Come Little Children (46 page)

“Everything you say—everything you are, Abigail—is a lie. This can’t go on.”

Camilla edged nearer. She was close enough to jump and take both of them down.

The branch cracked louder. Around them, the flames seared so brightly that she could barely keep her eyes open.

This is it
, Camilla thought, planting her feet on the bark beneath her. Then just before she jumped, she turned and took one final look at Peter wrestling with the last creature across the yard.

I love you
.

Camilla turned back, but before she could lunge at Abigail, Abigail lunged at her.

Their bodies crashed together. Camilla’s spine slammed against the bark, and Abigail shrieked on top of her. Her hands shot for her mother’s neck, but the branch jolted beneath them and threw Abigail off balance, allowing Camilla a split second to lash back and toss her daughter over the edge. Abigail went tumbling away, but just when Camilla felt a microsecond of relief, the rope tore across her skin and ripped her off of the branch too.

Camilla squeezed and clung to the bark with her right arm while the left side of her body dangled perilously from the tree. She looked down and saw Abigail holding onto the cord around her wrist and swaying high above the shallow water.

The bough
cracked
.

Camilla slid under the weight, but the rope slipped first. Abigail howled as the knot pulled loose and the whole cord unraveled in her hand, giving one final scream as she fell through the air and crumpled into the depthless pond, tumbling away like a rotting apple.

Peter snapped the neck of his last attacker right before a thundering
CRACK
shot through the courtyard. He spun around in
time to see the whole branch Camilla was hanging from explode off the burning trunk and plummet towards the ground.

“No!” he screamed.

But there was nothing he could do as the limb crashed into the pond and sent a tidal wave gushing into the air. The water hissed like a monstrous serpent. He ran into the haze, and as he disappeared in the mist, the back door of the Vincent manor burst open with the entire mob of townspeople spilling outside.

The Nolaners stopped.

The sight of the backyard was chilling.

All over, the snow was stained with blood. There were twenty bodies scattered about, and the giant tree that towered over all of them was afire, its smoke curling off the pond like some omnipotent, vaporous dragon.

Slowly, the Yukon wind blew through and revealed a silhouette hunched in the pond. The figure didn’t move. It was just standing in the cold water, up to its waist, clinging to something that was slung motionless in its arms.

The Nolaners didn’t dare move closer, and in a second they didn’t have to. For when the wind cast the mist away, they could all see that the figure was Peter Vincent, frozen at the edge of the pond, with his wife, Camilla Vincent, drooped lifelessly in his arms.

35

Requiem

T
here was so much blood in the pond that Camilla’s sheaves of hair had reverted from dirty blonde to deep, sanguine red. It wasn’t the same as her natural shade, but it helped her look a version of herself again while slung in Peter’s arms. No semblance of horror or surprise was carved into her face; instead, it seemed like she had gone peacefully, her eyelids sealed together and her lips touching in a perfectly neutral expression. She looked as though she was sleeping contentedly with no nightmares to haunt her.

Peter’s expression was neutral too, appearing numb or unaware. His skin was cut open in countless places along his arms and legs, and his blood—which trickled out in thin red creeks—pooled in Camilla’s cuts, and her blood seeped into his. Their veins connected them just as their vows had, and for that moment, they were in each other’s bloodstreams. It was impossible to become any closer.

The faces of the Nolaners were more animated than Peter’s and Camilla’s. A dozen of them had turned their heads to vomit, while others—as many as fifteen or twenty—buckled to their knees and burst into tears or passed out in the snow. Brutus was
among the ones who fainted, like a heavy punching bag finally beaten off its chain. Maddock bent down and held the funeral director’s head off the cement. A few other men stepped forward, their jaws set and nostrils still flaring at the repulsive sight and smell of rotting flesh.

Still, no one dared cross into no-man’s-land: that eerie space between the porch and the pond where twenty corpses were strewn across the snow. The feeling of danger had abated, but there remained a very palpable line that no one seemed willing to pass.

The two sides faced each other in chessboard formation, one side fully stacked against a field of slaughtered pawns and a cornered king mourning the broken queen in his arms. They stayed that way for a long time, in stalemate, until finally Peter spoke.

“It’s over.” His words were slow and quiet, but the wind carried the message across the yard. “Go home and be with your families.”

But the townspeople didn’t move. Their eyes hovered over him and Camilla. Some of them lowered their guns, others raised them.

“How do we know?” a woman shouted from the mob. It was Sharon Mullard, standing beside her husband, Lou, and their son, Hudson.

“Who’s left to stone?” Peter said. “Me? Go ahead, kill me. See how much better you feel.”

The point resonated. There was no danger left in the backyard, and the stark shift in mood confirmed it. The hate and hostility in the air had quelled to nothing more than a cold, ghostly silence, the same kind that seeps from battlefields when both the winners and losers stand back to survey the body count.

“If you won’t kill me,” Peter said, “help me.”

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, then 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.