Come Little Children (16 page)

She came up behind the cottages and stopped. There was a long stretch of fencing that connected the backyards for a mile in either direction—no way around.

Hiking up the frills and bows of her dress, she lodged her heel on the lowest strand of barbwire and started climbing. Thankfully the fence was only five feet tall and took less than thirty seconds to scale, otherwise she may have lost her time advantage. She plopped down on the other side of the posts and buckled at the knees.

Her head whipped up and she scanned the yard, unfazed by the fact that she’d landed in a row of soggy cabbages that were molding this late in the season. Something about the place seemed vaguely familiar.
Don’t stop. Move it!
She heaved her
stiletto spikes out of the mud and bolted for the front gate, grabbing its rusty hasp.

Something caught her eye.

It was an old tandem bicycle leaning against the fence: rusted chains, tufts of dead grass stuffed into the spokes, plastic handlebars melting from years of being kept too close to the barbeque. The frame looked about as stable as a shithouse in a hurricane, but Camilla squeezed the brakes and felt it respond with a decent stop.
Good enough
.

The side gate swung open and Camilla sailed through on her new road warrior: a broken-down double-seated bicycle, built for two but captained by one.

“Hey! Where d’ya think you’re takin’ that?”

The bike’s steering was so stiff and off-kilter that Camilla didn’t dare look back to see who was hollering at her. She kept her eyes on the road ahead and yelled a garbled apology into the wind: “Sorry!”

Nolan’s cemetery loomed across the street, and Camilla jetted straight for it. As she whipped through the graveyard’s gates, her dress billowed back in the wind and her hair tossed itself out of its pins. The rush of the airstream muffled the squeals of the bike chains and brought a coolness to her burned cheeks, and the raw speed sent volts of energy up her spine, awakening her from her depressive coma.

The wheels bumped over tiny clumps of grass and patches of grave markers; despite being disrespectful, a straight line was the quickest path. Seconds later, the bike barreled out the other side of the graveyard and into town square.

Two senior citizens were coming out of the General Store and stopped dead in their tracks. Another pair of elders paused
their outdoor game of chess midmove, and a group of joggers all turned their heads in unison as they ran by.

Camilla looked certifiable.

Her hair was everywhere. There were mud and grass stains plastered all over the front of her dress, and her feet were covered with a heavy layer of caked-on blood. Her eyes, bugged out as usual, flitted rapidly around the space as she wobbled into the scene on a bicycle built for two, by herself.

One of the seniors stood up from their chess match. “Need help there? Miss?”

The other chimed in, “Lose someone off the back?”

Camilla ignored them, eyes racing for her target. Just as the first elderly man limped within arm’s length, she spotted a figure dash onto the far end of the street and vanish through an alley between two buildings.

“Sorry,” she said, pushing her way through the crowd. “I have a—a date.” The seniors’ mouths hung open as she gripped the bike’s handlebars and heaved it away.

The alley was crammed with bundles of outdated newspapers, broken down cardboard boxes, and bags of garbage piled halfway up the first flight of the building’s fire escape.

Camilla dismounted and put her ear to a heavy gunmetal door. There was the sound of something mechanical running inside, but nothing resembling voices or footsteps.

She pushed on the handle and the door swung open obediently.

No light leaked out of the dark room—just the greasy smell of paper and ink, which dazed Camilla’s neural receptors like a potent whiff of paint thinner or gasoline. She took her last breath of clean air and slipped silently into the cavernous room.
Inside, the halogen lamps hanging from the two-story ceiling were all turned off. Tiny square windows existed above the catwalks that networked overhead, and the shafts of light that shone through them were just enough to outline a cluster of jumbo conveyor belts and plate processors with a fine, silvery glow. None of the massive offset machines were running, though a steady hum of fans droned evenly in the background.

The door slammed shut and darkened the room even more. Camilla took a moment to adjust, feeling in front of her, and tiptoed deeper inside. As shapes started coming into focus, she spotted a bundle of newspapers that were corded together and piled into three-foot stacks; when she squinted, she could
just
make out the headline:
25
^th
CANDLELIGHT VIGIL BRINGS MOURNERS BACK TO NOLAN
.

Understanding dawned.

Camilla was inside the
Midnight Sun
’s printing plant. The papers in front of her were dated the previous week, and their covers showed people with candles kneeling around the stone memorial that she recognized from the Nolan hospital.

A quiet
plunk
echoed in the room.

She straightened, looked left, right, up, down—it was no use. The room was too resonant, and she couldn’t tell where the sound had come from.

“Hello?”

No answer.

“I’m not chasing you,” she said louder. “I just have a question.”
Or two, or ten
.

Still nothing. She walked deeper inside, trying her best to stay away from the edges of the room where heavy girders draped long shadows over the cement floor. She didn’t know if the photographer was hiding because he was scared or because
he was the Phantom of the Newspaper, ready to pounce from any dark crevice or closet or balcony.

On the right side of the warehouse was the editor’s workstation. The area was part of a crude garrison, like some sort of homeless bivouac complete with ratty pull-out couch and the dirtiest microwave Camilla had ever seen. Clippings of past news stories were wheat-pasted to the walls alongside some of the editor’s personal photographs, including several Polaroid pictures of a teenage rockabilly band on road trips through Nashville and Memphis and Graceland. Every inch of table surface was cluttered with strips of rejected headlines and scrap Post-it notes, and the mess had built up so high that it was hard to imagine anyone actually working there.

As she scanned the bench, something caught Camilla’s attention. It was the only thing on the table that was relatively organized: a large sheet of glass covered with carefully placed clippings and local advertisements. On top was a sticky note that read:
Todd, Meet @ 12 so press can start @ 1
.

She looked up at an Elvis clock on the wall—the King’s pompadour showed 11:44 a.m.—then looked at the note again.

Noon. He’s meeting someone here at noon. He can’t go far
.

She took in the rest of the glass board and suddenly it dawned on her that she was staring at the mock-up of the next day’s newspaper, lain out column by column, ad by ad, block by block. Her fingers reached down and peeled away the sticky note that was covering the front page, slowly revealing tomorrow’s headline.

VINCENT WEDDING INSIDER! PICTURES FROM THE PAGAN MARRIAGE

Her pupils lit up like searchlights. She scanned the proof, but her eyes moved too fast to process full sentences. All she
caught were quick flashes of words:
courtyard ceremony
,
flowers arrive late
,
first since ’89
,
no guests for bride
,
mysterious bridesmaid
.

Something flashed in the reflection of the glass board.

She held her breath. It had come from somewhere high up on the catwalk.

Pull it together. Pull it together. Pull it together
.

Camilla calmly backed away from the workbench and walked to the edge of the room, into the shadows that she had previously been avoiding. Once under the girders, she trained her eyes on the catwalk and took a deep breath in. He was there. The weasel was definitely up there.

She felt for the cold wall and crossed one foot over the other, then repeated the step again and again, slowly at first and then faster as she followed the bricks to a staircase and paused at the bottom step.

Trembling, Camilla reached down and undid her stiletto straps. Slipping them off with a tiny wince, she hooked the shoes in her fingers and tiptoed up the metal steps on the spongy pads of her feet. Stealth and subtlety had never been her strong suits, but if there was ever a time…

She reached the second level, eyes trained on the place where she’d seen the glint of movement. It was higher up yet. Her heart beat harder as she felt behind her back for the ladder to the catwalk.

Clang!
Her stilettos hit one of the rungs. She froze.

The catwalk was still.

When nothing else happened, she broke her gaze and turned around to face the narrow ladder that tracked all the way up to the ceiling.

The iron rungs were cold on her bare skin and dug uncomfortably into her feet, but she had already come this far and she
wasn’t about to turn around now—or look down either. The cement floor was forty feet below.

The railing stretched up and up until it leveled off with the steel catwalk. Camilla pulled herself onto the platform as quietly as she could and crouched over to gain her bearings. Thankfully, the spot she was bent on was much easier to get to: just a dozen steps straight ahead and then one turn to the left.

She set down her heels and started forward. The safety railing was no more than a thin bar as high as her waist, and she clung to it for dear life with both sweaty palms.

The turn was coming up in ten steps, then seven, then three.

She paused, taking a deep breath to summon enough strength to keep moving.

Two steps…

One step…

Finally she edged around the corner—

And there was Todd, the
Midnight Sun
’s photographer, crouched ten feet away against the dead end of the catwalk.

Except Todd was about half as young as Camilla had expected. He was only sixteen—
maybe
a baby-face seventeen—and about as scrawny as they come.

Todd jumped to his feet, his camera joggling on the strap around his neck, and backed up the only inch he had left.

“Y-You?” He coughed. His voice was like a shotgun going off in a library. “You’re from the wedding. The bridesmaid.”

“Yes.” Camilla nodded, then appended, “But I’m not a Vincent. I just work there.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Sooo... you’re chasing me why?”

“I’m not. I’m just—I’m chasing an answer. Please, can I ask you something?”

“Does it look like I’m going anywhere?”

Camilla snickered. She hadn’t anticipated a smart-ass.

“Why were you at their house?”

“My job. Trust me, I didn’t go for the kicks.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I’d lose my SLR if the headline was ‘Vincent Wedding Insider’ and there wasn’t a shot to prove it.”

“No.” She shook her head, indicating that wasn’t what she had meant. “Why is it front page news? What is it about the family that everyone knows but me?”

Todd perked an eyebrow. “Knows? Nobody
knows
anything.”

“Then why don’t you want to go near them!” Camilla blurted. Her patience was wearing thin.

The newspaper factory fell quiet again with the whirring of the fans. Caged like a skittish animal, Todd looked down, tracing the wire mesh of the catwalk with his black-and-white skate shoes.

“You don’t have any clue?” he asked. “Living there. They don’t do anything fucked up?”

“Not them. But…”

“But?”

“There have been incidents.”

“With kids?”

Camilla’s heart fell into her stomach. She pictured the little boy in the kitchen doorway, then the girl’s eyes in the pond. Scars on their chests. Water rippling down their skin. Staring, staring at her on the gazebo as tiny hands shot out of the pond and grabbed her ankles, pulling her into the water as she kicked and screamed for help while the Vincents stood back, grinning, as she sunk below the bubbling surface…

Finally she nodded.

“If I tell you what I know, will you let me leave?”

“What
do
you know?” The tone in her voice said neither of them was going anywhere at the moment.

Todd took a deep breath and rubbed the back of his head. “I guess if you never grew up here,” he started, “you wouldn’t get the little stuff.”

“Little stuff ?”

“Like, uh…like, you know…playground stuff…like skipping rhymes and dares and shit.”

“You’re saying no one’s told you anything either?”

“Not like that, no. I guess they warned us in Sunday school not to walk by the place. Said going there opens you up to something dangerous.”

Well? Has anything dangerous happened?

Todd’s foot stopped tracing the catwalk. Camilla could feel the mystery close to unraveling, like a spool of thread about to fly off a sewing machine.

“Why do you want to know so bad?”

“Because I need an explanation.”

“What if it’s something you can’t explain?”

Camilla’s heart thumped faster. “Tell me anyway.”

Todd gave her another once-over, as if he was judging whether or not she was pulling his leg. Finally he shoved his hands in his pockets and slid farther onto the floor, surrendering to the idea that he wasn’t going anywhere until she was satisfied.

“I think I was seven or eight,” he said. “My dad’s a ranger, so I guess I probably hear stuff other kids don’t. I mean, mom’s pretty good at giving the under-the-table kick when we’re eating or whatever, but the rest of the time he never really…censors himself, I guess?

“So yeah, I was, uh, I don’t know, in second grade. He picked me up from school and took me to grab a new Spider-Man comic
from Jeb’s corner station, but then a call radioed in and told us to stop at this address on the way home. There was already a cruiser parked outside when we pulled up. And dad told me to stay there and read my comic till he got back, so I did. Cover to cover. Five times. But, shit, they were gone forever, and it was like a hundred fucking degrees, so I got out of the car and went up to the house.