The Bone Snatcher

by Charlotte Salter

  “You’re right,” he said. “I am taller.”

  “Ah! Young sirs!”

  Scree scuttled from the other end of the corridor. Sophie, who had almost forgotten she was hiding and had leaned out from the carpet, quickly withdrew. He ran right past, dragging a sodden mop.

  “What is it?” snapped Ralf.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” said Scree. “I was mopping the ceiling, and there was an . . . incident.”

  “You mopped the ceiling?” said Gail.

  “The hanging mushrooms were getting out of control,” he said. “One of ’em tried to eat me.”

  “So what’s the problem?” said Ralf.

  “Some of the ceiling came down. And the plays you wrote, they’ve been . . .” Scree licked his lips as he searched for the right word . . . “compromised.”

  “Compromised?” said Ralf.

  “They’re wet,” said Scree. “Ruined, in fact. A big inky mess mixed with plaster.” If Sophie didn’t know any better, she’d say he was enjoying himself.

  Ralf pushed Scree against the wall with surprising strength. Scree’s eyes goggled as Ralf leaned in, and Sophie fought the urge to run out and stop them.

  “I thought we told you,” said Ralf, “not to disturb our things.”

  “Her Battleshipness . . . that is, her ladyship . . . wanted me to clean everything.”

  “Our mother isn’t in charge, General,” said Ralf.

  “We are,” said Gail.

  “Not only have you been mopping our ceiling,” said Ralf, tightening his grip, “you’ve let Silverfish out of your sight. Last night she was poking around in our secret room.”

  “But there’s nothing secret in it, ’cause we don’t have anything to hide,” added Gail.

  “I can’t know where she is all the time,” Scree croaked.

  “If you let Silverfish or Cartwright poke around you’re dead,” said Ralf. “Do you understand? We don’t want either of them finding our box.”

  “I don’t know anything about boxes,” Scree said, straining his face away from Ralf’s.

  “Shut up!” Ralf barked. “If you want to keep being a good servant to our poor dead daddy, you’ll look after our best interests.”

  “After all, you wouldn’t want us to throw you into the sea,” said Gail pleasantly.

  “The monsters would love a piece of stringy meat,” said Ralf.

  Ralf pushed Scree one more time, so his eggshell-smooth head hit the wall hard. Scree’s face crumpled in a mixture of pain and humiliation. Sophie couldn’t watch it anymore. She gritted her teeth and stepped out of the shadows, bunching her hands into fists. Scree saw her first. He shook his head.

  She hesitated, her blood thick with anger, then under his gaze slid back into her hiding place.

  “We’ll see you later, Scree,” Ralf said, and beckoned to his brother. “Let’s go downstairs. She’s probably in the catacombs. I’ve got a new game we can play with her.”

  “Slithery little Silverfish,” Gail sang, and they danced off, clapping their hands.

  Sophie ran out from her hiding place and grabbed hold of Scree, who was swaying like a man in a storm.

  “You should have let me hit them!” she said as he regained his balance.

  “Ha!” he barked, like she’d told a great joke. “They’d hit back harder.”

  “I could take them,” she muttered.

  “You listen to me,” he said, nodding toward the portrait. “If you upset them it’s both our necks on the line. They’ve been getting worse, and they weren’t joking about throwin’ me to the sea. You just let sleeping clams lie.”

  “Why are they so protective of this Monster Box? What’s in it?”

  “No idea,” he said. “But it’s the last thing Laurel made, Neptune rest his soul, and he was in a bad state by then. It can’t be anything sane or good, that’s what I reckon.”

  He picked up his mop and started to creak off, but then he turned back.

  “The boy’s waiting in the courtyard. Make sure you tell him what I just said, or we’ll be nothing more than a smear on the carpet. And for the love of Neptune,” he added darkly, “I don’t want to be clearin’ you off the walls.”

  “I didn’t know you cared,” she said, trying to hide a smile.

  He scowled at her and loped away. Sophie watched until he was gone. She knew she couldn’t just let the twins stamp all over Scree. Sometime soon she’d give them exactly what they deserved.

  Chapter 16

  Laurel’s Invention

  Sophie watched Master Most Violent Cartwright lounging on a deck chair in the courtyard. It was raining. Hard. Water fell from the back of the chair in a solid sheet and ran down the spine of the book in his hand. He was wearing tinted glasses, one lens cracked, which had obviously been dredged up from the sea. The blocked gutter above his head finally overflowed and dumped a load of greenish filth on him. He yawned and stretched, settled back into the chair, flipped a page over and continued to read as though he were sitting by a pool on the New Continent.

  He’d been doing this for half an hour.

  Fed up with waiting, Sophie flung the door open and marched toward him. The rain was so hard that within seconds it overflowed her boots.

  “What’s wrong with meeting inside?” she shouted through the downpour.

  Cartwright held up a finger and finished his paragraph. Sophie boiled with rage.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “You told me to meet you here!”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes! And just so you know,” she said derisively, “those sunglasses look terrible on you.”

  He just smiled, like the corners of his mouth had been pinned up. Sophie looked at the book in his hands. It was upside down.

  “Who’s watching?” she said.

  “Ralf and Gail are standing on the top floor with binoculars—don’t look!” he said as her head jerked up. She saw two dim figures standing behind a pane of crusty glass. “My aunt’s watching from the other side of the building. She thinks I can’t see her. Just smile. And,” he added, “my sunglasses look cool.”

  Sophie hadn’t smiled properly in weeks, maybe months. She forced her face into a grimace. It hurt.

  “They know I’m here for the Monster Box,” he said. “So they’re all following me around. I thought I’d make it easy for them by sitting down.”

  “The twins were just following me,” she said. “They can’t be in two places at once.”

  “Obviously you were too boring,” he said, and she had to bite her tongue to stop her temper spilling out.

  “Why out here?” she asked.

  “It was sunny when I sat down. But they haven’t moved, and I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me leave first. Would you care to join me?” He gestured to a folded-up deck chair leaning against the wall.

  “I’ll stand.” She waited for him to continue, but he just crossed his legs in that infuriatingly adult way, like he was sitting in front of his fireplace. “I’m meant to tell you to stop searching,” she said. “The twins nearly bashed Scree into a thousand pieces. If you keep looking for this box he’ll be in trouble, and so will I.”

  “The twins are going to torment you either way,” he said. “You ought to make it worth your while by actually finding the Monster Box.”

  “I don’t want anything to do with it,” she said, raising her chin, but she couldn’t quite squash her curiosity. “But since I’m here, you might as well have a go at persuading me.”

  “So you are interested.” He sat up so quickly he nearly dropped the book. “It’s quite simple. My uncle was a great inventor.”

  “I’ve seen the machines,” Sophie said drily.

  “In the months before he died, he became obsessed with one invention in par
ticular: the Monster Box. He locked himself in his workshop. Before then I would spend hours every day with him, learning how to build machines and talking. He’s the one who told me about the New Continent. But after he started on the Monster Box, I didn’t even glimpse him.”

  “Right,” said Sophie, refusing to appear interested.

  “The evening before he died he came down to dinner—something he hadn’t done in years—and made an announcement. He had finished creating something that would end the madness forever. It was the greatest, most ingenious thing he’d ever created. And he was leaving it to me.”

  “Ouch,” said Sophie, casting another glance at the outlines of the twins.

  “Yep. They already hated me, but that was the tipping point. My uncle told us that the Monster Box was locked away in his workshop, and that when he was . . . gone, I was to open it immediately. I think he knew he wouldn’t be alive very much longer. The next day he was dead, drowned and frozen on the beach, and the box had vanished. His workroom door was splintered and hanging open, there was a square patch in the dusty floor, and there were two identical sets of footprints leading up to it. They’d taken it.” His face twisted bitterly.

  “And you’ve come to take it back,” said Sophie, nodding before she could stop herself.

  “But they haven’t opened it,” said Cartwright, “because I have the key. I found it under a footstool when I was searching my uncle’s workshop. One of them must have accidentally kicked it when they were scrambling to get their hands on the box.”

  He drew something from his pocket, and it took Sophie a moment to make out what it was: a notoriously complex octopus key with eight limbs and eighty impossible-to-copy notches. He dangled it from its chain for just a second, then dropped it back into his pocket.

  “The twins aren’t stupid,” she said. “Why haven’t they stolen the key from you already?”

  “They only want to keep the box away from me to drive me mad. This key is my own personal torture device.”

  “You’re obsessed,” she said. She tried to drag her eyes away from his pocket, but she wanted to see it again. “It’s not healthy.”

  “If he left me something, it was important,” Cartwright said. “He didn’t do things lightly.”

  Sophie stepped back. She knew she was being snared by an irresistible mystery.

  “I found you a new sword,” she said abruptly. “It’s outside your door.”

  “That’s kind,” he said. She started to walk away, and she got all the way to the door before he cleared his throat.

  “It’s a cure for Sea Fever,” he said. “The thing in the Monster Box.”

  Sophie froze. Water ran off her back for a good few seconds before she turned around again. His face was utterly serious.

  “How do you know that?” she asked, coming closer again. Her hands and feet felt numb.

  “He said the Monster Box was something to end the madness forever. He’d told me once that he had a theory about Sea Fever. That the afflicted dream the memories of the sea creatures, only it’s too much for humans, and it drives them mad. That’s why everyone dreams of dark water and storms at sea. A disease of fear, as it were, that grabs your brain and wrings it dry of sense.”

  “I don’t have those dreams,” said Sophie.

  “Neither do I. Some of us are immune. But the more I think about it, the more I believe he found a cure.”

  “I want evidence,” she said quietly, but she knew she had it already. She remembered the diagrams in the Room of Remains and suppressed a shiver.

  “I found some of his notes, before the twins stole those, too,” said Cartwright. “Pictures of the creatures’ nervous systems, their ears, their brains. He understood them. He’d talk to them and draw pictures. I think that’s what he was doing when he died.”

  A cure for Sea Fever. The world would be just like it was before the disease struck, before her parents really hated her. She’d be a better daughter. Tell fewer stories. She hadn’t thought she’d wanted any of that, but the desire hit her so hard and so fast she felt sick.

  “Think about it,” said Cartwright. “We could find the box. We could leave, run to the New Continent, and cure everyone. The world would be sane again.”

  “Like it was,” she repeated. She tried to see through the beauty of it, to find the untruth, but every part of her brain was screaming to believe him.

  She forgot about how much she hated her parents. For just a minute none of it mattered. She saw the wide, seaweed-free archways of her house, the dining table laid with meals conspicuously absent of glowfish, her parents smiling when she spent a whole day being good. Maybe they missed her. And maybe—Sophie could only just admit it to herself—maybe she missed them, too. She blurted, “Fine. I’ll help you find your box.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Cartwright said, grinning. “Anyway, you made your decision before you came out here. I could tell from the way you stamped out the door.”

  “Shut up or I won’t help you at all,” she said. “Tell me what to do.”

  “You could talk to Scree. He knows all the nooks and crannies in this place. He won’t tell me anything—he hates me because I stir up the twins.”

  “Fine,” she said. But she already had other plans. If she wanted to find the box, she had to go straight to the people who had it. She had to get her claws into the twins.

  “Is my aunt still watching?”

  “For Neptune’s sake, you’re paranoid.” She looked up. “Yes, she is.”

  “I can’t help it,” said Cartwright miserably. “The other day she popped up out of nowhere like she’d fallen from the sky. And I swear Ralf was in two places at once; he was behind me then in front of me without moving.”

  “I think there are secret passages in the walls.”

  “Probably. And there’s another thing. The twins went through a phase of . . . manipulating some of my uncle’s machines. I think I’ve managed to break most of them, but if they get wind of what you’re doing, they might . . .” He shuddered.

  By now the rain had completely soaked her. Sophie bowed her head to stop the water getting in her eyes, and it dripped down her silvery hair and fell to the floor in sheets.

  “I’ll deal with it,” she said. “But if we don’t find the box within a week, I’m not hanging around. I’m taking your tickets and your horse, and if you won’t help me get across, I’ll force you to do it at sword point. Okay?”

  “That’s fair,” he said.

  “It is,” she said, annoyed that he didn’t even try to argue. He pointed at the door she just came through.

  “I’m giving you directions,” he said. “Nod and smile.”

  She nodded and smiled so hard she thought her face might crack.

  “Are they still watching?” he asked.

  “They haven’t moved once.”

  “It’s going to be a long day.”

  Sophie plowed through the rain, forced the water-swollen door open, and heaved it back with relief. She could hear the Battleship moving around on the floor above, but the twins were nowhere to be seen.

  On her way back to the catacombs something struck her as odd. She hesitated, wondering if she was being stupid. She turned and walked through the corridors that circled the courtyard, and climbed the stairs to the window where the twins were standing.

  There they were, stock-still and dumb as posts, in their matching red jackets and too-short trousers. She walked up behind them and touched the shoulder of the left twin. It rocked backward and forward very gently.

  Mannequins. Clever.

  She peered over their shoulders at the half-drowned Cartwright. She might just leave the mannequins exactly where they were.

  Chapter 17

  Breaking Bones

  Sophie brought the rusty ax down on a pile of scattered human bones. They cracked and shattered,
yellow splinters flying past her face and hitting the wall behind her. The tunnels below were flooded, and all the bones there were floating around, impossible to reach through the murky water. It was Sophie’s idea to start breaking up the bone chairs instead.

  She wiped her face with the back of her hand and leaned against the ax, trying not to think about who the bones once belonged to, or whose idea it was to turn them into pieces of furniture. If she could do that, the task was almost relaxing, and it kept her mind away from the Monster Box. Whenever she thought about it she felt a bit feverish, excited and nervous at the same time. She just needed to decide where to start looking.

  “Concentrate or you’ll chop yer fingers off,” said Scree, making her jump.

  “I’m trying not to look at all these dead people.”

  “They’re not dead people, they’re chairs. It was a sort of honor, having your bones made into bits of furniture. It was so you’d be useful. Here,” he added kindly. “If you stick around long enough, you can be a chair, too. I don’t offer that to everyone.”

  Sophie shuddered. “It takes a special kind of person to think a chair made out of human bones is tasteful.”

  “It’s not bad just ’cause you don’t understand it,” said Scree. “Why do you think everyone tells tales about sea draugrs? It’s ’cause they don’t understand the things that go bump in the night. So they turn ’em into unreal monsters instead.”

  “Of course sea draugrs are real!” she said, horrified.

  “You ever seen one? I reckon they’re big ol’ fish that people see when they’re drunk.”

  “I thought you believe in ghosts. What about the glowfish?”

  “Them’s real ghosts,” he said. “Don’t be stupid. Hold up, they’re at it again.”

  There was a loud crack and the catacombs shook. The echo rolled through the tunnels, deep and submarine-like. When it faded Scree began picking through the bones again, which had shivered across the floor and mixed together.