Mother of Crows Read online

  15

  Unexpected

  Bryce could hardly think on the way back to Arkham. He was acutely aware of Abby Thorndike’s presence in the seat next to him, and not just because she was gorgeous. She was trying to disappear inside of herself, her elfin face shrouded behind her shimmering curtain of autumn-colored hair. Only the sharp points of her glasses were visible. The rest of her was gathered up inside her school uniform.

  A pregnancy test.

  A pregnancy test.

  He wondered who it could have been. She hadn’t been around with any of the guys at school. As far as he knew, she was single. At first, he’d figured that kid Nate had been her boyfriend, but it was clear that guy was friend-zoned. It was his own fault. He’d known Abby how long and hadn’t made a move?

  Or maybe he had.

  Everything Bryce thought he knew about Abby said the idea she might be pregnant was insane. She was a goody-goody; a teacher’s pet. She was a Thorndike, the closest thing America had to royalty. Even before he had ever heard the name Abigail Thorndike, he’d known about her mother, Constance. There was no woman his own mother hated and admired more than Constance Thorndike.

  As far as Bryce knew, Abby was the virginal princess of the family, who would someday be arranged to marry one of Arkham’s eligible bachelors. In a few years, he would be on that list too, though this was something he only understood in the abstract and never gave any thought.

  A pregnancy test!

  Who had she slept with? He reviewed the last few weeks of school. He had only seen Abby at lunch really. He was a year ahead, and not on the honors track either, so they had no classes together. She was only the pretty, quiet presence next to her friend Sindy. Our friend, Sindy, he amended. Sindy was a lot of fun, and just as hot as her friend. Less girl-next-door, more girl-under-the-bleachers. But Abby barely spoke. She had never mentioned a guy, and the only person anyone saw her with was Nate Baxter.

  He pulled up in front of Harwich Hall. The place always gave him the creeps. It had existed as long as there had been a town. Nestled in the trees, behind the wrought iron fence and vast lawns, flush up against the woods that were still wild, it looked like something from the old world. Like it should be haunted.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Abby whispered, and she was out the door.

  “Yeah, no prob-” The door was already shut. Bryce stepped on the gas. The sun had gone down on the way back from Middleton, and the back roads of Arkham were treacherous. He could spin out if he went too fast. Lots of people had died just that way on these evil roads. Too many. He headed back to his home.

  Unbidden, his mind went back to the night of the carnival and the yawning darkness again where his memories should have been. He didn’t get it. He’d been drinking for years, and nothing like that had ever happened. He blacked out every now and again, but when he did, there were always distinct memories interspersed. Generally they were about throwing up somewhere, sure, but those were memories.

  All of his memories of that night just stopped. The few things that did break through the dark haze were not normal.

  He remembered leaving the carnival with his friends. They’d gone to the Lodge for more drinking, and things were steadily heading out of control, just the way he liked them. Get a couple of drinks into Ben Knowles and the boy would do anything. He and Hunter had an informal contest between them to come up with the most ridiculous and humiliating dares for Ben, and he’d been looking forward to it. Then…

  …it was gone. Just gone. As though someone turned the light off on his memory. One moment, it was a regular evening with his friends. The next, nothing.

  He had other memories, none good. It was like the light had been flicked on just long enough for him to look around, and then off again.

  He remembered being wet and shivering. He was trying to keep his teeth from chattering. Something was out there in the gloom. Something… he had no idea what. A bear? A coyote? Both lived in the local woods, but he knew it wasn’t just an animal. His dread was too intense for something so mundane.

  That was crazy, though. A nightmare brought on by binge drinking. He told himself that many times, even though he knew that by his standards, he hadn’t had too much.

  He had been by the shore, out on the rocks while the tide pulled out to lay the pools bare. He dropped to his knees to devour whatever what he found in the salty water. He was like an animal. He cracked sea urchins on rocks and slurped out their orange insides. He ripped anemones from the rocks and swallowed them whole, even as they should have choked him. He remembered finding a dead and rotting seagull, alive with maggots. He lowered his face to devour its fetid flesh and then…

  …he had woken up in his bed at home. He was wet, his hair was gritty from salt and sand, and a persistent chill in his bones shook him for the next day and a half. He’d thought he might be crazy, but as the night of the carnival receded further into the past, he was able to dismiss it. Some variation of what he saw had no doubt happened, but it had been warped. Enhanced. No one else had a weird night, and he wasn’t going to be the strange one.

  The way Abby had asked about it chilled him. He knew that scared tone because it was inside his own head whenever he tried to reassure himself that his memories were mere fantasy. He wondered what kinds of dreams Abby was having if a pregnancy test had entered the picture. He tried to shut it out as soon as the thought flitted into his mind, but found he couldn’t.

  Who had she slept with? Not him; he would have remembered. Then he scoffed. The entire night was black except for a few moments. How could he know he had or hadn’t done anything?

  Another lance of fear speared him. This was different, this had none of the eeriness of the inexplicable events around the strange night. This fear came from responsibility. Had he fathered a child? He hadn’t slept with that many girls, but he had always been careful.

  He had absolutely no idea what he would do if he had. He thought about just driving. Driving and not stopping and leaving all of this behind.

  He pulled into the driveway of Coffin Manor. The cloud hanging over him was palpable, but no one noticed it.

  16

  Positive

  There was a blue plus sign in the window of Abby’s pregnancy test. In the history of time, had any one of these ever come up negative? They seemed to her an invention to confirm what suspicion and biology were already saying. So, sitting on her toilet, the lid now closed, she was not surprised or even angry to see that her worst fears had been confirmed.

  She felt sick. She felt like her guts had been twisting constantly since the night of the carnival; now she knew why. She imagined her intestines somehow harming the baby, and even as she knew how silly that was-it was still microscopic. She stared at the test. It wobbled in and out of focus as tears blurred her vision and burned her throat.

  There it was. Her future. Pregnant at fourteen years old. She was a statistic. A reality show.

  She would have to drop out of school, though not before she ballooned up so big that everyone knew what had happened. Wouldn’t that be fun?

  Dropping out of school. That alone would be enough to unite both her mother and grandmother in disgust. Perhaps even worse, this would delay or even derail her entry into the Daughters of Arkham. There wasn’t anything more important to either woman than that little club of gray-hairs. It was stupid, some throwback to pilgrim times, and yet the women in that group treated it like the only real reason for living. Abby herself felt no overwhelming desire to join, other than to keep Constance and Hester off her back. Abby figured that when she was in charge-she was a Thorndike; it was inevitable-she could loosen things up a little.

  It wasn’t inevitable anymore. The Daughters had strict moral standards. Abby could barely separate them from her personal moral code. They were the guidelines to her entire life, the keystones her mother used to raise her. And though most were the kinds of things any parent would use as a rule of thumb when raising their child, these had the added
sting of, “because it’s important to the Daughters.” The big one was premarital sex. Abby had promised her mother there would be none of that before she even knew what sex was. When Sindy finally explained-helped along by a video she found in her mother’s room-Abby thought she wouldn’t have any trouble abstaining from what seemed like a terrifying endeavor. Even as she matured and started to think sex might not be so bad, it was always in the context of marriage.

  And now, not only had she done it, she didn’t even remember doing it.

  It was unfair. The boy, whoever he had been, might or might not remember the event, but he had nothing to worry about. She had all the consequences and none of the fun. That this had happened when she had made such an extensive production about being responsible in the face of peer pressure only made the whole thing seem that much more unjust.

  Staring at the stick put another problem in her mind. Disposal. How many TV shows had she seen where a positive pregnancy test had been thrown in the garbage only to be found by the worst possible person? Constance Thorndike had never handled trash a day in her life, but the maid who did would bring it to her attention.

  Of course, her mother was going to know eventually.

  That was too big to even consider. For now, she put the test into a plastic baggie, which went into her pocket. She had to talk to someone. As she went back into her room, she ran into the table with the dollhouse and this time she cursed for real. Her cheeks burned with it, but she didn’t care. If she was old enough to have a baby, she was old enough to swear. In private. As long as her mom didn’t hear.

  Sindy had been right. Her stupid pregnancy joke had been prophetic. Abby felt like Sindy had somehow known it, like the way fortune tellers saw the future in their crystal balls. Sindy had taken one look at her friend and had been positive Abby was pregnant.

  She sent a text message. can u come over?

  The response was immediate. brt 10 min

  meet out back

  Abby got up to go downstairs. Her schoolbooks and homework were arrayed across her bed. When she got home from the drugstore, she’d made an effort to get her work done. She couldn’t face the test right after the awkward ride with Bryce. He probably thought she was damaged goods. He had assumed Abby was as sweet and pure as she looked, as she had always thought she was. But now, she could only imagine all the awful things he must have been thinking about her, just the same as what everyone would eventually think about her.

  Unless it had been him. The thought had been there before, but now it gained power. Had they been together? Her fantasies had topped out at kissing, and there had been one that involved his hand on her side, but sex in any form was too dangerous even to think about.

  She would have to figure it out later, find something to say to Bryce that wouldn’t make him hate her. She put on a jacket over her sweater and crept out a side door.

  17

  Swing Set

  The moonlight glowed off the lawn until it disappeared into the darkness. Abby checked the small side gate and unlocked it, then moved to the edge of the lawn. Tall hedges grew there, well out of sight of the light that spilled from the windows of Harwich Hall. Occasionally, she saw a shadow cut across a window, either her mother or her grandmother by the shape of it. As for Bertram, Abby saw no sign. There was a time she wouldn’t have even thought to look out for him. Now she couldn’t help it.

  She traced the hedge to the backyard, where a large, gnarled oak sprouted from the dimpled earth. There were other trees on the property, but they all grew in clumps, as though they needed moral support. The oak was proud and alone. A swing hung from one of its branches, little more than a pair of thick ropes and a plank. From the top of the swing’s arc, it was possible to see the creek that ran out beyond the hedges where the Thorndike property turned into forest. She couldn’t imagine Constance or Hester going near the swing, though it had certainly been around when they were children. It was the only thing at Harwich Hall that felt a little like home.

  Abby sat gingerly on the swing. It had very little give, as its rope had bitten deeply into the wood of the oak. If you looked up at the branch, it was like a finger wrapped in thread turning purple. She looked out over the trees where the moon hung bright and low in the sky. The wind carried the teeth of the Atlantic in it, and she waited with only her fears and the moon to keep her company.

  “Hey.”

  She turned, smiling as she saw Nate trudging through the darkness to her side. She scooted over on the swing so he could take his place beside her. It was such an unconscious gesture that it was easy to ignore the complications that were developing in their relationship as they began to hurtle toward adulthood.

  Nate leaned against his side of the swing as they had done when they were still small enough to both fit without touching. He didn’t say a word. He waited. That was the best thing about Nate. He never insisted. He was always happy to wait on her time.

  Abby sniffled and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. She’d already cried herself out, and she didn’t think she would start again. These were mere aftershocks. She found it hard to speak. She looked up at the moon. For a moment, she felt like she had swallowed it. The words were stuck behind it. She thought it might be easier if she just told the moon. If anyone overheard her, so be it.

  She whispered, “I’m pregnant.”

  There was silence from Nate’s side of the swing. She stole a glance at him and saw him in a state of shock, completely paralyzed by her revelation.

  She said it again. It was easier this time.

  Nate gathered himself slowly. Pain flashed behind his eyes for a moment, then she could see it slithering through his body as he tensed up. She almost wished she hadn’t told him. It was too much for him to hear about his oldest friend. But she needed him; she needed Nate. The same Nate who had helped her through everything up until this moment.

  He swallowed, and the word that followed was barely a croak. “Bryce?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” His tone was soft, but his words were hard.

  “I don’t remember. It has to be either you or Bryce. Has to.”

  “Me?”

  Abby nodded.

  “Abby, we’ve never… I’ve never…”

  “That’s what I thought, too. I don’t remember having sex with anyone, but I’m pregnant.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “The test said positive.”

  “Tests can be wrong.”

  “I know, Nate. I know.”

  He nodded, not pressing the thought anymore. She knew as well as he did that tests weren’t a hundred percent guarantee, but she knew. There was no point in continuing to deny it.

  She swallowed. “Do you remember the night of the carnival?”

  “Was that when it happened?”

  She shrugged. “It didn’t happen any other night, and that’s the only one I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember that night, either?”

  Another one of them. She thought of all the others who had been there: Delilah, Ashley, Ben, Hunter… They probably all remembered everything perfectly. Something deep down whispered that it was just the four of them-just her, her friends, and Bryce Coffin, linked together in the darkness of forgotten memories. Eleazar Grant sprang into her mind, then-not his true face, but the gloomy, handsome one he used to fool everyone into thinking he was human.

  Abby shook her head. “I remember a little. Nothing that makes much sense.” She quickly described what she did remember, though they were barely specific: the funhouse, the run through the woods, and the sensation of being by the shore.

  “That’s all?” he asked her.

  “Sindy said she remembers us at Fisherman’s Lodge and me going off into the woods with someone.”

  “Who?”

  “She doesn’t remember that.”

  Nate took a deep breath. “I thought it was a nightmare at first. I got drunk, and, you know�
� Pink elephants.”

  She twisted to look at him. “What?”

  “You know, that part of Dumbo? I thought that’s what being drunk was. I thought you got nightmares.”

  “Why did you think people did it then?”

  “People go to horror movies. They ride roller coasters.”

  Abby wanted to laugh, but she stopped herself.

  Nate went on, “I remember being with you and Sindy. I remember Bryce there, too, and I wanted to hit him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t remember,” he lied. “I just wanted to hit him, and I thought for sure I would. Then I have nothing. I remember being in the woods, I think. I know there were trees around, and I was walking on leaves, but when I looked down, they were actually these… beetles.”

  “Beetles?”

  “Yeah. Huge. I had never seen anything like them. That’s partly why I thought it was a nightmare. They were monsters… the size of golf balls, and their shells had these designs on them.” He shrugged. “Someone else was there.”

  “Me?”

  He shook his head.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Have you ever had one of those dreams where you know you can’t look around no matter how much you want to?”

  She nodded. “For me, it’s like I can’t open my eyes. I’m usually lost someplace, trying to find a way out, but I can’t open my eyes all the way.”

  “It was like that. I knew there was someone there, walking next to me and a little bit behind. Sounded pretty big. He stopped when I stopped and moved when I moved. He never said anything, either.”

  “How did you know there was anyone there?”

  “The sounds. His steps were heavier than mine, and it was like he was taking longer to step. And then there was the breathing. Deep. Heavy. He sounded huge.”

  Abby shivered. Nate’s voice was utterly sincere. As much as she wanted to think he really was dreaming, she knew now that monsters were quite real. They lived all around her. She wondered if Nate would be comforted by this revelation. Probably not.