She could not see, but she could feel, and in feeling there was something approaching sight. She could not describe it; the agony had pushed her past any human reckoning of time and space. She was in the church, and yet the church was gone. There were only the voices, but they were not attached to anything substantial. She was within that great tear she had perceived before, and she was not alone.
No, it was the tear itself. It was a void. She felt the crushing emptiness of nothing all around, the sense of being an infinitesimal, lost mote of dust surrounded by a vast black. It was not empty, not in the sense she understood. It was a reflection of reality, empty of what she understood as matter, but full of something else. Something wrong.
It moved. She had the sense of layers sliding past other layers, with the occasional glimmer of something that was almost scales. Her mind cried out; even through the pain, it could not perceive what was all around, not without breaking. The human mind was not built for understanding the divine.
That’s what this was.
Or, it was as close as she could come to such an understanding. She could not be certain, even as she was looking through an agony so terrible it threatened to snuff out her nerves entirely.
She had the sense of a great uncoiling as the ragged edges of the tear resolved. It was not precisely a void, and not precisely a being. It was both, and neither.
And it could see Abby.
Her panicked mind gave it the form of a snake, though that was only the most convenient of descriptors. It was a serpentine mass whose scales glittered with stars and whose eyes were the ravenous pits of black holes.
The words-the unholy, inhuman syllables-formed a trail for the vast snake. Abby was amongst it, yet somehow it also had to hunt her along this pathway of blasphemy. She wanted to recoil, but she found she could not move. There was something in the wine beside just blood and alcohol… it weakened her, made her receptive to the hypnotic sway of the snake. All of the Daughters looked on the snake with rapturous devotion.
The words writhed ahead, igniting her agony wherever they went. Where the serpent followed, the pain was doused in a pleasant, soporific sensation. She felt like floating; she felt like sleeping.
No.
Abby roused herself from the seduction of possession. The serpent was already preparing to coil itself within her, worming into the cracks made by Hester’s words. If it got inside, there would be nothing left of her.
She screamed in frustration, as the power of Yidhra tried to open her like a seam. A thunderbolt of pain exploded across her abdomen and her scream cascaded into shrill agony. And then, a moment later, there was an echoing scream resounding inside her that demanded release.
It was time.
Her daughter was being born.
This power of birth, of creation, was the strongest force any human could harness. Abby felt the temptation to throw it as a wall against the great serpent, this Mother of All Daughters, to fight her strength for strength. It was futile. The strongest power of a human was still human. This was a god.
And then… a hand grasped hers. Strength flowed into her body and cleared the drug-like haze from her eyes, pulling her back into the real world. Abby’s head listed to the side. She could barely move her head under her own power, but she saw enough to recognize burnished auburn hair and shimmering green eyes.
“Mom?”
Constance planted her other hand against the arm of her chair, straining against the crushing force that filled the church. She forced herself to her feet. She reached up to the omnipresent metallic pin on her lapel and clutched at it with a trembling hand.
“Get-away -from my-DAUGHTER!”
She wrenched the pin from her breast and hurled it against the void. The ancient serpent howled its displeasure and turned its gaze to her mother. It rippled with might, but Constance had placed herself in front of Abby. Her mother’s shriek tore through the air and Abby’s very soul as the snake drove its essence into Constance.
Abby and her unborn daughter echoed the scream as another contraction built; a precursor to an eruption that would tear Abby in half. The snake’s power hammered at the fragile wall of Constance’s psyche. The congregation hadn’t yet realized what was happening and Hester was unable to see beyond the ancient words tumbling from her mouth. Mr. Harris had not arrived in time and her mother had reached beyond her years of conditioning to buy her these few seconds.
She looked at Nate and Bryce, helpless on the altar, awaiting their death. But there was no one in the world left to help them.
Not in this world.
Abby kept one hand locked into her mother’s. She placed the other on her belly, whispering to her unborn child; asking, pleading, for her to use whatever gifts she had imparted to Abby over the last nine months.
She felt a flutter of response and then a rush of sound that traveled through her body and into Constance. The surge of energy gave Constance new resolve in her battle with Yidhra; she dug in her heels and squeezed Abby’s hand in silent gratitude. Abby felt a flickering pulse from within her womb.
They were united. Three daughters, acting as one.
An unbreakable holy trinity.
Abby felt the contraction coming, and this time, she did not flee from it. Instead, she dove into the crushing wave of its approach. She let it submerge her, relishing the bright agony until she was floating within its embryonic depths. She forced her body to relax, breathing through the spasms. She surrendered to its pull, allowing it to draw her upward until she broke through its surface with a gasp.
Abby threw back her head as the pain shattered into a symphonic downpour of unspoken notes. She sobbed with joy as she bathed in the heart wrenching melody of her unborn daughter’s voice.
Her daughter had been speaking to her for months in words not meant for human ears. And just as Abby’s mind had rebelled at being forced to reconcile the layered worlds and creatures that existed beyond human sight with those terrible headaches, so too had her body fought against the discordance of this non-Euclidian language until it had battered her consciousness into comprehension.
And with that comprehension came bliss and freedom from pain.
She fashioned that comprehension into her lens-so easy now that she could see with all of her senses. She called out in a voice that reverberated through the church, down through the hills and onto the town green.
“Josiah Baxter. Luther Hobbes. Israel Thaw.”
The words left her lips like a testament.
“Come and claim your justice.”
Her words seized the corners of two worlds and forged them together by sheer force of will. The Daughters of Arkham were nearly laid flat by the concussion of Abby’s invocation.
Abby opened her pain-bright eyes to behold the church. The congregation was gazing at her in awe and terror. Hester could not halt the ritual lest the serpent tear free and turn on her, but she saw Abby. They could all see her.
Abby had been exalted by her daughter and had transcended the Daughters themselves.
She was iron and judgement.
She was Abigail Thorndike.
85
The Cavalry
Mr. Harris had gathered a paltry force: Treach, the school janitor; Jenkins, the mechanic; Williams, who ran the local deli; and a few others. None of them really had the kind of power they would need to overcome the thralls and their masters inside the church. It was a risk to reveal themselves before all of their plans were in place, but for Abby’s sake and for her promise, they would try.
They ran overland. The forest or the denizen within-as though there was a distinction-didn’t want them there. One day, Mr. Harris would learn what devil’s deal the Daughters had struck to place such a sentry, but there was no time to worry about it now. Their attack would have to be swift and brutal. Their only goal was to keep Abigail Thorndike alive.
They had just come into sight of the church when a thrum of power tore the air, slamming into reality itself. It knocked the win
d out of Mr. Harris and his men. When he recovered, he saw their masks had been stripped from their bodies. He didn’t know what sort of sorcery could do such a thing, but it was fitting that they would fight this battle as their true selves.
He charged, knowing they would follow. He threw the doors open and his men boiled into the church around him. Hester Thorndike, the leader of the Daughters, was on the dais.
Abby was seated, clutching her belly and her mother’s hand. Harris saw lines of energy that he perceived as threads of ink in water, a sign that Yidhra was making her way into Constance Thorndike’s body. The woman was still fighting. He wondered how long she had left before the god consumed her entirely.
Bertram, the leader of the thralls, pointed at Mr. Harris.
“Kill them,” Bertram said.
The thralls charged out to meet the apostates on the stairs of the church. Mr. Harris struck two, temporarily incapacitating them. Bertram vaulted over their prone bodies and gripped Mr. Harris’ wrists with hands like liquid stone.
“You’re mine, apostate,” he said.
86
Brothers in Death
Abby was still reeling. The phenomenal power she had unleashed had left a glowing residue behind in her soul. She could see her mother still struggling against Yidhra but she didn’t know what to do. She felt a momentary surge of hope when Mr. Harris and his apostates arrived but… there were so few of them.
With the thralls distracted, the dais was unguarded. Abby turned to shout to Sindy, but she saw the other girl was already moving. Sindy ran around the front of the table to crouch beside Bryce and Nate. Moments later, Ophelia Thomas and Charity Duckworth grabbed her from behind and dragged her away. Sindy kicked and bit and clawed at them, but other Daughters soon joined in to restrain her.
Bryce and Nate hauled at their chains. Abby could see the shackles bite into the flesh of their wrists. Other Daughters converged on them, beating them back into submission.
Abby was frozen. If she released her mother’s hand to help any of them, Constance would be lost to Yidhra forever. Mr. Harris’s apostates were outnumbered and being driven back. Her small flash of hope and victory was fading in the maelstrom of this chaos. Abby buried her face in her mother’s side, unable to watch any more of the suffering.
“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 fe
lt 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 huddle, clinging to each other, and to sanity, in the face of the godhead incarnate.
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