Come Little Children (6 page)

Apparently the family was precise with their portioning—there wasn’t a crumb of leftovers from dinner.
Hmm
. She looked over her shoulder at the rack of pots and pans hanging above the island in the middle of the room, but decided she would rather starve to death than risk waking the family.

Camilla poured another glass of milk and put the jug back on the shelf. She took her drink and followed a wall of cupboards.

Spices behind door number one.

Mugs behind door two.

Bowls behind door three.

The cupboards led all the way to the kitchen sink, where she paused to finish her last swig of milk. As she lowered the glass under the faucet and tested the water on her fingertips, she looked up at the dark window in front of her.

The moon was behind a bank of clouds and it was pitch black outside—so black that it was impossible to see anything beyond the veranda.

Camilla grabbed a tea towel and dried her cup, randomly remembering how tea towels had made excellent capes when she was little.

Something moved in the darkness outside.

Camilla stopped drying.
Jesus. Not the other cat?

She leaned forward, squinting through the window—

Nothing. Only black.

She leaned closer…

Closer…

Just as her nose touched the glass, there was a knock at the back door.

Camilla dropped her glass and it exploded on the tile. The crash echoed through the house like a hydrogen bomb, and she
tripped against the counter, half falling, half crouching behind the granite island.

Aside from the ringing in her ears, everything was quiet again. She put her hands on the counter and pulled herself high enough to peek at the back door.

There was a figure standing outside, its silhouette distorted behind the door’s curtains.

The stranger knocked again.

A shiver rushed up the back of Camilla’s neck. Her eyes went straight to a set of knives on the counter in front of her—

No. Don’t be ridiculous
.

Another knock tolled out.

Maybe it’s not an intruder? Maybe it’s another family member? Christ, in either case, why are they knocking?

Knock. Knock. Knock
.

Screw it
.

She reached up and grasped one of the meat cleavers in her shaky hand. Vickie had always teased her for being too jumpy, saying things like “how can you work with dead people when you can’t even take the bus at night?”, but to Camilla it was obvious. Dealing with dead people is easy: they’re dead. It’s dealing with the living that’s dangerous.

Camilla stood, the knife gripped behind her back, and crept to the door, hoping to God it was just another uncle or cousin or nephew who had forgotten his key. She eyed the disfigured silhouette and reached out, clenching the dead bolt.

“Hello?” she asked, her voice cracking.

There was no answer.

“Can I help you?”

Still nothing.

She gripped the dead bolt and gave it a turn, pulling the door open on its old, rusty hinges.

Instantly a breeze rode through the kitchen, carrying in a damp stench of wet hair and mud.

Standing in the doorway was a young boy who couldn’t have been more than six-years-old. He was soaking wet from head to toe, pale skin and dark freckles, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer shorts that matched the black hair sticking to his skull in sopping wet strands. His eyes were blue, but distant, like a bright sky blocked by clouds or factory smog.

“Oh!” Camilla said, stunned. “Oh God, uh…Come—come here.”

The boy didn’t move.

She looked around, completely at a loss for what to do, when suddenly the kitchen lights flashed on.

“What in God’s name is happening down here? Something break, or—”

Camilla turned to see Moira billowing into the room, her black nightgown swirling like thunderclouds around her. The woman’s face cycled from confusion to frustration, and then to concern when she spotted the wet boy.

“Move,” Moira barked, rushing forward and pushing Camilla aside.

The old woman opened a cabinet near the back door and took a towel from a stack inside—wrapping it around the immobile child—and escorted him into the house. As they passed under the lights, Camilla went paler than she already was.

There was mud sandwiched between the boy’s toes and fingernails. His skin looked shrivelled, as if he had taken a bath for too long, and his lips were the faintest shade of indigo.

But that wasn’t all.

No, the most jarring aspect of the six-year-old’s appearance was the long scar that stretched from his sternum down to the bottom of his rib cage. It looked raw—so raw that it couldn’t have been more than a day or two old.

Camilla backed against the counter as Moira came by, kicking the broken glass out of the boy’s barefooted path. She stopped directly in front of her. Anything was possible, from a firing to a face slap.

The room went silent.

“Be up by six thirty,” Moira said, pursing her lips. “Downstairs at seven.”

Moira raised her hand—
here it comes, the slap
—and whipped it forward, snatching the silver hair clip right out of Camilla’s hair.

And that was it. The old woman kicked another chunk of glass across the kitchen and walked out of the room with the wet boy pressed to her side.

5

Stag Crescent

A
t six twenty-five a.m. the next morning, Camilla tiptoed up to the second floor of the Vincents’ house on the balls of her toes. She was dripping wet, clinging to a towel that felt like a ream of sandpaper.

Her legs slid together to lock in every degree of body heat. As her hips rocked back and forth—not that she had “hips” so much as just hip bones—she pictured herself modeling something from one of her favorite fashion houses, maybe Valentino or Givenchy. She had tried modeling in college and was pretty decent at hitting her marks, but after a month of nothing but first and second round callbacks, her tetchy Tim-Gunn-knockoff agent had given her the old, cold boot. “You’ve got the tools, hon,” his lisp was memorably condescending, “but you’re missing the ‘tude.”

He was right, of course. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t be less pretentious about it
.
Asshole
.

And then it hit her: the smell of eggs and sausage links rising up from the kitchen. Oil was popping on Teflon as a spatula scraped the burned rims of bacon off a frying pan two floors below. She closed her eyes, breathing deeper, and allowed
visions of greasy breakfast foods in all their glory to chase away her inner model.

The smells summoned another image, this time a full-bodied memory.

She was suddenly in the kitchen of her parents’ old trailer home—a drab den of corroded appliances, permanently stained countertops, and linoleum that curled up from the walls like untrimmed toenails. This “dining room” barely qualified as a kitchenette, yet that embarrassing little nook had fed more mouths with fewer resources than Jesus Christ. Five loaves of bread and a couple of fish would have been a feast in those days; usually Camilla and her mother would split two or three scrambled eggs and a glass of milk as they sat in the trailer’s dining booth and watched the smoke curl off a limp cigarette. The only sound would be their FM radio crackling out the morning show: weather, advertisements, five minutes of banter, more advertisements, Tom Petty, more advertisements. Sometimes they could get through their milk and eggs with enough time to catch the first half of the Hot Talk segment with Bert Blightly, but more often than not, the third Petty tune would get cut short by the sudden banging on the side of their trailer. Camilla swore, even now, that she could smell the odor of booze and urine seep through the screen door and murder every pleasant molecule in the room.

A drop of water rolled down Camilla’s thigh and shot a shiver back up between her legs.

The dripping sensation triggered another memory—a newer memory—which flashed over the old one, causing Camilla to see her childhood trailer’s door crash open and, instead of her father, reveal the soaking wet six-year-old boy from the Vincents’ backyard.

He was white as a ghost.

White skin. White eyes. White teeth in a gaping black mouth.

The apparition burned out like a light bulb, and she was suddenly back on the second floor of the funeral home, alone, hugging her sandpaper towel.

Camilla’s legs carried her up the rest of the stairs as she replayed the previous night in her head for the hundredth time—everything from the silhouette, to Moira’s reaction, to the scar running down the boy’s chest. That last one disturbed her the most.

Who was he? Why was he soaking wet? Why were there towels by the back door?
The more she tried to connect the dots, the more it felt like a paint-by-number Picasso.
Why was he in the backyard in the first place, and why was Moira…nervous? Yes, nervous…

When she reached the top of the staircase, she spotted a blazer hanging from her bedroom door and a breakfast tray on the ground below it. Instantly she rushed for the food, shelving her thoughts of the mysterious boy for later.

She grinned as her hand shot down and pulled the lid off the tray.

There were no sausage links.

Or eggs.

Or bacon strips.

Instead there were two small bowls: one filled with milky chunks that looked like prechewed oatmeal, and the other with four or five spoonfuls of something gray and clumpy. Technically it might have been yogurt.

Her whole body sagged.
I deserved that
. She crouched down and picked up the bowl of yogurt, noticing a piece of paper stuck to the bottom.

Carleton: Only mediums. Wear anyway
.

Camilla looked at the blazer hanging from the doorknob and frowned. It was a men’s coat with the Vincent crest stitched on the left breast. She glanced back at the note.

P.S. A call came in early. Be outside by six thirty. —M

She reread the last sentence, a spoonful of yogurt paused at the edge of her lips.

“Psst.”

Camilla turned around—still crouched in her towel with the gray goo dripping in front of her mouth—and saw Peter coming out of his room across the hall. He was fully done up in dress pants and a well-tailored blazer.

“I wouldn’t eat that,” he said. “It’s been at the back of the fridge for a year.”

Camilla lowered the spoon, not saying a word.

Peter turned and took off down the staircase. As soon as he was out of earshot, Camilla dropped the food and grabbed her coat, rocketing into her bedroom.

An unmarked van was waiting in front of the funeral home. It was white from bumper to bumper, including the windows that had been painted over to block the interior view from kids and nosy pedestrians. Peter and Lucas were standing by the taillights, arguing with their uncle Brutus.

“There aren’t enough,” Brutus insisted.

“
Yes
, there are,” Lucas shot back.

“You need three. No exceptions.
Three
.”

“One…two…” Lucas pointed to himself and Peter, and then at the house as Camilla came stepping out the front door. “Three.”

Camilla looked back at the men and adjusted her blazer, which, as Moira had predicted, was too big. Her hair was pulled
back and she hadn’t had time to put on any makeup. At best, she looked frazzled; at worst, manly.

“No,” Brutus said outright. “I don’t care what your mother says, she’s too green.”

“I’m sure she’s seen a thing or two.”

“Stop arguing and get in.” Brutus pushed Peter’s flimsy frame aside and moved for the driver’s seat. But Lucas, being much taller and bulkier, blocked his uncle’s way like a human wall.

“Move, boy. I’m busier than a chimp in a shit-flinging contest.”

“There aren’t enough seats and Camilla needs the experience,” Lucas said. “Either you stay or I do.”

Brutus surveyed his nephew and seemed to weigh the threat. He had tossed Peter aside like a ragdoll but appeared more reluctant to do so with Lucas. His eyes hovered over all of them again, and Camilla could almost hear his thought process:
One, two, three
.
Rule’s a rule
.

“Fine,” he conceded. “But watch yourselves. And you”—he turned to Camilla—“I don’t know you yet, but do what they say and don’t get squeamish. A squirmer can ruin the whole goddamn thing.”

Lucas cleared his throat and Brutus gave one last grunt, dropping a set of keys into his nephew’s bear-size paw.

The white van rolled past the steel gates of the Vincents’ manor. Lucas was driving and Peter rode shotgun; Camilla was in the back, perched sideways on a bench that faced a bare gurney, and increasingly excited, despite the rough start to the day.

It was her first removal call, and she knew exactly what that meant. A corpse was ready for pickup.
Spectacular
.

“That wasn’t easy, you know,” Lucas said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Uncle B has his rules, and he’s stubborn.”

“He didn’t want me along?”

“He doesn’t think you’re ready yet. There should always be three people on removals in case something comes up. It’s usually him and the two of us, but we thought you could use the experience.”

“And a break from the house,” Peter added. He caught her eye in his side mirror. “How was breakfast, by the way?”

“I don’t know,” Camilla said. “Ask the toilet.”

Peter laughed, which helped ease the mood.

“What’s funny?” Lucas asked.

“Mom gave her the yogurt this morning.”

“The yogurt? My God, what did you do?”

“Nothing,” Camilla said, not entirely honest.

Peter and Lucas stared in their mirrors. They could smell the lie like a skunk on the road.

“Fine. She caught me sneaking around your kitchen last night.”

“That’s it?”

“Well…
Maybe
I broke something. But that’s no reason to poison me!” Although that wasn’t technically a lie, it wasn’t exactly the truth either. Still, the situation sounded bad enough without her bringing up the fact that she had almost attacked a six-year-old kid with a meat cleaver.

“Nice. Pete and I used to sneak down all the time.”