The Iron Thorn

by Caitlin Kittredge

  We stood in the doorway, an invitation into yet another expanse of blackness. As before, I stepped forward into the dark, and someone screamed.

  “Cal!” I thumped him on the arm in reflexive alarm. “Shine the lantern!”

  “You’re trespassers!” the voice shrieked. A projectile from the darkness—a woman’s shoe—narrowly missed Cal’s head. “I’m not infected! Get out!”

  “Whoa there, miss!” he shouted. “There’s no call to get violent!”

  The other shoe flew and I ducked. “Hey!” I snapped at the voice. “Cut that out!”

  Silence while the ghostly lantern beam swept the dark room beyond the door. The aether glow picked up stone floors, a vast porcelain sink and pump, an icebox of polished mahogany.

  “What’s your name?” I said to the shadows. I felt confident doing so, sure that viral creatures most likely wouldn’t resort to throwing scuffed-up leather pumps at us.

  “None of your beeswax!”

  Considering it was my father’s house, I privately thought it was very much my beeswax, but I wasn’t about to argue with a stranger hiding in a kitchen, pelting me with footwear.

  I gave the rest of the room a cursory glance while trying to discern the voice’s source. A dead fire gave its last gasp in the grate, shooting embers to leave black streaks on the hearth. A single chair sat before it, a book draped over the arm. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A banned text. A text on the Bonfire List, the compilation of all books the Proctors thought rated burning. I’d choked on the smoke as a little girl, while Conrad held my hand to keep us well clear of the mob standing around the conflagration in Banishment Square.

  “Is that your book?” I said. There was a shuffle and a sniffle. I fixed on the sound—beyond the sink and before the icebox.

  “You can’t pin nothing on me. That there was in the library when I came. I never read a word of it. Just like the pictures.”

  I picked up my first real live heretical book and turned it over. A crocheted bookmark, the kind of thing I’d had to waste hours on in Home Life classes, nestled thick in the pages.

  The book looked very ordinary—it was a cheap edition, bound in scratchy paper, and a little ink came away on my fingers when I traced the first line of the page. “ ‘The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” ’ ”

  “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” I asked the shadow voice.

  “It’s a mad tea party,” said the shadow. “Riddles without answer, ’less you’re a mad one too.” A pause, and the voice dipped, like it was shy of quoting the text. “The Cheshire Cat says it—‘We’re all mad here.’ ”

  While she rambled, I let her voice guide me, and locked my fingers around the plump arm of the voice’s owner. The girl in my grip squealed. She didn’t sound a day over graduation age at the Academy, and terrified.

  “Take your hands off! That ain’t ladylike!”

  I gave her a shake. “That’s quite enough of that. Who are you?”

  Copper-pot curls bounced and her chubby face flushed. “The nerve of you, playing handsy with me! Think you’d never had a lesson in manners in all your life!”

  “Okay, okay,” Cal said, training the lantern on us. “Settle down, the both of you.”

  “Who are you?” I ignored Cal. “Why are you in my father’s house?” My words came out with more ice coating them than I’d intended. Perhaps it was the shadows, or the book, or my throbbing shoulder. Perhaps I was simply wrung out of patience for foolish girls and their foolish games.

  “I work here, don’t I!” the girl snapped. “I’m the chambermaid. Who in blue heaven are you?”

  That stopped my indignation cold. Of course such a great house would have servants. Of course I seemed like a trespasser to this girl.

  “Aoife Grayson,” I managed. My own flush crept up my face. “I’m Mr. Grayson’s daughter.”

  The chambermaid screwed up a frown. “Well, I’ve never heard of you.”

  I let go of her arm and stepped away. Of course she hadn’t. My father had no use for me.

  “Where has everyone gone?” Cal said. “The other servants? Mr. Grayson?”

  “They …” The chambermaid shuddered. Her round face went paler than dead under Cal’s lantern. “They …”

  “What’s your name?” I amended, as shivers racked her frame.

  “Bethina,” she quavered. “Bethina Constance Perivale.”

  “I’m Aoife,” I said again. “This is Cal, and we and our friend are searching for my brother, Conrad. He’d be a bit older than me, and taller. Black hair and blue eyes. He was here … have you seen him?”

  Bethina’s eyes, the shade of a Coca-Cola bottle shot through with sun, went wide. “Mr. Conrad? You’re his sister?”

  “Yes. And I desperately need to find him, Bethina. Can you help me?”

  Bethina’s face crumbled, moisture shine rising like dew on her cheeks as her eyes filled. “It were a terrible thing. Terrible, terrible thing what happened to Mr. Conrad.”

  Even though my throat tightened with dread, I felt through my pockets for a handkerchief and held it out. The small dingy flag dangled limply between us before Bethina snatched it and gave a great heaving snort into its folds.

  “Bethina,” I said gently. “Don’t cry.” That only made her louder. “Bethina!” I said, trying to sound like Marcos Langostrian, entitled to boss her. “Is that any way to behave in front of your, er, your betters?”

  “I’m … I’m … s-sorry, miss,” she gulped. “I just … I’ve been here for days. Days, alone in the cold. When it gets dark …” She dissolved again and soaked my handkerchief with a fresh flood of tears.

  A shuffling came from the darkness, the click of flint, and a small flame sprang to life. “You two could wake up a dead thing and get it dancing,” Dean said, hiding a yawn. “What’s the racket?”

  Bethina gasped. “Who is that?”

  “Dean,” I said. “This is Bethina. She worked … works for my father.”

  “Pleasure’s all mine, darlin’,” Dean said. He lofted his lighter and illuminated an oil lamp hanging over the butcher block in the middle of the kitchen. Dean blew on the flame and after a breath the lamp sprang to life in sympathy, without the aid of the flame.

  “Old Ones return!” Bethina gibbered. “You didn’t touch that lamp! That’s regular witchcraft!”

  “Witches aren’t real,” I said automatically. “They’re stories for fools.” Conrad’s words. He always knew the right ones.

  “Stories usually start true, Miss Aoife,” Dean said. “A touch of truth makes a lie worth believing.” He sat himself at the battered kitchen table and looked about. “Got any food in this dump, Bethina? I’d murder something for a sandwich.”

  “I don’t want you here,” Bethina blubbered. “Any of you! You’ll let them in. The cold things and the creeping shadows. They’ll steal me away.…”

  I glanced at Dean. “Can’t you do something?”

  Dean grimaced. “Waterworks ain’t really my department, Miss Aoife.”

  “Conrad was here,” I grated, feeling control slip. “She saw him. Talked to him.” My own tears, hot and thin and angry as Bethina’s were fat and hysteria-laden, threatened to boil over and betray me. “She has to tell me where he went. What she saw.” I took Bethina by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “Stop that infernal noise and tell me where my brother is!”

  “Aoife, calm down,” Cal said. “You’re getting shrill.”

  “You’re damn right I’m shrill!” I shouted. “My brother is missing and my father is gone and my shoulder aches, so forgive me if I’m not dropping a curtsy!”

  Dean clapped his hands sharply. “Everybody simmer down.” He got up, moved me to the side and lifted Bethina’s chin with one finger. “Now you listen, Miss Bethina. You’re gonna leave off the fussing and talk with Miss Aoife, and I’m going to make you up something hot for your nerves. You got any coffee?”<
br />
  Bethina swallowed and shook her head, her poodle cut bobbing like soap bubbles on air. “Just hot chocolate. In the cabinet by the basin. Milk in the icebox, if it hasn’t turned. Milkman hasn’t come since … well. Not in weeks.”

  Dean pulled down a tin of Ovaltine and a saucepan, while Cal helped Bethina to her chair by the fire. In the warm hearth glow of the oil lamp, I saw empty tins and boxes of food stacked on the drain board, dirty plates and mud-spattered petticoats laid across every surface of the kitchen.

  “How long have you been living like this?” I said.

  Bethina looked at her hands, twisted my handkerchief in a stranglehold. “Since they took your brother away.”

  I felt the fear crawl back into my chest. “ ‘They,’ ” I said heavily. “Proctors? The Bureau of Heresy?”

  Bethina looked at me mournfully. “Worse,” she said. “So much worse.”

  The Chambermaid’s Tale

  EVEN AS CAL worked to rekindle the kitchen fire, Bethina shivered. “This place … it was never a good place, miss, even before Mr. Conrad went missing.”

  I paced from the table to the basin and back. I couldn’t seem to sit still. Bethina had seen my brother, spoken with him, held a rational-enough conversation to learn his name. His letter to me hadn’t been a fancy. “If you’re expecting me to believe in some far-fetched curse on this place, or some ridiculous heretic story …”

  Bethina shook her head. “No, miss! It’s the Master Builder’s own truth. Graystone is built on burying ground, and that’s a fact. Puritans, I think Mr. Grayson said. The first Grayson here dug up the gravestones and planted them out in the oak grove, but they didn’t find all of the bodies. I know I ain’t supposed to believe in Spiritualism and things like that, but it’s a foul business. And during the heretic troubles some-odd decades ago, bootleggers dug passages in the cellars. There’s limestone caves about a mile on, down at the river. They left casks of money and liquor down there when the Revenue chased them out. And Mr. Grayson said the folks in Arkham have seen nightjars in the tunnels, too, and revenants—those glowing ghostish things that lead you off the path to drown in the underground pools.”

  “What does this have to do with my brother?” I demanded. “Did he try to go into the caves?” The thought of Conrad trapped underground in some damp stony place, unable to call for help, seized me right about the heart.

  Dean poured Ovaltine into a pair of chipped mugs with the flourish of a soda jerk. “Bethina.” He handed her a mug covered in ducks wearing glasses and smoking cigars. “Miss Aoife.” My mug was plain and blue, and Dean’s fingers whispered against mine.

  Cal’s mouth turned down. “Where’s mine?”

  “Only enough for two, and I think the girls need something to calm their nerves more than you do, cowboy.” Dean settled himself at the table again and lit a Lucky Strike, looking for all the world like he belonged in my father’s kitchen.

  Cal stole Bethina’s chair by the fire and put his foot on the hob, grumbling. His ankle was returning to its normal size. At least that deceitful Alouette had been good for something.

  Bethina blew on her mug. “Mr. Archibald hired my mother on when I was just a kid. I used to play in the front hall ’cause it had the slickest floors and I loved roller-skating. He was a nice man. Not cruel, but he had … strange habits.”

  “I suppose wealthy folk often do,” I said curtly. I didn’t know why the urge to defend Archibald rushed words to my lips, but it felt right.

  She puffed up like a banty hen. “I wouldn’t dream of questioning him. But all the same, miss, there was something not right about this house. I’d wake up from bad dreams and I’d have the most awful feeling that something was watching me, from the back gardens, staring up at my window.” She sipped her Ovaltine and made a face. “This milk is gone.”

  “Working with what I have.” Dean waved his flask. “I think there’s a sip or two left, if you’d care to sweeten that.”

  “Certainly not,” Bethina said primly, setting the mug down with a clack, as if the very idea of liquor were offensive.

  “Someone watching you,” I prompted her to continue. I kept my irritation in check by tapping my bare foot against the tile floor. “Who was it?”

  “I’d get out of bed to check that the window was locked up in the garret,” Bethina said. “And … I’d see them, out in the moonlight.”

  “The mysterious Them. I got chills.” Dean had already polished off his cigarette and was up digging in cabinets. All he unearthed was an ancient packet of TreacleTarts, the pudding inside the pastry shell gone rock-hard from age.

  “I call them the tall men,” Bethina said, her voice no bigger than the child with nightmares she described. “They were pale, too. Cold eyes. They came from the woods, single file. Every full moon, they came. I heard Mr. Grayson on those nights, pacing in the library.” She reached out and clapped her hand over mine and I started. Her palm was hot from the Ovaltine, while I’d gone cold. “I didn’t mean to snoop,” Bethina whispered. “I didn’t mean to be trouble.”

  I wriggled my hand free. Hers was slick. “Bethina, what did the tall men want with my father?”

  “I didn’t never want to find that out, miss,” she whispered. “They were awful, the pale men. Their pale fingers and their pale eyes … one looked up at my window, and I swear he stole the thoughts from my head. So bright to look on, in that full moonlight. So beautiful …” A tear slipped down her cheek, dangled unnoticed on her flower-petal skin. “I could have looked at him forever, even though I had the most awful nervous flutter in my chest when he caught my eye. I wanted to hide but I couldn’t.…” She stopped, and knotted her fingers together. “I fear I’m not making any sense, miss.”

  “Trust me, you’re making more sense than a number of folks I know,” I told her. Even though she was scared and didn’t appear overly bright, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Bethina. She’d been trapped alone in the house, and obviously whatever had visited my father had spooked the tar out of her. I gestured Cal out of her chair. “Let’s get you settled and then you can tell me the rest of the story,” I suggested, trying to be kind like the endlessly patient and immeasurably patronizing nurses at Nerissa’s madhouse.

  Like the patients with their sedative-addled senses, Bethina didn’t cotton to the fact the entire act was for her benefit. “Thank you, miss. You’re not such a hooligan as you first seemed,” she said, dabbing at her cheek with the edge of her cuff once she’d sat. “Talking about the tall men … it does set me off sometimes, like a silly thing.”

  “Forgive me, Bethina,” Cal said, “but could you have maybe seen a real man, flesh and blood, wearing an illusion cloak like in the Phantasm comics?”

  “Of course not.” Bethina sniffed. “That Phantasm ain’t real.”

  Cal flushed. Dean shoved a handful of stale TreacleTart into his mouth to muffle what would surely be a sound of derision.

  “Did Conrad meet the tall men?” I asked. “Did they do something to my brother?” Conrad wasn’t like me. He was fearless, and he’d charge into something strange without a thought. I was the one who worried, who weighed logic before she did anything larger than pick out a new pencil from the box.

  Bethina bobbed her head, but I couldn’t tell if she was acquiescing or trying to hide embarrassment. “One day Mr. Grayson was gone. Dismissed the staff in a note left in his gentleman’s parlor. Some clothes and favorite books, his sturdy boots and his shaving kit … all gone. He left his bedroom and dressing room in such a mess it took me all day to straighten up on my own. Even left his diary behind, tossed on the floor like trash.” She fiddled with her curls.

  “And?” I prompted. “Conrad?”

  “Mr. Conrad came a few weeks later. After your father had gone. A wild-eyed type, that’s for certain. Mr. Grayson would have been none too happy with his manners. Mr. Conrad wanted to poke about. He kept talking about some birthday and wanting to ask Mr. Grayson about his mother, which I didn’t unders
tand none of, because Mr. Grayson’s not seen her in near fifteen years. But I still made up a bed and put on some supper. He was a decent sort, if you could get past his comportment.” Bethina’s voice dipped to a whisper, nearly lost in the crackle of the fire. “They came that night.”

  “The pale men?” My tongue tasted of chalk.

  “No, miss. It weren’t the pale men, it was something else altogether. Shadow things. Things I ain’t never seen the like of in all of my sixteen years on this earth.” She rubbed her hands together, looking to the darkness beyond the kitchen windows. “They didn’t whisper or laugh like the pale men. These creatures poured in, miss. They covered every inch of the place, and I shut my eyes tight so they wouldn’t see me. They took your brother out, toward the apple orchard, and poor Mr. Conrad didn’t even have time to call out. He left everything. Even his letters. Didn’t have stamps on ’em, so I did it, and dropped ’em in the post. I figured it was the least I could do. Then I holed up here ’fore dark in case those things came back again at night and I haven’t been out since. That was a week ago.”

  So Conrad’s note had reached me under Bethina’s auspices. Conrad himself was vanished yet again. We’d been connected for so many months by strings of words, by only the smell of ink and smoke that I ached to see him, put my arms around him and hear his gentle rumbling voice telling gentle jokes at my expense. My wise brother, who’d know exactly how to handle the place I found myself in.

  But Conrad wasn’t here, and it fell to me to be clever and worldly, to shoulder the load. I felt a bit like crying, but if I started having hysterics in front of Dean I’d never let myself live it down.

  “Why didn’t you report this to the Proctors?” Cal asked Bethina. “It’s a kidnapping, and viral creatures are involved besides.”

  Bethina shrilled a laugh. “What, and have the same Proctors believe I’m bound for the rubber house? ‘Living shadows kidnapped a heretic boy from under my nose!’ No thank you. I like my freedom if it’s all the same to you.”