Daughters of Arkham

by Justin Robinson

  “What’s what, dear?” Constance said.

  “This. Him!”

  Constance turned to the computer as though she was seeing it for the first time. She squinted just a bit at the screen, and Abby took savage joy in her perfect mother showing the first signs of her age. “That is the man who committed the murders at the clinic.”

  “No, he didn’t!”

  “The police say he did. They say they have all the evidence they need for a conviction.”

  “You sure know a lot about that.”

  Here, Constance paused. Abby felt the tension drawing out between them like a taut line, ready to be cut in two. “What exactly are you saying, Abigail?”

  On another day, Abby might have quailed and ceded the fight to her mother. Not today. “You know exactly what I’m saying, Mother. The police are framing this poor man for something he didn’t do!”

  “Poor man?” Constance laughed. It was a brittle, almost hysterical sound. “Do you even know who this man is? He is a criminal. A petty criminal doing what he can to hurt the people of Arkham.”

  “But he didn’t kill Dr. Collins! He didn’t do any of this!”

  “He’s a thief. He’s been to prison.” Constance stage-whispered the last word as though prison were contagious.

  “He didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Do you know that? For certain? The police say he did it. They have all the evidence they need.”

  “Maybe I should go talk to Stephanie Hill. Or I could email CNN or something.”

  Constance set the book aside, and the thread between them thrummed, vibrating a frosty chill into Abby’s body. She had never before felt as though she were in actual physical danger from her mother until that moment. Constance’s face might as well have been a porcelain mask as she stood.

  “You will speak to no one, Abigail. Let’s not forget why you were in that clinic to begin with.” She paused, letting that sink in. Then: “This man committed the crime, and we have no way of knowing any different because you and I were not there.”

  Constance watched her daughter. Abby withered under her gaze, feeling disappointment and anger radiating from her mother in tangible waves. Finally, Constance left the room.

  Abby stayed there, shaking, though whether from rage or fear she didn’t know. Probably both. She did know one thing: Duncan Koons was innocent, and she was going to prove it.

  40

  cake

  eleazar Grant was only important in the abstract. Sindy liked him. At times, she even told herself she might consider loving him, but she knew that feeling was only temporary. No one ever married their high school boyfriend. Or, at least, she was not going to be one of those people. She planned to have fun with him until she lost interest and then she’d move along.

  And then Hester Thorndike had given her the recipe for devotion. Try as she might, Sindy could not get the old woman’s words out of her head. Whenever she closed her eyes, she could see Hester’s clear green eyes boring into her as she told her the secret. A single drop of blood. As time went on, the phrase took on the quality of a prayer.

  She didn’t want devotion from Eleazar, but she had to know if she could get it. The promise of that kind of power was mesmerizing.

  As the days passed and her blood hummed with the phrase, she knew she had to do it. She didn’t worry that it might be a bad idea. In fact, her only concern was that it might not work.

  A week before Christmas, she looked up a recipe for gingerbread cupcakes and added all the ingredients to the household shopping list. The next afternoon, she found everything in the cupboards. She didn’t know which of the servants had gone to the store, or which one had lugged the bags into the house, or which one had reorganized the spice rack. It didn’t matter. As far as she was concerned, groceries always appeared in the house like magic.

  Baking for her boyfriend felt like a serious step in her relationship with Eleazar. Sindy wasn’t a natural baker, and she would never get onto Top Chef, but she knew everything needed to taste good and look cute. She took her time, checking and rechecking her measurements.

  She looked down at the bowl as she finished mixing everything together. The batter was a deep, earthy brown, with a subtly sweet scent. Maybe it was better to just spoon it into the cups and shake off Hester’s words like a bad dream…

  As she picked up her spatula, she felt a pang of regret. Even if Eleazar had no reaction at all, then that wasn’t a waste. She’d know that what Hester told her had been a lie.

  She had to know.

  A needle waited for her, gleaming on the white countertop. She’d taken it from a dusty pincushion in the parlor drawer, and in here, its presence overwhelmed the entire room. Sindy picked it up and watched the light play off the point as she held the index finger of her left hand over the batter. She was afraid of the pain, but she was far more afraid of the power she felt.

  That power wasn’t inside her, not exactly. It was all around her but shut out, as though it had been locked away on the other side of a door. Holding the needle in her hand now, she felt like that door had opened. The power flowed into her and filled her entire body with a glimmering insistence. It demanded release.

  Sindy pricked her finger and watched as a ruby-colored droplet of blood welled up around the needle. Turning her hand, she allowed the droplet to fall to the batter. As it fell, she felt the power follow it, like it was a lightning bolt and she was a conductor. Her muscles ached as though she had run a great distance. Her vision went red before the kitchen once again swam into view. She didn’t know when she’d done it, but her finger was in her mouth. She sucked away the little bit of coppery blood, then covered her fingertip with a band aid.

  She stirred the batter once. The blood had vanished, but she knew it was there. She could feel it.

  She spooned the batter into cupcake liners, baked a whole sheet, waited for them to cool, and then frosted them. When they were finished, she arranged them into a basket and went out into the winter cold.

  A rind of snow covered everything. The roads were clear, with pools of salt soaking the ice up. Sindy’s breath was a white plume as she clipped in the direction of the Grant household. She was bundled up, and her skin burned pleasantly in the few places she hadn’t protected from the wind. After the heat and closeness of the kitchen, she felt refreshed but the secret in the cupcakes put a spring in her step that the winter air could not.

  In another town, Eleazar Grant’s house might have been huge. It was a two-story colonial with more space than he and his father needed. In Arkham, where the homes were either sprawling mansions or rickety matchboxes, the Grant house was one of the few outliers.

  Eleazar’s father Elijah answered the door. He looked a lot like his son, except his perfectly-styled, blonde hair had gone almost white, and he had fine crinkles around his eyes and mouth. Sindy thought that Elijah Grant might be the most attractive man she had ever met. She always had a tough time talking to him without her cheeks lighting up.

  “Hello there, Sincere,” Mr. Grant said. “Come in out of the cold.”

  If anyone else had called her by her full name, Sindy would have cringed inwardly and grimaced outwardly. But when Elijah Grant said it, her knees threatened to buckle and she felt a warm flush on her cheeks again.

  He stepped aside, calling up the stairs, “Eleazar, your young lady is there.”

  Sindy liked being called a young lady. She looked up as Eleazar came down to the landing. He smiled when he saw her, like the sun momentarily breaking through a cloudy day.

  “What do you have there?” Mr. Grant asked.

  Sindy moved the cloth she had over her basket, and suddenly felt like Little Red Riding Hood. There were no wolves or grandmothers around, at least. She held up the basket for inspection. “Cupcakes.”

  “They look delicious,” Mr. Grant said.

  “They’re for Eleazar.”

  “Lucky him. You two kids have fun.” He wandered into the other room, and Sindy heard the tel
evision come on. An announcer said something about sports and she tuned out.

  “Cupcakes?” Eleazar asked from the landing.

  “Uh-huh. I thought I’d bake you something for the holiday.”

  The smile broke through again. “Guess you’d better come up then.”

  Sindy felt two things then. On one hand, there was the pure and honest affection she felt for him and the joy he was taking in the fact that she’d baked for him. On the other, she was detached, wondering what effect, if any, the cupcakes would have. She held both of these feelings within her at the same time, and both swelled as she watched him.

  She went up the stairs and met him at the top. She leaned into her boyfriend and kissed him deeply. She loved how he kissed. He was sensitive and forceful, and his tongue was quite agile. He took her by the hand and led her to his room. It was dark, and had an earthy smell that Sindy associated with teenage boys. Most of the walls were covered with pictures and posters. Most of the floor was covered with dirty clothes.

  “So, cupcakes, huh?” He turned around.

  Sindy blushed and nodded. She gave him the basket without thinking of the drop of blood she’d added to the batter. Eleazar uncovered the cupcakes and raised his eyebrows. “They look great.”

  “Gingerbread with peppermint frosting. I found the recipe on a website.”

  He selected one and put the basket down on his chair. He raised it, as though toasting her, and took a big bite.

  He looked to be on the edge of exploding into a smile, but then his face just seemed to explode. There was no sound, and no spray of blood and brain matter. His flesh just came apart in dark, staticky shards that shot away from him and melted into the back of a writhing shadow. In an instant, he was no longer eating the cupcake with his normal (and, in Sindy’s opinion, quite kissable) lips. His mouth was a horrid, circular hole that was ringed with curved teeth. His tongue—at least a foot long—snaked out and swirled around his mouth cavity. His pretty eyes faded into bloodless, white orbs. His skin turned slimy and dark.

  Worst of all, he still seemed to be smiling.

  Sindy was paralyzed. She wanted to scream. She wanted to release the awful pressure building inside her as though she, too, were ready to explode into an inhuman monster. She found she had no breath. The air had been squeezed out of her. There wasn’t even enough to move her body. She was frozen. No force on earth could have moved her.

  “What’s wrong, Sin?” the thing asked.

  That was enough. Like a hammer through stained glass, she was broken, but free. The shriek that tore from her throat rattled the windows. Even the monster recoiled, though she wouldn’t remember that detail until much later as she asked herself how many times she had kissed that horrible mouth. Right now, the fear was enough.

  She ran out of the room, shot down the stairs, and burst out of the house. She heard Mr. Grant say something behind her, but she could not turn. She was terrified that he had turned into the same kind of creature as his son, and she could not take a second transformation on top of the first.

  She ran. She had to get as far away from Grant house as she could. She wasn’t certain she could ever feel safe again, but the blind animal panic that consumed her, that suffused her tissues, demanded only that she run.

  She didn’t stop until the frigid air made her feel like she was inhaling sheets of glass. Only then did she look around—she had no memory of fleeing the house, only seeing the image of the monster Eleazar had become before her eyes. Everything around her felt entirely new. Arkham, the place she had lived every one of her fourteen years, was an alien landscape under its crust of snow. It was a bright and dangerous place. She stood at a crossroads on one of the sloping streets that fed into the hills. To her right, Arkham Academy and Harwich Hall. To her left, home.

  She thought of Abby. They were still best friends, regardless of their fight. Yes, things were still rocky… and yes, they still hadn’t made up because she’d talked to Hester instead of Abby, but… She needed help. She needed to talk to her.

  Sindy remembered the first day of school. Abby had been running down the halls, screaming in terror at something only she could see. What if it was more than that? What if she’d seen something terrible?

  The secret of the blood had come from Abby’s grandmother. What if Abby had tried it? What if Bryce Coffin had been turned into one of those things, too? Or… Maybe he hadn’t been transformed. Maybe that was just what he always looked like, and Abby could see his real body. That would explain why she still hadn’t kissed him despite how obvious it was that she wanted to.

  She shivered in the cold, her breath rising in great plumes. She had to ask Abby what she’d seen. If anyone could understand it would be her.

  41

  Bound by Secrets

  sindy trudged toward Abby’s house. As she passed by Arkham Academy, she cast a superstitious look at it. It looked like a predator nestled in the perfect hiding spot. The windows were a hundred blank eyes hunting the world for more prey. Sindy shuddered again. She was allowing herself to get spooked. Then she thought of her boyfriend and thought she might not be scared enough.

  That put a hurry in her step, driving her to the gates of Harwich Hall. She stopped and looked at the house. In the snow, the Thorndike home was perfect. The lawn was a field of unbroken white and the trees held great fat drops of sugary powder. Sindy took out her phone, thinking that she should have texted Abby earlier and saved herself the walk. But if Abby wasn’t home, Sindy also knew that she might have lost her nerve.

  U home?

  Waiting for the text in response felt like days, but it was barely a minute.

  ya~~~ u here???