Come Little Children (27 page)

“Watch it, will you?” he barked, grinning over the top of two paper bags in his arms.

“Sor-ry,” Camilla said. She scrambled to come up with an excuse of why she was stepping out of the house, but, thankfully, Peter seemed too scatterbrained to notice. “What’s this?”

“Materials.”

“For what?”

“A secret.”

“A secret date, you mean?”

“Yes,” he conceded, squeezing past her. “I’m sorry, but gingers aren’t my type anymore.”

Camilla tsked. “Good. Assholes aren’t mine.”

Peter pecked her on the cheek and spied into the north parlor. When he was sure that no one was looking, he ducked past the open frame and slipped through the next doorway.

“Hey,” he called back, “can you keep them in there for a while? Or just away from the backyard?”

“Umm…”

“Wait.” His eyes seemed to register her outfit for the first time. “Where are you going?”

Busted
.

“Nowhere,” she said. “I’m just…cleaning this jacket.” She grabbed a ring of packing tape off the reception desk. “I ran out of sheets for my sticky roller upstairs. This thing’s atrocious though, look at it. Cat fur is the cancer of fleece.”

“OK.” He rolled his eyes. “Just keep it handy for later.”

“The coat? Why?”

“I told you, it’s a surprise. Gimme half an hour and then bring everyone to the backyard.”

Camilla sighed. “I get it. You’re resurrecting your blonde girlfriend, aren’t you?”

“Not tonight,” he shouted as he disappeared around a corner. “And she’s a brunette!”

Camilla stepped outside. Immediately her thoughts about Peter and his cryptic plans were cut off by the slap of the Yukon cold. It was only seven o’clock, but it could have been midnight. The moon was out in full, and the stars twinkled like snowflakes caught in a big, black net. The net was so large that it sagged over the horizon and swallowed the gorge of trees and hills and streetlights in its thick, black mesh.

She peeked over her shoulder and saw her family again in the parlor window. Brutus was well into his fourth Guinness now, giving Peter two or three bottles’ time to finish whatever secret he was assembling. She smiled as Abigail finally found the right place for her puzzle piece, and the grin produced a puff of cold air.

“Be home soon,” she whispered, then she pinched the yarn of her neck warmer and took off into the big, black net ahead.

Lou and Sharon Mullard owned a cottage on the west side of Nolan. It was a small A-frame perched on a hump of snow and dirt with an unfinished path winding sloppily to the front. Camilla instantly recognized the little blue truck in the driveway as the same half-ton that picked up Hudson Mullard from the morgue nearly eight years ago. Except back then she hadn’t
known his name was Hudson—she knew him only as the little boy who had shown up, soaking wet, at the Vincents’ back door on her first night in Nolan.

As she trudged up the path, she silently rehearsed her opening line.
Hello. Mr./Ms. Mullard? Camilla Vincent. Nice to meet you. I’m the one who phoned about Hudson, do you mind if I come in?

The path hadn’t been shoveled in weeks. Her foot caught a hidden piece of rebar and she nearly tripped into a snow bank.
Damn it!
She straightened up and plowed forward again.

Hello. Mr./Ms. Mullard? Camilla Vincent. Nice to meet you. I’m the one who phoned about Hudson, do you mind if I come in? Hello. Mr./Ms. Mullard? Camilla Vincent. Nice to meet you. I’m the one who phoned about Hudson, do you mind if I come in?

She arrived at the door and habitually smoothed out her jacket, giving a quick sniffle, and pressed the doorbell.

Nothing happened. No bell, no chime. But there were lights on inside, so she rang again.

Still nothing.

She made a fist and rapped on the door. Someone yelled in the distance then a different person came thudding down a flight of stairs.

Hello. Mr./Ms. Mullard? Camilla Vincent. Nice to meet you—

The door pulled open, and Hudson Mullard appeared in the frame.

Camilla froze.

Hudson looked much different than the last time they were face to face. He was a giant now—close to 200 pounds, half-fat, half-muscle—which, for a fourteen-year-old, was either a curse or a genetic jackpot, depending how much he liked the idea of college football. His hair was a mess and his face was a minefield of zits waiting to blow. The only features Camilla
recognized were his eyes: the baby-blues nestled behind their pubescent mask, staring at her in the exact same way as nearly a decade before. A wave of déjà vu hit, and suddenly it struck her that something strange in the midnight sun had come full circle. Eight years after this boy had turned up on her doorstep, she was turning up on his.

“Hello, Mr...Hudson?” The script was thrown off.

Hudson nodded slowly. He seemed distant and dazed.

“Do you mind if I—?”

“Who is it?” someone hollered inside. A woman—Sharon Mullard—appeared hovering in the background. “Is that Kam or Carmen or whatever? Tell her to shut the door.”

Hudson shuffled over to let Camilla inside and closed the door behind her.

Stepping into the Mullards’ cabin was like stepping into a taxidermist’s wet dream—or a PETA activist’s nightmare. Covering every wall was a crowded collage of game, from antelope and caribou, to pike and trout as long as skateboards. The stairs, which were flanked by a collection of great horned owls, led up to a second level where presumably the bedrooms were, while the main floor was a one-room den with a kitchen, a dining room, and a rec room all jumbled together.

Standing in the kitchen with a cigarette pinched between her lips was Sharon Mullard. She was thin as a garden hoe, and her baggy zip-up vest and tattered sweater dangled loosely off her bones, despite her best efforts to bunch up the sleeves every ten or fifteen seconds. Camilla had seen her before, but only twice: once while riding in the Vincents’ funeral van, and then again, briefly, at Lucas and Laura’s wedding. Since then, Sharon had aged considerably. She looked at least fifteen years older, and
the creases lining her face could form only two emotions: tired and mean.

On the other side of the room, sunken into an old maroon sofa, was Lou Mullard. He was a perfect circle—twice as fat and half as strong as his son—and his Krispy-Kreme-stained wifebeater did a poor job hiding it. The man looked at least ten years older than he actually was, and the creases in his cheeks and forehead could manage only one emotion: exhausted.

“Hello, Mr. and Ms. Mullard—”

“Lou and Sharon,” Sharon said, tapping her cigarette on a plate. “And you know my boy, Hud.”

Sharon gave Hudson—Hud—a tight squeeze and kissed him on the crown of his head.

“I do. I’m sorry to come by so late—”

“Nah. A little late for Lou, maybe, but the two of us are night owls, ain’t we, Hud?”

“Yeah ma,” Hudson replied, sniffling. It was the first time Camilla heard him speak, and his voice seemed just as distant as his baby-blue eyes. She had no idea what signs she was supposed to look for in a child who had “gone bad,” but whatever they were, she couldn’t imagine that Hud had a single one of them. He was big and strong, and a little—well, a lot—slow, but he didn’t come across as a dangerous kidnapper.

“How are you feeling, Hudson?” she asked, then caught herself. “Hud.”

“Good.” He wiped his nose again.

“Good.” She nodded back. “Good.”

The conversation was getting awkward at record speed. But suddenly Camilla was more interested in something about Hudson’s physical appearance than what he had to say. Her eyes
darted back and forth between the mother-and-son duo standing in the kitchen.

“Well, Lou,” Sharon piped up, “time to hit the sack, eh? Hud, help your pa up to bed and I’ll finish with Millie here. Go on. Go.”

Sharon plugged in a coffeemaker while Hudson turned off the TV and slung a shoulder under his dad’s arm, helping him up the flight of stairs. As Camilla watched them pass the wall of animals—the massive moose antlers, the razor-sharp pike teeth, and the angry horned owls—she couldn’t believe that Lou,
this
Lou, was the man who had slayed these beasts.
He can barely get to bed now!
She couldn’t imagine him lunging through the wilderness and poaching game like Jim Page or Dean Ruth or Everett Leonard. But the trophies were there, combed and polished. He’d beaten Mother Nature long before she’d beaten him, and a man like Lou doesn’t keep the heads because he thinks they look nice. He keeps them to prove the score.

After Hudson’s sniffling faded away and the bedroom door closed, Sharon poured two cups of coffee and slid one over. “So whatta you make of my boy?”

“He’s a lot…taller than I remember.”

“Yup.” She smiled, proud. “He’s a big kid. Not the tick he used to be.”

“How’s he doing in school?”

“Passing. A little worse than last year, but he’ll be fine.”

“Does he get into trouble?”

Sharon tapped her cigarette on her plate again and took a long drag, narrowing her eyes.

“He’s a good boy.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t.”

“
He’s a good boy
,” she emphasized, “so you may as well finish your coffee and go on home.”

The words echoed in the rafters of the A-frame cottage, and then everything fell quiet. Neither woman looked at each other after the outburst, but instead they focused intensely on their own mugs.

“Don’t think I don’t know the reason you’re here,” Sharon said, much lower than before. “Call in saying it’s a regular checkup, like it’s some sort of routine thing. Checkup? C’mon. It’s ‘cause of what’s going on, isn’t it? Those Cory girls go missing, and you’re in my kitchen three days later.”

“No one is blaming your son.”

“Might as well be. Half the town’s seen you come up to the house now, they’ll think something’s wrong. Oh yes, ma’am. You might not see ‘em lookin’, but they’re at their windows, watching what stirs in the dark.”

“Would you rather me
not
check? I’m the one stepping outside here. I want to find out what’s going on just as much as everybody else.”

“I know that,” Sharon said irritably, rubbing her leathery face. For a moment the tiredness and meanness mixed together to form Sharon Mullard’s version of frustration. “It’s just…I-I can’t handle another ’89. ‘Specially with Hud’s history. They’ll rip him up like terry cloth.”

1989
. Camilla frowned.
There’s that year again
.

The mention of 1989 sparked a string of oddly connected memories. First the tall memorial outside of her room at the Nolan hospital, then a faded photo from the
Midnight Sun
warehouse, a shot of people crowded underneath the headline:
25
^th
CANDLE-LIGHT VIGIL BRINGS MOURNERS BACK TO
NOLAN
. Camilla had never paid much attention to it, but now the year seemed like an impossible thing to ignore.

“What happened in 1989?” she asked bluntly. Even after a decade of dealing with people in the funeral business, she still hadn’t developed much tact, especially when her curiosity hounded her.

Sharon took another puff and then started coughing. She flushed the smoke down with a sip of coffee and appraised Camilla again.

“Guess they don’t go bragging it up in their little shop of horrors, do they? Trying to forget about that little blip, probably. Except you can’t just forget something like that. No one here can.”

Camilla peeked at the clock on the wall. It was already quarter to eight. “The facts, if you don’t mind.”

“The facts?” Sharon hacked. “The facts? Jesus. Well, here are
the facts
.” She crushed her cigarette butt and lit up another. “Dallas Whittaker used to live across the street with his boy, Jesse. Old Mrs. Whittaker had taken off with some casino man from Atlanta the year the kid was born, so it was just the two of them left at the cottage. Anyhow, Dallas worked as a technician on oil barges for some company called Tessrix or Tessarix or whatever the hell it is. He did a lotta trucking between locations, and he usually took little Jesse with him. They’d head out in their pickup and be gone the whole weekend, sometimes more.”

Sharon paused to take another pinch of her cigarette. Camilla felt like pointing out there was a lot of exposition in this “just facts” version of the story, but decided to keep her mouth shut.

“Well, February tenth, ’89, Dallas’s truck came squealing back to town a lot faster than usual. Lou was out getting bulbs
from Darlyle’s when he saw the Dodge roar up to the hospital. He wasn’t quick enough to get there in time, but he saw Dallas climb out of the driver’s seat, covered in blood, and take his boy out of the passenger’s side. Said he almost got sick. Little Jesse was missing a whole goddamn arm.

“We found out later he’d fallen into one of the barges and got chewed up by a turbine. Doctors said he was DOA, and Dallas was in hysterics. I guess he tore up the hospital pretty bad and they had to call 911. But before anybody got there, Dallas grabbed his boy—all up in his hospital shroud and everything—and took him to the Vincents’ place. Well, you know what goes on in there better than the rest of us, but anyhow, 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.”

Sharon coughed and tried pushing up her sleeves, but they tumbled down immediately.

“A day later, they found the truck smashed into the barge where Jesse’d had his accident. A few workmen were dead, including Dallas. But when the rescue team showed up, they only counted three bodies. No sign of the kid. And that was just the start. In under a week, six Nolaners were attacked, each of them showing up to the hospital with an arm lobbed clean off. But then the really weird shit started happening. A pair of nurses at the hospital went loony and killed five patients. Not long after, the inmates in the jail started screaming like animals every night, and the mood in the air got gloomy too, like a permanent thundercloud settled over town. Thank Christ for the fire—something caught the hospital morgue and burned the whole goddamn thing down.”