Daughters of Arkham

by Justin Robinson

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  A soft light caressed her face like a spectral brush. She could feel something at the other end of the regular pain of her contractions. She opened her eyes and they were before her: three men in colonial clothing, their faces pale and eyes pitted. The nooses around their necks coiled and swayed with hypnotic grace. They fixed her with their own pain, the endless agony of reliving their deaths, then removed their hats in deference, nodding their heads to her.

  “Now don’t you cry, Miss Abigail,” Josiah Baxter said. “We’re sorry for being late. But the distance is a mite further than it seems.”

  Abby looked up at them in wonder. “You came.”

  Israel Thaw stepped forward. “You didn’t really leave us much in the way of a choice, miss, if you’ll beg my pardon for saying so.”

  Luther Hobbes seethed with quiet rage. The pain of his betrayal had followed him to the grave and sustained him for more than two-hundred years. “Our time here is short, Thorndike. Why have you beckoned us to this cursed place?”

  “I need you to help my friends. I need you to save my mother.”

  Hobbes sneered. “I don’t know what you thought you were doing, girl, but we’re not your lackeys to be ordered about. We were promised justice.”

  Abby didn’t waver. “The women who tied those ropes around your neck were the Daughters. They threaten your children’s children.” She pointed to the dais where Bryce and Nate still fought at their chains. “Nathan Baxter and Bryce Coffin.” She saw them shudder with rage at the mere mention of the Coffin name but she continued, demanding their attention. “In your time, a Coffin betrayed you. But they worked together to stop the Daughters of Arkham from hurting more people. Can you do any less?”

  Josiah made a slow turn, a ripple of anticipation sending a shimmer across his ghostly form. “The Daughters still survive?” he said.

  “All around you,” Abby said. “And there…” She pointed to the dais where Hester continued to chant, keeping the power of Yidhra contained. “There’s your vengeance. There is Hester Thorndike.”

  “Thorndike?” Josiah Baxter said.

  “Thorndike!” the other two answered with gleeful rage.

  The three of them let out sepulchral howls and hurled themselves at Hester. Abby was chilled by their ferocity, but she could understand it. Hester had not seen these men hanged, but she had killed others. Abby’s conscience would not be totally clean, but it would be clean enough, she thought, to live.

  Hester threw up her hands in futile defense as the ghosts attacked. They lashed her hands tight with their nooses and yanked her arms apart as Josiah Baxter flew through her, leaving his spectral coil around her neck. He planted a knee in her spine and hauled her back with otherworldly might. The Iron Maiden dropped to her knees in agony. She screamed as wild energy tore free from her control and erupted in a coruscation of shadow and ink, severing Yidhra’s tie to Constance Thorndike.

  Abby caught her mother in her arms as she collapsed. She pulled her close. Constance’s breathing was shallow and her pulse was faint but she was still alive. Abby watched in horror as the great serpent, free of all compulsion, gazed around the church with contempt at the flea-like mortals cowering beneath her.

  The smoky flesh of the goddess no longer had anything to cling to. No human soul here provided any anchor… except the one that had called it from the abyss. It turned its star-flecked eyes to Hester Thorndike as she was tormented by the spirits of her past crimes. There, it saw opportunity. Yidhra lunged forward, burrowing through.

  Hester screamed anew as the Mother of All Daughters found a new home.

  87

  We Are One

  ‘she remembered her first time. Until that moment, she’d thought of it as her only time. The human body, mind, and soul were not powerful enough to play host to divinity more than once. The first ritual left scars on the inside of a Daughter that forever marked her as one of Yidhra’s children. A second possession was an inevitable death sentence, as the scar tissue split and the body changed to become a more pleasing vessel for the goddess.

  Hester had welcomed the goddess into her flesh then. When the time had come to consume her husband, she did so with relish. In the days and weeks and months and years that followed, she often imagined she still felt bits of him within her—warming her. Powering her. It had been a moment of sublime connection and it told her that she had been right all along. She was a devotee of a great and true faith.

  Abigail’s gambit had been brilliant. As soon as Hester lost control of Yidhra, she could no longer guide the goddess to her designated target. The power had to rebound on its commander. The girl had good instincts and she would make a skilled leader in time. She regretted that she couldn’t tell Constance that she was proud of her granddaughter.

  But Hester would not speak with her own voice ever again.

  As the great god-void moved into her body, she split immediately. It was as easy as a zipper, spilling out shafts of light. She felt pain, but it was pleasant, like probing a tender place between your teeth, or rubbing away a stubborn knot in your shoulder. Hester was changing, but it was what the faithful could hope for. She was a vessel for the sublime, to be changed as the consciousness saw fit.

  Describing Yidhra as a consciousness was a human invention. The being itself, if it was even alive, was nothing so prosaic. It was to humanity what humanity was to a housefly. The changes that the goddess wrought in her were uncontrollable, unknowable, and unstoppable.

  Hester felt her body growing. Her limbs stretched, combined. New muscle and bone sprouted from the old. Energy flowed in from the other side, spurring her new mutations along. She felt structures growing inside of her for some unimaginable purpose, even as her lungs deflated, withered, and joined the other tissue inside of her.

  The weakness of her limbs was gone. The pain in her joints, also gone. Every stigmata of age was replaced by the arcane strength of this joining. She felt young, vital, powerful, and beautiful in ways that she had never felt before. She wanted to give a whoop of exultation, but her voice was swallowed up in the change.

  Hester Thorndike’s mind was ripped apart shortly afterward, consumed by the great deity that shared her skin. Her soul labored on in gleeful madness.

  88

  Outnumbered

  ‘williams and Jenkins were already down. Mr. Harris could not tell if they were dead or alive. The apostates had given better than they had gotten, but in the end, the thralls had overrun the group and pushed them out in front of the church. Mr. Harris regretted that he could no longer see inside the church to know if Abby was still all right.

  The fight against Bertram had been brutal. The thrall had known no hardship in his time with the Thorndikes, but he was older than Mr. Harris and he had grown strong in his age. Mr. Harris had only just managed to knock the other croatan unconscious.

  Mr. Harris and his men could not win the fight. They were never going to break through the line of defense; there were just too many thralls.

  Mr. Harris could not help Abby.

  “Treach!” he called to the school janitor. “We have to go!”

  The other croatan nodded. They were the only two left standing. Soon they were running, a mob of the Daughters’ thralls hot on their heels.

  89

  Against Her Blood

  ‘abby watched in horror as the serpentine monster that had been her grandmother whipped its great tail around and screeched its victory to the skies. The church had emptied; the Crows had been drawn out by Mr. Harris and his small group. The hanged men had chased out the remaining Daughters and vanished. Abby wasn’t certain if they had returned to the other side, or if they were pursuing the fleeing Daughters, or if they were waiting for another command. Sindy had stayed behind. She freed Bryce and Nate from their bonds with trembling hands, then helped them limp over to where Abby still clung to her mother’s unconscious body. They dropped to their knees in a grateful h
uddle, clinging to each other, and to sanity, in the face of the godhead incarnate.

  The tentacles of the creature’s flesh touched Abby’s cheek. They were dry and raspy like snake scales, but immediately became as wispy and insubstantial as cotton candy. She felt them moving along her face, toward her mouth, eyes, nose, and ears. Abby tasted the burnt cinnamon on her tongue, overpowering now. The stench of peat wafted through the church.

  Abby opened her eyes.

  Yidhra, the Mother of All Daughters, the cannibal serpent goddess, was inches from her. Its face was huge; much larger than Abby. It regarded her. As their eyes met, Abby felt its power inside her.

  “Abby!” a distant voice called. Was it Nate or Bryce? She couldn’t tell.

  The massive black serpent rose up, so immense that it nearly reached the vaulted ceiling of the church. Its distorted face resembled a Thorndike—probably thanks to whatever influence Hester had held with it before she’d utterly lost herself.

  Abby’s mind was cracking. Even buttressed by her daughter and friends, she was still only human. Her rational mind was not constructed to withstand the incongruence of these events. She was on the verge of tipping into the safety of insanity. She was plummeting into nothingness.

  Another contraction burned through her, rescuing her. It pulled her back from the precipice one last time. Her daughter would not allow her to yield. She would not allow her mother to surrender her existence before it had even begun. In the face of the obliteration and the seemingly bottomless power of Yidhra, Abby clung to the dignity of her mortality and howled her defiance.

  Her daughter would be born.

  The serpent recoiled in frustration, denied final asylum. It blinked its ageless eyes in reluctant admiration and then it opened its terrible maw.

  “I will come for you, daughter. Yidhra does not forgive. We are eternal.”

  The great serpent began to tear away into pieces that smoked and evaporated into the air. There was no longer a human soul providing her an anchor. The scaled flesh of the goddess had nothing left to keep it in this world. Abby clung to her friends and mother as the afternoon sun speared the serpent’s body and burned it away to nothing.

  Abby buried her face in her mother’s hair as Hester’s body dropped onto the altar and was still.

  Epilogue

  ‘constance had delivered the baby. She had, in fact, insisted to be the one to bring her granddaughter into this world. Sindy had held Abby’s hand and blathered encouragement about breathing and pushing. Bryce and Nate had stood guard outside the church doors until Verity Thorndike’s sobs echoed through the forest. She looked exactly like Abby had, down to her shock of red hair and her bright green eyes.

  They’d all sat together in the church for some time, basking in the warmth of new life, unsure about facing a world that might not belong to them anymore.

  Eventually they went about the business of rebuilding their lives.

  Hester’s funeral was a week later. The coroner officially declared her cause of death a heart attack. Her coffin was full. There had been no investigation. Constance still had enough influence to see to that. She had recovered from her experience in the church but she seemed less interested in playing the role of socialite. She traded in her designer clothes for a ponytail and yoga-pants, and spent her days rolling on the floor of the den with her grandchild and her nights cuddling on the couch in front of the television with Abby.

  The Daughters of Arkham had been quiet since the debacle at the church. Abby only saw the ones she went to school with on a regular basis. They all steered clear of her and her friends, but it was difficult to miss the hatred in their eyes. They hadn’t tried anything yet, and Abby was not interested in striking the first blow. Let them plot and lick their wounds, she thought. She had more important things to tend to.

  Somehow, she’d managed to finish out the school year fifth in her class. She looked forward to a long and quiet summer, one where she could spend more time with her mother and daughter. She still didn’t know who Verity’s father was, but her new doctor assured her the baby was quite healthy. Neither Bryce nor Nate seemed terribly pressed to figure out the answer just yet. They both seemed to enjoy the warmth allowed by the ambiguity of their odd relationship.

  Abby closed the nursery door behind her and smiled as she thought about Verity’s most likely fathers hanging out together. She never would have imagined them being anything more than tolerant of each other. But now… everyone was full of surprises, she supposed. She had just reached the top of the staircase and was heading downstairs to meet her mother when heard a strange sound. Like a thump, or maybe a footfall.

  It had come from the nursery.

  She had a vision of her daughter falling out her crib. She spun around and broke into a run.

  She threw open the nursery door in a panic, expecting to see her poor daughter sobbing on the floor. Instead, she saw a diminutive woman with ageless skin sitting in the rocking chair beside the crib. She cradled Verity in her arms. There was a swashbuckler hat on the floor beside her. She looked up as Abby entered, tiny crinkles appearing around her twinkling eyes as she unleashed her giant barker’s grin.

  “And a pleasant good evening to you, your royal ladyship. Is a pleasure to see you again.”

  “Captain Virginia?” Abby was confused and enraged. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing? Take your hands off my daughter!” Abby lunged forward but powerful hands grabbed her from behind. She screeched and flailed in desperation, but the grip was too strong. “Let me go! Give me my daughter!”

  “I’m sorry, Abigail.” Abby froze. She knew that voice. She slumped in his grip.

  “Mr. Harris? What are you—? Why!”

  “It is time to honor our deal.”

  Captain Virginia rose from the rocker, her face still split in a horrific, ghoulish grin. She lifted the sleeping baby in her arms and held her aloft. Moonlight glittered through the strands of Verity’s coppery hair.

  “All hail… the American Princess.”

  End Book One