The Nightmare Garden

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Conrad snarled for a moment, looking for all the world as if he was going to slap me across the face, but then he collapsed, wrapping his arms around me so tightly I couldn’t breathe.

  I hugged him back, as hard as I could. Relief flooded through me. This was the Conrad I knew, the one I’d grown up with.

  I realized amid my pounding heart and the wind that Conrad was saying something to me, and I pulled back to listen. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry, Aoife.”

  “For what?” I said, confused. “Neither of us has been very nice lately, but that’s not—”

  “No.” Conrad tugged my scarf down. I flinched when he touched my scar but squeezed his hand between my own.

  “It wasn’t your fault. The iron madness—”

  “Nothing will make my attacking you all right, Aoife,” he said. “Not the fact that I was crazy, not the fact that I’m in remission. Nothing will make this mess with me making you come find me all right. Just let me say I’m sorry.”

  I dropped his hand and nodded, pulling off my scarf on my own. “I forgive you, Conrad.” After everything that had happened, the words that had once stuck in my throat at merely thinking them came without any effort at all.

  Conrad didn’t say anything; he just buried his face against my shoulder. We stayed that way for a minute, until Archie came up and coughed softly. He looked almost ashamed to be intruding, and I thought it sort of served him right. He was trying to teach Conrad to be a survivor, but calling him out had been cruel. I held on to my brother protectively as Archie spoke.

  “I think that’s enough for today, son. You can go on back to the house.” He gave Conrad an awkward tap on the shoulder, the sort of male gesture that somehow conveyed it was all right, that he wasn’t really mad.

  Once my brother had gone out of earshot, Archie turned to me and shook his head. “This is going to cause an epic uproar, I hope you know. There has never been a female Gateminder, not in the hundred and twenty years since Tesla made the damn things in the first place. If you turn out to be my heir with the Weird—and let’s face it, we both know it’s likely after your brother’s performance just now … Well. There’s going to be some hurt feelings in the Brotherhood.”

  I didn’t particularly care what sort of uproar I’d cause. By now, I was pretty used to being the one who made everything go sideways for the people in charge. “Are you mad at me?” I asked my father. He gave me a look as if I were going crazier than I already was.

  “Of course not. I’m damn proud of you. You’re smart, and your Weird is something to behold. Once we toughen you up, you’re going to do a much better job of this whole thing than me.”

  I blushed a little. Inspiring pride in Archie was a new sensation, and I liked it. “But without the Brotherhood, what good are the Gateminders?” I asked. “What will it matter if it passes to me?”

  “We’re still the only humans who can open Gates,” Archie said. “In this world or any other. As long as that’s the case, we have a duty to police what comes through, whether or not those fat cats who’ve taken over the Brotherhood have a say.”

  I kicked a furrow in the sand with my foot. It was a lot of responsibility. But it certainly wasn’t more than what I’d already decided to shoulder myself: to find the nightmare clock. That was what I had to do, above all else.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said to my father. I felt lousier than I admitted about lying to him, even partially. But his falling-out with the Brotherhood wasn’t mine, and I needed a look at the Iron Codex, now more than ever. I needed a way to find the nightmare clock and use it, and Archie couldn’t do that for me.

  I was as ready as I was ever going to be, I realized. And I was going to have to disobey my father to do what I needed to do—only, now there was at least the small hope that he’d forgive me after the fact for running off on my own.

  Archie pulled me in with one arm and gave me a squeeze. “Thank you,” he said.

  I frowned in confusion. “For what, Dad?”

  “Trusting me,” he said. “I know it was a lot to ask. All I ask now is that you keep being smart, and strong, and trust yourself.” He held me at arm’s length, and for the first time the expression in his eyes softened when he looked at me. I wouldn’t have called it fatherly, but it was no longer calculating. “Trust yourself, Aoife. And never stop fighting.”

  Trusting other people doesn’t come easily to you when you’ve never had someone who trusts you. But I had to tell someone about my dreams of the dark figure and the spinning worlds beyond his glass prison, someone who wouldn’t tell Archie or Valentina in turn. Or let it slip to the girl he was infatuated with.

  Dean shook his head when I finished, and lit a cigarette. “Hell of a story, Aoife.”

  “They’re not regular dreams,” I said. “I’m sure of that. They feel too much. I can taste the air and hear the gears clacking, feel the vibrations under my feet.”

  “I’ve had some doozies of dreams,” Dean said. “Bourbon and bad diner food will do it. But not lately.” He slid closer to me and draped his arm around my shoulder. “I sleep nice and tight here, princess.”

  “It’s different,” I said, blushing at his reminder of the day before. “If the nightmare clock actually exists, and I think it does, Valentina said it can … change things. Reality.” I swallowed, hoping it didn’t sound insane when I said it aloud. “It could put the world right again. The Engine, the Gates, everything.”

  “Right.” Dean exhaled. “You mean back like it was, with Proctors and secret prisons and burnings? Because that was top-notch, I gotta say.” Venom dripped from his words.

  “Back to where I know why my mother is sick, and I can help her,” I whispered, feeling tears prick at the corners of my eyes and hating my weakness. “And where the Proctors don’t exist at all.”

  Dean ground out his cigarette against a porch post. “You’ve got that look, Aoife. Like all the gears are seized. What crazy thing are you thinking of?”

  “Someone who knows more than Archie could be a big help,” I said.

  “True, but you’re stuck here with dear old Dad,” Dean said. “He’s got his eye on you, to make sure you don’t …” He trailed off and rubbed his chin, not meeting my eyes.

  “Blow up an Engine and break the Gates?” I supplied. It was the truth. It shouldn’t have hurt. But it did, and I pulled back.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Dean said. He drew me close again. “I know you feel like you have to put things right. I just don’t want you to get hurt. Besides, who knows more than your old man about this stuff?”

  “The Brotherhood,” I said instantly. “They have the Iron Codex—all the knowledge this world has of any other.”

  “I thought Archie said we couldn’t trust them,” Dean said. “People who think they know everything are usually pretty good at hiding stuff, Aoife.”

  “But I don’t know anything right now,” I said, all the frustration I’d been feeling earlier cropping up again. “I don’t know if my dad’s right or just paranoid. I’d just like the chance to ask them myself.”

  “Well, if you insist,” Dean said. “Let’s bust out of here and go ask ’em. Where do they bunk?”

  I shrugged. “No idea.” I looked back at the house, where off-key piano music floated out through the glass. “But I bet Valentina knows all about it.”

  Valentina and Archie shared the master bedroom in the Crosley house. The four-poster bed was unmade, and bottles of ink and papers bearing my father’s jagged handwriting were scattered across the writing desk in the corner.

  I stood still for a moment, taking in the details of the room. A negligee hung from the door of the wardrobe, and one of Archie’s shirts was crumpled on the floor.

  A creak from below reminded me that I was on borrowed time, and I went over to the dressing table, which was covered with rows of makeup pots and perfume bottles and a powder puff, all the tools Valentina had shown me how to use to put my face on. She’d really tried t
o make this easier on me, and a small part of me felt rotten for snooping now and deceiving the both of them.

  But in the greater scheme, if I fixed things, if I used the clock the way Valentina had said some believed it could be used, wouldn’t it justify what I was doing now?

  I sure hoped so.

  While Dean kept watch on the door, I dug into the drawers, beneath the underthings and the odds and ends of old hairpins and mostly empty bottles.

  Valentina had to have something—a letter, her own witch’s alphabet—that would tell me how to connect with the Brotherhood of Iron.

  My fingers brushed paper—good, thick vellum paper—and I moved aside a stack of slips to see several oversized envelopes tied with a blue silk ribbon. Finally. Elated, I pulled them from the drawer and flipped through them one by one. They were all addressed to Miss Valentina Gravesend Crosley in the same precise hand.

  I slipped the letters—six of them—out of the envelopes and retied the parcel sans the pages inside the envelopes. That would buy me a little time before Valentina and Archie discovered what I was up to.

  What I was up to could be mad; I’d considered that. The iron of the Iron Land could be poisoning me—more slowly than before, it was true—but then, my particular brand of madness had always shown itself first in dreams.

  Still, if there was a chance I could put things right, I was going to take it, no matter what the odds might be. I knew myself well enough to know that.

  Shoving the letters into the waist of my skirt, I pulled the pin-neat white cardigan Valentina had lent me over the bulge and went back to my own little room.

  I propped a chair under the doorknob to avoid being interrupted. I’d hit the jackpot. The letters, all but one, were from Valentina’s father, and he’d signed them Herbert Gravesend Crosley, which just solidified the image I had of Valentina’s parents as stuffy, unappealing sticklers.

  Lastly, I unfolded a letter in familiar handwriting—the jagged slanted scrawl of my father. It was old, the ink worn away at the crease, and written on cheaper paper than the rest; it was beginning to fray at the corners.

  Dearest Valentina,

  I shut my eyes and sucked in a breath of the stale air in my room. A love letter. A love letter written when I was still in Lovecraft, when my mother was locked away, when Conrad and I were in some orphanage.

  That couldn’t matter now. Shaking my head to clear it, I read on.

  It’s cold here, and I’m getting more frustrated by the day.

  The Brotherhood as it is now is a disgrace. They sit, fat and content here at the top of the world, and they scheme and argue, but they never do anything. Not about the Thorn Land, not about the Proctors, not about the instability of the Gates.

  They don’t realize that with every bargain they cut with the Fae, they bring us an inch closer to another Storm. They are weakening the very world that they helped build. The tenet of never trusting the Fae has fallen by the wayside, and nobody listens to anything I have to say on the matter. They sit and scribble in their damn notebooks, natter on and on about the glory of the Iron Codex, and never admit that things are worse now than they ever were when the Storm was raging.

  Too late, I thought. I gripped the letter hard enough to make tiny tears in the edges of the paper. There was a second Storm now—a slow-moving plague that was pouring from the shattered Gate into the Iron Land, a Storm I’d had a hand in causing when I’d broken the Gates to Thorn.

  This is not about protecting the human race anymore. This is not even about balance, about living in harmony with the eldritch things that crawl out of Thorn. This is a shell game to see who can grab the most power and influence from under the cup before the whole thing collapses and we all realize we’ve grabbed a fat handful of nothing.

  Or until the Proctors burn every last reasonable person on earth alive. I don’t know which we’ll get to first.

  Archie’s handwriting started to skid off the page, his pen blotting and leaving long dribbles of ink that obliterated entire words.

  Coming home. That’s what I want. I want to see green hills and blue skies again. Even that vile smoke over Lovecraft would be preferable to the endless days cooped up here with these old men in the Bone Sepulchre. I want

  After that, the words were blotted out, until the very end.

  hold you again, smell you and feel you next to me.

  I love you, Valentina. I hope you understand why I can’t be a part of this farce the Brotherhood has become anymore. Say you’ll stay with me. Please.

  I crumpled the letter and tossed it across the room. It landed in the corner, with a flutter rather than a satisfying bounce.

  I’d found out something useful. The rest of it shouldn’t matter.

  My resolve had hardened.

  The Brotherhood was going to help me, whether they knew it or not. The Iron Codex would have answers, and I was going to have to go and find them.

  I laid out my plan to Dean, Cal, Bethina and Conrad, because I needed their help. They took it about as well as I expected.

  “You’re cracked,” Conrad said. “You heard what Dad said. We have to lie low, and we have to wait until there’s more of us together to try and fix the Gate. In the meantime, there are Proctors everywhere, and creatures coming through the broken Gates. Have you thought about how you’re even going to get to this … what’d you call it?”

  “The Bone Sepulchre,” I said, matching his testy tone. “And stop calling me nuts, Conrad.”

  “I’m sorry, but when you say something that’s nuts, I’m not gonna lie,” he said. He looked at Dean. “Please tell her she’s being crazy.”

  “It’s a bad idea,” Dean said. “But if you’re going, I’m going with you.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “I don’t know how they’d react to you, Dean. It’s bad enough that I have Fae blood. I can’t put you in that position.”

  “Have you ever thought that your father might be right?” Bethina spoke up. “The world isn’t the same at all. Ghouls everywhere, stone knows what crawling out from under every rock.” She shivered. “Mr. Grayson has good sense, miss. Maybe you should listen to him for once.”

  Cal nodded agreement, and I shot him an annoyed glance. He was only doing that to impress his girlfriend, and I kicked him under the table when he glared back. Boys and girls got silly when crushes and love came into play. I hoped I didn’t come across as that irritating when I was with Dean.

  “I’m going to try,” I said. “So don’t even attempt to change my mind.”

  Cal grumbled, and I spread my hands. “If it were your mother missing in this mess …”

  “All right, all right,” Cal said, throwing me a murderous shut up glance. As if I’d spill his secret in front of Bethina. “We’ll help you, but for the record, I think this whole plan is going to come to a bad end.”

  “Well, I’m not helping,” Conrad announced. “Your running away is just that—running. You’re afraid of what might happen if you let Archie be in charge and fix this the right way.”

  “And what exactly are you doing besides nothing, Conrad?” I asked. “What exactly did you do before, besides pant after Archie’s trail like a puppy and almost get yourself killed? Thank goodness you had your Weird,” I said, and then snapped my fingers. “Oh, that’s right—yours hasn’t shown up yet.”

  “You’re being a bitch, Aoife,” Conrad said, his brows lowering and his eyes going angry.

  “And you’re being a dunce if you think we can just sit here and expect everything to be fine,” I snapped back. I shouldn’t have picked on Conrad’s lack of a Weird, but he could be so infuriating. “Archie’s not perfect, Conrad, and he doesn’t always have a plan. He did just leave us in Lovecraft.”

  “You know our mother, Aoife,” he cried, slamming his hand on the table in frustration. “I would have left too.”

  “You leave wives,” I said. “Not children.”

  “She’s got a point,” Dean murmured.

  Conrad stood
up, shoving back his chair. “Fine. You two run off like delinquents, and drag poor Cal and Bethina with you. I’m out of this.” He left, and I stood up to go after him, to do what, I wasn’t sure, but Dean pulled me back.

  “Forget it,” he said. “You’re not changing his mind.”

  I sank back in my chair and pressed my face into my hands. I thought I’d lost Conrad over a year ago when his iron madness made him go for my throat with a knife, but to find him alive and sane and now to see the gulf between us getting even wider—that, I couldn’t handle.

  Nor could I blame Conrad entirely for being such a jerk. I wanted a father again as badly as he did. He was just more willing to accept Archie’s demands for obedience.

  “He’s right, though,” I muttered. “I don’t have a plan for how I’ll get out of here, never mind how I’ll get to the Brotherhood. We don’t even know where the Bone Sepulchre is.”

  Cal cast a look back at the door. As a ghoul, he had much better hearing than Dean and me, and I’d entrusted him with keeping watch. “Is there some way we can figure it out?”

  “Well, Archie’s letter talked about the top of the world,” I said. “The Arctic Circle somewhere would make sense. The Proctors steer clear of there.” The accepted story was that great viral creatures flourished under the polar ice, but I didn’t know the real truth. Regardless, there was something there that kept the Proctors out of the cold, unclaimed waters and led them to keep everyone else out too, with blockades and patrol boats. It made as much sense as any other location on earth.

  “Not to put a damper on the party,” Bethina said, “but you can’t just grab a skiff and row up to the Arctic Ocean. That’s a long journey, and you need an ironside boat. I saw a lanternreel on the subject when I was a girl. About the expeditions and such.”