Come Little Children (40 page)

Camilla buried her head again as the tears welled anew. The prayer unlocked an inundation of memories: hiding in the bathroom when she was Abigail’s age, listening to her father beat her mother; then the teasing in elementary school; the doctor telling her she was infertile; the touch of Erica Cory’s dead fingers; her nights in the crypt; the horrors at the hospital. Amid the loneliness were good images too, but they were harder to distinguish. The evening she arrived at the Vincent house, the first night she spent with Peter, her wedding day.

She tried keeping her eyes open, but the combination of physical and mental exhaustion was too much. She cried herself to sleep in the pew, her head hung in her hands, until eventually her body curled up on the stiff bench and she drifted off under
the watchful eyes of the stained-glass Saints, unaware that her prayer had already been heard.

The crescent moon rolled over the sky, peeking through Mother Earth’s long, misty fingers before vanishing again under her cloudy palm. Its pale eye had seen much over the millennia, but it had missed a lot too.

The shadow that fell over Camilla’s body was not a cloud. Another silhouette rose above it, lifting higher and higher, and formed the clear outline of a cross. A soft murmur started in the silence—a voice pleading under its breath—but Camilla did not stir.

The shadow shook and sputtered like a spitting fire. The crucifix reached its peak, wavering, and then came swinging down with the full skull-crushing force of iron behind it.

Suddenly another shadow flew across the room and flung itself into the first. There was an ear-splitting
CRACK
as something hit the pew beside Camilla and splintered off a chunk of wood. Her eyes snapped open and she dove instinctively to the floor, rolling backward below the pews while fighting to gain her bearings.

Ten feet away, there was a large man crumpled in the aisle. He was groaning and clutching his head like a dumb troll that had been knocked down by the Billy Goats Gruff. In front of him, another figure got to its knees and stumbled for the broken bench.

“Camilla?”

The voice wasn’t real. It was just another blown resistor in her sanity’s fuse box.

“Camilla!”

She looked closer and saw a familiar pair of boots gliding beneath the pews.

“Peter!” Camilla gasped, jumping up and seeing her husband standing in the middle of the aisle. She flinched as if to run to him, but held back. There was a heavy second of silence carried over from the last time they were face-to-face.

The hush was broken by the groans of the troll on the floor. It rolled over, and Camilla saw the church’s priest lying on his back in his dark cassock and starched white collar. He was rubbing his head as consciousness slowly washed over him.

“Careful,” Peter said. “He tried to kill you.”

Camilla looked at the spot where she had been sleeping and saw the broken bench. There was an iron crucifix lying in the splinters like a blunted ax.

“How did you—”

“I saw him from the balcony. Got down here just in time.”

“Conspirator!” the priest spat.

They looked back at the reverend as he shambled to his feet. “Conspiring with that—that
abomination
is seditious. God will burn you together!” The old man coughed, crossing himself with one hand and cradling his head with the other. A bump was already showing above his temple.

“Quick,” Peter said, “let’s get out of here.” He grazed Camilla’s arm, and her heart fluttered—it was the first touch in days that hadn’t been someone trying to kill her. Even after his hand swept away, the warmth of it lingered.

“Where will you run!” the priest hollered as they jogged from the sanctuary. “No house or hollow—not even the grave—will guard you. Your collusion with the damned will be brought before the Host, and this insurrection will be punished!”

The priest’s condemnations faded away as they ran out the door and down the steps of the church. Knowing it was a thousand times more dangerous out here than it was inside, Camilla
grabbed Peter’s hand and pulled him around the back of the churchyard. They sprinted away from the chapel like newlywed outlaws—partners in crime—until they reached the graveyard on the south end of Nolan and went rushing for the stretch of tombs.

Camilla heaved herself against the Goodwynn crypt, and the door swung open. Peter eyed the mausoleum with utter disbelief before following her inside and sealing the entrance behind them.

“Like what I’ve done with the place?”

Their eyes were still adjusting, but Peter was already doing a full three-sixty of the room. He took in the caskets and the columbarium first, then hospital gown folded in the corner, and finally the handgun lying by the map of Nolan sketched in the dirt.

“Where’s—”

“She ran away.”

Peter closed his mouth. Camilla watched him survey the room again and shake his head in disbelief.

“It’s actually not that bad…” she huffed. Then she saw the glisten of tears in his eyes and told herself to stop talking.

Each of them sniffled. They faced one another soberly and felt the weight of their previous exchange sink in again. Something had changed in the last two days. It was more than the tired lines on Peter’s face or Camilla’s hair or the room they were in. It was like they had been reincarnated in a different century and were just seeing each other for the first time, wondering why it felt so strange and questioning whether or not they had belonged together in a past life.

“You were there the whole time, weren’t you?” Camilla asked. She remembered the creak in the rafters when she was
praying and connected it to him. “You were in the balcony before I even got there.”

Peter nodded. “I’ve been there every night.”

“Why?”

“I…I really thought I’d never see you again. When you ran away, it felt like you were gone for good.” His face sagged and the moonlight made the bags under his eyes look a hundred pounds each. “I’ve felt dead for three days.”

“You’ve felt dead?” Camilla gnawed her lips. There was so much swirling around in her head that she had trouble choosing what to say next. She held up a helpless shrug and motioned around the tomb, spilling her breath in a puff of angry, hurt laughter. “You have no idea what dead feels like, Peter. You’ve been depressed, maybe. You’ve been crying yourself to sleep. But you have not been
here
. You have not been freezing in somebody else’s grave and disfiguring yourself so you won’t be recognized when you go out to hunt your own daughter.”

“My daughter?” Peter said softly. “I thought you made it clear the last time we talked that she was never my daughter.”

Unbelievable
. Camilla shook her head. “Don’t tell me you can separate yourself from her that easily, ‘cause I’ve tried. You loved her. You weren’t going to let Lucas do it because you refused to believe him—”

“Why would I?” Peter’s voice toughened. “Why would my
wife
lie to me about something like that for eight years?”

“I was trying to make us happy—”

“But the fact that you knew…you knew and you
still
protected her.” His voice was shaking now. “The fact that I didn’t and I killed my own brother over such a…such a sick lie.”

The words stung, but Camilla couldn’t just back down. Not when one choice—one unselfish sin—was tossing her into deeper
and deeper circles of hell for the wrongs of others. “Nothing I did was supposed to hurt anyone.
Nothing
,” she stressed. “And I’ve been killing myself trying to fix it because I know sorry isn’t enough, but apparently there’s nothing I can do. I’m
damned
, Peter. I am truly damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”

He shook his head. “Abigail is damned. You saw the writing on the wall.”

“I was blinded just as much as everyone else. Just as much as you were.”

“Yeah, I was blinded, all right. But it wasn’t by Abigail. It was by you.”

Their chests heaved up and down, breathless from the run and from arguing with each other, and Camilla hunched even lower, drooping like an animal on its last legs. She was spent. She had no energy left to stay on her feet—let alone defend herself—any longer.

“Please,” she whispered. “I can’t fight anymore. I can’t.” The wind whistled through the cracks in the tomb, and she wiped another tear from her cheek. “If you hate me, go home. Go tell your family where I am. I’m done. I’ve made every wrong decision and I’m done trying.”

“I won’t leave until I know.” He grabbed her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

Camilla covered her face. She wanted to say,
for the sake of our family
or
because being a dad was important to you
, but she couldn’t bring herself to make any more excuses. That was pinning the blame again. This was her fault, all of it. The Corys’ deaths. Lucas’s death. Abigail. So she looked deep into herself and searched for the true answer.

“Because I’m still a scared little girl, Peter.” The tomb was silent. Every word she spoke hung on the cold air in swirling,
spectral clouds. “I’m the same girl who watched her father beat her mother and never told a soul because she was afraid of being alone. That’s who you married. You married someone who pretends she doesn’t have cuts and scars and then stains everything she touches with blood. And she can’t wipe it up. God, she tries, but as soon as she wipes it, it spreads. And it spreads, and it spreads, and it spreads…”

Peter reached up and pulled her hands away from her face. They were stiff, but they didn’t give much resistance.

“The girl I married,” he said, “is right here. Maybe the haircut’s a little…different, but we’re breathing, aren’t we? This isn’t over until we die or we give up. And I’m not giving up. I’m not giving up on you no matter how much shit we’ve been through because we can’t get through this alone. We’re not leaving each other again.”

Peter leaned forward and kissed her. Camilla tensed at first, but then she felt the hesitation fade away as she kissed him back, pressing their mouths together to say everything they couldn’t with words. Finally she turned her head and squeezed her arms around his chest. He squeezed back and they slid down the cinder block wall, curling up together with Peter’s frame engulfing her body and shielding her from the drips of ceiling water and gusts of wind that slipped through the stone cracks.

Neither of them said anything else for a long time. She curled up in his arms with her head against his shoulder and absorbed the kind of safety and comfort that a frightened child would get in the arms of someone who truly loves them.

For the first time in two days, Camilla was warm.

30

Abigail’s Gift

“Y
ou went to the hospital? Into quarantine?”

“Yes,” Camilla said, and then off Peter’s look: “I know. But I thought I’d find something.”

“Her?”

“Maybe not
her
, but a hint at least. Someone who’d seen or heard something. She’s seven, for God’s sake, how long can she hide on her own?”

Peter shoved the last morsel of bread into his mouth and licked a glob of strawberry jam off his fingers. He had brought them breakfast—a loaf of Nature’s Own, two jars of Miss Rosa’s jam, and a liter of orange juice—from the 24/7 gas station on Alpine Road. “What were the patients like?”

“Awful. They keep the sick ones on the second floor and the really bad ones sedated on the third. When you see those… those people—or whatever they are—you can’t even feel sorry for them. You’re so terrified that all you want to do is run away.” She paused and thought about it. “Your throat goes dry and your stomach churns like you just ate something rotten. You can actually feel it creeping around you.”

“So it’s spreading pretty badly.” Peter shook his head. “God, it comes quick. And all from…ugh.”

All from one little person
, Camilla thought.
One bad apple spoils the bushel. One rotten little girl
.

As Peter tipped the jam over another slice of bread and spread it around with his pinkie, Camilla watched him with a feeling of disbelief. She didn’t deserve to have him back.
She
was the one who had started this rot and lied about it for eight years, yet here he was, like any good man, bringing her breakfast and keeping his vows. She was afraid that if she looked away he would be gone when she turned back, and then she would realize that she was truly alone.
Mumbling to myself, spreading mud on rocks, pretending it’s bread and jam. Camilla Vincent: nuttier than a squirrel turd
.

She touched Peter’s hand and slid their fingers together, squeezing tightly. He wasn’t a hallucination. He was there, in the flesh, which made him either the craziest man in the world or the most faithful. Despite all their tribulations, they were still together—man and woman, husband and wife—inextricably linked. ’Til death do they part.

Peter finished a swig of orange juice and wiped his lips with his shirtsleeve. “I think I know where Abby is.”

Camilla didn’t register the words right away. She was reaching for a slice of bread when her hand froze inside the bag.

“She’s at the funeral home,” he continued. “I think she’s hiding in the tree house.”

“You’re sure?”

“I was in her bedroom two nights ago and I saw something crawl through the fence into the courtyard. I’m ninety percent sure it was her.”

“Does anyone else know?”

Peter shook his head.

“We have to—”

“I know.” Peter squeezed her fingers tighter. “I know.”

Camilla studied the cold resolve on his face and drew some strength from it. He looked back and added, “But it’s
our
responsibility. I don’t want my family to be part of it.”

“Can we lure them away from the house? Just in case things get…loud.” She remembered her experience with the Cory sisters and how violent it could be.

“I’ll check what the parlor’s schedule is like. There’s a chance everyone will be out on pickups at some point, and with any luck maybe an extra call or two will come in.”

Camilla looked past Peter and saw the sky lightening through the cracks in the wall. “You’d better get going before morning hits”—she frowned—“or they’ll wonder where you are.”