29 Liney To Behold
Liney
To Behold
I check on Bridget first. She’s been out there all night. I should’ve left while Elle was sleeping. The answers she gave me, a confusing mixture of truth and lies, weren’t worth the trouble. No matter how much I wish she were still mine, she’s not. A soft snow melts on the roof of the cave.
I tell her everything: the newspaper headlines, the wanted poster, Elle’s story. When I offer that she take the boat now, tell her that it’s too dangerous to have her here, she won’t listen.
“It’s both of us or neither. I won’t leave you on this hellmouth,” Bridget says and kisses me, urgent like a prayer.
I grip her hands so hard I worry I’ll break through her skin.
“Why not leave with me, now?” she asks as she rubs my back in a slow, circular motion.
“I want to. But I promised James.”
Bridget steps back to search my expression. “Don’t you think he’d understand? He was so concerned for your safety.”
“I don’t want to be haunted by him too!”
Bridget frowns. She knows that’s not why. Not really.
“I can’t undo the harm Elle did,” I try again, looking down at our shoes. “To my parents or to him. But if I can help him in this one request… Maybe it’ll help him heal. Maybe that’s enough. I can’t stop caring about what’s right, what a promise means.”
“Are you sure—”
I squeeze her hand, then let go. I don’t want my sister’s cruelty, but I share her stubbornness.
“Take the boat if you need to,” I say. Not a goodbye. A gentle boundary. “I must do this.”
Bridget holds the sides of my face. I want to fall into her arms. Rest. Allow the hurt of the world to tick by without us.
I never used to worry about being good. It was easy as a child.
Acting within my role was expected and tenable.
I said my prayers, practiced piano, and sang in our choir.
That was enough. While Elle struggled with her responsibilities, I floated.
The world wasn’t my concern, nor were any unfortunates within it. Be good, be quiet, be loved.
Then I was engaged to Thomas. My easy life of hanging onto Elle turned sour.
She stole me here. I took on the new role of forlorn, tragic Liney.
Obedient but melancholic. Chamomile convinced me of my own importance and drowned me in wanting.
Filled my mind with false hope of escape while keeping me stuck in place.
She was my misery.
I still didn’t suppose myself as ever in the wrong.
My sister hurt—more than I can imagine—and that hurt created a monster.
I let her braid my hair and cook me supper and kill.
It’s not convenient to bring James Douglas to his rest. But it’s the right thing to do.
That must matter. If to no one else, at least to me.
I kiss Bridget, press until her back is against the cave wall and I’m against her. While this world of men and monsters may never love or understand us, this can be enough. Her hands slip under my—no, the ghost’s—wool jacket, tugging me closer.
“I’ll come back,” I whisper between heavy breaths when we break apart.
“I’ll be here. I promise.”
The snow picks up on my way back to the lighthouse. We’re midway through November. It’ll turn into a storm soon. We can’t still be here when it does.
I open the door and close it behind me as carefully as I can, but there’s no need. Elle isn’t on the main floor. The chesterfield was moved out of the way again. The trapdoor is closed. She’s downstairs.
Now’s my only chance. A frightened Elle, aware of what I know, can’t be reasoned with.
It nearly breaks my resolve that I’ll leave her without another word.
But I grab the skull out of the bedside table and the lantern, then head upstairs.
I tried to take it up last night when she was sleeping, but there was no step or breath I took quiet enough not to rouse her.
It was torturous to lie on the chesterfield pretending to sleep and unable to fulfill the one task James gave me.
The journey up the lighthouse stairs is long, but I manage. Have I gotten stronger since I last trekked up here? Last time I ascended to the lightroom, I’d nearly died the day before. Or perhaps my sister’s worrying added to my frailty.
By the time I reach the top landing, I’m out of breath, but my lungs haven’t started burning. I set the lantern down and keep the skull tucked closely to my side as I hoist myself up the ladder.
The lightroom is the same as last time, though less intimidating in the soft glow of the daylit snow.
Simple wooden benches ring the walls while the center mechanical structure stands dormant.
The large glass windows show a gentle island of maple trees covered in white fluff and lapping waves.
A place that shouldn’t know screams or blood.
I’m losing focus on what matters. The skull. I position it carefully on the bench, pointing it inward toward the lenses.
“I hope this helps, Mr. Douglas,” I say, unsure what might alert him that it’s done.
Nothing happens. I wait a second, then another, then look around the room. I can’t leave this half-done. I sit beside the skull, careful not to disturb it.
“I don’t know if you can hear me. You’re here, in the lightroom.
The sky is beautiful. It’s snowing, but there’s still a little blue peeking out.
The lens is here. It looks good. Um, clean.
You’re on the bench. I’m sure you remember being here.
” I rub my hands together, unsure what else would help connect him here.
“It’s a beautiful little island. Maybe someone will love it the way it should be after we leave. The way you did.”
“Thank you.” He sits beside me, whole. He gazes up at the lens. There’s relief so full in his eyes that it rivals the sun behind him. “I truly mean it, Miss—”
“You can call me Liney.”
“Liney.” He smiles, tears flowing freely from his eyes. “Thank you. You both must leave.”
I nod and reach for his hand, but mine falls through it. I leave it there anyway. So does he.
“We will,” I promise. A second promise. Another I’ll keep. “We’re leaving after this.”
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t do more.”
“Me too.”
We watch slivers of sunrays shine off the lenses. I must leave. I will, but we could both use a moment of kind company.
“It really is beautiful,” he whispers, voice cracking. “But it’s not only that. Beneath the lighthouse, under the basement, there’s…”
Douglas stops mid-sentence. I look over to find him waist-deep into the bench as though it were water instead of wood. His arms are stretched out for anything to grip. Glistening red hands emerge from the wood, fistfuls of his shirt caught in their grasp.
I can’t pull the hand that was overlapping mine a second ago. My mouth won’t form words of warning or comfort. His expression mirrors mine. Confounded horror.
“Another—another layer—Elle’s—run—Liney, run!”
I scramble to grab him, but there’s nothing to hold onto. He falls through the wood until all that remains is the skull. I’m alone again.
I hop through the trapdoor, down the ladder, stair after stair, searching for any sign of him.
Whatever took him is as fast as the Devil himself.
I collapse back to sit against the steps halfway down.
It’s not fair. Kindness, goodness, what do they matter?
I help a ghost, and he’s captured by the evil he feared. I left Bridget alone for this.
Bridget. If the evil she felt can claim Douglas, it can hurt her too.
My heart races, but I raise myself and continue down the spiral stairs and across the room I once called home.
I open the door, and guilt hits me in a crashing wave. My resolve nearly breaks. I’ll leave Elle without another word. But I can’t let her know where I’m going. She’d follow, find us, do what she always does when at risk of losing me: Solve the problem.
I’m not her problem to solve or her victim to protect.
It wasn’t our parents’ death that changed us.
Not even Douglas’s slaying, though horrifying.
I might’ve found a way to love her through every monstrous act.
But I can’t love a person who’ll never see me as equal.
Protection is a weapon when it only shields the lies between us.
I close the door softly behind me. The trek across the snow, which is now sticking to the ground, feels endless. I long for Bridget’s easy smile and strong embrace. She’ll have the energy to row, and we’ll escape.
I’ve dreamed of this moment in so many other scenarios since we arrived. Every impossibility is laid out in front of me, tangible and shining. I don’t have a plan past escape, but that’s all we need. We’ll figure out the rest. What did careful planning do for Elle? It trapped us. No longer.
The cave entrance remains uncovered. Its mouth drips with melting snow. I duck my head and enter. Immediately something feels wrong. Bridget isn’t here.
I scour the cave, but every nook and cranny is empty save for sand, rocks, and a few crabs.
Did she leave? Did I take too long? Or was Elle not in the basement but out here instead? Was I lured? Was Douglas working with her?
None of those feel right. Bridget didn’t leave me behind. She loves me. I will it with every ounce of faith I have left in my small, tired body. My breath comes faster, shallower—no, not now, I can find her, she must’ve—
“Look what the cod nets dragged in.”
That voice. No.
I open my eyes and turn to the back of the cave. Chamomile. Tall, her red dress indistinguishable from the rest of her with everything wet and red and glistening.
Beside her, grasped by the hair and struggling against her grip, is Bridget.
“Didn’t take you long to replace me, did it, Liney?”
I’m frozen. Only my heaving chest and wild eyes move. She grips Bridget harder, earning a seething grunt. They’re in front of an opening that wasn’t there before. I searched there. I must’ve.
“Nothing to say to your old friend, silly?” Chamomile smirks, her voice lower than before. Her face is transformed in malice, and her eyes glow bright, almost white. “After all the fun we had together? I’m hurt.”
“Who is she?” Bridget shouts to me, struggling against her captor.
Chamomile grips Bridget’s hair tighter, and she calls out again in pain. How can she hurt her? How is she here? I can’t find my voice.
“You should’ve learned, Liney,” Chamomile says, backing up into the deeper cave entrance. “God isn’t the only one who listens to your prayers.”
“No!” I step forward, but when I place a foot on the ground in front of me, the searing heat makes me snatch it back. I can’t follow, or I’ll burn my feet clean off.
“High time this mistake gets corrected,” Chamomile muses, looking down her nose at Bridget. “Set everything as it should be.”
Chamomile backs into the deeper cave. I try to get around or move forward, but every touch of earth scorches my skin.
My boot hisses and burnt rubber blooms when I try to brace through the pain.
Bridget’s cries for me heighten until she’s screeching, clawing, fighting in every way I wish I could for her.
“I won’t be long,” Chamomile promises, grinning red-toothed, eyes ablaze.
The walls form back around them, covering the deeper tunnel they disappear into. I test the ground, blistering my feet, until it cools enough for me to walk over. I claw at the wall, but it’s solid rock, only making my palms bleed. I pound against it, but no hollow ring promises a thin cover.
I lost her. We were so close to safe. Instead, Chamomile has dragged her into the hell Douglas warned me of.
I should’ve prepared Bridget for Chamomile. I hid this danger from her. Out of shame. Like Elle would. I lie against the rock, legs useless under the weight of misery.
I’ve lost everything.