Iron Codex 2 - The Nightmare Garden Read Free Page B

bucket of water when I needed one? “I’ll keep going,” I told Conrad quietly. “But I’m not going to forget about this. I
am
going to get her back.”
    “I’m not saying forget it,” he said. “Just focus on staying safe until our father comes back and can help us settle things.”
    He started walking again, his stiff-shouldered posture evidence that he was dismissing Dean and me—and the straggling Cal and Bethina—so I spoke my last thought to his back: “You know, Archie coming back and saving the day is about as likely as a snowball surviving the heart of the Engine.” It was harsh, but it was true. Conrad was the only one who refused to see that.
    Second entry:
    What can I say about my father? I knew him as only a story for the first fourteen years of my life, a figure both larger and smaller than any real father could hope to be
.
    I know that he stayed just long enough to watch Conrad take his first steps and see me born before he returned to the city of Arkham, to Graystone, his family home, and then had nothing more to do with us
.
Nerissa never mentioned it, but I knew they weren’t married, and that a family like the Graysons didn’t need bastards running around. It made me angry, made me feel small and worthless, like a trinket rather than somebody’s child. Usually I pretended I didn’t have a father at all
.
    I only saw him once: when the Proctors scooped me up and Grey Draven told me the truth about the necrovirus, that it was a lie and that he planned to use me to lure in the insurgents my father was running with. My father showed up and helped me get out of Ravenhouse, the bastion of the Proctors in Lovecraft, and run to Arkham, back to my brother and into the Mists
.
    We spoke maybe ten words to each other
.
    So you can see why I don’t have a lot of faith in Archibald Grayson showing up and saving the day, even though Conrad thinks he’ll solve everything. People relied on the Proctors to solve everything too—to keep them safe from the necrovirus—and look what happened. The world is going to burn. Maybe not all at once, but what happened in Lovecraft is surely worldwide news by now, and who knows what’s already crossed over from the Thorn Land to make a picnic of the human race? I can’t even think about it without feeling like I want to cry, scream, or simply lie down, let the guilt eat me alive and give up
.
    I don’t know if our father is coming back. I don’t know if he’ll help us if he does
.
    I don’t know anything except that Conrad’s wrong about me, and about our mother when he says that
she’s a lost cause, and that if I want to survive, I have to cast my lot with a father I barely know. If I can go back, if I can at least make sure she’s alive and see what condition the city is in from what I did—if it still exists at all—then I’ll know
.
    I’ll know exactly what I did and what the damage was, the number of deaths and exactly how many tons of guilt should press on me. I’ll know if there’s anything I can do to make it right, because the plain fact is, innocent people shouldn’t pay for my stupidity. That, nobody had to teach me. That’s just the truth
.
    And maybe if I know what happened, I can stop dreaming about it
.
    I’d stopped keeping track of how many miles we’d walked days ago, but not of the day. My birthday had come and gone, and so far, I still had my mind. But I wasn’t cured. Periodically I felt the scratches and whispers of the madness, and I waited for the iron poison to awaken it fully in my blood and plunge me down an endless hole of insanity.
    The road disappeared for a time, and we relied on the dim sun to navigate until it came into view again. Well, Conrad did. The rest of us were so tired we mostly just trudged. Cal had barely spoken since we’d come through from Arkham to the Mists, and finally, when I looked back and saw him stumble, I dropped back to walk with him.
    “How are you holding up?”
    Cal grunted. He was a