“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-deepinto 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 andshining. 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.”
