The Kraken Sea Read online

  He knocked on the wood edge and sent a flurry of ravens up through the glass as he waited for Cressida to bid him enter. She did this in short order, expecting him, and Jackson stepped in to find her and the sister seated in the nook where Cressida received important visitors. Jackson’s breath stuck in his throat when the sister smiled at him.

  “Jackson.” Sister Jerome Grace reached a hand out, beckoning to him.

  Right now, it was only a hand, but he could imagine the palm split open, teeming with countless threads. He closed the door behind him and crossed the room to slide his hand into hers. Her hand was cool; Foster had told him earlier the sister was walking over, through the autumn sun and dappled leaves.

  The sitting area was warm, a fire crackling in the hearth beneath the huge head on the wall over the mantle. Jackson could not say what this creature had been. From one angle, it looked like an ordinary elk, but from other angles, antlers turned into tentacles, the fur more liquid than it should be. Its eyes saw everything.

  “Sister.” Jackson sank into the chair beside the couch. He squeezed her hand then withdrew while Cressida poured from the steaming teapot at the table. Pastries sat on gleaming china plates: rounded puffs of dough oozing with cream, scones awaiting jam and cream of their own, and sweet almond cookies. The best china plates, perfectly white trimmed with gold ribbon.

  He also saw, belatedly, it wasn’t a table at all. The metal trunk from the docks sat there, under a crisp linen spread. He stared at it, mute, wondering if shadows leaked into the room or if he only imagined the fine black fog collecting around the trunk’s base. Perhaps he was in his room, standing in front of the mirror. He willed himself to believe this, but couldn’t get there. He drew his feet under the chair he occupied.

  “Isn’t this pleasant?” Cressida asked, but judging by her tone, she thought it was anything but pleasant. This only increased Jackson’s belief the shadows were leaking from the trunk and that the sister’s visit hadn’t been planned at all, and … He drew in a breath. A glance at the sister told him nothing. Her features were serene, as if nothing were amiss, but if they had been in the train yard before … If they had been here before … She knew what was to come? It was driving Jackson mad, not understanding how it could be.

  Cressida handed the sister a cup and saucer, then poured for Jackson. Jackson didn’t like tea, didn’t want tea, but made no fuss when he was served. He wanted more soda, and wanted to get out of this room, before the shadows —

  Did one just touch his foot? He gave a little kick.

  “Jackson.”

  Cressida’s tone commanded his attention and he tried not to fidget, but the weight of a sooty hand made itself known against his knee. Jackson saw nothing, but the sensation persisted. The hand squeezed his knee.

  “Sister Jerome Grace is obligated by the church to check in on you,” Cressida said, pouring her own tea. Her fingers tented on the teapot lid as she tipped.

  Jackson listened to the gurgle of the amber liquid, but the weight of the not-hand on his knee kept intruding. He looked at the sister, who only smiled as if she couldn’t sense a thing. Maybe she didn’t.

  “That isn’t the only reason I came,” Sister Jerome Grace said, her green eyes settling again on Jackson.

  He exhaled, because he thought he might explode otherwise. The hand didn’t leave his knee. It smelled of soot and brimstone, and was like a thing he had read about in a penny dreadful. It was awful, and he palmed his teacup even though it was too hot and should have stayed on its saucer. He wanted to leap up and dance around to get the hand off his knee.

  The pain of the hot cup gave him a place to focus so he wouldn’t run away the way he had in Chicago. He told himself he was above running away, but it didn’t seem so. Not with the sister so close and the phantom hand on his knee. Did they not see the shadows seeping like squid ink from the trunk? Did they not know?

  Jackson forced himself to make small talk. “Are you s-staying in the city, then?” He looked from the bleeding shadows to the sister. She sat with cup and saucer on her knees, draped in her black habit. Hair yet hidden. Her expression softened at his question, mouth gliding up.

  “For a little while longer,” she said, “but I will see to another group of children on the trains. There are homes waiting for them in Chicago this time. Children from the shipyards here, going to work the lakeshore …”

  Children from the shipyards here. Black shapeless things until someone drew them from the dark with sounds suckering deep into his gut. Jackson lifted his tea, drank half the hot, overly sweet liquid. The idea of the sister tending to other orphans was like an itch in the center of his back. He didn’t want there to be other children, he wanted there to be only him. He found this idea ridiculous. He thought he was happy here, but the sight of the sister proved otherwise. He pictured Sister Jerome Grace sitting on another train bench, holding another child’s hand and his jaw seized up.

  “It’s an entire network you have, Sister,” Cressida said as she leaned over the linen covered trunk to reach the milk pitcher. A shadow slithered beneath her black skirts and vanished. Cressida only tipped the pitcher over her teacup. Jackson watched it go creamy, white swallowing the amber. “How blessed are the children.”

  The second half of Jackson’s tea was swallowed before he realized it and he reached for the pot, pouring himself more. He couldn’t breathe, his tie tighter by the minute. The teapot made a clatter against the other dishes when he set it down. He reached for a plate and started filling it with cookies and scones.

  “C-cream, Sister?” he asked, spooning the smooth clotted cream onto the side of the plate even though she hadn’t said yes. She took the filled plate as he knew she would, and the linen napkin he offered her.

  “Jackson has been fitting in just fine,” Cressida said. Cressida leaned back in her chair, her cup and saucer cradled in her lap. Jackson might say she was nearly sprawled, one boot peeping out from the hem of her skirts as though her legs were spread beneath. Jackson watched another shadow vanish and his skin burned with heat.

  Sister Jerome Grace set her teacup on the trunk, to settle her plate in her lap. She added a dollop of cream and jam to a scone and took a small bite, watching Jackson all the while. She chewed so slowly Jackson thought he might go mad. She dabbed the corners of her mouth with the napkin and only after she had placed it back in her lap did she say, “We knew he would.”

  Jackson loaded a plate for himself. He took mostly cream puffs, jamming them by the pair into his mouth so he wouldn’t have to speak, so he wouldn’t scream when the sooty hand on his knee hitched higher.

  He listened to Cressida and the sister talk, but later couldn’t relate a single thing they had said. When at last the sister was to leave, Jackson stood and the disembodied hand dropped to the carpet where it sat motionless. Jackson would have sworn it was watching him.

  Only when he sank into the sister’s hug did that sense evaporate. The circle of her arms sent every awful thing back a dozen paces, including Cressida. Jackson let his cheek rest against the sister’s breast, he listened to the steady rhythm of her heart, and closed his eyes.

  He couldn’t say how long they stood like this. Time ceased to matter and he was back where he belonged. But when he opened his eyes, Cressida loomed near, silent fury masking her face. The sister’s hand slid over Jackson’s hair and he straightened, but it was Cressida’s hand drawing him out of the sister’s embrace at long last. Jackson couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  §

  Jackson craned his neck, trying to get a look. The room was small and packed well beyond its capacity, the air sweltering. Every now and then, Jackson tried to catch Foster’s eye, but the man wouldn’t look at him, focused on the proceedings at the front of the room. They hadn’t had a chance to talk since the dock and Jackson was beginning to wonder if it was intentional. He also hadn’t been invited back to Cressida’s office, so didn’t know if the trunk remained.

  The room didn’t conta
in a stage, or dancers, or showy animals. A long much-worn table held an assortment of boxes, crates, trunks, and cases, each numbered. Two men oversaw these items, the younger assistant making a show of each item as it was described and bid upon. Jackson found it fascinating, as some of the items weren’t described at all. One locked box sold for ten dollars, with no clue what might rest inside. People didn’t seem to care.

  Cressida placed the occasional bid, but didn’t seem intent on anything. Jackson realized Foster kept an eye on a certain trunk, however. The red leather trunk was bound in brass and heavily locked. Given what Jackson had seen at the docks, he wondered. More shadows, or a different horror?

  “Lot forty-two,” the gentleman with the list said. “Red leather trunk, banded in yellow brass. Locks, keys, and two well-preserved heads.”

  A collective gasp rolled through the room. Jackson thought he had misheard, but the conversation burbling through the adults confirmed it. Heads. He moved under arms and elbows, until he reached the front and could see the trunk unobstructed.

  The auctioneer unlocked the box and lifted the reluctant lid. The young assistant looked about to be sick as he put a glove on and lifted out a severed head.

  It was ghastly, but Jackson couldn’t look away. The skin was the color of whiskey, eyes tightly closed, mouth gaping in a scream. The cut at the throat was clean, though just above there was a faint mark, whether from a blade or a rope, Jackson couldn’t say.

  “A vicious bandit,” the auctioneer said, reading from the list he held. “These despicable men come to you today to settle a judgment! Cutthroat and thief, renegade and pirate. They did little good in life, yet their deaths have eased the pain in countless hearts, and these funds will see those hearts further consoled.”

  Jackson didn’t think Cressida cared about consoling hearts, but she did have an interest in the heads. She was not the first to bid, nor the second, but she made her interest slowly and firmly known. When she bid, one of the men dropped out, while the other stood firm, seeming not to care he was up against the Widow. When the price crested to twelve dollars, however, he cared. He shook off the auctioneer and Cressida was deemed the victor. She paid her money, had Foster collect the box and its key, and they departed.

  Foster lashed the trunk into the automobile, then gestured Jackson toward it. “Your seat, monsieur.”

  Jackson sat atop the box, holding it down on the drive back. Who in their right mind purchased severed heads? Then again, who in their right mind auctioned them? The closer they came to Macquarie’s, the more Jackson realized he didn’t care.

  There was a method here even if he didn’t understand it. Cressida didn’t do anything without cause. Inviting the sister to tea in a room where a trunk filled with shadow monsters served as a table? Of course this had a purpose beyond its apparent intent. He thought back to the foundling hospital and how one boy there tried to befriend him with offers of candies and fresh socks. Jackson slowly to let the boy into his circle but quickly came to see the boy’s actual target: Jackson’s collection of penny dreadfuls. Two came up missing.

  It was easy to turn the boy’s eagerness back on himself; everyone wanted something. Jackson lured the boy into a deeper friendship, requesting more of his time, more of his attention, until the boy had only Jackson to turn to when something went wrong. Inevitably, something did go wrong; Jackson ensured it did. A misstep down a dark hallway, a turn into a room that shouldn’t be there, getting tangled in what appeared to be cobwebs but became ropes that became Jackson’s arms.

  Boys went missing all the time, presumed to have run toward something better. There was never any sign of them in the hospital, so surely they couldn’t be there, and they never returned. No blood, no bones, just gone, leaving Jackson to stack his penny dreadfuls into their proper place, the daffodil crate that brought him to the hospital.

  He didn’t understand everything Cressida did, but knew there was a layer beyond what he saw. Likely layers beyond even those, for what had Mae said? The Widow controls so much of this city and she …

  Not even Mae knew.

  But Jackson thought he was getting closer. He was no longer a newcomer. He had seen it in Cressida’s eyes when the sister hugged him. Cressida carried a secret that weighed her down and sucked her dry. Her eyes were hollow but for when she looked at him. And he was a part of this place now, a part Cressida did not want to lose. He knew if he proved himself valuable, it was only a matter of time. Time was one thing he had; he could feel it in the palm of Sister Jerome Grace’s hand.

  At Macquarie’s, Foster gave him the trunk to carry. It was heavy, though maybe only because Jackson knew what it contained. They walked all the secret ways, deep into the building, to a room Jackson had not seen before.

  The room was wood paneled from floor to ceiling, and contained no windows. A stack of trunks and crates occupied one corner, each draped in its own colored cloth. Some clothes glowed orange, others red, each flat surface supporting a collection of items. Small framed photographs, candles, coins and loose stones. The closer he got, the more he could pick out. A chicken foot, what looked like a human thumb.

  “Here, Jackson.”

  Jackson kneeled with the trunk. He took the key when Foster offered it, but Cressida snatched it from his hand.

  “Not tonight,” was all she said before she swept from the room, leaving Jackson and Foster alone.

  Jackson eyed the room. It was dreadful, long braids of hair filling one corner, small framed items on another wall. A tooth. A blackened nub. Two bones tied together with a black ribbon.

  “This is her room,” Foster said in a tone of caution, but he didn’t stop Jackson from looking at anything. “We don’t come here when she’s in here. We don’t do anything in here she don’t ask us to do.”

  Another frame held a skewered butterfly, but there was no actual body, and only what looked like stretched skin in the place of wings. “What does she do in here?”

  Foster shook his head, smoothing his hands over his tunic. “Haven’t ever asked her. She does what she does.”

  The answer held no satisfaction. Jackson turned from the frames, to look closer at Foster. He didn’t know how old the man was; despite the silver of his hair, he had an agelessness about him.

  Old spirits, little Jackson, Cressida’s voice whispered in his mind.

  In her voice, he heard the call of train whistles even now. She was a thing he would never understand and almost didn’t want to, for that would ruin the mystery. He envisioned some part of her here even now though he and Foster were alone, a Cressida-shaped wraith pouring from the walls like smoke. She looked younger than she ever had, despite the shine of silver whiskers against her cheeks; the meadows had come back to her eyes, the petals to her cheeks.

  The smoke form kneeled before the fire and he watched as she opened an unseen bundle. He pictured crimson and cream fabric flowing outward from the small bodies inside. Three soft bats lay inside, along with three toads, and three spotted eggs. Somewhere in the room, shadows whispered.

  Smoke-Cressida offered each item up to the flames, one by one, murmuring strange words. It was a language Jackson did not know, but took comfort in. He closed his eyes and rocked to the rhythm of it all, looking back to the flames in time to watch the eggs burst open under the heat. Bat and toad and egg and oh spirits, come over me and into me and carry us away, beyond this place and time until we are ageless and everywhere and everywhere, like the rain, the rain. The essence rising from the flames poured over Cressida, instilling her with a beauty and youth she did not naturally possess.

  When he opened his eyes, this image was gone; only Foster remained, looking not at all surprised — had he seen Cressida this way before? Had she been here at all? Jackson’s throat grew tight as the questions about the shadow creatures crept closer to his tongue. He tried to swallow, but couldn’t, so asked. “An’ what about those shadow things?”

  Foster’s head tilted and his eyes narrowed on Jackson. “Shad
ow things.”

  Jackson couldn’t blame him for trying to see how much Jackson knew before he offered up his own information. As Jackson wouldn’t give up that he had seen the transfer at the docks, he was certain Foster wouldn’t tell him all he knew. Least not yet. “I am sure you will remember, Sister Jerome Grace came to tea the other day. In Cressida’s office, there was a trunk … leaking shadows.”

  To Jackson’s surprise, Foster smiled. “Everything in this place must eat.”

  “There’s a thing in this place that eats them?” Jackson’s voice fell to a whisper. He recalled the sooty hand on his knee and shuddered. Yes, those things should be swallowed, and then he remembered the gargoyles outside Bell’s. The way the young boy had been upended.

  “Would you like to see?”

  There was only one answer. As eager as Jackson was to see, Foster was equally eager to show someone. Maybe it didn’t matter who he showed; Jackson didn’t presume himself special in that regard, but there was a familiar joy in Foster’s eyes as they left the room and headed deeper into the building.

  Foster took him to another elevator, one he had not seen. This elevator went further down than Jackson had any clue it could. The lower they went, the colder the world became and Jackson was thankful for his oversized coat. When Foster opened the doors, Jackson found himself inside a dark tunnel. Foster reached for a lantern and lit it.

  “Don’t usually have company down here. Gets so cold.” Foster’s breath fogged some in the damp air.

  Jackson followed him into the gloom, through the close tunnel cutting through … The earth? Jackson couldn’t tell how far down they were, but it smelled like dirt and the deeper they went, it smelled like the sea. The tunnel twisted around a corner and the air grew even colder, saltier. Jackson dragged a hand across the cobble of the tunnel wall and the dampness was gritty under his fingers.