by Melhoff, D.
The officer paused. He stared directly at the dock, but it was too far away for a man with midfifties eyesight to spot anything floating in the dark. Still, he hovered, scrutinizing the waterfront.
Camilla tipped her head downward so he wouldn’t catch the whites of her eyes.
Suddenly she heard the thump thump thump of boots tromping over snow, and a sense of dread plunged into her frozen chest. Her body sunk deeper into the ghoulish tendrils of algae, which reached up and caressed her legs like the slimy fingers of pedophiles. The dread worsened, choking her, as she pictured the officer’s hand swopping in and grabbing her by the neck, either to yank her out or to force her under completely.
The boots stopped on the edge of the dock.
The officer was right on top of her. She could see his face through the floorboards, and if he looked down he would see her staring up just as clearly as she saw him.
Don’t look down…Don’t look down…Don’t look down…
But the officer’s sixth sense went off again and he did look down. His chin dropped to his chest, and just as his eyes came trailing in tandem, there was another loud bang! over at the house.
The officer’s head spun around, pulling his eyes away from the dock.
“You taking a leak down there?” the second officer hollered, coming into the yard with the two dogs. “Don’t freeze midstream.”
“Nah. Just thought I saw something.”
“What?”
“Beaver, probably. Fat one too. Made a hell of a splash.”
“Uh-huh. Well stop chasing critters and come give me a boost. It’s so cold I hear my lawyer has his hands in his own pockets for once.”
The officer on the dock laughed and ambled away. Camilla heard them start up their SUV and waited for what seemed like eternity while they boosted the other vehicle and scraped off their windshields. But she didn’t dare move, no matter how many limbs were going numb or how much heat escaped her blue, hypothermic lips, until the tires got rolling and faded off down the dirt road.
Finally she yanked herself back on the dock and gasped for air. Her body had never felt more frozen in her entire life, but adrenaline was still pounding through her veins, so she shot for the rope and didn’t quit tearing until it came loose and freed the canoe. By the time Mick came out of the house fifteen minutes later, she was already thirty yards upstream, weak but alive, with both of the twins wrapped in oil towels in the grooves of the boat’s hull in front of her.
The journey on the lake was slow and wraithlike. Night had come, but the sky was glowing with the ghostly swirls of the electric northern lights. They were so bright that they shimmered on the glassy surface of the water and bathed the whole crater like a rippling rainbow flume. Camilla had forced herself to look away from the sky; she focused solely on watching her oars dip in and out of the lake, over and over again, in and out, as the vessel made its ghostly voyage along the river Styx and down the Acheron like Charon’s Underworld ferry. Staring at the cosmos was too dangerous for her current state. The infinity of outer space can appear even deeper and vaster than the curvature of the ocean to a disoriented castaway. At best, it makes a person dizzy; at worst, insane.
Camilla paddled by a sandbar that had one lone tree rising up from the rocky soil. An owl came beating its wings against the moon and landed on the tree’s highest branch, gazing at her with its massive, oily eyes. The bird was big and mean, but it simply sat there and stared, perhaps waiting to see if she would fall asleep, or maybe just coming to witness the dark purpose it had sensed on the wind.
She pulled harder on the oars and cruised gently past the sandbar. The tips of her fingers were starting to go purple, and every muscle in her upper body burned as she fought the current.
Give them back, the Yukon seemed to demand. Their lives are gone, their bodies belong to me now.
All of nature was against her. The oily eyes in the forest’s shadows, the direction of the water, the gusts of the wind. Even the northern lights seemed to be reaching down to guide the souls of the little girls up to the heavens.
They’re not yours yet. Camilla bore down, glimpsing at the outlines of Erica and Stephanie swaddled in their mummy-like shrouds on the floor of the boat. The soaking-wet towels were already frosting over. Not as long as I have them.
And so she kept rowing against the Yukon’s promulgation. She rowed and rowed and rowed as late evening grew steadily into night and word of mouth spread among the galaxies, bringing multitudes of stars to gather around and watch her maiden voyage from thousands of light years away. At one point the lake tapered into a narrow inlet that was similar to Miles Canyon—a slender chute of volcanic rock that churned the waves through the coulee in a thick, soapy foam—and along wider, flatter stretch, the riverbanks became so crowded with spruce and aspen that it was impossible to spy anything through their palisading frontlines. Some places were as steep as the Golden Stairs at the Chilkoot Trail, and others were bald and level. Through it all Camilla rowed against nature and against the last thread of her own health, until finally the river curved right and brought the canoe to a shore on the north side of Nolan.
Using the rope from the Corys’ dock, Camilla managed to drag the canoe through an acre of backwoods right up to the Vincents’ courtyard. She abandoned the boat behind the farthest stretch of fencing and snuck into the house through the garage, hoping to remain undetected. As she slipped deeper into the house, out of the embalming area, she could hear her family’s voices coming from farther inside. Their conversation was too distant to decipher what any of them were saying, but her imagination filled in the sentences for her.
Where’s Camilla? Her in-laws gossiped as they poured each other spirits and warmed their asses comfortably by the fire-place. What is she doing that’s so important? She should be spending more time with Abby, poor little thing. Must think that her own mother doesn’t care about her.
It boiled her blood just imagining it. Of course she cared about her family, she thought as she stared in the bathroom mirror at the reflection of an unfamiliar specter. Icicles hung from her hair like needles, and her face had turned an unnatural white with strokes of blue coloring in the cracks of her lips. She cared about her family—about protecting her daughter—so much that after she dried off in the bathroom and changed out of her soaking-wet clothes, she carefully selected the right sizes of suturing needles and snuck down to the one place that she swore she would never go again.
The lid of the forbidden chest popped open with little effort this time. Camilla plucked out two seeds and set them carefully on the metal cart beside the bone saw, the spool of thread, and the polished scalpels.
“Seeds, saw, thread, scalpels,” she whispered off the checklist.
Making a hammock with the front of her coat, she carried the instruments pilgrim-style up the long staircase and through the loading bay, then back into the bitterly cold courtyard.
Camilla peeled away the towels from the Cory girls and took her first look at the bodies in the moonlight.
She vomited instantly.
She had seen hundreds of cadavers, but never ones that had met such unfortunate endings as these. The identical twins were crumpled up side by side with matching knife marks slashed across the fabric of their dresses. One girl’s eyeball had been crushed in like a baby tomato, and the other was missing three fingers from her left hand and one from her right. Even the quality of their skin was grotesque: loose and wrinkled from being submerged for so long, it seemed as though the slightest pull could peel it away in long, fleshy strips.
Tears rolled down Camilla’s cheeks and froze before they reached her chin. Any last hope that Abigail hadn’t committed this atrocity was gone. The dog’s scent at the Corys’ shed may have been contentious, but the black-and-purple outlines of her small hands on the girls’ necks condemned her. Camilla had known it, of course, even if she hadn’t admitted it until now. That’s why she was here, wasn’t it? That’s the only reason she had dragged the
bodies across the river and through the woods and onto this miserable pond—to do what any brave mother would do, to protect her own child. To cover it up.
Camilla lifted the bone saw in her trembling hands and flipped its switch. The electric whiz screamed to life in the quiet backyard—Fix it, Camilla, it’s your fault so fix it—and she cut through the sisters’ chests, hurrying, before swapping the saw for a scalpel.
Even if this worked, she began to consider—even if she could bring the girls back and undo the Corys’ pain—how would that stop Abigail from doing it again?
The evil spreads like rotted fruit, then Moira’s voice added from the back of her mind: If a child goes bad, it must be abolished.
Camilla dropped her scalpel at the word abolish, and it tinkled onto the ice. She wiped her forehead, picked up the blade, and then reached inside Stephanie Cory and cut a slit into her heart.
They won’t know. I’ll return the girls to the Corys and the Vincents won’t find out. Then I’ll talk to Abigail, ask her why she did it and tell her she can’t do it ever again, or…Or what? Or else? Would Peter say the same thing? Give her a warning like—like a fucking dog we have to put down if it doesn’t stop pissing on the carpet?
Camilla’s hands were quivering so badly that she couldn’t pick up the seeds.
Maybe we’ll run away instead. I’ll pack everything tonight and get her out of bed before anyone else wakes up. We’ll take the van past Whitehorse and stay in some sleepy town that no one’s ever heard of. There could be a medical clinic, maybe even a hospital morgue I can get a job at…
Her runaway fantasy stopped. Another voice cut in, the voice of Sharon Mullard telling her about Dallas Whittaker.
Dallas grabbed his boy—all up in his hospital shroud and everything—and took him to the Vincents’ place…The next day Jack Swanson swore he saw the Whittaker truck heading north of Nolan with little Jesse sitting in the passenger seat, blinking out the window. Blinking like nothin’ ever happened.
Camilla went whiter than she already was. She knew what happened to Dallas Whittaker after he tried running away with his son, Jesse. He was murdered. Murdered by his own boy.
She shook her head and lowered a seed into Stephanie’s heart. No! Abigail would never do that. Ever. But then she remembered Abigail’s eyes staring at her from across the dark bedroom the night before.
For you, Abby had said. The rope’s for you, mommy. I’ll hang you by your neck until your windpipe snaps and then dump you in the lake like those wretched Cory sisters.
“Stop,” she muttered, shaking her head vehemently. “Stop.” She continued sewing in absolute silence, stitching the chests first before mending the various knife marks scattered across the twins’ bodies. When all the wounds were sealed, she got to her feet.
Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!
The tenth blow from the ax (which she had taken from the Vincents’ toolshed) crashed through the ice, and water bled up from the pond, bubbling out as Camilla struck it again to widen the opening.
She dropped the ax and knelt beside the sisters.
“Last time,” she whispered. “I promise.”
With a nod of deference, she dragged Stephanie into the water and watched her albino face sink deeper and deeper into the darkness. The process was repeated with Erica.
It was odd. The whole time Camilla was carrying out the ritual, she knew that Abigail was watching. She could feel her daughter’s eyes coming from Peter’s old bedroom on the third floor of the funeral home, but when she looked up, all she saw were the room’s curtains barely shifting behind the frosted glass. Still, she knew. She could feel the seven-year-old’s gimlet eyes weighing down on her and piercing the back of her skull whenever she turned around.
Take a good look, girlie. Take a good look at what you did.
Camilla walked to the porch and up the steps, out of sight from Abigail, and sat on the wicker bench that she and Peter had once rested on while they waited for Todd to return to life. Except now she was alone; completely, utterly alone. No one else in the world—not in the Yukon, not in Nolan, not even in her own family—could be there to hold her head and tell her things would be all right.
She missed Peter fiercely. She missed the days when things were warm and when all they worried about was not getting caught kissing in the old tree house. She looked at the tree across the yard—the only fruit tree in the world that never died, not even in winter—with its green leaves still glittering underneath the powdery snow. Somewhere in those leaves was the place where she and Peter had first made love. It had been so beautiful that night. She wondered if she would give it up now, knowing that if they hadn’t been there then she wouldn’t have found the apple that brought on this living hell. Was it better to wipe out every happy moment with their daughter from the last seven years, or keep the same decision and face the consequences?
Camilla sat there for an hour and pondered the difficult questions that she had always ignored. Anytime a good memory came into focus, she would suddenly burst into sobs, and when she wanted to cry she couldn’t because her tear ducts were bone dry. The northern lights abandoned the sky, and the moon—the midnight sun—replaced the broiling colors with a ghostly, preternatural glow.
Suddenly the mood shifted.
Camilla straightened on the edge of her seat, staring at the pond.
A little girl’s hand reached out of the hole in the ice, followed by another. Stephanie pulled herself out of the water, then Erica was right behind her, clawing out of the gap with only four fingers on one hand and two on the other.
Camilla stood and walked toward them. Neither girl acknowledged her—they were busy examining their own bodies in the moonlight. One of them cracked her knuckles and stretched her neck while the other felt the hole in her face where her left eye should have been. Everything they did was slow and mechanical, as if they were just learning their motor skills again.
The closer Camilla got, the more she thought something was wrong. They were moving, yes, but they looked like they were stuck somewhere between death and life.
She stopped a few meters away and knelt slowly to the ice.
“Hello. Girls?”
The sisters didn’t acknowledge her. Instead, one leaned over and whispered something to the other.
Camilla couldn’t hear them. She slid closer.
The girls were whispering back and forth now, although there was no expression on either of their faces.
“Girls? It’s time to go home.”
She reached out to touch Erica’s arm, and that’s when it happened—the twins moved like two bolts of lightning and knocked her on her back with surprising force. Her head slammed against the ice and she felt a sudden flash of pain in her arm as she looked over and saw Stephanie sinking a row of sharp teeth into her biceps.
Camilla threw Erica off and pulled on Stephanie’s hair as hard as she could, attempting to toss her away, but Erica latched on again and tackled all three of them to the ice. Camilla screamed, but one of the girls grabbed her cheeks and bashed her head against the ground.
Camilla went limp, pain clouding her vision.
She felt dizzy, like her body was moving even though she was lying flat on her shoulders. Moaning, she blinked back to consciousness and realized that she was moving—the twins were dragging her to the hole in the ice—and the rush of a dreadful realization came all too late.
“NOO—!”
Camilla’s head was pushed under the water and forced to stay.
The pond erupted in bubbles as it muffled her hellish screams. From under the surface, she could see her killers sitting on top of her, staring through the jagged hole with moonlight framing their demented faces. She kicked and lashed with everything she had left, but darkness continued pressing in. Her mind raced faster than it ever had before, and in a final moment of clarity, it told her the only thing it could think of: stop moving.
And so Camilla quit moving. The bubbles stopped floating to the surface and her musc
les went limp in the girls’ hands.
The one-eyed sister kept Camilla’s head submerged to ensure her victim was dead, but the other twin wasn’t as careful. Her grip relaxed, and all of a sudden—with a hidden burst of life power—Camilla’s arms flew up and then slammed down again on the solid ice. Erica’s brittle fingers shattered and Camilla’s hands flew free, grabbing the girl on top of her and throwing her out of the way.
Camilla’s head burst out of the water and arctic air inflated her lungs. She leaped up, gasping, and ran for the house, but just as she started making distance, she slipped on the ice and her legs gave out beneath her.
The twins were on her again with renewed viciousness. They ripped at her arms and shoulders and scalp…
Then Camilla spotted it ten feet away: the ax she had used to crack open the ice.
If a child goes bad, it must be abolished.
She jabbed the twins with her elbows and threw herself forward. Her hands landed on the shaft of the ax, and as the sisters leaped up, she spun around and sunk the blade into one of their sides. In another fluid motion, she tore the blade out and clubbed the other sister with the blunt end of the metal, sending her spinning over the ground and sprawling out like an unconscious snow angel.
Camilla drew herself up, panting and wheezing. She looked at the twins’ bodies—the shells that she had tried desperately to save—and watched with horror as they writhed painfully on the ice. Perhaps she would have felt more remorse if they hadn’t just tried to kill her.
She glanced up at the moon and it stared back, waiting to see what she would do next.
It didn’t take long to find out.
Camilla approached the bodies of the girls and hovered over them. Without a single word, she lifted the ax in the air and brought it down as cleanly as she could. Then she did it one more time.