Come Little Children

by Melhoff, D.

  Twice was all.

  25

  Closed Caskets

  The Cory sisters’ funeral attracted nearly half the town of Nolan. More than three hundred people crammed shoulder to shoulder in the pews of the old Anglican church, and another two hundred packed themselves wherever they could find additional space: the balcony, the basement, and along both sides of the crowded sanctuary. Capacity was double what the code allowed, but when the fire chief walked in, he took off his hat with the rest of them and stood solemnly at the back.

  Camilla and Laura were standing in the farthest corner of the church dressed in blacks. Abigail was in front of them with her hands politely crossed; she was wearing a black dress with a white ribbon tied into her hair, complete with black shoes and a little black clutch containing all of a seven-year-old’s necessities—lip balm, four dimes, and half a stick of bubble gum. Camilla had dressed her that morning and neither of them had said a word to each other the entire time.

  The minister—the same grandfatherly man who had married Lucas and Laura, then Peter and Camilla—entered from the back, clothed in his white funeral vestments. His stole and surplice rippled behind him as he walked somberly up the aisle, and as he passed each row, a chain of coughs and sniffles rose into the steeple.

  The organist began playing the opening hymn as the pallbearers entered with the two miniature caskets. On top of each case was a beautiful casket spray of pink carnations. The pallbearers, four on each casket, were comprised of Mr. and Mrs. Cory, their siblings—all men—and Peter and Lucas for extra support.

  Camilla watched her husband and brother-in-law help bring the caskets to the front plinth and set them before the Paschal candle. She saw Peter touch the arm of Mr. Cory, who had tears falling down his face, and Mr. Cory nodded back, mouthing thank you.

  Camilla had felt sick all morning, but that one gesture—the image of Peter patting Mr. Cory’s tear-stained sleeve—nearly made her keel over. This was wrong. The whole funeral was wrong. Stephanie and Erica would still be alive and the church would have been empty on a Saturday afternoon if she had just handed over her daughter before anything awful came to pass.

  Mr. Cory should be the one patting Peter’s arm and offering his condolences, not the other way around.

  But Camilla hadn’t told the truth. She had lied through her teeth, claiming that she had found the girls washed up with the Cory’s canoe when she was out for a walk, and that her presence had scared off a lone timber wolf that, unfortunately, had found the sisters first. It sounded plausible enough—two kids sneak out on the lake, get tossed overboard, and freeze in the water—and no one had any reason to deny it. The parents were too decimated to question whether or not the canoe had been tied to their dock since the debacle began, and so Camilla forged a set of autopsy papers with the coroner’s signature that Jasper kept on file and the police closed the case the same day, leaving Nolan a few hours later. Finally, she had embalmed the girls herself to ensure that none of the Vincents would see the markings on their chests, and then went so far as to claim the wolf had done too much damage to bring them back the old-fashioned way. Indeed, Camilla and her daughter had both gotten off with the perfect murders.

  “We have come here today,” the priest began as the pallbearers took their seats, “to remember before God our sisters Stephanie and Erica Cory, to give thanks for their lives, to commend them to God our merciful redeemer and judge, and to comfort one another in our grief.”

  As Peter and Lucas walked along the front pew, Camilla saw half the heads in the congregation turn and follow them.

  The tension in Nolan had been getting worse, and the Midnight Sun was capitalizing on the atmosphere by churning out stories that increasingly compared the town’s ambience to that of 1989’s. Someone at the prison had leaked information about the inmates being separated for “exhibiting unusually violent tendencies,” and there was a whole spread on how the hospital’s sedatives budget had quadrupled in one month, not to mention an interview from an anonymous nurse who claimed that a majority of the patients in the past three weeks were becoming sicker, not healthier. Even though the Vincents were never explicitly mentioned in any of the articles, they were certainly brought up in the Letters to the Editor section: “Everyone knows who’s behind this”, “Force them to share their registry; have every family checked,” “Either they move or we do. Who agrees?” Some less journalistically-inclined individual even took it upon themself to voice their opinion by throwing a rock through the Vincents’ south parlor window. Since then, Brutus had taken a strong defensive stance among their day-to-day operations; he moved several of the manor’s gun cabinets into the main hallways and insisted that if anyone left the house, they take a revolver with them for safety purposes. “We’re not the dangerous ones,” he had snarled. “They are.”

  Camilla looked around the church. This occasion had been one of the few exceptions to Brutus’s new rule: the only Vincents concealing pistols under their jackets were Peter and Lucas, since as pallbearers they were the largest targets.

  “God of hope,” the priest recited, “we come to you in shock and grief and confusion of heart. Help us find peace in the knowledge of your loving mercy to all your children, and give us light to guide us out of our darkness and into the assurance of your love. Amen.”

  The congregation echoed a heavy “amen.”

  Camilla looked down. She had just heard Abigail repeating the “amen” quietly with everyone else.

  Pray all you want, girlie. It’s too late now.

  She looked back at the caskets in front of the altar and stared intensely at the white sidings. Part of her expected the lids to smash open and the Cory sisters to come clawing out, reaching forward with their pruny, strangling fingers to finish her off.

  But the caskets stayed still. The twins were dead—for good.

  If someone would have unlatched the coffins and unhinged the heavy tops, they would have found both sisters stretched out in their Saturday bests. Camilla had dressed them with brand-new clothes that the Corys had supplied and achieved some of her best reconstructive makeup work since mortuary school. Their wounds were virtually invisible: the places where she’d smashed their skulls in with the ax had been reassembled with putty and concealed by locks of their own hair, and Stephanie’s eyeball had been replaced with a glass marble before being sutured shut. Thankfully, the pink embalming fluid had put some color back in their cheeks, and by the time Camilla had finished with them, the twins looked just like their cute little selves instead of the demonic monsters that had pinned her to the ice and tried to drown her.

  The funeral service lasted only another twenty minutes. There was no eulogy, and when the commendation was finished, the priest looked down at the pews and offered his holy dismissal. “May the love of God, which transcends all understanding, bless and console you, and all who have known and loved Stephanie and Erica, this day and forevermore. Amen.”

  One more “amen” echoed in the congregation, and the organ began the closing hymn.

  The pallbearers resumed their posts and took the handles of the white caskets. They exited the church with the immediate family following suit, and then everyone else fell in behind, heads hung low, arms draped around loved ones. Camilla noticed a few of them shooting daggers at the crest on her jacket, but otherwise the townspeople were respectful of the situation and left without stirring trouble.

  As the crowd trickled out, Moira came down from the balcony and caught Camilla and Laura hovering in the narthex.

  “Stop standing there like mannequins,” she muttered. “Start packing up. The candles, the flowers, the mementos—we’re out of here in half an hour.” She clapped her hands chop-chop, and Camilla and Laura took off in separate directions.

  In front of the church, the pallbearers approached the hearse as the rear doors clicked and hovered open automatically. The eight of them charged the caskets into the transport space before Brutus closed the doors and climbed into the drive
r’s seat. Mr. Cory’s eyes were bloodshot, but something about the service had appeased a part of his sorrow and stopped the flow of tears temporarily.

  Peter and Lucas got into a town car that was parked behind the hearse—Lucas in the driver’s seat, Peter in shotgun—and watched the funeral car take off in front of them. Lucas put the keys in the ignition, but didn’t turn them. He just sat there watching the landau disappear down Geary Road.

  “What’s wrong?” Peter asked.

  Lucas shook his head. “You ever wonder if sometimes it’s better not bringing them into the world at all?”

  Peter looked at the Cory parents standing on the sidewalk. Mr. Cory was still holding together all right, but Mrs. Cory was a wreck. She had tears and snot and eyeliner running all down her face, and since the decision was to have the twins cremated after the service, she wasn’t even going to get the immediate closure of seeing their caskets lowered into the ground.

  “I think,” Peter said carefully, “we have a pretty slanted view of the world, doing this. Maybe I wonder sometimes what it would be like to leave, or what if mom and dad had been…I don’t know…electricians. But no, I don’t think I’ve ever second-guessed if kids are worth it.”

  “Think of how good we have it.” Lucas shook his head. “And how much luck is involved. It could have happened to anyone—two little girls decide to go for a boat trip and that’s it. Or they ride their bikes across the street at the wrong time, or get into trouble when you’re not around. Next thing you know, you’re crying on a sidewalk because it’s all over. You don’t worry about Abigail?”

  “Abby’s as smart as her mom. If anything, the two of them worry about me.”

  Lucas nodded, but didn’t laugh.

  “You know what,” Peter continued, “if something happened, I know I’d do everything in my power to protect her. And if I ever lost her, at least I would have known her. That’s better than never knowing her, isn’t it? If loss is the price of love, I think most parents would pay it.”

  Lucas tipped his head against the headrest, appearing to mull over that last point. Peter perked an eyebrow. “Luke? Something on your mind?”

  Lucas sat there for another couple of seconds. Finally he said, “Yeah. Yeah, Pete. There’s something I want to—”

  Suddenly there was a knock on Peter’s window. He looked over and saw Abigail standing outside.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said, rolling the window. “What’s up?”

  “It’s boring in there. Can I come home with you?”

  “Did you ask mom?”

  “No, she’s busy.”

  “Did you ask grandma?”

  “No, she’s grouchy. I told Uncle Jasper.”

  Peter snickered. “All right, but if you get me in trouble…” He opened the door and picked her up, setting her on his knee.

  “OK, chauffeur. Take us home.”

  Lucas tipped an invisible hat and cranked the keys in the ignition. The look of deep thought had disappeared from his face for now, and as the car took off from the church with no one—not even Jasper—knowing that Abigail had just left with the two brothers, a dark wave of clouds began rolling over Nolan.

  The Vincents had witnessed plenty of storms before, but none that compared to the one that was about to hit.

  After dropping Abigail off at the manor’s front door, Peter and Lucas drove around back to help Brutus bring the Cory sisters’ coffins through the garage. When the caskets were unloaded, the director told them to oversee the cremations while he made one more trip to St. Luther’s.

  Inside the crematory, the oven fired up with a bellowing roar. While the brothers waited for the chamber to preheat, they wheeled the caskets to the retort door and prepared the collection pails for the ashes. The two of them worked in silence; the only sound was the wind booming against the walls of the brick tower.

  Lucas put his hands on his hips and squinted up at the belfry. “Remember hide and seek?” he asked. “I always swore you hid in here, but I never caught you. How about it. How’d you get out?”

  “An illusionist never reveals his secrets,” Peter said.

  “Illusionist? Right, and mom’s a swimsuit model. You’re so scrawny you probably slid through the cracks in the walls.”

  “Now, maybe, but not then. Dad kept this place airtight. No mouse holes, no ceiling chinks, not even a crack for an ant to crawl through.”

  The wind slammed against the crematorium and whistled through a dozen holes in the wall. It sounded like ghostly screams coming from the tall, dark void above.

  “Huh. Maybe that’s him,” Peter said, looking up in the rafters. “He’s pissed off we let the place get so bad.”

  Lucas went over to the workbench and fished out the old, brittle cord from behind the cremulator. He ducked under the table and plugged it into the wall, then came back up and tested the buttons. The blades inside swished around like a high-powered blender, ready for their bony meal.

  “Yeah.” Lucas nodded. “Yeah. I guess things are pretty different, huh? You ever wonder what’ll happen down the road?”

  “How far? Like when mom and the uncles are gone?”

  Lucas shrugged.

  “Well, we’ll still be here, won’t we? Our families, plus Maddock. Tell you the truth, I’ve always thought the two of us would fix it up someday. The men of the house, you know. Dad would be proud.”

  “Yeah.” Lucas nodded again. “I think he would. Hey and, uh, speaking of family, there’s something I never finished telling you in the car.”

  Peter looked up, noticing the struggle in his brother’s eyes again. He set down the tray he was holding and crossed his arms. “Shoot.”

  Lucas scratched his head like an 800-pound gorilla, unsure of how to put something sensitively. Finally he looked up and just said it. “Laura’s pregnant.”

  A smile broke across Peter’s face. “Luke, that’s amazing. Good for you two!”

  Peter crossed the tiny room and threw his arms around his brother’s broad shoulders, smacking his back. A smile cracked on Lucas’s face.

  “Thanks, Pete. She’s only two months. We weren’t going to say anything for awhile, but this just seemed like…like the right time, I guess.”

  “That—that’s incredible. Who else knows?”

  “No one. Laura still wants to wait.”

  “My lips are sealed.” Peter hugged Lucas again, but this time his brother didn’t hug back. He pulled away. “What’s, uh, what’s going on? Is this what all that talk in the car was about?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lucas said.

  “No, you don’t worry about it. If this is the same ‘world’s not a safe place’ BS, you’ve got to put it out of your head. Every parent needs to at some point.”

  “But does every parent have to deal with this?” Lucas pointed at the two coffins waiting in front of the oven. “I should be ecstatic, but all I can think about is losing a kid I don’t even know yet. You’ve seen what’s happening out there. The paper’s not spewing bullshit—something is wrong, and we messed up somewhere.”

  The wind thrashed against the side of the tower again. A chill was blowing into the room, and all the warmth seemed to seep away through the cold, cracked walls.

  “You think it’s one of them?”

  “It has to be, it’s exactly what happened last time. The prisoners losing it, the sick getting sicker, the murders—”

  “No one’s been murdered.”

  Lucas opened his mouth, then closed it. Peter followed his brother’s eyes as they rolled over to the little caskets in front of the crematory.

  “You think they were killed?”

  “You don’t?”

  “They washed up with their family’s canoe. They drowned.”

  “But who’s to say someone else wasn’t involved? Maybe Camilla didn’t look close enough.”

  Lucas reached out and put a hand on one of the coffins.

  “Don’t,” Peter said. “Give them their peace.”
r />   “But what if we’re about to incinerate evidence that could save lives?”

  “We have other places we can go. Look, if it makes you feel better, I’ll set up interviews with all the families we’ve helped.”

  “No,” Lucas said. “I went out yesterday, but the Mullards practically chased me off their yard, and the Pinktons said Camilla talked to them last week. Did she say anything to you?”

  Peter furrowed his brow. “No. Nothing.”

  “Then this is it,” Lucas said, moving his fingers over the casket’s latches.

  “I said no,” Peter insisted, swatting Lucas’s hand away.

  “You’re not in charge.”

  “Neither are you. Our job is to cremate these sisters, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. If that’s not what you have in mind, then get out and I’ll finish it myself.”

  “Our job is to keep people safe when we fuck with the dead.”

  “Fine. So stop fucking with the dead and go play detective somewhere else.”

  “Pete.” Lucas put a firm hand on Peter’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. “If someone’s started killing, you know they won’t stop. That’s all they do—they spread their rot as much as they can—and they’ll rot away this whole town. Have you been to the hospital? The patients aren’t normal. That’s how it starts: the weak lose it first. Soon enough the strong catch it too, and unless we stop this thing, it’ll just get worse. A lot, lot worse.”

  Behind the fear, there was something dangerous in Lucas’s eyes. A look that said he would do anything to stop the kind of evil he was talking about.

  “I understand,” Peter said. He put his own hand on Lucas’s arm. “But you won’t find anything in here. Camilla wouldn’t miss a paper cut. I trust her. It’s not necessary, it’s not respectful, and it’s not what dad would have done either. You know that.”

  “That’s the reason he’s gone, Pete! He didn’t do what he needed to! He had him—he had fucking Jesse Whittaker in his hands—and he couldn’t…”