Suffer the Children

by John Saul

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  The cave was real.

  Four bodies. One of them with an arm missing.

  A dead cat.

  A knife.

  The blood. The blood and the mud.

  She began remembering, and she felt her mind beginning to go numb.

  Images flashed before her: Stumbling across the field in the middle of the night. Following someone. Who was she following?

  Creeping through the woods, trying to keep up with the fleeting shadow ahead of her.

  Rocks. Slippery rocks. Her ankle was twisting. She couldn’t catch up. She tried, but then the shadow disappeared.

  Darkness, and a closed-in place. And then a beam of light shining in the darkness. And rope, there was rope. What was the rope for?

  And sounds. Children’s voices. Cursing, yelling.

  A shaft. She seemed to be looking into a shaft, and there was light. Light was flickering off something. But what?

  A knife. She saw a knife flashing in the yellow light.

  And then a face looked up at her. A face. Whose face?

  She remembered.

  Pain flashed through Sarah’s head, and she raised her hands to her temples. She looked wildly around the room. The face was there, there in the room with her. Her sister.

  “Elizabeth—” she cried. “Elizabeth …” And then another name came to her, a name she had heard in the darkness. “Elizabeth,” she cried again, her voice rising in a shriek. Then “Eliza … beth. Beth! Beth!”

  And then something snapped in Sarah’s mind, and her hands fell limply to her lap. The color slowly returned to her face, but there was no expression. Her eyes—the eyes that had become so expressive, dancing merrily in the impish face—had gone vacant.

  “Sarah?”

  Elizabeth said the word softly, tentatively. She reached out to her sister, but there was no response. Sarah sat quietly, and the vacant eyes peered almost sightlessly from the expressionless face. “Sarah?” Elizabeth said again.

  Dr. Felding roused himself. It had happened so fast He should have been ready with a hypodermic needle and a sedative. But it shouldn’t have happened so fast. It should have been gradual, should have come back to her slowly, in pieces. But it had all crashed in on her, and she hadn’t been ready for it. She hadn’t been able to handle it. Sarah Conger’s mind had closed down again. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew that for Sarah it was over. The past had locked her in its grip again. He looked helplessly at Elizabeth.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “My God, I’m sorry.”

  “What happened?” Elizabeth faltered. “What’s happened to her? She’s all right, isn’t she?” There was a note of desperation in her voice, and Felding pressed a button under his desk that would signal a nurse to come in with a sedative.

  “She’s all right,” he said soothingly. “She remembered, that’s all. It all came back to her.”

  “But,” Elizabeth stammered, “but look at her … she’s—she looks like she used to …” Elizabeth began softly crying as she realized what had happened. Her sister was gone again, and this time she might never be back.

  It wasn’t until late that afternoon that they let Elizabeth go home, and even then Dr. Felding insisted on driving her. They were followed by someone else from Ocean Crest, who would bring the doctor back.

  “I don’t think we could have stopped it,” Felding was saying. “It was too fast. She just caved in. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  Elizabeth felt numb. She kept hearing Sarah’s voice calling her name. “Elizabeth … Elizabeth …” And then that other name. Beth. Beth. Something stirred deep inside of her.

  “She loved you very much,” she heard Felding saying now. “That’s why she was calling you at the end. She wanted you to help her.” He reached over and patted Elizabeth’s hand, and wasn’t surprised when she withdrew it. They were in the Conger driveway now.

  “Do you want me to come in with you?” Felding asked gently.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No,” she said, “but thank you. I’ll be all right. Really I will.”

  Reluctantly Felding let her get out of the car alone, and watched her until she disappeared into the house. Then he parked the car, and got into his own as it pulled up behind Elizabeth’s. He glanced at the house once more, then drove away. One day, he thought, the past will let go and Sarah will be free.

  Elizabeth sat in front of the fireplace, staring at the blank space above the mantel. The name kept running through her mind.

  Beth.

  Beth.

  Sarah hadn’t been calling for help. She had been accusing. But whom had she been accusing? Elizabeth struggled with her mind, feeling there was something she should remember. Had there been somebody in the attic last night? Had Sarah really heard something? She decided to go up and look around.

  In the attic she found herself drawn to one of the far corners, a corner she hadn’t been in for years. The corner where the old portrait lay.

  Elizabeth picked up the portrait and leaned it against one of the rafters of the sloping roof. She looked at it and couldn’t remember why it was that she had wanted it taken out of the study. The child was so pretty, all dressed in blue, with ruffles down the front and around the hem. And a little bonnet perched on the head, only partly covering the blond hair that cascaded over her shoulders. Elizabeth decided to take it back downstairs and rehang it in the study. Then she glanced at the spot where it had lain, and she saw the doll—the doll with the missing arm. It was propped up on what looked like an old book, and the book seemed to be familiar. She decided to take all three things down to the study.

  She carefully hung the portrait over the mantel, adjusted it to be sure it was straight, then stood back to admire it. It was right, she knew. It belonged there.

  She propped the doll on one of the chairs, the strange old-fashioned doll. Then she noticed that the doll was dressed the same way as the girl in the picture. It must have been her doll, Elizabeth thought Beth’s doll.

  Elizabeth seated herself in the wing-back chair. Beth’s doll, she repeated to herself. Why had she thought that? Was that the name of the girl in the portrait, the girl who looked so much like herself?

  She picked up the old book and opened it Somewhere, on the edges of her memory, she thought she had seen it before. A long time ago.

  It was a diary, handwritten on lined, yellowed paper, and the writing was that of a child. The words were carefully formed in a clear, old-fashioned hand that bore the odd look of a young person practicing penmanship. Much of it was faded and illegible, but Elizabeth could make out pieces of it.

  He keeps looking at me.

  He was watching me today. He watches me when I play in the field.

  My father tried to hurt me today.

  I wish he’d go away. I wish my father would go away. Mother wants him to go away too.

  He tried to hurt me again today. Why does Daddy want to hurt me?

  There was more, but Elizabeth couldn’t make it out She turned the pages of the old diary slowly, then closed it She reopened it at the front and reread the inscription on the first page. It was written in a strong hand, a masculine hand, and it had not faded. The initials under it were the same as her father’s: J.C. The diary must have been given to the little girl by her father.

  She set the diary aside and stared up at the portrait It was your diary, she thought It was yours, wasn’t it?

  Cecil, her ancient cat, came into the room then, and nuzzled against her leg. She took him into her lap. She stroked the old cat for a long time and continued to stare up at the portrait.

  Late in the evening, Elizabeth stood up. She glanced at the broken doll one more time; then, carrying Cecil, she walked to the kitchen. She opened the knife drawer and took out the largest of the knives. Without bothering to shut the drawer again, she went back to the study and stared mutely at the portrait.

  “All right,” she said at last “All right.”
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  Cradling the cat against her bosom with one hand and holding the knife with the other, Elizabeth Conger walked slowly out of the house.

  She started across the field, toward the forest and the embankment beyond. As she walked through the night, the odd inscription in the diary ran through her mind over and over:

  Suffer the Children, it had read, to Come Unto Me.

  Elizabeth Conger was answering the summons.