In the night the school loomed like a monster with square edges: dark and wicked in the moon-tinted snow. She pulled off her ski cap, letting her tri-colored hair fall free. Nobody had hair like Christina. She counted on her silver and gold locks to protect her from the demons of the dark.
The winter wind bit through Christina’s heavy coat. Who would have thought she would start the second semester with breaking and entering?
What if I get caught? Christina thought, flattening herself against an icy brick wall. In the blackness she could not see herself. Her shadow no longer existed: she was a non-person.
If I get caught, it will be exactly what the Shevvingtons want. But nobody else can stop the Shevvingtons. “Maybe you could have an accident,” they had whispered down the table.
The Shevvingtons had a grip on the adult community like it was a dog on a leash. No parent, no grown-up, no teacher would save Dolly.
She knew the Shevvingtons well. Other people might rent a movie or read a library book for weekend entertainment, but the Shevvingtons loved to gloat. Somewhere, someplace lay a stack of papers and photographs of all their previous victims.
Last fall she had believed any incriminating papers would be in the Guidance Office. There had been no papers there, though, only computer disks, and she had gotten caught trying to find the right disk.
Then she had searched every inch of Schooner Inne. She had even looked and measured for secret compartments and hidden backs on cabinets and bookcases.
But there was nothing at Schooner Inne except the weird whistle of the wind off the Atlantic Ocean crying, “Fffffffffffff!” until Christina grew dizzy and sick trying not to hear it.
But now she knew about the briefcase. A container Mr. Shevvington stroked like a pet.
Christina could imagine Mr. Shevvington … the office door locked … his secretary told to hold telephone calls … she could see his fine suit, his gleaming vest, the dashing little scarf he liked to wear … taking a beloved file from the deep, dark leather. How well she knew that private, gloating smile.
The power of adults! How they could humiliate a child in class. How easily they could manipulate and frighten. How they could control a child’s future by vicious rumor or carefully planned coincidence.
Anya had been the hope and pride of Burning Fog Isle. And now, thanks to hard work on the Shevvingtons’ part, Anya was a high school dropout who worked at the laundromat, folding other people’s clothing … if she remembered how. And the Shevvingtons were so clever! They convinced everybody that it was Anya’s fault. “Poor Anya has a weak character,” they said.
Before Anya, the victim had been Robbie’s sister Val. Christina would always remember Robbie’s warning, when school started last fall. “You’re new here, Christina. You’ve been out on that island, protected from things. You don’t know. Be careful of the Shevvingtons.”
And Christina had said, “Why?”
“I had an older sister,” he replied, giving the sister no name, no description, as if she were truly not a person, just a thing. Robbie’s eyes were sad and dark.
But later Christina found out. Her name was Val. She was even worse than Anya. She’d been stuck in an institution. Was still there. “Why don’t your parents do something about the Shevvingtons?” Christina had cried.
Robbie raised his eyebrows. “They are grateful to the Shevvingtons,” he said quietly. “For trying so hard to help Val. For finding her a counselor, and when that didn’t work, for helping them put Val away.”
So among the files Mr. Shevvington would smile over would be Val’s. He had truly triumphed with Val. There was nothing at all left of her.
Before Val, Christina had no knowledge. The Shevvingtons had not been in Maine before that.
I will find out, Christina thought. I will get the truth. I will stop the Shevvingtons before they can fill any folders full of Dolly or me.
A pink overhead light in the parking lot buzzed like a swarm of hornets. Christina gripped a wire trash basket and rolled it over the ice-pocked snow. She stood it up under the girls’ bathroom window.
What if Mr. Shevvington had gone into the bathroom to check, once he’d spotted her coming out? What if he knew her errand? What if he had heard her sneaking out of Schooner Inne and gotten here ahead of her?
The rhythm of her breathing was frantic. Her lungs slammed against her ribs. She climbed on top of the garbage can. With cold fingers she felt the window sill.
Neither the janitors nor Mr. Shevvington had found her folded paper towel. She forced her fingers under the crack and opened the window.
Swinging one foot in, Christina rested her stomach on the sill and then lowered herself sideways inside the school. Her heart was pounding so hard her chest hurt. She took the flashlight out of her inside jacket pocket and turned it on.
The compartments and sinks of the girls’ bathroom glittered cold and metallic. The dozen mirrors threw Christina’s reflection back and forth. She crept out of the bathroom. The door shut silently and slowly behind her.
There were no windows in the halls.
The darkness was complete. As sick, as abnormal as the Shevvingtons.
The thin circle of light from her flash was pitiful. Her hand shook with fear, and the light shivered with her wrist.
Somebody in the blackness was breathing.
Christina froze like an icicle. She could not think.
The breathing was heavy and irregular and thick. It —it —
— it’s me, she thought. I’m so scared I’m panting.
She leaned against the wall for a moment, remembering gym exercises. Three deep breaths, she told herself. She sucked air into her lungs, held it, heaved it out. Three times.
It actually worked. She was calmer. She moved her feet again. Left. Right. Left.
She was strong with purpose, as strong as the island granite from which she had come. They can’t stop me, Christina thought proudly.
She forgot how many girls they had stopped before her. Girls who were older, stronger, smarter.
Chapter 7
MR. SHEVVINGTON’S OFFICE DOOR was open.
This surprised Christina so much she was almost afraid to push it after she found the handle would turn. Could he be waiting inside?
No. If Christina had made any noise leaving Schooner Inne, it had been covered by the slapping of ocean waves. If poor Anya had heard Christina creeping, she’d think it was a ghost and tremble beneath her covers. Michael and Benj slept with their radio on and never heard anything but drums. Dolly slept as only a small child can sleep, thickly and completely.
Now Christina pressed against the outer office wall. With the tip of her toe, she pushed the principal’s door, like a policeman afraid the bad guy inside would have a gun.
The door moved without sound and without resistance. But it did not stay open. She had to hold it. She was terrified it would close on her, trap her inside Mr. Shevvington’s office, like a lobster in a trap: easy to crawl in, impossible to back out.
She used a huge telephone book to prop the door open.
She planned to touch nothing. Mr. Shevvington might even use fingerprints against her. Her mother’s hand-knitted mittens would keep her fingers safe.
The briefcase sat by the desk, half in the cavity where his feet went. Where he could reach down, just as Christina had imagined, to stroke its leather skin and remember gladly what it held.
Christina lifted the briefcase. It was full. These have to be the papers I want! she thought.
She did not want to turn on lights to examine the papers. She did not want to be there another second longer than she had to. She would take the briefcase —
But where?
She could not hide it in her bedroom at Schooner Inne. It was too small, too barren, for hiding places. She could not hide it anywhere else in the Inne either. Mrs. Shevvington spent all her spare time polishing, keeping the Inne gleaming for the guests who never came. Perhaps Anya’s laundromat — that hot, d
amp back room full of lint and lost socks?
Christina slipped out of the office, letting the door close. It made a little snick. She put the telephone book back exactly as it had been. She let herself out into the hall.
Far down the hall, an EXIT sign gleamed hot pink and dusty.
A man stood under the sign, his shoulders pink with EXIT light. He laughed, a low, insane giggle. His dark rubbery body gleamed. She knew he was a man by his great size — and yet he was too smooth-edged to be a person. He was something else. Something not human.
Giggling, the thing moved fluidly toward her as if underwater … swimming Christina’s way.
She felt underwater herself — eyes, brain, lungs, and legs clogged with terror.
The thing waved at Christina.
It swam down the hall, arms out to catch her.
There was nowhere to go but down the hall.
Christina fled toward the opposite EXIT sign. But it was blockaded by a diamond-crossed grill — one of the moveable walls strung out to block the halls at night, so the people who came to the basketball games in the gym could not just cruise throughout the school.
The rubbery, giggling thing had long legs — much longer than Christina’s. Nor was the thing weighed down by a heavy briefcase.
It came so close Christina could even smell it. It smelled like low tide — like the ocean in summer.
Christina swerved into the gym.
It was black as velvet in there. She turned off her flashlight and scooted under the bleachers. She ran down into the middle of them and crouched, motionless.
Her lungs refused to stay motionless. They heaved, sucking in air as if they belonged to somebody else entirely. Sssssshhhh, she said to her lungs and Hhhhhhhhh, her lungs said back, screaming for oxygen.
The gym doors clanked open.
For a horrible moment the gleaming creature was framed in the faint pinkish light from the center hall.
Then the gym door closed.
It was in the gym with Christina.
Getting closer, coming toward her as if he could see in the dark. As if the whites of her eyes or the heaving of her lungs was a sign to him. The giggle was part groan, part insanity.
The scent of the sea was so strong it was like the tide coming in. Did he live underwater? Was he human? Did the Shevvingtons’ evil extend to some other world Christina could not even imagine?
The thing approached the bleachers — not from the side, where he could slip in where she hid and grab her — but from the front, where he could push the bleachers together. Shove them against the wall.
Crush Christina.
She was hollowed out with fear. So this was how Anya felt — kneeling, helpless, caught — a victim. Without an exit, without hope.
The creature in the wet suit pushed the first row of bleachers under the second row. She was staring at his knees, and then his knees vanished because he shoved both those rows under the third row. He was making a wood-and-metal wall. He would shove on until there was no room for Christina. Until there was no Christina.
The bleachers protested. They clanked. Their joints fought back a little bit.
Christina, of the island, strong as granite, choked back sobs. She would not beg. She would not plead. She would not give in!
She had her proof in her hand, but there would be a different kind of proof in the morning.
The body of Christina Romney.
I want my mother! Christina thought. She clung to the mittens her mother had knit her. They gave her strength. There was love knit into that wool. Duck walking, Christina crept toward the side.
Now the thing pushed the three stacked bleachers under the fourth. He had to use his shoulder to force them, but all it cost him was a little grunt. Usually it took the whole basketball team to shut the bleachers.
He’s so strong, she thought.
Christina emerged at her edge.
If he catches me … Christina thought.
She waited until he was throwing his shoulder against the stacked seats. Then she ran.
She fled the gym, flinging the door open. She skidded on the waxed linoleum and raced down the hall to the girls’ room. Please let me get in here and close the door before he sees where I’m going! she prayed.
In the bathroom she was reflected in the mirrors: fear was painted on her face like a melted, deformed Barbie doll.
She climbed up onto the window sill but couldn’t get a grip with her mittens on. She slipped back onto the floor.
Behind her the bathroom door opened and the giggle pierced the room like knives.
Christina dived face first out the window, missing the trash can by inches, and falling instead onto a mattress of new-fallen snow.
The weather had changed as it did in Maine, instantly and without warning. She leaped to her feet and ran on. In the parking lot horrible buzzing lights illuminated her like a moth to be stabbed on a pin.
She ran across the playing fields toward the village.
Snow blew in her face and obscured her vision.
For three steps she ran on top of the snow. Then her foot broke through the crust. She floundered up to her knees. The wind whistled around her head and through the three colors of her hair as if she were a barn roof.
She could not hear the giggle, but that was because the snow had become a storm, and the Atlantic Ocean was pounding and the wind shrieking. She came to the Singing Bridge, whose open iron fretwork made the car tires hum when they passed over. The iron was solid with ice. With each splash of the extremely high tide, another slick layer was added.
To get to Schooner Inne she had to cross the Singing Bridge.
It will sweep me away, thought Christina Romney. The sea will take me down into Candle Cove and take me out with the tide. I will be frozen solid, like a maiden in an old poem: all ice. Even my heart and soul.
Exactly what the Shevvingtons want.
They planned this.
They knew.
They’re inside even now.
Laughing.
Chapter 8
SHE CLUNG TO A steel cable.
The mittens her mother had knit her were double layered: black with white angora stars. The yarn froze to the steel, and the leaping seawater soaked the mittens, freezing them into hand-shaped curls.
I was wrong, thought Christina Romney, her hands frozen to the bridge. It was not Dolly they were after. It was me.
The air from the ocean was so full, of salt and snow that she could actually see the wind.
Christina was lashed to the bridge by the very mittens her mother had knitted her. She pulled her hands out of the mittens, leaving them frozen to the steel. “You won’t win!” she shouted to the wind. “I am Christina of granite. So there!”
She fought the wind like a wrestler until she got off the Singing Bridge. She turned her back on the wind and half crawled up Breakneck Hill Road. She reached the huge green double doors of Schooner Inne. She found her key in her pocket. Her frozen blue fingers forced it into the lock. She opened the door, slipped in, and shut it behind her. The wallpaper was flocked and formal, put up by the sea captain of so long ago. But the air in the house was chilled, infected by the Shevvingtons.
Christina’s throbbing heart did not supply enough energy for the climb to her room. I am old, thought Christina. Perhaps my hair is gray now, instead of silver and gold and chocolate.
She touched her hair, but all she felt was melting snow. I don’t have the briefcase. I dropped it somewhere.
She stared at her empty hands. How, oh how could she have done this? Gone through such torture, only to have lost the documents — the proof?
She began crying.
She hung up her coat. She took off her sneakers and set them to dry over the heating vent. She peeled off her soaking socks. The ice that clung to them melted in her hands. She looked up the whirling stairs and the white banisters that blurred like a forest. The first flight was not so bad. Thick plush carpet softened the way for her frozen toe
s.
The second flight, bare and slippery wood, was cruel and unwelcoming. This is home? Christina Romney thought. This is where I live?
At the top of the stairs, out of the dark behind the balcony came a waft of white. White that swirled like snow or ghosts. Christina was enveloped in white.
She tried to scream, but the white smothered her.
“It’s me, Anya,” whispered the white. “Where have you been, Chrissie? The Shevvingtons came up and checked your bed, and when they saw you weren’t in it, they laughed and went back to their room. Where have you been? Are you all right?”
Anya’s swirling lacy nightgown, like a bride’s trousseau, folded around Christina. “You’re freezing,” Anya whispered. “Come, I’ll get in bed with you. Body heat will help.” They tiptoed to Christina’s room. It was tiny and dark, with bare floors and cracked plaster. Christina had added flower pictures and her mother’s vivid quilt and a little white rug, but the room stayed dark. There were times when Christina and The Dark were like best friends, huddled together under the covers. But tonight The Dark was laughing, ready to bring out its real friends, creatures of the shadows and the sea.
Anya peeled away Christina’s soaking jeans and hung them to dry. The wind came through the electrical outlets in prong-shaped drafts. “I turned on the electric blanket after the Shevvingtons left,” Anya whispered, “so the mattress would get hot for you.”
Usually Christina hated the electric blanket. She wanted the layers of wool to weight her down. Now the hot blanket was hope and safety.
“There,” said Anya, rubbing Christina’s feet, “you’re all right now.” Under the covers, they wrapped their arms around each other until Christina stopped shivering.
“Anya?” said Christina.
“Mmmmm?”
“Are you back?”
“What do you mean, Chrissie? I’ve never been away. I’ve lived here for a long, long time.”
“But — you waited up for me.” Be sane again, Anya, pleaded Christina silently, like prayers. Be my friend, I need a friend, I need you on my side. And you’re older than me. Oh, Anya, I want somebody older than me! When I was a little girl on the island, I always wanted to be the oldest. I wanted to be in charge and decide everything and run the show.