Come Little Children

by Melhoff, D.

  He told them to bring caskets from the second floor of the house. A group of men went in and returned a few minutes later carrying plain wooden coffins. They brought them to each of the bodies, and together with help from the other Nolaners, they loaded the cadavers respectfully and sealed the lids.

  A couple of men whom Peter had never met before brought a casket to the edge of the pond. He waded through the water to join them, and when he got to the plain, shoddy container—the complete opposite of what Camilla deserved—he lowered his wife’s body inside with trembling arms.

  He stood back and looked at her.

  Something behind his eyes fought the urge to grab her back and run out of the yard, but then the lid came down and the two strangers began nailing it shut.

  Whack! Whack! Whack!

  Peter held out his hand as if to stop them, but when they paused, he took one of the men’s hammers and placed its head on the last protruding nail. Whack! Whack! The nail went flush, and the coffin was sealed. It was finished.

  The men nodded solemnly and went off to help the others. Meanwhile, Peter slipped the hammer into his coat and walked across the perimeter of the pond, coming to Abigail’s body. She was facedown in the shallow water, and if there had been blood, it had since rinsed away.

  He picked her up and took her to the blazing tree. The roaring fire lit up their faces and melted the icicles from their hair. When he reached the roots, he set Abigail in the flames and turned back, offering no sign of deference or homage, before walking away. Behind him, her body burned on the pyre, the flesh hissing over her bones as it boiled and melted off.

  When all the bodies had been put into caskets, Peter told the townspeople to pick them up and form a line. The Nolaners did as he said, and once the line was ready—himself and three other pallbearers at the very front with Camilla’s casket—they walked out of the side gate and strung through the front yard in single file. The parade of twenty-five caskets crossed over the driveway and curled onto the dirt road that swung gradually toward Nolan’s town square.

  They marched along the road in complete silence, the midnight sun hanging large and low overhead, the stars still watching from their mezzanine seats. Farther down, the wind died off and the beautiful northern lights came out to dance for the solemn procession. The entire Yukon seemed to be mourning its people.

  The string of Nolaners curved with the road and delved deeper into the trees. Finally they came to the edge of the town’s cemetery and crossed under the iron archway. Once they were through, they peeled off in different directions toward their families’ and friends’ plots.

  Peter and his pallbearers brought Camilla’s casket to the Vincents’ mausoleum. He took out the crypt key and inserted it in the lock. Together they passed through, and then barely a minute later they returned outside. Peter shut the door and locked it as each of the pallbearers gave him a firm pat on the back and took off to help other families bury their loved ones. Peter stayed in front of the mausoleum for another few seconds, looking up at the crest that was chiseled into the stony edifice, and his face remained as numb as it had been in the courtyard. He whispered something—a prayer, maybe—and turned and went to help the other mourning townspeople. Not all families were fortunate enough to have burial vaults; a lot of graves needed digging tonight, and the mindless shovel work would give his head a break and feel good on the hands.

  The Nolaners dug all night. The ground was still frozen, but their determination kept their shovels going at an inexorable pace. By the time the sky was starting to lighten, there were almost two dozen fresh plots where coffins had been planted like garden seeds and covered with chunks of earth. The exodus from the graveyard was just as unified as the entrance had been. Everyone stayed until the last grave was planted, and then the minister from St. Luther’s Northern Parish came forward and said a few words about love and forgiveness and trust in God—all the while, his goose egg gleaming piously above his left eye—before they all echoed a quiet “amen” and exited the cemetery together.

  Back at the Vincent manor, Peter entered the front gates just as the family’s town car was pulling out of the garage. Brutus and Maddock had skipped the mass burial and, from the looks of the three faces in the Lincoln’s windows, gone to pick up Laura from the hospital before returning home and chucking as many possessions as possible into one car load. As the vehicle with the three remaining family members skidded past, Peter made eye contact with them one final time. The animosity was still in their eyes, but it was overshadowed by profound grief. Vengeance would not be able to slake it—nothing could but distance and time—so with a final turn from their heads, the three of them made a silent, unanimous vote and excommunicated Peter from their family. The town car swerved out of the yard and burned rubber down the road, starting its first of many miles between the remaining clan and their abandoned funeral home.

  Peter skirted around the lawn, avoiding the fountain where Jasper’s head was still mounted on top, and followed the driveway to the open garage. He went in and came out the other side, reentering the courtyard where most of the chaos had taken place.

  The tree was still burning, although not as violently as before. He walked to the place where he had left Abigail’s body and saw nothing but a pile of unidentifiable remains, like the charred bits from a burned log in a fire pit. His hand reached down and took a branch that had escaped the blaze. Walking closer, he held the stick up and dipped it into the flames.

  The fire caught instantly.

  He walked back across the yard, swinging the stick and watching the tail of fire ripple through the air, until he arrived at the porch again.

  Without hesitating, Peter tapped the stick against the kitchen door and watched the fire catch onto the screen. He walked over to the patio furniture next, lit the cushions, and then tapped the windowsills and the gables. The fire latched onto the hundred-year-old wood and started spreading as calmly as Peter was walking.

  He stepped off the porch and turned to see the fruits of his fiery labor. Finally, his arm came up and lobbed the stick in the air; it landed on the old shingles of the manor where the snow had melted away, and the fire caught there too, lapping up the roof and connecting with the gutters.

  From the front of the house, nothing looked wrong yet. It would be over half an hour until the flames became visible from the road, and then another hour until anyone noticed. By then it would be too late to do anything (of course, whether or not the fire chief would’ve actually called in the trucks was a different matter).

  An engine started to life in the garage, and then two headlights peeled into the front yard and down the long driveway. It was the parlor’s piano-black hearse, with Peter at the wheel, and it crawled slowly across the yard before passing through the broken down gates at the front of the estate. As he drove off the lot, his hands anxiously at ten-and-two, Peter stared in the rearview mirror and took a last look at his family’s house while the smoke from the courtyard curled into the twilight sky.

  The hearse followed the dirt road all the way to the graveyard. It drove right up to the Vincents’ crypt and parked by the doorway.

  Peter got out of the driver’s seat and walked to the entrance of the mausoleum. The cemetery was cold and quiet. Everyone was back at home, sleeping, blocking out the night’s terrible events with unconsciousness.

  But Peter couldn’t sleep.

  Not tonight. Not now.

  Inside the Vincents’ crypt, the vaults were cloaked with shadows. Then a crack of light cut through the darkness as the door opened and Peter stepped inside.

  In the center of the room was Camilla’s coffin. He crossed the stone floor and knelt in front of it, eyes flitting quicker as his hand reached inside his jacket and pulled out the hammer that he had been holding on to since nailing the casket shut.

  Peter wedged the forked end of the hammer into the lid and yanked back as hard as he could. A nail popped out. The hammer slid down to the next nail and cranked back again, t
hen the next, and the next.

  There was a thump from inside the coffin, and Peter sucked back a sharp gust of breath as he slammed the hammer harder against the splintered case and forced the flimsy top clean off the remaining pins.

  The lid crashed beside the casket as a pair of hands shot through the opening. Peter reached in at the same time that Camilla reached out, and their arms wrapped around each other as tightly as they could. They kissed feverishly, Peter running his fingers through Camilla’s crusty red hair as she swept her hands all over his head and the back of his neck.

  Torn between not wanting to waste any more time and not wanting to let each other go, it was Camilla who finally pulled away from the kiss. Peter took her hand to help her out of the coffin, and then without looking back, they left the casket behind them, broken open, and went running out of the tomb.

  The hearse waited patiently. As Camilla approached, the rear doors clicked and hovered open automatically. She crawled in as fast as she could—being spotted would ruin the getaway—while Peter locked the crypt and returned to the driver’s side.

  The hearse started up again and pulled away from the graveyard. As it drove through the iron gates and onto the streets of Nolan, Camilla peeked out of the little window curtains in the back and watched the buildings roll by, just as she had on the night that she arrived more than eight years ago.

  It worked. I can’t believe it. It really, really worked.

  Tears of happiness tumbled down her cheeks.

  Her mind flashed back to the seconds following her collapse from the flaming tree. While Abigail had landed in the shallow part of the pond, Camilla had fallen farther out, and the branch had managed to break through the weakened ice and absorb the crushing blow. When Peter had come splashing through the mist, she had been hanging off the buoying wood, weak but alive. Still, there was no escaping the backyard. Not alive, at least. In a flash of panic and madness—and inspired by how she had once tricked the Cory sisters when they tried to drown her—Camilla suggested she pretend to be dead. They would inter her body in the family crypt, and then Peter would come back with the hearse and they would smuggle her out in the rear compartment, away from Nolan forever.

  And it worked. Holy shit, it worked.

  The old buildings on Main Street passed by, followed by the cottages on the outskirts of town. For once, no one was watching through the windows. The citizens were all sleeping, their vigilant gazes turned away as the hearse crawled by, completely unnoticed.

  Camilla leaned back and breathed easier. She saw the town’s sign float away beyond her window, right before the forest swallowed them up in its wooden teeth and they began climbing a steep, bumpy hill.

  At the top of the canyon, the space between trees opened up and the hearse came rattling out of the brush, joining the Top of the World Highway as it curled left and ran toward Dawson City. Camilla took one last look out of the window and saw the valley of trees stretched below, as well as a billow of smoke rising up from somewhere in the northwest. Once the smoke died out, Nolan would be lost in the rolling canyons, and she knew that if she ever came back, she would not be able to find it.

  The hearse picked up speed and glided smoothly along the highway, the only speck of life for miles and miles ahead. The sun was just coming up over the hills, and as its beams stretched brightly into the back of the hearse, Camilla reached up and closed the velvet curtains. She slid down and rested her head against the wall, thinking not of nooses or fires, but of the open road that now lay ahead.

  Of building a new home—a new life—somewhere else.

  Of hugging her mother again, and introducing Peter.

  Of starting fresh and suturing the wounds from the last seven days until they were nothing but faded scars that drew less and less attention in the coming years. And as sleep washed over her, so too did the peace that came with knowing the nightmare was finally over.