Dead Water Zone - Kenneth Oppel [14]
“Why did you do that? Say those things?”
“I just wanted to know what made him leave. It was stupid of me.”
He shrugged, feeling a little sick.
“How do you know he’s even in Watertown? Maybe he just packed up, went home.”
“He’s blind without his glasses.”
And Sam would never return to Governor’s Hill. Neither of those things necessarily meant that Sam was still here in Watertown. But there was something else—that shadowy figure dancing across the rooftops. Why that electric jolt of recognition? All he’d seen was a knife-edged silhouette—no face, no details. Sam couldn’t run that fast, and he certainly couldn’t make those jumps.
“What’s the place we met at?” he asked with sudden urgency.
“Jailer’s Pier.”
“No, I mean the place on the other side.”
She seemed hesitant. “It’s where the old prisons used to be.”
“There was a jail here?” he asked, surprised.
“This whole place was a jail once. I guess they don’t teach that up in Governor’s Hill.”
“No.”
“It goes back more than two hundred years. The City prisons were overcrowded, so someone came up with the idea of putting convicts out in the harbor. They tethered a couple old hulks together and made a prison island.”
He followed her along the pier and up the ladder into the stilt house.
“So, you stole a loaf of bread, you were sent to the hulks,” she said. “Below deck you couldn’t even stand upright. Tiny, cramped spaces, bodies pressing against you all the time. Epidemics wiped out whole ships. Prisoners sometimes tried to swim back to shore. Not many made it—they had these iron balls chained around their wrists and ankles.”
“When did they shut it down?”
“About a hundred and fifty years ago. The ships were taking on too much water. But some of the convicts stayed. Wasn’t long before most of the hulks rotted away completely, but the piers and jetties were still there. Over the years, more and more people came.”
“How did you learn all this?”
“My mom told me.”
“So, across the canal, that was where the last hulks were anchored?”
She nodded. “Watertowners call it Rat Castle.”
“Why don’t people live there anymore?”
“They’re stupid. Superstitious.”
“Ghosts?”
“I guess,” she said.
“But someone could be hiding in there.”
“There’s no one there, Paul.”
“But how can you be certain?”
“You think because you saw something it means your brother’s in there? I’ve seen things, too.” She lifted her hands in a gesture of futility. “People disappear here all the time.”
“Your parents.”
His words startled him.
“I never knew my father.” She shrugged. “He did the vanishing act before I was born. Armitage might remember him, but I doubt it.”
“What about your mother?”
“She went eight months ago.”
“How?” he asked awkwardly. “Did she die?”
“She walked out. Another runaway.”
She spoke with complete indifference. He felt a pang of tenderness for her, but there was a spark of excitement, too. They had something in common.
“Maybe she’ll come back.”
“I’m not holding my breath. Anyway, Armitage is right. She was useless. We’re better off without her.”
“Oh.”
“She used to be a teacher at some college before she ended up down here. She taught history. One day she couldn’t stand it anymore. She said there was no point because it just didn’t get any better. The tyranny of the past. Anyway, she just shredded all her work and went wandering. I guess that’s what you call a nervous breakdown.”
Paul waited, not wanting to break the mood.
“Armitage and I were born here. She brought us up, but she just wasn’t all there. She’d go off every now and then. One day she didn’t come back. End of story.”
“But you still look for her, don’t you?”
“Not much point, really.”
“You look for her by Rat Castle.”
She didn’t answer for a few seconds. “She used to wander around there sometimes, that’s all. I found her on Jailer’s Pier once or twice. Looking at the water.”
Paul thought of her last night, cupping the water in her hands, letting it slither through her fingers.
“So, what about the rest of your family?” she asked quickly. “What are your parents like?”
With a start he realized