The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [61]
“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.”
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 me, of all people, to rescue him. The vertiginous, swirling pool of madness rushed up at me and I shut my eyes, willing the images from my dreams to retreat. Order. I needed order. I opened my eyes again, started to count tiles, my lips moving.
“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:
Save yourself.
“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,