Come Little Children

by Melhoff, D.

  The figure stopped shuffling.

  Camilla’s eyes popped open in horror. She saw the figure hunch over and pick up the cruciate from the floor, running it through his silhouetted fingers like a hunter finding a fresh trail to a sitting duck.

  The figure ambled forward, still examining the needle, and stepped into the basement’s small pool of light. His socks were visible first, then his claw-like hands, and finally the crown of his head. Slowly his neck tilted up and revealed Maddock’s face staring straight at the staircase—straight at her.

  Crack!

  The basement’s light bulb sparked out.

  Camilla’s heart pounded in her chest. Did he see me? He’s staring right here.

  Silence. She pictured him standing ten feet away—or creeping toward her with outstretched hands—when suddenly the Velcro crackle started again and ended the uncertainty.

  He was walking straight toward her.

  Maneuvering carefully through the support beams, she wormed her way out of her hiding spot toward the hall that shot deeper into the basement. Now she was in completely new territory. Her hands found the wall and she slipped inside the cold corridor, having no idea where it led and nothing but adrenaline to propel her forward.

  Immediately the wall veered through another doorway—when she tried following it, she was blocked by iron rungs.

  Damn it!

  She kept down the original hall, shorter breaths with every step, only to find the next door was sealed off too. And the next. She flipped to the other side of the hall as a swell of anxiety percolated her blood and shot tremors through her hands. It was no good—all the rooms were barred off like a cellblock.

  Panting, she gripped a pair of rungs and pressed her face between them. Inside all she could see was a tiny window near the ceiling of the room…and a little moonlight leaking through. It was just enough to illuminate a wooden bench nestled into the corner, along with a pair of wrist restraints that hung down like medieval dungeon cuffs.

  These are makeshift cells, she realized with sudden clarity. This is where they ran the experiments.

  She was horrified and hopeful at the same time. If the rooms on that side of the hall were against the outer wall, she should stay as close to that edge as possible.

  A footstep echoed behind her—Maddock was in the same hallway now—and then another. Slowly at first, then faster.

  Camilla ran as quickly as she could on the heels of her feet. Maddock was taking large strides behind her, and as he walked, he dragged her forgotten needle along the cement wall. When it hit the bars it made a chilling clink, clink, clink sound followed by a stony grrrrrrrr.

  Clink, clink, clink, grrrrrrrr…Clink, clink, clink, grrrrrrrr…

  The sound was straight out of a nightmare.

  Clink, clink, clink, grrrrrrrr…CLINK, CLINK, CLINK, GRRRRRRRR…

  Maddock drew closer with every clink, and no matter how fast Camilla lurched on her heels, she couldn’t outrun him. She bared her teeth and got ready to make a full-out dash, when all of a sudden her worst fear came true.

  She hit a dead end.

  CLINK, CLINK, CLINK, GRRRRRRRR…CLINK, CLINK, CLINK, GRRRRRRRR…

  All of the cool-headedness Camilla possessed immediately evaporated. She pictured Maddock reaching out behind her, his claws diving for her in the pitch black air, and she squirmed against the wall like a field mouse hearing the tail of a rattler sizzle closer.

  Camilla pressed herself harder against the wall, about to scream at the top of her lungs, when a handle stabbed painfully—miraculously—into her hip. It’s not a wall, it’s a door! In a flurry of panic, she pushed the handle open and threw herself inside the room, slamming it shut and jabbing the button lock.

  A second later, the handle was jostling wildly.

  “Who are you! Who’s in there!”

  Camilla curled up against the sink, hyperventilating, but she didn’t dare respond.

  “I’m phoning the police!” Maddock shouted, but she knew he was lying. The Vincents would never allow anyone in their basement, especially the police.

  She looked up at the ceiling of the bathroom and spotted a windowpane set back in the wall. A sliver of light glinted across the dusty glass.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  “Get out of there, coward! Let me see your face!”

  She wobbled to her legs and stood on the toilet seat, hoisting herself higher on the bowl, and pressed her nose to the window. The light was filtering through a series of slits, and she realized that she was looking up from underneath the veranda as moonlight came streaming through the gaps in the porch’s floorboards.

  Behind her, the hinges on the bathroom door heaved and groaned.

  BANG! BANG, BANG, BANG!

  She undid the window latches with quivering hands and shoved as hard as she could.

  The warped frame was blocked with sludge and barely moved.

  Desperately, she looked around for something that could help her escape…when suddenly she realized that the terrible banging had stopped.

  She froze.

  Is he really gone?

  Then she heard it. Not another banging sound, but a faint scrape. She squinted over her shoulder and tried identifying where the new sound was coming from…

  Then she saw it: the door handle was wiggling up and down, and the scrape, scrape, scrape was coming from the button in the very center. He’s picking the lock! The bastard’s using my own tool against me.

  Panic renewed, Camilla flung herself at the window with full force. There was a low crack and the window bulged out, pushing the leaves away and creating an extremely small gap. She hammered the sill with the blunt of her palm until it was wide enough for a size zero, then threw her hands outside and dug into the dirt, clawing her way to freedom as fast as she could.

  The doorknob wrenched harder and harder behind her; the pins shook the frame.

  Camilla groped for her life. Clumps of weeds went flying by as she kicked in the air—half-in, half-out—with her hips wedged tight in the sill. For a terrifying second, she knew she was stuck.

  Behind her the door BANGED open and Maddock blasted into the room. The sound was like a last injection of rocket fuel, and Camilla summoned every muscle she had, pulling herself through as her pants tore down the sides and a dozen splinters sunk into each leg. With a primal grunt, she flung herself under the patio and kicked the window closed behind her, then rolled out of view. But there was no time to catch her breath; even though Maddock wasn’t thin enough to fit through the sill himself, she only had thirty or forty seconds tops before he’d be out in the courtyard like a bat out of hell.

  She scampered on her hands and knees away from the basement window, tearing through anthills, cobwebs, and abandoned rat nests. The needle of her inner compass was reeling—she had absolutely no bearing—then she spotted a hasp in the deck’s panels and rushed for it, pushing through the exit, and tumbled out on the cool lawn of the Vincents’ courtyard.

  The Milky Way burst overhead like a network of dazzling stage lights. Come on, Camilla grunted, no time to stargaze. She ran for the tree at the far end of the yard and ducked behind its thick trunk just as the back door banged open and Maddock came stumbling outside.

  She peeked around the bark and watched him dash down the steps before tapering off. He turned his ear a few different directions and then looked back at the house, apparently reconsidering the possibility that the intruder had escaped out the front, and slouched, defeated. He waddled back up the stairs and disappeared inside the manor with his tail between his legs.

  Camilla collapsed against the tree. She looked down at her own legs and winced: her pants were mutilated, and the wood slivers were already stinging like hell. What was worse, however—much worse—was the feeling of failure in the pit of her stomach. When she thought about her botched mission, it was that pain that bore deeper than any splinter.

  She knew she could never do what she had just done again. Even if she got up the ne
rve, Maddock would almost certainly be sleeping with a sawed-off shotgun tucked under his arm from now on. She’d ruined it: her one chance to jump-start the batteries in her biological clock and keep the family going. No matter what Peter would say down the road, she would always know that part of him would be a little disappointed in her, whether he found out that she had tried to fix the situation and failed or not. And that part of him would always ask “What would life have been like if we could’ve had children?” or worse, “What if she wasn’t the one after all?”

  Finally the tears spilled, hot and wet, down Camilla’s cheekbones. Her mouth fell open, but before she made a sound, she jammed a fist between her teeth and bit down.

  The chorus frogs chirped.

  The Milky Way glimmered.

  A wind blew through the courtyard and shook the leaves on the great fruit tree, which shimmered with a quiet shh, shh sound, like a soothing whisper in Camilla’s ear. She curled against the comfortable crooks in the wood and continued to cry in the tree’s arms. Shh, shh.

  In the distance, a pack of wolves began howling together, and even farther off a Grey Owl screeched over the waters of a lone lake where masses of black flies buzzed and rainbow trout plopped through their own ripples. But none of those sounds made it to the Vincents’ yard. The wind carried them elsewhere, leaving nothing but the swish of leaves for Camilla’s tender ears.

  She adjusted her position in the roots and leaned back, wiping the tears away.

  Well, what did you expect? she asked herself. You’d waltz out with a handful of seeds and everything would be fixed? Maybe put them through a dozen tests you could run with a kindergartener’s home chemistry set before throwing in the towel, and then what? You got your hopes up—admit it. The stupid things would’ve disappointed you anyway.

  And she wished she could believe that, but she couldn’t.

  They cure people, she sighed, conceding. Whether or not this stupid tree came from the Garden of Eden is a whole other kettle of Jesus fish, but those seeds can cure people.

  Another gust rustled by, and she watched how the leaves rippled overhead like emerald water. Now that her eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness, she could see bits of the hidden tree house poking through the foliage, and she couldn’t help but picture the first time she and Peter had spent the night together. How different—how fun—that had been before all this. The tour of the funeral home, the first kiss, the picnic…

  Camilla sat up almost dreamily. Slowly she got up, first to her knees, then to her feet, and placed a hand on the bark, the whole time without taking her eyes off of the tree house.

  She circled the trunk with her hand dragging along the wood, around and around, until her fingers found the pegs that were nailed into the side. Then, hand over hand, she started to climb. Every step was faster than the last, quickening with a distant realization, until finally she reached the top and pulled herself into the private cabin.

  The space was just as bare as she remembered. Nothing but leaves and twigs and squirrel droppings.

  She froze.

  Shh, the tree whispered as Camilla’s lips curled into a smile. Shh…

  There, ten feet away—nestled in a stack of leaves—was the withered apple that she had plucked only a month before. The same piece of fruit that Peter had snatched out of her hand, tossed in the corner, and forgotten about.

  But it wasn’t forgotten, not completely. The tree had been keeping it in its darkest crevice this whole time, waiting for the right person to come along and take it from its twisted, tempting limbs.

  Waiting for her.

  PART II

  ABIGAIL

  18

  Seven Candles

  “Happy birthday!”

  The partiers cheered as little Abigail blew out all seven candles in a single breath. Peter reached over and stuck a spatula in the baking pan, calling out: “Atta girl! Another year of no boyfriends. Keep it up, kiddo.”

  The girls around the table ewwed in unison, and then the crowd of six- and seven-year-old boys, not to be outdone, jammed out their tongues and ewwed back with equal enthusiasm. Camilla jumped in and started passing out paper plates, which diffused the chaos and brought everyone’s butts back to their plastic green chairs. Still, she knew the effect was only palliative; inevitably their energy would return with a vengeance, powered by enough sugar to wipe out half of the world’s diabetics.

  Peter and Camilla tiptoed backward through the basement of St. Luther’s Northern Parish and slipped into the church’s kitchen. Together they peeked out of the serving window like a pair of surreptitious stage managers, careful not to draw any unwanted attention toward themselves, and watched as the kids pounced on the cake faster than a pack of hyenas on a wounded gazelle.

  “Quick, while they’re scavenging.”

  Peter smacked his lips and snagged a jug of knockoff strawberry Kool-Aid from the 1945 Philco refrigerator. As he topped off two Dixie cups, Camilla checked the last remaining box of pizza and found a lonely slice buried under the cardboard flaps.

  Peter saw the pizza and his mouth popped open. He leaned over and took a bite, but a pocket of cheese burst and sent tomato sauce shooting up his nose.

  “Ugh!”

  Camilla snorted with laughter, watching him rear back and try to wipe the sauce off his face. He moved his hand away and flashed another smile, all teeth. “How do I look?”

  “Like you were picking your nose with a coat hanger.”

  She wasn’t exaggerating; the red sauce was still dripping out of his nostrils, flecked with specks of pepperoni that resembled hunks of brain matter.

  “I’ll show you bloody…” He clasped his hands over his nose and wrung out the remaining sauce, then lurched ahead with wet tomato paste fingers.

  “Stop it!” She half whispered, half shrieked. “Stop!”

  Peter lunged and caught the side of her arm, leaving a dark marinara streak from her wrist up to her elbow.

  “I swear—ah!” She dodged again, getting it on her knuckles. “I swear, if you get a drop on this cardigan…”

  “You’ll what?”

  “Eek!”

  “Huh? You’ll what?”

  “I’ll…I’ll leave you alone with the Lords of the Flies.” She nodded at the birthday table. “Fifteen minutes tops before your head’s stuck on a tetherball pole.”

  Peter froze in front of her. He put his hands in the air like a prison convict caught pulling a bad lunchroom stunt. “Checkmate, boss.” He flashed his flirty grin and leaned forward, but Camilla turned and the peck barely grazed her cheek.

  “You think it’s that easy?”

  “You think you have time to flirt?”

  Camilla spied the kids’ table again—they were still distracted with dessert—and she swiveled back and returned the peck on Peter’s lips. Eight years hadn’t changed a lot, at least in that department. She swore she would never be one of those parents who did anything PG-plus in front of her daughter’s friends, no matter how old the kids were or how charming Peter could be, so intimate affection had to be time-boxed. And if there’s one thing new parents are shorter on than money, sleep, and patience, it’s time (which Peter was particularly good at capitalizing on when they caught these short spells of privacy).

  Peter poured two more shooters of church juice, and they tapped Dixies, downing the weak strawberry water in one swig each. As she lowered her cup, Camilla’s eyes fell on the scene through the serving window again.

  Abigail was sitting at the head of the table, her brown locks pulled back with the pretty lace headband they had given her as an early birthday present. She was poised properly—back straight and feet uncrossed, just like her grandmother had impressed upon her—while licking vanilla icing off a plastic fork.

  Come on, sweetheart, Camilla thought. Talk to someone. You can do it.

  But Abigail wasn’t saying anything. She sat there, content, eating dessert and listening to the kids around her yap their curly-haired heads of
f.

  Speak up, Abby, you can do it. Don’t be shy.

  Abigail perked up, almost as if she was tuned in to her mother’s wavelength, and swiveled to the pair of girls beside her. She parted her lips, about to say something, when suddenly a boy at the other end of the table let out a loud battle cry and planted his entire face in his slice of cake, pulling focus from the whole group. Whether he did so on a dare or purely for attention, it didn’t matter; the boy looked like a Looney Tunes character now, and a blaze of laughter was spreading around the table faster than wildfire. Within seconds everyone from Abigail and the Cory sisters at one end, to little Tim Lam and Alex Palmer and Farley “Five Chins” Melstrom at the other, was rocking with giggles.

  Camilla shook her head, but a smile had crossed her lips too. They’re laughing. They’re having fun, thank God. Everyone’s having fun. It was music to her ears. Music, especially, since last year’s party had been nothing to grin about.

  Last year was Abigail’s first kick at public school, and the whole summer leading up to September had been incredibly nerve-racking. Scars from Camilla’s own school years stung more and more every time she plucked a petal from the stems of her own past—I send her, I send her not, I send her, I send her not—but ultimately, she knew the public school system would teach Abby a few lessons that might benefit a new generation of Vincents. Thankfully, day one wasn’t as awkward as she’d imagined. Abigail was just as quiet as Camilla had been at that age, and she attracted just as many looks walking through the hallways, but at least she hadn’t arrived at show-and-tell with a dead animal stuffed in her pencil case yet, so by Vincent and Carleton standards, it was a whopping success.

  The problem, it turned out—and Camilla should have predicted it—wasn’t so much with the children as it was with their parents. Every time she tried calling another mom to set up a play date, she hit that mighty destroyer of all good intentions: voice mail. Then out of the blue one night in October, Abigail admitted that none of her classmates wanted to play with her because their moms and dads told them to “stay away from the Vincents.” That was the most painful thing Camilla had ever heard. Stay away from the Vincents? Who do those stuck-up, bucktooth hill trolls think they are? But thankfully, Abigail hadn’t seemed nearly as distraught as her mother was; in fact, she seemed more curious than anything. “Why do they say that, mom?” she asked, and Camilla had explained that because they lived in a funeral home, a lot of people were superstitious around them. When Abigail asked what “superstitious” meant, Camilla had settled on “scared of dead people,” and Abby, in the perpetual wisdom and naivety of a six-year-old, had returned a puzzled look and replied, “That’s dumb,” to which Camilla had nodded and agreed.