Children of Eternity Omnibus

by P. T. Dilloway

  Right on cue a section of the roof peeled away like the skin on a potato. The girls nearest to the hole screamed and ran over to huddle by Rebecca and Annie. “It’s all right, children,” Rebecca said, trying to summon the authority of Miss Brigham or Samantha. Yet even as she said this, she saw a puddle getting larger and larger on the floor. In no time at all the dormitory would be flooded. “I want everyone to gather up their things and then we’ll go over to the other dormitory.”

  Rebecca tried to set a good example by remaining calm as she walked across the dormitory to gather up spare clothes and dolls for the youngest girls. Some of the others began to join in, but Helena began to sob. “I hate this place!” she wailed.

  “Helena, stop it. Get anything you don’t want soaked and then go to the dining room.” Rebecca tried to fix the younger girl with a hard stare the way Samantha did. “Unless you want to stay here and get wet?”

  “No,” Helena mumbled. She went over to her pallet to grab her clothes.

  The water was an inch deep through most of the dormitory by the time Rebecca guided the last girl into the dining room. To her surprise the boys were already in there. As they did at dinner and in church, the girls sat on one side of the room while the boys sat on the other.

  “What are you doing here?” Rebecca asked.

  “Water’s coming through the roof,” David said, speaking for the rest of the boys. “Where’s Boobies and Fatty?”

  “Samantha and Prudence left before the storm. They have yet to return.”

  “They left you in charge?”

  Rebecca stretched to her full height, still a foot shorter than David. “That’s right. I’m in charge of the girls.”

  He grabbed her by the arm and then led her into the kitchen. He looked around to make sure they were alone. “We can’t stay here. It won’t be long until the storm gets in here too.”

  “Then where are we supposed to go?”

  “The caves.”

  “The caves? That’s so far away.”

  “The storm won’t get us in there.”

  “But by the time we get there—if we get there—we’ll be drenched.”

  “You got a better idea?” He waited for a moment and then grinned. “I didn’t think so.”

  “Give me a minute to think.”

  “This ought to be good.”

  Rebecca ignored him and closed her eyes. She tried to think of what Samantha would do in this situation. They needed somewhere close by that would be stronger than the dormitories. But there wasn’t much else around, just the shops and kitchen and—

  “The church.”

  “What?”

  “The church should be safer. The walls are stone and the roof is much stronger.”

  David stared at her for a moment and then nodded. “That could work. Good job, Tubby.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “You sound like Wendy.”

  “Well maybe if you weren’t such a bully people wouldn’t have to say it.”

  “Let’s just get the kids and go over there.”

  “Fine.” Rebecca led the way back out to the dining room. She cleared her throat to try and get everyone’s attention. Only Annie and a couple of the other girls looked her way.

  “Everyone listen!” David barked. “We’re getting out of here. Now.”

  “Where?” Wendell asked.

  “To the church,” Rebecca said.

  “But it’s not time for services.”

  “I know, but we’ll be safer there. So, I want everyone to join hands and make one long chain. That way we can all stay together.” The children seemed skeptical, but when David cleared his throat, they began to do it.

  Within a few minutes, all of the children had joined hands. Rebecca had David’s hand in one of hers and Annie’s in the other. “Here we go, children,” Rebecca said. “No matter what happens, keep a hold of those in front and behind. Don’t go too fast. We want everyone to stay together.”

  David opened the front doors. He had only to slip the latch and the wind did the rest, the doors banging open. Some of the smaller children yelped at this. Annie tightened her grip on Rebecca’s hand. “It’s going to be all right!” Rebecca shouted over the wind.

  The path from the dormitory to the church had turned to mud. Rebecca’s shoes sank into the ground; the mud threatened to yank the shoes right off her feet. She had to struggle to get her feet to move. The smaller girls like Annie had an even more difficult time of it. Rebecca had to pull Annie’s feet from the mud. At the same time rain and wind lashed at her, nearly blinding her.

  “We’re not going to make it!” she shouted to David.

  “Just keep going, Tubby.”

  “I told you not to call me that!”

  Out of spite she forced herself to take another step. Then she turned to Annie. “Climb on me, sweetheart.” The toddler scrambled onto Rebecca and wrapped her arms around Rebecca’s neck. Rebecca took Helena’s hand to reform the chain.

  One step at a time they made their way to the church. By the time they got to the front doors, Rebecca was soaked through. Annie still clung to her, shivering from the cold and dampness. Not even Helena had the strength to whine as they staggered into the church.

  As Rebecca had figured, the church’s stone walls and wooden roof had held fast against the storm. “Don’t get too close to the windows,” she said as the children began to fan out among the pews.

  Once everyone had gotten inside, David and a couple of the older boys managed to yank the doors closed and latched them. The doors still rattled from the wind, but it held. Rebecca forced herself to smile and sound as if this were just another normal night in Eternity. “All right, children, let’s get out of these wet clothes and into something drier. We don’t want you to catch cold.”

  With some grumbling the children began struggling out of their wet nightclothes. Rebecca crouched behind the podium Miss Brigham used for services so none of the boys—especially David—would see her undress. Once she’d gotten her nightgown off, she put a hand on her bulging tummy. She thought of what Samantha had said to her; in a year or two she probably would be as big as Prudence. No wonder David called her Tubby. The strangest part was that she didn’t eat any more than skinny girls like Helena and yet she kept getting chubbier. “It’s not fair,” she muttered.

  The clothes she’d brought with her weren’t much drier, but at least they didn’t cling to her so much. She was trying to smooth down her wet tangled hair when she heard the side door bang open. “Samantha?”

  “No, dear,” Miss Brigham said. She looked even worse than the children, her hair a sodden mess and her dress slashed open in several places. She didn’t have time to try changing her clothes before Annie ran to her and hugged her around the waist.

  “Miss Brigham! You’re here!”

  “That’s right, dear. I’m here. Just barely. Such a dreadful storm. I’ve never seen anything like it. Then again I suppose I’ve only been here for five years, at least that I can remember.” She pried Annie loose and then looked around the room. “Where are Samantha and Prudence?”

  “I was hoping they were with you,” Rebecca said. “They left before the storm.”

  “They did? Why would they go sneaking around at night? Especially, Prudence. I thought she was much more responsible than that.”

  Rebecca took Annie from Miss Brigham and then explained what had happened with Samantha, followed by Prudence going after her. “Then the storm began tearing the roof off the dormitories, so David and I brought the children here.”

  “That is very good thinking, dear,” Miss Brigham said. “We should be safe here in God’s house. He would never do anything to us here. Not unless we’ve offended Him in some way. I can’t imagine how we might have made Him so angry as to send such a terrible storm.”

  “I don’t know either,” Rebecca said. “What about Samantha and Prudence?”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do for them, dear. Not in th
is storm, in the dark. We’d only wind up getting ourselves lost and hurt. We will have to trust in the Lord to protect them.” Miss Brigham raised her voice to add, “Children, let’s all bow our heads to pray for the Lord’s forgiveness and for His protection of Samantha and Prudence.”

  Rebecca knelt on the floor with Annie next to her. They bowed their heads and closed their eyes. Please don’t let anything bad happen to Samantha and Prudence, she thought. Let them come back safely to us. I don’t think I can go on without them. Amen.

  She looked up to see Miss Brigham still knelt in prayer. Rebecca drifted over to where David sat, his arms crossed. “Didn’t you pray for them?”

  “Why? If God wants them dead or not is up to him. Nothing we can do about it.”

  “That’s not a nice thing to say.”

  “It’s the truth. You really think God listens to you, Tubby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why haven’t you prayed to him to make you skinnier?”

  “I have.”

  “There you go.”

  “Just because He hasn’t made me skinny doesn’t mean He doesn’t hear me.”

  “So he just wants you to be fat then?”

  “Why do you have to be so cruel?” Tears came to Rebecca’s eyes. She ran into a far corner of the church so that mean boy wouldn’t see her cry. The worst part was that she had thought the same things herself sometimes. Why did God make her this way? Why couldn’t He have made her pretty and skinny like Helena. It wasn’t fair.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder. She assumed it would be Miss Brigham, but then she heard David say, “I’m sorry.”

  She wiped her eyes and then turned to face him. “You are?”

  “You are fat, but you’re not like that cow Prudence. You’re stronger, like Samantha.”

  “Thank you—I think.”

  “We couldn’t have made it without you. The church was your idea, after all. And you’re better with the girls.”

  “We couldn’t have made it without you either. The boys respect you.”

  “They’re scared of me.” He smiled at her. “They should be.”

  Rebecca giggled at this. She had never considered before how strong David was, and how handsome too. He was probably stronger than Samantha, perhaps the strongest person on Eternity. “I’m not scared of you.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “That’s good.” He leaned down and to her surprise, he kissed her. Not on the cheek as Miss Brigham had when Rebecca was younger, but on the lips, like in the books Samantha had read to them. She didn’t know what to do, so she just closed her eyes and kissed him back while the storm continued to rage around them.

  Chapter 9: Mementoes

  Samantha couldn’t see anything in the cellar. It certainly didn’t smell like the cellars in Eternity, though. The cellars in the village smelled like the ripe vegetables kept down there: potatoes and carrots for the most part. Pryde’s cellar to her surprise had more of a floral scent, as if he’d left bundles of flowers down here. That didn’t fit with the Mr. Pryde she knew.

  She groped around to find some kind of light. Her hand finally brushed against a small square of cardboard. Though she couldn’t see, she was fairly certain it was a matchbook. Not the wooden matches they had in the village, but the cheap cardboard ones they had on the mainland.

  She confirmed her suspicions when she flicked the cover of the matchbook open. She fumbled around until she managed to rip one match off. Getting it to light took four tries. Finally the match flared to life with an orange flame. That flame didn’t last long, but it was enough for her to see a lantern hanging on the wall.

  Samantha had to light another match to examine the lantern. Unlike those in Eternity, the lantern didn’t use oil. From the heaviness of the lantern’s base and the switch on it, she knew it was electric, run by batteries. She flicked the lantern’s switch before the match burned her fingers. The lantern came to life with a white-blue light almost like the moon.

  She swept the lantern around the room and gasped. Pryde’s cellar did not contain vegetables; it contained clothes. She saw pile after pile of women’s clothes along the floor. These clothes weren’t the dull gray dresses worn by the girls on Eternity either. Samantha saw blues, pinks, yellows, floral prints, stripes, and even polka dots, not the sort of thing Reverend Crane would have allowed.

  Her stomach began to churn as she studied the clothes. She had studied Reverend Crane’s ledgers that had detailed the ages of the children on Eternity over the last three hundred fifty years. Except for her there had not been any additions to the roster during that time. That left only two possibilities: either the Reverend had kept replacing the girls by kidnapping new ones from the mainland or else the women these clothes had belonged to were dead. From what she knew of Mr. Pryde, she suspected the latter.

  She set the lantern on the floor so she could use both hands to study the clothes. As she did, she noticed another strange thing. All of these clothes were huge, for women even bigger around than Prudence. Samantha held up a white blouse that could have fit three of her.

  Fat women are his prey. He goes to the mainland and stalks them. He might kill them on the mainland or bring them back to Eternity to finish off. Then he keeps the clothes as a souvenir, a trophy of his kill.

  This thought made her shiver not only because of the implication, but because she hadn’t really thought it. It was as if someone else had spoken directly into her mind. It was something from the past she couldn’t remember. She waited a moment for anything else to happen, but no other strange thoughts entered her mind, no memories resurfaced. With a sigh she tossed the blouse aside and picked up a pastel green dress that would look gorgeous on Prudence.

  As she sorted through the clothes, Samantha began to understand why she had smelled flowers down here. Some of the clothes still had the floral scents of perfume on them, even after all these years. She shivered again as she imagined Pryde coming down here to smell the clothes of his victims so he could relive the experience.

  The farther down she went in the piles, the older the clothes became. The skirts became longer and then turned to bulky dresses. She unearthed a gown that seemed to weigh as much as she did from the layers of cotton and lace. The skirt was an inflexible circle at least three feet in diameter—a hoop skirt. She knew these had gone out of fashion long, long ago.

  She had to stop her search as her stomach cramped. Samantha put a hand to her stomach and groaned. She hadn’t eaten in a long time, but the cramp wasn’t from hunger. For that matter her stomach still felt nauseous. She really ought to get out of this awful cellar and go—

  Go where? Back to town? She didn’t want to go crawling back there. But her supplies were all gone now, scattered across the island thanks to the storm. She couldn’t try crossing the sea without food and water. She would just have to sneak back in at night and take something.

  Her stomach settled for a few moments, which allowed her to think. Her clothes were still drenched and clinging to her from the storm. Even if these clothes were made for someone much bigger than her, they were at least dry. She ought to find something before she went back to the village.

  Samantha’s stomach cramped a few more times as she continued her search through the piles. She did her best to ignore the pain, but every now and then she put her head down on the clothes and let out a groan. When she got back to town she would have to take a sip of fountain water, just enough to cure whatever was wrong with her. Or maybe Pryde had left some down here. A few drops and she would be right as rain.

  She reached the final pile without finding anything even close to fitting her. Then her hand brushed against something stiff and coarse. She pulled out a jacket made of a rough blue material. Denim, that’s what it was called. Unlike the other clothes, the denim jacket also looked about her size.

  She stood up to try the jacket on. It was a couple of sizes too big, the hem coming to about the middle of her th
ighs and the sleeves overhanging her fingers by an inch or two. Still, it was close enough. Plus the rough material was dry and would be sturdy enough to make it through the forest without tearing. She buttoned the jacket and smiled at the warmth it provided.

  With the jacket still on, she resumed her digging. She found a pair of pants made from the same material as the jacket. Blue jeans. There was also a blouse made of black cotton fabric. A T-shirt. Both articles looked a bit too big for her, but they would serve her purposes.

  She changed into the dry clothes and again smiled. There was something familiar about this ensemble. A voice whispered at her to check the pockets. She rifled through the interior and exterior pockets of the jacket and the pockets of the jeans without finding anything. Yet she couldn’t help feeling she should have found something.

  She put a hand to her wet hair and felt something else was missing. Her limbs began to move of their own accord as she dug around the pile. At last she turned up an orange band made of a stretchy fabric—elastic. She pushed her hair back and gathered it into a short ponytail, which she secured with the elastic band. One rogue tress slipped out to caress her cheek.

  A mirror winked at her in the light. She toddled over to it, careful not to trip on the cuffs of the pants. She stared at her face in the mirror, a smile spreading across her face. She saw more than a simple reflection; she saw a memory of her past. It’s me, she thought. This was how she had looked in her past, before Pryde had kidnapped her. Perhaps she hadn’t worn these exact clothes, but she had worn something similar to them.

  Her head began to ache from these thoughts. Another stomach cramp nearly doubled her over. Maybe she should get some sleep; it was probably almost morning by now and she hadn’t slept all night. The piles of clothes would make a decent enough nest, softer even than her pallet back in town. She curled up on one pile and then pulled up a couple of skirts as blankets. Within moments she had fallen to sleep.