Come Little Children (12 page)

Wind shook the branches and shivered the leaves. Something glinted in the moonlight outside of the window that made Camilla tilt her head and squint closer.

“I didn’t know this was a fruit tree,” she said.

“Huh?” Peter said, still fumbling over his previous sentence.

Camilla shimmied closer to the window and reached out to pluck something off the closest branch. When she brought her hand back in, it was cradling a dark-red apple.

Peter’s eyes pulled back into focus. He sat up a little straighter. “Let’s see.”

Camilla reached across the space and handed Peter the apple. He took it, and she caught a glimpse of the tattoo on the inside of his wrist again.

Peter felt the waxy skin of the apple for a second and then set it on the floor. “We load this thing with insecticides every year,” he dismissed. “Big bug problems. Don’t eat these.”

“M-hmm.” Camilla wasn’t paying attention to the apple anymore; she was still eying the tattoo. “What’s that?”

“This?” Peter rolled up his sleeve as far as it could go, revealing the full calligraphy inked into his skin.

“
Memento vivre
,” Camilla read.

“The sister of this one.” Peter rolled up his other sleeve, unveiling another tattoo in the same style and font that read “
Memento mori
.”

“Remember you must live,” she mumbled. “Remember you must die.”

“You know Latin?”

“Phrases. I like them.”

“Thanks. They remind me that on one hand”—he shook his right arm—“I should have a life worth living, and on the other hand”—he shook his left—“I’m only human. So basically, don’t be stupid.”

“Who did them?”

“Me. My own ink and needles.”

Camilla admired the tattoos in a whole new way, imagining Peter’s steady hands guiding the delicate needle tip along his own skin. She felt a tingle up her spine.

“These are nothing,” Peter said, more excited. “Look at this.”

He pulled the collar of his shirt down and turned so Camilla could see a green-and-gray Celtic symbol colored into the bottom of his nape. She moved closer and touched the intricate marking.

“It’s the triquetra. Father and son linked together. Had to do it with a small hand mirror; I was stiff for a month.”

“What’s this?” Camilla touched a point where another tattoo dipped below his shirt collar.

“Oh yeah.” Peter rolled his eyes. “One sec.”

He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off, then slid his undershirt over his head to reveal a large bird covering the right side of his chest and shoulder.

“The raven on the bust of Pallas.”

“I swear,” Peter said, “every teen with an emo phase hits a Poe stage. Got bored and took it to the next level, I guess.”

“At least this one’s important.” Camilla pointed to Peter’s last tattoo: the Vincent family’s
V
inked over his left breast, right above his heart.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Guess you’re getting to know us pretty well.”

Camilla studied Peter’s body: his torso resting on top of his knees with the moonlight bathing his bare skin in a milky glow. The air in the tree house had changed. It was tender and quiet.

Peter reached down and took her hand, guiding it to his chest. Wind rustled through the yard and another shiver zipped up Camilla’s spine, though this time it wasn’t from the breeze.

And then, as the whole world spun around them, Peter and Camilla leaned in and kissed.

9

The Hospice

A
quiet
swish
of water woke Camilla up in the middle of the night. The sound blended naturally with the peaceful Yukon soundscape—the chirps of the chorus frogs, the hoots from the great gray owls in their bulky nests—but to Camilla’s subconscious, something was very, very wrong.

The picnic blanket slid off her bare shoulder as she sat up and massaged her eyes in the dark. Running a hand through her hair, she looked back and saw Peter still asleep, curled up like a baby in the fetal position on the floor of the tree house. He looked content—possibly dreaming—and Camilla felt a little bit like she was floating in a dream herself. But it wasn’t a dream; it was real, and everything that had happened between them was real too.

The water swished again.

Camilla crawled to the window and peeked over the ledge. The pond was churning long, lethargic waves.
It could have been the frogs
, she thought.
Or maybe the wind tossed something inside
.

She watched the water settle down to its glassy surface and slumped into the tree house again, massaging her forehead.
There’s nothing there. Nothing at all
.

Another swish.

Frowning, Camilla lifted herself up again and stuck her head over the ledge.

She could see the water stirring, but it was too dark to tell where the ripples were coming from. She squinted harder, leaning halfway out of the window, and threw her gaze around the courtyard.

Then she spotted them, right near the bank of the pond: a pair of eyes bobbing in the water. They were looking straight at her, the whites of them cutting through the darkness amid a net of black hair that floated like dead seaweed on the surface.

Camilla was paralyzed. She gripped the wall of the tree house with shaking white knuckles as the head began to rise. Every step the body took, the water level sunk to expose more of the person’s face. A tiny nose broke the surface, then round cheeks with pudgy dimples. When the rest of the jaw slid out, Camilla sucked in a cold draft of breath and clenched it in her paralyzed lungs.

The person was a little girl—the same eight-year-old girl whose third grade picture had been stapled to Leonard Gall’s autopsy papers.

Camilla tumbled back, a hundred images reeling through her head: flashes of the dripping-wet boy, the gory autopsy scars, the cupboard of towels in the kitchen, the police officer telling her to “Watch yourself around these freaks”, and, most of all, the constant feeling of being scrutinized from Nolan’s dark neighborhood windows. Then one thought came galloping through the rest—a command that was loud and clear as it charged from her instincts and galvanized every muscle in her body.
Catch her! Catch that girl!

Camilla seized her shirt off the floor and pulled it over her breasts in one tug, then rammed on her flats and went scrambling for the ladder. Peter barely stirred behind her.

Her awkward legs spindled out of the tree house and fumbled for the invisible steps; when she looked below she could see the outline of the eight-year-old’s body at the edge of the pond. The girl was naked except for underwear and a training bra.

Camilla stepped down the tree with her heart whomping like a bass drum. Her nails dug into the trunk and she heard the fabric of her pants rip, exposing her kneecaps to the bite of the freezing wind, but she kept on, kept sliding her shins down the jagged bark like cheese on a cheese grater while the cuts and gashes were anesthetized by sheer adrenaline.

The little girl continued toward the manor.

“Stop!” Camilla hissed.

The girl didn’t listen. She kept going with her back to the tree.

Camilla looked down and weighed the danger of a ten-foot jump. A split second later, she sprung off the ladder and landed with a buckling thud; a rod of pain shot through her right leg, but she was up in a heartbeat and limping across the yard.

“Wait!” she hissed again. “Come back!”

The little girl stopped and looked over her shoulder. Camilla hobbled forward; the sting in her leg was so bad that she was half keeled over.

Suddenly, the little girl giggled.

Camilla took another step forward and the girl skipped two away.

“No, please. Stay there.”

She stumbled closer, but the girl giggled again and hopped an equal distance ahead.
Great, she thinks it’s a game
.

“All right, you win, you win.” Camilla grimaced.
Maybe I can talk to her from here
. “M-My name’s Camilla. What’s yours?”

No response.

“It’s a little cold for swimming. If you wait here a sec, I can bring you a towel.”

The girl was losing interest fast. She began turning away...

“Wait, how about a different game? I—I’ve got a suitcase of clothes upstairs and a
whole room
of crazy hats. How does that sound? We can play dress-up as late as you want, pinky swear.”

The girl eyed Camilla’s outstretched pinky and took the bait. Slowly she turned around, and as she pivoted, her scar became visible for the first time, stretching from the top of her sternum to the bottom of her rib cage.

Camilla gaped at the scar, her outstretched pinky curling back into a loose fist. The two of them stood there, staring at each other for a frozen moment, until the girl pivoted again and continued toward the veranda.

“No! Come back!” Camilla took another step, but a stabbing pain ripped into her lower body.

The girl continued bobbing through the yard, fading farther and farther away.

Camilla locked her eyes on the child’s back.
Now or never
. She took a deep breath in…and sprinted across the yard.

The little girl checked behind her and squealed with laughter, taking off faster for the house.

As they ran across the lawn, Camilla’s long legs began gaining ground. The dew on the grass was cold and slippery, but she dug in and tore through it, determined like a wounded lion pursuing a vital prey.

Then it happened—an enormous spike of pain plunged into her stomach.

Camilla crippled onto the lawn, her vision blurring as a massive charge surged through every circuit in her brain. Suddenly the world’s supply of oxygen wasn’t enough. She couldn’t cry out because something in her gut had clenched together and sealed off her body’s air supply, and as a cold darkness pressed in, she was left alone to writhe across the grass like an animal caught in an electrical fence. As she passed out, all she could do was watch the spinning, unfocused image of the giggling girl skip farther and farther away until everything went cloudy, then black.

This time it wasn’t the sound of water that woke Camilla up—it was the melody of a Baroque minuet.

A bar of sunlight cut through a gap in the curtains and turned the insides of her eyelids hot red. She stirred under the padding of stale hospital sheets and let out a low groan, attempting to release the pressure that was built up behind her skull. It didn’t help.

“Camilla?” a voice asked from somewhere in the room.

“Ughhhh,” she groaned again, inching herself up the elevated mattress. Finally she peeked an eyelid open.

The room was bland and sanitized. Someone from a local parish had tried sprucing it up with pink Mary Mother of Jesus curtains and an entire ark of macramé animals, but, despite their best Christian efforts, the room still had the overwhelming feeling of a sterile hospital.
An entire cloister of nuns knitting ten hours a day for ten years straight couldn’t bring enough cheer to a sick ward
.

The minuet was dancing out of an old cassette player in the corner. A hand reached down and dimmed the knob; it was Laura, Lucas’s fiancé.

“Wild guess. Jasper sent the music?”

“‘A place can never have too many pianos,’” Laura quoted, adding, “even if they’re prerecorded.”

Camilla lolled her head against the pillow. She tried remembering how she had gotten there, but the smallest amount of concentration returned a walloping headache.

“Don’t worry, you’re still in Nolan,” Laura said. “They did the surgery here.”

“Surgery?” Camilla’s eyes popped. “What surgery?” She immediately started patting her arms and legs to make sure her main appendages were still attached.

Laura moved closer and rested her hands gently on the bed-frame. “You look fine,” she said, as if it was supposed to help.

“Fine? What was it?”

“We don’t know. They won’t say a word since we’re not family.”

If the problem’s not on the outside, it’s on the inside
. She ran her hands over her skin, trying to hunt for physical clues, and when she touched the plastic tube that was trailing out the back of her wrist, her eyes followed it to the cart that was stationed beside her bed.

She reached over and pulled the IV closer, grabbing an empty 2mL bottle labelled DYLOJECT. Unfamiliar with the brand name, she spun the bottle around and spotted
diclofenac
in the fine print.

“How long have I been out?” Camilla asked, still on edge but measurably more composed. She returned the innocuous painkiller to the cart and leaned back again.

“Almost twelve hours. Peter will be happy he can get some sleep now.”

“Peter?” she frowned. A memory was tapping earnestly on her forehead. “Where is he?”

“A removal call came in, and Moira insisted he take it.” Laura paused, then added, “He didn’t want to leave, but I said I’d stay until he came back.”

Camilla pictured Peter in the chair by the cassette player, watching her sleep for twelve hours straight.
He must have tried a few gentle nudges. Maybe a kiss too
.

A dull pain tapped the middle of her stomach. She breathed in and the pain pinched back like a spider bite.

Frowning, she lifted the blankets and peeled away her gown to reveal a tiny incision beside her belly button.
Ah, there you are
. The stitching wasn’t much longer than a paper clip, but it was red and raw.

“So no one knows anything?”

“No. Peter found you passed out in the courtyard this morning and used the van to rush you here. That’s it.”

The courtyard
?
What in the world was I doing in the—

Suddenly the memories burst through her headache like a ten thousand pound wrecking ball.

Steps snaking up to a hidden tree house
.

A cremation box full of picnic food
.

Peter’s bare skin sliding against hers
.

Tree bark tearing her kneecaps
.

The eyes in the water
.

The giggling
.

The scar
.

“What happened to the girl?” Camilla blurted.

“Girl?”

“The one from the backyard. The one who was in the pond, just like the boy the night before.” She had bolted up without realizing it and felt a wave of dizziness suddenly wash over her. She blinked out of focus as Laura guided her against the mattress again.