Come Little Children (25 page)

That was when things
really
got wild.

Proper heaved as if all its guts were lurching up its esophagus. Camilla held tight while her arms were cut up worse than if she’d dunked them in a tub of razorblades, then finally the convulsions tapered off and they both collapsed, spent. When she rolled over and saw the defeat in the cat’s eyes—a kind of lazy sadness—she immediately felt terrible. Her experiments hadn’t yielded a single result, and the costs had finally crossed a line. All she had left was one seed and the overwhelming feeling that she owed Proper a colossal apology.

In the months that followed, life returned to normal. Proper practically disappeared from sight (not that Camilla could blame it), but then early one February morning while shoveling the walk, Brutus heard a strange sound coming from the courtyard tool shed. He rooted through the garden equipment, past the lawnmower, past a broken croquet set and a community of garden gnomes, and discovered Prim and Proper hiding away at the very back. Both cats were curled up on a nest of fertilizer bags and torn patio cushions, and behind them, mewing like a chorus of plastic squeaky toys, was their new litter of scraggily black kittens.

A sled roared down the snow hill, carving a wave of powder that caught the sunlight and glistened back to earth like stage glitter. The high-pitched
whee!
hung on the crisp air for a second longer, then faded up in the trees with a cheerful echo.

Another group of Abigail’s classmates rocketed by, and Camilla called out, “Don’t run into—”

Too late. The second train of sledders careened into the first crew at the bottom of the hill and sent them scattering like bowling pins.

“Stee-rike!” Peter hollered.

“Are they OK?”

“With those ski suits? They’ve got more padding than pro linebackers.”

True
. The kids were done up in so much winter gear that they looked like pudgy Michelin babies: thermal coats puffed up around their chests, snow boots, ski pants, long johns, wool mittens, and at least three pairs of socks apiece. Only their eyeballs were unprotected, peeking through the tunnels of hoods and scarves and ski masks.

Camilla rubbed her hands together and stuffed them in the pockets of her coat. The faux fox pelt around her shoulders kept her neck warm, and her feet were doing all right, but her fingers felt chilled to the bone.

It wasn’t even that cold of a day—for December in the Yukon, at least. Not a single cloud smeared the sky, and nothing more than a light breeze had blown through since morning. But it wasn’t
warm
either. Minus five degrees Fahrenheit still had bite, and the yellow sunlight was deceiving. You can’t trust what you see when it comes to the cold, she had learned, but your other senses sure let you know in a hurry: the feeling of tears in your eyes, the sound of snow crunching like Styrofoam, the sensation of snot fusing to your nose hairs.
Such a comfortable place to live
;
it’s a mystery why more people don’t come to embrace their bodily limits
.

At the bottom of the hill, the kids had gotten up and were brushing the snow off their legs. Camilla picked out Abigail
instantly: the one in the black suit with a white toque and pink Columbia snow boots. She waved, but Abigail didn’t wave back. She was too busy giggling with one of the Cory girls.

There you go, kiddo
.

“Geez,” Peter said. “Cute little monsters, huh? Almost makes the whole pregnancy part seem worth it.” He bumped her jokingly.

Camilla smiled, but it wasn’t funny. Her pregnancy had been the most excruciating period of her entire life, and she frequently reminded him that he owed her an eternity of massages because of it.

She had been sick every morning, bar none, and developed a case of sleep apnea that could drive the calmest soul to the brink of insanity. Doubts had flooded her psyche, and she couldn’t help imagine the doctors screaming in the delivery room when they cut her open and brought out a litter of bloody, furless kittens, their blind squeals filling her brain like unholy demonic yowls. As a result of her sleeplessness, she lost her sense of humor. When the baby finally arrived—a month premature, but perfectly healthy, no mewing or other feline malformations—she was relieved to have it out of her body and into her arms.

From day one Abigail had been extremely quiet, despite her violent gestation. All day, she would stare through the walls of her incubator and watch what was going on around her. Camilla came to think it was cute and inquisitive, but one time she caught a nurse whispering to a coworker, “That Vincent girl…you ever see her watching you? Like she’s…I don’t know, studying you? A little creepy if you ask me.”

As time passed, Camilla kept an eye out for anything else that might have been unusual in Abigail’s development. She didn’t seem to like toys very much, and she didn’t laugh or
smile a lot either. Her first New Year’s Eve was the only notable exception. Brutus had lit up a box of fireworks in the backyard, and the eruptions of brilliant sparkles set her off like a giggle factory. Camilla had silently hoped that it was because of the shimmering colors and not the boom of the explosions.

Conversely, other aspects of their daughter were perfectly normal. She ate normally, she slept normally. She didn’t burst into flames when they stepped into church. So slowly Camilla’s hesitations had melted away until she stopped watching Abigail like a scientific experiment and started treating her like a regular kid.

A series of screams cracked through the cold air and snapped Camilla back to reality. Her heart dropped beneath its layers of flesh and synthetic thermal gear, and she looked up just in time to see a toboggan rocket past, the five kids on board yipping with laughter as they shot down the snow hill toward the rest of the crowd below.

Her eyes scanned the woods for a white toque and pink boots.

There she is, halfway up the hill
.

Camilla let out a long breath.

“You all right, jumpy?” Peter elbowed her.

“I’m fine.” She shrugged it off. She
was
jumpier in the last seven years—there was no doubt about that—but she had hoped it might improve the older Abigail got.
I guess I’ve still got a ways to go
.

As she watched her daughter trudge back up the hillside with a handful of other boys and girls, their sleds slung over their shoulders, Camilla sighed and shook her head at herself.
She’s a regular kid, all right. Deep breaths
.

Just a regular kid
.

19

Officer Logan

C
amilla was up to her elbows in remains when there was a knock on the embalming room door.

Knock, knock, knock…Knock! Knock! Knock!

But she didn’t hear it. The vents in the crematorium were set to full steam ahead, bellowing through the chimney shaft and shuffling an eighty-year-old retired air force pilot named Howard Konners into the atmosphere for one last rip in the wild blue yonder. Had his spirit held on to its gruff, incorporeal voice box, the colonel would have been whooping up his favorite anthem, bursting with red-white-and-blue spangles as he wafted into freedom, singing: “Down we dive, spouting our flame from under, off with one helluva rooooar! We live in fame or go down in flame—hey!—nothing’ll stop the US Air Fooooorce!”

The knocking came again, louder this time, and a motion caught Camilla’s eye. She looked up and saw Laura standing in the double doors.

“—is here!” Laura shouted over the furnace. “He says he—”

“What?” Camilla cupped her ear.

“Officer Logan! He wants to see you.”

“Me?” She looked around incredulously. There was no one else in the room except for Rosemary Volkes, and old Rosey was lying across the current workstation, carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Laura turned on her heels, too busy to stop. “He’s in the south parlor.”

The south parlor was the Vincents’ formal study. Three of the four walls were rigged with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, packed with brittle Encyclopedia Britannica sets that had yet to hear of the Hubble Telescope or September 11 or a black president. There were leatherback chairs with matching ottomans, reading lights with candy glass lamp shades, and an antique cart holding fat snifters and unmarked bottles of hot amber whiskey—a warm contrast to the icy scene outside the front window.

Officer Logan was standing in the center of the room with his back to the entrance. His thermal jacket was done up along with a Maglite, a two-way radio, and a .45-caliber Glock clipped to his patrol belt.

Camilla appeared in the doorway and stopped in her tracks. She hovered apprehensively at the sight of the police uniform. “Officer Logan?”

“Ms. Carleton,” the man said, and before he turned around Camilla’s heart had already dropped into her stomach. “Pardon me. It’s Mrs.
Vincent
now, isn’t it?” The man pivoted and revealed himself to be Mick, the mousy greaseball from her first removal job. “Sorry I didn’t send a card.” He added a polite smile that made her skin crawl and legs close up.

“Strange, Mick,” Camilla said. “I didn’t notice.”

“You remember my name.”

I remember a lot more than your name
. He had once told her to “watch herself around these freaks,” referring to Peter and Lucas at their standoff on the Beaudrys’ driveway. His belated congratulations were worth as much as his pencil-thin peach-fuzz moustache.

“Can I help you?”

“Well, for starters you can jot down your exercise secrets.” He clicked his tongue like a pig at the slop trough. “I say you’re lookin’ the same as you did eight years ago, sunshine. Pretty rare for Nolan birds. Seems they all let go around here soon as the honeymoon’s over.”

“Moira’s upstairs. I’ll ask if she’s free.”

“Oh relax and learn to take a compliment”—he waved her down condescendingly—“especially when it pats you on the ass. Now, have a seat.”

“I’ll stand.”

Mick shrugged, replacing his smarmy smile with a dull have-it-your-way smirk. He put his hands on his hips and stretched his shoulders back, grunting, as he puffed out his chest and flashed the notches on his uniform’s belt.
It’s your house
, the showboat gesture seemed to say,
but don’t forget it’s my town
.

“So. Guess I’ll get down to business.”

Please do
.

“Uh-huh. Right.” For the first time, the silence seemed to put Mick on edge. He looked around the room, a lot less confident than he’d been a second before, and his shoulders slumped when a nicely timed footstep
thudded
on the second floor above them. His eyes peered up and traced the footsteps, back and forth, back and forth, clearly mistrusting the groans and growls of the old house as if suddenly understanding that he had no jurisdiction in this place. His badge was an illusion—as
insignificant a symbol in the Vincents’ manor as a PhD drawn up with a six-year-old’s crayons.

Mick cleared his throat. “I hear you know the Corys? Little family three streets over. Wayne is the day manager at Darlyle’s Oil Change and Mary does—”

“Yes. We know them.”

“And their daughters too?”

Camilla nodded. “The twins were at Abigail’s birthday party.”

The Cory twins, Erica and Stephanie, were the smallest girls in Abigail’s first grade class. She could picture both girls’ curly hair whipping behind them as they flew down the toboggan hill on their blue-and-orange crazy carpets.

“Well that’s the reason I’m here, Mrs. Vincent. Neither girl’s been seen since yesterday.”

Camilla tensed. She knew a visit from a ranger—asshole or no asshole—was a bad sign. She crossed her arms defensively and tried picturing the party again.

All of the kids were picked up by their parents. All of them, right at four o’clock. Positive. But no…Wait. Wait, wait, wait. The twins lived at the top of the hill. Abigail told us that they walked home right before everyone else left
.

“They made it home from the party,” she said, half asking, half insisting. “I know they did.” A slimy monster of phlegm and mucus clawed up her throat. She hoped to God this wasn’t one of her nightmares coming alive—that Mick would demand to see Abigail and take her away for committing some unimaginable crime which, deep down, Camilla was always afraid she would someday carry out. The faster her mind raced, the clearer she could picture the three girls walking up the hill with Abigail in step, sauntering farther and farther away in their pudgy black
snowsuits and pink pom-pom mittens. Was that moment really the last time the sisters were seen?

No
. She pushed the thought out of her head.
The twins made it home. They made it home. They—

“They made it home.” Mick nodded, and for a second Camilla thought it was just the voice in her head again. “They disappeared sometime between bed and breakfast.”

“That’s terrible.” Camilla put her hands over her mouth, not only because she was shocked, but also to cover a sigh of relief. “What
…
what’s everyone thinking?”

“The Corys have no clue,” Mick continued dryly. “No signs of struggle and the neighbors say the street was quiet all night. No suspects, no nothin’. I’m told it’ll take three or four days to get the dogs up here from Whitehorse, but by then this whole clusterfuck could be as cold as a witch’s teat.” His walkie-talkie bleeped, but he ignored it. “Be honest: did you notice anything strange at the party?”

“No. Not at all.”

The walkie-talkie bleeped again, followed by blaring voices gushing through the static in their own language of muffled code.
Kssh!
“JD, when you’re done, circle back on Dressling.”
Kssh!
“Four and five inside; unpatching combined channels now.”
Kssh!
“We’re gonna have to tape off T-6 down here as well.”
Kssh!

Mick didn’t copy the station back or even touch the talkie’s volume.

“Well, if that’s everything, officer,” Camilla continued, motioning at the radio, “sounds like you should be out helping find two little girls instead of asking me for exercise tips.”

“Trust me”—Mick looked disdainfully around the room again—“I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to. Just letting your lot know to do their civic duties.”