Suffer the Children (16 page)

It was his Megan looking up at him from an open bag that reeked of rot and decay. The same face. The same eyes. The same voice. The same little girl, dressed in her Sunday best.

Could it really be her? His daughter was dead.

He saw the jagged pattern on the side of her head from when she’d cut her own hair a week ago.

He leaned away and threw up onto the snow. His eyes flooded with hot tears.

“It can’t be,” he sobbed. “It’s not happening.”

Joan yelled, “I found him!”

Then he heard her scream.

“Nate?” he groaned. He heaved again, producing a single ropey strand of foul-smelling fluid.

Megan stood next to him. She touched his shoulder. “I want to go home now, Daddy.”

“Oh, God.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “All right, princess. Come on.”

He took off his coat and wrapped it around her. He rubbed her arms.

Nate climbed out of his bag.

“Thank you, Daddy,” said Megan.

“Warm you right up,” he said without thinking.

He picked her up and brought her to Joan. She felt like a frozen block of wood. Joan was kissing Nate’s cold hard face and whispering to him. Doug wanted to laugh; she was using a scolding tone, the tone she used when the boy did something dangerous that worried her.

He set Megan on the ground. “Look who I found, Joanie.”

Joanie hugged her daughter with a loud cry.

“Hi, Dad,” said Nate.

Doug gaped at him. “Hey, sport.”

Nate, exasperated: “What took you guys so long?”

Doug laughed, and Joan joined in. It felt good to laugh. They laughed long and hard.

From insanity or joy, he didn’t know or care.

“Yup,” said Doug. “That’s definitely my boy.”

Nate grinned with gray teeth.

1 hour after Resurrection

Ramona lay in the back of Ross’s car with her arms wrapped tight around Josh’s body. He stank like the grave. Holding him was like hugging a large, thawing, rotten steak.

She’d never been happier.

Ross leaned on the horn and tossed his hands in frustration. “This is going to take forever. People are going nuts. There are cars everywhere.”

She couldn’t see anything except the red glow of brake lights. She pulled her coat tighter over her and Josh to create a private nest.

Ross rolled down the window. Cold air and the blare of sirens flooded the car.

“Put the window back up,” she said.

“It smells like something d—” He glanced behind him. “Like something really bad in here.”

“He’s freezing, Ross. His skin feels like ice. Crank the heat as high as it’ll go.”

He winced at the stink but did as she asked. Ross was fighting to keep it together, she knew. The world had stopped making sense entirely.

“I don’t feel anything,” Josh whispered.

“Do you know what happened to you?”

“I woke up in a hole. There were a lot of other kids coming out of sleeping bags. We tried to get out. A boy reached down and grabbed my hand and helped me climb.”

He only breathed when he wanted to talk.

Ross slammed the steering wheel. “Come on! Learn how to drive, buddy!”

“It was my fault,” Ramona whispered near Josh’s ear. “I’m so sorry.”

Josh shook his head slowly. “No, Mommy.”

She thought of all the regrets she’d voiced to Ross.

Seeing you come out of me, I felt like I’d been born to love you. But it was hard raising you by myself. You have no idea. How could you? It wasn’t always just about getting us what we needed. I missed having choices. I wanted more than I had. There was a time when I thought I could have it all. A great career. A man like Ross to love. I gave so much to you. I thought the world owed me something back, and in the dark times, deep down, I thought my life would have been better if you hadn’t been born.

“You came back for a reason,” she breathed.

A second chance to make things right.

The car built up speed. She listened to the hum of the engine, the smooth roll of the car’s tires on the road. She closed her eyes.

“My little miracle,” she murmured. Tonight, they were both reborn.

“
I’m hungry
,” Josh growled.

Ramona’s eyes flashed open. Ross grimaced in the front seat. He glanced at them before returning his eyes to the road with a shake of his head.

“I’ll make you something when we get home,” she said, studying his pale little face.

The air whistled out of Josh’s lungs.

She remembered how, one night, her stepmother had agreed to pick up Josh at day care and watch him for a few hours so Ramona could
have dinner with an eye doctor she’d met through a mutual friend. She’d left work excited about the date, gotten into her car, and next thing she knew, she’d driven to the day care center. Her brain had blanked out, and her body had taken over, executing its normal routine.

Body memory, they called it.

Is he real or a copy? A fleeting echo of his former personality? Something of a ghost?

“Are you here to stay, Josh?” she asked.

He didn’t answer.

A little louder: “Josh?”

Not all miracles are good. She wondered if this one carried a price.

The car stopped. She sat up. They were in her driveway. Home.

Ross leaped out and walked away from the car.

Ramona opened her door and waited as she normally would, but Josh didn’t move. She leaned in and pulled her boy out of the car. His body left an oily black smear on the seat. Dogs barked all over the neighborhood. A car skidded on screeching tires in the distance. Several houses down, a screen door slammed, and a woman screamed. Ross started at the sound.

“Thank you,” Ramona told him. “For everything.”

“Do you want me to come in? I could put coffee on, and we could try to get our bearings.”

She shook her head. He glanced at Josh with obvious relief not to be staying.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll call you. Soon.”

She turned and carried Josh to the door. He felt heavy in her arms. Church bells began to chime across the city. She struggled to hold him in one arm while she rooted in her purse for her keys.

“How about a nice hot bath before I feed you?” she asked him.

The water would both clean and warm him. Ramona took his silence as consent. She carried him upstairs, set him on his bed, and stretched out his limbs. It was hard work. His body appeared to be frozen solid. His skin felt like marble. She wondered how he’d been able to walk at all.

“Mommy will be right back, honey,” she said.

He didn’t answer. He stared at the ceiling. The muscles in his face were slack. His chest didn’t rise and fall. He didn’t blink.

She went into the bathroom and turned on the taps. The room filled with warm steam.

Otherwise, the house was quiet.

Maybe he’s gone
, she thought. She ran into his room and found him lying in the exact same spot. His eyes had shifted to look at her.

“Mommy’s going to give you a nice hot bath, little man.”

Ramona took his hands and pulled him into a sitting position. She undressed him until he sat naked and pale. His abdomen had swollen and turned green. His back was heavily bruised. He had blisters on his arms and legs. His fingertips were blue.

His body is rotting but something inside him is still alive
.

She picked up her son and carried him into the bathroom. It was like carrying a chair. Dead weight. He made no sound as she lowered him into the hot water.

The routine comforted her. This part was familiar. She would give him a bath. No big deal. A typical Tuesday night. She wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t run away.

He’s still Josh.

She held on to that thought with whatever mental strength she had left.

“Are you in there, Josh?”

No answer.

“Why won’t you talk to me?”

Ramona wrung out a sponge and washed his back.

“That’s okay, little man. Mommy will wait. I’m just so glad you’re home.”

As she worked, she sang: “
Hush, little baby, don’t say a word . . .
”

She raised one of his arms and sponged it carefully.

“Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird . . .”

Outside, people were cheering. The initial shock had worn off. They were embracing the insanity for the miracle it was, just as
Ramona was. The gift. The children were back. How and why didn’t matter right now.

“And if that mockingbird won’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a—”

The water turned black. Ramona coughed. The bath smelled like a rotten stew. She raised the toilet seat and retched over it. She turned on the bathroom fan and returned to the tub.

“I’m going to wash your hair now, so close your eyes.”

To her surprise, he did. Josh was still in there. They were communicating.

“You always did hate getting water in your eyes.”

Ramona had always figured he would abandon her one day—friends, girls, college, and, ultimately, his own family. She hadn’t expected him to die.

And now that she’d gotten him back, she’d never lose him again.

Whatever the price.

8 hours after Resurrection

Doug woke to the worst hangover of his life.

His head ached as if somebody had taken a baseball bat to it during the night. Joan had raised the shade on the window, and the light pierced his eyes like microscopic needles. His tongue felt too big for his mouth. The room spun. He wondered if he was still drunk. It wouldn’t have surprised him one bit if he was.

It all came back to him with a jolt.

Nate and Megan had come back from the dead.

“Joanie,” he called. He barely recognized his ragged voice.

She didn’t answer.

He coughed hard. His mouth tasted like an old ashtray. He took his time standing. He was still wearing his gamey, foul-smelling black suit.

He had to see for himself if they were still here or if it had all been a dream. Hell, he just wanted to
see
them.

He hurried down the stairs. Froze on the bottom step.

Nate and Megan leaned against each other on the La-Z-Boy sofa. Nate wore his favorite pajamas covered with NHL team logos. Megan wore a pink sleeper with a little patch (ballerina shoes) stitched onto
the left breast. The daylight coming through the windows wasn’t kind to them. They looked like figures carved from wax. Soap, shampoo, and lotion had covered up the stink, but the low-grade smell of ongoing decay tainted the air.

Joan had plugged in the Christmas tree, which filled the room with the parody of cheer.

“Kids?” he rasped.

They didn’t answer. Didn’t move a muscle, their eyes glassy and unblinking.

“Oh, God.” He clamped his hand over his mouth and rushed past them to the bathroom, where he fell to his knees and vomited a single burning trickle of stomach acid. Dry heaves followed.

“That’s what you get for drinking,” Joan said behind him.

He yanked a handful of toilet paper off the roll and wiped the tears and snot from his face. “What have we done, Joanie?”

“What do you mean?”

He’d been hallucinating last night. What had happened at the park couldn’t have happened; therefore, it hadn’t. It was one of those events people call mass hysteria. They’d hallucinated, recovered the bodies of their dead children, and brought them home. But they were still dead.

And now they have to go back into the ground.

Then he remembered. They’d taken Nate and Megan home in the truck and carried them inside. Nate said he was starving. Crossing the threshold, he’d said, “Home again, home again, jiggety-jig,” and went rock still in Doug’s arms.

They’d washed and clothed them and tried to feed them, but the kids had stopped responding. They put them to bed and pressed their eyelids closed. Afterward, they collapsed, exhausted, in their own bed and slept.

No, what had happened last night had been real enough.

He flushed the toilet again, grabbed the edge of the sink, and hauled himself up. When he tried to leave, Joan stood her ground. She held two small cartons of apple juice with straws punched into them.

“Doug, these are our kids.”

“They were dead three whole days,” he said. “Doesn’t that bother you at all?”

Her mouth set in a hard line. “This is a gift. A miracle. The only thing I feel is grateful.”

He followed her into the living room and watched her offer the juice to the kids. No takers.

“Have they done anything,” he asked, “other than just sit there staring into space?”

“No,” Joan admitted.

“So, what are we doing here?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to take things one minute at a time, okay?” Her voice cracked. “What do you want to do? Take them back and bury them again?”

She was right, but that didn’t make it any easier being in the same room with them.

“We’ll take care of them like we always have,” he said. “But to be honest, they scare me a little.”

Her expression softened. “Oh, Doug, they’re still our kids. You know that, right?”

It was a good question. Were they? If they’d gone into a coma, they’d still be his kids, wouldn’t they? Or had a disfiguring accident? Was this that much different?

Of course it is. They’re DEAD. They’re dead, and we’re treating them like living people.

The children’s eyes flickered in unison to look at him.

“Jesus,” he said with a shudder. “Their eyes are following me.”

Joan turned to gape at the children. “They moved?”

The phone rang.

“
Goddamn it!
” Doug roared, venting his stress. He stomped into the kitchen.

Their eyes followed his progress.

“They’re moving, Doug! Look! They’re watching you!”

He snatched up the phone, nerves jangling.
“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” Otis shouted back. “You were supposed to be here at six thirty!”

“You want me to pick up trash today? My kids just came back, you prick.”

“Language,” Joan called from the living room.