“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
“Of course not.” Bethina sniffed. “
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 understand 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
I rose and set my mug into the wash basin, Ovaltine untasted. “That’s all? That’s all you know?”
Bethina flushed. “I’m sorry, miss, but yes. The shadows stole your brother, and that’s the whole of it. No one here except me and the mice.”
I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the porcelain drain board and stared at the stained tile of the countertop until the spots of water and mildew spun in front of my eyes. I started multiplying numbers, trying to keep my mind on an even keel, to hold my hopelessly jumbled thoughts at bay.
Conrad kidnapped by viral creatures. Conrad vanished without so much as a scream. Only time to pen the note. Conrad asking
“I suppose it was cowardly to shut myself up in the kitchen,” Bethina admitted. “But I wasn’t keen on swanning about with those things running loose. They might take me.”
“No one’s going to hurt you, darlin’,” Dean said. His words were directed at Bethina, but his eyes were on me. By the time I’d reached my eightieth tile, the swimming behind my eyes had retreated and I slowly unlocked my aching hands from the edge of the drain board. I hoped that Cal, Bethina and Dean would put my episode down to worry over Conrad. I wished that I could.
“I thank you for your kindness, even if you are a heretic,” Bethina told Dean. Dean’s eyebrow quirked.
“Keep a razor blade under that tongue of yours, eh?”
“I see what I see, sir.” Bethina crossed her ankles primly. In keeping with Graystone’s crumbling surroundings, her stockings had a run in them.
“That’s it, then,” Cal said. “End of the line. Conrad’s gone and so is your pop. We’d best be hoofing it back to Lovecraft and praying that we don’t get expelled.”
Conrad’s shaky handwriting floated through my vision, and his admonishment to me:
“Bethina,” I said. “Did my father or Conrad ever mention anything about a book? A specific book, or perhaps a ledger?” I swallowed a lump “The … a … ‘witch’s alphabet’?”
Dean’s head came up, as if he wanted to interject, but he kept quiet.
Bethina frowned. “No, miss. I never heard them mention no witches. They seemed upright men, the both.”
The fire sighed in the draft, and that was the end of Bethina’s story.
While Cal escorted Bethina to her garret, Dean walked me back to the room where I’d recovered from the shoggoth bite. He shivered outside my door, and I didn’t think it was entirely from the winter air against his bare arms.
“Are you all right, Dean?” I hoped the question wouldn’t wound his pride too much.
Dean’s mouth quirked down. “I suppose, but I gotta say it—this is Weirdsville, kid. Your old man’s a spooky cat.”
Privately, I was beginning to agree with Dean. Aloud I said, “I expect you want to get back to Lovecraft and the Rustworks. Your life.” I reached for the roll of bills I’d secreted in the top of my stocking. “How much do I owe you for being our guide?”
Dean sucked his teeth. “This job’s a complicated bargain, true enough. More to it than blood or money.”
“What else is there?” I rolled my stocking back over my thigh and watched Dean’s fingers curl as they followed the movement.
“You’re a pistol, Miss Aoife. You sure you don’t belong with us down in the Rustworks instead of at that stuffy School?”
