Quite Contrary (17 page)

“How big is this ship?” I asked, beginning to worry about the answer. We’d walked through a lot of rooms.

“Big enough,” Patrick replied. “I’ve been climbing since I was Joe’s age. I don’t even remember how I died. Everything went dark, and Andre pulled me out of a barrel. But it’s not endless. I saw daylight once, coming through a door at the top of a stair. Andre made it, but like a fool, I threw away the skull I was holding like trash to try and catch up with him. The floor broke, and I fell a long way. I wasn’t there, but Sylvia found the sun, and Ana. We just have to keep climbing.”

“Speaking of skulls,” Rainbow segued.

I stepped into the next room behind her, and saw what she meant. A human skeleton sat slumped over a desk. It had a faint, dusty smell from over here, and was too small to be an adult. A pirate costume hung loosely off the bones, if it was a costume. Treasure covered the desk. Thin gold coins shone in the light of a pair of candles. They gleamed, like real gold. That much gold couldn’t be real. Jewelry, little statues, and silverware that was actually goldware bulked out the pile. Some of the gemstones on the jewelry were bigger than my thumbnail. Crap. There was so much treasure it had spilled onto the floor around the desk as the ship rolled.

Rainbow took the pizza box from Joe and tiptoed over to the skeleton like she didn’t want to disturb it. Crouching, she scooped all the coins on the floor into the box. As she stood, she lifted the hanging arm of the skeleton, laying the box on the desk and tucking the arm over it. For good measure, she shifted the skull, leaving the skeleton looking like it had just fallen asleep.

“I hope that’s better,” she whispered to the corpse, “We don’t need the box or your gold, but we might need this if it’s okay.” The skeleton’s other arm lay atop a rusty old box. Another tool box, and as she slid it out, Rainbow peeked inside, before nodding back at the rest of us. Mainly at Patrick. Oh geez, was this another crush? No, she didn’t give him another look as she walked back over to us and dumped a bunch of nails and that black sealing gunk into the tool chest Francis carried. Patrick was just the boy in the lead.

I must have looked confused. Patrick said, “We take nothing we don’t need, and we respect the dead.”

“Respect the dead,” a faint voice repeated, one I didn’t know. I glanced around, and didn’t see anyone. I was just going to pretend I hadn’t heard it like everyone else was doing.

A pirate skeleton was cool, and I kind of wondered how the gold coins had been stamped, but really I was happy we were leaving.

Most of the ship consisted of long, narrow hallways. We passed closed door after closed door, and a few that hung open but showed darkness. Up front, Maria sang to herself in I-didn’t-know-what language, and Francis hoisted Joe up onto his shoulders, which forced him to stoop every time they passed a doorway. Everyone ignored a stairwell leading down when we passed it, so I stopped and leaned over to peer around the curve.

“Don’t get left behind,” Rainbow urged, fingertips tugging at the pouf of my sleeve. “We never go down.”

“Not even if you smell more pizza down there,” Stephen quipped, reaching for my other sleeve. I yanked my arm away, and stepped past Rainbow.

“Why not?” I challenged her as I picked up the pace to catch up with Francis’ back.

“Because I want to see sunlight again,” she answered. Her voice sounded wistful, but her lips pulled tight. How long had it been?

“We have rules to help us find our way,” Patrick noted from up front, “Some were passed down by older children, some we were told, some we learned the hard way, and some just made sense. One of them is that we never go down.”

“And we never go into the dark. Patrick, this is a dead end,” Maria added, pointing down the hall. The doorway at the end did look almost black from here. I could see another lit doorway in the distance, but shadow covered most of the hallway in-between.

“There’s ceiling lamps, but they’re out,” Stephen said, leaning across the threshold without setting foot inside.

Francis groaned, and Maria asked in a weary voice, “When was the last time we passed a lit side passage?”

I got impatient. “Why not just carry a lamp with us? We’ve passed fifty.”

Patrick sounded so matter-of-fact he might have been waiting for the question. “If a room is lit, we never leave it dark. I know we’re not the only children lost in Purgatory. If we find our way out, we’ll leave a safe trail for whoever comes after.

I wasn’t going to be the person who argued we save ourselves at the expense of others. Fortunately, Rainbow made it moot by reminding us, “The dead pirate had an extra candle. We’ll go back and get it, and use it to light these lamps.”

“Not alone, you won’t,” Patrick argued.

“Then, I’ll go with her,” I snapped automatically.

“It’s a straight path, Patrick. It’ll be okay,” Maria reassured him.

His sigh was good enough for me. I started walking, back the way we came. My shoes ate up the ground now that I’d gotten used to the floor rolling underneath me. Rainbow caught up fast.

“Too many people you don’t know yet, right?” she asked under her breath as we left the others behind.

I grunted. I couldn’t lie about it, but I didn’t like feeling transparent. I knew she got it, but still.

“I figured I’d have to get you alone to ask this. Were you at a costume party when it happened?” she inquired.

“Were you?” I returned.

Rainbow smiled. “No, I wanted to dress like this. If you haven’t guessed by the name, my folks were big hippies. I always felt like they wanted me to fake being happy, so I refused.”

“I’m not wearing this by choice. I’m not the Red Riding Hood Type,” I replied vehemently.

Her smile turned amused. “It’s a little big for you.”

“You’re a little blonde for a goth.” I changed the subject.

Her grin only grew. “When I drowned myself it was black with red and purple streaks. When the color started to fade and my roots grew out I found a cabinet full of dye, but I decided not to take it. It wasn’t really something I needed. After that, there wasn’t anymore.”

I didn’t say anything, and she let me be silent until we got back to the pirate’s room. The candles stood on gold candlesticks where we’d left them. Rainbow curtseyed formally to the skeleton, and gathered up the candlestick carefully in both hands. “This room will be okay with just one. It’s not that big,” Rainbow curtseyed formally to the skeleton, and gathered up the candlestick in both hands.

“Take them both. The darkness and I deserve each other,” the voice from last time whispered.

Rainbow did hear it. “You’re generous, but we only need one. We don’t leave people in the darkness,” she answered kindly. She didn’t stop and chat, and I walked out with her.

“Not everyone still has a chance like we do,” she whispered to me. She looked pained about it, and made no effort to hide that pity.

“Is that going to happen a lot?” I asked back.

“More than you’ll like. Whatever they tell you to do, don’t do it,” she warned me.

“I won’t, trust me,” I assured her. That would be an easy promise for me to keep.

When we got back to the others, Francis said, “I’ll do it,” but Rainbow shook her head, told him, “I’m fine,” and kept walking.

She walked down the dark, narrow hallway with candlelight stretching in front of her and behind. The difference from the deep shadows that had covered the space before surprised me. Near the far end, she reached up above her head and fiddled with a hanging lamp, which glowed as she lit the wick inside. On her way back back, she did the same with the lamp near us, but it didn’t light.

“It’s empty,” she said.

“I’m not surprised,” Patrick replied.

Apparently, Rainbow didn’t have to be told what to do. She screwed the candle into the lamp instead of a wick, and left it as she walked back to us.

“Still pretty dark,” Patrick worried, but Maria shook her head.

“It’s light enough to be safe, and we’re not trying to break the rules,” she said.

That seemed to be good enough, because everyone started moving. The hall got pretty dim in the middle, but as the weak light faded behind us it grew again in front of us, until we passed the lamp and walked out the next doorway into a new hallway made of metal.

I looked back over my shoulder. In the middle of the door frame, wood changed to metal. These walls had the buttresses and rivets that made me think of a naval boat, and a closed doorway looked more like a hatch with a wheel instead of a handle. I tested the wheel as we passed, but it was no good.

“I know we’re getting closer to the sun,” Maria remarked as she watched me. “When I was smaller, there were sections where the walls were made of bone.”

“I remember,” Patrick’s voice and face went as quiet as Maria’s.

“I will sic Joe on you,” Stephen warned them. Joe took that as a signal and charged Patrick, who swept her up and laid her over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Joe giggled, and Patrick grinned, and we cut down a side passage with an open hatch.

This tunnel had pipes running along the walls near the ceiling. I slid my fingertips over the metal, wondering if I’d see a label anywhere to tell me what ship had lost this one cramped hallway. At the end, it opened up into a large metal room.

We’d found a gymnasium. A
modern
gymnasium, if a Spartan one. Exercise bicycles, weight lifting benches with complicated pulley systems, that kind of thing. Joe let out a squeal of glee, thrashing until Patrick had to put her down. She bolted over to a rack against the wall and pulled out a fat rubber dodge ball. “Break time!” she declared, and threw it with admirable precision at Stephen’s head. Stephen caught it, but stopped still and looked at Patrick questioningly.

“As long as we put it back, I’m sure it’s fine,” Patrick told him. Permission granted, Stephen threw himself back theatrically onto his butt, clutching the ball to his chest. As Joe laughed, Stephen spiked the ball against the floor and sent the little girl chasing after it when it sailed over her head.

They dragged Francis into the game, then Patrick, and finally Rainbow. Maria poked through lockers and cabinets until she came across some refrigerated meat sandwiches and a plastic gallon bottle of apple juice. It was bland. Really, really, bland. No wonder they’d been desperate for pizza.

The room had two other open hatches, but one of them led into darkness. The fluorescent lights high above us didn’t carry very far. I wandered up to peer inside as Stephen looked through the other door.

“I guess we’re headed this way,” he mused.

“No, we’re going this way,” I corrected him.

“Oh, man, a ladder up. That’s mean,” Rainbow sighed as she walked up to stare down the dark room at the patch of light at the end, “There’s no way we can cross to it.”

“Find a way. That’s not just a ladder, it’s daylight,” I told her emphatically. Told all of them. “It’s been years for you, but I saw daylight yesterday. I know what it looks like.”

Everyone shut up.

“We’ll check the side rooms in the next few halls. We might find lamps,” Francis suggested.

“That’s a hallway running past the ladder. We’ll circle around,” Patrick assured him.

I snarled in frustration, grabbed Rainbow’s wrist, and pulled. I got two steps into the dark room before she managed to twist free and stumble back out. Fine. I stormed further in. This room was bigger than the gym, and I could barely make out the floor in the middle. The walls were so dark I was surprised that a deeper black marked tunnels branching off the sides. I couldn’t see anything in those shadows until one of them moved.

Like an idiot, I stared until it made sense. At first, I thought it was two kids tied together, lurching and groping for me. As it got closer to the merely terrible light between the two lit doors the shape became clearer. Clear enough that I could tell why they were clumsy. Two bodies fused with each other at an angle. Four arms stuck out from the wrong places. Three legs carried it, but I saw it fall over twice and have to claw its way back up before I was smart enough to run.

That was nearly too late. I turned back towards the door I’d come in, and between me and the horrified faces of the other kids stood something else. Silhouetted by the light, I was only sure that its arms weren’t the same length and one had too many joints. I bolted forward. I had to run past it and hope. This one was as clumsy as the other, and I’d had a bunch of people try to hit me before. I ducked under the swinging arm, heard metal clank as it hit the floor instead of me, and I tried hard to shut out the wrinkled, mouthless face from my memory.

My feet pumped. I leapt through the hatch, and as Maria and Rainbow caught me, Patrick and Francis slammed the door closed and turned the wheel to seal it.

“It’s okay,” Maria whispered to me as she and Rainbow held me tight, “You’re back in the light and obeying the rules again. They won’t follow.”

“I’m so sorry. The way out was right there. Right there, and I messed it up for you,” I panted miserably.

“Either we can still circle around, or we couldn’t get there anyway. You’re alive, which is what matters,” Patrick assured me. “It’s me that should apologize. I didn’t warn you how important the rules are. But you broke them, and you’re still alive, and you have another chance.”

“Don’t go into the dark. That’s the first rule. Breaking the others is punished, but the darkness kills,” Maria recited softly.

“Don’t make any lit room dark,” Patrick went on, sitting down wearily on the seat of an exercise bike. “Repair what you can, seal off what you can’t. Breaking those is bad luck, but not disaster. We do it because it’s right.”

“Don’t take anything you don’t need. Treat the dead with respect. Sanctify their bodies. When they speak, listen, but don’t obey. Do not break the ship. Not a wall, not the ceiling or floor, not even a door,” Maria took over, “This is Purgatory. We don’t just have to find the way out, we have to earn it. Breaking those rules brings punishment.”

“Don’t go off on your own,” Francis supplied grimly, “Anyone we can’t see or hear who’s by themselves is gone. We never see them again.” That rule made them all look unhappy. They’d lost people before.