Come Little Children (42 page)

This was the door that slammed
.

Peter reached out and tested the handle. The tip of his Memento mori tattoo stuck out of his sleeve, and Camilla silently wished that he had used the other arm instead.

The door croaked open and revealed the back hallway, washed in its nauseas-green hue. The lights hummed like cages of hornets daring them to step inside and get stung.

There was no cover as they passed the threshold and slunk down the narrow hall. Their guns were pointed firmly in front, but if Abigail sprang out of the embalming room or popped around the corner at the end, they’d be fish in a barrel.

Their heels clacked quickly over the floor. It was only forty feet long, but it seemed like four hundred. Camilla’s blood pounded in her ears as they reached the embalming room and Peter braced himself against the double doors. He shouldered his way through—

Boom, boom!

And the lights flashed on, revealing…

Nothing.

Camilla stayed by the doors, peeking out the portholes for signs of danger, while Peter looked in the closets and cupboards around the embalming tables and the crematorium.

“Not here,” he concluded. “Ready?”

Camilla checked the portholes—both directions—and nodded.

They slipped out again and rushed to the end of the hall. Their backs slammed against the corner that turned onto the last stretch of the house, and Peter lifted his fingers and mouthed a silent countdown:
three…two…one…go
.

They hurled themselves around the corner, gun barrels first, and spun into the final hallway.

It was empty too.

There were three doors—one to the garage, one to the basement, and one to the walk-in freezer—all standing wide open. For a second Camilla saw nooses swaying in the frames, then she blinked and they were gone.

But Peter wasn’t looking at the doors. He was staring at the row of gurneys lined up like shopping carts along the far wall.
“Luke took the gurneys,” he whispered. Some blurry realization seemed to be coming into focus.

“What?”

Peter didn’t answer. He was still mumbling to himself. “She was already back here…
back here
. Why?”

Camilla was first to step forward this time. She walked to the basement door frame and stared down.

The light was on at the foot of the stairs.

She put her first boot through the doorway, and Peter hissed, “Wait!”

“She’s not down here,” Camilla said, taking one more step onto the staircase.

“How do you know?”

“The bulb’s not swaying. It’s been on awhile.”

“That doesn’t—”

Too late. Camilla vanished, and Peter was forced to rush after her. As he pattered down the rotting steps, he called out quietly, “Camilla? Camilla?” And when he curled around the bottom landing, he saw her standing at the oak cabinet across the den, rifling desperately through the cupboards and drawers.

“What are you doing?”

She stood on her toes and felt along the top shelf. “Praying again.”

“Sorry?”

Her hands dove into the deepest and darkest crooks of the cabinet, but there was nothing there.

“When Abigail watched me bring the Cory girls back—”

“What!” Peter spit. “You brought the twins back?”

“Yes.” She came off her tiptoes and slammed the cabinet shut. “It didn’t go very well. But worse, Abby saw the whole thing.”

Peter ran his hands through his hair. “So you think…what?”

“I think we’ve got a problem.” As she turned around, the naked light bulb that dangled above her head elongated the shadows on her face and accented her look of fear. “The seeds are gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone.”

“Well,” he said slowly, “what’s she gonna do? Dig up a few bodies and drag them all the way home with the whole goddamn town watching? She can’t even lift a shovel.”

“You’re right,” Camilla said, a swell of new panic adding to her spectral face shadows. “Why dig up bodies when she’s got a whole freezer of fresh ones right here?”

Their eyes popped open and they rocketed back up the staircase, erupting into the hallway and tearing toward the farthest door—the freezer room—that was standing wide open.

The light burst on and bathed the room in a cold blue flicker.

“Oh my God,” Peter moaned.

The room was bare, save for the very center. There was a hacksaw and a scalpel lying in a pool of dried-up blood, and beside them was the family’s forbidden chest. The sacred box was smashed open, splinters shelled over the floor, and all of the seeds were missing, along with the racks that normally lined the walls of the refrigerated room.

“The yard—” Peter said.

But Camilla was already moving. He whipped after her for the garage, and as they tore past the hearse and the town car, she already had her hands up to push the back exit open. She erupted outside, gun in front, and stepped into the courtyard.

Her legs stopped as Peter caught up behind her.

“Aw, shit,” he groaned again.

Between their footprints was a set of parallel lines running through the snow. The tracks stretched in front of them, trailing all the way down to the edge of the pond where they reached a part of the ice that was completely smashed in. And floating in the water among the broken ice chunks were three stainless-steel body carts.

“That little fucker.” Peter rubbed the back of his neck. “That smart little fucker.”

As the sun set beyond the courtyard fence, a cold wind blew through and sawed at their cheeks like a serrated knife. Beyond the pond, the ominous tree rippled as though it was laughing at their unavailing plight.

Camilla pictured heads starting to pop out of the water: a whole score of Cory sisters rising up with deep, sunken eye sockets, about to run at her with their strangling fingers. She looked up and noticed a pale crescent moon starting to appear in the sky.

“AHHHYEEAA!”

The bloodcurdling scream shattered the silence and echoed inhumanly on the wind.

“That’s—”

“The front yard.”

Peter flew up the patio, and Camilla was right after him. Inside, the wailing pierced the walls and crescendoed as they ran through the kitchen, the dining room, the rotunda, and the chapel corridor before erupting onto the front veranda.

The screaming was coming from Moira.

She was keeled over by the front gate, her mouth hanging open as she let out a wretched wail. Brutus and Maddock were beside her, both of them as pale as the white van parked in the background.

Camilla blanched when she saw what Moira was screaming at.

It was the grand fountain in the middle of the yard. The pump hadn’t been running for months, but now there was a dark red liquid dripping off the circular tiers from the top to the middle to the base. At the very peak, impaled on the pinnacle spike, was Jasper’s decapitated head.

“Mom!” Peter shouted, flying across the driveway toward them. “Turn around!”

“Who did this?” Brutus hollered. “WHO DID THIS!”

Camilla stepped around the fountain, and the look in Moira’s eyes turned molten lava. Moira stumbled ahead, her face contorting with rage, but Peter seized her shoulders and held her back.

“It’s Abigail,” he shouted. “This is Abigail’s doing, not Camilla’s. We’re stopping her.”

“She betrayed us,” Brutus fumed. “Come here, you!”

Brutus rushed for Camilla, but Peter let go of his mother and raised his gun, blocking the space between his family and his wife.

“Move!” Brutus shouted, taking out his own gun.

“No,” Peter replied. “Get out of here, all three of you. Go.”

“Brutus,” Moira spat, “for God’s sake, put the gun down. Listen to me, Peter. Listen. She led to this.”

“Get out, mom.”

“Peter—”

“Leave!” He charged ahead, arms outstretched, and corralled his family past the van. They continued hollering, but he forced them to the gate on the gamble that Brutus wouldn’t start firing.

“We took you back,” Moira seethed, “and this is how you repay us? By choosing the liar—the one who abandoned you?
She’s the reason your uncle and brother are dead. Her! If you turn on us, their blood is on your hands too!”

Peter reached up and pushed his mother through the gates. Maddock shriveled away instantly, but Brutus puffed out his chest and thrust his nephew into the snow. “You runt! You’ll never be half the men your father and brother were.”

Camilla rushed forward, but Peter raised his gun in the air and fired two warning shots. Everyone froze on the spot.

“Get out,” he demanded as he got to his feet. His voice was rattled, but loud. “Get out!”

Brutus and Moira stumbled back, speechless, to where Maddock was standing behind the fence. Peter grabbed the wrought-iron gates and swung them closed, barring his family out of their own yard as they stood on the other side, smoldering.

“Your father would never turn his back on us,” Moira said with her most acidic tone. Peter flinched as he looped the gate’s chains around the iron rungs and slipped on the heavy lock. “You’re as dead to me as he is. You’re worse—I wish I’d never had you. At least then I might still have one son I’d be proud of.”

The lock shot home and bound the links together.

“Mark me,” Moira said. “We’ll be back with half the town. We’re coming for you
and
her. This gate will fall and we’ll abolish every bit of evil behind it, so help us God.”

“Good-bye, mom.”

Peter turned, unable to look at Moira anymore, and went to Camilla. He put his hand on her back—a move his mother cursed—and guided them toward to the house.

“Good-bye, Peter!” Moira shouted. “I hope you’re happy with your family, while it lasts.”

Peter and Camilla went behind the fountain and vanished from the view of the Vincents, who had already taken off on foot.

“I—I’m sorry…” Camilla started, but words failed her. She fell against Peter’s chest and clutched her hands against the back of his shirt. “What do we do?”

“We keep going,” he whispered. “We’re finishing this. We have to.”

“How? The moon’s already out. We’re gonna have a mob on either side of us.”

“We split up. One takes Abigail, one takes the backyard.”

Camilla looked at the manor and knew immediately what her choice had to be.

“Abigail.” She bit down. The two of them had started this debacle, and one of them would end it. “I’ll take Abigail.”

“All right.” Peter nodded. “We can do this. Promise me.”

“Promise.”

He surrounded her in a hug. They kissed, and then Camilla watched the only man she had ever loved tear himself away and take off through the hedges beside the house. In a few seconds he scaled the fence to the backyard and was gone. She was alone once more.

She wiped her nose on her sleeve and ran up the porch. The wind stirred the snow banks as clouds blew across the sky and the moon shed its twilight veil.

Then for the last time that night—for the last time in her life—Camilla stepped into the Vincent Funeral Home. Inside, the floor of the entrance hall creaked as loudly as it had in her nightmares. The walls snapped and the short corridor suddenly seemed to stretch on and on into darkness toward the faint light of the lobby up ahead.
Gun level, at your chest
.
Keep it up
.

Suddenly she stopped.

Her eyes widened and her blood turned to ice as something materialized in the shadows a few steps in front of her.

There, hung in the doorway at the end of the hall, was a recently tied noose.

So recent, it was still swaying.

32

Hide and Seek

C
amilla blinked, but the noose did not disappear this time. It rocked back and forth from the frame of the entrance hall like a homemade gift from a demon kindergartener.
Do you like it, mom? I made it just for you
.

She drew closer—where her strength came from, she didn’t know—and put her hand on the rope to stop it from swaying. Through the center of the loop, her eyes settled on the rotunda.

It was a 360-degree trap. If she stepped into the circular room, there would be no way to cover her back, no matter which way she faced, and Abigail could be waiting in any doorway with her finger on the trigger. But the clock was ticking. She had to book it.

Go
.

She tucked her chin to her chest and ran.

The glass cupola appeared overhead like a red, Godly eye, and for a split second she expected it to explode into a million fragments like in her dream. But if it did, she didn’t notice—the sound of her own rushing blood drowned her eardrums as she barreled into the vestibule and rammed herself through
the door on the other end, catapulting directly into the lobby outside the chapel.

Her heartbeat was still filling her ears. She checked the corners of the room for glistening eyeballs—nothing. No flicker of movement, no crackle of noise. The house was stiller than she ever remembered.

Come out, come out, wherever you are
.

But the silence betrayed neither of them. Not then. It sunk in heavier and heavier, waiting for the first gust of breath or a slight shift of weight to forsake the weaker predator to her prey.

A mechanical growl erupted out of nowhere.

Guurrrrvvvv. Clank, CLINK, clank
.

Camilla whipped around and stared down the hallway to the dining room.

CLINK, CLINK, CLINK. Guurrrvv! Gurrvv, clank, guurvvv
.

The grating got louder—metal rasping against metal—as an electronic hum startled to life and groaned with unoiled hinges.

Camilla’s knuckles whitened on her handgun. She stepped over the carpet—the metallic racket stifling the sound of her steps—and dipped into the hallway. Her sight disappeared in the darkness as the iron sputtering got louder and louder around her, every clank like the strike of a blacksmith’s anvil, until she erupted into the dining room where moonlight illuminated her surroundings once again.

CLINK, CLINK, CLINK. Guurrrvv! Gurrvv, clank, guurvvv
.

The clanking was coming from the manor’s two-story elevator lift. Behind a golden accordion gate, the steel cables and iron mechanisms clattered their way down the shaft at an agonizingly slow pace.