by Melhoff, D.
But that was the calm before the storm. Then it hit like an angry tempest—a twister strong enough to lift up a southern farmhouse and toss it somewhere over a gaudy rainbow. The awful sixth birthday party.
To start with, not a single invitee showed up.
The extra chairs sat empty. The black-cherry torte, decorated with dark chocolate and freshly picked strawberries, sat on its special plinth going stale. Jasper’s musical program went unheard.
For over an hour, the whole family had sat in the Vincents’ dining room—which was festooned with long loops of carefully hung streamers, buckets of black-and-pink confetti, and matching jumbo balloons—and waited it out. But around seven o’clock it was Abigail herself who suggested that everyone eat their supper before it got cold.
Camilla was livid for a month.
It wasn’t because of the wasted decorating effort, or the sunk cost of throwing out three quarters of a ninety-dollar cake. It was because those heartless, high-and-mighty Nolan bastards wouldn’t give her and her daughter the time of day.
But—yes, there was always a self-deprecating but that came with these kinds of parental failures—things won’t change if I don’t take a proactive approach. So gradually she started spending more evenings away from the funeral home and more time in the community. She brought Abigail along on errands, took her to the parks and the public library, and explored the walking paths with her every weekend. Any time another family was out, she made a point of introducing herself, and despite how difficult it was on a daily basis, she even managed to keep some of her more eccentric outfits at home. Then as slowly as the Earth’s tectonic plates form new mountain ranges, the Nolan community—or at least the parents of the first grade class—began to build up their mutual trust. As a final clincher, she decided to hold Abigail’s party at a public venue this year: the basement of St. Luther’s Northern Parish. “If the community can’t trust holy ground, I’m giving up,” she had told Peter point-blank. Peter agreed, pointing out that there was a good toboggan hill close by, and so it was decided. He also hinted that instead of strawberry torte and homemade hors d’oeuvres, we should probably stick to cheese pizza and vanilla cake. Another good call.
“Solid party, huh?” Peter whispered.
Camilla nodded, chewing her crust.
“Although, they’d probably have just as much fun if you stuck them in a laundry room and told them to fold socks all night.”
The joke wafted by without registering. As she licked the pizza grease off her fingers, Camilla’s eyes hovered on their daughter through the serving window again.
Watching Abigail was like watching a spitting image of herself at that age. Their figures were identical—both she and Abby had tiny frames—and they both shared the same slender, Snow-White faces. Abigail was a brunette though, which Camilla should have expected (red hair alleles are more recessive than the polar icecaps) but occasionally it still surprised her. After all, the dream—that famous dream that drove her to take that incredible risk more than seven years ago—showed a redhead. As red as a rose, redder than copper. But not a single scarlet hair had ever graced Abigail’s skull, not even at birth.
The birth and conception of Abigail Grace Vincent had been unusual events, to put it mildly.
Camilla remembered the night she had taken the apple and reentered the mansion, long after Maddock returned to bed. She had crept to the kitchen and cut it open, slicing past the shriveled skin to reveal nothing but brown, decaying mush, and picked out the five seeds with the tip of a knife while examining each one with her naked eye. They looked so harmless. No one could ever tell the difference.
She had been eager to test their effects, but not so eager that she considered anything reckless. Even where the occult is concerned, there’s still room for good procedure and sound hypothesis testing. So every night over the subsequent week, Camilla had stalked down to the embalming room—summoned by nothing but her own hunch and a mortician’s toolset—and carried out a variety of experiments after everyone else was fast asleep.
The first order of business had been smashing a seed open. Afterward she found an old microscope and inspected the contents meticulously, but when she couldn’t spot anything unusual compared to the control apple stolen from the south parlor’s fruit bowl, she decided to mash it in a crucible and look again. Nothing.
The second seed was dipped in a solution and measured with a voltmeter to gauge electrical potential. Unsurprisingly, it had carried absolutely no current. That was a pretty dumb test in the first place, she recalled, and while she had scorched the remains of seeds one and two with Moira’s crème brûlée torch, she regretted wasting her supply so heedlessly.
For the third trial, she had found an old car battery from the garage and hammered it open, then diluted the fluid to a point where the pH was comparable to stomach acid. Most people didn’t know that apple seeds contain amygdalin—a toxic glycoside that can kill a fully grown adult—and although their shells are usually strong enough to withhold the poison throughout digestion, there was no guarantee that these ones would behave the same way. She submerged the seed for ten hours to see how well it held up, and while it ultimately passed the acid test, it became too weakened to risk further use, so she burned it as well.
By that point, a week had passed and Camilla still knew nothing. Only two seeds were left and there was no chance she would try anything on herself without first testing a living subject.
Luckily, the perfect candidate presented itself later that same night.
She was down in the kitchen getting a glass of water when there was a sudden scratch at the back door. With a dark flash of déjà vu, she jumped like a Nam solider standing next to a Roman candle. Somehow she managed to hold on to her glass this time, but it wasn’t until the shock wore off that she could take a deep breath and focus on the patio door.
There was no silhouette. Nothing behind the wafting curtains, no boy in the dark.
Still, the scratching continued. She reached out and turned the latch, pulling it open to reveal Proper, one of the Vincents’ scrawny black cats, pawing on the outer screen.
The idea had dawned on her instantly. She scooped the cat in her arms and grabbed a tin of Fancy Feast from the fridge, then raced all the way to the embalming room as fast as her moccasins could carry her.
“There we go,” she had whispered, setting the cat on a cold countertop and running a hand over its stomach. Finally she found the furless patch—and the scar—on its lower belly. “Good girl, good girl.”
She opened the Fancy Feast and carved out a portion with a scalpel, then planted a seed inside and plopped it in front of the starry-eyed pet. Proper dug in and devoured the glob in twenty seconds—all of it except the shiny black kernel. The cat blinked and batted the seed with its paw, then stopped, unimpressed.
Camilla dug out another serving and stuck the seed inside again. This time she fed the animal by hand—forcing every morsel into its mouth—and just when she thought she’d won, it let out a high, retching wheeze. Startled, Camilla let go, and Proper proceeded to improperly puke up its entire meal on the cement counter. After that, the cat leaped to the floor and scampered for the exit, but luckily the doors were shut. You can’t run, you little rat. I’ve got you cornered now. The pet arched against the frame as Camilla picked out the seed from the vomit and prowled toward the door. Enough is enough. She lunged and caught the cat by its haunches, wrestling it into a tight grip while its back paws kicked murderously for her wrists. She pried its jaw open and dropped the seed inside, then clamped the teeth together and kept them shut while the cat thrashed around with more piss and vinegar than a rabid cougar. Finally it swallowed.
That was when things really got wild.
Proper heaved as if all its guts were lurching up its esophagus. Camilla held tight while her arms were cut up worse than if she’d dunked them in a tub of razorblades, then finally the convulsions tapered off and they both collapsed, spent. When she rolled over
and saw the defeat in the cat’s eyes—a kind of lazy sadness—she immediately felt terrible. Her experiments hadn’t yielded a single result, and the costs had finally crossed a line. All she had left was one seed and the overwhelming feeling that she owed Proper a colossal apology.
In the months that followed, life returned to normal. Proper practically disappeared from sight (not that Camilla could blame it), but then early one February morning while shoveling the walk, Brutus heard a strange sound coming from the courtyard tool shed. He rooted through the garden equipment, past the lawnmower, past a broken croquet set and a community of garden gnomes, and discovered Prim and Proper hiding away at the very back. Both cats were curled up on a nest of fertilizer bags and torn patio cushions, and behind them, mewing like a chorus of plastic squeaky toys, was their new litter of scraggily black kittens.
A sled roared down the snow hill, carving a wave of powder that caught the sunlight and glistened back to earth like stage glitter. The high-pitched whee! hung on the crisp air for a second longer, then faded up in the trees with a cheerful echo.
Another group of Abigail’s classmates rocketed by, and Camilla called out, “Don’t run into—”
Too late. The second train of sledders careened into the first crew at the bottom of the hill and sent them scattering like bowling pins.
“Stee-rike!” Peter hollered.
“Are they OK?”
“With those ski suits? They’ve got more padding than pro linebackers.”
True. The kids were done up in so much winter gear that they looked like pudgy Michelin babies: thermal coats puffed up around their chests, snow boots, ski pants, long johns, wool mittens, and at least three pairs of socks apiece. Only their eyeballs were unprotected, peeking through the tunnels of hoods and scarves and ski masks.
Camilla rubbed her hands together and stuffed them in the pockets of her coat. The faux fox pelt around her shoulders kept her neck warm, and her feet were doing all right, but her fingers felt chilled to the bone.
It wasn’t even that cold of a day—for December in the Yukon, at least. Not a single cloud smeared the sky, and nothing more than a light breeze had blown through since morning. But it wasn’t warm either. Minus five degrees Fahrenheit still had bite, and the yellow sunlight was deceiving. You can’t trust what you see when it comes to the cold, she had learned, but your other senses sure let you know in a hurry: the feeling of tears in your eyes, the sound of snow crunching like Styrofoam, the sensation of snot fusing to your nose hairs. Such a comfortable place to live; it’s a mystery why more people don’t come to embrace their bodily limits.
At the bottom of the hill, the kids had gotten up and were brushing the snow off their legs. Camilla picked out Abigail instantly: the one in the black suit with a white toque and pink Columbia snow boots. She waved, but Abigail didn’t wave back. She was too busy giggling with one of the Cory girls.
There you go, kiddo.
“Geez,” Peter said. “Cute little monsters, huh? Almost makes the whole pregnancy part seem worth it.” He bumped her jokingly.
Camilla smiled, but it wasn’t funny. Her pregnancy had been the most excruciating period of her entire life, and she frequently reminded him that he owed her an eternity of massages because of it.
She had been sick every morning, bar none, and developed a case of sleep apnea that could drive the calmest soul to the brink of insanity. Doubts had flooded her psyche, and she couldn’t help imagine the doctors screaming in the delivery room when they cut her open and brought out a litter of bloody, furless kittens, their blind squeals filling her brain like unholy demonic yowls. As a result of her sleeplessness, she lost her sense of humor. When the baby finally arrived—a month premature, but perfectly healthy, no mewing or other feline malformations—she was relieved to have it out of her body and into her arms.
From day one Abigail had been extremely quiet, despite her violent gestation. All day, she would stare through the walls of her incubator and watch what was going on around her. Camilla came to think it was cute and inquisitive, but one time she caught a nurse whispering to a coworker, “That Vincent girl…you ever see her watching you? Like she’s…I don’t know, studying you? A little creepy if you ask me.”
As time passed, Camilla kept an eye out for anything else that might have been unusual in Abigail’s development. She didn’t seem to like toys very much, and she didn’t laugh or smile a lot either. Her first New Year’s Eve was the only notable exception. Brutus had lit up a box of fireworks in the backyard, and the eruptions of brilliant sparkles set her off like a giggle factory. Camilla had silently hoped that it was because of the shimmering colors and not the boom of the explosions.
Conversely, other aspects of their daughter were perfectly normal. She ate normally, she slept normally. She didn’t burst into flames when they stepped into church. So slowly Camilla’s hesitations had melted away until she stopped watching Abigail like a scientific experiment and started treating her like a regular kid.
A series of screams cracked through the cold air and snapped Camilla back to reality. Her heart dropped beneath its layers of flesh and synthetic thermal gear, and she looked up just in time to see a toboggan rocket past, the five kids on board yipping with laughter as they shot down the snow hill toward the rest of the crowd below.
Her eyes scanned the woods for a white toque and pink boots.
There she is, halfway up the hill.
Camilla let out a long breath.
“You all right, jumpy?” Peter elbowed her.
“I’m fine.” She shrugged it off. She was jumpier in the last seven years—there was no doubt about that—but she had hoped it might improve the older Abigail got. I guess I’ve still got a ways to go.
As she watched her daughter trudge back up the hillside with a handful of other boys and girls, their sleds slung over their shoulders, Camilla sighed and shook her head at herself. She’s a regular kid, all right. Deep breaths.
Just a regular kid.
19
Officer Logan
Camilla was up to her elbows in remains when there was a knock on the embalming room door.
Knock, knock, knock…Knock! Knock! Knock!
But she didn’t hear it. The vents in the crematorium were set to full steam ahead, bellowing through the chimney shaft and shuffling an eighty-year-old retired air force pilot named Howard Konners into the atmosphere for one last rip in the wild blue yonder. Had his spirit held on to its gruff, incorporeal voice box, the colonel would have been whooping up his favorite anthem, bursting with red-white-and-blue spangles as he wafted into freedom, singing: “Down we dive, spouting our flame from under, off with one helluva rooooar! We live in fame or go down in flame—hey!—nothing’ll stop the US Air Fooooorce!”
The knocking came again, louder this time, and a motion caught Camilla’s eye. She looked up and saw Laura standing in the double doors.
“—is here!” Laura shouted over the furnace. “He says he—”
“What?” Camilla cupped her ear.
“Officer Logan! He wants to see you.”
“Me?” She looked around incredulously. There was no one else in the room except for Rosemary Volkes, and old Rosey was lying across the current workstation, carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Laura turned on her heels, too busy to stop. “He’s in the south parlor.”
The south parlor was the Vincents’ formal study. Three of the four walls were rigged with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, packed with brittle Encyclopedia Britannica sets that had yet to hear of the Hubble Telescope or September 11 or a black president. There were leatherback chairs with matching ottomans, reading lights with candy glass lamp shades, and an antique cart holding fat snifters and unmarked bottles of hot amber whiskey—a warm contrast to the icy scene outside the front window.
Officer Logan was standing in the center of the room with his back to the entrance. His thermal jacket was done up along with a Maglite, a two-way radio, and a .45-caliber Gl
ock clipped to his patrol belt.
Camilla appeared in the doorway and stopped in her tracks. She hovered apprehensively at the sight of the police uniform. “Officer Logan?”
“Ms. Carleton,” the man said, and before he turned around Camilla’s heart had already dropped into her stomach. “Pardon me. It’s Mrs. Vincent now, isn’t it?” The man pivoted and revealed himself to be Mick, the mousy greaseball from her first removal job. “Sorry I didn’t send a card.” He added a polite smile that made her skin crawl and legs close up.
“Strange, Mick,” Camilla said. “I didn’t notice.”
“You remember my name.”
I remember a lot more than your name. He had once told her to “watch herself around these freaks,” referring to Peter and Lucas at their standoff on the Beaudrys’ driveway. His belated congratulations were worth as much as his pencil-thin peach-fuzz moustache.
“Can I help you?”
“Well, for starters you can jot down your exercise secrets.” He clicked his tongue like a pig at the slop trough. “I say you’re lookin’ the same as you did eight years ago, sunshine. Pretty rare for Nolan birds. Seems they all let go around here soon as the honeymoon’s over.”
“Moira’s upstairs. I’ll ask if she’s free.”