Soul Splinter Read online

  Puddle waved a hand. ‘Sleep anywhere you like – in the boat, on the floor,’ he pulled back a dustsheet and raised an eyebrow, ‘on the sofa which I forgot I had . . . Just get some rest and I’ll start thinking about this amulet.’ Dorothy let out a foghorn blast and Puddle scowled. ‘She’s very particular about her bedroom – all sorts of airs and graces, this one. But just ignore her and get a bit of kip.’

  Siddy, Alfie and Scrap flopped down on the bed while Moll led Gryff over to the sofa and scooped him up among the lumpy cushions. She curled round him protectively and listened to his purr rumbling inside her body. And though a storm was brewing outside – waves smashed against the rocks and whipped up into the wind – the children slept as soundly as if they’d been back in Little Hollows.

  But not so far away, their heads bent down against the driving rain, a huddle of dark shapes was rowing out at sea, advancing slowly along the coast.

  ‘Will you stop it!’ Puddle roared.

  Moll’s eyes sprang open. It was dark outside now.

  ‘Enough is enough!’ Puddle shouted again. ‘You’re going to get somebody killed!’

  Moll tensed. The shouting was coming from higher up the lighthouse. She reached a hand down for her quiver, but remembered she’d left it outside the kitchen.

  ‘I will NOT have this, Dorothy!’ Puddle boomed.

  Moll breathed a sigh of relief that it was the lighthouse playing up and nothing worse. She listened to the storm outside, still raging against the window and the darkness. Puddle had lit a candle while they were sleeping and its light flickered across the bed. Alfie stirred, then opened his eyes and looked at Moll.

  ‘I’m going up to speak to Puddle,’ she whispered. ‘Stay here with the others.’

  Alfie nodded sleepily and Moll turned to Gryff. His eyes were open, staring blankly, and when Moll saw them she squeezed her fists hard. ‘Come on,’ she breathed, helping Gryff from the sofa and grabbing her coat. ‘We’ve got to work out why the bones sent us here.’

  They climbed the cold stone steps up another level, past a room filled with spare lamps, until they reached the very last floor of the lighthouse: the lantern room. It was smaller than the rest, hexagonal in shape, and boxed in on every side by large sheets of latticed glass that were only just holding out against the rain. In the centre of the room there was a big, glowing lamp, surrounded by hundreds of pieces of beautiful, specially-cut glass, casting a beam of roving light out on to the sea – and, beside that, stood Puddle.

  Moll watched from the doorway. ‘What’s Dorothy up to?’

  Puddle jumped in surprise, then, on seeing Moll and Gryff, he smiled. ‘What isn’t she up to, more like . . .’ He rolled the sleeves of his cagoule up and placed a hand on a lever beneath the glass lens, then pushed. From the base there came a grinding sound, like a clockwork wheel turning. ‘The lamp needs winding up every two hours,’ Puddle muttered. ‘She’s high maintenance, I’ll tell you that.’ His muscles flexed and he kept pushing. ‘Her lens collects light from the lamp as it turns and directs the rays out to sea as a single beam. Clever old thing, isn’t she?’

  Moll nodded. ‘Oak would’ve liked to have seen this.’

  Puddle looked up. ‘Who’s Oak then?’

  Moll was silent for a moment. ‘Someone who looks out for me, even when I’m annoying.’ She picked at her coat. ‘He got injured trying to protect me and I’m hoping this amulet might make things better.’

  She padded towards a window with Gryff. The storm outside was furious. Huge waves battered against the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs, hurling themselves again and again amid the rain and wind, and thunderclaps ground out from the night sky, shaking the whole lighthouse.

  But still Dorothy’s light shone out, scouring steady beams over the sea. And then her lamp began to flash on and off, not regularly as it had been doing before, but in a haphazard, stuttering way. Seconds later, it juddered to a complete stop, lighting up just one place.

  ‘Dorothy!’ Puddle hollered. ‘Stop messing around!’

  But Moll was only half listening. She screwed up her eyes against the windowpane, ignoring the rain that lashed against it.

  ‘What’s that just round the coastline – where the beam’s shining?’ she asked.

  Puddle followed Moll’s gaze. ‘That there’s Devil’s Drop where the river spills out into the sea.’

  Moll nodded. The roar she’d heard when they arrived at the coast earlier suddenly made sense. Because pouring over the edge of the cliffs in a bay just round from the lighthouse, and only visible from this height, was an enormous waterfall. Torrents of water cascaded over the lip and plunged down into the sea, sending up metres of foaming spray. Moll watched as the water fell, great curtains of white crashing down into the sea. The lamp flashed on and off again, jerking light then shadow over the falls, but it refused to turn regularly as Puddle wanted it to.

  ‘No one ever goes near there,’ Puddle added. ‘A ship called the Craggan sank before the falls years and years ago. There are rumours that the dead sailors’ bodies haunt the wreck so people tend to steer clear.’

  Moll carried on watching, mesmerised by the gushing water. The lamp flickered again and again over Devil’s Drop and Moll turned to Puddle. ‘The Oracle Bones sent us to the Blinking Eye. Maybe – maybe – the lighthouse is trying to show us something.’

  Puddle snorted. ‘Dorothy? She’s just having one of her moods.’ He bent down to try and fix the lamp again and the rain beat harder against the windows, seeping in through unsealed cracks.

  Moll frowned. ‘But the way the lamp flashes on and off – it’s not just random.’ She gasped. ‘Look, Puddle! There’s some sort of pattern!’

  Puddle stood beside Moll, his eyes squinting into the darkness. ‘Is that . . .’ His voice trailed off into a whisper.

  ‘Is that what?’ Moll asked eagerly.

  ‘Long long long, short, long, short, short . . . You might be on to something after all . . . This looks like a code!’

  Moll’s eyes grew large. ‘How do you know?’

  Puddle watched intently as the lamp flicked on and off over the waterfall. ‘Because I recognise the patterns. I think it’s Morse code – an emergency code sent through signals.’

  Moll’s breath misted up in a circle on the pane before her. She rubbed it away. ‘Do you know what it means?’

  Puddle reached behind him and grabbed an old parchment map rolled up on a table. Unfurling it and turning it over, he drew a pencil from his cagoule pocket and began to write. ‘Dashes for the longer stretches of light, then we draw a diagonal line when there’s a pause with no light at all, then dots for when it flashes in short bursts.’ Before long, Puddle had scribbled a line of dashes and dots:

  _ _ _ / . _ . . / . . / . . . _ /

  ‘What does it mean?’ Moll asked again.

  ‘Each set of dashes and dots between a diagonal line is a letter.’ Puddle ran his pencil over the symbols, then looked up at Moll. Her eyes were wide and green against the night. ‘I’ve got a word,’ he said.

  Moll nodded, hardly daring to speak. Beside her, Gryff leant close.

  ‘OLIVE,’ Puddle said. ‘The code reads: OLIVE.’

  Moll raised two hands to the glass and watched the waterfall crashing down over the cliffs.

  ‘Does that mean something to you?’ Puddle asked.

  The longing inside Moll ached. ‘Olive was my ma. The Shadowmasks killed her.’

  Puddle looked from the parchment to the waterfall, then back to Moll. ‘Well, I never . . .’

  Moll nodded. ‘The amulet is my ma’s soul . . . and I think Dorothy’s trying to tell me that it’s trapped near Devil’s Drop.’

  The rain beat against the lantern room and thunder growled across the sky.

  ‘There is a cave,’ Puddle said slowly, ‘behind Devil’s Drop. Only no one’s been in it since the Craggan sank.’

  ‘Because of the rumours of the haunted wreck?’ Moll asked.

  Puddle nodde
d. ‘Them – and the swell is so strong round the falls that any sailor would be mad to steer their boat towards it.’

  Moll dug her hands into her coat pockets. ‘That’s where the amulet is; I just know it. We have to go there.’

  ‘You’ll be killed out there on a night like this!’

  Moll bit her lip. ‘I’ll be killed anyway if I stay.’

  A whistle sounded sleepily from the doorway and Scrap appeared, dreadlocks wild about her face, her striped flag knotted under her chin.

  Moll looked at her. ‘I think we know where the amulet is, Scrap.’

  Puddle fiddled nervously with the zip on his cagoule. ‘It’s too dangerous. You’re just a kid, it’s the middle of the night and we don’t even have a boat to—’

  His words were cut short by three loud raps coming from further down the lighthouse. Knocks on the front door echoed through the building.

  Moll glanced at Puddle. ‘Are you expecting someone?’ she said slowly.

  Puddle frowned. ‘No.’

  The knocks sounded again, louder this time.

  Alfie and Siddy appeared in the doorway behind Scrap. The storm and Puddle’s shouting earlier hadn’t bothered them too much, but knocks in the night – that meant trouble.

  ‘We shouldn’t answer it,’ Alfie warned. ‘It could be them – the Shadowmasks.’

  The knocks didn’t come again. Just the rain beat at the lighthouse, clawing at the windows with slippery fingers. The lamp flashed on and off, still repeating the pattern of Olive’s name. But a feeling was growing inside Moll, whispering to her quietly. Whatever had been trying to get inside the lighthouse hadn’t gone away.

  Puddle placed a protective hand on the lever before his lamp. ‘The door’s strong and it’s bolted fast.’ He scratched his beard. ‘But in all the time I’ve been here no one has ever come knocking on it in the middle of the night.’

  ‘We haven’t got time to think on it,’ Moll said urgently, she turned to the others. ‘Listen, the lighthouse, it’s been shining out a code—’

  ‘—and Moll wants to go after it tonight,’ Puddle finished. ‘In the rain. Without a boat. To Devil’s Drop.’

  ‘What’s Devil’s Drop?’ Siddy asked warily.

  Moll raised her jaw. ‘A waterfall that might or might not be a little bit haunted.’

  ‘How haunted are we talking?’ Alfie asked.

  Moll tapped her foot impatiently. ‘Dead sailors, I think.’

  Siddy moaned. ‘Only you would come up with a plan as mad as that, Moll.’

  Ignoring them both, Moll spread out the parchment where Puddle had drawn the code. ‘Puddle says it’s something called a Morse code – emergency signals.’ Her voice was a rush of breath. ‘And it spells out OLIVE. My ma! Somehow we need to get down to Devil’s Drop because that’s where the amulet is. And we need to do it before the Shadowmasks find us!’

  The reply didn’t come from anyone inside the lighthouse. It came from the glass surrounding the lantern room – a tapping noise, scratching on a pane at the far side.

  Scrap reached out to find Alfie and he took her hand in his. The lamp flickered off, and darkness fell, but when the light beamed again it shone upon a terrifying sight.

  A crowbar gripped firmly by an enormous black hand.

  Scrap screamed and Alfie held her tight. Before anyone could move, the crowbar slammed into the glass, the windowpane shattered to the floor and four smugglers, clad in long black leather boots and soaking shirts, piled in off the ladder that scaled the lighthouse: Barbarous Grudge, Smog Sprockett and the two older boys Moll and Siddy had seen back in Inchgrundle.

  Moll plunged a hand into her dress pocket, but she’d taken the catapult and knife out before going to sleep – and the bows downstairs, even Willow had said, wouldn’t work against those who knew nothing of the Bone Murmur. She backed up against the wall, shielding Gryff with her legs.

  ‘Now – now listen here,’ Puddle stammered, edging behind the lens. ‘This is no place for smugglers. You and your lot aren’t welcome so—’

  Grudge raised his crowbar, all the while chewing hard on the finger bone, grinding it between his golden teeth. He lunged towards Puddle and struck him in the stomach. The lighthouse keeper crashed to the ground, winded and groaning.

  Moll leapt forward, but the two smuggler boys fell upon her, pinning her back. Smog cornered Gryff and, though he snarled and hissed, the street urchin could see the wildcat was now blind and he taunted and jeered at him as if Gryff was a harmless stray.

  ‘Thought I wouldn’t find you and your little friends?’ Smog sniggered at Moll. ‘I only had to ask around, then track your footprints . . .’

  Grudge pushed his dreadlocks back from his face and pointed at Scrap with his crowbar. Then he crunched over the broken glass towards her.

  ‘You!’ he spat. ‘You helped them? My own flesh and blood?’ He looked at her with contempt. ‘You’re no daughter of mine any more!’

  Moll’s eyes widened. Scrap was Grudge’s daughter! And yet she’d saved Moll from the kelpie and led them all to the Blinking Eye.

  Grudge raised a pistol from his holster and Scrap raced round the wall to the door. But Grudge followed her with the barrel of his gun. ‘Here’s what I do to traitors, you little wretch!’

  ‘Run, Scrap!’ Moll screamed.

  But it was too late. The gunshot roared. Scrap’s legs buckled beneath her and she collapsed to the ground.

  Moll bit the smuggler’s hand fixed round her jaw, but it held fast. Siddy darted towards Scrap, but Grudge advanced, his gun levelled at him. Siddy froze and Gryff growled from the corner, but Smog boxed him in. Only Alfie, unseen by the smugglers, could run to Scrap. He bent down, cradling her little body close. Immediately, he felt the blood leaking from her side.

  His eyes stung. ‘It’s OK, Scrap, it’s OK.’

  The smugglers shifted uneasily at the voice coming from nowhere.

  ‘More gypsy magic. Just like back in the port,’ Smog muttered.

  A smuggler boy shivered. ‘It – it’s a ghost!’

  Grudge stiffened. ‘Stay away from it, boys. Whatever it is.’

  Scrap whimpered in Alfie’s arms, her breaths shallow and fast. But in her eyes Alfie saw something different. She was looking at him, not around him, not in his general direction, but at him.

  Tears rose in his eyes. ‘You can see me now, can’t you?’ he whispered.

  Scrap nodded, letting her eyes work their way over every curve of Alfie’s face. She smiled faintly as if she was recognising him after a long time apart. Then she lifted her shaking arms up and wrapped them round his neck. She clung to Alfie, and he clung back, and then her body grew weaker and she slumped into his lap.

  Gryff snarled and stamped on the floorboards. Alfie’s jaw stiffened and he glared at Grudge. ‘Murderer!’ Still unseen by the smugglers, he picked up a shard of broken glass next to him and hurled it at Grudge.

  Grudge may not have been able to see Alfie, but he spotted the flying glass and ducked just in time, his pistol swinging from Siddy to where the glass had come from. He shot once again into the room and Alfie ducked as the bullet skimmed the door frame.

  ‘Keep back, spirit!’ Grudge warned, training his pistol on Moll. ‘Come close and I’ll shoot your friends.’

  Alfie looked down at Scrap and moaned. ‘I promised her I’d keep her safe.’

  From behind the lens, Puddle heaved himself up and limped towards the door. He glowered at Grudge as he passed. ‘You can shoot me if you want,’ he muttered, bending down to kneel by Scrap. He felt for Alfie and placed a hand on his back. ‘It wasn’t your fault, boy. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done.’

  Grudge grunted at Moll. ‘It’s you and your pal I’m after. We’ve come for that amulet.’

  Moll blinked at Scrap’s body, hardly able to take in what had happened. How could Scrap be dead? Tears pricked her eyes, but with Grudge there she wouldn’t let them fall. She spat on to the ground by Grudge’s boot a
s he advanced and the smugglers holding her tightened their grip.

  ‘That’s no way to cooperate, missy.’ Grudge’s lips curled back to show two rows of golden teeth.

  Moll looked him square in the eye. ‘How could you? She was your own daughter!’

  Grudge ground the finger bone between his teeth.

  Moll watched the storm swelling around them outside. Scrap was gone – and it hadn’t even been the Shadowmasks who’d taken her away. She looked at the little smuggler girl and a lump swelled in her throat. Grudge would answer for this; she would see to that. And then, just as she was about to look away, Moll’s heart beat faster. She could have sworn she’d seen a tiny, almost unnoticeable, flicker cross Scrap’s eyelids. Moll’s pulse hammered as Scrap’s chest rose then dipped a fraction. She glanced from Puddle to Alfie to Siddy. They’d seen it too: Scrap was still alive. But if Grudge caught on he wouldn’t show her mercy.

  Thinking fast, Puddle scooped Scrap up from Alfie’s arms and looked at Grudge. ‘There’s nothing you want from me. I’m taking her body; she deserves a proper burial. You owe her that much.’

  Grudge scowled as Puddle left the room with Scrap lying limp in his arms. And then an idea began to form in Moll’s mind. She didn’t like it, but maybe, just maybe, it might work. She forced the words out, trying her best to turn her anger into a plan. ‘You got a boat?’

  Grudge nodded.

  ‘Good,’ she told him. ‘Cos you’re going to need it if you want the amulet.’

  Siddy turned panicked eyes towards her. ‘You’re going to trust them to take us to the amulet?’

  Moll glanced at Siddy, then at Alfie and took a deep breath. She faced Grudge square on. ‘We’ll take you to the amulet – if you’re man enough to brave Devil’s Drop.’

  Smog looked up from taunting Gryff, and the two smugglers glanced at one another uneasily.