Come Little Children
Read Come Little Children Online
Authors: D. Melhoff
D. Melhoff
Copyright © D. Melhoff 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters and incidents in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
First published by
Bellwoods Publishing
ISBN-13: 9780992133108
ISBN-10: 0992133106
Cover artwork by Carl Graves
Back cover and book design by Bryce Kirk
Permissions
Garden Of Magic
from HOCUS POCUS*
Text based on the poem “Come Little Children” by Edgar Allan Poe
Additional text by Brock Walsh
Music by James Horner
(c) 1993 Walt Disney Music Company
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
*Adapted lyrics not used in film
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
For my family
Blood is thicker than ink
Come little children
I’ll take thee away, into a land
of Enchantment.
Come little children
the time’s come to play
here in my garden
of Shadows.
Follow sweet children
I’ll show thee the way
through all the pain and
the Sorrows.
Weep not poor children
for life is this way
murdering beauty and
Passions.
Hush now dear children
it must be this way
to weary of life and
Deceptions.
Rest now my children
for soon we’ll away
into the calm and
the Quiet.
Come little children
I’ll take thee away, into a land
of Enchantment.
Come little children
the time’s come to play
here in my garden
of Shadows.
—Brock Walsh et al. (“Garden of Magic”)
On my experience, Adam, freely taste,
And fear of Death deliver to the Windes.
– Eve (John Milton,
Paradise Lost
)
Man,
Plac’d in a Paradise, by our exile
Made happy: him by fraud I have seduc’d
From his Creator, and the more to increase
Your wonder, with an apple.
– Satan (John Milton,
Paradise Lost
)
Table of Contents
PART I: Town of the Midnight Sun
Chapter 1: The Men and the Mortician
Chapter 13: On the Edge of the Pond
Chapter 17: A Chase in the Night
Chapter 24: Night on the Water
Chapter 34: Battle of the Yukon
PART I
TOWN OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN
Prologue
T
he old hands worked carefully with the added confidence of having done this hundreds of times. Their maneuvers were quick and precise. Fluid. Surgical.
A scalpel touched a point between the nipples on the cadaver’s chest and drifted north, unzipping the skin exactly seven inches along the sternum. Shadows played out the rest on the concrete walls: the worker selected a heavier device and hovered over the outline of the body, flicking a switch and activating a high, screeching vibration that trailed through the air and disappeared into the silhouette’s chest.
Instantly the hum dropped an octave—
ggvvrrrrr, ck-ck, ggvvrrrrr
—choking and sputtering as it coughed up particles of bone dust.
Ggvvrrrrr! CK-CK! Ggvvrrrr!
The mist made a macabre Tyndall effect in the lamplight. Beyond these specks, the worker turned off the electric saw and brought up a wooden box the size of a tea chest, then withdrew something from inside.
Something small.
Something odd.
It was too dark to see what the object was, but the worker handled it nimbly and lowered it into the body’s rib cage. Finally came the wires. Long strands went to string the ribs together
again, and then finer thread began suturing the seven-inch cut. The worker—the puppeteer—pulled up and down on every angle and direction, tugging at the limbs like they belonged to a limp marionette.
When the wiring and stitching were complete, the worker reached up and pulled away her surgical mask to reveal a stern woman with a weathered complexion. Her hollow cheeks and pursed lips formed a mean countenance, and a tight nest of charcoal hair pegged her somewhere in her late fifties. She examined her work on the table and nodded, satisfied, then scooped the body of the dead six-year-old boy into her arms and walked briskly out of the room.
Outside was calm. The courtyard glowed on nights like this: beautiful fountains bubbled in the moonlight—stone maidens carrying marble vases, Grecian warriors with playful cherubs gliding above their heads—while wisps of fireflies pulsed on and off in the sweet-smelling ground cover. At one end of the yard, a sprawling tree dipped its roots in the water of a deep pond, and at the opposite end the estate stood proud, protecting it all. Guarding it.
The back door swept open and out walked the woman with the boy in her arms. She hummed a soft tune to herself as she strolled to the edge of the pond, and when she reached the water, she slipped out of her heels and waded two, three steps farther. Finally she let the boy go, and then turning around without so much as a slight pause to watch the body sink through the ripples, she pulled on her heels again and walked back toward the house, still humming her mellifluous tune.
A minute passed.
The waves in the pond settled.
The work was done.
1
The Men and the Mortician
C
amilla Carleton cleared her throat.
You can stop staring now, please
. She glanced beside her, and the old man sitting at the back of the airplane looked away. He tugged the brim of his Stetson hat over his face and adjusted the crotch of his jeans, folding his arms and tilting his head down like one of those sleepy cowboy cut-outs that ranchers prop against their fences to make themselves seem mellow and rustic.
Camilla was out of place, there was no doubt about that. Twenty-six years old, pale skin, long burgundy hair. She fluffed her white ruffled blouse and smoothed out the black pinafore on top, which was draped over a pair of leggings that stretched all the way down to a pair of wedges made from Louisianan alligator scales.
“Sweet Jesus,” the old-timer had commented to the airline’s ticket-taker when they’d boarded the plane. “Some civvies. Got ourselves one of those tropical birds that flew too far south and came around the top again. Heh, heh, heh.”
Apparently the outfit attracted more attention up north than it had back home—or maybe everyone back home was just used to it by now. Either way, Camilla couldn’t care less what an
old man from Whitehorse had to say about fashion. Frankly, she had bigger things to worry about.
Tap, tap, tap
went the alligator wedges.
Tap
.
Tap, tap
.
Tap, tap, tap
.
The other passengers were, by Klondike standards, run-of-the-gold-mill folk. An overweight trucker in jeans and suspenders was snoring in row three, and right behind him—slouched in 4D—an oil rigger was scratching the stubble underneath his chin, yawning as he watched the Yukon gorges dip past his little window. The other seats were empty until the very back. On the right side of row twenty was the retired old-timer, splayed out like a genuine Yukon prospector: salt-and-pepper moustache, tan jacket, authentic deer-hide work boots. He was a caricature modeled after his grandfather’s box of gold-panning photographs, down to the same Stetson hat.
Then there was Camilla. The odd girl out, 20A, misplaced in the tough northern territory with her pretty black pinafore and funeral-chic leggings. But her outfit wasn’t the only thing that pegged her as different. It was the way she sat—arms and legs tucked together, shoulders slouched—and the way she took in her surroundings with a curious, wide-eyed look that hinted her thoughts were as busy as her East Coast couture. Maybe as sharp too.
The Hawker-Siddeley 748 continued cutting its way from Whitehorse to Dawson City. It drew a long vapor trail over Miles Canyon and the Yukon River, following the milky waters from where they churned and surged through the winding chutes of volcanic rock to quieter streams that branched off and became clear as gin. As Camilla stared out of her window with pupils as
wide as camera apertures, she thought:
These valleys are spectacular. Absolutely spectacular
.
It was so untouched—so raw, the Yukon wilderness—and even more breathtaking than she had predicted. A quote from the first chapter of a book she’d been trying to finish before she left popped into her head: “An ocean can make the largest man in the world feel small, while the Yukon makes the strongest men feel weak.” The quotation resonated from thirty thousand feet. Every river and crater below appeared to be carved out by a giant’s hand, and the hillsides, steep and cragged, were like the land’s underbite coming to swallow up anyone who wasn’t worthy of scaling its soil. Unlike neat patches of land in other parts of the country, this was wild terrain that jutted and swerved and sprawled wherever it felt like. There was only one word that could sum it up—indeed, it’s what the poets usually settled on—and that was “untamed.”
The plane dipped into a bank of clouds and the spell of the Yukon was temporarily broken. Camilla’s quick, camera-like focus returned to the cabin in search of a distraction.
Why didn’t you bring a carry-on, genius?
She frowned.
Or at least Meyers and Thiessen. You knew you’d want to go over the Thanatos problems again
. Her upper teeth raked her lower lip, and she fidgeted with the nervous twitch of an A+ student who knows she’s failed a final exam before she’s even sat down to write it.