Harrow

By Lucas Lex Dejong

On the longest night of the year, the bodies of two young boys are found deep in the woods. Police Chief Duncan Horewood becomes obsessed with one question: why did they go into Greylock Forest?
As the seasons turn strange happenings keep occurring in Stokeshaw. Lily Reid is convinced that she keeps seeing her dead brother. Is it grief, guilt, or does her twin have a dire warning for her?
Inheriting her mother's place in the small-town gentry, Sonia Prider returns to the home she fled many years ago. Guided by the other Matriarchs, she learns of her true legacy, three centuries in the making.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984506108

Book preview

HARROW

LUCAS LEX DEJONG

Copyright © 2020 by Lucas Lex Dejong.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/15/2020

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

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Contents

Prologue

Part One   December 23rd

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part Two   February 2nd

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part Three   March 14th

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Founding Day

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Part Four   May 1st

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Part Five   June 21st

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Part Six   August 1st

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

The Ritual

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

The Covenant

Part Seven   September 19th

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Penultimate

Dénouement

Epilogue

Author’s Note

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A novel is ash from the exorcism of an obsession.

Dedicated to Amy.

For her love and patience as I struggled through ideas,

and for her inspiration to write with less blue, and more green.

Cover Art by Simon Bubner

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Prologue

T win blades of light sliced and intertwined in the dense black of the mountainside night. Swiping, parting and parrying, they were soon joined by a third, then a fifth and more, until the forest was rife with light. Narrow beams danced together and apart as people rushed and stumbled through dense thickets; their desperate bellows heaving small breaths of steam into the silhouetted air. Again and again, a pitch black figure would lurch through unseen pitfalls, regaining composure long enough for his back to arch in the night, his head to raise high, and another cloud to escape the dark void of his head before he is flanked on either side by his companions, mirroring his actions. Mirroring his cries.

Again and again, the same two names. Called until the voices which carried them strained dry and weak from the frosted atmosphere. Nature had silenced herself this night. No owl called, nor rodent scurried in the undergrowth. Nature knows evil; she has known it longer than man’s short memory. To man, three hundred years is a long time, and to these men three miles is a long way to stagger their way through dark woods. Nature’s memory is vast and long; she waits and watches as man faces off against the dark again.

"Bobby!"

An echo sounded, far off to the right.

"Sean!"

With every call their voices grew weaker and their shouts became pleas, high and whining and failing. They drew their hands away from their bodies to steady themselves, and they felt whatever warmth still remaining ebb away. It was the long night, the winternight, the hibernal solstice. Sun would not pierce the landscape for many hours yet, and even the starlight was hidden from them by a black blanket of clouds. Men and women struggled in a total winter darkness where the only hope they had they brought with them, and all it illuminated was the packed snow which threatened to swallow them whole.

Yet in the strength of darkness lies its weakness; a single candle can hold back the night. Stokeshaw Harrow emptied itself into the four hundred-thousand acres of Greylock Forest and dozens of candles dove through the darkness, carving their way through the woods in search for two of their own. Beasts lurked in the dark between the trees, but they do not fear the wolves, but the wild within. They could never hope to scour the impossible vastness of the green mountains, but the hope that their boys would be found before hope dwindled with first light was all that sustained them.

Teddy Rogers. His son was in the Magnusson lad’s class at school. Never heard a peep about him; they mustn’t have been close. Teddy had to pull out Paulie’s school yearbook just to see what the boys looked like, but he supposed that was silly. Any child out here would be the children they were looking for.

Toni Laslow. She had chased Sean and his sister out of her video store once. They were giggling down in the restricted aisle, where all the adult movies were kept. She had hung signs up forbidding children from entering, and she knows they saw it. Something not right about kids that age…

James Stone. He would know Bobby or Sean by nothing more than a muddy shoeprint; Lord knows they’d left enough of them through his kitchen in their time. If anything happened to them, how would he explain it to Evan?

Old Huck Murphy. Shouldn’t be out in this chill. His wife would, did and will give him endless grief if that pneumonia acts up. She had cursed him and slapped him, telling him to leave that nonsense to younger men, like the men who now flanked him on either side and helped him across the treacherous terrain. But nothing gets done sitting on your thumbs, and if those boys are out here…

Kate McEnroe. She found Sean’s name surrounded by a rose-red love-heart scrawled into the back of Tracy’s algebra workbook. She was too bashful to confront her daughter about it; she remembers her own first crush well, though she didn’t remember it being quite so young. Tracy favoured her father – he was the ‘good cop’ – but with his bad knee she volunteered immediately. She grimaced in the cold, wiping away a streak of spittle which threatened to freeze. She supposed she should have more selfless reasons for searching for the boys, but she had never really seen eye-to-eye with Linda or Carolyn…

Damon Smith. Wouldn’t know the boys by sight and didn’t know their parents. He didn’t have kids at the school, but after four years in the Harrow he still felt like an outsider; still referred to as ‘that negro who runs the butcher’. Always politely, with a please and thank you and a steady stream of regular customers, but he felt like an audience member on a stage playing out before him, watching from the sidelines. Helping find these boys would surely get his name known around town. Anything to help break the ice in this community. His next step fell beneath him as his foot plunged into a frozen puddle of water. He hissed, then laughed once he was sure his boots had kept his toes dry. He had only meant it proverbially…

Duncan Horewood. Not again. Please God, not again. This was the second search party this town had run this year, and the turnout was thrice that of the previous, despite the cold. Most people wrote off the two hikers as naïve and unprepared outsiders. Duncan had ordered searches for a week straight, and the early days of summer were as ideal as any, but by the seventh day it was only he and his deputy left scouring the many trails which twisted into the verdant inferno. Duncan was more hopeful this time. For two of their own, Stokeshaw would turn over every fallen branch in this forest.

David Magnusson. Not a thought passed through his mind. He wouldn’t let it. He was nothing more than eyes and legs, pounding his way through the frozen earth, scanning with eyes and light, back and forth robotically. Thank God it hadn’t snowed this night, though the crisp sky continued to threaten him. Searching was hard enough, but if there was any thought that they would be buried under…

No, he wouldn’t let himself think it. He swore he wouldn’t. The only thing that mattered was holding his boy again. He had to hold his boy again. It was fate; inexorable. He never woke at nights, so why tonight? Why had he felt the need to go to the kitchen for a drink? There was none; David hadn’t had a restless night in his life. It drove Carolyn mad, that she had spent years tending to agitated children whilst he dozed undisturbed. Yet on this night as he passed Bobby’s room, his toes curled back from the cold gusts reaching out to him from under the door. It had to be fate.

The black silhouette beside him stumbled. He turned; the light reflecting from the white snow and illuminating black to green as he reached out and helped lift Tristan from his fall. He would be thinking the same things as David. Within minutes of opening the door to the cold, empty shell of Bobby’s room, he was barking down the phone line to James and then Marianne, both of whom quietly confirmed their boys as being safely tucked away. When he reached Tristan and waited those long, agonising seconds as he scouted his children’s room, it was with a sickly guilty relief that Tristan returned to the line in a panic. Not only that he should share the crippling fear of a father, but that Bobby – wherever he was – wasn’t alone.

"Sean!"

The choir of calls continued to siren in the night, and with every call, every searcher became more and more agitated at the silent response of the forest. That there should be no wind, no animal and no sound to contaminate their search might have been seen by some as a mercy, but to the individuals trudging their faith through the snow, Greylock seemed dead.

"Bobby!"

Tristan Reid squinted through the dark, his glasses constantly fogging up as he carelessly panted warm breath and walked into it. He felt like he would have a heart attack. Not from the exertion, but because every shape which materialised at the edge of his torchlight caused his heart to leap as he doubled back on it. Was that a leg? Only a branch. It looked like a small body, lying in the snow. Only a log. Is that Sean’s red jacket? Only a moss-covered redwood, its scarlet insides torn open by nature. No matter how many times his eyes tricked him, every second glance sent his heart racing in hope before lurching in despair. When he didn’t see Sean on the white canvas of ground, his mind materialized the two bikes resting side by side. James had called them to the northern edges of town, near where the road ended and the endless trails winding into Greylock Forest formed. It was there that their search had begun, now hours ago.

"Over here!"

It was two words; it a gunshot in which silence followed. The forest had been silent, and now not even a padded footstep was heard over the ice and snow. The search party froze, each one questioning whether they heard what they thought they had heard, and where the call had come from.

Over here! Louder. Clearer. Tristan and David turned hard to their right, where they thought the call had come from. A dozen beams of light coalesced on a single point, where a small figure – black on black against black – was barely visible, waving his arms. No one moved. No one dared break the tension and hope, but as soon as the two fathers broke their stride, the search party turned into an avalanche toward a central point.

The figure became clearer; he was only visible from the chest up, standing in a small depression in the snow. Duncan recognised him as the black fellow who ran the butcher’s shop. Smith, he thought. Neither Tristan nor David heeded the man at all, save for his acting as a beacon. As they neared, they thought they saw a wide grin upon the man’s dark face, and David felt himself flush with a relief which almost sent his legs out from under him. But it wasn’t a grin. It was a grimace.

The snow ceased on the lip of the depression; a shallow inverted-dome no more than twenty feet across. Damon stood over two brightly-coloured forms, his arms now dumbly at his sides. Sean’s red jacket and Bobby’s white one. Red and White. Too much red against that white. Bright and glistening, but it did not twinkle as liquid does; it was frozen still. David shoved passed the others who had gathered, leaving Tristan standing dumbly on the ridge. His boots skidded down loose, bare soil, trampling a border of fungal toadstools and mushrooms which had grown around the lip of the crater.

No. The first word was barely a groan. No, no. He skidded to the bottom on his knees, colliding with motionless forms which did not react. "No, Bobby!" David turned the white-clothed figure over and collapsed back with an ungodly, animal-like shriek which roused Tristan from his denial and sent him rushing through the ring. He shook him and screamed his name but the body did not respond; it could barely be described as limp and felt colder even than the ice-covered ground. They pawed at red, open faces like animals without understanding, in complete denial but utter grief. Death masks were their shroud, and red lines opened up to expose the futility of the father’s suffering.

Duncan knelt at the edge of the depression, his hands buried in his face. Without sight his world was only anguished cries and the cold vacuum that swallowed them. He reached down and felt the trodden broken fungal ring. He dimly heard the voice of his grandmother from his earliest years, muting the moans and sobs in front of him, telling him folktales and stories of the wilds. There was a rhyme, some old slang from the British Isles of her birth, which he couldn’t quite remember. He could only remember the tune; her atonal heavy breathing humming a mirthless melody. His stomach churned at the thought of carrying the two small bodies back; even from a distance he balked at the open red smiles through their bone white flesh.

The army of torches concentrated on the hallowed circle of earth, each one casting light from snow into the clear night air. Duncan felt some small consolation that in the midst of tragedy; it seemed like all of Stokeshaw had come out in solidarity. As the two men’s cries faded into numb and benign mewling, Duncan stepped into the ring to begin the arduous task before him.

A breeze picked up; the first in the still night. Carried on that breeze, silent to all others, was the voice of his grandmother, carried through the years, the memory suddenly crisp as if she were sitting before him, warning him of folkish dangers.

"And he wha cleans the faery ring

An easy death shall dee."

Part One

December 23rd

Chapter One

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S he sat on his bed, staring at her own. She pressed her hand down into the folds of the blanket. Red marked with white diamonds. She had stamped her feet and pouted when her mother tried to buy her the pink blanket. She wasn’t the pink one. She was the Green Ranger. She didn’t care he was supposed to be a boy. Even when Brett pointed it out, as he always did. It didn’t matter. Sean had her back.

A cold breath caught in her throat at even the thought of his name. Her eyes darted around their room. Her room now, she supposed. Her eyes took in every toy, every cabinet. The robots and the dinosaurs. The rug, with its winding roads; the fabric pattern on which the five-year-old siblings raced their Matchbox cars on the good days, and on which they demarcated their separate boundaries on the bad days.

"You can have up to East Street, and I’ll have up to the Mason Boul…Boulev…"

"Boulevard, dummy. And Mason curves round; you’d get more room."

"Okay, well…I’ll race you for it! Get your car!"

"Okay!"

Neither of them could remember who won. Only that by the time they had finished playing and hurried down the stairs for dinner, it didn’t matter. It was their room again. Together.

She didn’t want the room to herself. She cringed at the memory of every tantrum she had ever thrown in front of her mother, wanting her own room. Even then she dimly knew that she would have only ended up crawling back into this room at night. Those nights when their parents thought their seven-year-old darlings were asleep, and they propped up Sean’s blanket with a toy lightsabre and read scary books by its bright blue glow.

It was hard to imagine being separated. They never had been. She could scarcely remember being without Sean. He was always there, in body and in name, his right next to hers, as it was carved into a painted wooden plaque on their door:

‘Lily & Sean’

He wanted his name to be first, since he was two minutes older. Lily said that didn’t matter; they were both nine. It should be alphabetical. Besides, that’s how everyone always said it. Lily and Sean Reid. "Sean and Lily just sounds stupid," she told him, poking her tongue out as they painted the plaque. She was only supposed to paint her side. She had started it, painting a pretty pink flower on his side when he went to the bathroom. He was so mad. He tried to turn it into a lion, but the mane looked funny. A dandy-lion, Dad had called it with a stupidly proud grin. Now the plaque was covered in pictures from both sides. In the end, they liked it better that way. The plaque still says ‘& Sean’. She would stop anyone who ever tried to change it. Ever.

She clenched the red blanket in her fingers and shook. She had cried. She had cried so much that she honestly didn’t know if anything was left inside her. It felt like a part of her was missing. She didn’t even know where he was. She didn’t think they took him to the hospital; he wasn’t sick. But don’t they have a room there for when people…

She couldn’t even think the word. Died. There it was. It didn’t make sense. Eleven-year-old kids don’t die. They grow up, and turn into old people, and then old people die, after having lots of kids and buying a house – Lily and Sean always said they’d need a giant house for both of their families. Or at least be next-door neighbours and knock the fence down. That would be cool.

Now that house in her mind felt empty; its shutters boarded up and the local papers piling up on the front porch like unwritten chapters in a book he’d never finish.

Lily! She heard the call from downstairs. For the last two days, it had only ever sounded like a scream turned down. Highly wound and on the verge of a wail. She knew her mother shook too. She wasn’t alone in that, but seeing her parents cry made her feel uncomfortable. She only remembered seeing her mother cry once before. They were playing baseball inside, even after Mom told them not to. Lily told her brother not to go easy on her, but he pitched it too slow, and she got a good hit in. And when the ball finally stopped moving in a cloud of ceramic shards and Grandpa’s ashes, Lily and Sean ran all the way to Evan’s house. By the time Mr and Mrs Stone drove them home, Mom was in hysterics.

Lily! The call was higher this time, almost frantic. Lily broke from her reverie and leapt off the bed, straightening Sean’s blanket again so that it was all neat and tucked in for when… No. She ran her hands over her cheeks, making sure they were dry, and darted towards the door, past a tall mirror. In it, she caught only a peripheral glimpse of a familiar shape, so like her twin, dressed in similar blue faded jeans and the red and green Christmas sweater that Sean wore last. The colour of both Rangers. It was only the long braids of strawberry blonde hair which gave her away as she pulled the door closed behind her and slowed carefully as she reached the stairs. Mom always said not to run down the stairs.

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Duncan Horewood ran his fingernails through the short, prickly hair along his neck. He hadn’t shaved in three days. That wasn’t usually like him, but he had been stretched a little thin. He would have to remember to fix that tonight; Betty always gave him hell when he forgot to shave. Like kissin’ sandpaper, Duncan. And I won’t have it. Not to mention it was beginning to itch. He wasn’t a spritely young man anymore; the pale grey streaks in his otherwise dark hair gave that away, but his neck would bulge and fold under the tight collar of the Chief of Police uniform, and the short, sharp hairs didn’t help. He supposed it was time to upgrade to a more fitting shirt; he had put it off for long enough, out of denial and dignity. Time catches up with everyone. Doc Waterman said he was still in decent shape for a man of fifty-two, but he couldn’t help but mourn the paunch which had begun to form around his mid-section.

We heading in, Boss?

Duncan turned to his deputy. He was a good lad, even if he sometimes let the badge go to his head, but could be a real pain in the ass at times, too. It made the chief feel old, cruising around with a man some twenty-something years his junior. He had to concede that he was a good-looking boy; especially with that deep tanned skin. All the ladies consider that something exotic. Duncan chuckled silently to himself. Exotic? Those ladies ain’t never even made it as far as Boston. Alright, Alvarez. Just… The chief paused, steadying his mind. We gotta be delicate, you hear? These folks have been through a lot. The shallow wrinkles around the deputy’s eyes faded as his smile faded. A good lad; he knew the deal.

Duncan cracked the car door open, bracing himself in the cold air. There wasn’t much wind, thank Christ, because he left his heavy jacket back at the station.

Nice house, Alvarez commented. It was. Typical of the more modern looking houses in southern Stokeshaw, albeit more modest than some, the Reid’s residence shone with that good old-fashioned off-white family home appeal with one story in the front living area, and the windows to the upstairs rooms just visible over the front of the porch. Duncan looked up, watching the empty window from the children’s room. He breathed deep, his exhale a white cloud in crisp air, and steadied his composure. This was not his favourite part of the job.

A still lion wreathed in holly held a chrome loop in his jaws, but instead of roaring, all it did was knock. The door opened slowly, revealing a pair of pale, dark-ringed eyes, before swinging wide. Chief Horewood, Linda Reid sputtered. She looked terrified. Like terrified prey, her head darted around anxiously. Deputy Alvarez. Please, come in. She ushered the two men inside quickly, slamming the door to keep out both the cold and prying eyes. Thank you for coming, she recited vacantly.

Thank you, Linda. Duncan tried to keep her gaze, to bestow upon her some sense of control, that everything was being taken care of. The children took after their mother; that was for sure. The same strawberry blonde hair, the same high, tight nose. Not the eyes; that must be from their father. Is Tristan in?

No. She hushed immediately, not making eye contact. She wrung her hands nervously. I think he’s with David and James.

The chief nodded. He had just come from the Magnusson’s residence and Carolyn said much the same of her own husband, David. As much as the grieving parents, his heart went out to James Stone. A good man, to take on that burden of consolation.

A lovely house you have here, Mrs Reid, Deputy Alvarez chimed in from behind. He meant well, but the platitude didn’t seem to reach Linda at all; she just wandered back and forth in the entryway.

Linda, I was hoping we might speak with your daughter.

Her eyes rocketed up. In them Duncan saw the look of a cornered animal protecting her pups. The stare passed quickly, but he found himself asking God how any parent could ever cope with the loss of a child.

Linda nodded her head hesitantly. Yes, yes. Lily! There was a glottal sound at the end of her call. It sent a sharp pang through Duncan’s heart. She still wasn’t used to calling a single name. With twins, one name always followed the other, and he could almost hear Sean’s name in the echo. Would you like a drink? she offered cordially. Tea? Coffee?

No, thank you, ma’am, Alvarez declined.

Duncan saw how anxious she was. She needed something menial to occupy herself with. Well if you won’t Diego, I sure will. A coffee would be lovely. Black, one sugar.

Yes, yes. Of course. Lily! Linda called again, this time high and shrill, with a barely concealed frantic plea. Please, she gestured them to the kitchen. As he turned away, Duncan saw a Christmas tree erected in the adjacent living room. He mentally tallied the boxes under the tree, knowing that half of them would likely remain unopened.

They passed under an archway just as the soft padding of sneakered shoes clipped their way down the stairs. Duncan had steeled himself for seeing her, but when she appeared around the corner, one hand gripping the archway for a swing, his breath still caught in his chest. They really did look so alike. They were twins, obviously, but caught at that age just before puberty would drive them apart. Lily’s small cherub-like face matched the pale, bloodless one he had carried through Greylock Forest not three days past.

The chief waited for the inevitable glance he received from all children: to the holster on his belt, then back to the eyes. Yet Lily Reid never broke eye contact with him. Her eyes swam with lofty existential questions she probably wouldn’t be able to ask for years, and may never have the answer to. Hello, Chief Horewood, she said politely.

Hello, Lily. He resisted the urge to plant his hands on his knees, to meet her eye level. It would feel patronising. I wanted to speak to you about Sean. He expected some reaction. A tightening. A sob. Nothing. Obviously Duncan was here to talk to her about her brother. This information was no surprise. Duncan cleared his throat sheepishly, accepting a warm mug from a silent Linda, who only watched the interaction with wide, protective eyes. Duncan took a short sip of the coffee, suppressing a wince as he felt his lip burn. He handed the mug to Alvarez and slowly took a knee in front of the girl. Honey, we’re trying to work out what your brother and Bobby Magnusson were doing out in Greylock Forest at night.

Lily finally broke off her gaze; eyes drifting down towards the floorboards. We play there, sometimes. In a place called the Grove. The chief suppressed a nostalgic smile. He knew the place. He had played there as a young boy himself. The Grove nestled itself in the shallow foothills of Greylock, but the boys were found deep in its depths.

At night? Alvarez questioned from behind them.

Lily shook her head. No. Never at night. She looked up to her mother. Her grip around her own coffee mug looked tight enough to shatter the ceramic. Honest. There was indignant defensiveness in her voice.

I believe you, Lily, he tried to assure her, though he didn’t believe it himself. But we still want to know why the boys were out there.

"I don’t know, Lily pouted. Her small fists clenched and shook in insistence. I don’t know. I didn’t even know he was gone. I told Mom; I just woke up and he was… was… gone! Her voice snagged in her throat, but tears did not come. Her eyes dropped to the floor again; through the floor. A thousand-yard stare. Questioning. I don’t know why he left. He never leaves me behind. We always go everywhere together."

Duncan turned as Linda gasped, fawning for a damp cloth to sooth her hand. They must have been shaking badly. Diego, will you see to Mrs Reid’s hand in the kitchen? Alvarez caught the chief’s meaning and ushered the mother out of the room before she could see their ploy. He waited for them to be alone before turning back to the girl. Honey, you can tell me if you knew Sean was going. I know that would be hard for your mother to hear but-

I. Don’t. Know. She enunciated each word clearly. Duncan searched for face for any clue. In his experience, children were either very bad at lying, or had convinced themselves of their own innocence so well as to be impossible to catch out. I wouldn’t even care if I got in trouble, she went on. "I just want to know why it happened." Ah. The ‘why’. He knew she would be searching for that ‘why’ the rest of her life. The primary feeling Lily had etched on her face was that of betrayal. He brother had left her behind. He had never left her behind before, and now she felt that if they had been together, everything would be okay. For that, the chief was thankful Sean had left his twin sister behind, lest this family be even more broken than it was now.

Duncan downed a large mouthful of the still-scalding coffee as Linda and Diego returned. The deputy’s eyes searched him for validation, and Duncan replied with a curt nod. Thank you for the coffee, Linda. He set the mug on the table. We’ll be in contact as soon as we find anything. Linda’s eyes flickered between the chief of police and her daughter, searching for some hope or progress. Duncan leaned down again to Lily and gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze. Thanks, little Lily. You think of anything and you let us know, y’hear? I can make you a deputy, so I don’t have to ride around with Alvarez anymore.

I think she’d scare the bad guys more than I would, anyway, Boss. Diego beamed at her in support. There wasn’t much of a reaction; Duncan didn’t expect one, but he was sure that the corners of Lily’s mouth pulled back in what might have been a smile, had fate been different.

Thank you for coming, Linda Reid sighed as she walked the two officers to the door.

I’m sorry for your loss, Diego tried to comfort her. Stupid. Words straight out of a Hallmark card. How many times is Linda going to hear those words? More times than any mother should. Too many times, already. The only response she gave was a hard gulp and a forced nod.

You need anything… Duncan let the offer hang as they stepped through the door. Tiny flakes of snow were beginning to fall, coating the lawns along Southbury Street with a fine white powder. He wished it could feel like Christmas.

They were halfway down to the patrol car when Diego leaned in. Anything?

Duncan shook his head. It’s hard to tell with kids, but I don’t think she knows anything.

How can you be sure?

Duncan cast him a glance. They’re twins, Alvarez. If she knew Sean was going into the forest, we’d have been collecting her body, too.

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It was cold in the attic. Far too cold. The white clouds she exhaled with every breath told her so. There were no white clouds above her mother’s face. Her breath was barely a whisper, and barely a wisp would come from it. There was a radiating heater in the far corner of the room, but the cold enveloped and smothered it like a physical presence which fought back against the redeeming warmth. A sharp ray of sunlight broke through the barren tree branches outside and winked and flickered into the room, illuminating the frozen, suspended motes of dust which hung all throughout the air.

Sonia Prider tried to remember her mother’s voice, as if memory could conjure it into reality. As if remembering the warmth and motion of two decades past could bring it into this room and the images flashing behind her eyes would merge with the one before it. But nothing changed, and nothing moved, except for the steady clouds of steam from her breath flowing into and dissipating into the dusty attic air.

Why have you left her up here? Sonia’s voice was smooth and even; given the circumstances it seemed as cold as the air around them.

We moved her up here because it was a smaller room. We thought we could heat it more easily. Magnolia Prider shrugged her shoulders embarrassingly. Big old houses are hard to keep warm in winter. Sonia didn’t respond. She didn’t turn. She just stood, watching her mother’s shallow struggle to hold onto life. Soon… Dr Waterman said she was too sick to safely move. Her lungs… She cleared her throat, trying to force some lingering authority back into it. We just tried to keep her warm as best we could.

The stern tones in Aunt Magna’s voice crashed upon Sonia like waves upon rocks. They receded and Sonia remained unmoved. In her own mind, she was too unmoved. She should be furious. She should be desperate. She should be springing to action. Instead she just felt numb. A lifetime’s worth of emotions wrestled within her, fighting to get out, but none bubbled to the surface, leaving her feeling only a void.

I’d like to be alone with her. She whispered, but in the silence it was easy to hear even the quietest mourning, and Magna left, closing the door behind her. Sonia reached into her bag and pulled out a stethoscope. She had rummaged through old boxes for twenty minutes to find it; she hadn’t used it since the early days of medical school, before other studies led her away from the need.

She took her mother’s hand gently. It wasn’t nearly as cold as she had feared, and the thick woollen blanket had covered another several layers beneath it. She should have taken some comfort and confidence in that, but she wasn’t sure that she could reach that far yet. Magna was the bearer of ill news, calling her out of the blue, bringing Sonia back to a town she had done her best not to even think of for twenty years. Had someone simply announced her mother’s untimely death, Sonia would have mourned lightly and moved on.

She pressed the stethoscope under her mother’s gown. The heartbeat which sounded in her ears sounded to her like the ticking away of time both past and future; years lost and years never to be had, each growing fainter. She shifted the stethoscope and could hear the shortness of time in the shortness of her mother’s breath. Crackling and strained, the pneumonia was advanced. Evangeline Prider’s lungs would soon drown themselves.

She pressed her hands hard around the sides of the coffee mug, bracing against the burning until she could feel the heat begin to creep back into her joints. She stared into the mouth of the mug, that black hole, feeling like the dark was swallowing her concerns whole. She should be in a hospital. Across the kitchen, Aunt Magnolia gave Sonia only her back, busying herself with plates and cutlery and any other distractions. Sonia raised her voice. Magna. She should be in a-

I heard you, Sonia, she said in the same condescending way she would when Sonia was a child. She probably still saw her as a child. Doctor Waterman has been coming to see her regularly.

"That’s not enough, Sonia insisted, slamming her mug on the table. She pulled her hand back as a small pool of steaming liquid pooled around its base. She needs to be in a hospital. She needs intensive care. She’s-"

Dying, Magna said matter-of-factly. She turned around to face her niece. Short and somewhat chubby, Aunt Magna wore her deep grey hair in a tight bun. It’s what the elderly do, my dear.

She’s not that elderly, Sonia dismissed. Seventy-six. She should still have…

We live a tough life, here in Stokeshaw. Sonia scoffed. It sounded like Magna was recalling some lost days of the pioneers. Your mother most of all. She gave everything she had into having you, after-

I know the story, she snapped. I don’t need to hear it again.

"But you will. The old woman was sturdy as a badger when she dug her heels in. Three miscarriages. Then she finally had you at forty-five, and it damn-near-"

Killed her. Sonia sighed. She felt like the weight of those words were placed squarely on her shoulders. Her birth, her difficult upbringing, culminating in her fleeing the Harrow and leaving all those memories behind. Her life was one long series of health hazards for her mother. She took a cloth which Magna held in her outstretched hand, dabbing at the spill. That doesn’t mean we should just give up. Doctors can…

Prolong the inevitable? I don’t mean to be callous, love. Her tone indicated anything but. The nearest hospital is in Pittsfield, nearly fifty miles from here. Even then, they might only transfer her across the border to Albany. She shook her head curtly in stubborn defiance. No. She’s a Prider. Her place is here. She’d rather die here than in some foreign place.

Some foreign place. Sonia could have smiled if her teeth weren’t almost cracked from frustration. That a city a few hours’ drive in their own country would be considered foreign soil. Stokeshaw Harrow was fiercely loyal to its roots. Sonia hadn’t lived in many other smaller towns, but Stokeshaw’s insularity was – in part – what drove her so far away.

Sonia. Her aunt’s voice was heavy. We need to talk about…when she passes.

Sonia nodded grimly at her coffee, fingering the handle irritably. I’ll stay to help prepare the funeral. She sighed deeply. And the burial.

Magna waved her hands dismissively. "I’m not talking about that, she insisted. The inheritance, Sonia. Prider House will be yours, soon."

Sonia only shook her head. There were memories in this house. Her own memories, and those of the generations stretching back centuries; memories now soaked into the walls with time. She wanted none of them. It’s held jointly between Mom, yourself and Veronika.

But her aunt continued to rap her knuckled on the table. Matriarchal inheritance. How many times did we tell you growing up? Veronika and I have only sons. According to our customs, you inherit the Prider estate. Her mouth pulled to the side, suspiciously. With some caveats, of course. For our own welfare. Of course. It didn’t seem becoming of Magna to part with the comfortable life she had made for herself.

Sonia couldn’t help but laugh mirthlessly at the stupidity of it all. Doesn’t Veronika have a granddaughter now? Magna hissed her disapproval. I’m serious. I don’t want it. She jutted a finger at the old aunt. "And you wouldn’t want it, either. I don’t live here, and I won’t. I know how distrustful you all are of outsiders and…tourists." She emphasised this last word to place a greater distance between herself and this town.

This town is in your blood, the old woman spat back. Seven families founded Stokeshaw Harrow, and tradition has kept our legacy alive for three hundred years. She pointed a stubby finger at Sonia. "Three. Hundred. Years. The Prider family is an integral part of this town, and an integral part of you. This town runs in your blood."

And that blood runs this town, a cold, stately voice finished the familiar refrain. Taller and more hawkish than Magnolia, Sonia’s aunt Veronika stood behind her in the archway from the living area, her bony hands clasped tightly in front of her, her nose raised so contemptuously high it was a wonder that Sonia couldn’t see directly through the nostrils of her hooked nose and into her putrid mind.

Aunt Magna was a mostly pleasant if meddling old woman, but Sonia’s fond memories of Aunt Veronika began and ended with the sweet bliss of leaving her behind some twenty years prior. All of Stokeshaw should have been grateful that Veronika Prider had been born three years after Evangeline. A malicious and harsh woman, she practically lived to see others bend to her will. And if they broke in the process… Any question of maternal instinct was quickly stamped out when observing her two sons, so cowed and lifeless they each married women so controlling in themselves they were second only to their mother-in-law. Veronika had divorced her husband as soon as her second son could stand, casting him away as a useless vestige of a purpose already served. The matriarchal nature of Stokeshaw Harrow’s founding houses had become accepted and normalised as a part of the town’s history, but that Veronika even needed a man to sire children in the first place seemed like a slight against her.

Sonia had grown too tall to be cowed even by the childhood memories of her menacing aunt. Good seeing you again, Aunt Veronika. She pronounced the name meticulously, mocking the harsh words bestowed upon her and other small children who had once struggled with pronunciation.

Her eyes tightened and lips pursed. Yes, quite. You’ve grown into a striking resemblance of your mother, I must say. Sonia herself had noticed. On more than one occasion she had been startled to see what she thought was her own face staring out at her from the black-and-white portraits. In her own memory her mother had always been old, but those framed memories showed the same strong cheekbones and slight chin that she saw in the mirror, as well as the natural dark shading beneath her eyes which she had always tried to cover. "Your mother once tried to shirk her responsibilities. I trust you have not also inherited that trait?"

This was news to Sonia, who turned back to Magna only to see her gazing submissively into her hands. There was no protest or scepticism in her stare. It seemed impossible to Sonia that her stern, traditional mother had ever been rebellious, but there were more than four decades to Evangeline Prider before Sonia came into her life. "That would have left you as the Prider matriarch, Aunt," she observed coyly.

Just as well it didn’t, she responded curtly with more than a touch of remorse. Or else this House would end with us.

It seemed the only thing Veronika valued over her own influence was tradition. Sonia gritted her teeth, plunging once more into the hope that the two old crones would see reason. You have a granddaughter. Don’t you, Veronika? She turned to Magna for confirmation. Haley, isn’t it?

Born of my son, she spat distastefully, as if the girl were not worth considering, and as if that statement closed all matters. "You know our traditions, and why we hold to them after three centuries. Men sire bastards, when they are not bastards themselves. Her withered lips almost curled into a sly grin at her approximation of humour. They run off to die in other men’s wars over foreign soil, leaving their houses in ruin. They claim ownership of a lineage they cannot even be sure is theirs. This seemed as close as Veronika ever approached to acknowledging the fallibility of the fairer sex, and may have spoken volumes of the faith Veronika placed in her son’s wives. You remember the Covenant?"

The words were etched into Sonia’s brain like a chant, recited like a prayer, an intonation and indoctrination of the town’s tradition.

"From mother to daughter the gift is bestowed,

"From father to son the gift is forgotten.

"Like lambs in the summer the way is hallowed,

"Now gather the young lest the line become rotten."

Saying the words brought a churning sickness to the forefront of her mind, placing her right back to her miserable home-schooling on the virtues of tradition. It took her a few moments to dispel the thick clouds of nauseating nostalgia which had formed behind her eyes; she could have practically smelt the cheap, thick wax from the candles her mother used to light the study room.

Veronika smirked cruelly at her niece blanching. A silly rhyme for silly children. Still effective, it seems, even after so many years. What passed for mirth ironed out on her face, leaving only a cold, hard glare. Seven families founded Stokeshaw Harrow, and now only Williams, Warren, Talbot and Prider remain intact and strong.

Four? Two derelict houses she remembered from childhood, but three she saw driving in. What about Horner?

Veronika only tightened her eyes in a contemptuous yet victorious glare. That she feared the destruction of the founding houses was clear, but Prider’s continued longevity where others failed stoked the flames of her sense of self-superiority.

Henrietta Horner has…moved away, Magnolia chimed in with a thinly-veiled tone of gossip. And Talbot isn’t long either, lest Marianne manages a daughter, somehow. She chuckled to express her thoughts on that likelihood, but silenced herself under her elder sister’s glare.

Sonia rubbed her fingers into her eyes, frustrated at the mulish stubbornness of tradition. What did it matter? Boy, girl, true lineage or not, this was a small New England town, not the dynasty of some great kingdom. Though with that frustrated realisation came a kind of relief, and a calming voice inside her. Just placate them, get through the funeral, and leave. It seemed so simple. Let them leave the estate in her name. She could assign any of them to micro-manage it whilst she fled the falling ruins of her family as she had so many years ago. She survived then; she could survive again. The voice inside made it seem so easy.

Just. Run. Away.

Chapter Two

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S onia let the car idle in the middle of an intersection on Fairview Road. She cracked the window just a few inches. Beyond it was silence. It was only early in the afternoon, but already the sky was darkening behind a curtain of clouds. The solstice was only a few days past; most New England wildlife was well into migration, hibernation or otherwise mitigation of their activity. Few birds sang, the broadleaf trees in this area had no leaves left to rustle through the wind, and that wind only moaned quietly in mourning. Life seemed to have left the small town in the wake of the longest night, and only the evergreen mountains in her rear-view mirror gave any sense of longevity.

Behind her lay her mother’s house – her house, soon – on the northernmost edges of town, pressing up against the sloping hills which led into Greylock Forest. The forest loomed over her like her past, and no matter how far she drove, the felt like those endless miles of wilderness would always be behind her.

Her family house was one of seven – the Seven Houses of the Covenant – the reclusive semi-private estate with only one road leading in and out. Covenant Way. Amongst the oldest buildings in town, dating back to the founding of the Harrow in the last years of the seventeenth century, they watched over the town from their elevation as their inhabitants had watched over the town during its long and sordid history. Rebuilt, renovated, added to and sometimes partially demolished, these old houses became sprawls in and of themselves over the long generations, whilst the cores remained intact. It made her think of the town itself. People would come and go, buildings and shops would be built and abandoned, but the central core of the town – those folk who proudly trace their bloodlines back to 1694 – remained steadfast as the central pillar to Stokeshaw Harrow.

Or so they liked to believe. Sonia noted that three of the old houses had degraded to a dishevelled remnant of their former glory. Wardwell House was Stokeshaw’s resident haunted house, or so anyone below drinking age would have you believe. Even sceptical adults braced themselves as they passed the derelict, ruined façade of boarded up doors and windows. The house itself seemed to lurch under the weight of its failure, but lurched with the predatory threat of a dead snake with one poisonous bite left in it. Even looking at it played tricks on her vision. None of the walls appeared straight, and yet she couldn’t see where they betrayed the straight ground. The building seemed poised to collapse, and yet in what direction she couldn’t be sure. The house – like the family after which it was named – was dead, its body buried in the shame of the murderous scandal which finished it off, and few had dared to walk its halls in living memory.

If Wardwell House was dead, then Benham House was a bustling ruin of activity as infestation swarmed over it like insects over carrion. Benham’s last matriarch had died daughterless before Sonia was born, and countless women – and even men – had since arisen to lay claim to the small-town empire left in its wake. The Wardwell and Benham houses had carried a malevolent mystique about them since Sonia was a girl. Only occasionally occupied and never truly a home to any who did, they served as both a memorial and a ghastly warning, part haunted house and part museum, a testimony to the fate of the Founding Houses of Stokeshaw.

In the decades since Sonia had fled the town, Horner House had also become overgrown and derelict, as if the ever-encroaching forest threatened to reclaim it for its own. It was the warning her aunts had internalised into their flesh, so much so that they forsook their own children to preserve it. Superstition and tradition in equal measure. Matrilineality. And with it was appropriation. Sonia had not forgotten the rote-learned dogma of her infancy, even in her long years trying to escape it. So once out from under the dome of Stokeshaw’s education, she had learned that whilst incongruous with the rest of the western world as it passed them by, matrilineality was a cultural staple of many Native tribes of the region, including the Iroquois Mohicans whose land this once was, where heritage was only assured through the female lineage.

It should seem ironic that such a stanchly insular New England people should owe so much to the First People whom they displaced, but that was small relief to Sonia now as she sat in her idling car with the full weight of three hundred years of heritage upon her shoulders. She put the car into gear, gradually easing downhill, the turnoff to Reservoir Road on her left granting a brief glimpse through the tree line to the river banks which fed the titular reservoir. The asphalt was a deep black under the light covering of snow; the road was freshly paved when compared to the longstanding paths of the rest of Stokeshaw. Another new development incongruous with her memories of the town; vacation cabins and water-sport businesses lined the new road which hugged the frolicking bends and turns of Deerblood River. The small cottages which once lined the banks of the river had fallen to time and to floods, and Sonia wondered at the feat it must have taken to convince the rigid council board to permit the audacious new buildings, with ostentatious canopies and large, post-modern glass fronts overlooking the churning rapids of the shallows.

Before her lurked a wretched old building, standing solitary on a wide pedestrian refuge at the center of a large Y-junction. The building pre-dated even the rotted sign at the southern edge of town. Now modestly designated the Waranoak Town Hall, Sonia suspected the eroded and weathered old brass plaque still stood just inside those creaking wooden doors. Still bearing the name of Stokeshaw’s first building’s original purpose, the plaque read ‘Stokeshaw Convent.’

Past the hall to her right, the road crumbled away to an unsealed path leading into the Taconic Ridge; that westernmost barrier between Stokeshaw Harrow and the rest of the world. The third-world dirt road was granted only for the sake of necessity, but the window of opportune weather needed to safely navigate the twisting switchbacks kept regular traffic from daring the route. To cross the ridge, all but the stoutest hearts travelled south almost to Pittsfield before turning west to cross the Ridge into New York State at a less perilous location.

With Covenant Way and the wretched old town hall behind her, Stokeshaw was for all appearances like any other small American town. Storefronts down Main Street were decorated with the owner’s names, and no two sold the same things. This town ain’t big enough for two of any particular store. The tall concrete walls of The Strand – Stokeshaw’s own movie theatre – were a testament to that, being the hollow shell of a Wallmart which had tried and failed to take root in town. People simply didn’t show up.

Of Stokeshaw’s two hotels, she had chosen the reputable old four-story just off Main Street, even though it overlooked the Hillside Cemetery to its north. The other, a questionable motel chain on the turnoff to the southern exit, only held appeal insofar as it was the furthest point in town from her family home. That motel had not been successful. Being that Stokeshaw was located far off of any highway, the only visitors were visitors to town, and with most people visiting and staying with family, that was not a large customer base. The other problem was Hawley Bog. This time of year was typically fine; the shallow pools of stillwater dotting the flatlands frozen over. But the precarious lowlands were only ever one heavy rainfall away from being an impenetrable swampland of sinkholes and mosquitoes. More than a few of the missing persons who litter the town’s history are suspected to be sleeping beneath thirty feet of anoxic peat south of town.

Flanked on all sides by natural boundaries: Greylock Forest to the north, Deerblood River to the east, the Taconic Ridge to the west and the low peatlands of Hawley Bog to the south, Sonia once again remembered the number of natural elements which conspired to entrench the isolated mentality of Stokeshaw’s inhabitants. It chilled her that her hometown in twentieth century Massachusetts could feel so isolating, like an untouched snapshot of a time in memoriam. Like a stone monolith in a storm, years blow by but Stokeshaw Harrow stands unchanged.

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Evan Stone stood at the foot of the stairs, staring upwards as if to scale a mountain. His parents had already forgotten him; dismissing him in the rush and flurry of hugs and crying and platitudes. He vaguely heard I’m so sorry we didn’t come sooner, a line that he distinctly remembered his mother saying they should say on the short drive over. Not that they didn’t mean it, but his mother was so occupied with how Mr and Mrs Reid might react, she had all but forgotten how she would sound.

A dozen lines ran through Evan’s head at the foot of those stairs. "You should tell her you’re there for her. His father was nodding. And tell her she has to stay strong. Jack, is that really what he should say to an eleven-year-old girl?" He had no idea how he was supposed to act, and it didn’t seem fair that he had to act. He was grieving, too. He had barely come to terms with Sean and Bobby’s deaths himself. How was he supposed to support another?

His father had talked to him the morning after they found Sean and Bobby. Most of it was now lost in a numb haze which his memory couldn’t or wouldn’t penetrate, but he remembered one particular phrase. "You just have to take it one step at a time now, Son." It seemed like good enough advice for now, as Evan took the first step, and then the next, dodging the squeaky stair as much out of habit as to make himself sound as lightheaded as he felt.

The top of the staircase offered an aslant view into Lily and Sean’s room. He could see her there, or part of her, sitting on her bed, hands folded in her lap, facing the door but gaze dropped and blank. Sean’s bed was closest to the door. It was so he could protect Lily if anyone ever barged in during the night. At least, that’s what he said. Evan didn’t really believe him, since he could remember numerous times where Lily ‘saved’ Sean from spiders, mice, and that one time Sean found a garter snake under his bike in the Grove. Lily gently chased it off with a stick, saying she read in a book that they weren’t dangerous. Evan remembered that same book in the library, but there was still no way he was going to go near that snake.

Making his way to the doorway, his steps slowed. Lily was still looking down, shoulders hunched, not moving except for her breathing, which he could only tell because her braids bobbed up and down as she did. It was slow, but occasionally jarred from a sharp and staggered intake of breath. Evan felt like an intruder. In his mind this was Sean’s room, and he was going in there without Sean’s permission. He knocked on the doorframe.

It took a moment for Lily to pull herself out of the seeming catatonic haze she was in. Her eyes darted up, catching sight of Evan in the doorway. Immediately, it was if a shroud had fallen away from in front of her eyes, and the colour returned to them in vibrant blue. Her back straightened and she flung herself off her bed, throwing her arms around Evan’s shoulders in a hug.

Evan staggered backwards, surprised and caught off guard by her sudden spring to life before being pulled forward with Lily’s hand around his wrist, tugging him impatiently into their room. I’m so glad you came, she exclaimed. Evan was planted firmly on Sean’s bed as Lily sprung back to hers. He awkwardly combed his ratty brown hair with his fingers, uncomfortable on his friend’s bed, and unprepared for Lily’s unexpected vibrancy. I’m going crazy in here. There was a grim determination in her words. Not desperate, not yet, but fighting for some floating timber from a wreck to hold onto. "I can’t stop myself

Reviews for Harrow

[sprocketeer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Still reading, since I can't get through the first page and the huge WRITE A REVIEW pop-up without writing a review. I can say that the writing is elegant and atmospheric, so far.