The Bone Snatcher

by Charlotte Salter

  “Ten extra points!” screamed Gail.

  That nasal laugh again. It was so high-pitched it made Sophie’s jaw ache.

  Crash!

  “Your aim is rubbish, Gail.”

  Thwack!

  There was a pained scream.

  “Good thing your head’s such a huge target, Ralf!” said Gail.

  “You little—”

  Something dropped in front of Sophie’s face and crawled over her lips. She spluttered and inhaled a furry spider, then coughed and clawed it out of her mouth. It fell and ran across the floor, but even so she could still feel it in there, its legs dancing on her tongue. When she’d finished raking her tongue across her sleeve, a new feeling settled on the corridor. It was the feeling of being listened to.

  After a long pause the door containing the voices swung open very slowly. Nobody came out. It was an invitation. They were waiting for Sophie to show herself. She looked over her shoulder, suspecting some kind of trick. Seeing nothing but empty gloom, she walked through the doorway.

  The room was a lot brighter than she’d expected, and for a moment she was dazzled. Then, as her vision cleared, she saw the twins.

  Tall and skinny, they were dressed in faded red suits that must have come from the bottom of a costume box, their sleeves stopping a couple of inches above their wrists and their too-short trousers exposing green socks. Their hair was red and so messy it looked like they’d recently escaped a storm. They were exactly alike, except one had R embroidered on his lapel, and the other G. Ralf and Gail. Gail stood somewhat slumped. His eyes flicked toward his brother, who was twirling a tennis racket between his fingers.

  Ralf grinned at Sophie, his mouth snapping open in a smile that showed all his teeth at once.

  “It looks like mother’s found us another toy to play with,” he said.

  “What is it? Is it a girl, Ralf?” asked Gail. His fingers wriggled like worms on a hook.

  “Yes, I think so. Doesn’t it have weird hair? I’ve never seen hair like that before.”

  “You’re right. Why does it have white hair?”

  The twins looked at her expectantly. Sophie realized that they were even breathing at the same time, exhaling together like clockwork. They were waiting for an answer.

  “I saw a ghost,” she said as a piece of squashed fruit dropped from the ceiling. It landed in the wreckage with a terminal plop.

  The room must have been beautiful once, but now it was a total mess: there was a smashed chandelier, scorch marks in the carpet, dents in the walls, and a painting of a rather pained-looking horse with a rolled-up napkin wedged onto its forehead, where it had apparently been smashed with a tennis racket. In the corner of the room a brass machine spat another napkin out, where it hit the wall with a sad and unnoticed thump.

  The twins smelled like formaldehyde, the chemical Sophie’s dad used to preserve his award-winning carrier pigeon with when it died.

  “I have to find Mister Scree,” she said, suddenly feeling uneasy. “He’s waiting for me.”

  Ralf reached out and grabbed her arm. His nails were sharp and left little crescents in her skin. Sophie flushed with anger, but she forced herself to keep still.

  “Never mind Scree,” Ralf said. “He’s just an old coffin-dodger who thinks he runs the place. You can help us. We’re rehearsing a play.”

  “A play?”

  “A play?” mimicked Ralf, his face twisting into a shape that, for a moment, Sophie recognized perfectly as her own reflection. It was so good she caught her breath. Then, in a second, it had gone.

  “We’re going to be famous actors,” said Gail. “We’ll go to London and take the country by storm. Won’t we, Ralf?”

  “We will,” Ralf said. “There’ll be posters of us on every street. We’ll rule the world.”

  “When our play’s good enough, that is.”

  Sophie tried to take Ralf by surprise by wrenching her arm away suddenly, but his grip was too tight.

  “We’ve been practicing for years,” he continued.

  “But not because we’re no good,” said Gail.

  “We’re just not ready.”

  “But when we are—”

  “—we’ll be unstoppable.”

  They both gave her frozen smiles, and Ralf’s nails dug a little deeper.

  “You should let go of me before I get annoyed,” Sophie growled, although there was clearly no way out.

  “What we need,” Ralf said, ignoring her, “is someone to do a drowning with. There’s a girl called Ophelia in our play, and she throws herself into a river. It’s our favorite bit.”

  “We wrote it ourselves,” said Gail. “It’s a great play.”

  “Yes, but we can’t act that part, can we? We need a girl to run around and scream.”

  Without warning, Ralf released her. Sophie dodged away, clutching her wrist.

  “Where’s she going, Ralf?”

  “I don’t know, Gail. She’s being awfully rude, isn’t she?”

  “Maybe we ought to teach her a lesson.”

  “Maybe we ought to flush her head down the toilet like we did with our cousin.”

  “Cartwright? Oh, that was fun. He should be here again soon.”

  “She’ll love Cartwright, won’t she, Gail. All the servants do.”

  “But I hope she’s not too much like the others. We can’t have her running off and ruining our play.”

  “I can’t think of anything that would make me more annoyed.”

  The twins gave her a look that was truly murderous.

  Sophie stepped backward out of the room, then tripped on a broken chair leg and fell right into Scree. Ralf and Gail spluttered with laughter.

  “Found the skeletons rattling around in the catacombs,” Scree said proudly, swooping so close Sophie couldn’t see anything except his eyes. “Caught ’em all. Nothing can run without a rib cage!” He picked up the sack at his feet and gave it a cheerful shake.

  “Scree!” Ralf yelled from inside. “We want toast and pineapples for tea!”

  “Pineapples, sir?”

  “They’re yellow and they come from trees. You idiot.”

  The twins started smashing the room again, swinging their tennis rackets at the napkins flying out of the machine.

  “Interesting, aren’t they?” Scree said.

  Sophie whirled around and backed Scree against the wall until they were nose-to-nose.

  “No,” she said. “They’re creepy. And that’s a nice way of putting it.”

  “They won’t like you saying that.”

  “I don’t care. You said you’d talk to me, so talk. Tell me how to get away from this place and I’ll do it, even if I have to swim.”

  She realized that she was facing a blank wall. Scree had slid away like a bar of soap, and she was just in time to see him scurry down the unlit side of the hallway. She took off after him, hiking her skirt up above her knees.

  Scree stopped around the corner so suddenly she almost ran into him.

  “Here’s a nugget of advice,” he said. “When you’re with the twins, pretend you’re stupid. They’re thirteen now, and they’ve grown a fine temper. Neptune help you if you upset ’em.”

  “I’m not going to pretend anything,” Sophie said. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to show you something,” he said, jabbing his thin finger into her chest. “Just to wipe any nonsense about escaping out of your head. Are you brave enough?”

  “I’ve never been scared of anything,” she said.

  Scree’s eyes burned through her. She stared right back, and finally he looked away.

  “Make sure you keep up,” he muttered.

  And they began moving again, deeper and deeper into the house on Catacomb Hill.

  * * *

  The sc
reeching of the twins died away as they wormed into the moonlit labyrinth of the house. Scree moved quickly, ducking and diving through curtains of cobwebs, with Sophie following behind. The green carpet slowly became blue, and she realized that it was just no longer covered in algae. They went past dozens of locked rooms—Sophie knew, because she tried each doorknob—and into a corridor lined with portraits. Each face was pocked with spots of mold or growing a furry mustache. She recognized the twins when they were younger, both thin as rakes, their cheekbones straight like carving knives. Between them was an older man who was remarkably dissimilar to them: brown hair, round glasses, a nervous smile.

  “Does he live here, too?” Sophie asked.

  Scree grunted and carried on.

  The house grew and grew before her eyes, each corridor sprouting stuffed fish, shells in picture frames, and furniture made from worryingly human-looking bones.

  “Where do all the bones come from?” she asked.

  “From the catacombs under the island. Before this house was built on top, they were a place to leave the dead.” Scree cackled. “His lordship Laurel wanted somewhere grand to live.”

  He shook the sack of bones again.

  “So a man called Laurel built this ugly mansion,” she said. “He built it on an island full of holes, filled with dead bodies, in a lethal creature-infested sea. Am I missing anything?”

  “He was a genius,” said Scree. “An inventor. He was famous once. He filled this place with machines and plumbing and clockwork, though it mostly doesn’t work now. And he left old Scree a gift to help him do his job.”

  “Is the floor shaking?”

  “Eh? Course it is.”

  They stopped outside a particularly large door. From inside came the sound of ticking and the grinding of machinery. Sophie, with a nod from Scree, put her eye to the keyhole.

  When her eyes adjusted, she realized she was looking at the inside of a vast and complicated clock. Pulleys and levers stretched from floor to ceiling, and there were spinning cogs and weights bobbing up and down next to a corroded bell the size of a wardrobe. The floor plunged into a bottomless hole, with a walkway swinging precariously above it. Hourglasses danced on strings, and one flipped over neatly to reverse the flow of sand.

  “I knew the house was moving,” she said triumphantly. She tried the door handle, but it was locked. “What’s this for?”

  A weight turned over. The shaking grew until it made her teeth chatter.

  “I’d cover my ears if I were you,” said Scree.

  The bell inside the clockwork room rang.

  It started as a vibration going up her knees and into her stomach. She stuffed her fingers into her ears just in time, because a second later a deafening wave of sound threw her to the ground. She clenched her teeth as her whole body vibrated with the shifting floorboards.

  The noise died away, but it felt like her head was stuffed with cotton wool. She looked up and could see Scree talking, but heard nothing until he clapped her around the head with his bony hand.

  “I said, get up and follow me. That bell’s the five-minute warning; that’s what your new job sounds like. The Bone Snatching.”

  She could tell he’d given this talk before. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

  “The what?” she shouted back.

  “No need to shout,” he said. “Come on, we haven’t got all night. The monsters are very exacting when it comes to dinnertime.”

  Sophie wobbled after Scree as fast as she could. They twisted and turned and came to a damp room overhanging the sea.

  “I don’t want anything to do with bones,” said Sophie, but Scree wasn’t listening. He undid latch after latch on an enormous window, so many of them that it seemed like they’d been designed to keep something out.

  “Normally we do this close up on the beach,” he said. “The monsters like the personal touch. But tonight I’m treating you to a good view.”

  “Of what?” she said.

  “You got any experience in the culinary industry?”

  “No. Only in storytelling.”

  “Storytelling,” he repeated. His fingers paused on the window frame, and Sophie was taken aback by the sadness in his expression. “I ain’t heard a story in a while. His lordship liked stories.” He trailed off, gazing into the sea below. Then irritation puckered his face again. “What kind of stories?”

  “All kinds,” said Sophie, papering over her surprise. “I’m going to be a storyteller on the New Continent. I’m going to record history, so that nobody forgets what it was like before Sea Fever struck.”

  “A historian,” Scree said.

  “Yeah, that sounds good. A historian of sanity.”

  Scree shrugged, telling her the conversation was over, then jammed his hands under the glass window and pulled with his whole body.

  The frame shot upward, and a blast of cold air hit them. He picked up the sack and heaved it onto the windowsill, turning back to make sure he had Sophie’s full attention. Then he upended the sack and a pile of bones—gray and yellow, cracked and broken—tumbled to the ground and bounced to the rocks by the shore.

  The sack slipped from his fingers and drifted into space. Scree slammed the window shut, as though he wanted to get as far away from the sea as possible.

  He stood back to let Sophie watch.

  The sea churned and pulsed, growing blacker. A shadow, huge as a submarine, writhed under the water. It spread and became a creature: There was a spine, and there were spikes, black and oily, that punctuated the surface with bursts of foam and scum. Long tapered legs uncurled from its sides, dragging clumps of seaweed and debris in its wake.

  Sophie recoiled, but Scree planted a hand on her shoulder.

  “It ain’t done yet.”

  The size of a normal house, now, the thing broke the surface, bobbing like an ice floe, its body constantly changing shape. Water poured from its back as its eyes rolled wildly. One dark orb settled on Sophie, and it heaved itself from the water with a supernatural groan that shook the walls.

  It moved so fast she couldn’t make out its shape. Tentacles shot toward the rocks. The scattered bones were dragged toward the sea with chunks of stone and torn-up bushes. One after the other, more things rose from the water, some the size of horses, others as small as her hand, all armed with tentacles, squid-like and bristling with barnacles. They were fighting to get to the food first. The biggest creature’s body plummeted back into the depths, legs slapping the water like pieces of elastic, gripping the scraps. And then it was gone, the water foaming and the rest of the monsters fighting in its wake, crabs surging over the remains like rats over bread.

  “We had boats once,” Scree said. “They tore them up years ago. But it don’t matter, ’cause there’s nothing on the mainland for the likes of you and me but misery. No New Continent for us, ’cause we ain’t important enough. But here we have a job. We feed ’em best we can to stop ’em tearing down the house, and when we run out of food, which ain’t too far away to be honest, the monsters’ll swim to the front door.” He paused, then added bitterly, “We’ll be sucked out of our beds and that’s that.”

  “That’s not true,” Sophie said fiercely. “You said there’s someone who knows how to get across the sea.”

  “He only comes here to stir up trouble,” he said. “Trust me. It won’t end well.”

  “I’m going to escape,” she said, gripping the windowsill as flecks of water flew up from the sea.

  “All the servants say that,” Scree said. “You think whatever you want to. We all tell ourselves stories here.”

  Chapter 4

  The Rules of the House

  Sophie was a Bone Snatcher, a feeder of monsters.

  Her home was in a cave far beneath the house on Catacomb Hill. The house itself was only the tip of the island; the rest plunged far beneath the water li
ke the roots of an old tooth. Tunnels folded back against themselves like intestines, nightmare dark and endless, crammed together in a space that shouldn’t be able to contain all that distance.

  Sophie’s room was carved straight into the rock. Her bed was a slab worn smooth by hundreds of sleepers. She lay there for what remained of the first night, staring at the ceiling as waves lapped against the other side of the wall.

  She wouldn’t be in this creepy place if Sea Fever hadn’t struck. Before then, people had tolerated the sea creatures; now everyone was so mad with terror they wouldn’t even turn the taps on.

  By now her parents would be boarding one of the last ships to the New Continent, clutching the tickets they’d sold her off for. Her mum and dad flickered behind her eyelids like holograms, pulling their trunks behind them as they entered Portsmouth. In a few hours the land would have disappeared from view. They would sail on while terror squeezed their hearts dry, until the great, monster-free shores of the New Continent rose from the sea.

  The thought of her parents’ ship in the endless, gray sea made her hands cold and her eyes blurry.

  At some point she must have fallen asleep, because when she next opened her eyes there was light creeping in from upstairs. Sophie sat up quickly, banging her head on the rock and yelping.

  Scree, hidden behind the doorway, banged his fishing claw against the floor.

  “Uh?” she said, trying desperately to remember where she was.

  “You’re late,” he said grumpily. “I’ve got to train you.”

  “Train me for what?” she said.

  “Do you pay attention to anything?” He shook his head and came hobbling over. “You don’t just chuck rubbish in the water. You’ve got to know what the sea creatures want that day. On calm days they like nice long bones and bobbing skulls. When the storms come they want armor and sharp things. You treat ’em well, show ’em respect, and they’ll do the same for you, s’long as you don’t push your luck. And you’ve gotta know when feeding time is near. Five minutes after the bell rings, that’s all the time you’ve got, or they’ll get annoyed and start looking for chunks of the house to munch on instead.”