Come Little Children (23 page)

Too heavy for Moira or Laura, too light for Brutus—

The figure’s legs, lumbering down the steps, cast flickering shadows over her face.

Too clunky for Jasper or Peter
.

The person landed on the cement. The support beams were blocking a full view, but brief glimpses filtered through the wide gaps: first a foot, then a hand, then another hand.

She shrunk back against the wall as the figure shuffled across the room to the cabinet, then to the table, then to the cabinet again. Finally it stopped.

Go back to sleep
, she urged with all her willpower.
Go back to sleep! Please!

To Camilla’s incredible relief, the figure started back for the staircase.
Thank God!
she thought, unclenching her fists, when suddenly there was a faint metallic
clink
.

The figure stopped shuffling.

Camilla’s eyes popped open in horror. She saw the figure hunch over and pick up the cruciate from the floor, running it through his silhouetted fingers like a hunter finding a fresh trail to a sitting duck.

The figure ambled forward, still examining the needle, and stepped into the basement’s small pool of light. His socks were visible first, then his claw-like hands, and finally the crown of his head. Slowly his neck tilted up and revealed Maddock’s face staring straight at the staircase—straight at her.

Crack!

The basement’s light bulb sparked out.

Camilla’s heart pounded in her chest.
Did he see me? He’s staring right here
.

Silence. She pictured him standing ten feet away—or creeping toward her with outstretched hands—when suddenly the Velcro crackle started again and ended the uncertainty.

He was walking straight toward her.

Maneuvering carefully through the support beams, she wormed her way out of her hiding spot toward the hall that shot deeper into the basement. Now she was in completely new territory. Her hands found the wall and she slipped inside the cold corridor, having no idea where it led and nothing but adrenaline to propel her forward.

Immediately the wall veered through another doorway—when she tried following it, she was blocked by iron rungs.

Damn it!

She kept down the original hall, shorter breaths with every step, only to find the next door was sealed off too. And the next. She flipped to the other side of the hall as a swell of anxiety percolated her blood and shot tremors through her hands. It was no good—all the rooms were barred off like a cellblock.

Panting, she gripped a pair of rungs and pressed her face between them. Inside all she could see was a tiny window near the ceiling of the room…and a little moonlight leaking through. It was just enough to illuminate a wooden bench nestled into the corner, along with a pair of wrist restraints that hung down like medieval dungeon cuffs.

These are makeshift cells
, she realized with sudden clarity.
This is where they ran the experiments
.

She was horrified and hopeful at the same time. If the rooms on that side of the hall were against the outer wall, she should stay as close to that edge as possible.

A footstep echoed behind her—Maddock was in the same hallway now—and then another. Slowly at first, then faster.

Camilla ran as quickly as she could on the heels of her feet. Maddock was taking large strides behind her, and as he walked, he dragged her forgotten needle along the cement wall. When
it hit the bars it made a chilling
clink, clink, clink
sound followed by a stony
grrrrrrrr
.

Clink, clink, clink, grrrrrrrr…Clink, clink, clink, grrrrrrrr…

The sound was straight out of a nightmare.

Clink, clink, clink, grrrrrrrr…CLINK, CLINK, CLINK, GRRRRRRRR…

Maddock drew closer with every clink, and no matter how fast Camilla lurched on her heels, she couldn’t outrun him. She bared her teeth and got ready to make a full-out dash, when all of a sudden her worst fear came true.

She hit a dead end.

CLINK, CLINK, CLINK, GRRRRRRRR…CLINK, CLINK, CLINK, GRRRRRRRR…

All of the cool-headedness Camilla possessed immediately evaporated. She pictured Maddock reaching out behind her, his claws diving for her in the pitch black air, and she squirmed against the wall like a field mouse hearing the tail of a rattler sizzle closer.

Camilla pressed herself harder against the wall, about to scream at the top of her lungs, when a handle stabbed painfully—miraculously—into her hip.
It’s not a wall, it’s a door!
In a flurry of panic, she pushed the handle open and threw herself inside the room, slamming it shut and jabbing the button lock.

A second later, the handle was jostling wildly.

“Who are you! Who’s in there!”

Camilla curled up against the sink, hyperventilating, but she didn’t dare respond.

“I’m phoning the police!” Maddock shouted, but she knew he was lying. The Vincents would never allow anyone in their basement, especially the police.

She looked up at the ceiling of the bathroom and spotted a windowpane set back in the wall. A sliver of light glinted across the dusty glass.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Get out of there, coward! Let me see your face!”

She wobbled to her legs and stood on the toilet seat, hoisting herself higher on the bowl, and pressed her nose to the window. The light was filtering through a series of slits, and she realized that she was looking up from underneath the veranda as moonlight came streaming through the gaps in the porch’s floorboards.

Behind her, the hinges on the bathroom door heaved and groaned.

BANG! BANG, BANG, BANG!

She undid the window latches with quivering hands and shoved as hard as she could.

The warped frame was blocked with sludge and barely moved.

Desperately, she looked around for something that could help her escape…when suddenly she realized that the terrible banging had stopped.

She froze.

Is he really gone?

Then she heard it. Not another banging sound, but a faint
scrape
. She squinted over her shoulder and tried identifying where the new sound was coming from…

Then she saw it: the door handle was wiggling up and down, and the
scrape, scrape, scrape
was coming from the button in the very center.
He’s picking the lock! The bastard’s using my own tool against me
.

Panic renewed, Camilla flung herself at the window with full force. There was a low crack and the window bulged out, pushing the leaves away and creating an extremely small gap. She hammered the sill with the blunt of her palm until it was wide enough for a size zero, then threw her hands outside and dug into the dirt, clawing her way to freedom as fast as she could.

The doorknob wrenched harder and harder behind her; the pins shook the frame.

Camilla groped for her life. Clumps of weeds went flying by as she kicked in the air—half-in, half-out—with her hips wedged tight in the sill. For a terrifying second, she knew she was stuck.

Behind her the door
BANGED
open and Maddock blasted into the room. The sound was like a last injection of rocket fuel, and Camilla summoned every muscle she had, pulling herself through as her pants tore down the sides and a dozen splinters sunk into each leg. With a primal grunt, she flung herself under the patio and kicked the window closed behind her, then rolled out of view. But there was no time to catch her breath; even though Maddock wasn’t thin enough to fit through the sill himself, she only had thirty or forty seconds tops before he’d be out in the courtyard like a bat out of hell.

She scampered on her hands and knees away from the basement window, tearing through anthills, cobwebs, and abandoned rat nests. The needle of her inner compass was reeling—she had absolutely no bearing—then she spotted a hasp in the deck’s panels and rushed for it, pushing through the exit, and tumbled out on the cool lawn of the Vincents’ courtyard.

The Milky Way burst overhead like a network of dazzling stage lights.
Come on
, Camilla grunted,
no time to stargaze
. She ran for the tree at the far end of the yard and ducked behind its thick
trunk just as the back door banged open and Maddock came stumbling outside.

She peeked around the bark and watched him dash down the steps before tapering off. He turned his ear a few different directions and then looked back at the house, apparently reconsidering the possibility that the intruder had escaped out the front, and slouched, defeated. He waddled back up the stairs and disappeared inside the manor with his tail between his legs.

Camilla collapsed against the tree. She looked down at her own legs and winced: her pants were mutilated, and the wood slivers were already stinging like hell. What was worse, however—much worse—was the feeling of failure in the pit of her stomach. When she thought about her botched mission, it was
that
pain that bore deeper than any splinter.

She knew she could never do what she had just done again. Even if she got up the nerve, Maddock would almost certainly be sleeping with a sawed-off shotgun tucked under his arm from now on. She’d ruined it: her one chance to jump-start the batteries in her biological clock and keep the family going. No matter what Peter would say down the road, she would always know that part of him would be a little disappointed in her, whether he found out that she had tried to fix the situation and failed or not. And that part of him would always ask “What would life have been like if we could’ve had children?” or worse, “What if she wasn’t the one after all?”

Finally the tears spilled, hot and wet, down Camilla’s cheekbones. Her mouth fell open, but before she made a sound, she jammed a fist between her teeth and bit down.

The chorus frogs chirped.

The Milky Way glimmered.

A wind blew through the courtyard and shook the leaves on the great fruit tree, which shimmered with a quiet
shh, shh
sound, like a soothing whisper in Camilla’s ear. She curled against the comfortable crooks in the wood and continued to cry in the tree’s arms.
Shh, shh
.

In the distance, a pack of wolves began howling together, and even farther off a Grey Owl screeched over the waters of a lone lake where masses of black flies buzzed and rainbow trout plopped through their own ripples. But none of those sounds made it to the Vincents’ yard. The wind carried them elsewhere, leaving nothing but the swish of leaves for Camilla’s tender ears.

She adjusted her position in the roots and leaned back, wiping the tears away.

Well, what did you expect?
she asked herself.
You’d waltz out with a handful of seeds and everything would be fixed? Maybe put them through a dozen tests you could run with a kindergartener’s home chemistry set before throwing in the towel, and then what? You got your hopes up—admit it. The stupid things would’ve disappointed you anyway
.

And she wished she could believe that, but she couldn’t.

They cure people
, she sighed, conceding.
Whether or not this stupid tree came from the Garden of Eden is a whole other kettle of Jesus fish, but those seeds can cure people
.

Another gust rustled by, and she watched how the leaves rippled overhead like emerald water. Now that her eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness, she could see bits of the hidden tree house poking through the foliage, and she couldn’t help but picture the first time she and Peter had spent the night together. How different—
how fun
—that had been before all this. The tour of the funeral home, the first kiss, the picnic…

Camilla sat up almost dreamily. Slowly she got up, first to her knees, then to her feet, and placed a hand on the bark, the whole time without taking her eyes off of the tree house.

She circled the trunk with her hand dragging along the wood, around and around, until her fingers found the pegs that were nailed into the side. Then, hand over hand, she started to climb. Every step was faster than the last, quickening with a distant realization, until finally she reached the top and pulled herself into the private cabin.

The space was just as bare as she remembered. Nothing but leaves and twigs and squirrel droppings.

She froze.

Shh
, the tree whispered as Camilla’s lips curled into a smile.
Shh
…

There, ten feet away—nestled in a stack of leaves—was the withered apple that she had plucked only a month before. The same piece of fruit that Peter had snatched out of her hand, tossed in the corner, and forgotten about.

But it wasn’t forgotten, not completely. The tree had been keeping it in its darkest crevice this whole time, waiting for the right person to come along and take it from its twisted, tempting limbs.

Waiting for her.

PART II

ABIGAIL

18

Seven Candles

“H
appy birthday!”

The partiers cheered as little Abigail blew out all seven candles in a single breath. Peter reached over and stuck a spatula in the baking pan, calling out: “Atta girl! Another year of no boyfriends. Keep it up, kiddo.”