Well, there was the front… But then, why bother with the cars at all? Why not just drive to wherever they’d gone? It made no sense.
He decided to head back through the wall and across the lawn despite the danger of being seen. There was no easy way to follow the wall around to the side gate where he’d left his bike, but he was too frustrated to care.
As Nate rode home, he considered different scenarios and possibilities for the strange, mass disappearance. He did not know that something far stranger was happening in the clinic downtown.
34
The Procedure
dr. Collins’ clinic was on the outskirts of town in a folksy-looking building that looked an awful lot like a log cabin. The entire thing was built in a donut-shape around an interior garden and a massive oak tree that had grown gnarled and powerful. It was not unusual to see hawks roosting in the boughs of the trees, searching the ground for rabbits or songbirds.
Abby didn’t know what to think of the place. Maybe it had been designed to appeal to the latent outdoorsiness of its wealthy clientele. But then, what was she supposed to think of any clinic like this? This wasn’t the kind of thing she had ever expected for herself. She’d thought she would get married sometime after college, after her career—whatever that turned out to be—was well underway. A couple years into her marriage, she would have a baby with her impossibly gorgeous and attentive husband.
She had not pictured this. She supposed no one ever did. There were no little girls fantasizing about their first— their first…
Abortion.
No matter how much Constance had reassured her that the procedure was painless and she wouldn’t have a single thing to worry about, Abby knew “procedure” was a euphemism for “surgery.” And this wasn’t just a surgery, it was a… No. She couldn’t think about it. She wouldn’t think about it. Her mother had everything under control.
Constance had called Dr. Collins immediately after their conversation. She had arranged for the procedure to be done that afternoon, and Abby had fallen into line as if she were still seven years old. She’d barely had a moment to think about what was about to happen.
As Constance parked the car, Abby was relieved (but not terribly surprised) that the parking lot was practically empty. She suspected that her mother had something to do with that fact. It wouldn’t do to have the shame of the Thorndikes turn into gossip fodder for the entire town.
“Put on a brave face, dear. You are going to be just fine.” Constance unbuckled, then leaned over to kiss Abby’s forehead. “It will be like it never happened.”
Abby smiled woodenly. She felt very afraid.
A nurse looked up as they went inside. She smiled professionally. “Ms. Thorndike, Dr. Collins is waiting for you in Room B.”
“Thank you, Darla,” Constance said. She escorted Abby down a hallway. The walls that faced the garden were made out of glass. As they walked, Abby looked at the giant oak tree in the center of the garden. It reminded her of the one in her own backyard. Both trees were of a similar size and character. Maybe their seeds had come from the same tree that had once stood in the middle of town. A couple years back, someone had chopped it down to put up a storefront. Abby decided they definitely were the same; they were sisters.
They turned, and she couldn’t see the tree anymore. She felt unnamable dread as soon as it was out of sight. Right on cue, her belly twisted up. Unwelcome thoughts invaded Abby’s mind. She fell into lockstep behind her mother and tried to clear her mind. Mother knew best. The pain twisted again, and Abby winced, clutching at her tummy.
“Are you all right, dear? Do you need the…” Constance’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Ladies’ room?”
“No, Mom. I’m all right. Just a little tummy ache.”
“You’re nervous,” Constance said, obviously relieved that some horrible accident was no longer on the horizon. She gathered Abby into the crook of her arm. “I’m sorry, dear. It’s going to be okay, I promise you. You’re going to spend the day in bed, probably tomorrow too just to be safe, and I’m going to make sure you have anything you want to eat.”
“Anything?” Abby asked. Normally, nutrition was queen at Harwich Hall. Constance frowned on anything lower class. Consequently, Abby always craved the kinds of treats she only got at Nate’s house. “Double Stuf Oreos?”
“Sure. Put it on a list and I’ll make sure it’s waiting for you.”
“Yoo-Hoo?”
“Is that a drink?”
“Chocolate soda.”
“Are you certain that’s a real thing?”
“Yes. I have it at Nate’s sometimes.”
Constance stiffened. “Hopefully, that’s all you have at Nate’s.”
Just like that, the moment was over. Her mother couldn’t have meant that as just an innocent remark; it was loaded with intent. Her mother couldn’t trust her own daughter anymore. Abby hadn’t considered how cold that was going to feel.
She forced a smile onto her face and looked away, feeling her mother’s body grow rigid next to her. She considered the easy connection Nate had with his mother, Lana, or even what Sindy had with her mother, Faith. There had always been such a distance between the Thorndike women. Beyond a few isolated moments that were quickly spoiled, none of them ever knew how to bridge it.
Dr. Collins was waiting for them in Room B. She was a small, thin woman. Her blonde hair was tied up in a simple bun, and she wore a lab coat over a sensible, stylish suit. Dr. Collins smiled at them. She probably intended it to be comforting, but her mouth was very large. When her lips peeled away from her teeth, she seemed predatory to Abby.
“Hello, Abigail.”
Abby tried to greet the doctor, but the words died somewhere in her throat. She listened as Dr. Collins swept through the procedure, reassuring Constance that there were only two other people in the building. The procedure wouldn’t take long and Abby could remain in the recovery room for as long as she liked.
Abby tuned out somewhere between “nurse” and “recovery.” The pain in her belly started to intensify, though not all at once as it usually did. This was a gradual twisting and burning, like a serpent uncoiling inside of her. She held her hand over it and felt immediate relief.
“Abby? Abby?”
Abby blinked. “Yeah, Mom?”
“Dr. Collins needs you to undress.”
Abby turned to the doctor, who gave her that same frightening smile. Abby had the queasy sense that the doctor was planning to use her teeth at some point during this procedure. “We’re going to wait outside. Please undress and put this gown on. Then, if you could lie down on the table and put your feet in the stirrups, that would be great. You can go ahead and cover yourself with the sheet. My assistant and I will be back in a few minutes. All right?”
Abby nodded. Constance gave her an almost-motherly hug, then pulled away and left Abby alone in the room. It was the same as any other examination room she had ever been in. The perverse familiarity made everything worse; it recast the room as a new player in this step toward adulthood that she didn’t want to take.
She undressed as quickly as she could with the knot burning in her belly. She managed to hang her clothes up on a nearby rack before she clambered onto the table. As soon as she put her feet in the icy stirrups, she felt more exposed than she ever had in her entire life. At least the table was perpendicular from the door. Small comforts were all she had.
She drew a thin paper sheet over her body. It offered no defense against the brutal air conditioning. It felt been colder in here than it did outside, and it was November. Why would they do that? Maybe the intense refrigeration kept everything in here sterile. Or maybe it was one final humiliation for girls who stepped outside the boundaries of proper society. Abby shivered, and the involuntary movement aggravated the pain inside her.
Dr. Collins came back in. She didn’t knock. Abby thought she should have. Here she was, as vulnerable as she had ever been, and Dr. Collins barged right back in with her b
ig shark mouth. Her assistant was a sturdy, severe-looking woman Abby couldn’t quite place. Her hair was a jumble of dark curls up under her gauzy surgical cap, and she couldn’t identify her mouth because she was already wearing a mask. She probably wasn’t one of the Daughters of Arkham.
“Now, are we ready?”
We. Abby imagined Nate commenting that was the scariest word a doctor could say, aside from “Oops.” She stifled a panicked giggle that tried to fly out of her mouth. She wondered if she was going crazy, but the idea of Dr. Collins as anything other than ready for this “procedure” was so ridiculous that it bordered on the hysterical. Dr. Collins had better be ready. She had gone to school for this, and Abby hadn’t. She buried another grin and offered a quick, nervous nod instead.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be finished before you know it.”
She hooked up an IV to Abby’s arm and lined up Abby’s belly with a hole in the sheet. “This is going to be a little cold,” she said.
She covered Abby’s belly in a clear gel, and began to buzz a wand over it. Abby had seen enough medical shows on television to know that this was an ultrasound. Dr. Collins looked at the screen for what felt a very long time. Abby glanced over but couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was seeing.
“That’s odd. Abigail, I need to do a quick pelvic exam.”
Abby nodded. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes. I just want to make sure that everything is… You know, as it should be.”
Abby thought that was an odd statement, but it wasn’t like she’d experienced any of this before. She laid down and tried to put her mind someplace else.
“Abigail. Are you absolutely certain that you’re pregnant?”
“What? What are you talking about? I took the test. What else could it be?”
Dr. Collins ignored Abby. “Run a blood test on her. And get the internal ultrasound. I’m not positive, but I believe she still has her—”
The lights went out.
“Karen, would you check the generator? Abby, there’s nothi—”
Abby cut Dr. Collins off with a howl of pure agony. The pain in her belly spiked past anything she had ever experienced before. It was a white-hot core at her center, sending out barbed tendrils of fire through her entire body. She felt like she was going to explode.
“Abigail! ABBY! Stop thrashing!”
Abby heard the words, but they were just noises in the distant background of her blinding pain. She felt hands on her, but they really had nothing to do with her.
The pain began to change. It reached the peak of all the anguish she could possibly feel and then twisted back down along itself. A bright burning tore through the darkness, and she was one with it. The pain ignited every nerve in her body, lighting them red, then orange, then yellow, then white, then something beyond white that she could see but never describe. It focused and sharpened her. She was not seeing through her eyes; she was seeing through her whole body—but it was so much more than just seeing. She could hear, smell, taste, feel everything, and then there innumerable, indescribable other senses she must have always had and also gained right at that moment.
Something was on the other side of the light.
Abby could only perceive bits of it. A swatch of glittering scales. A wet scent, like a peat bog. The taste of burnt cinnamon. She knew she was only getting tiny parts, like looking at a whale through a microscope. It was much too large for her to perceive it whole.
Then… it looked at her.
It was impossibly old. She did not know how she knew, but it was incontrovertible fact. It regarded her with unreadable intentions. Maybe it saw a meal. Maybe a kindred spirit. Maybe it had just awakened and it had no idea what this tiny, screaming being even was.
She opened her eyes and the agony stopped. The fluorescent lights flickered on, one by one.
Abby winced, suddenly aware of a pricking sensation in her arm. She looked, and saw that she had torn free of the IV. She put her hand over the dripping wound.
A smear of bright blood went across the wall and out the door. Abby pulled her feet from the stirrups and huddled on the table, pulling the inadequate sheet about her.
“Dr. Collins?” she asked the silence.
There was no answer.
“Dr. Collins?” she said louder.
Still no answer.
The blood looked vaguely like a smeared hand print. It couldn’t have been Dr. Collins—it was too big—but maybe the nurse… The paint was scratched amid the blood. Nail marks. It looked like the nurse had been yanked out of the room.
Yanked. Yanked by what?
She shivered. Was it still out there? Could it still be?
“Abby?”
Abby was paralyzed. She didn’t believe she’d heard anything. She thought it had to be the product of her imagination, giving her hope where there was none.
“Abby?”
It was her mother.
“Abby, honey, are you there?”
Relief slammed into Abby like a sob.
“Mom!” She screamed the word like an escaping night terror. “I’m in here, Mom! Please!”
Constance stepped through the door. Abby huddled on the examination table, trembling.
“I need you to get dressed dear,” Constance said. Her voice was taut. Abby had heard that tone before when Constance was angry, but she couldn’t be angry. Could she?
“I… I can’t.” Her limbs wouldn’t obey. Her brain was trying to shake itself apart. “Mommy…” Abby didn’t think as the words left her lips. She couldn’t remember the last time she had referred to Constance as ‘mommy,’ but she needed a mommy more than anything right now. She needed her to run over her, hold her, kiss her forehead, and swear that no matter what it was all going to be okay.
Such displays of affection and compassion were beyond Constance at this moment. Her eyes were heavy with an expression that was totally alien to her mother’s Thorndike-green eyes.
Constance was terrified.
“Abigail, get off that table and get dressed. Do it now and do it fast. Don’t make me tell you again.”
Abby couldn’t help but respond to that icy tone. She slid off the examination table, covering herself as best she could. She wiped the gel off her belly with the paper sheet, then threw her clothes on. The poke on her arm from the IV had stopped oozing. She tried not to look at the darkening smear of blood on the wall.
Constance pressed a single button on her cell phone. “Hello? Yes, I need to speak with Chief Stone, please.”
Robert Stone was the Arkham Chief of Police.
“Hello, Robert. Yes, there has been a… well, an event at Dr. Collins’s clinic.” She brushed her hand against her lapel, following the contours of the Daughters of Arkham pin with her fingertips. “I need you to send your most discreet men. Mm-hmm. Yes. I’m afraid so. I will not be here when you arrive. In fact, I was never here. Is that understood? Good. Thank you, Robert.” She ended the call, and turned to Abby.
Abby’s clothes felt strange on her, as though they belonged to someone else. Maybe it was because everything had been chilled by the oppressive air conditioning, but that didn’t explain why her blouse and tights felt like steel wool. She shivered and looked at her mother, trying to understand whether her mother had in fact just issued peremptory orders to the Chief of Police.
Constance Thorndike stood in the doorway. She had made her call just inches from the horrible bloodstain on the doorjamb and wall. Anyone else might have only seen her as the imperious figure she projected, the impossible standard of class and beauty, but Abby saw something foreign in her mother’s face. It was something she had never seen before, something ashen and vulnerable.
“Come now, dear. We have to leave.” The tautness in her voice had returned. She held out her hand. In the flickering fluorescent light, her ivory complexion looked more like the pallor of a corpse.
Abby took her hand, and Constance led her out into the hall.
Abby saw what was wai
ting there and screamed.
Dr. Collins and her assistant were there with their throats torn open. Abby buried her head in Constance’s side.
“It’s all right, dear. They’re dead. Nothing more can happen to them, and they can’t hurt you.”
It was such a tone-deaf response that Abby felt another hysterical laugh bubble up in her lungs. She clamped it down. That was what crazy people did. She was not crazy, no matter how the world was conspiring to make her so. Her mind reeled with what had just happened and what she had seen in that strange vision during the attack.
That presence… Had it been responsible?
Abby heaved out a sob as they skirted the bodies. She looked up only when they were through the door and into the waiting room. She regretted it immediately. The woman at the desk had been killed as well. Her blood decorated the glass wall. On the other side, the oak tree waited, a mute sentinel. It had seen everything.
Constance hustled Abby into the car and sped home.
35
Two Mothers
constance Thorndike did her best not to allow her fear to escape her icy façade. Luckily, she had a great deal of practice maintaining her composure. This was supposed to have been a simple procedure, and it had gone horribly wrong. How? Or even what? Those wounds hadn’t looked like they’d been made by any weapon she knew, or at least none made by human hands.
Abby slumped in the passenger seat. The sight of her dead eyes and twitching hands disturbed Constance. The girl looked like she was on the edge of madness. Certain kinds of insanity could be helpful to the bloodline. No psychiatrist would pronounce Hester Thorndike sane and she had run the Daughters for over thirty years. This kind, however, looked to be of the fragile variety. Constance imagined her daughter broken and hollow-eyed, wasting away in her room. It was enough to send Constance spiraling into panic.
She ran through the situation for the umpteenth time since it had happened. With each review of the facts, she gained no new insights. There was no reason to think she would this time. She recounted everything regardless. She had the feeling that it was the only thing keeping her from joining her daughter’s present catatonia.
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