The coffin was empty. They were burying it, pretending. Acting.
In the front, Corinne Blackwell was swathed in funereal black, dabbing at the tears that would not stop coming. Sindy had watched the woman eat him like a snake would eat a mouse, and now here she was, feigning sorrow like some…
Stars flashed in front of her eyes. She felt Eleazar Grant’s strong hands on her shoulders, steadying her. He was her new manservant, assigned to her by Hester Thorndike herself. She refused to look at his hideous face.
She didn’t know how she got through the funeral. Corinne’s short, tear-choked eulogy was almost funny in how brazen it was. Sindy found herself holding in a laugh now; the scream had metamorphosed. But she couldn’t laugh. Not here. That’s what crazy people did, and Sindy was not that. She was holding onto sanity by her fingernails, but she was not crazy.
Sindy was part of the parade past the bereaved widow. She saw Corinne accept the comfort of everyone passing. Occasionally, Corinne would reach up to stroke the metal pin on her dress. Sindy had a pin now as well, but the ship’s wheel with the leviathan coils had taken on a much different meaning to her. Sindy didn’t know if she could participate in this grotesque display of false grief.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she muttered.
“Oh, thank you, Sindy.” And there was a glimmer in Corinne’s eye. It was gone in a flash, just a moment between the two women, and as Corinne embraced her young sister, Sindy had to stifle another hysterical laugh. She had to get out of there. She had to be anywhere else in the world.
She moved past the line and found Abby and Bryce waiting for her. Abby seemed bigger every time she saw her. She imagined Abby swallowing the mangled body of Drew Marks. The laugh bubbled up inside her again. She choked it back, and it came out like a sob.
“You okay?” Abby said, putting a concerned hand on Sindy’s arm.
Sindy nodded.
“I didn’t know you guys were so close,” Bryce said, nodding to the coffin. The empty coffin, Sindy reminded herself.
“Yeah. I mean, no. Kind of.”
“Bryce and I were going to get out of here. Want to come?”
More than anything, Sindy thought.
“Hello, Abigail.” It was Hester’s voice, right at Sindy’s shoulder. She hadn’t heard the old woman sneaking up. Was she still as spry as she had been at the ritual? Was the magic lingering?
Magic. Who thinks about magic? Sindy thought frantically.
Hester touched the back of Sindy’s hand, and her reply to Abby’s invitation was swallowed in the bubbling madness of the terrible laugh. ‘Yes’ was a simple word; three letters, one syllable. If she could just say it, she would be free of Hester, free of the Sisters, free to live a life outside their terrible lies and rituals. But she was held fast by Hester’s touch.
Or was she?
Oh, there was such power in that church. Power in the rites. Power in the sisterhood. She could feel it thrumming through her bones. The lies cloaked them and freed them to do their work. She remembered the bliss she felt when she tried Hester’s first trick, the blood in the cake. This was like that, but orders of magnitude greater. Was she really willing to throw all of that away?
“Come on, Sindy.” It was Eleazar’s voice now. She felt his arms over her shoulders, steering her away from Abby and Bryce. She thought of calling out, but she couldn’t, no more than she could have jumped to the moon. Eleazar and Hester took her back to the protective ring of the Daughters.
64
The Fresh Grave
Bryce watched Eleazar Grant drag Sindy away from him and Abby. Although he kind of wanted to punch Laze in his smug face, he was no white knight. Sindy had made her choice, even if it was the wrong one.
“I don’t like that,” Abby said. She was frowning. Bryce found it almost painfully cute.
“Me neither, but there’s not much we can do. She wants to be with him, so she’s going to be with him.”
“I don’t think she wants to be with him.”
“You sure?”
“No. But that… that didn’t feel like Sindy to me. Did you see her? She looked terrified.”
“I’ve never seen her like that, but I don’t know all of her faces.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve known her forever, and she’s never looked like that before in her life.”
Bryce watched Sindy being enfolded in the black wings of the Daughters of Arkham. She did look alone, forlorn even, though she never so much as glanced back at her two friends waiting on the lawn. Hester lingered close to Sindy, treating her more like her granddaughter than she did Abby.
“There’s a wake at my house,” Abby said. From her tone, it was obvious she didn’t want to go.
“Too bad. I wasn’t planning on going.”
“Oh?”
“No, I was thinking… here, take a walk with me.” He didn’t want any of the Daughters overhearing. They walked away from the crowd as people began to slowly disperse toward their cars.
Arkham Cemetery was old. It had spread out from the original plots, and now took up a few small hills in the southern part of town. Originally, it was a churchyard, but the Great Arkham Fire had claimed that church, leaving the field open. All of the newer stones were toward the back. Abby and Bryce climbed a hill that was only partially covered in stone markers.
Ahead of them were the green lawns of the cemetery. Behind them, the forest closed up, dark and secret.
“What’s up?” Abby said, out of breath.
Bryce sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy, but Abby needed to hear it. “I think they’re dead.”
Abby looked around. “Bryce, we’re in a cemetery. Most people think that’s normal.”
“No, not them. Well, yeah, them. But I’m talking about the fathers. All the missing fathers, I think they’re dead.”
“I told you my dad is dead. Yours, too.”
“I think they were murdered.”
Abby turned to look at him, but it was not the expression of shock he expected. Only a few months ago, Abby had been a picture of innocence. Now there was something flinty behind her eyes. Bryce felt a sudden pang of grief for her.
“I think the Daughters of Arkham wait until they conceive daughters and then they kill their husbands.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. But there’s definitely something shady going on. Try and think for a second about how many of the people we know in this town that don’t have fathers.”
Abby was quiet, and Bryce knew that she was running those numbers in her head, that she was trying to calculate the obscene mortality rate for the men of Arkham.
“So what do you want to do?” she asked.
“Dig him up.”
“What?”
“I’m coming back here after dark, and I’m going to dig Drew up.”
“Your plan is grave-robbing?”
“I’m not going to take anything. I just want to see what actually killed him.”
Abby opened her mouth, and then shut it again. A moment later, she said, “Before Duncan Koons, I would have called you crazy. But if Drew was murdered, the Daughters could cover it up without even trying.”
“Does that mean you believe me?”
“It means you and I have a lot of talking to do first. And then I’ll help you.”
“What?”
“The soil’s loose, this is the perfect time, right?”
“Well, yeah. But it’s not safe. And you’re…”
“A girl?”
“I was going to say pregnant.”
“Then I’ll hold the light for you. You’ll need light.”
He wasn’t going to talk her out of it. Her face was set in an expression he had seen before but not on Abby. That was all Iron Maiden. He hoped that was as far as Hester’s influence extended. Finally, he nodded. “I’ll need light.”
“Good,” she said.
After they left, he noted that neither her mother nor her grandmother ch
ecked up on Abby after the funeral. Maybe they figured she couldn’t get more pregnant. Maybe they were too busy with their new daughter.
Bryce and Abby decided to drive over to Middleton to hit a hardware store. It was better to buy a shovel somewhere that no one knew them. It would also give them a chance to fill in some blanks. He listened in horror as Abby described what happened during the failed procedure at the clinic and the swift cover-up that followed. She told him all about her fake iron supplements and how they were actually birth control. That meant that the Daughters of Arkham were actually controlling the reproductive systems of their children. No wonder they were so pissed off at Abby.
In return, Bryce filled her in on all of his investigations and how that had led him to the man posing as Sindy’s father.
“Sindy’s father is dead too?”
Bryce shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. All I know is that your mother has been paying an actor to call Sindy on her birthdays and holidays for the past ten years.”
He got what he needed at the hardware store, though the clerk gave him and Abby (who likely appeared to be his very pregnant child-bride) a strange look. Afterward, they went into a coffee shop to pass the time until they could drive back to do their errand under the cover of darkness.
As the day went on, a thought itched around the back of Bryce’s mind. It was only as dusk began to fall that he figured it out. They were only a couple blocks from the community theater where they had found Burton Fell, the man pretending to be Sindy’s father, and only a little farther from the pharmacy he had driven Abby to. Bryce frowned.
“What?” she asked. She held her coffee cup in both hands, like a raccoon clutching a rice ball.
“Nothing. It’s just that… Middleton has become the place where we hide our secrets.”
“Oh,” she said, looking around. A flush crept up onto her cheeks, masking her freckles. “Oh.”
“I wonder if we’re really out of your mother’s reach here.” Fell certainly wasn’t. Bryce could have driven to his house; the route was still etched in his memory.
“I don’t know. I don’t really know what any of this means.”
“What about Koons?” Bryce said.
Abby shrugged. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do. If he wants to go to trial for something he didn’t do, and I can’t prove he didn’t, then that’s what’s going to happen.”
“The Daughters like their martyrs.”
“I guess they do.”
“Won’t be me.”
“What?”
“This. Whatever is happening, it’s not going to be me. I’m not going to get murdered like my dad.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Abby muttered into her coffee.
“What?” Bryce asked, a grin spreading over his face.
“I won’t let that happen,” she said again, this time meeting his gaze.
The barista began to stack the chairs on the tables.
Bryce stood up and held out his hand to Abby. “Come on. Let’s do this.”
They drove back into town. It was a weeknight. The people of Arkham were already in bed or headed off to it. The cemetery appeared deserted. Other than the light of the moon and stars, it was pitch black.
Bryce grabbed the tools from the trunk and prepared to climb the short stone wall that separated the cemetery from the street.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Abby asked him.
Bryce turned around and saw Abby standing by the road. Her hip might have been stuck out. It was tough to tell because she seemed to be deliberately emphasizing her pregnant belly.
“What, your doctor didn’t prescribe rock climbing?”
Abby shook her head and walked along the side of the wall to a small side gate. She pushed it open, gave him a meaningful look, flipped her hair, and walked inside.
Bryce hefted his tools. As they hiked across the rolling hills of the cemetery, Abby kept the flashlight off. Walking in the dark was difficult. Headstones kept looming suddenly out of the darkness, threatening to spill both of them onto the grass. When they got to the hill where Drew Marks was buried, they stopped. “I think you can turn that on now. Just keep your coat cupped around the side, and put your body between it and the road.”
“I got it,” Abby said, annoyed.
He grinned. Of course she had it. He looked down at the fresh dirt. It was still crumbly and loose. They’d put grass down on top of it tomorrow. For now, time to dig in.
Bryce was exhausted by the time he was three feet down. He was in shape, but his muscles were from play, not from work. He had never done anything like this before. His palms felt like they were covered in a thin sheen of acid.
“I should have hired someone for this,” he said, mopping his brow. He was still in his suit, though he’d thrown his jacket onto the grass. His white shirt was covered in black streaks and dark sweat stains.
“Can’t dig a hole?” Abby teased, the beam of the flashlight bobbing with her soft chuckle.
“You want to do this?”
“Doctor was pretty clear. No rock climbing, no exhuming bodies.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Bryce muttered, and dug in.
His muscles were screaming by the time his shovel hit something. The beam picked up the shining black top of the coffin. He dug a little more, clearing out the area around the top seam of the casket so he could open the part that would reveal Drew’s head.
“You ready?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Good, me too.” He stared at it. He was about to see a dead man, one he kind of knew. He hadn’t been friends with Drew, but he had seemed like a decent enough guy. Now he was going to be laying there with a bullet through his head and the back of his skull repaired by some mortician. “One.” He grasped the edge of the door. “Two.” He took a deep breath. “Three.”
He yanked the coffin back, ready for something horrible, something he had seen only in horror movies.
Instead, the coffin was empty.
Abby yelped, dropping the flashlight. The light bounced crazily for a moment before it hitched up next to a headstone.
“Abby? Abby!” he stage-whispered.
Bryce heard her, sobbing. He hoisted himself out of the grave and nearly collapsed, but forced himself to keep moving. He took her in his arms, though her belly did its best to separate them. He felt her shoulders shake, her breath coming raggedly against his chest.
“What is it? What’s going on?”
“The grave… it’s empty.”
“I know. No body. Nothing to be afraid of.”
She looked up at him. Tears fell down her cheeks. Lit in the moonlight, she looked like some otherworldly creature, far too beautiful for anything on earth. “That’s it. That’s just it. My dad is buried over there.” She pointed a few rows over. “If this coffin is empty, that means his coffin is, too.”
Bryce shivered, thinking of his own father. She was right. He felt some ghost of what Abby was feeling and abruptly he needed the embrace as much or even more than she did.
“Bryce… where are our fathers?”
65
Broken Engagement
Bryce sat at his desk reviewing all of his notes. He was trying to focus, but all he could think about was Abby and the night in the cemetery. He’d reburied the empty coffin, hoping it would pass muster with the groundskeepers, then he’d taken Abby home, kissed her on the forehead, and promised to keep her updated. He’d told her not to worry and that they would figure this all out.
That, of course, was the problem. What do they possibly do next? What did one do in situations like this? Were there even situations like this?
Bryce threw his pen down. How could you go up against some crazy murdering secret society that had existed in plain sight for hundreds of years, one that controlled the law, the media, and girls’ reproductive systems? When had his life been eaten up by this obsession? Maybe a drive would clear his head. He got up, grabbed his keys off th
e dresser, and then froze.
Ophelia Thomas stood in the doorway. He almost didn’t register her there. She was so out of place that he couldn’t understand her as a visitor. He blinked once as his brain finally got the message. Her arms were folded; her pretty, round face was set in a glower. Her hair tumbled loose over her shoulders.
“How did you get in here?” Bryce said.
“That’s what you have to say to me?”
“Ta-dah would have been my first pick, but I haven’t done anything amazing yet. Give me five minutes.”
“Amazing. That’s what you call slumming with Abby Thorndike?”
“How is that any of your business?”
“That’s not an answer, Bryce.”
Something about the way she said his name really annoyed him. It had an undercurrent of entitlement. He had enjoyed their chat but that was all. He didn’t owe her anything.
“Are you off your meds or something?”
“You’re spending a lot of time with her, aren’t you? How do you think that looks to everyone when we are the ones who are getting married?”
Bryce burst out laughing. “To each other? Please tell me you didn’t buy into that whole arranged marriage crap?”
“I told you. The Daughters said we would be a good match.” She took a step towards him.
Bryce’s eyes were drawn to that goddamned pin on her blouse. He had almost forgotten. She was a Daughter of Arkham. That made her dangerous, no matter what face she and her mother presented to the world.
“Look, Ophelia, I’m just not in the married sort of place right now. We still have a few years before we even graduate from high school.”
“I can’t believe you’re dumping me for that slut.”
“What did you say?”
Ophelia grinned, a horrible light in her eyes. For the first time, Bryce saw her as ugly. “Abby Thorndike. You haven’t heard? The reason that she doesn’t know whose kid is in her belly is because she’s lost track of how many guys she’s been with. I heard that’s how the family pays their staff. Everyone gets a poke at little Abby. Even the old bald one.” Ophelia laughed. “Did you think she was saving everything for you?”
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