Three Hybrid Brothers Locked Me in Their Tower, and the Man Who Sent Me There Is the Real Monster novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Iron Door

Crossing to the Ledge in the first nor'easter, Dally is shown the keeper's room with its two locks, and finds all three men awake on the stairs watching her door.

The nor'easter caught us halfway across the bay.

Rain came sideways off the water and the long black boat climbed each swell and dropped.

Rook MacNaughton stood at the wheel in a canvas jacket with a grin on his face that the weather had no right to.

"Hold the rail, Miss Pinkham," he called.

"I've held rails," I said.

"Hold this one harder."

I held it harder.

The middle brother was lean and wind-burned, with brown hair and a bleached streak at the front and green eyes that kept returning to me.

The youngest sat across from me under the canopy with a lamp between his boots.

He was the quietest of the three, with glasses on a cord around his neck and ink on his fingers.

"Ansel," he said, when he caught me looking.

"I keep the tide tables.

"You'll be warm in a moment.

"There's a blanket under the bench."

I did not take the blanket.

I took the book out from under my arm and held it in my lap, in both hands.

Magnus stood in the stern with his back to the weather.

He had not said a word since the landing.

The Ledge came up out of the rain all at once: a stub of black rock with a granite tower standing on it, gray as old teeth, a lamp burning in the topmost window.

I had seen it from the harbor road all my life, a small light on the horizon.

Up close it was enormous.

Rook brought us alongside a stone dock slick with weed, and the three of them got me out of the boat without touching me.

I noticed it.

Rook held a hand near my elbow and didn't close it.

Ansel stood on the dock with the lamp raised so I could see the steps.

Magnus came last, tying the stern line with one hand.

"This way," he said.

The door at the tower's foot was oak, banded with iron, and it shut behind us with a sound I felt in my teeth.

Inside it was warm, and smelled of tallow and old stone and tea.

A stair went up the inside of the wall in a long turn.

"Three floors," Magnus said, ahead of me.

"The kitchen and stores below.

"The library and our rooms above.

"The lamp room at the top.

"Yours is between the library and the lamp," Magnus said, and went on climbing.

"Mine."

"The keeper's room."

He didn't turn around.

"It's the only room in the tower the wind cannot open."

We climbed.

My legs ached by the second landing.

At the top of the third flight he stopped in front of a door.

It was iron.

It was painted black, and set into the stone as if the tower had been built around it, and it had two locks.

One was set in the face of it where a visitor would knock.

The other was on the inside, a plain brass bolt and a keyhole at the height of my hand.

"The outside key stays with me," Magnus said.

He lifted a chain from the neck of his shirt.

An iron key as long as my finger hung from it, warm from his skin.

"The inside key is yours."

He held out a second one, small and brass.

I looked at it.

"You've put a lock on the inside of a cell," I said.

"Yes," said Magnus.

"Why?"

"So that no one comes in while you sleep," he said.

"Not me.

"Not them.

"Not anyone who isn't you."

I took the brass key.

It sat in my palm, and my hand was shaking, and I closed my fingers over it.

The room beyond the door was larger than I had expected.

A narrow bed with a heavy quilt, a lamp, a washstand, a chair, a table under a deep stone window.

A fire had been lit in the little iron stove.

There was a small, plain book on the table.

"Tide tables," Ansel said, from the stair.

"For the weather.

"In case you want to know what the water's doing."

On the windowsill lay a brass button, round and polished, beside a bit of green sea glass.

"What's that?" I asked.

"A guest gift," Rook said, leaning in the doorway.

"It's what ravens do for a guest.

"We keep shiny things.

"We give you one on the first night."

"That's absurd."

"It's a very old custom," he said, with his face perfectly serious.

Ansel laughed once, quietly, behind him.

Magnus said, "Rook."

"It's true, though."

"Go and see to the boat."

Rook went.

Ansel went after him with the lamp.

Magnus stayed in the doorway a moment longer.

"There is bread and cheese on the table," he said.

"Water in the jug.

"If you need anything, there is a bell on the wall by the bed.

"One of us will come."

"And if I want to leave?"

"You can't," Magnus said.

"Not yet."

He shut the door.

I heard the outside lock turn, heavy and sure.

I stood in the middle of the room with my coat on and my account book under my arm and a key in my hand, and I did not cry.

I sat on the bed.

I ate half the bread because I had missed supper.

I turned the brass key over.

Then I got up, crossed the stone floor, and fitted the key into the inside lock.

It turned.

The door was not locked from within.

It swung toward me on silent hinges and I stood in the opening with the stair dark below me.

Three men sat on the steps beneath the landing, in their coats, in the dark, wide awake.

Magnus was on the middle step with his forearms on his knees.

Rook leaned against the wall, and Ansel sat with a book unopened in his lap.

All three had their faces turned up, toward my door.

None of them moved.

None of them said a word.

They had been watching it the whole time.

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