Mother of Crows Read online

  It was dishonest, too. If Eleazar liked human women, then that was one thing. It was strange, though maybe not uncommon if Nate’s monster movies were right. But Abby was one hundred percent certain that Sindy would not be okay with romancing a scaly Crow. Eleazar was pretending to be something he wasn’t.

  But what could she say? Sindy wasn’t speaking to her, and Abby didn’t think the best way to mend their friendship to accuse Sindy’s new boyfriend of being a monster. She’d get thrown in the looney bin. Or, worse, she’d suffer whatever punishment that Mr. Harris had alluded to when he asked her to keep quiet about the Crows.

  The only bright side was things with Nate were normal. He never mentioned Halloween, and she was fine with that. They hung out downtown or they did homework at Nate’s house. Abby loved afternoons at the Baxter place. Their house was so small and cozy, it guaranteed a lot of close interaction. While she and Nate did their work, Arnold and Veronica would watch the Celtics game and Lana would make dinner in the kitchen. Abby never ate with them-not because she wasn’t hungry, but because she knew they had enough trouble keeping their own kids fed.

  Abby was on her way home after studying for a test with Nate. Lana and Nate had both offered her a ride, but she had refused. She wanted to walk. She needed the time to think, and she thought the fresh air would clear her mind. She could wander over the bizarre events of the year so far and wonder where she might ultimately end up. Plus, it was pretty outside and soon winter would blanket Arkham. She wanted to get in as many walks as she could before the snow came.

  The wind was well on its way from brisk to downright chilling. It swept off the Atlantic and raced through town, gobbling up heat as it went. It felt like her face was turning into a porcelain mask, and she smiled. She never felt quite so alive as she did in weather like this.

  Maple Park, Nate’s neighborhood, was a tangle of short streets with few entries and exits, and even fewer trees. Abby only knew the ways in and out because of Nate. She’d had other friends from the neighborhood, but they had drifted away, one by one, when the differences between their families had become too difficult to ignore. Not Nate, though. Loyal Nate would be with her forever.

  The houses on both sides of the street were quiet. There were no lights on anywhere, and everyone’s drapes seemed to be drawn shut. If she hadn’t known better, Abby would have thought the entire neighborhood was deserted. Only Nate’s house seemed to be alive.

  Abby turned onto Main Street. To her right, the streets slowly rose until the hills took over. Harwich Hall was there, waiting for her. To her left, there were more shops, more houses, and the center of the town.

  She glanced left. The so-called town center was no longer the actual geographic center of Arkham, if it ever had been. Everything had grown up around it, spreading tendrils of civilization into the hills and valleys. The green, as it was still called, was a wide open lawn. It used to be a place for farmers to graze their cattle, but now the town hosted official celebrations there. There was a gazebo there all year round, but the seasonal decorations were stored in a town-owned barn on the Carruther’s property.

  Something else was on the green. Maybe someone had put up one of the Thanksgiving decorations early. Abby couldn’t make it out from where she stood, but it looked a little like the bandstand that was a regular fixture at town events. Something about it wasn’t quite right. The raised platform looked to be made from raw, unpainted wood. A set of stairs led up the side. There was an additional part at the top of the maybe-bandstand that was almost like an armature.

  As she began to understand the outline, she felt a twinge in her belly in the same place as the pain that had incapacitated her in the hallway on Halloween. That had been white hot agony, and this was like a phantom memory of that pain. She knew it could be far worse.

  The green wasn’t on her way home, but it wasn’t a long detour, either. The pain in Abby’s belly seemed to grow less intense as she took her first step toward the scaffolding. It was probably all in her mind, but she could not escape the thought that she was being drawn toward this place by her body, as though it wanted to investigate on its own. This was probably just a new bandstand for the Thanksgiving parade. That had to be it. But she had to be certain.

  As she approached the structure, it became apparent that it was not a bandstand. The one the town used was lofted about five feet off the ground-tall enough so that it could be seen, but not so tall that you could be hurt if you fell off, as someone inevitably did every year. This structure was easily twice as high, if not more. It was also much narrower, with barely enough room for more than two people to stand back to front. It looked to be about twelve feet long, and the armature over the top was a single beam which was supported by two struts.

  Abby squinted. It was made of wood, and though she was no expert, it seemed hastily made. It didn’t look rickety, exactly, but nothing about the structure smacked of permanence. She had the impression that it could be torn down as quickly as the bandstand, but instead of going back into the Carruther’s barn for storage, this structure would be little more than firewood.

  She paused at the edge of the green. It was an open lawn, ringed by packed dirt paths and a few elm and maple trees. It had no official sidewalk to speak of, and every child of Arkham had been meticulously trained to walk on the dirt and stay there instead of veering into the streets.

  Despite herself, Abby lingered on the pavement. It felt like the green was hiding something. One more step, and the whole of it would be revealed. If she stayed where she was, nothing would change. Her stomach twinged again.

  She curiously scanned the scaffolding again. She remembered the shape in her hallway and thought that if she looked close enough, she would find that thing unweaving into this shadow as well. But that had been a shadowy form to begin with, more gloom than anything. This thing looked like it was made of solid wood. She could imagine knocking on it with her knuckles and hearing a satisfying thunk. It seemed as real as the trees shedding leaves into the sullen wind.

  A car horn blared. Abby flinched and jumped onto the green. The car moved past. She saw the driver shaking her head in annoyance, then her eyes went wide as she recognized Abby’s unmistakable red hair. The car sped off. Abby frowned. Who had that been?

  Motion drew her eye to the scaffolding on the green. People were standing on it. She hadn’t seen anyone there before. It was like they’d had materialized out of nowhere.

  Three of them shuffled up the stairs. As they reached the platform, they spread out evenly and faced outward. They seemed to be reacting to something that wasn’t there. They lurched occasionally to the left or right as an unseen presence moved them, or twitched their heads slightly as they reacted to an absent speaker.

  Abby noticed that their hands were bound behind their backs.

  She moved, making a wide circle to see them from the front. Their clothing looked old. Not old as in worn (though it looked that way, too) but almost Colonial in style. She could make out the resolute and defiant features of the three men before bags covered their faces. They appeared out of nothingness-one moment they were not there, and then they were, as though they had been there forever. Mist steamed through the bags as the men began to breathe a little faster.

  Ropes went around all three necks. Nooses were tightened. The hands that performed these things were invisible. Abby saw that the hangman’s ropes were looped over the top armature of what she now understood was a gallows.

  She reached out toward the men. A protest died on her lips as three trapdoors opened in unison. She turned away, unable to watch the three men twitch away their lives.

  When she turned back, the men, the ropes, and the gallows were gone. It was tempting to think they had never been there at all, but they had.

  As if to confirm their existence, a serpent of pain wound through her belly.

  30

  Meet Cute

  Bryce lay in his bed with his laptop open on his chest. There was frightening porn
playing in one of his browser tabs, but he wasn’t paying any attention to it. He didn’t like it. He just wanted it in his browser history in case his mother ever decided to snoop. As far as he knew, she still hadn’t. Or maybe she had, and she just didn’t care.

  It was Friday, and he had no plans. Disturbing. He had seen everyone at his party the week before and at school since then, but something ineffable had changed. Laze was dating Abby’s cute friend. Delilah and Hunter had gotten back together for the umpteenth time. (Bryce was already looking forward to Hunter’s inevitable drunken call about the break up.) Couples didn’t hang out, and Ben Knowles hadn’t been any fun since he was hit in the head with that baseball in the 5th grade. There were the others, new kids at the school, but Bryce didn’t bother with them. Last year, he would have picked one at random and gotten them to bike over so he could see how much hell he could convince them to raise with zero parental supervision.

  It bored him now.

  He wasn’t content with just lying around, but there wasn’t much else he could or would do. He thought he might go for a joyride, but even that felt pointless. The truth was that there was only one place he wanted to be, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about how much he wanted to be there.

  His door opened. Harcourt, the family butler, poked his head inside. “Your mother would like to see you in the main dining room.”

  Bryce cranked the volume on the porn, maintaining direct eye contact with the old man. Harcourt didn’t blink. The man had impressive composure, probably learned at whatever barracks they used to train butlers. “And you didn’t think to question such a strange order?” Bryce asked over the mechanical moans and grunting.

  “No, sir. Just that she was very clear on ‘now.’”

  “That is troubling.”

  Bryce almost dismissed it, but he was just interested enough to find out what his mother wanted. She never asked to see him. Sometimes he thought the reason that Coffin Manor underwent almost constant renovation was so his mother wouldn’t accidentally run into him in the hallways. God forbid she experience the embarrassment of trying to remember his name.

  He stood up without pausing the porn, and went out into the hallway. Harcourt lingered, making certain that Bryce was on his way, and then closed the bedroom door behind them.

  Bryce knew what the old man meant by “main dining room,” though a guest might not. It wasn’t the biggest one-that was a vaulted feasting hall that looked like his mother’s attempt to start a Viking trend amongst the wealthy. It wasn’t the nicest one, either-that was in what had formerly been known as the east wing, but was now more accurately the northeast wing and never referred to by name. The main dining room was the one that had been in the house since Bryce was very little, and it hadn’t seen an actual meal since then. He doubted that was what his mother was calling him down for now, since she ate her meals on the hidden terrace on the second floor or in her bedroom while she watched one of her mindless television shows.

  His mother’s disinterest in his life was so dependable that the mystery of this summons was almost exhilarating. Bryce took the back stairs to a split-level section of the house and headed into the main dining room through the small kitchen that these days was used primarily for farming spiders.

  Marianne Coffin sat at the head of the table-even alone, her ego would allow her to sit nowhere else-next to a nearly-empty bottle of vodka, a mostly-full tumbler, and a crystal ashtray. Smoke spiraled up to the antique ceiling she’d had imported from a monastery in Spain. She gulped the last of the vodka in the tumbler, then killed the bottle. “Harcourt,” she began, but the butler was already putting another bottle of Grey Goose on the table. It was still frosty from the freezer. He vanished back into the maze of the house.

  There were pictures of Bryce’s mother scattered around the house. She had been, quite literally, a beauty queen. Though her clouds of blonde hair and large, gleaming teeth weren’t in fashion anymore, she’d once been a living sex symbol. Thirty years later, age, cigarettes, alcohol, and pills had taken their toll. Marianne’s hair was thinning. She teased it to mask how bad it was getting, but she was fighting a losing battle. Her formerly bright grey eyes had dulled to a shade of flat slate. Her skin was taut, with crêpe-like hollows around her eyes and cheeks.

  She turned her head as Bryce came into the room, forcing her eyes into focus. Despite her efforts, her gaze was empty and glassy. Bryce imagined she’d look at him this way when she died.

  “Imagine my surprise when your pet creep told me you wanted to see me,” Bryce said. “I thought to myself, ‘Does she need me to make a booze run?’ No, those are for poor people. ‘Does she need one of her prescriptions filled?’ But you just have those delivered right to the house.”

  “Bryce Quincy Coffin IV,” she said, trying to summon some lost authority by using his full name but she just couldn’t muster up enough passion. She was mixing her pills and her liquor again, or as he usually thought of it, the Mom parfait. He recognized it by her slurred consonants and lazy vowels. “That’s no way to speak to your mother.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t recognize you. It’s been a while.”

  He expected some recrimination for that one, some kind of slowly formed rebuke that she’d forget halfway through. Instead, she nodded. “I know. I know. There’s been so much to do. So much.”

  He frowned, and for the first time noticed what she was wearing. It wasn’t exactly night-at-the-opera wear, but she was dressed well and made-up. She was also wearing her Daughters of Arkham pin, which was stranger still. When she was having a parfait, she didn’t bother with that sort of thing. This little meeting was becoming more curious by the second.

  Marianne gulped at her vodka. “The Coffin family is important to this town. To this country.”

  “Absolutely. Without us, America would suffer a crippling alcohol surplus.”

  His mother didn’t seem to hear. “We’re one of the leading lights of the economy. Do you know how many people we employ? Not just the family, but all of our companies and subsidiaries? I once asked Mr. Terrell for a figure. I had never seen so many zeroes.”

  Davis Terrell was the family lawyer, a man who, in Bryce’s estimation, had missed his calling as a scarecrow.

  “We’re a cornerstone of a vast fortune, going back generations. And that fortune started right here. Right in Arkham.” Her skeletal finger stabbed the table. She finished off her cup and refilled it again before it hit the table. “You could say that as the Coffins go, so goes Arkham.”

  “I’m sure that’s not nearly as morbid as it sounds.” Bryce muttered.

  “We have responsibilities,” Marianne said, fixing her son with a glassy stare. Bryce shuddered. It was like his mother was dead and her eyelids had just flipped open. He fought the urge to take a step back, scolding himself. He’d seen his mother in this state since he was old enough to have memories, but he couldn’t escape the impression that this time something was different.

  “Responsibilities,” she slurred. Her head nodded a bit. Just like that, the power of the moment was gone. Bryce was once again looking at a woman who was barely skin and bones because she was often too drunk or high to remember to eat. “We do things we don’t want to do because we have to. We have to.” She repeated that once more, like an incantation.

  The doorbell chimed. In other parts of the house, he never would have heard it. It only sounded near the front and in the servants’ quarters where Harcourt could deal with it. He entered the dining room and said, “Madam, your guests have arrived.”

  “Send them in,” she said.

  Harcourt made a quick gesture and one of the maids came in, removing the now empty vodka bottle. A moment later, Harcourt came into the room and announced, “Patience and Ophelia Thomas.”

  Bryce’s head snapped around. The Thomases were wealthy, although not in the same league as the Coffins, and he knew Ophelia. She was a curvy girl, teetering on chubby, pretty and full-faced. Her hair was her best feature, long, an
d glossy chestnut, setting off her hazel eyes. They were in the same grade and they’d gone to the same school since kindergarten but they weren’t friends. They weren’t even friendly. She was a bookworm, a band geek, a nerd. If there was some strange obsession, she had it. In elementary school, she had been all about sparkly vampires. She and her friends had put on white pancake makeup and dark eyeliner. Now it was something else, Bryce thought maybe police in England or someplace, since every item of clothing Ophelia owned had a blue police box on it.

  The only jewelry Ophelia wore today was the lapel pin that signified her membership in the Daughters. A matching pin graced the left side of her mother’s ample bosom.

  Marianne Coffin got up from her chair and airily embraced Patience Thomas. Patience was a large woman who had succumbed to her genetics long ago. Her features had almost been completely devoured by fragrant, pillowy rolls of flesh. His Mother turned to him.

  “Bryce, won’t you say hello to Ophelia?”

  “Yeah, hi. What’s going on here?”

  “Hi Bryce,” Ophelia said, glancing at him from under her eyelashes.

  “Offer the young lady a chair. Or something to drink,” Marianne said.

  “We’re out of vodka.”

  “Bryce!”

  Bryce sighed. “Sit down. If you want anything to drink, we have a trained monkey around here somewhere.”

  Ophelia giggled at “trained monkey” and sat down.

  Marianne took her place at the head of the table. Patience sat at her right hand. It reminded Bryce of some kind of WASP mafia meeting.

  “Sit down, Bryce,” Marianne said. Her voice had sharpened up; she was hiding her slurring very well. It was possible Patience hadn’t noticed. Then again, the Coffin fortune bought a whole lot of looking the other way.