27 Liney To Open
Liney
To Open
I’m combing through the nooks and crannies of the lighthouse searching for the key to the basement when Bridget hollers in victory.
“I found it! One second I’m pacing, the next it’s sitting on that shelf exactly where I’m sure I looked earlier,” she says, grinning as she presents me with an old iron key.
I’m surprised Elle would put the key in plain sight. I inspect the bookcase—it’s full of the last lighthouse keeper’s books. There’s no outline where Bridget found the key. It hasn’t been there long enough to accumulate dust. Did Elle move it? Make a quick trip down there and forget to hide it?
“Elle can’t know we’ve been down there,” I warn as Bridget wastes no time and kneels down to unlock it. “We’ll put it back exactly where we found it.”
“That’ll be hard to do with this.” Bridget shows me a small white ribbon that had been hidden within the lock, now poking out from the key’s prodding. It’s singed on one end, likely had only a couple of strands left to hold it together before it broke off. “Elle’s, I presume?”
I gave her the ribbon years ago as a birthday gift. She used to wear her hair up with it. Now she’s used it to signal my betrayal.
I can’t bring any fire down with us given the quantities of oil downstairs.
We could blow the whole building up with one misplaced step.
Instead, I find a sample I’d collected a few days back while combing the beach.
It’s a microscopic alga that glows a beautiful cyan at night.
Placed inside a lantern with water, it emits a soft glow.
“Like an anglerfish,” I mutter as we descend the old ladder into the basement.
It’s a smaller room than I imagined. I place my feet squarely on the floor, then move out of the way for Bridget. She jumps off the third-lowest ring of the ladder.
“Careful,” I whisper.
The room isn’t full of drums of oil. There’s no smell of vapors. This isn’t a recent change.
“You said there were—” Bridget begins, turning to me, but I shake my head before she can finish.
The light pulses in my lantern, its water disturbed by my movements. It illuminates the stone around us, but not much else. I reach out to one of the walls and trace over the rough surface. The air is dank, but the walls aren’t damp.
“But if there’s no oil, what’s fueling the light?” Bridget asks.
I’m as perplexed as she is. I’m halfway across the room when I spot something in the back corner. It’s white against the dark floor, a spiked lump.
“Something’s there,” I whisper, pointing. “See?”
Bridget strides forward, then freezes a foot from the pile. She reaches back and offers me her hand. I take it, shuffling closer.
“I don’t think the lighthouse keeper drowned,” she whispers, a quiver in her voice.
It’s bones. A pile of them, gleaming in the cool light. There’s the curve of ribs, holes through the pelvis, and a skull atop the rest. Bile collects at the back of my throat, making me cough. I’ve never seen a human skeleton. I want to clamber out of here, shut the door, forget this.
Elle has always been my savior with an edge. How could I know that edge was a knife?
My stomach turns. The kitchen knife. She’s so protective of it.
She’s been serving me cod and preserved peaches with a murder weapon all these months.
She forbade me this room so she could hide him from me.
Lied to me. She knew I wouldn’t ask questions.
Her good little sister would never go snooping where she doesn’t belong.
That night, while I was shivering in the boat, these white pieces were a man. Did he welcome her? Resist her? Threaten her? Or did Elle take advantage of him?
She dropped him down here, closed the trapdoor, then ushered me inside to make a home out of a crime scene. I’ve been living with a murderer wearing the skin of my sister.
“How are they that…” I search for the word and bite down on my tongue to keep from retching.
“Clean?” Bridget squats beside the bones. “No idea. There’s no decay. Only bones.” She examines them while I struggle to keep my nausea at bay.
I need open air, away from this cursed room. Is there another explanation? The lighthouse keeper could’ve been a drunkard, been a villain, attacked my sister, been found dead already—
“Liney?”
My head swims as chills run up my spine. I’m unanchored.
“Hey, hey now—it’s all right.” I can barely hear Bridget as she puts a hand on my shoulder. “Lean against that wall. I’ll investigate.”
I press my back against the cool stone. But cold doesn’t fix cold. I’ll freeze, ocean to ice.
Bridget reaches down to the bones.
“What are you doing?” I ask in a panic.
“Shouldn’t we collect them? If not to confront your sister, at least to give him a proper burial?”
It is the kind thing to do, though I don’t wish to. Finally facing my sister’s crime, I want to turn away. I yearned to know more for so long. To piece together the ripped edges of our lives and stitch them back together. And now? I’m a coward.
“Liney?” Bridget asks, her voice soft but insistent.
“A moment. Please.”
Bridget turns away and picks up a bone near the top of the pile. She turns it in her hands. I make myself watch since I won’t do it myself. That was in a person. It’s been given no more respect than the discarded bones of a fish. I shiver, too aware of my own skeleton.
“I don’t know why I thought they’d be wet,” she admits. “Dry as a bone.” She’s holding back a laugh at the realization.
I let out a tear-choked laugh. Even down here, in the dark heart of my sister’s sin, she’s found a way to thaw me from the fear.
I take a few steps away from the wall, toward her.
If she can be brave half a world away from home and nearly killed twice on the same island, I can be too.
I put a hand on her shoulder, squeeze it. She leans her head against my arm.
“I don’t know what to do,” she admits, grimacing.
“Anyone deserves better than this.” Frustration tinges my voice. “I wish we could talk to him.”
“Talk?” Bridget’s eyebrows turn up. “I know you love your sister, but I don’t know how much clearer it could be that—”
I wring the frustration out of my hands. “I’m not saying she didn’t do this. He’d merely have a lot to say about who threw him down here. Left him alone.”
Bridget holds the bone level with the floor, cradling it carefully. Neither of us says it, but we both bow our heads for a moment. I close my eyes and offer a small prayer. Let us know how to put this soul to rest.
I want to apologize to him, yet I know that’s far too little and I’m not the one he needs an apology from.
Where do we go from here? How can I look in Elle’s eyes again without seeing this room, these bones?
Why did she just leave them here, so close to me?
Did she mean to tell me eventually? My throat constricts.
Am I having another asthma attack? My eyes, swollen, burn from tears.
I breathe in as deep as I can, shallower than I’d like but not dangerous.
At least not yet. I scrunch my face tight.
Bridget’s hand grasps mine and pushes against me gently, like the last time I had an attack. I concentrate on that connection, warmth replacing fear.
“Bridget,” I whisper, weak between long breaths but full of gratitude.
“Liney. Something’s happening.”
I open my eyes, blink a few times to clear the bleary streaks, taking one more breath as deep as I can rattle. It’s not getting worse. Good. I’ll survive the basement yet.
The streaks aren’t going away. I squint. It’s not my eyes. It’s in the room. The air above the pile of bones simmers.
“Our breath? Disturbing the air?” Bridget suggests in a rush. She can see a pile of bones without a pause, but this has her squeezing my hand again. “Gas, maybe?”
It’s hard to look at the streaks, like the edges of a mirage or the sun.
“We should go,” she whispers. “How long have you been breathing like that?”
She noticed. I step closer to the—what? Apparition?
Illusion? Spontaneous fog? The longer I stare, the quieter my heart beats in my ears.
I’m no less scared. Yet there’s an uncanny comfort emanating from it.
It’s warm but not like fire. Like Bridget’s hand in mine. The tug of my hair when Elle braids it.
It doesn’t make sense. Certainly not to Bridget. She squeezes my hand. I squeeze back and take another step closer. There’s more shape to it now. Out of focus and yet there’s something there I’ve known for a while now but never had a name for.
The knife that skittered to my hand. Shaking cupboard doors. The key to this room?
“I know who you are,” I tell him. “I don’t know how. But I’m right, aren’t I? Show yourself.”
Bridget is asking me to leave again, but I can’t give up on him. While Elle has been dabbling in something beyond me, a force that creates fire in the eyes and compelled her to hurt Bridget, does she know she created something down here too?
The focus shifts like a lens flipped the right way. Where the hazy patch was, there floats the ghost. Was he waiting for my invitation? Awoken by our presence?
He’s young. His clothes are loose and well worn, a patched pair of trousers and rumpled work shirt under suspenders. I recognize them. Elle’s clothes. His beard is trim, well maintained.
His eyes are rounded at the bottom and flat at the top, creating a perpetually sorrowful gaze, though his brows are upturned in shock, his mouth open in surprise. I’d think him real, were he not partially obscured by the bricks behind him.
“I’m not dangerous!” he sputters in a rush.
Bridget nods but stays silent. I’m frozen in place.
“My name is James,” he continues, his gaze shifting back and forth between us as he drifts to the ground. “I lived here. I mean you no harm.”
“James Douglas?” I ask. The name the glassblower mentioned; I’d forgotten until now.
His gaze stays on mine, softening. “Miss Caroline. Yes. I know—”
I take a step back. “How do you know my name, sir?”
I’ve learned not to trust what appears to be gentle.