He got on and flipped the bike around in a smooth motion. The people and creatures all around them made no attempt to stop her as she mounted the handlebars. She did it right the first time, and soon they were pedaling away, back into the safety and familiarity of the Arkham she knew. Nate didn’t speak again until they arrived at Abby’s place.
“What in the hell was that?”
“Not all the people who were watching us were human,” Abby told him.
“What?”
“You should come in. I’ve got some stuff to tell you.”
56
Arkham PO Box 23
They spent every free moment parked in front of the Arkham Post Office. Bryce didn’t really know what he was doing there. He wasn’t dating Sindy-he wasn’t dating anyone-and this wasn’t the kind of time that someone put in just because.
Not that he wouldn’t want to date Sindy. She was gorgeous by any rational standard. Glossy, black hair; ice blue eyes; a pale, flawless complexion; and other details he preferred not to dwell on in the cramped space of his car.
Bryce couldn’t help but compare her to Abby. They were both beautiful. Thinking of Abby still upset him in ways he didn’t like to acknowledge. Hurt feelings were for girls and little boys. He wanted to stay angry at her. He wanted a reason to hate her so he wouldn’t have to think of how much he missed being close to her. He hadn’t spoken to her since, because he was afraid that he’d crumple and give in at the first word or smile.
All of this was made worse by the crawling dread he felt over the prospect of being the father of Abby’s child.
And here he was, sitting in a car with Abby’s best friend, across the street from the Arkham Post Office. They had a clean view right into the small bank of PO boxes. Sindy had binoculars in her lap that made it easy to Number 23 whenever someone went inside.
They had expected it to be quick, but after a week of staking it out whenever they could, it dawned on Bryce that they were playing a waiting game with luck. He’d thought Sindy would lose interest after a day or two. She’d never seemed to Bryce like a girl with a long attention span. But it was obvious to him that Sindy was determined to see this through, though, almost to the exclusion of all else. Most days, she barely said more than a few words to Bryce.
Bryce looked down as his phone started buzzing. He’d turned it to silent on the second day, after Sindy glared at him when it beeped. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it broke her intense focus on the front door. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and saw that it was Abby. He stared at her picture on his phone for a few seconds before he stepped out of the car to answer the call.
“Hello?” he said in what he thought was a neutral tone. He could be a grownup. No reason to be uncivil.
“Bryce? Is that you?” Her voice went straight through the phone and into his chest. He felt his pulse start climbing. You cannot be serious, Coffin. Pull it together!
“Yeah, it’s me Abs. What’s up?” There we go. Totally cool. You’re not hurt. You’re not upset.
“Oh, well…” There was a wounded sound to her voice that sent fresh thrums through his body. She cleared her throat. “How are you?”
“I’m fine.” He paused. He could give a little. She was trying. “How are you?”
“Better,” she said with a small chuckle. “Much better than I’ve been in a while.”
Bryce felt himself smiling like an idiot at the idea of her being happy, especially after the way they’d left things. “I’m glad, Abby.”
“You are?”
“Yeah, I am. I’m glad you called.” The words started falling out of his mouth before he could stop them. “And I just wanted to say… I’m really sorry. I was mad. I might still be, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.” His throat was tight. “But you do.”
The phone was silent. He could hear her breathing.
“You know you’re not saying anything, right?”
Abby laughed, and he could hear that it was tinged with tears. “This is not the way I thought this call was going to go.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Are we okay, then? Does that mean you forgive me for lying?”
He smiled again, though he knew she couldn’t see him. “How about we call it a push and go from there?”
“That sounds fair.”
“Awesome. So, if this wasn’t what you expected, what did you actually call for?”
“Oh, right! I was wondering if we could meet. There’s some weird stuff going on, and I think it’s got to do with that night at the carnival. Remember? I thought maybe if we reviewed everything we…”
A car pulled up to the front of the post office. It was a new Mercedes. Even from across the street, Bryce could tell it had all the bells and whistles. Other than his car, it might have been the most expensive one in the entire town. This might be the one. Crap.
“Abby, can we finish this up later?”
“Uh, sure, I guess.”
“There’s just something I need to take care of right now.”
Sindy lowered the driver’s side window. She was frantic. “This is it! Get in the damn car before they see you.”
“Is that Sindy?”
Bryce ducked down and let himself back in the car. “Yeah, we’re just doing this thing, but then I’ll call you back, okay?”
“Sure, Bryce. Take all the time you need.” She hung up, and Bryce was in such a hurry that he missed the frost in her tone. Sindy had her binoculars up, watching the Mercedes. He should have been more surprised to see Constance Thorndike step out of it.
Constance, of course, was not driving. Their old manservant was sitting behind the wheel. Bryce frowned.
Sindy said, “You’re never going to believe this, but-”
“Constance Thorndike owns PO Box 23.”
“Yep.”
“Have fun telling Abby.”
57
Always an Option
Abby didn’t answer when Bryce called her back. She didn’t know what to say. Bryce had moved on. Not only that, but he’d moved on with her best friend. Well, “best friend,” complete with sarcastic air quotes, would be a more accurate descriptor. No true friend would betray her like that.
She couldn’t find refuge at home, and school had become a nightmare. The rumors had teeth now. Abby was no longer able to hide her weight at all. Before, she could brush the jokes off, but now everyone admitted that they had a ring of truth to them. To make matters worse, her closest friends couldn’t even deny it. They might try, but the lie was easy to see on their faces.
It was common knowledge at the school: freshman Abigail Thorndike was pregnant.
The whispers and jokes were stupid and juvenile, and rationally, she knew they shouldn’t hurt, but they did. They stabbed right into that great black void that was the night of the carnival. The night that her baby-and she had begun to think of it that way-had been conceived. She still had no idea who the father was. Of her two prime suspects, one was dating her second-best friend, and the other was her best friend.
She kept her head down and did her best to let the barbs slide off, but they caught her. Almost every time, they caught her.
Lunch time was the worst. It was like she was on display for the entire school. The hushed whispers blended together to become a spiteful buzz that dug into her back while she waited for her tray of food. She reached the end of the line with only a few sympathetic glances from the cafeteria workers and took a deep breath before she turned to face the room, holding her head high.
Sindy and Bryce were conspicuously absent. Probably eating off-campus, she thought as she sat at her usual spot, trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible.
She was barely maintaining her status as the pariah of Bryce’s group. She knew all of them, and a couple still said hi to her in the hallways, but the tension was growing. Abby couldn’t tell if she was causing the rift to widen, or if they were. She supposed it didn’t really matter.
/> Eleazar brooded across from Abby, poking at his food. Charity whispered into Ben Knowles’ ear and showed him her phone. He looked at it and his loud guffaw echoed across the table, drawing Abby’s attention. She watched as Ben nudged Hunter. Charity leaned over to show him, too. Hunter cackled and Abby felt a flush rise to her face. They were talking about her. Of course they were talking about her.
She forced herself to swallow her bite of food, choking it past the shame caught in her throat. She tried to look around the cafeteria without raising her eyes and noticed that there were more and more people looking at their phones, then at her, and then laughing. She clenched her entire body, forcing herself to stay seated as she wedged another bite of food between her teeth. She was a Thorndike. She would not run. She would not cry. She would not give them that satisfaction.
Her phone buzzed.
She knew what it would be before she picked it up. Whoever sent the image out to the school directory hadn’t bothered to cull Abby’s name from the list. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She swiped the screen and tapped the message icon. An image immediately filled the screen, Abby breath caught in her throat.
It was a picture of her riding on Nate’s handlebars.
Someone had snapped it as they were riding towards Endicott Bridge. Abby was leaning back into Nate’s chest, her rounded belly clearly visible. Nate’s face was practically buried in her hair. Her legs were splayed open farther than usual in order to keep her precarious balance on the padded handlebars, but the angle of the shot and the beatific smile on Abby’s face made the whole picture seem obscene. The image had been manipulated to look like one of those motivational posters, and the headline read “WHOREWICH HALL.” Underneath that was another sentence: “The First Ride is Free.”
Abby felt tears sliding down her cheeks as she tucked the phone away. The laughs were louder now. Charity covered her mouth, but she had to lean into Ben as her body shook with laughter. Hunter leaned back and mimicked Abby’s facial expression from the picture, drawing more laughs. Abby stood with as much grace as she could muster, refusing to wipe her eyes, and began the long and interminable walk out of the cafeteria.
There were shouts and catcalls. Abby couldn’t quite make them out, but it didn’t matter. She kept her eyes down, only focusing on her breathing and her feet. She was so intent on just making it to the exit that she almost collided with Bryce and Sindy as they entered the cafeteria together. Of course they would be here. Of course they would be here right now.
“Hey, Abby. What’s…?” Sindy halted when she saw Abby’s face.
Abby looked at her with undisguised hurt and anger and then turned to Bryce. Bryce was holding his phone, and Abby didn’t have to guess what he’d just been looking at. It was too much. It was all too much.
Abby choked down a sob and shoved past Bryce and Sindy. She fled, accompanied by a fresh cacophony of mocking laughter and drawn-out jeers.
It didn’t matter anymore. Bryce was with Sindy, and why shouldn’t he be? Why would Bryce ever possibly choose her over anyone?
She was Abigail Thorndike of Whorewich Hall.
58
The Strange Case
of Josiah Baxter
spring arrived right on schedule. The snow dissolved, leaving behind a carpet of deep, emerald-green grass. The lean times in the Baxter household were about to end, as every rich person suddenly needed their excellent gardener back on the payroll. Nate knew this meant his weekends were shot, but in a way, he was looking forward to it. Some normalcy would probably do him good.
He’d reached the end of what the library had on Josiah Baxter’s role in the Great Arkham Fire. Nate’s ancestor, who he now realized was his seven times great-grandfather, was an infuriating cipher. Before the fire, he was a citizen; afterwards, he was a traitor. There was nothing at all in between. The Baxters, Thaws, and Hobbeses had all continued to live in Arkham without being linked to this terrible event. Even in the papers published just after the hanging, there were no references to the families at all.
Nate asked his father about Josiah Baxter, but he’d never heard of the guy. Nate’s paternal grandfather had died young of emphysema, so he couldn’t ask him, either. The fact of the matter was that there was nothing left of Josiah Baxter. No old trunk in the attic, no storage closet full of treasures, no photo albums with the key to the mystery. Nate had to expand his search radius.
There had been a Hobbes back in elementary school. In another place, he might assume it was a different family. Not in Arkham. This incestuous town kept all its citizens close. A Hobbes from the 1800s and a Hobbes from the 2000s were almost certainly related. Dawn Hobbes had never been a friend of his, but they’d never been enemies, either. Dawn lived down in Brookside, and despite his last visit, he didn’t share Abby’s superstitious dread of the place. He’d spent many years learning to navigate the neighborhood, and some habits died slower than others. He messaged her on Facebook and learned nothing.
The Thaws lived out in the hills. Not the nice hills, either. The hills were technically outside of city limits, and the people there generally considered themselves Arkhamites when it suited them and nothing at all when it didn’t. Unlike the Brooksiders, the people in the hills had been there as long as there had been white people in Arkham. Longer even, as many of them had Native American branches on their family trees.
He knew a few Thaws from school. He remembered an older boy who had a reputation as a bully, and a younger girl, wide-eyed and quiet. He couldn’t conjure any names and didn’t have them on any friend lists. If he was going to talk to any Thaws, he was going to have to do it face-to-face.
On the first real Saturday of spring, Nate got on his bike and rode the winding roads into the hills, up near the source of the creek that cut Brookside off from the rest of the town. Out beyond the town center, it was possible to find all kinds of streams and ponds alive with creatures.
The paved roads quickly turned to dirt roads. Nate knew the back of his jacket would be spackled with a line of dust and mud when he got home. The properties up here tended to look like log cabins. Most had probably been standing since the fire. The fire had never climbed into the hills, and Nate wondered if that had something to do with Israel Thaw. He’d been named a conspirator in the arson.
Arson, he thought with a frown. He was already internalizing the story he’d read. He had to keep a clear mind. If it turned out Josiah Baxter was part of some bizarre royalist scheme, Nate had to accept that. He didn’t think it was true. It felt wrong, and combined with everything else he’d learned, he knew the facts had to be different than they initially appeared.
He could barely accept what Abby had told him the month before: that not all Arkhamites were human. She’d described the strange, lamprey-like creatures and gave him the names of some of them: Mr. Harris, Mr. Weatherby, her own servant Bertram, and Sindy’s ex-boyfriend, Eleazar Grant. He’d chuckled at the last one, even though it was all so completely insane. Thinking about the status-conscious Sindy making out with a fish monster gave him amused satisfaction. Even Abby had giggled at it a little, then she’d smacked him for getting her started.
His rational mind accepted it. He’d seen all these men around. They were fairly normal. Nate liked and respected Mr. Harris. He had been an excellent teacher, and Nate was beginning to think about a career in biology; a research scientist or something like that.
Abby said he was a monster.
She also said he was a nice man.
He wondered how the two mysteries intersected: the inhuman race and the hanged royalists. He accepted that they must be related in some way. If the croatan had been in the shadows of Arkham for the town’s entire history, they at least had seen it happen.
This sparked another question in his mind: how long did the croatan live? He asked Abby and she’d blanched. “I don’t know,” she said. “I never asked.”
What if they were immortal? Or, if they were so long-lived that they might
as well have been? What if Mr. Harris had been standing on the village green when Josiah Baxter took his last drop?
For now, he had to pretend this was a normal mystery. He didn’t want to think that he was suddenly wandering into a nest of these beings. It gave him the willies to think that one might be staring at him from behind a human mask. He would have preferred to see their faces, and the more Abby insisted that he really would rather not, the more Nate wanted to.
Nate felt better as he listened to the cheerful sounds of the surrounding woods. The spring peepers were waking up. It was silly to feel hope just because of a simple cycling of the seasons, but no amount of logic was going to kill the feeling. He was going to enjoy the clean scent of life on the ride out to the Thaw place.
The Thaw home was on a dirt road off another dirt road, off another dirt road, off the main road, off the paved road, between the folds of two hills. It was a log cabin built from the weathered bones of trees. Nate wasn’t sure it was the right place until he saw the name “THAW” on the mailbox. He stopped his bike at the gate and hesitated, wondering if someone was going to come out with a shotgun. Someone was home, judging by the dusty pickup parked in what might have been a driveway.
Only one way to find out, he thought, and headed for the door.
No armed man burst outside to curse at him. A couple of crows croaked nearby. Nate knocked.
The door opened to reveal a middle-aged man, stout and pale from the winter. His hair was so blond as to be almost white, and when he spoke, he revealed a few gaps in his smile. “Help you?” he asked. His accent was thick enough that it took Nate a second to process it.
“Hi, my name is Nathan Baxter.” He paused and saw no glimmer of reaction in the man’s nearly colorless eyes. “Are you Mr. Thaw?”
“Yes, sir. Help you with something, Nathan? Lost?”
“No, sir. I was looking for you. This is a little strange, but are you related to Israel Thaw?”
Mother of Crows Page 26