Come Little Children

by Melhoff, D.

  Crackle, pop! Pop! “Can anybody tell me”—crackle, swish—“what God gave to Moses?” Swish, swish, pop!

  Camilla watched as two of the shier children looked down and quietly started plucking the burgundy carpet below their feet. A pack of mini von Trapps scrunched up their faces and checked to see if their siblings knew the correct answer, but all six of them seemed utterly stumped. They glanced at their parents in the congregation but received no help from them either; the adults were all leaning forward in their seats, having missed what the old lady had mumbled through the hissing lapel mike. Camilla snickered. Can’t have the word of God coming in too loud and clear, or Christians might actually start questioning it.

  “Do you know?” a timid voice piped up.

  Camilla looked toward the lectern and saw a little girl staring at her from the altar steps. Unblinking.

  “Sure she does,” said another voice. “Tell us.”

  “Come on, help us out.”

  Camilla blinked, and suddenly every kid at the front of the church was staring at her. Their mouths weren’t moving, but their voices were whispering from somewhere deep inside her head.

  Tell us, quick.

  She doesn’t know—

  Yes she does. She just doesn’t want to help.

  Why won’t she help us? Why?

  Pop! pop! “What’s that, Ms. Mousey?” Crackle, swish! The old crone held the puppet up to her ear and pretended to hear it whisper the answer she was looking for. “God gave Moses”—crackle, swish, swish—“commandments.” Pop! Pop!

  The old woman continued talking about Moses, but her voice was drowned out by the increasing whispers of the little children. They were all looking inquisitively at Camilla in the back pew.

  Why are you sitting back there?

  Are you different than us?

  My mom makes me sit up here, why doesn’t yours?

  Are you really shy?

  Camilla gulped and shook her head. Shyness had nothing to do with why she never went up for the children’s lessons. The truth was, she hated being patronized. That’s all it was: just a bunch of Christian mollycoddling where chatty, conditioned children were praised like precocious geniuses and the quiet ones were talked down to like two-year-olds. To cap it off, the mere thought of having to recite answers for old Methuselah and that dumb rodent, Ms. Mousey, made her blood boil (of course, the questions were never that difficult—if you answered “Jesus,” “the cross,” or “for our sins,” you had a ninety-five percent chance of getting it right—but back then it was all about the principle).

  Pop! “Amen.”

  The pop twitched the whole church like a TV station going haywire, then coming back stable. None of the kids were staring at Camilla anymore—if they ever had been—and the old woman was beginning to back away, having just finished the children’s prayer and dismissed them for Sunday school.

  As the organ began playing again, the children raced down the aisle for the back of the church where the classrooms were. Camilla watched their cute faces rollick by, not a care in the world, and then looked around at the other people in the congregation. The parents were all smiling too, proud, content, watching their sons and daughters gambol down the aisle. Everyone seemed so happy.

  Come on, come on! The children grinned as they flew past. Their lips still weren’t moving.

  Come with us!

  It’s fun, we promise!

  As they flashed by, Camilla’s heart thumped faster. A wave of excitement washed over her and she reached for her mom’s legs to ask if she could go along too. I’ve changed my mind, mom! I want to go with them! But all she felt was the glossy varnish of the pew.

  She looked over. Her mother was gone.

  Glancing down, she noticed her feet were suddenly touching the ground, and that she was now wearing skin-tone leggings with a paisley skirt.

  She looked back at the string of kids running downstairs, but they were all gone—all except one. The last girl, a cute redhead with crooked teeth and black buckle shoes, came skipping down the carpet, waving excitedly as she ran past. It was like seeing a younger reflection whiz by. “See you! See you later, mom!” Then whoosh, she was gone.

  Mom?

  Camilla leaped out of the pew just as the narthex door wafted shut.

  Her hand lunged for the handle and gave it a firm pull, but it didn’t budge. It was locked. She peeked through the door’s windowpane and caught a fleeting glimpse of the girl’s back disappearing down the lobby stairs, then a second later the girl was out of sight.

  “Come back!” Camilla shouted, smacking the door with both hands. “Come back! Come open the door!”

  She wrung her fists around the golden handles and pulled as hard as she could, but her muscles were suddenly Jell-O. The more she tugged, the weaker she felt, as if every tendon and ligature were melting around her bones.

  “Help,” she grunted. “Someone…help…open this door!” She turned to the congregation.

  But everyone was gone.

  The families and the minister had all disappeared. The organist was gone too, even though a soft hymn was still creeping through the choir screen, filling the air along with the smoke that wafted off the suffocated candle wicks.

  The only other person in the sanctuary was the old woman standing at the bottom of the altar steps. She still had Ms. Mousey draped over her right hand, and the two of them—the puppet and the puppeteer—were like statues, staring down the aisle with black, pupil-less eyes.

  “Can you help me?” Camilla asked. But as soon as she spoke, she wished that she could take the words back. There was a terrible feeling in her gut that she didn’t want the old woman getting any closer.

  The woman didn’t move.

  Camilla tested the door handle behind her waist again; it didn’t budge.

  She took a deep breath and spun around, putting her lips against the small crack between the two handles, and called out, “Anyone there! I’m stuck in here!”

  She turned her head and put her ear to the crack, listening, but no one answered. The whole building was silent except for the chords of the slow nocturne echoing in the carillon tower.

  Camilla checked over her shoulder again: the old woman was still at the other end of the aisle, staring at her. She hadn’t moved an inch.

  Except…Wait—was she at the second pew before? Or the bottom of the altar?

  All of a sudden the pot lights went out.

  A feeling of panic welled up in Camilla’s throat as the room was swallowed by darkness. The only remaining light came from the stained-glass wall at the front of the church, which cast a long, distorted shadow of the old woman down the center aisle.

  Pop! Pop!

  The speakers above crackled like bullet fire and Camilla jolted, instantly letting go of the door. Her eyes were fixated on the old woman—and the old woman’s on hers—which made the hairs of her neck stand on end.

  The gut-wrenching screech that followed was half-human, half-static.

  “PLAGA MAGNA!” The speakers crackled like flames. “The Lord has prepared his people for a great slaughter! ELECTI CARNIFICUM! He has chosen their executioners!”

  Camilla recoiled against the door. Bits of dust crumbled from the ceiling onto the crown of her head as the volume shook the bolts of the speaker cases.

  “It is a day of ruin and desolation!” the old woman’s voice scraped. “A day of darkness and gloom, of clouds, blackness, trumpet calls, and battle cries!”

  The mouse puppet moved forward, pulling the crone down the aisle like the head of a small beast attached to a crooked arm. Its oil-drop eyes glinted in the darkness, coming closer and closer as the woman screeched though the blazing sound system.

  Crackle, pop! “Down go the walled cities!” Pop! Pop! “Down go the strongest battlements!” Crackle, swish!

  The whole church was shaking. Every quart of blood in Camilla’s veins was ice-cold as she watched the puppet stalk closer.

  She groped despera
tely for the gold handles again, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the rat’s twitching whiskers—that’s what it was, a rat, not a mouse. A rabid, thrashing rat that was closing in fast, its razor sharp teeth drooling saliva down its rubber chin onto its gray, dishcloth body.

  “PULVIS! Your blood will be poured into the dust, and your body will lie there rotting on the ground!”

  No! Stay away! Camilla tried screaming, but the words were lodged in her throat. She suffocated as the crone’s arm drew nearer, now within five feet.

  “Yes!”

  No!

  “Yes!” The head of the rat gnashed at her with its dripping, jagged teeth. She slammed her head against the door and finally let out a full-bore scream.

  The rat lunged for her neck and plunged its fangs up to its rotten gums. Shrieking, Camilla looked up and saw the old crone standing above her, staring down with two holes where her eyes should have been.

  The old woman screamed, “KEEP!” Pop, Pop! “YOUR!” Crackle, swish! “COMMANDEMENTS!” Pop! Pop! Pop!

  As the old woman bore down, the stained-glass wall behind her grew brighter and brighter, then finally the colors merged into one dazzling white light seconds before the whole world was swallowed up in the crone’s gaping black eye sockets.

  16

  Jasper’s Parable

  Camilla was in the Vincents’ rotunda, her head against the tough leather padding of the secretary’s chair, when she gasped back to consciousness, coughing and clutching the side of her neck as her jugular thumped harder than a thirty-pound jackrabbit’s foot.

  She wiped the sweat off her forehead and sat up, looking left, right, back, forward. Good. No one was there.

  No mouse puppets either.

  The nightmare was still seared on the insides of her eyelids. When she blinked she saw the old woman coming at her again, closer and closer, as the pops and crackles drowned out the organ music in the background.

  Camilla raked her fingernails through her hair and kept massaging the sore spot on her neck. Finally the dream started to blur in the hazy grog of consciousness; her heartbeat went from Mach ten to five to point-five in less than thirty seconds, then leveled off at an even 110 beats per minute. The pounding in her ears faded away too, bringing attention to the one part of the dream that wasn’t dissipating: the church music. A soft hymn was still floating through the air, casting a quiet, happy dissonance against the backdrop of horrific images that she had just witnessed.

  Pushing the nightmare away, she got out of the chair—a little wobbly at first, then sturdier after a good breath—and followed the music out of the room.

  Jasper was at the Steinway in the north parlor. His fingers were pressing the chords of #447 from an old leather-bound hymnal, performing for a nonexistent audience.

  Camilla appeared in the doorway, hovering, unsure if he noticed her standing there. Without glancing up, Jasper tipped his head toward a chair by the window. She obliged.

  The tune was unfamiliar. It was soft and dulcet; the simple melody in the right hand paired nicely with the broken chords of the left, then the two wandered off in counterpoint and repeated a couple bars later.

  As Camilla sat and listened, smoothing out the wrinkles in her pants, her mind wandered back to her nightmare. The faces of the children had seemed so real—and so close, too, like she could have reached out and touched them. She saw them running by again, their tiny shoes pattering past her on the carpet, and the last little girl appeared with remarkable precision: her hair was much richer than Camilla’s current mop of burgundy—just like when I was little—and her black buckle shoes could have been straight out of Camilla’s own closet when she was six or seven.

  She sniffed, rolling her eyes. Silly details.

  Except they weren’t silly. Not at all. The girl—my daughter—was familiar. As familiar as she was a stranger.

  An arpeggio ran up the piano. “So.” Jasper coughed. “Do you play?” He finished off the song with a glissando.

  She looked across the room and shook her head.

  “Bah. There goes my last hope for a duet partner.”

  “It’s pretty. I’ll listen any time.”

  “Mm. Good music makes for good reflection, especially when there’s a lot to, umm, mull over.” His fingers began fiddling around with a springy march next. “Speaking of, what was that all about?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “You were mumbling at the desk. I thought I’d play a little tune to wake you up before my sister came along and, well, did so less peacefully.” He winked to let her know it was their little secret.

  “Thank you.”

  “So?”

  “I…I can’t remember,” she fibbed. “Something about someone in my family. They’re sick.”

  The piano notes rode a scale to a higher octave. “Will they be all right?”

  “Doctors say no.”

  “My condolences.” Jasper frowned. “On the bright side, we Vincents have marvelous genes. Your own children will live long and healthy lives—I guarantee it.” The piece hopped back to the lower octave and kept bouncing along in two-four time.

  Camilla swallowed her mewl. She looked at the family portrait above the mantelpiece and thought, marvelous genes, maybe, but terrible track record. She studied the two rows of Vincents standing in the painting and took in their ghostly canvas smiles. It was an eerie image to anyone who knew what would happen to them.

  The four boys in the front row, killed overseas.

  Their father, descended to madness.

  Their aunt, consumed by a mysterious addiction.

  “Would you mind if I ask a few questions?” Camilla said pointedly.

  “By all means, constable.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No, no, that’s fine. Try me.”

  Her eyes were still on the family portrait. “Which one is Warren?”

  “The one on left,” Jasper said without looking up. The person he indicated was a burly, barrel-chested man with a moustache the size of a dust-pan broom. At what Camilla guessed was six foot five and more than 300 pounds, he was the largest man in the family by far, and undoubtedly the most intimidating. He towered over his miniature wife—assumedly the matron in the tight, schoolmarm dress standing beside him—and Camilla had to stop herself from trying to solve how those two geometrically opposed shapes had ever procreated successfully, and at least four times at that.

  “Peter said he ran the experiments that led to the discovery. Did he document them?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Warren wasn’t…Well, he wasn’t an academic. Clearly. In any case, documentation would be extremely dangerous.”

  “But useful,” she muttered.

  The piano music stopped. “Pardon me?”

  “From a medical perspective, I mean. What if the seeds have other properties? Imagine they were brought into a lab and used to develop vaccines for, I don’t know, entire strains of illnesses.”

  Jasper took both of his hands off the piano. He turned and fixated his gaze intensely on hers.

  “There are precepts with this responsibility, Camilla.”

  “That’s my point,” she said, stirring in her chair. “Where do the rules come from? Some”—she pointed at Warren and had to refrain from using the first couple of words that came to mind—“lumberjack in the middle of the woods? I mean, right from the start: rule one. Only children. Why?”

  She knew she had blurted too much. She felt it in the sudden coldness of the room; the last vibrations of the piano strings had become still, and the faces above the mantelpiece stared down, motionless, like disapproving specters.

  “If people could build on what he did,” she spoke more softly, “imagine what the world would be like.”

  “I’m afraid to,” Jasper said. “Come here.”

  He beckoned her forward like a wiry grandfather. She stood up and crossed the room to the piano while he turned his hymnal toward her. As he flipped through its pages, colorful illustrations
started flying by: Bethlehem at advent, Calvary at Lent, Golgotha at Easter. This was a much nicer hymnal than the old tattered ones Camilla remembered from the pews of St. Teresa’s.

  Jasper kept flipping backward, past the hymns, past the creeds, past the sacraments—even past the copyright and publishing inserts—and finally stopped with only one piece of paper left. Slowly, his long fingers rolled the page over to reveal an illustration of the Garden of Eden. Underneath, embossed in gold lettering, was the phrase In the beginning…

  “People claim Christendom is shrinking,” Jasper said, stroking his chin, “but if I had to guess, most of those people haven’t found their first gray hair yet. As the saying goes, ‘No atheists in foxholes or old folks’ homes,’ hmm?” He waved his hand in the air. “Neither here nor there. Now tell me. Is this parable familiar to you?”

  Camilla nodded.

  “Good. And what’s that at the center there?” he asked, tapping the colorful Garden of Eden.

  “The tree of knowledge?”

  “Or life, depending which theologian you ask. ‘Here grows this Cure of all, this Fruit Divine,’” he quoted Milton’s Paradise Lost. “And what was the only instruction given to Adam and Eve?”

  “Don’t eat the fruit.”

  “And what did they do?”

  “Ate the fruit.”

  Camilla half expected him to pull out a creepy mouse puppet and continue quizzing her like the crone from her nightmare.

  It was a good metaphor, she had to admit. The tree of life to a tree that gave life with its fruit; Eve’s fall of temptation to her own curiosity. All that’s missing are a couple of cherubs and seraphim... unless Brutus and Moira count, in which case there are two fiery beasts who round off the comparison quite nicely.

  “I know where this is going,” she said. “Human nature. Avarice. Our curiosity curses us—”

  “I’m not a preacher,” he cut in. “I’m merely answering your question.”