Daughters of Arkham

by Justin Robinson

  Her perception shifted, and she was standing on the town green. She had not walked it, yet her mind created the vague sense that she had, a queasy melding of forgetfulness and memory.

  The gallows was out. It had looked rickety and ethereal the first time she’d seen it, but here, every beam was thick and sturdy. It glowed from a distance. As she got closer to it, she saw that the wood itself was bleeding. The bodies of the three men hung there, swaying like broken wind-chimes.

  They were not dead. Not here. In the real world, they had been executed two hundred years before, but in this place, they were trapped for eternity. They would hear her.

  Abby called to them. “Josiah Baxter.” She wasn’t certain who was who. Burlap bags hid their features, which were probably horribly distended after their brutal execution.

  The center figure stirred. It was not a human motion. There was no twitch of the fingers, no kick of the toes. It was the rope itself, possessed with the power of the dead, which began to move.

  “Josiah Baxter,” she said again.

  A wind she could not feel shook the body. Now its hands and feet were moving with a stuttering, unearthly shifting that her eyes struggled to track. Then, the body clawed its way up through the trapdoor, which closed behind it. The burlap bag disintegrated from the man’s head and faded.

  Josiah Baxter looked like Nate. Not exactly, but there were enough genetic markers that survived to the present day. He had Nate’s moon face and his dark, hooded eyes. Josiah blinked and found Abby at the foot of the gallows.

  “You dare speak my name, Thorndike?”

  “I’m a Thorndike who is your friend,” she said.

  “There is no such creature.”

  “My name is Abigail and I am a friend to the Baxters. I came here because I need you to help me. Who did this to you? ”

  “Our own hubris did us in. That’s what happens when mortals meddle in the affairs of gods. The Daughters of Arkham do not take kindly to those that might challenge their precious Mother.” The rope came off the crossbeam. It reared up like a serpent. The end of it regarded her. “You are with child.”

  Abby put a protective hand over her belly.

  “I would never harm a lady who is expecting,” Josiah said. “Tell me, young Thorndike, what do you want from this hanged man?”

  Abby readied herself to ask what he had discovered that had made the Daughters kill him, who was this “Mother” he spoke of, when, suddenly, she was in the woods. She blinked, casting about for the hanged men, but they were gone. She put the town green in her mind, to force the travel once again, but she did not budge. She could feel the old colonial church from where she stood. She knew she was supposed to go there. She obeyed the summons.

  She was not truly walking, though she felt the dim, phantom ache of her feet bleeding up into her. She was gliding, like a ghost. She could feel herself just fine, down to the shape of her daughter’s hands and feet pushing against the skin of her belly. Yet she knew she did not properly have a body.

  Dread filled her. It was the same sensation she felt occasionally in dark hallways, when she rationally knew there could be nothing behind her but felt too frightened to turn to confirm it.

  She followed the path as it wound out of sight. Movement flickered through the bare, gray trunks of trees. She could never see precisely what it was, but it was too low, too quick to be human. No humans here, she reminded herself. No telling what death did to someone. Josiah had seemed reasonable, but she could not quite trust that.

  The pain that had summoned her here was still present, though subdued. It was a halo around her. She felt that if she did look at herself, she would be surrounded by white flame set away from her body, and yet close enough to singe her.

  She took a phantom step and found herself going farther. Another step carried her two steps worth of distance. She was being moved deeper into the forest, under her own power and yet not. Each subsequent movement drew her farther and farther along.

  The woods were unfamiliar right up to the point when they suddenly, horribly, were. She was in the dead place around the church, only in this place there was no church. There was a buzzing blackness, as though a swatch of reality had been torn away. Just looking at the juxtaposition made her head pound and tried to draw a scream out between her teeth.

  The stench of peat filled the ghostly air. She could taste burnt cinnamon on her tongue.

  Abby had stopped moving now, at the edge of the clearing. She wanted to look away from the void where the church should have been, but found she could not. It pulled her attention as sure as whatever force had pulled her to this place.

  She gazed at the hideous wound in reality. No—not reality—in this place where everything was dead, somehow the church managed to be more dead. So dead that in this place, it was utterly gone, erasing everything around it. Briefly, she wondered what the wound looked like around its ragged edges, but her mind itched with invisible spiders crawling behind her eyes.

  This was the place she had been drawn to. There was some great truth here.

  Then, the void blinked.

  Abby screamed. She saw nothing else; no flash; no darkness. There was no stab of pain or spiral of euphoria.

  The next sensation she felt was her hurting hands. She opened her eyes and Bryce and Nate were less than a foot from her face. They were terrified.

  “Abby? Abby!” Nate said

  “I’m… I’m okay.”

  “What happened? You were talking to yourself.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you find the ghosts?” Bryce asked, doubts erased.

  “I think I found something worse.”

  71

  Unlikely Allies

  ‘when he thought about it, Bryce knew he really hadn’t seen anything at all. He didn’t know why the séance—if it could even be called that—stuck with him. Maybe it was the atmosphere, the heavy air in that unfinished room, the candlelight burnishing everything around them. Abby had gone into some kind of a trance, and then she had squeezed their hands, groaning in obvious pain. He thought for sure she had gone into labor.

  Instead, she had begun to thrash her head around. Bryce wanted to stop it, to shake Abby awake, but Nate had stopped him. They’d promised Abby they would try it her way and Nate held them to that. She needed to find out what she could, even if it was nothing.

  It hadn’t looked like nothing to Bryce. Abby had seen something terrible, but none of them completely understood what it was.

  His phone buzzed, jolting him out of his reverie. He pulled it out and checked the caller ID. It was Delilah Cutter. That was odd. He hadn’t spoken to her in weeks.

  “Hey, Del? What’s up?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yeah. But we’re not friends that way. I mean, there was that one time during summer program, but that was more of an experimental phase for—”

  “Hey, dumbass,” Delilah said. “Holster your piece. I don’t need you for phone sex. I can have real sex delivered to my house like pizza. Or with a pizza. I’m calling about the Daughters.”

  Bryce sat up. “What do you know about the Daughters?”

  “I know that they don’t like that you’ve been sticking your nose into their business. I don’t know what it is that you’re doing, I just thought you should know that Sindy and her crew don’t like it, and if you keep it up, they said they’re going to do something to you.”

  Bryce almost laughed at the idea of those girls doing anything to him, then he remembered the six guys who jumped him in the park at someone’s orders. Delilah was right. They were dangerous.

  “Why are you telling me this, Del? You are her crew. What happened to, ‘Above all else, sisterhood’?”

  “They’re not my sisters, Bryce. You just watch that cute ass of yours. I’d hate to see something bad happen to it.”

  72

  Frozen Out

  ‘constance was surprised when she heard the bell at Harwich Hall ring. She had n
ot been expecting any visitors, but it was not entirely unusual to get an uninvited guest. By virtue of being a Thorndike, there was always someone who wanted to come to kiss the ring.

  Her smile did not falter in the slightest when she saw Bertram taking Faith Endicott’s coat. Ever since Sincere’s initiation, Constance had harbored a deep loathing for her so-called sister. “Faith! So lovely to see you,” she said, taking the woman’s arms as she gave her an air kiss.

  “Hello, Constance. So nice of you to have me.”

  Constance had never felt such contempt radiating off of anyone before. They both kept their smiles plastered firmly in place.

  “I did not know I would have the pleasure. Can I have Bertram get you something?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Hester croaked. Both women turned. Hester hobbled into the room on her cane. The vigor from the ritual had left her.

  “My guest and I have a lot to discuss. Nothing you need to worry yourself over, dear. Come, Faith. Join me in my study.”

  Faith walked by, and Constance could swear the look the other woman shot her was triumphant. She burned as she watched the two of them go deeper into the house—into Hester’s study, of all places! Only Thorndike women went in there.

  It was the final nail in the coffin. Constance was out; Faith was in… all over this misguided adherence to tradition. Abby was pregnant. Yes, that was terrible for someone so young, but it wasn’t the end of Abby’s life. She wasn’t a ruined woman or anything so medieval. The Thorndikes had enough money to guarantee the child would be raised well. While Constance would have rather Abby had waited, she wasn’t going to turn her back on her daughter for one little mistake.

  Constance still wondered who the boy really was, whether it was Bryce Coffin or Nathan Baxter. One would be an appropriate—though far from ideal—match for her daughter. The other was blatantly unacceptable.

  She pushed that aside. She needed to secure her relationship with Abby. She was more powerful united with her daughter. If she was going to stop this apparent Endicott coup, she would need the help. Beyond that, she just wanted her daughter back. Hester saw Abby as a vessel for the next generation. Constance saw her as a girl she desperately loved and wanted to be close with again.

  She went upstairs and knocked at her daughter’s door.

  “Yes?”

  “Abby, may I come in?”

  There was a pause. “Sure.”

  Constance opened the door. She glanced to the corner of the room at the dollhouse replica of Harwich Hall. It was dusty, and there was some stain creeping out from the inside. She made a mental note to ask Bertram to clean it.

  Abby gazed up at her, waiting.

  “Would you like to go to Baldwin’s?” she asked.

  Baldwin’s was an old-fashioned ice cream parlor downtown. Whenever Abby had a bit of good news or Constance thought they needed some time together, that’s where they went. The tradition had petered out as Abby had grown up, another casualty in the timeline of a growing teenager.

  “Sure. Yeah,” Abby said, brightening. She worked her way off the bed, and Constance winced internally at her daughter’s transformation. She was still just a baby herself; she didn’t need to have a baby…

  No, we are not talking about that, Constance reminded herself.

  The two of them took the Mercedes downtown and got their sundaes. Constance’s was butterscotch over salted caramel ice cream. Abby’s was strawberry and chocolate over banana. As they ate, Abby talked about her classes and grades. It was easy for Constance to read between the lines. She was an outcast because of her condition. Constance made certain not to pry. Though she was desperately curious for the connection of her daughter’s life, it was far more important to re-establish a connection first.

  They returned home, cheerfully talking about nothing at all. Constance had not felt so relaxed around her daughter in a long while, and by the ease of Abby’s posture—even burdened by her ever-expanding womb—it looked like she felt the same way.

  “Mom, can I ask you something?” Abby asked as they went through the front door.

  “Anything.”

  “Is there anything I should know about the Daughters of Arkham?”

  The question froze Constance in her tracks. It could have been completely innocent. The Daughters were, after all, a charitable organization, no different to the outside world than the Daughters of the American Revolution. Yet, they both knew the question was not innocent at all. Even worse, Constance wanted to answer her.

  There was no way she could. She had taken oaths, oaths that seemed distant and unimportant right now. Wasn’t her oath to her own daughter more important than any promise made to a gathering of other women?

  “Well, Abby it’s not quite that simple—” she started, still not certain how she would finish the sentence.

  “Constance, you’re home.” Hester said. She stood in the doorway with her cane. “I’d like to see you in my study now, dear.”

  “Yes, mother,” Constance said, leaving her daughter alone in the hall.

  73

  In Distress

  ‘nate felt strange being inside Coffin Manor. He felt certain that at any moment, Marianne Coffin was going to throw him out, or even worse, demand that he cut the east lawn. (Of course, he was going to do that, but it was scheduled for Saturday.) Both possibilities were embarrassing, but the first was actively humiliating. Bryce assured him that Marianne didn’t even know they were there, and followed it by saying, “She’s three spoons deep in a Mom parfait,” as if that meant something to Nate.

  Bryce led Nate to his bedroom and sort of gestured at a leather recliner, then went to his desk to hit a few keys on his laptop. “Okay, here’s what we know so far.”

  A massive flat-screen television blinked to life. There were thumbnail images scattered across the screen. Each one was connected to lines which led to other, larger images and scattered pieces of text. It looked like one of those evidence boards from cop shows.

  “Holy cats.” Nate moved closer to the screen. “When did you do all of this?”

  “Well, as it turns out, if you stop drinking and partying, you end up with an extraordinary amount of free time.” Bryce clicked on the center of the image. It zoomed in on the symbol of the Daughters of Arkham. Nate shivered. The symbol had been creeping him out ever since the weird episode Abby’d had with Hester’s pin.

  “Don’t you worry about your homework and grades and stuff?”

  “I’m already rich, Poindexter. My GPA isn’t really going to factor into my future.”

  “Well, yeah, sure. But some of those coloring sheets are pretty fun. And if you want, I can even help you with your times tables.”

  Bryce’s head jerked up. Nate looked back at him with all the innocence he could feign. Bryce scowled, then snatched a lacrosse ball off his desk. He whipped it at Nate, who dodged out of the way and burst out laughing.

  “Keep it up, lawn boy. I swear to God, I will hire someone to kick your ass. Don’t think I won’t.” Bryce was smiling behind his feigned anger as he went back to clicking at the screen. “Now pay attention.”

  The screen pulled out to show the numerous faces of the elder Daughters. Hester, of course, was at the center. A connection led from her to Constance and then to Abby. This was repeated all over the screen, for every single daughter. Beside each of them was a clip-art man with an X through it to indicate their dead husbands.

  Nate looked at the screen with a mix of dread and awe. So many husbands across multiple generations were missing or dead. He had a feeling that if they were to dig up the graves of these men, they would find them as empty as Drew Marks’ grave had been.

  “How is this even possible?” Nate’s mind boggled at the idea of so many murders and cover-ups. You’d need so much influence! And power! Why? Why would you do it?

  “The real question is, what are they doing with the bodies?” Bryce said. “They have to put them somewhere.”

  Nate looked at t
he screen. It pained him to see Sindy’s face there. They’d never been close but they had been connected in their love for Abby. He wasn’t emotionally prepared to see her on a roster of people in Arkham who could not be trusted.

  Bryce’s phone buzzed. He picked it up to look at his texts. “It’s Delilah again. She wants to meet.”

  “Didn’t she warn you to be careful about all this stuff?”

  “Yeah,” he said. The phone buzzed again. “She says she has more information. Something she found out when she was over at Sindy’s house last night.”

  Nate cocked his head. The phone buzzed once more. Bryce paled as he looked up at Nate.

  “She says she knows where the Fathers of Arkham are.”

  74

  Hester’s Study

  ‘constance felt like she was seeing the principal. She always did when she sat here. Hester sat on the far side of her desk. The padding of her chair forced her to sit in the ramrod posture she had learned in finishing school. Her face was pursed in an expression of disapproval, or—more accurately—even more disapproval than usual.

  The study was barely worth such a grandiose name. Generations of Thorndike matriarchs had cluttered it with books, journals, ledgers, and paper which overflowed from shelves against every wall. Some were entirely mundane, such as the ledgers outlining the Thorndike business concerns. Others were a little more esoteric. Harwich Hall’s library was one floor above the study, well-known for its extravagant collection, and yet to certain eyes the volumes in here were far more valuable.

  Here, Hester used the secrets in them as a sigil of her power.

  “I hate to say this about my own grandchild, but her lack of self-control indicates that she’s entirely unsuited to lead the Daughters,” Hester began without preamble.