The Bone Snatcher

by Charlotte Salter

  There was a low gurgling from the sea, and an accusatory, pointing tentacle lashed out fast as a whip, grabbed the teeth, and dragged them under.

  “Oh, Neptune,” she whispered to herself. But surely the sea monsters would never catch Scree—he was fast and wily, despite his aching bones. And he knew the monsters inside out. Maybe he’d dropped his teeth. She’d probably see him wandering around later, poking the shore with his grab-claw contraption.

  She heard a low crunching behind her and spun around, expecting to see a crab chewing stones. Instead she came face-to-face with Cartwright. Gone was the tall stance and cocky smile. He looked . . . sorry.

  “What?” she said rudely, trying to cover up the fact that she was disturbed.

  “That’s a rubbish way to say ‘hello’ to someone,” he said. “If you weren’t so intent on being aggressive you’d have heard what I was trying to say earlier. About the tickets.”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “I just want to be alone.”

  “Have you been crying?”

  “Do you want a broken foot?”

  “You should try being nice sometime.”

  “So I’ve been told,” she snapped. “Why are you out here?”

  “To explain myself,” he said. “You owe it to me to listen, if only because you stuck those scissors in my arm. When they were chasing the ghost Ralf leaped on me from a chandelier and almost broke my back. Gail tried to chew my ear off! I’m serious.”

  “What do you want to tell me?”

  “A story.”

  “Is it a true story?”

  “As true as the rocks we’re standing on, but told with style and vim.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “To elicit your sympathy.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “What if I told it anyway?”

  “I don’t promise to listen.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” he said, and sitting on a rock he began.

  Chapter 21

  Another Sad Story About an Orphan

  In Which the Dazzling Cartwright Strikes the World

  Ladies and gentlemen, humans and creatures, monsters and men: what follows is another sad story about an orphan, one of the many left behind in the wake of Sea Fever. The unfortunate boy’s name was Master Most Violent Cartwright.

  Young Cartwright, eight years old, was shipped off to his uncle’s oyster farm with a suitcase containing a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and a packet of biscuits. He was bedraggled, upset, and pitiful, but really quite handsome. Now that I think about it, it’s a shame he wasted his childhood on that dismal island when the world could have known his uniquely dazzling personality. Are you laughing? Don’t laugh. Now, where was I?

  His new home was haunted by his vicious cousins, Ralf and Gail, who spent their time playing cruel but uninventive tricks on him—flushing his head down the toilet, stealing his books, hiding fish under his pillow, and so on. Cartwright would have thought of more original pranks himself, but he was better than that, obviously. And he wasn’t the only one subjected to this terror. His uncle, Laurel, an inventor of the highest order, was also tormented by his sons. Laurel’s wife, Agatha, directed the twins toward him like a hunter with a pack of dogs, furious that her husband wasn’t, in fact, interested in her.

  Here our story intersects with another; let us go sideways, like a boat slipping gently into a current, to the story of Agatha Fischer, a woman who married Laurel for his oysters. Having brought up twin sons with a penchant for making others miserable, she was more than slightly regretful when her husband was driven to an early grave and the torturers turned their attention on her. Her three emotions are consequently guilt, loneliness, and stone-shattering fury. But Agatha would do anything to protect Catacomb Hill, as it’s the only thing she has left, though secretly she hates it so much she wants to see it destroyed.

  But let us veer back to the dazzling Cartwright and his similarly tortured uncle as they bond over their shared passion for hiding from the twins. Laurel told Cartwright stories about the stars and planets, about all the different countries, about the sea and the things that lived in it. That’s how Cartwright heard about the New Continent. The boy was hooked on the posters and maps Laurel brought back from the mainland. He’d never seen anything so full of promise. When his uncle, who was already pretty old, started going a bit—How should I put it? Crackers?—it seemed like the stories of the New Continent kept him going.

  But let’s not forget about the twin monsters living in the house. They hunted Cartwright with a passion, and they started to sabotage Laurel’s inventions in the middle of the night. They put a hole in the boat and pushed it out to sea. Laurel started to go madder than before, and Cartwright suspected that he had finally succumbed to Sea Fever. One day, Laurel locked himself in his study and didn’t emerge for two months. All he told Cartwright was that he had found the cure, and it was his duty to see it made reality.

  Laurel created the Monster Box and left it to Cartwright. It was obviously Cartwright’s destiny: he would travel to the New Continent and give his uncle’s legacy—most certainly a cure for Sea Fever—to the world. Everything would be all right again, and our dazzling orphan Cartwright would be a hero.

  The rest, dear audience, you know. The twins became jealous. They stole the box, and Cartwright, in the throes of grief, took the key and fled the island.

  Cartwright knew he needed to get himself on a boat and to the New Continent, but despite his most admirable talents, he had no way to buy passage across the sea.

  Now twelve years old, he joined the army. They were only too glad to recruit him on account of his obvious talent and maturity, although many have said that they were also desperate for men. Because he was quick and clever, and because the others had either gone mad or fled, he was soon promoted to captain. He rescued a manic horse from a burning tar pit, and became known as the most unpredictable, intimidating man in the force. Soon he had enough money to get tickets—two of them, in fact—one for himself, and another in case he ever needed a bribe.

  But he couldn’t stop thinking about the Monster Box. He got angrier and angrier at the twins. They had cheated the world out of a cure for its malady, and they had taken something that was rightfully his. He wanted that box.

  He took off in the middle of the night. Tickets in hand, he reached the coast and rode across to the derelict oyster farm.

  The only thing that had changed in the house was the addition of a servant who helped Scree with the Bone Snatching. He asked for the girl’s help, and in return promised her passage to the New Continent with him. She accepted, but just a week later she disappeared, leaving a note to say that she had run away for London. Cartwright, feeling claustrophobic, left the island again. He traveled up and down the country, doing circus tricks for peanuts. The tickets were always in his pocket, but every time he determined to board a ship and leave the country, the itch to take back what was rightfully his made him step back.

  So he returned to the house. There was a new servant by now, who also agreed to the deal, but the same thing happened again. He left, and a few weeks later he was back, and there was another Bone Snatcher.

  He was exhausted and obsessed. He tried to grow a fashionable beard several times. And he was beginning to really worry about the twins. He wondered what they had to do with his uncle’s death. He wondered what they had to do with the disappearing Bone Snatchers. He wondered if he was lying to himself. He vowed to go back one last time, to confront the twins and his aunt himself, if not to find the box then to say good-bye to the island and his uncle’s memory. This time he meant it.

  There was a new servant, a girl with white hair and a pointy face. She looked about as abandoned and hateful as he felt. At dinner, he turned to the girl. Old habits die hard, and the great pretender Master Most Violent Cartwright struck again.

&nb
sp; Chapter 22

  Feeding Every Kind of Creature

  “One small secret,” said Cartwright.

  He reached for his inside pocket and pulled out a brown envelope, which he handed to Sophie. She tore the end off. Two gold-colored tickets slipped out. She held them up to the light as though they might disappear, but there they were, solid as the stones that were digging into her legs.

  “The twins didn’t burn the tickets,” Cartwright said. “They burned the decoys. I made them as soon as I got here. There was gold paper in the library, and I only had to write on them in black ink. I put them in my sock drawer. I thought the twins might go looking for them, and I was right. Obviously they fell for it. So did you. They think they’ve broken you now, so they’ll leave us both alone for a while.”

  “You had the real ones all along?”

  “I keep them on me all the time. And now one of them is yours. I don’t want you to think I’m a total horror. I’m trying to do better. Keep the ticket, and if you want to leave, I’ll put you on Manic tomorrow, and you’ll never see this place again.”

  She studied them closely. She wanted them to look fake, but they didn’t. These were thick and heavy, perfectly printed. More like tickets than the things the twins had.

  “When I ran away the first time,” she said slowly, “and you dragged me back, I’d stolen a ticket from your sock drawer. Would it have gotten me anywhere?”

  “You had a bad fake,” he said. “They would have laughed and turned you away.”

  “You made me feel so guilty about it!”

  “Your intention was still rotten.”

  Something was occurring to Sophie for the first time. Her fingers loosened on the tickets.

  “I don’t know if I really wanted to leave anyway,” she admitted.

  “What does that mean?” asked Cartwright.

  “I kind of like the sea, and even the creatures. I’d rather be on Catacomb Hill than trying to get on a boat. This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you,” she added. “I will still despise you forever, eternally, until the stars burn out and Neptune comes down and freezes everything into a block of ice.”

  “You’re so angry all the time. All you do is stomp around and threaten people. Doesn’t it get tiring?”

  “You’d feel like this too if your parents shipped you off to an island of death while they went on an extended holiday.”

  “I rather think mine did,” he replied.

  “But did they hate you?”

  “I don’t think so. They just didn’t like me that much. There’s a huge difference. I doubt your parents actually hated you either. Maybe they were scared of you, or they didn’t understand you.”

  “How wise of you,” said Sophie. She sighed. “It was my toes that scared them. I think they suspected I was a changeling.”

  “What do your toes have to do with it?”

  Sophie pushed her boots off and wriggled her twelve toes in the gravelly beach, grinning. Cartwright stared.

  “Maybe it’s why the sea creatures like you,” he said. “You’re a defective human being.”

  “It’s also where I get my superior, cat-like balance from,” she said, then remembered that Cartwright was a lying coward. “I’m going. I need to get more bones for tomorrow.”

  “But what now?” said Cartwright. “Are you leaving? Aren’t you going to demand I take you across to the mainland?”

  “Not yet,” she said, looking out to the flat, black sea. “I’m going to stay for a couple more days. Not because I owe you anything. But I feel like there’s unfinished business. Like something’s going to happen, and if I don’t stay to watch it, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. I’m doing this for myself.”

  “And you want a cure for Sea Fever.”

  “Yes. No. Yes. If we could undo it, the world would be . . . better. And my parents . . .” she trailed off. She didn’t know what she was going to say. That they’d be proud of her? Want her back? Did she even want them back?

  “It’s contagious,” said Cartwright. “The feeling that we’re on the edge of something. It’s this island. It gives me the creeps.”

  “It is creepy,” said Sophie. “But it’s more than that. It’s like I know something important, but I can’t quite worm it out. I’m missing something. Something huge. And I can’t leave until I know what it is.”

  “You’re the weirdest girl I’ve ever met, Sophie Seacove.”

  “And you’re the most blatant flatterer. You don’t have to be nice to me.”

  Cartwright looked at her with an expression so unfathomable the only thing she could do was stare. She saw that there were tiny freckles on the side of his face like new constellations. Then she wondered why she was noticing them.

  “Got to go,” she blurted. She got up and hurried toward the catacombs. Cartwright shouted something at her. But soon he was far behind her, and his voice was lost in the roar of the sea.

  * * *

  It was night again, and Sophie’s breath rose in white plumes above her. Funny how she couldn’t sleep now unless she was on a slab of rock. She’d tried settling on one of the damp, marshmallow-like mattresses upstairs, but it felt like she was being engulfed, and she had nightmares that she was back at home in her old bed. Down in the catacombs the eerie singing of the wind felt like a lullaby. As she drifted off she thought of the New Continent. There was something about the idea of the pristine isle that had begun to disturb her. Maybe she was just used to Catacomb Hill, with its strange moods and unpredictable personality. She tried to fix the watercolor of trees in her mind, the one that was on all the posters, but it swam away as soon as she got near.

  Morning broke slowly. Sophie got dressed and washed her face in a snail-filled pool of water. She listened carefully for Scree, who at this time of morning was usually pottering around with his fishing contraption, telling her to hurry up. The tunnels gaped at her like empty mouths. She didn’t know where Scree slept, or ate, or spent his time when he wasn’t polishing the rocks or fishing. She wondered if he was in the clock room, tinkering with the mashed-up cogs and levers, but she was sure he would have told her.

  Scree’s pocket watch made a sound like it was clearing its throat and started playing. As the song wound down, and she overcame the urge to smash the thing to pieces, four round eyes appeared in the entrance to her hovel with two sets of white, shiny teeth.

  She tried to slip into a gap in the wall, but the twins had already spotted her.

  “Get out!” she shouted.

  “We want to,” said Gail sulkily. “But everything’s gone wrong.”

  “Oh, has it?” she hissed, picking up what she thought was a rock but turned out to be a clump of socks. “How terrible for you.”

  She expected a comeback, or a small act of violence, but the twins didn’t come any closer.

  “We’re hungry, Silverfish,” Ralf said instead. “We want breakfast.”

  “Scree didn’t make dinner last night,” said Gail. “We can’t find him. We haven’t eaten in over a day.”

  “We get annoyed when we’re hungry,” said Ralf, stepping closer. “I went mad the last time Scree was late with breakfast, didn’t I, Gail?”

  Sophie tried to push past them, but they held their arms out and herded her back into her cave. A spasm of fear went through her. She was alone with the twins, where it was dark and nobody could hear them. She imagined the other Bone Snatchers going through the same thing, person after person being cornered in the catacombs, the twins reaching out with their sharp nails and frozen smiles. She picked up the only thing she could find, a broken fishing rod, and advanced.

  “She looks angry,” said Gail. “She must’ve fallen out with Cartwright.”

  “Must have found out what a sneak he is.”

  “Why is she grinding her teeth like that?”

  “She’s a girl
. They’re all irrational.”

  She dodged under their arms, and they followed as she ran all the way out of the catacombs and into the house. Their images flashed past in the tilted, broken mirrors of the grand entrance hall. They ran lightly and silently in a way that reminded her of daddy longlegs, their limbs stretched and lanky, their feet barely brushing the carpet.

  “Mummy!” Ralf bellowed, and as Sophie leaped over a broken vase she came face-to-face with the Battleship, four heads taller than her, voluminous skirts extending on either side of her like wings. The twins overtook her and hid behind their mother, peering out from their barricade.

  The Battleship stared at her, small black eyes sunk deep into her pale face.

  Then she sucked her cheeks in and raised her hands, which held a knife and fork in each.

  “Kippers and mash,” she said. “You’re the cook until the General decides to do his job properly.” She took a deep breath. “YOU’RE ALREADY FIVE MINUTES LATE!”

  Sophie tried to formulate a response, gave up, and ducked past the Battleship’s skirts toward the kitchen. The twins cackled behind her, and she could hear the dining room doors opening, the Battleship settling into her creaking throne.

  It was clear that the stove had been cold for a long time. Sophie searched through the cupboards and shelves, which were jammed with bits of rusting metal but very little food. She pulled a huge stockpot from underneath the sink, got a flame after five broken matches, and dumped in a dried fish, some grayish soup from a tin, and one of the sprouting potatoes by the sink. As soon as it started to bubble she stuck a ladle in it, heaved the pot onto the floor, and dragged it behind her, leaving a groove through the small passageway to the dining room.

  The twins hurled themselves upon it like they’d never eaten before, digging out lumps of potato with their fingers and smearing gray soup over their faces. The Battleship picked the pot up like a cup and poured half of it into her mouth to which the twins, now in a good mood, clapped and yelled “Bravo!”