Come Little Children (43 page)

She held up her gun, wavering, and trained it on the lift.

Suddenly everything stopped. There was a high-pitch
ting
like the bell on a concierge’s desk, and the accordion doors popped open on loaded springs, slamming into the walls on either side.

Camilla flinched and hugged her trigger, a pascal of pressure away from firing.

The elevator was empty.

She kept the gun cocked and weighed the dare in front of her.
So you want me upstairs, do you?

The elevator waited patiently. It was clear who had the upper hand so far, and she didn’t like it. She crossed the room to the lift and tapped the second floor button with the end of her gun before sliding the golden gate shut and standing back.

To hell with you if you think I’m actually riding that thing up
.

The machinery whirred back to life, and Camilla rushed for the winding staircase, her footsteps stifled by the
clink, clank, clink
of the elevator shaft once again.

She scaled the stairs two at a time and peeked over the top step just as the lift arrived. There was no one waiting in the open area—no eyes peeking out from behind furniture or between the leaves of the potted ferns—so she crawled to her feet and dipped into the hallway ahead.

Jasper’s office was the first door on the left.

Inside was a rat’s nest of filing cabinets and bookshelves packed with catechisms, psalm binders, and rows upon rows of sacred sheet music that put the Vatican’s collection to shame.

A cramp curled in Camilla’s stomach when she saw a little red light blinking from the answering machine atop the desk. Whatever message was waiting, it would have to wait for eternity.
Ninety percent of the person you’ve tried to reach is leaking over his grand piano, and the other ten percent is impaled on top of a water fountain
. She
glanced around the room—nothing behind the door, nothing between bookshelves—and ducked out again, moving across the hall.

The showroom, which had once been filled with Peter’s beautiful hand-carved caskets, was much different than the last time she was there. In place of the artful coffins were rows and rows of generic urns stacked along the shelves like Ikea: Funeral Edition. In the middle of the room were cardboard boxes that contained more urns and caskets piled as high as the ceiling. Some of them were taped shut, while others were cracked open and puking out sheets of plastic wrap and packing peanuts all over the floor.

Something flapped around a wall of boxes.

Camilla squinted. She moved forward, trying to avoid the packing peanuts, but it was almost impossible. Every time she stepped on one, it banged like a Styrofoam land mine.

Another flap.

She stopped. Her right foot hovered unknowingly over another peanut as she craned her head around a wall of boxes and saw a sheet of plastic flapping against a furnace vent.
Thank God
.

Gradually—as if in slow motion—she lowered her foot again and detonated the white packing peanut underneath, pinching out a tiny
squeal
.

BWOOM!

The entire wall of boxes thundered down on top of her. She buckled under the landslide and cracked her skull against the floor, feeling a dull coma wash over her as another sensation tightened around her wrists and bound them behind her chest.

She tried worming away, but the pressure swelled in her head as the fluorescents burst on and amplified her migraine
tenfold. Then came the unmistakable swish of shoes wading through the packing peanuts, and the sound of her gun being booted across the floor.

“Hi, mom.”

Through the shower of sunbursts floating across her eyes, Camilla saw the outline of Abigail come into focus. The girl’s face was blotted out by the ceiling lights, but draped in her hands was the silhouette of a long, thick rope.

“No!” Camilla screamed. “NO!”

She writhed across the floor and watched in horror as Abigail came closer and closer with the serpentine cable.
My hands
. She winced.
She tied my hands
. Then another flash of panic hit when she tried to kick out, but couldn’t.
My feet are tied too!

Abigail leaned down, and at last they were face-to-face.

“What happened to you, mom?” Abigail asked with a twinge of sadness. “What happened to all your hair?”

“You!” Camilla teared with anger. “
You’ve
done this to me, Abby.”

Her daughter frowned, failing to understand. “Don’t worry. I’m fixing it. I’ll bring you back too, then no one can hurt us.”

“You can’t—”

“No one will be mean to us.”

“Stop!”

“No one will chase us.”

“I said ‘stop’!”

Abigail leaned over and looped the rope over Camilla’s pale neck. “Everyone will join us.”

A bestial scream rose from Camilla’s gut and blasted out of her mouth. She swung her legs with every ounce of energy she had left and caught Abigail’s feet, crashing her into the boxes beside them. Instantly Camilla’s hands shot to her own ankles
and yanked the knots apart, then she sprung up and flew out of the showroom like a bat out of hell, her wrists still bound behind her.

The hall was pitch black. A gunshot exploded off the banister in front of her.

BANG!
The elevator cage.

BANG!
A pot of ferns.

Camilla threw herself into Jasper’s office and barely missed another explosion in the wall beside her. She whimpered and thrashed around like an animal caught in a trap, but it was no good—her hands were still tied with the heinous cord, and the more she struggled, the more blood she could feel seeping through the raw skin around her wrists.

Scissors. I need scissors
.

She ran for the desk, but suddenly there came the patter of small shoes running down the hallway. Wincing again, she abandoned the desk and dove behind a bookshelf just as Abigail’s shadow spilled across the office floor.

There was a small gap between the ground and the bookshelf; a shadow flickered below it, then vanished. Camilla considered her waist size and the width of the gap and concluded it was the only way out: as soon as Abigail stepped around the corner, she would slide under the bookshelf and bolt back through the office door.

Get ready
.

Camilla dropped to her knees and listened for her daughter’s feet.

The shoes were gone. The room was silent again.

She took a deep breath and lowered her cheek against the carpet.

Abigail’s face was
right there
, staring at her under the bookshelf with those wild black eyes.

“Found you.”

The barrel of the gun came up level with Camilla’s head, and just as it was about to fire, Camilla threw her entire body against the bookshelf in a final heave of desperation. The wood cracked with the sudden force and then splintered, sending the whole shelf crashing down on top of Abigail.

Camilla scrambled over the heap of destruction—her hands still bound—and jetted for the exit, not stopping to see what became of her girl in the dust and rubble behind her. She emerged in the hallway and shot straight down the staircase, landing on the first floor, and bolted through the back hall to the embalming room.

The double doors blew open, and Camilla stumbled inside. A gunshot went off somewhere in the house, but it didn’t sound close.
Maybe she didn’t see me come this way. I need time—I need to get my hands free
. She ran for the scalpel drawer and jimmied it open behind her back.

Another gunshot blasted out. This time it was closer, somewhere on the main floor.

Camilla fumbled the blade in her bound hands. She forced the razor edge against the rope and began sawing up and down.

BANG! BANG!
The shots were closer, from the dining room now.

Camilla felt a moan vibrating in her throat. She struggled with the scalpel in what seemed like slow motion—up and down, up and down—and felt the cords beginning to fray.

Even if I get this off
, she started to think,
she’s got a gun. A gun! I’ve got nothing
.

Another door slammed and Camilla pictured Abigail less than thirty feet away, stalking down the hallway.

She stopped sawing the rope and ran to the only other room she had access to: the crematorium. Forcing down the handle with her forearm, she unlatched the door and shouldered her way in just as Abigail’s shadow crossed underneath the doors to the embalming room. But as the hinges swung open, Camilla jerked to maintain her balance and accidentally dropped the scalpel on the hard linoleum.

The
tinkle
of metal was like an atomic bomb going off.

The shadow in the hallway stopped.

There was no time to pick up the instrument. Camilla used her last nanosecond to slip inside the crematorium and close the door just as the embalming room’s entrance swung open.

The crematorium was dark and drafty. Its circular brick chimney stretched up and up to the tallest peak of the funeral home like the inside of a castle turret.

Camilla backed away from the door, but she didn’t take her eyes off of it.
Please let her miss the scalpel. Please let her miss the scalpel. Please let her miss the scalpel
.

Her hands bumped the oven behind her. There was nowhere left to run—the dead end had finally come—and with both hands still tied behind her back, it wasn’t even a fight anymore. She was up against the firing wall.

Abigail’s shadow appeared under the door of the crematorium—

Please let her miss the scalpel
. A rivulet of sweat trickled down her forehead.
Please let her miss the scalpel. Please let her miss the scalpel
.

—Then came the quiet, heart-wrenching sound of metal being dragged across linoleum. A terrified sob sputtered out of Camilla’s lips as she shook her head in angry disbelief.

The handle on the crematorium started turning.

Camilla’s eyes widened in horror…

And then the door pushed open. Abigail was standing in the frame, a scalpel clutched in one hand and a gun in the other. The little girl looked straight into the crematorium.

And frowned.

From Abigail’s point of view, the crematory was empty. No one was there, and there was no exit they could have slipped through.

Inside the crematorium oven, Camilla bit her lips together so hard they started bleeding. She was lying headfirst on her stomach in the retort chamber, as still as a corpse ready for cremation. She could feel her shoulders and knees were torn up from throwing herself in at the last second, but it didn’t matter—she had made it. She had gotten inside and closed the door not a second before Abigail had burst into the room.

Camilla stayed absolutely still for what felt like minutes. There was complete silence from outside, and finally she realized—with relief and overwhelming joy—that the trick had actually worked.
I fooled her. I fooled the little demon
.
I can slip out and find another gun, then start the whole hunt over again
.

Suddenly there was a deafening
whoomph
followed by a deep electrical hum. Before she registered what was going on, a bolt shot home by her feet, and a metallic crank echoed high above her, accompanied by a cold winter draft.

Camilla screamed.

She wailed louder than her throat allowed, tearing apart her vocal cords, and kicked the retort door with her weakened,
degenerated legs, squirming like a rat caught in a sewer pipe. But it was no use—she was locked inside the claustrophobic crematorium, and as her own screams howled around her, the cold draft that she had felt up until then was slowly replaced with a warm, rising chinook.

The oven was preheating.

33

The Pond Floor

P
eter dropped from the top of the fence and landed in a four-foot snow mound. He teetered forward, his center of gravity tugging on the tip of his nose, and then his joints locked and he found his balance again. Eyes alert, barrel up, he strong-legged his way through the drifts that were packed beside the house like well-tamped tobacco.

As he emerged in the courtyard, his gun swung left, then right, then back to middle. The body trays were still floating in the broken-up pond, but otherwise there were no signs of movement. Nothing fidgeted—not yet. The soundscape was gone too. No chirping, no hooting, no howling. All the wildlife, both the strongest and the most innocuous, had made themselves scarce tonight.

Skirting the pond, he ran for the toolshed with his shotgun jangling on its shoulder strap. His hands came up and rattled the door on its ice-crusted hinges, shaking viciously until it jiggered open.

Inside, the shed seeped with the intoxicating smell of gasoline and dead grass. The summer and fall equipment—rakes, weed whackers, propane tanks, a pair of gas lawnmowers—were
shoved to the back, and the winter gear was piled helter-skelter at the front. At one point, somebody must have spilled a sack of fertilizer all over the floor because there were aqua-colored crystals in every nook and splinter. Not someone—Lucas. It would have been Luke, with his strong, meaty hands trying to tear along a fine dotted line.

Peter kicked a few beads of fertilizer away and circled a set of snow blowers. He turned his attention to a wall of shelves and poked at the contents with the tip of his gun. Dissatisfied, he delved deeper into the shed, frowning in every direction.

Then he spotted what he was searching for: two jerricans beside the twin lawnmowers. He ran over and picked them up, one in each hand, and felt a decent amount of fuel sloshing around inside.

He rushed out of the shed with both jerries bouncing beside his legs and jogged to the tree that towered over the courtyard. Kneeling beside a section of roots—and throwing nervous glances over his shoulder to watch for movement in the pond—he spun off the caps and started dousing the bark in gasoline. “You’ve done enough damage,” he huffed under his breath. “See how this feels.”

Peter soaked the roots until the fuel containers were almost empty, then he backed up and raised his handgun, taking careful aim.