Daughters of Arkham

by Justin Robinson

  She chuckled, but stopped when it sent another bolt through her tender head. All of her drug and alcohol awareness classes at Mather Primary hadn’t done much to protect her from last night. It was one thing to understand peer pressure intellectually, and another to experience it. Her night—the first time she’d really spent with Bryce Coffin—was a big, blank, embarrassing spot. She felt that something was in the back of her mind, the way you can sense another person in a darkened room, but there was no way to make out any details.

  Abby kept thinking. There were the images of the sea creatures outside the funhouse, and then there was the hall of mirrors… No, those were two separate memories. Had she gotten lost? She felt like she’d been in there for days. Had it been minutes? The faces. The reflections. Was that real? It couldn’t be real. She touched her forehead, expecting a bruise or a knot from slamming her head into the floor, but it was smooth and unmarred.

  She stripped off her tights and shoes. Her feet were sore, so that pointed to some walking. In fact, her muscles were sore all over—her abdomen and shoulders especially. She moved her arms experimentally and found a twinge in her right elbow. A wide bruise marred her left thigh. As she catalogued her injuries, nothing was too disturbing but she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten any of them.

  Walking, though. The faint soreness in her feet reminded her of leaving the carnival with her friends. She had rejoined them at some point. It wasn’t all of them, though. The group had shrunk. It was her, Sindy, Nate, Bryce—she was happy to see that—Eleazar, and Delilah.

  No, there was running. She was in the woods. They looked like the ones that stretched out all around the rolling hills of Arkham, enflamed by autumn. There hadn’t been many dead leaves on the forest floor. She’d run silently, her breath flashing in her ears. She had the sense of something out there, maybe following, maybe just there.

  Crashing surf? Was that before or after the running? She had no idea. She remembered the taste of the salt spray in her mind. The sea churned angrily in the moonlight. Someone spoke to her in a low and reasonable voice. She felt as though she should be able to understand this voice and even respond, but the sounds were past her knowledge. Was it another language? Or had her addled mind just lost the ability to process English? She had no way of knowing.

  And that was all. Those brief moments, and then nothing at all. The memories, if they were that, slipped away from her into a black abyss.

  Abby reflexively shook her head, as though that would jar something loose. She needed aspirin, Tylenol, Advil, or maybe just another couple hours of sleep.

  A soft knock at her door made her wince. “Rise and shine, Abby. It’s your first day of school.” Her mother’s voice. Her accent was perfect Mid-Atlantic, picked up in her years at the best boarding schools. Abby had a whiff of that accent, too. She knew because Nate affected it sometimes when he imitated her. They both wondered if the Academy was going to sharpen it.

  “I’m up, Mother,” she muttered.

  “Abby? Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Just woke up.”

  Her mother’s light footsteps moved off down the hall. Abby struggled to motivate herself to get up, but she finally stood and staggered toward her bathroom. She took a few Tylenol first, dreading the idea of breakfast, then she got ready on autopilot. The shower stung small cuts and scratches on her hands. She brushed crushed leaves and twigs out of the tangles in her hair, and covered the circles under her eyes with concealer as she put on her make-up.

  She wondered if she needed to see a doctor. The pounding in her head that had begun when the others were drinking had built to a screaming crescendo inside the funhouse. It was frightening not to remember what had happened; she didn’t want to experience this again. But as the pain receded, so did her fear. Maybe it was the shower or maybe it was the Tylenol, but she was already feeling a bit better. Last night’s headache had probably just been a really bad migraine. Nonetheless, she mentally filed a reminder to speak to her doctor at her next check-up.

  On the way back through her room, she banged her baby toe on the edge of a table. She nearly cursed, but caught herself. Screaming profanity was not something a Thorndike woman did, and she didn’t want a lecture from her grandmother. Not this morning. She cursed once under her breath, then (superstitiously convinced her grandmother had somehow heard) instantly switched to the softer fake curses that her grandmother tolerated. They didn’t help.

  The table held an antique dollhouse, built to the exact specifications of Harwich Hall. It had belonged to Thorndike women as long as there had been Thorndike women, and there had been Thorndike women on the continent before there was America. The dolls inside the dollhouse were generic, though since they were all red-headed, it would have been easy to pretend one was her, one was her mother, and one was her grandmother. There was even a servant that could have been Bertram. Abby had never played with it, and mostly just resented its presence in her room. It was creepy. A greenish-black mold had started to grow on the inside. Abby noted with some pleasure that the biggest blotch was in what would have been her grandmother’s room. If her mother or her grandmother saw it, she’d be in trouble, but she couldn’t bring herself to clean it up.

  Abby hobbled to her closet. Her clean uniforms were already hanging back-to-back in an orderly row. She had one for every day of the week. They were modest: a maroon blazer with the school’s crest on the left breast, a knee-length skirt, and a white blouse. Abby matched them with dark tights, penny loafers, and a green scarf. She had a couple of school sweaters and thick wool tights for when the weather turned cooler. Grabbing her backpack, she went downstairs.

  Outside of Abby’s room, Harwich Hall lost the comfort of home. It was familiar, but there was no emotion in the wide, chilly halls. She didn’t care for the antiques balanced on pedestals and ensconced in recesses in the walls. This place should have been her home, but other than a few isolated places—usually spots she had made memories with Nate or Sindy—there was very little sentiment here. It would have been nice to live in the dorms at Arkham Academy, but there was no way Constance Thorndike was going to let her daughter go unsupervised for that long. Living in the dorms might result in embarrassment, something horrible like the youngest Thorndike getting blind drunk and doing God knows what on the streets of the town. With Abby’s initiation into the Daughters of Arkham just around the corner, embarrassment would not be tolerated.

  Abby’s stomach turned over. She swallowed some burning bile. Had her mother heard something about the previous night? Abby recounted their conversation through her door. Had her mother used a tone with her? She couldn’t recall one, but she couldn’t recall much of anything. Maybe Sindy or Nate had gotten in trouble, and word had somehow made its way to Harwich Hall, as bad news often did. She had no idea what would even happen to her if her mother found out she’d been hanging out with a bunch of underage teens who had been drinking. There was no way her mother would believe that she had refused to drink with them. This was so far beyond the pale of the little trouble she’d ever gotten into that she had no frame of reference for the punishment she could receive.

  Abby heard her mother and grandmother talking lowly in the dining room. She pushed the door open, and found breakfast waiting for her: a fluffy omelet and some fruit. Her grandmother Hester sat at the head of the table, daintily eating a boiled egg from a silver cup, while Abby’s mother was picking at her own omelet. They were both wearing their lapel pins. They must have planned to go out.

  Constance Thorndike was perfect as always, not an eyelash out of place. She was tall and in excellent shape, with the milky complexion, jade eyes, and copper hair that were the Thorndike genetic hallmarks. Abby had a lesser version of all three—freckles over her nose, eyes a touch duller, and hair that quickly bleached in the sun—and often wished she could be as lovely as her mother.

  Hester Thorndike had been beautiful in her youth, but those days were decidedly far away. The years had eroded the soft curves
of her body, leaving the severe planes of age. Her eyes were as bright as ever but her hair was a not-quite-natural cloud of red. Abby loved her grandmother, but Hester bore more than a passing resemblance to a Disney villain, something that grew more apparent with every passing year.

  “Good morning, dear,” Constance said.

  “You look terrible, Abigail,” Hester said, barely looking up from her egg.

  “The carnival was… big,” Abby said as neutrally as she could. She tried to watch both women for signs that they were fishing for some kind of misbehavior, but saw nothing.

  “Sit down and eat. You’ll need your strength.”

  Bertram came into the room. He was the live-in servant for Harwich Hall, which also employed a small staff of several maids and a cook. Bertram was the only one who actually lived on the premises—something Hester often complained about, as when she was a girl, the house was teeming with staff—and he was normally a ghost. Abby had stopped noticing him when she was much younger. He was just another presence who occasionally got her juice or fetched her mother.

  Bertram was not a striking man. He had bulging eyes, a nonexistent chin, and his head was crowned with only a few wispy hairs that had long since turned iron-gray. He was not handsome but he was also not repulsive, and yet when Abby saw him, her stomach turned. Her headache returned, planting a knife squarely between her eyes. She found she could barely look at him and planted her attention on the meal in front of her.

  The omelet and the fruit were light and insubstantial. She couldn’t have asked for a better meal this morning but she could barely touch it. As Bertram drew closer, her stomach started doing cartwheels. She focused on it, bearing down. Vomiting at the breakfast table was not a good idea. Bertram leaned over her. He poured her a glass of orange juice and she felt palpable relief when he moved away.

  “First day of Arkham Academy,” Constance said. “Exciting.”

  “Yes. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “I remember my first day. I couldn’t wait.”

  “You were scared,” Hester said. “Shivering like a lamb before slaughter. I practically had to drag you.”

  Constance looked down, and Abby knew her mother was fighting a blush. “Well, there was enough room in me for both excitement, and that.” She took a bite, and recovered. “First thing, you go directly to the headmaster. He will be waiting for you.” What she didn’t say was that anyone in Arkham would wait on a Thorndike, and anyone at the Academy, doubly so. The family had been hugely important to the Academy in the past and they still donated every year.

  “What for?”

  “Well, because I said so. But also because he’ll welcome you to the school and give you your schedule.”

  How did Nate get his schedule? Probably not from the hand of the headmaster. “Mmhmm.”

  “You’re going to want to eat. Keep your strength up.”

  “Feeling sick, dear?” Hester said. Though she said ‘dear,’ there was nothing sweet in her tone. Abby glanced at her. Was she suspicious?

  “Oh, she’s probably as nervous as I was,” Constance said. She smiled encouragingly at her daughter. “You’ll do fine, Abby. Just fine.”

  Abby forced herself to eat as much of the food as she could, doing her best to ignore Bertram. On any other day, she would have already forgotten he was even there. Now he was an intolerable presence, at once twisting her stomach and fanning the flames in her head. She wanted to shriek at him, to tell him to get away, but she knew she couldn’t. She choked her food down, and made certain never to empty her orange juice glass. If she did, Bertram would come around, loom over her again, and make her sick.

  Abby got up. She’d had enough.

  “Don’t forget your supplement,” Constance said, gesturing to a fat pill sitting on a tiny plate.

  Abby rolled her eyes. Her doctor said something in the groundwater of Arkham leeched the iron right out of people. She had been taking an iron supplement for as long as she could remember. When she was younger, her mother had cut it in half for her. It was a small rite of passage when she could finally swallow the whole thing in a gulp. She put it in her mouth and washed it down with one last swallow of orange juice, then shot out of her seat before Bertram could interpret her empty glass as a need for a refill. Her head swam and her stomach lurched. For a moment, she was terrified that everything would come right back up on the breakfast table. She smiled queasily at her mother and grandmother. Keep it together, Abby, she thought.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?” Constance asked.

  “I’m fine, Mother.”

  “Go meet the car, Bertram will—”

  “No, it’s okay. I want to walk. It looks nice out.”

  Constance relaxed and her smile brightened. “Just make sure you’re on time. Have fun at school, and remember, go see the headmaster.”

  Abby went out the door. The crisp autumn air washed the night away from her. Every breath cleared more of her head, and soon her headache was nothing but a memory. She could even forget her bruises, her strained muscles, and a stubborn crick in her ankle from the awkward way she’d been sleeping. As she walked toward the narrow strip of road that led into town, she felt good again.

  5

  Mr. Weatherby

  there was a shortcut to Arkham Academy that went through the woods. Walking through town would take longer because the road doubled back on itself several times, but Abby couldn’t face going through the woods that day, not with the gouges on the backs of her hands, and those weird half-glimpsed memories of the previous night. The road was safe. Whatever went on behind the stands of oaks and elms that grew alongside the road carried the black danger of the unknown.

  She did not think of these things consciously. Instead, she thought about her new school. It had been strange growing up for fourteen years, knowing she was destined for the Academy. There had been times she believed she would never get there.

  It became more real as she walked up Academy Road and the school came into view. It looked a lot like her own home, except much grander. Harwich Hall had only a small, single door; Arkham Academy had huge double doors beyond a stand of Doric columns. The lawn was wide and green. Copses of oaks and birches grew here and there, their leaves as fiery as the Academy’s brick. The road led up to the front, looped around, and came back down the hill in the approximate shape of an old-fashioned keyhole.

  The few students going inside were locals. They arrived in expensive cars or whizzed past her on sleek road bikes. Any upperclassmen with cars would follow a different access road to the parking lot in the back, concealed so as not to spoil the school’s postcard-perfect autumnal façade.

  Abby saw faces she recognized, but everyone was so intent on getting inside that no one stopped to chat. Despite the good weather, the day had a kind of funerary pall over it. Summer was gone, and with it, freedom. Now it was the school year that would never end. Abby slumped her shoulders like everyone else, but she felt full of jittery anticipation.

  She climbed the concrete stairs to the front door of the main hall. Thorndike Hall, Abby reminded herself. There was a large brass plaque mounted on the wall. DEDICATED TO SERENITY THORNDIKE, it said. Abby’s direct ancestor. Fear clutched at her for a moment. Everyone would judge her for her name and for being such a pale reflection of her family. Had her mother—or even her grandmother—had felt this way? Maybe Mother did, Abby thought, and then rejected the idea. Her mother was Constance Thorndike, a genius in a model’s body. But her grandmother… Hester, Abby decided, would have never felt anything but flinty contempt for whoever had let the plaque tarnish just a little.

  Inside, the hall was packed with students. Some struggled through the crowd; others clustered together to chat with school friends face-to-face for the first time in months. The signs in the front hall were tasteful and unobtrusive, which made it hell to navigate. Abby couldn’t bring herself to ask anyone for directions. The idea of Abigail Thorndike unable to find her way through Thorndike H
all seemed like the kind of thing she wouldn’t be able to live down.

  She finally found the headmaster’s office just off the main office. Like the rest of the interior of the school, it was elegantly appointed with mahogany wood paneling and ornamented molding. Large windows along the back wall flooded the room with bright, clear light. Several women were hard at work nearby—one typed at her computer, one sorted mail, and a third filled out forms at the high desk that divided the room.

  “Abigail Thorndike to see Mr. Weatherby?” Abby said.

  The office worker was a gnomish woman. She fixed Abby with a sunny smile. “Thorndike, hmm? You must be right at home.”

  Abby winced, trying to play it off as a laugh. The gnome-lady hardly noticed as she went into an office marked HEADMASTER with the name MR. CLARENCE WEATHERBY underneath. A moment later, she returned to beckon Abby onward. “The headmaster is waiting for you.”

  The headmaster’s office had only one small window, which was mostly blocked by a bookcase and a half-drawn blind. The room was dominated by a wide oaken desk. Tall bookcases and portraits of previous headmasters decorated the walls, and a plush Persian rug muffled Abby’s steps. Though the room appeared lived-in, Abby had the impression everything had been meticulously arranged to look that way.

  Mr. Weatherby stood up behind his desk as Abby came in. He was a big man, both tall and portly. His hair was thinning at the top and he wore circular spectacles over his narrow eyes. He held out his hand, and Abby instantly felt dizzy. “Welcome to Arkham Academy, Miss Thorndike. I’m Mr. Weatherby.”

  Abby took his hand out of polite reflex. It was small for such a big man. His fingers were narrow, almost feminine, and his nails were a tad long, although clean. She released his hand as soon as she could, and had to suppress a shudder. She mentally scolded herself. This wasn’t a creep; this was the principal. The headmaster.