Come Little Children (35 page)

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t do something so
incredibly
stupid that I ought to strangle you right here and now.”

Camilla could have denied knowing what Moira was talking about, but it was clear from the electricity between them that there would have been no point. Her secret was out.

“Where’s Abigail?” Moira pressed.

“I—I don’t know,” Camilla realized with growing horror. “She was around the whole service. I thought she was waiting for us to clear the church.”

“She’s not here now. Is there a chance she went with Peter?”

“Maybe.”

Moira looked like she could strike Camilla again. “Get in the car. Go.”

“Where are we—?”

Moira reached for the door and flung it open. The wind blasted inside and slapped Camilla’s face just as hard as her mother-in-law had.

“Back to the house.”

The oven door in the crematorium opened again and Peter reached in with a long-handled broom. Bits of Erica Cory’s bones were still intact among the pile of ashes—including a small fragment of her skull—and he used the bristles of the sweeper to pat them down and dust them into a collection tray. Afterward, he brought the tray over to the cremulator that Lucas had set up and dumped the ashes into the cylindrical tank. The switch flipped on and the blades came to life, grinding and mincing the little girl’s remains to a fine, sand-like substance.

Behind him, Lucas rolled the second sister’s coffin up to the oven. He opened the door, charged the casket inside, and
slammed the ingress shut. “Back in a second!” He shouted over the whirr of the cremulator.

“What!”

Lucas pointed at the gurneys, mouthing:
Taking these back
.

Peter nodded and kept monitoring the human blender.

Lucas grabbed the two gurneys and wheeled them out of the crematorium, one in front of him and one behind. In the embalming room, he switched it so both gurneys were out front, then he pushed past the porcelain washing stations and the instrument cabinets before pausing at the room’s only windowpane.

Outside, the snow was flying thick enough that the entire view of the backyard was nothing but white. “Whoa, when did that start?” He smudged his nose up against the glass, but no matter how close he got, he couldn’t make out the mansion’s fence less than thirty feet away.

“Damn,” he muttered, shaking his head, and pushed the gurneys out of the room.

There was a stretch along the back hallway of the funeral home where the Vincents stored their out-of-use gurneys. Lucas rolled his neatly into place like a pair of shopping carts, then coughed and turned back for the embalming room.

He stopped.

Something had caught his eye.

He peered over his shoulder and looked all the way down to where the hallway ended.

The door to the basement was cracked open.

Lucas walked to the doorway and peeked downstairs. The lights were off. He closed the door and tested the handle—it jiggled, unlocked, in his palm.

As he turned around again, his gaze followed the walls of the perpendicular hallway to where the freezer room was located. That door was open too—just a crack—and cold air was spilling out in clouds of subzero smoke.

Lucas stepped down the hallway as quietly as he could. The fluorescent tubes flickered above, their cages creaking on their steel cords and casting a sickly green shine on the cement walls. Outside the blizzard howled demonically.

At the end of the hall, Lucas reached out and put a hand on the freezer door. Without hesitating, he opened it farther.

The sick light from the hallway spilled into the refrigerated room. Lucas’s eyes grew wider and wider; his mouth sagged and his breath stopped at the sight of something horrific.

Suddenly there came the quiet tap of size-two shoes on the linoleum behind him.

Lucas whipped around and saw Abigail turning the corner at the end of the hall. She was looking down, sipping a glass of water that she’d just gotten from the kitchen. When she looked up and saw Lucas, she stopped in her tracks.

“Abigail.” Lucas took a step forward. “Stay right there—”

But it was too late. Abigail dropped the glass and it smashed on the floor as she spun around and ran back through the hallway.

Lucas rocketed after her, leaping over the broken glass, and hung the sharp corner to see—

The door to the main part of the house, swaying on its hinges.

He ran for the door and burst into the old Victorian setting. A
crash
echoed deeper in the house, and Lucas kept bolting, following the black-and-blue floral wallpaper down the winding halls of the funeral home toward the source of the distant clatter.

He sprinted past the kitchen and the dining room and stuck his head into the north parlor.

Nothing there.

He stopped to listen for footsteps, but it didn’t help. The blizzard was beating its snowy fists against the walls and the window frames, and the old house creaked vociferously.

He slunk into the north parlor through one door and out the other, cutting across the rotunda to check the south parlor, and then ducked toward the chapel.

The chapel door was hanging open, daring him forward. He took a step closer and stopped when something terrifying caught his eye.

The door on the gun cabinet in the hallway was hanging open. A revolver was missing, and a carton of bullets was scattered over the floor.

Lucas reached in the breast pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out the handgun that he was still carrying from the Cory sisters’ funeral.

He peeked through the crack of the chapel entrance, but the lights were off: nothing was visible except a few rows of pews and the front lectern. The wind howled savagely, and on the next, loudest
crack
, Lucas dove through the doorway and crouched against the closest wall.

The Vincents’ chapel was large for a small-town funeral home. The ceiling was a dozen feet tall, and the long rows of pews could comfortably seat a hundred.

Lucas gripped the handgun in both hands. He put his head against the floor and checked under the benches—no sign of her—then got to his feet and edged along the wall, glancing into the rows to make sure he hadn’t missed anything deadly.

Suddenly, a sniffle broke the silence.

He looked at the front of the room. The whimper had come from behind the podium.

With the wind cracking against the house again and masking his footsteps, Lucas slid across the chapel and drew closer to the pulpit. As he moved, the sniffling got louder and louder.

Creak
…
creak
…
creak
…

He took a deep breath, stepping up on the platform, and peeked slowly around the lectern.

Abigail was sitting on the ground with her back to the room and her legs spread into a V. Bullets were scattered like Lego pieces in front of her, and it was obvious that she was trying to jiggle the stolen gun open and jam them inside. Fortunately, it didn’t seem like she knew how.

Lucas hid his gun behind his back. “Put it down, Abigail. Put the gun down. Look at me, OK?”

Abigail stopped fidgeting with the weapon. She turned her head and met her uncle’s gaze with big, watery eyes.

“I’m sorry, uncle.” The tears started falling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Stand up.”

Abigail sniffled again and started drawing herself off the floor, when suddenly she spun around and threw a handful of bullets directly at Lucas’s face. He reached up to block them, but he stumbled over the pulpit’s steps and lost balance, careening backward onto the ground. His fingers splayed out to break his fall, and the gun went plummeting across the carpet.

They both lunged for the loaded weapon, but Abigail got to it first. Her tiny fingers gripped the handle as Lucas’s monster-size hands clamped over her wrists to keep her from aiming it at his head.

Abigail squeezed the trigger and fired two shots—
bang-bang!
But Lucas fought back, holding his own as his niece screamed and writhed on top of him with surprising strength.

In the crematorium, Peter heard the gunshots go off like fire- crackers. He dropped his tray on the workbench and tore out of the room, ripping his gloves away as he sprinted out of the hall into the main section of the house.

“Luke? Luke!”

The manor groaned in reply. He rushed through the corridors and spotted the gun cabinet with the bullets scattered over the carpet. Suddenly his ears picked up the commotion coming from inside the chapel.

Peter burst through the chapel doors and saw Lucas on the platform at the front of the room, sitting on top of his daughter—little Abigail—who had tears running down her face.

“Luke? Abby?” Peter called, rushing forward. “What the hell is going on?”

“Daddy, help!” Abigail cried. “He’s hurting me.”

“Peter, stay back,” Lucas said. “She tried to kill me.”

Peter stopped at the sight of the gun in Lucas’s hand.

“I was right. Something is wrong in this town, and it’s her. I know you don’t want to hear this, Pete, it’s a terrible, terrible truth. But we all know what has to happen.”

Peter’s lips fell open, but he didn’t say anything immediately. He didn’t even look like he was paying attention to his brother anymore; he was staring only at Abigail, who had tears streaming down her rosy cheeks.

“Get off of her, please,” Peter begged. “You’re hurting her.”

“I can’t.”

“She’s an innocent girl, let her go!”

“She’s not innocent! There’s no innocence left, and you know it. She’ll rip this family apart and worse. Look at me. Listen to
me
, Pete.”

But Peter wasn’t focusing on anything Lucas was saying. He was still watching Abigail and listening to her struggling breaths, cringing as each tiny squeal escaped her crushed chest.

“I am so sorry,” Lucas said. “This family loves each other
so
much, and that’s why I have to ask you to leave. Please leave, Peter. Please go.”

“No, Lucas,” Peter said. “Get off of her
now
. Nothing is wrong with her. Just goddamn look at her—she’s my daughter! My daughter!”

“She killed the Cory girls. She’s infected, and she’ll keep killing unless—”

“DADDY!” Abigail let out a bloodcurdling scream. “Daddy, help me! He’s hurting me!”

Lucas’s voice was drowned out by Abigail’s. A new wave of tears came flooding out the little girl’s eyes.

Lucas was screaming too, and the walls and the roof were screaming with the cracking of the wind, and somewhere else in the house Peter heard the front door open and the rest of the Vincents come running inside, although he didn’t register it.

Suddenly every noise vanished as Lucas raised his gun and pointed it at Abigail’s head.

“Put the gun down!” Peter screamed, tears falling across his face.

Lucas shook his head and Peter saw him mouth
I’m sorry
one more time. Lucas’s finger gripped the trigger, sweat streaking down his forehead as Abigail continued screaming, and then his jaw settled and his mind was made up.

“No!” Peter shrieked. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out his own handgun, aiming it across the nave.

A single shot exploded in the chapel and Lucas collapsed over Abigail. His body sagged like none of its bones or muscles held it up any longer, and he crumpled into a lifeless heap on top of his tiny niece. A rill of blood trickled down his face, and the remaining light in his eyes dissolved just as the rest of the Vincents came running into the room.

PART III

THE FAMILY CRYPT

26

Entombed

A
tremendous
BOOM!
slammed against the manor and drowned out the vehement screams of the Vincents like an atomic explosion. Then the wailing was back, multiplied, in new waves of horror as the light disappeared from Lucas’s eyes and he was gone forever.

Camilla had run into the chapel right behind Moira, Brutus, Jasper, Maddock, and Laura, and together they had witnessed the shot that caught Lucas’s temple and crumpled him to the floor. Peter was still standing with his arm outstretched when his grip fell dead and the handgun clunked to his feet. His face looked more ghostly than most of the corpses Camilla had seen, and the lights in the back of his eyes—the elusory fixtures that give a person’s gaze its special shine—had burned out.

Laura shrieked again and rushed forward just as Abigail came crawling out from under Lucas’s body. Abby ran across the room and latched onto Camilla’s leg, and Camilla was too stunned to move. She felt like shuddering away, like pushing her daughter off of her, but she was too shocked to even blink, let alone bat an arm.

There was more screaming as Moira sprinted by the pews and collapsed beside Laura. The two women clutched Lucas’s body and let out their floodgates of tears.

“He…he was sick.” Peter’s frail voice broke through the screams. His own tears trickled into his mouth. “He almost killed Abigail. I…I had to. I
had
to.”

Laura looked up from her dead husband and glowered so viciously that she seemed more animal than human. She pounced in an instant; Brutus tried flinging his arms around her, but she dodged his grip and tackled her brother-in-law to the ground, kicking and clawing and tearing in raw, unrestrained fury. Peter did nothing to fight back. By the time Brutus and Jasper grabbed hold of her and tore her away, she had already ripped his lip open and raked a series of gashes into his neckline.