Sindy spent all of her time with Eleazar. Abby did her best not to look at them. Sindy seemed a bit more hesitant in their public displays, but Eleazar had not cooled. He spent most of this time staring at Sindy or nuzzling her. To Abby, it looked like an animal playing with its food.
She'd seen the wounds on the throats of the women killed at the clinic. In her mind, she imagined those wounds on Sindy as well. It was enough to make her want to vomit. She avoided the pair for the rest of the day.
Nate said hi, but he was distant as well. All of Abby's immediate social group had become locked in their own little worlds and it seemed like nothing was going to change that. She wanted to shout at all of them, but it wasn't like she had a leg to stand on. This had started with her.
She chatted briefly with Nate on Friday, but spent most of her evening on homework, and then TV. On Fridays, she was allowed to watch as much as she liked. It was a tradition Constance probably thought of as horribly indulgent. Hester never approved and still referred to the television as the "idiot box," even though it was hardly box-shaped anymore. Abby just wanted an escape from what was going on in Arkham, no matter how brief.
She spent Saturday morning reading and pacing the house. She should have told Nate to come in the morning, but she wanted to be alone. Hester had a monthly engagement with the elder members of the Daughters. A bridge game, she said, though Abby was beginning to doubt that was the truth. Constance had made plans for a shopping trip to Boston. Someone (Constance refused to elaborate) would be around to pick her up at eleven. Abby was not at all surprised when that someone turned out to be Chief Robert Stone, off-duty and almost dashing in a new suit.
Abby watched them leave. Constance was not a nun, though she did not have dates- or, as she put it, "entertain admirers"-very often. When she was much younger, Abby had thought that one of those admirers would become her new father. Now she had no such illusions, and felt better for it.
The house was empty as she waited for Nate's arrival. Her eagerness must have sharpened her senses, because she heard the side gate squeak. She ran to her bedroom window and saw Nate through the branches of the maple tree outside her window, coming up the path toward the front door. It felt like a moment of mental connection, because as soon as she saw him, he looked up at her and waved.
It was silly, but that tiny gesture comforted her. No matter what else happened, Nate would be there.
She met him at the front door, but their greeting was strained and discordant. There were too many big things to say and there had not been nearly enough of the saying. The unsaid words created a gulf between them. They stood there for a moment, looking at each other. The warm feeling of being connected had vanished.
"Come on," she said as she turned to go upstairs.
He hesitated. Abby couldn't imagine why. He had been up to her room many times before without issue, and it was the only place in the house they could safely speak in private. In her most paranoid moments, she sometimes believed her mother had hidden nanny cams in the halls. She didn't truly believe Constance would go through with it, but at the same time, she didn't not believe it either. Her room was the best place to talk.
Nate's footsteps stuttered as he followed her. Outside her room, Abby glanced toward the window, expecting the dark silhouette to be lurking there again. The hall was empty.
She opened the door to her bedroom and threw herself onto the bed. Nate smiled at her from the doorway. It was a fleeting, sad smile, a final bloom in autumn. Instead of taking his customary place beside her, he sat down in the chair by her desk. Abby felt a knot in her stomach. For a moment, she couldn't look at him. They sat there in silence; one waiting, and the other working up the courage to speak.
"I tried to have an abortion," she said.
Nate straightened up, though he did not look surprised. She began to describe the procedure, feeling the need to let him into that experience, but the more she talked, the more he frowned. Finally, she said, "What?"
"None of that was necessary."
"What?"
"Well, you got... pregnant," Nate still found it difficult to say the word, "at the very end of September. So you're at the most eight weeks now. You can terminate a pregnancy that early with medication."
"How do you know this?"
Nate blushed. "When you told me you were pregnant, I read up."
Warmth spread through Abby's chest. Of course he had. Even though he could barely say the word 'pregnant,' he wanted to be as informed as possible in case she needed him. She fought back tears of affection and guilt. She didn't deserve him. A cold suspicion chased that thought away. "What were they doing then?"
"That IV was probably the drug. The other sounds like an ultrasound, though what they expected to see this early, I don't know. They might have been checking to see if you had some other kind of abdominal condition. Or if you had a false positive."
"She did ask whether I was sure I was pregnant."
A faint hope lit Nate's eyes. Abby shook her head and shivered. She wasn't sure of many things right now, but she was certain about her pregnancy.
"That's not all, is it?"
She took a deep breath and told him the rest of the story. She omitted nothing. This time, Nate was surprised. More than that, he was horrified. He had heard of the murders at the clinic, but he'd had no idea she had been there when they had happened. He had also heard the rumors that bounced from lip to lip over the digital fences of the community. People said it'd been a killer, but someone from the cloudy part of the world everyone referred to as 'outside.'
"It wasn't a killer," she said. "At least not like they're saying. It wasn't a drifter, or even a person." She clutched a stuffed bear to her chest and rocked back and forth. "I felt something and I know. I don't know how I know but I do, Nate. And whatever it was that I felt had everything to do with those murders. What kind of homicidal drifter walks in, kills three people, and then leaves me and my mom untouched?"
Abby blinked and took note of her surroundings. She was in her room. She was in a safe place. She wasn't back in Room B. She set down her bear and grabbed her laptop to show Nate the stories. There was the original, and then a follow-up about the investigation. Both articles claimed that the police were closing in on the perpetrator.
Nate shook his head. "Your mother did all this?"
"The cover-up? Yeah. She didn't even hesitate." Abby felt foolish saying 'cover-up' but she couldn't think of any other way to describe it.
"One phone call to the Chief of Police."
"And, both he and the reporter were here for Thanksgiving. Plus, she's out with him now."
"Out? You mean out-out?"
Abby nodded.
"That is weird." Nate shifted in his chair and adjusted his shirt. "Can I tell you a story now?"
"Of course."
She searched Nate's face. She knew every detail; she'd seen the shape of it change as he grew up. It was still round with youth. If he took after his father at all, it wasn't going to get much more angular. She saw the shame in the way he watched the floor, the fear in the tightness of his lips, and something deeper and more dreadful she couldn't name.
Her heart turned icy when he began to tell his story. He had come over on Halloween with Flutternutters for her phantom illness-while she had been away, dancing with Bryce-and there had been no one in the house. She couldn't believe it. "It was so weird," he said. "Unless everyone was hiding someplace, there was no party here."
"But I saw it," she said.
"Saw what?"
She felt her cheeks getting hot. "When I got home, they were cleaning up from it."
"You weren't here?"
She shook her head. "I went to Bryce's party."
"Oh." His voice broke so subtly that she might not have noticed if she were anyone else.
"I'm sorry, Nate. It was a last minute thing. I didn't know what to tell you."
Nate shrugged. "It's fine."
It wasn't fine. Abby didn't know if it
ever would be.
She watched Nate shake it off as he started telling his story. His voice transitioned into a deeper, dreamy timbre as he recalled the events of that evening. He stuttered once, making brief, sheepish eye contact with her when he described how he'd entered the house. There had been no one there, except for the shape in the upstairs hall.
Abby swallowed. "Where in the upstairs hall?"
"By the window. I could only see a silhouette."
Abby's voice was a hushed whisper. "I've seen it too."
Nate's eyes went wide. "What is it?"
Abby shrugged. "When I saw it, it was just a shape. Nothing at all. Some shadows."
"I didn't see much else before I took off. I've never run so fast." Nate said. "So I never found anyone."
"You said the house was empty. There was nothing to find."
"No. There has to be. All the cars were here. If they were meeting somewhere else, the cars would be at whatever that place was. There's no trail out back, and there's no way through the woods from your backyard. You think those ladies went hiking in their nice dresses?"
"So what do you think?"
"Harwich Hall is old. It predates the Revolution. A lot of those old buildings had secret rooms. Safe houses, storerooms, that kind of thing, for the Continentals."
"You think that this house has a secret room," Abby said.
"When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
"Is that... Spock?"
Nate smiled a little. "Spock quoting Sherlock Holmes, actually. Ten points to Gryffindor. Good effort."
Abby smiled back. "But what if they brought their cars here, then had their drivers go to a second place with their other cars? Everybody in the Daughters of Arkham has more than one, I think."
"Oh." Nate looked at the floor. He hadn't even considered that option. Rich people... Then, even brighter, he said, "Then why lie? Why here? Why create a situation that can be disproved by one person who comes to crash a five-hour-long party?" He got up and went to her dollhouse. "How accurate is this?"
"It's supposed to be perfect."
Nate opened the dollhouse, and Abby gasped. The patch of mold inside had grown into a furry green-grey coating over the kitchen and several neighboring rooms. Nate recoiled from it as well. "You should..."
"I know."
"Yeah. Okay."
He looked over the rooms one by one, comparing the outline of the building from the inside and the outside. After a moment, he snapped his fingers. "Of course. That would make the most sense." He closed the house back up and wiped his hands on his pants. "Let's go."
"Where?"
"To the one place in here that's not in there. The basement."
"The basement?"
"Cellar. Whatever. You have one of those?"
"Sure. I'm not supposed to go down there."
Nate nodded as though this proved everything.
"Because it's dark, Nate! And you know... spiders."
"Sure. Let's go."
"Nathan. You are not hearing me. Spi-ders!"
Nate ignored her and headed out of the room. Abby sighed. There was only one way Nate was going to get this out of his head and that was to go along with him. At least this would help put her betrayal behind them.
The basement stairs were behind a door in the kitchen, concealed in an alcove by the pantry. Abby opened the door and gestured to the stairs descending into the dark. "There you go. The basement."
Nate stood at the top of the staircase, peering down. She thought he might be afraid, but he took a step inside and reached out to pull a cord. An old yellow lightbulb flickered on.
Before Abby could reply, Nate was already headed down. She took a deep breath and followed him, watching out for spiders at every step. Soon, Nate would discover that there was not a giant, underground chamber in the basement. She was positive that there had to be a perfectly normal, rational explanation for everything. One that includes croatan, she reminded herself.
She lingered at the bottom of the stairs while Nate explored the basement. It was spacious. The walls were lined with tools, cleaning supplies, and everything else an army of servants might need to run a house like Harwich Hall. On the far side of the room were some ancient-looking wooden barrels. Everything seemed normal to Abby. The only basements she'd seen were on TV, though once she'd been into the one at Nate's house. TV basements were always shrouded in spider webs and filled with creepy old toys. Nate's was stacked floor-to-ceiling with cardboard boxes.
"It's pretty clean," Nate said. "Cleaner than most basements."
"You've met my mother, right?"
"Yeah, but there's like, no dust. None at all."
Nate looked at the ceiling, furrowing his brow. He pointed, then pivoted to look in the opposite direction, right at the antique barrels. He grinned and went over toward them to poke around.
"That's it? That's your secret door?" Abby asked him, unimpressed.
"Nope," Nate said. He reached under one of the barrels and hit something. "This is."
38
Into the Dark
The wall moved away in a section which turned aside to reveal a stone tunnel. The dim light of the basement revealed a sconce holding a torch-a torch, Abby's mind babbled-on the wall.
"What is this?" she asked.
"A secret passage."
"I know! But what's it doing in my house?"
Nate turned. His glasses threw skeletal shadows over his face. "Only one way to find out."
He reached into his pocket and removed a small but powerful flashlight. He clicked it on, sending the beam down the passageway. It dripped with moisture. Some sort of fuzzy mold grew along the brick that lined the walls. Just like the mold on the dollhouse, Abby thought. The passage was throat-like, and Abby could swear the dim, windy sound traveling through it had distinct inhales and exhales.
Nate began to walk down the passageway, lighting his way with the flashlight. Abby hesitated, and then jogged to catch up with him. She stuck close to him. They walked for a long time, so long that Abby supposed they might be beneath the small hills out beyond the Thorndike property.
The passage was not perfectly straight. It wound back and forth just enough so that neither side was visible from the other. They passed more sconces. The bricks above them were stained with soot, and every ten feet or so, wooden supports rose from the floor to bolster the tunnel.
Finally, light appeared ahead. Nate clicked off the flashlight. The dank air started to dry out, though it was just as cold as ever. The exit appeared as a postage-stamp-sized square on the horizon. As they got closer, Abby could see the trees of the Arkham forest and hear the comforting sounds of reality, where houses didn't have strange secret passages.
They paused at the lip, and Abby saw that the exit of the tunnel was partly concealed by rocks and a thicket. Nate looked back into the darkness.
"How far do you think we walked?" Abby asked him.
"I don't know. A mile? Maybe more?" He turned and scanned the ground, smiling again. "There's a trail here."
"Why is that good?"
"There were no real trails behind your house. This one's way too big for a game trail, and everything's been pounded flat."
"So?"
"You could walk around here if you were wearing high heels and an evening gown."
"You're not serious."
"This is what I was looking for, and I've found it."
Abby felt her equilibrium slipping away. "Why does my mother use a secret passage?"
Nate recognized her stress. "I'm sorry, Abby. It's probably nothing. I mean, the Daughters of Arkham are a secret society, like the Masons or the Elks or whatever. A secret passage doesn't necessarily mean anything illegal is happening."
He knew he didn't sound convincing, and so he stopped trying to explain away the situation. Instead, he followed the path. The forest was thick here, but the path was strangely clear. Golden light filtered in through the tre
es. Abby had the strange but unmistakable feeling that she was not welcome here. She wondered if Nate felt the same way, but the closeness of the air strangled the question in her throat. She could only follow along with the hair along the back of her neck standing on end.
Something was watching them. She was certain. It was out there, its attention as heavy as the sun on a cloudless summer day. Something was waiting for them out there in the golden forest.
Nate kept moving down the twisting forest path. There were other trails leading off into the trees, but Abby couldn't have gone that way even if she wanted to. Pure instinct kept her from straying off the path, something primal from the time that humanity lived in caves.
The trees fell behind them as the path opened up. It led up a short hill, only to end at a colonial church. Abby had never heard of any buildings out in the woods, but it looked like it had been there for years. A section of the roof had caved in and the other side was being mangled by a tree, but the structure looked sound. There was no mistaking that the path led right to the door. There were other paths leading off into the woods, but they narrowed, and she could see the differences Nate had talked about. Those were game paths. The trail they were on was intended for humans.
But not you, girl.
She didn't hear it as a voice. She felt it in her bones. She wanted to turn away. She wanted to run back down the passage, return home, and pretend she never found the secret door in the basement. She couldn't. She was tethered to Nate by some invisible force, as ensnared by the mystery as he was.
Nate began to circle the old church. It was a good size, enough for two stories, but the top contained only rafters and whatever birds had come inside to roost. The walls would have been white if not for dirt and age. The gnarled tree looked just like the ones in the yard of Harwich Hall and the central garden at Dr. Collins' clinic. They must have all come from a singular source. She'd thought that both of those trees had come from a tree on the green that had been cut down, but maybe she was wrong. The Mother Tree, wherever it was, had true power.
Mother of Crows: Daughters of Arkham - Book 2 Page 18