had heard the fishermen bellow when heading out to sea, enticing the winds to be calm and kind. They tipped in their chairs. They toasted their mother, who they hardly remembered now, for bringing them into this world, one year apart from each other, but on precisely the same day.

  The moon shone bright over the harbor, and the whale-oil lamps flickered from atop each table inside the tavern. Marguerite stood from her chair, scanning the musty room filled with fishermen and farmers and seamen who would be here for only a week or two before they set out again. She grinned, eyeing them with the heat of booze in her cheeks. “They all think we’re witches,” she hissed down to her sisters, waving the bottle of brandy wine around the room. The rumors had been seething through town for months, suspicion rooting itself in the framework of homes along the seaport, passing from lips to ears until each tale became more vile than the last. The people of Sparrow had begun to hate the sisters.

  “Yes, witches.” Aurora laughed. She tilted her head back and nearly toppled from her chair.

  “No, they don’t,” Hazel protested, frowning.

  But Aurora and Marguerite laughed even harder, for they knew what their youngest sister didn’t want to believe: that the entire town had already decided they were witches. A coven of three sisters, come to Sparrow to unleash treachery and ill deeds.

  “You all think we are witches, yes?” Marguerite shouted.

  The men seated at the bar turned to look. The barkeep set down the bottle of whiskey in his hand. But no one answered her.

  “Then I hex you all,” she announced, still smiling, lips ruddy from the wine. She circled a finger in the air then pointed it at a man seated at a nearby table. “You will grow a beard made of sea snakes.” She roared with laughter then swayed her finger to a man leaning against the wall. “You will trip and fall on your way home tonight, hit your head, and see your future death.” Her eyes, it would be said later, seemed alight with fire, like she was casting spells from an inferno that would burn alive anyone caught in her stare. “You will marry a mermaid,” she told another man. “You will taste fish, no matter what you eat, for the rest of your life,” she said to a man hunched over the bar. And as Marguerite’s finger waved around the room, calling out imaginary spells, the men began to flee, certain her hexes would come true. Aurora laughed from deep within her belly, watching her sister frighten even the toughest men in Sparrow. But Hazel, horrified by the looks on the men’s faces, grabbed her sisters and dragged them from the tavern as Marguerite continued to shout nonsense into the salty night air.

  Once outside, the three sisters locked arms and even Hazel laughed as they staggered up Ocean Avenue, past the docks, to the small living space they shared behind the perfumery. “You can’t do that,” Hazel said through her laughter. “They’ll think us real witches.”

  “They already do, my sweet sister,” Aurora told her.

  “They just don’t understand us,” Hazel offered, and Marguerite kissed her on the cheek.

  “Believe what you want,” Marguerite murmured, tilting her head to the starry sky, to the moon, which seemed to await her command. “But one day they will come for us.” They all fell silent, the wind brushing through their hair, making it weightless. “But until then, we drink.” She still had the bottle of wine and they passed it among them, letting the constellations guide them home.

  Later, when Arthur Helm hit his head, he swore he saw his death as Marguerite predicted. Even though he didn’t actually fall on his way home from the tavern—he was struck in the jaw by his plow horse a week later—the town still believed Marguerite had caused it. And when Murrey Coats married a woman with long ribbons of hair the color of wheat, people said she was once a mermaid he had caught in his fishing net—proof of Marguerite’s spell coming true.

  Four weeks later, on the summer solstice of 1823—a day chosen by the townspeople because a solstice was said to guarantee a witch’s death—the three sisters were drowned for their accused witchery. Marguerite was the oldest at nineteen on the day of her death, Aurora eighteen, Hazel seventeen.

  Born on the same day. Died on the same day.

  NINE

  Bo appears behind me in the doorway just as the tolling bell from across the harbor begins to fade. “Another one?” he asks, hand lifted as if he could see out over the water all the way to the docks.

  “Another one.”

  He sidesteps around me, his shoulder grazing mine, then starts down the path.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Town,” he answers.

  “You’re safer here,” I call after him, but he doesn’t stop. I have no choice but to follow—I can’t let him go alone. Marguerite is in the body of Olivia Greene. And this latest kill is likely Aurora’s. But I haven’t seen her yet—don’t yet know whose body she has stolen. So when Bo reaches the skiff, I climb in after him and start the motor.

  A cluster of boats have gathered in the harbor just offshore from Coppers Beach.

  I can’t see the body from this distance, but I know there must be one, newly discovered, floating, being pulled aboard one of the boats—so we motor over to the marina, Bo’s face hardened against the blustery wind.

  We dock the skiff, and see that a crowd has already assembled on Ocean Avenue awaiting the return of the harbor police boats, cameras ready. There are signs at the top of the marina that read: DOCK MEMBERS ONLY, NO TOURISTS ALLOWED. But there are always people who ignore the signs and tromp down to the docks anyway, especially after the bell has been rung.

  I push through the clot of tourists, past the stone bench facing the harbor, when someone grabs my arm. It’s Rose. Heath is standing beside her.

  “There’s two of them,” she says with shaking breath, her blue eyes magnified. She still looks pale and weak, like she hasn’t yet shaken off the chill of falling into the water over a week ago, only inches from Gregory Dunn’s corpse.

  “Two bodies?” Bo asks, stepping in beside me so the four of us form a tight circle on the sidewalk, our breath coming out in bursts of steamy white.

  Rose nods her head.

  Aurora, I think. She’s greedy and impulsive, can never decide, and so she will take two boys at once.

  “That’s not all,�
� Heath says. “They saw one of the Swan sisters.”

  “Who did?” I ask.

  Heath and Rose exchange a look. “Lon Whittamer was out on his dad’s boat this morning, patrolling the harbor. He and Davis decided to take shifts, like vigilantes; they thought they could catch one of the sisters in the act. Apparently, Lon was the first to spot the two bodies in the harbor. Then he saw something else: a girl swimming, her head just above the waterline. She was kicking frantically back to Coppers Beach.” Heath pauses and it feels like time stops, all of us holding our breath.

  “Who did Lon see?” I press, my heartbeat rising into my throat, about to burst.

  “Gigi Kline,” he answers in one swift exhale.

  I blink, a cold spire of ice slipping down the length of my spine.

  “Who’s Gigi Kline?” Bo asks.

  “A girl from my school,” I answer, my voice a near hush. “She was at the Swan party on the beach.”

  “Did she go in the water?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  I glance up Ocean Avenue, where the mass of people has grown larger, tourists pressed together, trying to get a better view of the docks where the bodies will be brought ashore. This is what they came for—to glimpse death, proof that the legend of the Swan sisters is real.

  “Who knows about Gigi?” I ask, looking back at Heath.

  “I don’t know. I saw Lon when he reached the docks, and he told me what he saw. Now he and Davis are searching for her.”

  “Shit,” I mutter. If they find her, who knows what they’ll do.

  “Do you think it’s true?” Rose asks. “Could Gigi be one of them?” Her expression seems tight and anxious. She’s never fully believed in the Swan sisters before—it scares her, I think, the idea that they could be real, that she could be taken and not even know it. It’s a survival mechanism for her, and I understand why she does it. But now the waver in her voice makes me think she’s not so sure what she believes anymore.

  “I don’t know,” I answer. I won’t know for sure until I see her.

  “They already found her,” Heath interrupts, his cell phone in his hand, the screen lit a vibrant blue.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Davis and Lon, they have her.” His throat catches. “And they’re taking her to the old boathouse past Coppers Beach. Everyone’s headed over there.” Word is traveling fast, at least among the inner circle of Sparrow High students. “I’m going down there,” Heath adds, clicking off his phone.

  Bo nods and Rose twines her fingers through Heath’s. We’re all going, apparently. Everyone will want to see if Gigi Kline—last year’s homecoming princess and star cheerleader—has been inhabited by a Swan sister. But I’m the only one who will know for sure.

  * * *

  The harbor police boats are just starting to motor into port, carrying two bodies whose identities we don’t yet know, when the four of us push through the crowds toward the edge of town. We pass Coppers Beach then turn down a dirt road almost completely overgrown by blackberry bushes and a tangle of wind-beaten shrubs.

  The air smells green here, damp and sodden, even with the sunlight glaring down. No cars pass down this road. The property is abandoned. And when we emerge from the dense thicket of green, the boathouse comes into view at the edge of the waterline. The old stone walls of the structure are slowly turning brownish green from the algae inching its way up the sides, and the wood-shingled roof is covered in a slimy layer of moss. A sheer cliff stands to the right of the boathouse and a rocky embankment to the left. You can’t see the town or the beach from here; it’s completely secluded. Which is why kids come here to smoke or make out or ditch classes. But it’s not exactly a pleasant place to spend longer than an afternoon.

  As we get closer, I notice that the small door into the boat-house is ajar several inches, and voices echo out from inside.

  Heath is the first to step into the dark interior, and several faces turn to look at us as we shuffle in behind him. It smells worse inside. The room has a rectangle cut out of the floor near the far doors where a boat once sat protected from the weather, and seawater laps up into the interior, making reflective patterns across the walls. The stench of fuel, fish guts, and seaweed permeates the space.

  Davis McArthurs and Lon Whittamer are standing against the right side wall on the narrow three-foot-wide walkway that stretches down either side of the boathouse. Three other girls who I recognize from school—but whose names I can’t recall—are crowded just inside the door, as if they’re afraid to get too close to the water splashing up from the floor with each wave that rolls in. And sitting in a plastic lawn chair between Davis and Lon, zip ties around her wrists and a red-and-white-checkered bandanna tied over her mouth, is Gigi Kline.

  We seem to have walked into the middle of a discussion already unfolding, because one of the girls, wearing a bright pink parka, says, “You don’t know for sure. She looks fine to me.”

  “That’s the point,” Davis says, jutting out his square jaw. Davis reminds me of a slab of meat, broad and thick. With a nose like a bull. There is nothing delicate about him. Or especially kind, for that matter. He’s a bully. And he gets away with it because of his size. “They look like everyone else,” he continues, firming his glare on the pink-parka girl. “She killed those two guys in the harbor. Lon saw her.”

  “You can’t keep her tied up,” another girl interjects, her smooth dark hair pulled up into a ponytail, and she points to Gigi with one long, sharp finger.

  “We sure fucking can,” Lon snaps back, while Davis scowls at the girl. Lon is wearing one of his standard Hawaiian shirts—light blue with neon yellow anchors and parrots. I feel Bo shift closer to me, like he wants to protect me from whatever is unfolding in front of us. And I wonder if he recognizes Lon from the night at the Swan party, when he was wasted and Bo pushed him into the sea.

  “There’s no way to prove she did anything,” ponytail girl points out.

  “Look at her fucking clothes and hair,” Lon says sharply. “She’s soaking wet.”

  “Maybe she . . .” But ponytail girl’s voice trails off.

  “Maybe she fell in,” pink-parka girl offers. But everyone knows that’s a weak excuse, and unlikely considering the circumstances. Two boys are being hauled from the harbor as we speak, and Gigi Kline is found completely drenched—it’s not hard to put the pieces together.

  Davis uncrosses his arms and takes a step toward the group. “She’s one of them,” he says coldly, his deep-set eyes unblinking. “And you all know it’s true.” He says it with such finality that everyone falls silent.

  My eyes slide over Gigi Kline, her cropped blond hair dripping water onto the wood-plank floor. Eyes bloodshot like she’s been crying, lips parted to accommodate the bandanna stretched across her mouth and tied at the back of her head. She looks cold, miserable, terrified. But while everyone speculates as to whether she might no longer be Gigi Kline, I know the truth. I can see right through the delicate features of her face, through her tear-streaked skin, right down into her center.

  A pearlescent, threadlike creature resides just beneath the surface—silky, atmospheric, shifting behind her human eyes. The ghost of a girl long dead.

  Gigi Kline is now Aurora Swan.

  Her gaze circles around the room, like she’s looking for someone to help her, to untie her, to speak up, but when her eyes settle on mine, I look quickly away.

  “And now,” Davis says, rolling his tongue along the inside of his lower lip, “we’re going to find the other two.” I think of Olivia Greene, now inhabited by Marguerite Swan. But she will be harder to catch—Marguerite is careful, precise, and she won’t allow these boys to discover what she really is.

  And no sooner have I thought her name than Olivia and Lola step into the boathouse through the little door behind us. Hardly anyone takes notice of their arrival.

  “How are we going to find them?” the third girl asks, chomping on a piece of gum and speaking up for the first time.
If she only knew—if all of them only knew—how close they really are.

  “We set a trap,” Lon says, grinning like he’s about to crush an insect beneath the sole of his shoe. “We have one of them now. The other two sisters will come for her. Gigi is our bait.”

  A short laugh at the back of the group breaks apart Lon’s words. “You think the Swan sisters would be stupid enough to fall for that?” It’s Marguerite who’s spoken, and she rolls her eyes when everyone turns to look at her.

  “They’re not just going to leave her here,” Davis points out.

  “Maybe they’ll think she deserves to be tied up for being dumb enough to get caught. Maybe they’ll want her to learn her lesson.” Marguerite stares directly at Gigi when she says it, her gaze penetrating deeply so that Aurora knows she’s speaking to her: one Swan sister to another. It’s a threat. Marguerite is upset that Aurora allowed herself to be captured.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Davis says. “And until then, we don’t let any girls near the boathouse.”

  “That’s not fair,” pink-parka girl asserts. “Gigi’s my friend and—”

  “And maybe you’re one of them,” Davis snaps, cutting her off.

  “That’s insane.” She snorts. “I didn’t even get in the water at the Swan party.”

  “Then we should question everyone who did.”

  The girl with the perfect ponytail drops her gaze to the floor. “Almost everyone swam that night.”

  “Not everyone,” Lon adds, “but you did.” His eyes are harpooned on her. “And so did Rose.” He nods to Rose, who is standing a half step behind me, next to Heath.

  “This is ridiculous,” Heath pipes up. “You idiots can’t start blaming every girl who was at the party that night. It might not have even happened at the party—the sisters might have stolen bodies later, after everyone was too wasted to remember anything. Or even the next morning.”