Scar Island Read online

  Jonathan looked up, straight into the Admiral’s eyes for the first time. “No,” he answered in a level voice. “It doesn’t burn, sir. It just hurts.”

  The Admiral raised an eyebrow and sniffed. “Yes, well, you would know, wouldn’t you, Jonathan Grisby?” Jonathan looked down quickly, stung by the man’s words. The Admiral cleared his throat and took a step back. “You’re just the latest degenerate to feel her bite. And she is just one of the tools we use at Slabhenge to educate and civilize and correct. And you will be corrected. A crime as wicked as yours will require quite severe correction.” The Admiral leaned close so that Jonathan could feel as well as hear his next words in his ear. “You have done terrible things, haven’t you, Jonathan Grisby?”

  Jonathan lowered his head and didn’t answer. The Admiral wheezed out a phlegmy sigh and took a step back.

  “But all that begins tomorrow. You’ll see. You’ve arrived late. It’s nearly all-dark time. Only one little thing remains to be done.”

  He reached for something from his desk and slid it onto the Sinner’s Sorrow’s little writing surface: a pen, and a blank piece of paper.

  “At Slabhenge, all of our boys write a letter home to Mommy and Daddy every day. To let them know that you are safe and sound and that their investment is paying off. The mail goes out in the morning, and yours is the last letter we need.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  The Admiral’s eyebrows dropped. The corner kid shuffled over and squeezed the back of Jonathan’s arm in a hard, vicious pinch. “Sir!” he spat into Jonathan’s ear.

  Jonathan tried to shift from knee to knee to ease the growing pain.

  “What do you want me to say, sir?”

  The Admiral turned his hands palm up and spread his fingers.

  “Whatever you like.”

  Jonathan frowned at the paper and thought of all the things he’d like to say to his parents.

  “I can’t write with my hands cuffed, sir.”

  “Of course not.” The Admiral tossed a heavy ring of keys to the chubby kid, who jangled and fumbled behind Jonathan until there was a click and Jonathan felt his hands finally swing free. He rubbed his sore wrists and wiggled his stiff shoulder sockets. With a quick glance at the Admiral, he picked up the pen and scribbled out a few sentences, then folded the paper and handed it to him.

  The Admiral unfolded the paper.

  “Dear Mom and Dad,” he read aloud. “This place is just as terrible as I deserve. Give my love to Sophia. Jonathan. Hmm.” The Admiral shook his head and clicked his tongue. “No, no, this won’t do. Try it again, Jonathan Grisby. You can say whatever you wish, of course, but you cannot speak poorly of our fine institution. We don’t want them regretting the difficult decision they made to send you here. So, again, without the parts about Slabhenge.” The Admiral slid another blank piece of paper across the desk.

  “My parents didn’t send me here. Sir.” Jonathan knew that it wouldn’t help him at all to argue, but he felt he had to say it. “A judge did.”

  The room hung in taut silence.

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” the Admiral asked, and his voice was darkly low and quiet. Jonathan didn’t answer. “Yes. A judge sentenced you to a reformatory for your heinous crime. But he gave your parents several choices, did he not? And they chose Slabhenge, did they not?”

  Jonathan swallowed. All of his trembling parts screamed at him to let it go. But he couldn’t.

  “Yes, sir. But … only because it was the cheapest. They had to … to pay for half, and we don’t have—”

  “Enough!” the Admiral interrupted. He bent down low so Jonathan could look into his shiny, bloodshot eyes. “Everything that I wish or need to know about you and your pathetic life, I have already read. You are here because they sent you. And, yes, we save money at the same time that we save souls here at Slabhenge—even souls not worth saving. Since I now know how very frugal you are, I shall make extra certain that we don’t waste a single unnecessary dime on your care, other than the discipline required to correct your corrupted character. Now, the letter!”

  Jonathan resisted the urge to wipe the spittle off his face that had flown there from the Admiral’s mouth. He blinked down at the paper through the sweat that was dripping into his eyes. His knees throbbed. He scrawled another message and handed it to the Admiral.

  “No,” the Admiral said after reading it. All the teasing was gone from his voice. “Longer. More pleasant. And mention our food.”

  “What food, sir?”

  “Our delicious and nourishing food.”

  “But I haven’t had any food, sir. And I’m starving.” Jonathan’s stomach growled as he spoke.

  The Admiral ground his teeth and blinked his eyes slowly. “Write the letter, Jonathan Grisby. Then dinner.”

  It took Jonathan seven tries to write a letter that the Admiral would accept. By the time he was done, his stomach was rumbling loud enough for all three of them to hear, and the boy in the corner was glaring at him with open hatred. The Admiral had gone through three more gold-wrapped chocolates.

  “There,” the Admiral said, folding up the final letter and slipping it into an envelope. “It shouldn’t have been that hard. Awful things happen to boys with awful attitudes.”

  Too late, Jonathan wanted to answer, but he bit his lip and kept his eyes on the cracks between the stone blocks of the floor. His hair dangled down in front of his eyes and he let it stay.

  “Brandy,” the Admiral said, and Jonathan heard the kid hurry to fill his glass. The Admiral walked to the door and opened it.

  “Mr. Warwick. Show Jonathan Grisby to his quarters.”

  “Yes, sir, straight away.”

  Jonathan’s head shot up.

  “What about my dinner?”

  A pair of rough hands pulled him up from the agony of the Sinner’s Sorrow and yanked him toward the door. The Admiral yawned as Jonathan was paraded past. He held out his hand to stop them, his fingers pressing into Jonathan’s chest. He smacked his lips and leaned down to speak into his face. The sour mix of chocolate and liquor on his hot breath made Jonathan’s stomach curl.

  “Do you really think a boy who wastes six pieces of paper to write a simple letter deserves to be spoiled with food? Hmmm?” Jonathan’s heart sank into his aching belly. The Admiral’s eyes slithered to the man who was pushing Jonathan from behind. “No pillow for this one, Mr. Warwick. He doesn’t have a brain worth cushioning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I will see you in the morning, Jonathan Grisby. Do try to get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a very hard day for you.”

  “Got on the Admiral’s bad side, did ye? Ya idiot.” Mr. Warwick hawked up a mouthful of snot from his lungs and spit it onto the floor. He was guiding Jonathan through a twisting labyrinth of dark hallways and steep, shadowy stairwells. The whole place—floor, walls, stairs, and ceiling—was made of the same huge blocks of gray stone. Their way was lit only by a hissing lantern that swung from Mr. Warwick’s outstretched hand.

  “Ye all do, nearly. Bunch of scum, ye are. The Admiral knows ye fer what ye are, aye.” Jonathan stumbled on a slippery step and Mr. Warwick jerked him roughly back up to his feet. “Still, ye got it better’n some. You get a blanket, at least. More than ye deserve, likely.”

  “Lucky me,” Jonathan muttered.

  Mr. Warwick spit again and flicked Jonathan in the ear hard enough to make his eyes burn.

  “Don’t ye be gettin’ smart, now. Smart gets ye nowhere good ’round here.”

  “Look, Mr…. Warwick, or whatever,” Jonathan started, rubbing his ear. “Could I get something to eat, something small, even? A biscuit or an apple or something? I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  Mr. Warwick scratched between his legs and snorted. “Ah, me heart’s just a-breakin’. Poor little criminal’s got ’im an achin’ tummy!” He coughed out a mean, small laugh.

  Suddenly, he pulled to a stop and grabbed Jonathan’s arm. “Ah,
now look here, boy.” His voice was tight and breathless. He held up the lantern to show a narrow stairway leading down from the corridor they were in. The stairs curved down and around a corner before they were lost in darkness. A low rumbling, gurgling sound and the salty, rotten smell of stale seawater wafted up to where Jonathan and his guard stood. A frayed rope stretched as a flimsy gate across the stairway opening.

  “Don’t ye never stumble down this wretched staircase, boy,” Mr. Warwick whispered. He leaned close to Jonathan’s face in the yellow lantern light. For the first time, Jonathan saw his wrinkled face and his one puckered, empty eye socket. He shivered and pulled back.

  “Why? What’s down there?”

  Mr. Warwick’s lips pulled back to show a toothless smile. “Why, the Hatch, me boy! A door, of sorts. And beyond it: death and despair and darkness! It be a door that holds back a monster. Ancient she is, and dark, and hungry, and just barely held back. She’s there, though, knockin’ and waitin’ and bidin’ her time! Not locked in, boy, but locked out—and not for long, I’d wager!”

  Mr. Warwick stared into Jonathan’s face with his one eye for a breathless moment before breaking into a wheezing cackle. “Aye,” he said, running his tongue over his toothless gums. “Death himself is yer downstairs neighbor. Yer room be straight up here, with the other no-goods.”

  Mr. Warwick stumbled ahead with the swinging lantern. Jonathan stood for a second longer, his eyes peering past the rope and down the darkened stairs. He knew the morbid cyclops was just trying to scare him, the new kid, with his ghost stories. And Jonathan was past believing in most kinds of monsters. But up from the stairwell came a thump and a rattle, then a slurping growl. He shivered and hurried after the retreating yellow light.

  They rounded a corner and then stopped before a large metal door. At eye level, just above Jonathan’s head, was a small rectangular opening crossed with metal bars. Mr. Warwick rapped on the door with his knuckles. The knocking echoed in the cold hallway. Water dripped all around them in the darkness, and there was occasional scurrying, off in the shadows.

  Through the opening in the door came the sound of shuffling footsteps punctuated by the steady thwock of a cane hitting the stone floor. A bald forehead and a glaring pair of eyes appeared in the little barred window.

  “It’s I, Mr. Mongley,” Mr. Warwick said to the eyes. “I’ve got me the new one here. No pillow for ’im, either, so you know.”

  The half face disappeared and there was a jangling of keys and then the door swung open. Mr. Warwick pushed Jonathan through the doorway and stepped in behind him.

  Beyond the door was nothing but darkness, but Jonathan could tell from the echoes and the movement of the air that the room was large, with a tall ceiling. Besides the smell of ocean and mold and wet stone, there was also here the smell of sweat and bodies and the unmistakable odor of an overused bathroom.

  The man who must be Mr. Mongley stood glaring at him sideways, one shoulder hunched over. He shielded his eyes from the light of the lamp.

  “It’s all-dark,” he rasped. His voice was a scratchy hiss, like his throat was stuffed with cotton. He was wearing the same blue uniform that Mr. Warwick and Mr. Vander had. Without another word he turned and limped off, thumping away into the darkness on a crooked black cane.

  “Go on, go on,” Mr. Warwick grunted, poking Jonathan in the spine.

  Jonathan’s eyes darted around the shifting shadows as he followed the hunched form of Mr. Mongley. There were puddles on the floor here, too, big and small. He could just make out, on both sides of him, openings in the walls. Large rectangular doorways, each with a lightless room behind it, each blocked with the sturdy metal gate of a jail cell. They were jail cells, he realized. Or, he reminded himself, madhouse cells. They were cells built to hold the criminally insane of the previous century.

  There were no windows. No torches. Not even a single, flickering candle. There was no light at all in the room, none except the shifting, swaying light of the lantern behind him. But in that unsteady light, Jonathan saw a silent face behind each black cell door as they passed it. A pair of hands, sometimes, gripping the iron bars. The light was too dim and the room too big for him to see any of them clearly, but he knew they could all see him, walking in the lantern light. He could feel all their eyes on him.

  Mr. Mongley stopped at a cell door and rattled it open with his ring of keys. He stepped to the side and Mr. Warwick started to shove Jonathan in.

  “Wait,” he protested. “I can’t sleep in here!”

  Mr. Warwick gave him a final push and slammed the metal door. “Then don’t,” he said through the bars as Mr. Mongley turned the key in the lock.

  “What about a bathroom?”

  Mr. Warwick raised the lantern and held it through the bars. The cell was narrow—Jonathan could have almost touched both walls with a hand if he stood in the middle. A few feet from the cell door, against the side wall, was a single bed on a metal frame, covered with a thin, lumpy mattress and one ragged blanket. No pillow, of course. And no window. No chair. No desk. No sink. The only thing in the cell besides the bed was a rusty bucket sitting in the back corner.

  Mr. Warwick swung the lantern toward the bucket. “That there’s yer night bathroom, boy. Sleep tight. And Mr. Mongley don’t take to no talkin’ after all-dark, so I’d be keepin’ yer mouth shut tight, if I was you. Which I ain’t, thank the devil.”

  And with that the light jerked away and disappeared step by step, leaving Jonathan to stand in thickening, choking blackness. Mr. Mongley’s cane tapped away with it. There was the creak of the metal door opening, then a final crashing clang as it slammed shut, taking the last of the light with it.

  At first, there was nothing but silence and absolute darkness. Jonathan could hear his own desperate breathing, and the hammering of his heart. A cold draft blew through his cell door and goose bumps popped up on his neck. He wrapped his arms around his body.

  Water dripped and dropped and dabbled all around, a crazy constant pattering and pittering. And then, all around the room, he heard a scraping and shuffling sound. He strained his ears and then realized that it was all the other boys, walking back from their cell doors to crawl into their skinny beds. Mixed in was the squinchy squeak of mattress springs as bodies lay down and curled up.

  He cocked his ear and stepped toward the wall to his right. There had been a watching face in the cell next door, he remembered, but he didn’t think he’d heard the sound of footsteps or mattress springs from that cell yet. His closest neighbor might still be standing at his cell door, only a few feet away.

  Jonathan leaned one hand against the damp stone wall and pressed his face through the bars closest to the wall.

  “Hey!” he whispered, as loudly as he dared. “Is anyone there?”

  There was no response.

  “Hey!” he tried again.

  There was a sound, like a sigh or a breath. He screwed his eyes shut in the darkness and listened harder.

  “What?” Jonathan asked.

  There was the sigh again, just as faint, but this time Jonathan’s ears picked up the sounds inside it.

  “Quieter,” the voice whispered, almost impossibly quiet. “Mongley hears everything.”

  “Mongley’s gone!”

  “No. He always stays. All night. Quieter.”

  Jonathan shook his head. He couldn’t possibly speak any quieter.

  “What kind of place is this?” he asked.

  “A bad place. Quieter.”

  A chill shook Jonathan’s body. His teeth were starting to chatter. It made the whispering harder.

  “It can’t be as bad as it seems.”

  The voice paused before answering. Like it wanted to say a lot more than it could in a smoke-thin whisper.

  “No. It’s worse. You’ll see tomorrow,” the voice breathed at last. “Quieter.”

  Jonathan gulped and took a few deep, shaky breaths. Behind him was a cold bed with no pillow and a bucket he didn’t even want
to think about. He changed the subject.

  “I’m Jonathan. What’s your name?”

  “Walter.”

  “Do you have any food?” Jonathan’s hunger got the better of him, and his rumbling belly grabbed him by the throat when he asked the question, raising his voice above the whisper he’d intended. His question came out as a desperate plea. It echoed, just barely, in the dark cavern of the room.

  Somewhere off in the darkness, Jonathan heard a grunt. Then, coming closer through the total blackness, the tap-tap-tapping of a cane. Beside him he heard Walter scuttle back to his bed. Jonathan held tight to the metal bars, eyes wide, his head rotating from side to side, seeing nothing. The tapping came closer, and closer, straight toward him.

  Finally, it stopped. In the echoing stone chamber Jonathan couldn’t tell where it had stopped—in the middle of the room, or inches away. He waited, breathless.

  There was a whoosh and another grunt and then Jonathan was hit by a shocking surge of freezing water. It hit him full in the face and drenched his clothes. His breath was sucked from his lungs by the frigid water.

  “No talking,” Mr. Mongley hissed like a dying rattlesnake. Jonathan gasped and coughed, his body racked by violent shivering. “The next bucket won’t be water.”

  The cane tapped away, quieter and quieter, and then fell silent. Jonathan stood shivering, his teeth rattling. Then he turned and felt his way back to his bed.

  He eased down onto the mattress. It was about as thin as a folded-up newspaper and just about as soft. He pulled the scratchy blanket around his soggy self and curled into a shaking ball.

  Something snuffled and squeaked under his bed.

  He blinked into blackness and tried not to imagine a day that could be any worse than the one he’d just had. He bit his lip and ran his fingers over the skin of his arms. After a few moments, his thoughts were no longer for himself or his cold or his hunger. Shivering alone in the black, his thoughts were for Sophia. And his silent tears, when at last they came, were for her, too.

  Jonathan gripped the knife in his hand and fought back the tears that burned in his eyes.