15 Elle To Worry
Elle
To Worry
While Liney sleeps, twitching beside me, I plot the murder of Bridget Coleman.
I should conserve my strength. The sun rises above the lighthouse’s spire, marking my twenty-fourth hour awake. I’ll be useless to us if I’m falling over with exhaustion.
But what if she comes back? Murders us while we sleep? A bitter irony.
I’ve only murdered one person up close. He was easy. No one tells you that. Not that any of my tutors or priests were well versed in death, but it always struck me as a difficult act.
It’s not.
The motions of his knife against his throat were laborious, but I’d assumed it’d be more complex.
There should’ve been a moment of decision between maiming and ending a life.
But once the blade is in action, you simply keep going.
You stop seeing the squirming person within your grasp.
You start planning where to put their body so your sister doesn’t see.
You consider how you’ll change their home into yours.
Then they’re dead. You’re a murderer. And you move on to the next task.
My plan for Bridget is simple. Knife, throat, end. It doesn’t matter where, only soon. In a sample of one lighthouse keeper, this plan worked flawlessly.
Anyone who’s come into our lives so serendipitously now must be a plot by Mr. Pratterman. Every time my eyelids droop, I’m assaulted with visions of blood seeping down from the rafters, Liney’s head rolling back in the arms of a sea demon, and my black knife dripping on the floor.
Liney left the lighthouse last night. She displaced my knife before she left, may have used it.
Douglas delayed me, knowing Liney had left.
What did she see? Mr. Pratterman is capable of trickery and magic.
He’s remained closer to this place than I thought.
The taste of him lingers on my tongue long after it should’ve dissipated.
I toss my head back against my pillow. I’ve drifted from fact into speculation.
Liney walked into the storm. She reached the mouth of the spiral after it had consumed the ship. Nausea creeps up my throat at what could’ve happened. Mr. Pratterman wouldn’t have broken our deal if she’d wandered into his domain on her own accord.
A wayward sheep falling off a cliff isn’t the wolf’s fault, though it may feast all the same.
And now Bridget. Bridget Coleman. She had introduced herself in a hurried voice. As if knowing her name would mean anything to me. Please, ma’am, I need to dry off. And she’ll need medical—
No. Her words can’t cloud my thinking. The facts.
Bridget was in the water, hauling my sister. She collapsed beside her on the beach. She came to as I rushed Liney into the lighthouse. She tried to stand her ground, explain herself, but I threw her out. I hoped she was an illusion or spirit. If I didn’t see her anymore, she didn’t exist.
I clench the sheets in tight bundles beside my hips. I need to consider every possibility. What else could Bridget be if not an ordinary young traveler?
A reanimated corpse? If she died but was given life again, would she count as living in the deal? There’s no evidence that Mr. Pratterman includes this among his tricks, but why would he detail them all to me?
A demon? I’ve not seen one yet. Only myself, in a certain sense. She didn’t have the air of a monster. Too scared, too human by far.
A water sprite or other creature from folklore, like mermaids and selkies? She’s too red-faced in the cold.
An omen? Douglas has spoken of forerunners when trying to scare or guilt me. Those specters of death to come. There will certainly be more death on these shores.
An illusion is the only other explanation.
It’s not so strange, not given what I’ve seen conjured.
I’ve been transported to entirely different planes of existence by Mr. Pratterman.
Dripping candles and burning rock. Could a sailor have saved Liney, only to be thrown back into the sea?
Or a rogue wave brought her back and I saw double of her lying on the beach?
The exact wording of the deal is etched into my mind.
You will kill the next living nonkin you see before my next visit.
I was relieved at nonkin. So simple; kill the next person who isn’t Liney.
But it is the living that holds Mr. Pratterman’s curse.
Is Bridget past death, or was she never living to begin with?
I can’t let my guard down, not on this second run with the Devil.
Not even with the girl who is perhaps the reason my sister sleeps beside me now and not at the bottom of the harbor. Or worse.
I close my eyes. The lighting’s changed when I open them again.
How long did I sleep? At least there were no dreams, dark or otherwise.
I get out of bed, careful not to stir Liney.
She snores. She’d be annoying if each honch and haw didn’t relieve me.
Proof she’s alive. Despite the storm, the ship, and the Devil himself.
I make porridge. It usually does the trick, but I’m craving sweetness.
I have a jar of canned peaches upstairs in the supplies room.
It’s stacked beside flour bundles and jars of honey.
It should take less than a minute to retrieve.
If Bridget hasn’t dismantled my locks and planks while I was asleep, she won’t now.
But Bridget isn’t the one I worry over as I softly pad up the stairs. Nor Liney as I search the shelves. Not even Mr. Pratterman’s moonlit eyes haunt me as I grab the half-empty jar.
It’s the lighthouse keeper’s ghost. He stands, same place as last time, when I turn with the jar close to my chest. I can’t stand his downcast expression.
“You dare—” My voice breaks. I sound so weak. No matter the power I can call upon, all its promises of protection and vengeance, afterward I’m just tired flesh and a fearful heart.
“Girl,” he says, like the call of a gull.
I squeeze my arms around the jar. “You dare show yourself, after you nearly killed her?” My weakness has a way of igniting. Now isn’t the time. I look up. Away from those mournful gray eyes, the slump of his shoulders, the gash of his throat.
“I didn’t mean for her to come to harm, just to help her,” he says in a rush. “You must know that something happened to her. I hadn’t sensed it before.”
I let a long breath out through my nose. Damn him. Why do I care? He’s already lied once.
Douglas seizes my silence. “She fought with someone. I couldn’t make them out. A shadow. Liney seemed to know them. They fought. Your sister was nearly killed in my—in the kitchen.”
I fumble and almost drop the jar. Though I catch it in time, I imagine splattered peaches mixed in pieces of glass. The peaches become clumps of viscera in my mind. I nearly retch.
Liney? In a fight? I can’t imagine a more preposterous claim. She’d have told me. But Douglas never tricked me before last night. Condescended and inconvenienced me, absolutely. But he’s never lied.
Did Bridget enter the lighthouse earlier? Why would Douglas not see her? Mr. Pratterman’s work is more insidious than I feared. This illusion may be a dark creation, half-corporeal and half shadow.
“I’ll ask her,” I tell him, but I won’t. I’ll butcher this creature, whether or not she’s alive, and we won’t speak a word about it again. “But so help me, Douglas—”
“It’s Mr. Douglas. Or James.”
James. It trips me. I’ve told him to call me Elle to no avail. Yet James is too familiar. James is a person, not a problem.
“If there’s a way to damn a ghost, I’ll find it.”
Douglas leans his head up in exasperation and curls his fingers inward. I grip the peaches tighter. I want to throttle this man. I still trust him, despite myself.
“You’re blinded by your own hate.” His next words are hesitant. Like he’s approaching a growling mutt. “I want to help her. Even if that means going against you.”
Something bubbles up, lodging in my throat. A sharp flavor of protectiveness I haven’t felt since ballrooms and church pews ruled my life. When the last man felt attached to my little sister. When I didn’t listen to my gut. When a predator stalked in my shadow.
“What, exactly, do you feel for her?” I steep every word in venom.
Douglas frowns, then his eyebrows shoot up in horror. “I don’t—God, no!” I’ve never seen him so flustered. “She’s barely more than a child.”
“That hasn’t stopped others.” My venom turns to melting tears. Douglas has never shown himself to Liney, to my knowledge. There’s nothing in his actions that reflect Thomas. Is it foolishness to believe him?
Douglas takes half a step forward, then stops when I glare. I’m no longer the girl falling apart while sitting on orange crates. Tears don’t mean I need his false comfort.
“My intentions for your sister are protective, but never romantic,” he says with the solemnity of prayer. “I’m inspired by your own feelings. I’ve seen the best of you in how you care for her.”
It could be a compliment. But I can’t forget our context. “Like when I murdered you?”
He flinches, so genteel. He dances around the reality of us. Pretending we can coexist. I wipe my face with one hand, my red-rimmed stare daring him to comment.
“Like when you brush her hair.” His voice is too soft as he tilts his head. “Calming her after a nightmare. Cooking for her and always giving her the larger portion. Teaching her French and laughing off her terrible accent. Singing with her as you wash the dishes. When you’re…you.”
Oh. Douglas doesn’t only see me when I’m about to harness the powers of hell. He sees me in the moments no one else should but Liney. I can’t marry the conflict of this kind-eyed man and the fury that still simmers in my gut.
I could forgive him. Liney is a willful girl on an island of devilry that would take advantage of the spark that makes her eyes alight, her feet dance, and her fingers twirl in unheard music.
It would be easy to forgive. But a pact with the Devil is also easy to make, hard to uphold.
I can’t be tempted by the easy thing.