"Abigail. Are you absolutely certain that you're pregnant?"
"What? What are you talking about? I took the test. What else could it be?"
Dr. Collins ignored Abby. "Run a blood test on her. And get the internal ultrasound. I'm not positive, but I believe she still has her-"
The lights went out.
"Karen, would you check the generator? Abby, there's nothi-"
Abby cut Dr. Collins off with a howl of pure agony. The pain in her belly spiked past anything she had ever experienced before. It was a white-hot core at her center, sending out barbed tendrils of fire through her entire body. She felt like she was going to explode.
"Abigail! ABBY! Stop thrashing!"
Abby heard the words, but they were just noises in the distant background of her blinding pain. She felt hands on her, but they really had nothing to do with her.
The pain began to change. It reached the peak of all the anguish she could possibly feel and then twisted back down along itself. A bright burning tore through the darkness, and she was one with it. The pain ignited every nerve in her body, lighting them red, then orange, then yellow, then white, then something beyond white that she could see but never describe. It focused and sharpened her. She was not seeing through her eyes; she was seeing through her whole body-but it was so much more than just seeing. She could hear, smell, taste, feel everything, and then there were innumerable, indescribable other senses she must have always had and also gained right at that moment.
Something was on the other side of the light.
Abby could only perceive bits of it. A swatch of glittering scales. A wet scent, like a peat bog. The taste of burnt cinnamon. She knew she was only getting tiny parts, like looking at a whale through a microscope. It was much too large for her to perceive it whole.
Then... it looked at her.
It was impossibly old. She did not know how she knew, but it was incontrovertible fact. It regarded her with unreadable intentions. Maybe it saw a meal. Maybe a kindred spirit. Maybe it had just awakened and it had no idea what this tiny, screaming being even was.
She opened her eyes and the agony stopped. The fluorescent lights flickered on, one by one.
Abby winced, suddenly aware of a pricking sensation in her arm. She looked, and saw that she had torn free of the IV. She put her hand over the dripping wound.
A smear of bright blood went across the wall and out the door. Abby pulled her feet from the stirrups and huddled on the table, pulling the inadequate sheet about her.
"Dr. Collins?" she asked the silence.
There was no answer.
"Dr. Collins?" she said louder.
Still no answer.
The blood looked vaguely like a smeared hand print. It couldn't have been Dr. Collins-it was too big-but maybe the nurse... The paint was scratched amid the blood. Nail marks. It looked like the nurse had been yanked out of the room.
Yanked. Yanked by what?
She shivered. Was it still out there? Could it still be?
"Abby?"
Abby was paralyzed. She didn't believe she'd heard anything. She thought it had to be the product of her imagination, giving her hope where there was none.
"Abby?"
It was her mother.
"Abby, honey, are you there?"
Relief slammed into Abby like a sob.
"Mom!" She screamed the word like an escaping night terror. "I'm in here, Mom! Please!"
Constance stepped through the door. Abby huddled on the examination table, trembling.
"I need you to get dressed dear," Constance said. Her voice was taut. Abby had heard that tone before when Constance was angry, but she couldn't be angry. Could she?
"I... I can't." Her limbs wouldn't obey. Her brain was trying to shake itself apart. "Mommy..." Abby didn't think as the words left her lips. She couldn't remember the last time she had referred to Constance as 'mommy,' but she needed a mommy more than anything right now. She needed her to run over her, hold her, kiss her forehead, and swear that no matter what it was all going to be okay.
Such displays of affection and compassion were beyond Constance at this moment. Her eyes were heavy with an expression that was totally alien to her mother's Thorndike-green eyes.
Constance was terrified.
"Abigail, get off that table and get dressed. Do it now and do it fast. Don't make me tell you again."
Abby couldn't help but respond to that icy tone. She slid off the examination table, covering herself as best she could. She wiped the gel off her belly with the paper sheet, then threw her clothes on. The poke on her arm from the IV had stopped oozing. She tried not to look at the darkening smear of blood on the wall.
Constance pressed a single button on her cell phone. "Hello? Yes, I need to speak with Chief Stone, please."
Robert Stone was the Arkham Chief of Police.
"Hello, Robert. Yes, there has been a... well, an event at Dr. Collins's clinic." She brushed her hand against her lapel, following the contours of the Daughters of Arkham pin with her fingertips. "I need you to send your most discreet men. Mm-hmm. Yes. I'm afraid so. I will not be here when you arrive. In fact, I was never here. Is that understood? Good. Thank you, Robert." She ended the call, and turned to Abby.
Abby's clothes felt strange on her, as though they belonged to someone else. Maybe it was because everything had been chilled by the oppressive air conditioning, but that didn't explain why her blouse and tights felt like steel wool. She shivered and looked at her mother, trying to understand whether her mother had in fact just issued peremptory orders to the Chief of Police.
Constance Thorndike stood in the doorway. She had made her call just inches from the horrible bloodstain on the doorjamb and wall. Anyone else might have only seen her as the imperious figure she projected, the impossible standard of class and beauty, but Abby saw something foreign in her mother's face. It was something she had never seen before, something ashen and vulnerable.
"Come now, dear. We have to leave." The tautness in her voice had returned. She held out her hand. In the flickering fluorescent light, her ivory complexion looked more like the pallor of a corpse.
Abby took her hand, and Constance led her out into the hall.
Abby saw what was waiting there and screamed.
Dr. Collins and her assistant were there with their throats torn open. Abby buried her head in Constance's side.
"It's all right, dear. They're dead. Nothing more can happen to them, and they can't hurt you."
It was such a tone-deaf response that Abby felt another hysterical laugh bubble up in her lungs. She clamped it down. That was what crazy people did. She was not crazy, no matter how the world was conspiring to make her so. Her mind reeled with what had just happened and what she had seen in that strange vision during the attack.
That presence... Had it been responsible?
Abby heaved out a sob as they skirted the bodies. She looked up only when they were through the door and into the waiting room. She regretted it immediately. The woman at the desk had been killed as well. Her blood decorated the glass wall. On the other side, the oak tree waited, a mute sentinel. It had seen everything.
Constance hustled Abby into the car and sped home.
35
Two Mothers
constance Thorndike did her best not to allow her fear to escape her icy facade. Luckily, she had a great deal of practice maintaining her composure. This was supposed to have been a simple procedure, and it had gone horribly wrong. How? Or even what? Those wounds hadn't looked like they'd been made by any weapon she knew, or at least none made by human hands.
Abby slumped in the passenger seat. The sight of her dead eyes and twitching hands disturbed Constance. The girl looked like she was on the edge of madness. Certain kinds of insanity could be helpful to the bloodline. No psychiatrist would pronounce Hester Thorndike sane and she had run the Daughters for over thirty years. This kind, however, looked to be of the fragile variety. Constance imagined her daughter b
roken and hollow-eyed, wasting away in her room. It was enough to send Constance spiraling into panic.
She ran through the situation for the umpteenth time since it had happened. With each review of the facts, she gained no new insights. There was no reason to think she would this time. She recounted everything regardless. She had the feeling that it was the only thing keeping her from joining her daughter's present catatonia.
Constance had left Abby in Room B and gone to wait in the well-appointed lounge. She'd picked up a magazine at random and she'd been flipping through it when the lights had gone out. She remembered looking up. She had the sense that she was not alone. She tried to remember the sounds that she should have heard. There should have been ripping flesh and blood splashing on the walls and glass. There should have been screams of agony, but there hadn't been. There had only been the yawning void in her ears.
Then the lights had come back on. And the girl behind the desk was dead.
Constance had stared at desk, trying to process what she was actually seeing, then she'd got up and gone to find her daughter. Evelyn Collins and the nurse were dead in the hallway. Constance had stepped around them, careful not to get any blood on her clothes or shoes. And then she'd found Abby.
Her poor daughter had looked like a drowned rat, shaking and hugging her knees on the table. Constance's heart had melted at the naked fear in her daughter's eyes. She'd ached to comfort Abby but she knew the best way to help her daughter was to present an image of strength. Her resolve had almost shattered when Abby called her 'mommy;' the word was like a punch to her womb. Maternal instincts that Constance had thought faded long ago had flooded back to the surface and threatened to overwhelm her completely.
She'd resisted it. She'd known she had to protect her daughter, not comfort her. She couldn't rock Abby and tell her the boogeyman wasn't real when it was more than obvious he was. She remembered thinking that they had to get out before the killers returned. She'd suspected they'd been deliberately spared. If the killers wanted them dead, too, they would have tried to kill both of them. They probably weren't in direct danger, but it was never a good idea to test the will of the mad.
Constance parked haphazardly by the front door of Harwich Hall. Bertram would return the car to the garage. She went to the passenger side, opened the door, and held out her hand to Abby. Her daughter blinked at her as though she had just woken from a dream.
"Come on, dear. It's okay now. We're home."
Abby took her mother's hand and allowed herself to be lead into the house. They went through the front door and ran directly into Hester Thorndike. Ice water replaced Constance's blood at the sight of her mother and she shivered under Hester's disapproving gaze. How long had Hester been standing there? She never stood anywhere for any length of time. Her knees couldn't take it. Yet there she was. Waiting.
"Hello, dear," Hester said to her daughter.
"Abby, why don't you go upstairs?"
Constance knew that Hester had somehow learned where they had been. She didn't try guessing how she knew; it didn't matter now. Hester had her ways. Her green eyes glinted in the burnished light of the hallway.
Abby trudged upstairs, silent as a ghost.
Hester's lips thinned and spread. Calling her expression a smile would have implied some form of warmth. "Where were you this afternoon?"
Constance swallowed. "The clinic."
"It pleases me that you choose not to lie." Hester turned and hobbled into the living room. Constance felt relieved when she noticed her mother's knees were bothering her. She was human, after all.
Hester settled into her chair. It was hers because no one else was allowed into it. It was high-backed, imperious, and commanded a view of the entire room, as though she was sitting at the head of an unseen table. Hester steepled her fingers and waited.
Constance settled into a chair across from her. She kept her knees together as she had been taught, presenting an appealing silhouette to her audience. She folded her hands in her lap and angled her shoulders just so. She could not have sat any other way, even in this moment of stress.
"Were you going to tell me?" Hester asked.
"There was no reason to tell you."
"Then the answer to that question is 'no.' I'll not have you dissemble under my own roof, Constance."
"Yes, mother."
"You were not going to tell me because Abigail was not ruined unless her condition became common knowledge."
"Yes, mother."
"You should have told me." Hester sighed. "Still, I would have told you to do precisely what you did."
Constance looked at her mother in surprise.
"Silly girl. After all we've done for her, she wants to spoil it all on the eve of her induction. The level of ingratitude staggers me."
"Mother... The abor- procedure... failed."
"Failed? What do you mean failed? Did you take her to," Hester searched for the name, "Eve Collins?"
"I took her to Evelyn Collins," Constance corrected her without correcting her, as she'd been taught. "And then... something happened." She explained everything as best she could to Hester. They both were frustrated with how little they knew.
"So, she is still with child?" Hester asked at the end.
"Yes, mother."
"And who is the..." Hester couldn't bear to say the word "father." Constance couldn't blame her.
"She doesn't know."
"Doesn't know? Has the apple fallen so far from the tree?"
Constance swallowed. "She says it is either Bryce Coffin or Nathaniel Baxter."
"Bryce Coffin? He's dead."
"No, his son. Bryce Coffin IV."
"Oh. How is that even possible? She has been taking her supplement, correct?"
Constance nodded.
"We need to find out what's wrong, then. This situation... I don't like it."
"We could try another procedure?"
Hester shook her head. "And lose another physician? I think not. No, we need to observe this and determine who is so invested in young Abigail's child. When we learn that, we will know what to do next."
Constance wanted to scream. She wanted to tell her mother that Abby was her daughter. She couldn't use the girl as bait. It was monstrous. Instead, she murmured, "Yes, mother."
36
The Report
Abby saw the article on the website of the Arkham Post. It wasn't even on the front page; it was nestled in a link near the bottom of a page normally reserved for unimportant local news, like an award-winning pumpkin or an announcement about road maintenance: Three Slain at Arkham Clinic.
She clicked on the link. The article was bare bones, more like a police report than a homicide story. It named the three victims-Dr. Evelyn Collins, Karen Dubois, and Darla Munson-and stated that an unknown person or persons had committed the crime. It claimed that there were no witnesses since the clinic had been free of visitors.
She scrolled back up to look at the title again. Three Slain at Arkham Clinic, by Stephanie Hill. Abby recognized the name. She was one of Constance's friends. She was a Daughter of Arkham.
Abby had to turn from the computer for a moment. How much influence did her mother have?
She knew she was going to see those bodies in her mind for a long time whenever she closed her eyes. Dr. Collins-her mouth formed into a grotesque rictus, her eyes popped out in fear, the terrible wound in her throat...
She returned to the article, and found no more answers. It hinted that police were concentrating on "drifters" who had recently arrived in Arkham, which could have meant anything from 'the homeless' to 'someone looking for a new direction.'
The article didn't mention Abby or her mother. Abby remembered her mother on the phone with the Chief of Police, her slender, pale, fingers stroking the pin on her lapel as if it were a genie's bottle, waiting to grant her every wish.
When Abby went downstairs to join Hester and Constance for breakfast, she looked at her mother and grandmother with newfound horro
r. They sat there eating their breakfast as if the world had not gone insane, as if the police department and the Arkham Post had not bent to her mother's will just a few days ago.
"Above all else... sisterhood," Abby whispered.
The four-hundred-year-old motto of the Daughters of Arkham had never sounded so menacing.
37
The Hidden Door
As usual, many town luminaries were invited to Harwich Hall for Thanksgiving dinner. Stephanie Hill, the woman who had written the deceitful newspaper article, attended. So did Chief Robert Stone. All the conspirators sat down together to eat turkey and be thankful.
Abby made herself as much of a ghost as she could. She bolted her food and vanished to her room, letting the adults talk about adult things. She wondered if her mother and the others would go off together to discuss their cover-up. How many others were complicit in the event?
She looked over at the dollhouse, the miniature Harwich Hall on its specially-built table. The mold had begun to peek out between the seams of wall and house. She sighed. She knew she should clean it, but she didn't have the will to get up and do it.
Instead, she opened up her laptop and found Nate online.
hey, she said to him.
Hey back.
u around sat???
I can be.
come over after lunch
You want to talk? I'm free now. Veronica's having a concert in the living room.
no... face 2 face
Got it. See you at school tomorrow?
yAA~*~
They didn't speak in detail at school, and Abby was as quiet as she could be. She had taken to wearing lumpy sweaters. She wasn't showing yet, but she was convinced the first signs had begun because her stomach now pooched out a little above her underwear. She folded her arms across her belly, both hugging and hiding. Her rational mind might insist that no one noticed, but that didn't stop her from believing that every eye had already witnessed her shame. It was easy to be inconspicuous, though. Bryce was almost too loud at lunch. He made too many jokes, acted a little too aloof. Abby saw the pain in his eyes but she didn't know what was causing it. If she asked, she knew she'd only get a joke in response.
Mother of Crows: Daughters of Arkham - Book 2 Page 17
