27 Liney To Open #2
James lifts his hands, palms open, and doesn’t move. “I’ve known of you since your arrival with your sister. I’d be happy to explain. But”—he glances upward at the ceiling—“are you two alone here?”
“Don’t answer that,” Bridget whispers, gripping my hand.
“How can we trust you, sir?” I ask. He seems soft, plaintive. But Chamomile once appeared as a friend.
James bites at his lip. He’s so real despite the transparency. I expected a ghost to be ethereal, not a man I might’ve seen during a walk in the city. But that’s all ghosts are. Imprints of the living, no grander for having died.
“I don’t agree with what Elle is doing,” he explains. He refers to her so personally! “Has she told you about me? About what happened?”
I hesitate from speaking. Is this a trick? I’m not good at riddles.
“We won’t find common ground if we can’t trust each other with some information,” Bridget interjects, squeezing my hand once more. “He’s dead. What can he do even if he wanted to?”
“Nothing,” James offers. He wants to be helpful.
How long has it been since he last had a conversation?
“Until now I thought it impossible for you to see me or hear me. I’ve observed you.
I have no ill will. You love cheese and chocolate.
You like to steal from the storage room when Elle is upstairs.
You sing when you wash dishes, twice as loud when your sister can’t hear.
She loves you. No matter her brutality.”
I’m rooted in place by the details, speechless. How much of my life has this man known? A blush spreads across my face at the thought.
“Are you always here?” Bridget asks. “Have you seen everything?”
James shakes his head and forms a tight smile. “I drift in and out. Some days I’m stronger, I can even move shutters or flip pages. I am entangled with this spot, same as when she killed me.”
A spike of ice rips through my jaw and down my neck at the word kill. It’s undeniable now. What did this kind-eyed man do to deserve it? She must have needed to do it. Elle has so much turmoil inside her, but cruelty was never her vice.
“When I saw your labored breathing, Miss Caroline, I couldn’t stand to watch,” he continues. “I pushed through. Same as the night I pushed the knife.”
“That’s how I knew it was you. The knife. Something in the feeling.” My heart leaps up my throat at the memory. I thought Chamomile an angel, even Bridget at first. Now staring at a true ghost, all I can see is how human he is. “You used to rattle the shutters too, didn’t you?”
He looks away. Is that a flush to his cheeks?
“I had a flair for the dramatic in the first few months. In truth, I could be rather a terror to your sister. Though, I’m sure you understand, not undeserved.”
I tell him what Elle told me the night we arrived. That we were headed to an abandoned island, that he was dead before we’d ever arrived. As I say it all, more tears well, but I blink them away. I don’t want his pity for being a fool, and I’m not the one suffering here.
“No wonder you don’t trust me,” James scoffs. “It’s hard to remember you don’t know me when I’ve known you for so long.”
I step forward. This man holds no malice. I know the tension of a body that wants to hurt but holds it back. He has none.
“Then what really happened?” I ask. Will I believe him over my sister? Yes. She had a year of chances to let me into her darkness. She chose for it to envelop her instead.
“I didn’t know who your sister was when she knocked on my door.
” He looks back to the bones. “She asked for shelter. I was putting a kettle on for tea when she did this.” He leans his head back to expose his neck.
Beneath the line of his beard, a broad gash runs from side to side.
It’s jagged and exposes flaps of skin. Within lies a mess of cords and bone.
The cavity inside darkens and blood drips out of the wound.
Ruby-black blood forms a river down onto his chest.
Bridget’s breath hitches while I take a step back. The last time I saw that much blood, I’d nearly been killed.
“Sorry.” James adjusts the collar of his shirt, sheepish. “I don’t control it.”
“She attacked you after you’d welcomed her?” I fight not to hold my nose in the copper-tinged air.
“She was vicious. Wild-eyed. She slayed me before I could offer more. I’ve been tethered here since while she undoes my duties.”
I can’t tell for certain in the dimness, but there’s a contradiction in James’s face when he speaks of Elle. There’s anger and pain, but something else slips into the crinkles of his eyelids or the twitch of his mouth. Admiration? Begrudging pride?
“How did your body end up down here?” Bridget asks.
James laughs, hollowly. “She threw me down the trapdoor before you arrived. After you’d gone to sleep, she crept down and hauled me back up with a rope around my waist. She took me out to the ocean, but I kept floating back to shore.
She tried to weigh me down, rowed out until the island was a blip on the horizon, but I always came back.
I didn’t mean to, but I haunt the lighthouse.
” He shrugs. “Eventually she brought my body down here and boiled off everything until only the bones remained. She did a remarkable job. Not a scrap of sinew left.”
I hold back a gag while Bridget places the bone back down on the pile and wipes her hands on her skirt.
“I forgot; my apologies. I’m not used to speaking to the squeamish.”
“Have you seen others like you here?” Did he see Chamomile? I try to imagine them together, but their pieces don’t fit.
“There are other forces at work.” He nods downward. “This island is on top of something dangerous, Li—Miss Caroline.”
“Were you about to call me Liney?” I can’t help but smile.
“It’s what Elle calls you,” he says simply but keeps his gaze away from me.
“Have you spoken to her?” How did Elle hide a third person, no matter how incorporeal, for so long? Then again, so did I.
“Near every day. Often in unbecoming ways.” James looks away as though ashamed.
I imagine she deserved any cross word this kindly man threw at her.
“Though we’ve been much more civil these past weeks.
You understand Elle’s complexity. Stubborn as the night is dark yet quick to act.
Often against her own self-interests, if it means protecting you. ”
I hesitate to respond given the tone in his voice. What has led to such tenderness? Elle was never a charmer. Were it any other pair, in any other circumstance, I might entertain that James held affections for her.
“That certainly recontextualizes things,” I finally say. How is it harder to understand what this could be than his murder? “To think that you’ve been alongside us all this time, helping where you can.”
Dare I believe he’s been courting his own murderer from beyond the grave? Impossible. And yet there’s something so alive in his eyes when he says my sister’s name.
“I didn’t mean to overwhelm you.” Each word rushes after the next. He’s nervous. “Until now I never knew if we’d speak. There’s much wrong in this place. Evil. If you heed nothing else from me, leave. As soon as you can.”
“I knew it!” Bridget peers around the room as though a ghoul might jump out at us from the stones any second, now it’s been spoken. “I knew I felt something.”
“What is wrong?” I prod, keeping us focused.
“Devil work with your sister at its core. I’m so sorry. I’ve done what I can, but she may be too far in his clutches.”
His? Devil? My instincts return to me. Run, get out, run. The words press into my calves and rattle the lantern.
“Do you feel it?” James asks Bridget. They stand in silence, eyes closed and searching.
“It’s like a void in the center,” Bridget says, more confident now.
James nods, clasping his hands together. “The void changes shape. Sometimes it’s small, and sometimes it reaches past the edges of the island. And now…?”
Bridget screws up her face, concentrating.
“There’s another void… I can’t feel it itself, but I can feel around it.
Like…” She turns to me, searching for the words as though describing a color without using its name.
She has a sense I don’t. “Like noticing shadows in shadows, seeing what you can’t see. ”
“It’s Elle,” James confirms. “She’s nearly here. We have little time. I shouldn’t have wasted so much of it.”
“It’s still a day too early,” I protest.
“It’s her.” Bridget’s voice is stronger, surer.
“I don’t…” I step away from them both. A ghost who knows me far more than he should and a woman I’m growing to love. Both on my side, both against my sister. “You think Elle is under some demonic spell?”
James’s eyes are glassy in the lantern light. His edges lose their crispness in tear blots. Textures blur like when he appeared. He must see my reaction because he looks down at himself and grimaces.
“It takes most of my focus to stay here this long,” he explains. “And I wish with all my heart that it were a spell.”
“We need to go.” Bridget takes my hand in hers. It’s clammy but strong. “Liney. Before she gets here.”
We back away to the ladder. I hate leaving James down here.
“May I ask one favor?” he asks. Being a ghost suits him. Those downcast eyes hold mourning tenderly. Like love. Like heartbreak.
“Would you bring my skull up to the lightroom?” He nods to the bone pile. “I can’t go myself. It would give me peace to know I’m where I ought to be. At least a part of me.”
Bridget moves to pick it up, but I tug at her sleeve and draw her toward the ladder. It was my sister who created this hell for him. This is my responsibility.
I approach the pile. The skull reflects a dull ivory gleam. It’s surprisingly small. A shiver runs through me once again at the image of my own skull beneath skin and muscle.
“You don’t mind me taking you?” I check.
“I’d appreciate you being gentle. And I’m sorry to ask.”
I take the skull. It’s lighter than I expected.
“You haunt this whole place, but you can’t go up there yourself?” I ask as Bridget takes my lantern from me and heads to the ladder.