The Mysteries of Holly Diem (Unknown Kadath Estates Book 2)

by Zachary Rawlins

  “I thought Madeleine was allied with the fish-people,” I objected. “Not the Toads. Am I wrong?”

  “She has friends. Admirers,” Yael explained, blushing. “Madeleine isn’t just a regent in service to the Empress of the Deep. She must have called in a favor from one of Assemblies.”

  “You said Madeleine took Holly to Innsmouth,” Sumire said curiously, chipper despite the attack. “What’s at the docks?”

  “You missed a lot. I’ll explain on the way,” Yael said hurriedly. “We need all the help we can get. Someone will need to stay with April, though…”

  They both stopped and looked at me.

  “Preston,” Yael said urgently. “Where is April?”

  “I brought her inside the gate, and left her with Lovecraft,” I said hurriedly, scrambling for the stairs in a panic. “She’s safe…”

  “…from anything outside,” Yael said, pushing past me. “Where did you leave Jenny?”

  “You mean Jenny Frost? Not to worry!” Sumire called out from behind us. “Holly banned her from the Estates.”

  Too late, I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. I was right on top of Yael’s heels.

  “The ban only holds…”

  “…when Holly is here. Yeah.”

  “That bitch!”

  “Preston!”

  “Sorry. But…”

  “…yeah. I know.”

  An apologetic clearing of the throat from the second story.

  “If I could be a bother,” Dawes said, skewering a Toad with the business end of what a looked like a legit sword cane, “then we could use a bit of assistance.”

  The old ghoul was right. Toads choked the hallway behind the one Yael had impaled, to the point that the gelatinous beasts spilled over the railing. Dawes was putting up a good fight – two Toads had fallen victim to the pointy end of his cane, and were still putting themselves back together – but he looked winded and worried. Behind him, Kim Ai pounded on Josh’s door, demanding entry with a quavering voice. Josh predictably did no such thing, leaving our manager to her fate.

  I had ambivalent feelings.

  “I got this,” Sumire said, leaping from the roof across the airshaft, to land casually on the railing beside Dawes, temporarily forgetting her fear of heights in her enthusiasm for battle. “You go check on April.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice. The Toads didn’t stand a chance against Sumire and her mechanical arm. We left her to it. My urgency was greater, but Yael was in better shape, so she was the first to see what waited for us beside the gate.

  “Oh.” Yael had stopped directly in front of the stairwell. I looked over her shoulder, and understood. “Oh, no.”

  April was gone; the silver gate was ajar, swinging gently along with gusts of cold wind from the water.

  It wasn’t an involved betrayal. Judging by the slime trail, all Jenny Frost did was hold the gate open in our wake. The Toads must have waited until we were on the roof before snatching April.

  I had assumed that Elijah Pickman had hired Jenny, but looking back on it, that was a foolish assumption. Jenny had probably been working for Madeleine all along, but Yael’s unexpected presence had complicated her job.

  Yael sobbed loudly over a small, broken body.

  Lovecraft had defended April. The quantity of gooey Toad innards splattered about spoke to both the valor and futility of the defense.

  “Oh, no.” Yael cradled the poor, still cat beside the ferns at the base of the stairwell, where he liked to lay in the afternoons, in a shaft of sunlight. She wept softly over Lovecraft while my hands opened and closed uselessly. “Not again. You poor dear. You poor, dear kitty.”

  I watched the girl cry, and the dead cat do nothing at all.

  And then I made a decision, which felt small at the time.

  ***

  “This is very suspicious.” Kim Ai glared at me over her glasses, pausing midway in the execution of perhaps fifteen stitches. “I am still of the opinion that you are responsible for what happened to poor Sumire…”

  She tugged the loop on the stitch tight, closing the wound, and I gasped with relief. Kim dipped the needle in a small dish of alcohol to sterilize it, watching me closely with evident dislike. I need her anyway – I should have gotten someone to look at my injuries hours earlier, as the skin around the wound beside my belly button had turned an ugly pinkish-yellow, while the one near my hip was puffy and deep red.

  “…and now this. April is gone...”

  “She’ll be fine,” I lied. “I’m gonna find her just as soon as everybody’s patched up.”

  “You’re always putting the girls in danger,” Kim criticized, attaching stitching to the needle and examining the wound in my stomach grimly. “Did you see Yael’s poor eyes? Sumire’s helping her wash them out now, but she could have suffered real damage to her vision.”

  “She did that herself.” To save both of us. “Really.”

  Kim gave me a dirty look.

  “You had better return April in one piece,” she grumbled, swiping away blood with a cotton swab to see her work. “After everything that’s happened, it’s the least you can do. You’re responsible for all of this, Preston.”

  “I don’t know about responsible,” I said, gripping the sink with both hands as she tugged the final stitch snug. “Not this time. I think our landlady can bear the weight this time.”

  She appeared to consider throwing me out.

  I leveled.

  “Listen – it went like this.” I told the story of Holly and her sisters, their squabbling and maiming. “Holly was pissed at Madeleine. Pissed enough to lock her up in Constance’s old observatory for who-knows how long. There was a purpose to that, I think – Holly mentioned something, about Constance, about obscuring things. Madeleine was stuck there up until just recently – a few months – when an old girlfriend went to great lengths to bust her out. Madeleine needed help, and got it, in the form of her great grandnephew, Elijah Pickman.”

  Kim paused in mid-stitch, and then studied my grimace.

  “How did she find Elijah?”

  “Madeleine didn’t find him at all,” I explained. “Elijah found her. He was studying the Nameless City’s architecture, remember? Making a survey of the oldest remaining examples or something like that. He must have found the observatory, and forced his way in. He couldn’t free Madeleine by himself, though, so she had him contact an old friend. The breakout took some time to arrange. In the meantime, she helped him find a tool, something called the Pallid Mask, which made him powerful and ruined him. He must have become enamored of Madeleine, and he started collecting arms and legs as presents.”

  “Poor Elijah,” Kim clucked. “Such a bright child. The Nameless City is hardest on the curious.”

  “I can see that.”

  “You haven’t convinced me of Holly Diem’s culpability,” Kim reminded me. “Or your own innocence.”

  “Holly knew,” I explained, slapping my palms on the table as she splashed alcohol on the finished stitches, before applying bandage and gauze. “Right from the very start, she knew Madeleine was loose. When the attacks started – when girls started turning up without their arms and legs, she didn’t tell anyone. She didn’t warn April, or Yael – or Sumire.”

  I let that one sink in. She didn’t like it any more than I did.

  “Instead, she convinced Sumire to go hunting for Madeleine, without telling her what was going on, or what kind of risk she was taking. She used her as bait. Then, when it worked…”

  “…she still didn’t tell us.” Kim looked at me, her eyes so sad I immediately regretted telling her anything. “You lie all the time, Preston. I can tell, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “You lie all the time.” Kim wasn’t given to tears, but the emotion was there. “Why aren’t you lying right now?”

  I wasn’t prepared to answer that question. Maybe Yael’s pushy decency had rubbed off on me a little.

  “Holly wasn�
�t as important to me as she is to you,” I said, mindful that she had given Kim Ai sanctuary after cultists assaulted her. “She is a big deal for me, though. I wouldn’t slander her.”

  Kim pursed her lips and nodded, her agreement unexpected, because I don’t think Kim has ever agreed with anything I said.

  “This damn city.” She clipped the end of the thread and ended my abdominal torment. It took all I had not to whimper. “It’s nothing but sharp edges.”

  “Seems that way.”

  Another stitch done. She turned her attention to the back of my head, removing the ice pack she had placed there earlier, so that she could inspect the damage there. She shook her head, and picked her needle back up.

  “I’ve wondered about her business for a long time,” she admitted with a sigh. “You work for her. Do you know what Holly does, Preston? Aside from keeping her monster of a sister imprisoned, I mean.”

  “I asked Dawes and Josh to look into separately. They came back with the same answer: Holly Diem has her fingers everywhere in this city, and no one has any idea why. Carter, the Museum, the Library, even the Night Market – she’s tied up in all of it.”

  Kim nodded sadly and went back to work.

  “I suppose.” She cleared her throat, and I felt the tension in her hands. The question came at cost. “Do you think there is truly any chance of retrieving her and April?”

  “Not sure.” I spoke through gritted teeth. “Yael thinks we stand a chance.”

  “I’m not sure if I can stand to hope. I’m not sure what I would say to Holly now.”

  “Don’t know either. I know I at least want the opportunity to ask her some questions, though. She has a lot to answer for.”

  Kim tugged the stitch closed, and then inspected the job, apparently to her satisfaction.

  “If you are right, then she used Sumire – probably all of us.” The possibility bothered her, and I didn’t blame her for that. “I trusted Holly. It took me a long time to trust anyone again, after what happened. If it was all a lie, then that seems a terrible waste.”

  “Then don’t let it be a waste. Sumire was the one who actually saved you, right? I think you are safe putting faith in her. She’s a hero, right?”

  Dunwich watched us from the end of Kim’s spare kitchen table. If he had thoughts, he kept them to himself.

  “I wouldn’t have expected to hear that from you.”

  “Me either, Kim. Guess I’m in a weird mood.”

  She nodded and started to clean her tools.

  “We are done. You can dress.”

  “Okay.” I pulled my shirt back on carefully over the stitches. “Thanks for the help.”

  She nodded. She didn’t say anything else, until my hand was on the doorknob.

  “Whatever happens,” she said quietly, her voice strangled with forced passivity, “I won’t be here. When you get back. I’ll be gone, from the Estates, forever.”

  I just stood there, eyes on the door, too tired for machinations.

  “Why?”

  “It’s ruined either way, isn’t it? I don’t want to stay and see the ending, Preston. I’ve seen enough to know that it will be ugly. You are taking Sumire and Yael with you, aren’t you?”

  “No choice.” I lied. “Even if I ditched them, they know where I’m going. You know I can’t talk them out of it.”

  She sighed again.

  “You’re awful.”

  “Maybe. I’m surprised you would run away, though, Kim.” The words hurt her, as I intended. “If you’re worried about Sumire, then why would you leave before you know she’s safe? And what about April, for that matter?”

  “You ruined April a long time ago,” Kim said, shaking her head to negate I don’t know what. “And I’m not worried about Sumire’s safety – she’s invulnerable.”

  “Listen, this is insanity. She got her arm cut off…”

  “She’s fine,” Kim said brusquely. “I’m worried about the road Sumire will go down. Holly, or April, or you – it doesn’t matter. None of you have good intentions.”

  “Then stay here, and be a good influence.”

  “I’m not harboring those sorts of delusions,” Kim said, sniffling. “Frankly, I’m tired of stitching all of you back together.”

  “Is this about the Toad attack? Because that was a fluke, a one-time occurrence…”

  “Really? You’re sure?”

  It would have been a good time for a lie. Unfortunately, somehow, I found myself lacking one.

  “No. I guess not.”

  “It wouldn’t make a difference, even if you were,” Kim said tersely. “I see people where the rest of you see tools. I don’t want to see them broken – and I don’t think I want to see you achieve whatever you came here to do, Preston. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Should I hope for April?”

  I consider it.

  “Not really.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes remained stubbornly dry. “I see.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Away from here. From this city.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  Kim did not respond. I left as quietly as possible.

  ***

  Yael closeted herself with Professor Dawes in his apartment that afternoon, laboring over crucible and parchment, while Sumire ran errands, and I drank instant coffee and ate aspirin until my ears rang. Sumire returned a few hours later, dropping off what looked like links of chain with Yael and Dawes, and then disappeared again promptly. We didn’t talk on the train ride to Innsmouth.

  It was raining when we arrived at the station, but the rain tapered off as we approached the crumbling docks. The smell of the sea was pervasive, the crashing of waves on the nearby shore a steady percussion. The swollen moon appeared close enough to graze the rotting warehouses and workshops that lined the narrow streets. Creeping along in the shadows or along the fences and gutters of the ancient canneries and fishmongers, the Cats of Ulthar followed us – a grim and silent presence at our heels, ever since Snowball accepted Lovecraft’s wrapped body at the gates of the Kadath Estates. I didn’t know what help they might be – what help anything could be, given the circumstances – but I felt better with company.

  We followed the same path along the sandy alleys as we had in our first visit, Dunwich taking the lead with Yael close behind, masked clamped over her head. Sumire followed boldly, inviting confrontation, a large canvas bag stuck clumsily beneath her arm, and Professor Dawes and I slunk after. The cats were silent as ghosts at our heels. We all had our reasons.

  The beach at the end of the road shone like marble in the moonlight. The waves were thick with bioluminescent algae, the shore strewn with a wealth of seashells and sea glass. The charcoal remains of Madeleine’s ruined lair were strewn with roses and orchids, sage and yarrow, kelp, and abalone shell. The door leading to the Tidal Chamber and the submerged caverns beyond were buried beneath an enormous pile of heaped coral and stone, suffocated under tons of dripping rock.

  Elijah Pickman waited at the end of the road, beside the last of the weather-beaten buildings, illuminated by a gas lantern hung on a nearby piling. He had loosened the Pallid Mask slightly, so that it hung grotesquely from his absent face. His shadow stretched across the building wall, flexing and bowing without any corresponding movement on his part.

  “My great-grandaunt and great-grandmother send their apologies,” he said merrily, his voice emerging from the shadow. “I am afraid you won’t be able to see them this evening.”

  The smile that crossed his face did not belong to Elijah Pickman. That expression belonged to the Pallid Mask, and it was foul.

  His shadow split from him and crept toward us like a living thing. The stars dimmed and the surrounding buildings receded, but the moon was bright and sickly in the pitch sky. I remembered this darkness, or another like it, from the incident in the subway station two years earlier. An incident that had not necessarily happened.

  “Sumire.�
�� Yael’s lenses were two brilliant reflections of the swollen moon. “The etchings.”

  She nodded and then tore open the canvas bag with her mechanical arm, sending a dozen hatefully rendered etchings onto the wet roadway, where the rain and mud immediately began to muck them up. The shadow quailed and pooled, shimmering with anxiety. Elijah cried out like a sleeping child in the grip of a nightmare.

  “Sorry,” Sumire said, sheepishly laughing, and rubbing the back of her head. “Still getting used to my new arm. Guess I don’t know my own strength, huh?”

  Elijah took a halting step toward the etchings, his shadow quavering at a distance.

  “Are…are those…?”

  “Yes, Elijah. I’m afraid so,” Yael explained solemnly, while Sumire hurried to gather the fallen canvases. “Those are the etchings you produced for the King in Yellow, to provide it with passage. Madeleine must have given you the particulars, right? I’m so disappointed in you, Elijah. You are such a gifted artist. What a waste of talent, simply to acquire a bauble like the Pallid Mask. You could have accomplished so much more.”

  “Give them to me!” Elijah snarled, while his shadow rushed toward us like the incoming tide. “Those are mine!”

  Yael scattered a handful of papers onto the wet asphalt, directly in the path of Elijah’s liberated shadow. The surge of animate darkness collided with the discarded paper, and then recoiled like a rebounding bowstring.

  “I hate to litter,” Yael explained, striding forward confidentially, papers blowing from open hands in all directions. “You’ve driven me to it, though, Elijah.”

  “What folly is this?” Elijah hollered. The Pallid Mask slipped slightly to expose the absence it concealed. “You think I can be contained with the Yellow Sign?”

  I caught one of the fluttering pages and glanced at the intricate symbol traced on it. April had drawn the same symbol across her skin before her earlier confrontation with Elijah. Sumire gathered the etchings, placing them in a pile in front of the Professor, who was busy fumbling through his book bag.