Wicked as They Come

I shouldn’t have been alive.

Her mouth moved.

“You have to swim to shore,” she said in my mind, her voice musical and sweet. “Kick up, get above the waves. You’re so close.”

Am I dead? I thought.

“Almost,” she said. “But you have to make it to the lighthouse. You have to free me.”

How?

“Open the door upstairs. Find my bones and bury them. I’ve been waiting for years. Help me, and I’ll save you. Will you do it?”

I’ll try.

“Promise!”

I promise. Just help me.

“Then kick up. Break the surface. Breathe. Swim. Go now!” she cried.

A burst of white-hot lightning shot through my muscles, shocking me into action. I gave a mighty kick, and my head broke the surface. Water dribbled from my mouth, and then I was gasping for breath, starving for air. My arms churned in the water, my legs kicked, and the waves seemed to help me, pushing me toward the shore.

I hit the sand hard, the waves driving me into the rocky beach. I coughed and dragged myself forward with my elbows, until Criminy lifted me from the sand. He sat on the beach with me collapsed across his body, his arms holding me tight.

“I knew you could do it, love,” he said fiercely. “I knew you could.”

“I didn’t,” I said, holding up my ragged glove and ripped sleeve. When he saw the blood running down my fishbelly-white arm, he licked his lips and shuddered, and I tucked it under my armpit and scooted away to a safe distance. “Something dragged me down. But then there was a girl, and she helped me.”

“A girl?” Criminy asked, eyes sharp.

“I guess she was a ghost,” I said, hugging myself tightly and shaking, the fear finally catching up with me. “Or my mind playing tricks on me. She made me promise to go to the lighthouse and find her bones and bury them. She said she’d been waiting.”

“Then we must,” Criminy said, patting me from farther away than we would both have preferred. “Ghost curses are hard to break. But first you need to wrap up that wound. I can be good, but not that good.”

He looked toward the lighthouse, and I followed his glance up the tall building, the upper story lost in thick clouds. More time lost.

As we picked our way along the large rocks and tide pools, I asked, “Ghosts are real here?” I wasn’t surprised, not really. But I wanted to know more. Was I going to be seeing ghosts all over the place now?

“As real as they are anywhere, I suspect,” he said. “I’ve never seen one, only the results of their handiwork. It’s only natural that a glancer would see such things. You walk the line between the worlds in more ways than one, you know.”

He was trying very hard not to look at me, not to smell me. Despite his self-control, it was still difficult for him to ignore my freshly bleeding arm. On the beach, he had tossed me a handkerchief and kept his distance as I tied it around the wound. And then he’d found a vial in his pack and chugged it, his bright eyes never leaving me. I briefly wondered if it was the one taken from my own veins in Manchester.

The lighthouse loomed over us, a sagging tower of loose boards and peeling paint. The stripes that had seemed so fresh and new from the hill, pitch black and snowy white, were faded to light gray and darker gray, desolate and reproachful. I didn’t want to get near it, but I was bound by my promise to a dead girl. Criminy said that she had the power to curse me, and I believed him. I didn’t want another enemy in Sang, especially not a paranormal one.

Criminy kicked the door open. It smacked against the wall, making the entire building shake. The stark room inside was coated with dust, the furniture leaning and splintered.

“What happened?” I asked.

“No one’s come here for years,” Criminy said. “The ships have enough instruments and clockworks to tell the navigators where the rocks are. It’s crude and outdated technology, shining a light around the darkness.”

“But I saw it,” I said, puzzled. “Earlier, when we looked down from the hill. It was orange, and it spun slowly and hit the water.”

He turned to look down at me, troubled. “You saw a light? Here? In this lighthouse?”

“Yes,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

“No,” he said quietly.

I didn’t know what to say. Why was I seeing things that weren’t there?

Criminy pointed to the spiral staircase. “If you must do this, that’s the only way up,” he said. “But I won’t think any less of you if you want to walk right back out that door and bugger the ghost. There are ways around curses, although they aren’t pretty.”

“We’re already here,” I said. “Let’s get it over with.”

He sighed and bowed. “After you, love.”

My boots squelched up the tight curve of the stairs, and the ancient wood creaked threateningly under my heels. I picked up the pace, eager to be done with this errand and on to my own treasure hunt. The city, the storm, the sea, the ghost—it was high time to be gone from Brighton.

Around and around we went, Criminy’s step light behind me. I hadn’t asked him much about his own journey over the wall, but he looked as fresh and crisp as if he’d just stepped out of his wagon. But he was missing his satchel.

Finally, the staircase opened up in a smaller, sparse room. It was the living quarters, with one narrow metal bed against the wall, a tiny potbelly stove, and dozens of sharp metal hooks hanging empty from the faded white wood. I felt as if I was being watched, but there was nowhere for a watcher to hide.

“This is where the lighthouse tender lived,” Criminy said softly. “One lonely person, tending the flame above.”

“I don’t think that was her, though.”

“I don’t see any bones,” he said. “Not even a chest or a box or a cupboard.”

“She said there was a door upstairs,” I offered.

“Only one way to go, love,” he said, pointing his chin at the stairs. “You’re not scared of heights, are you?”

“Why?”

“Because I think most of the glass has blown out, and it’s going to be windy up there.”

I stepped gingerly back onto the staircase and clung to the inside rail on my way up. The tight curve opened onto a narrow walkway with a waist-high wooden railing. He was right. It was a long, long way down, and most of the glass was gone. The jagged remains of the windows that had once sheltered the flame invited the wind to whip us with an impersonal, random violence. Thunder boomed, making the lighthouse shake and quiver beneath us.

There was a small, cylindrical room in the very center of the roof, about five steps away. A metal ring that reminded me of a giant cigarette lighter sat on top of the room. She had to be there, in the metal closet under the flame. It was the only place we’d seen where bones might be found, and a sinister place it was for a young girl’s eternal rest.

I edged away toward the door. I felt blind and tiny, with nothing to hold on to, and the wind played with me like a cat toying with a mouse. I tried the handle, and it was unlocked. I glanced behind me to make sure Criminy was close. He raised his eyebrows at me but said nothing. When I opened the door to look inside the small room, his hand was on my shoulder.

The room had riveted metal walls, and it was about six feet square. The warm air hit us like a puff of breath, carrying the stale scent of death. The evening light from the open doorway showed a grisly scene.

Rusty bloodstains remained where fingers had once clawed helplessly at the walls. A figure huddled in the corner, mostly preserved by the dry, salty air sealed within. A mummy. The bobbed black hair was intact, and the skull was covered with taut black skin. Her dress was so thin now as to be transparent, white with a high, lacy collar.

“The poor girl,” I whispered.

Before Criminy could speak, the door slammed shut behind us.

And we were trapped in the blackness with a ghost.

22

“That little bitch!” Criminy shouted.

I found his hand. “She’s here, you know,” I whispered.

In response, eerie, girlish laughter echoed off the metal walls. “Three ghosts in a lighthouse,” she whispered, and the voice was different from the calm, pleading sweetness I’d heard underwater. Up here, the voice was filled with madness.

She giggled, and Criminy growled, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend eternity with a little strumpet like you.” He pounded on the door. It didn’t budge. It was airtight, of course.

“You’ll never get out,” she sang. “I couldn’t. And you won’t.”

There was a pause, and I could hear myself and Criminy breathing.

And then came the gruesome scratching of fingernails on a chalkboard.

Or bones on metal walls.

“What happened to you?” I asked, my voice flat, guarded.

“He was a Bludman, and I was a maid,” she whispered. “We fell in love. But I was betrothed to my brother’s best friend. My love and I were going to stow away on a ship, go to Almanica and start over fresh, where people wouldn’t hate us for loving each other. But my brother found our letters. He knew where we were meeting. When I came here, he and my betrothed found me, locked me in to die alone. Told me I deserved it for loving a filthy Bludman. Called me an abomination.”

She tittered in my ear. “Just like you.”

“What happened to the Bludman?” I asked softly.

“I never found out,” the voice echoed. “I died here. And I’ve been lonely.”

I felt Criminy’s hand on my arm, and it traveled down to my wrist. I could sense his urgency, so I coughed, trying to cover up the furtive noises as he pressed Uro’s head and the little snake whirred with gears. I waited to see red lights, but Criminy must have planned ahead and shielded the ruby eyes.

“Your Bludman—what was his name?” I asked, my voice loud in the tiny room.

“His name was Scarab Crumbly,” the voice said, dreamy. “We met in the market. His hair was golden and wavy, like a lion. He had eyes as deep as the sea. And he loved me.” ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">