Children of Eternity Omnibus Read online

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  She has to pull up Mommy’s pants in order to get the shoes on. The shoes are turquoise high heels that don’t really go with the jeans, but they’re so pretty she just had to try them on. She lets the pants go, the excess material pooling around her feet. She toddles forward a step in the heels; she holds out her arms to steady herself. The denim jacket is much too big as well, her arms ending about halfway through the sleeves. She flaps these as she takes another step in the heels.

  Somehow she makes it all the way over to the mirror. In the glass she sees herself in Mommy’s jacket and pants, the heels almost obscured by the pant legs. She’s still wearing her pink Disneyland T-shirt and her black hair is split into pigtails instead of a ponytail like Mommy’s, but still she smiles at her reflection.

  The door opens and she sees Daddy in his suit and tie from work. “Daddy!” she squeals. She starts to run towards him, but in the heels she can’t get very far before she trips.

  Daddy catches her before she can hit the floor. He lifts her into the air, the heels falling away from her feet to clatter to the floor. “What are you up to, young lady?”

  “I look like Mommy!”

  Her father brushes hair away from her forehead and then smiles. “You sure do look like your mom.”

  “When I grow up, am I going to be as pretty as Mommy?”

  “Of course you are, sweetheart.” Daddy carries over to their bed and sets her down. He sits down next to her and then puts an arm around her shoulders. “But right now you’re my pretty little girl.”

  He emphasizes this by tickling her tummy until she giggles. She swats at him with the empty sleeves of the jacket, but it doesn’t do any good. Finally she has to squeal through her laughter, “Daddy, stop it!”

  He helps her sit back up. “You want to go out and show your mom?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK, but let’s leave the shoes, all right?”

  “But they’re so pretty.”

  “They are, aren’t they? Did you get those out of Mommy’s closet?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know Mommy doesn’t like you playing in there. It’s not safe for little girls.”

  “Sorry, Daddy.”

  “That’s all right, sweetie. We’ll just put the shoes back so she doesn’t know.” Daddy gets off the bed and retrieves the shoes. He tosses them back into the closet from which she got them. Then he turns back to scoop her from the bed.

  She wraps her arms around his neck, clinging to him as he carries her down the hallway. Mommy is in the kitchen, making dinner. She’s bent over the stove, her back to them so only her back and glossy black hair are visible. She stops what she’s doing as she must hear them. She starts to turn around—

  Samantha woke up with a girlish squeal. She sat up in the pile of clothes and looked around the room. It took her a moment to realize she wasn’t in the house from her dream and that her father was not carrying her. She held out her arms and while the sleeves were too long, they weren’t as long as in her dream. She put one sleeve to her head to feel the ponytail on the back of her head, not the pigtails from her dream.

  Or had it been a memory? Over the last five years she had experienced a few dreams like that, though not one so vivid. Those dreams had been only fragments and never with any faces. She hugged herself with the jacket. It must have been these clothes that had prompted her to unlock an old memory, from when she had been a little girl playing dress-up in Mommy’s clothes. In these clothes.

  A horrible thought struck her: the only way for her mother’s clothes to have gotten here would have been if Pryde had killed her mother. He must have killed Samantha’s mother and turned Samantha over to the reverend, who had tried to brainwash her like the others.

  “No,” she whimpered. Her mother couldn’t be dead. She had to be back on the mainland, waiting for her kidnapped daughter to return, as was Samantha’s father. As much as she wanted to believe that, she couldn’t deny the evidence. Her mother’s clothes were here but her mother wasn’t.

  She bit down on her lip to keep herself from crying. She couldn’t jump to conclusions. There could be another explanation. Perhaps as in the dream Samantha had been wearing her mother’s clothes when Pryde had taken her. He might have simply grabbed them from off a clothesline or out of a drawer to take with him. She couldn’t give up hope yet.

  She rolled into a standing position and then snatched the lantern. Pryde might have left some clues in here about what had happened to her parents. She held up the lantern to look around the room. At the opposite end of the cellar she saw a metal door. Something told her she would find answers in there.

  The door was so heavy that she had to pull on it with all of her weight. The door finally creaked open a few inches, enough so Samantha could slip through the crack. She swept the lantern around to reveal a horrible sight. On a worktable she saw a half-dozen knives of varying sizes, all of them covered with rust and blood.

  She ran over to a half-dozen of clay pots set against the wall to empty her stomach into one of them. Before she could, she saw what was in the pots: bones. Human bones. A skull’s empty sockets glared up at her, its mouth seeming to grin at her. She barely turned her head in time to vomit on the floor.

  Samantha lay panting on the floor for a few minutes, trying to collect her wits. That was what had happened to the women who had owned the clothes in the other room. Pryde had killed them and then kept the bones for his trophies along with the clothes. Was her mother one of the victims? Was her skull in one of the clay pots?

  Once she had the wherewithal to look up again, she noticed a bulletin board over the worktable. Tacked to the board were photographs. As with the clothes, the photos dated from different eras. The ones at the top were in black-and-white, the women not smiling into the camera. They wore bulky dresses like the hoop skirt she had found. The farther down Samantha went on the board, the fewer clothes the women wore and the more they smiled.

  Samantha stood up to examine the pictures closer. As the clothes had indicated, all of the women had been large, some probably more than three hundred pounds. They all had dark hair and dark eyes and ranged from thirty to perhaps fifty years old. In most of the pictures the woman had at least one child with her, if not more. Any husbands had been edited out of the photographs.

  He killed mothers, the voice in her mind spoke again. Most likely because he resented his own mother. Subconsciously he seeks out victims who look like her to try and destroy the memories. But he couldn’t do it, at least not for long, so he would need another victim.

  She followed the lines of pictures until she came to the last one. She sucked in a deep breath when she saw herself. In the picture she was about the age she was now, wearing a pink T-shirt with a sunset depicted on it and the words, “San Diego, California.” Her mother had an arm around her shoulders. She looked almost exactly like Samantha, with the same glossy black hair tied into a ponytail and the same bronze skin. She wore the same outfit Samantha had found in the cellar, which confirmed Samantha’s worst fears.

  Her father stood on the other side of her, looking a little older than in her dream but otherwise the same. He was a heavyset man with paler skin burned red from the sun, light blue eyes, and blond hair that had begun to thin. In the background were palm trees and whitish sand. Apparently Pryde hadn’t taken the time to cut Samantha’s father from the photograph before he died in the Fountain of Youth.

  She took the tack from the picture so she could hold it in both hands. A scenario played out in her mind. Pryde had seen her mother and gone in for the kill. But Samantha must have heard him and tried to interfere. So he had taken both of them back to Eternity. He kept Mom here while he turned Samantha over to the reverend. He had given her some of the fountain water, perhaps to heal an injury, making her ten years old and erasing her memory. Meanwhile Pryde had killed Samantha’s mother and disposed of her.

  Samantha sagged to the floor and began to sob. She clutched the photograph of her mother to her
chest. It was the only way she could ever see her mother again.

  Chapter 10: Stuck

  Prudence heard someone screaming. She realized from the soreness of her throat that it had been her. She opened her eyes but there wasn’t much to see except the muddy sides of the pit she’d fallen into.

  For once, though, she was glad to see her enormous stomach. That at least confirmed she hadn’t shrunk into a baby like in her nightmare. No, it hadn’t been a nightmare; it had been a memory. Samantha had told her about the markings on the chamber wall. Prudence had carved them long ago, one of the first times she’d been a little girl.

  She began to cry as she thought of the rest of the dream. For so many years she had believed in Reverend Crane. She had believed in The Way. She had followed his rules so she could someday get into Heaven and be happy. But he’d never had any intention of her getting to Heaven or being happy. He had kept her as a slave, first by locking her up and then by using the fountain water to make her a baby, one who would grow into a little girl loyal to the reverend. From what Samantha had found in the reverend’s cabin, he had done this numerous times over the last three centuries. Every time Prudence or some of the other children began to question the reverend, he turned them back into babies for Miss Brigham to raise. And if Miss Brigham got out of line, he would turn her into a scatterbrained teenager who pined for him. Along with Mr. Pryde and his dogs, it had made for a perfect system of control.

  And she had been so stupid as to fall for the lies again and again. As if that weren’t bad enough, now she had fallen into this pit. She began to understand why a girl like Samantha didn’t want to be friends with her anymore. Samantha was so much stronger and smarter than her, than really anyone else on the island, including Miss Brigham. She had seen through Reverend Crane’s lies and eventually she had destroyed him. All Prudence had done was to pull Samantha out when the reverend had tried to pull her in too.

  About all Prudence could do right was sew. That wouldn’t help her down here, where she didn’t have a needle or thread. All she had down here was mud and the bones of some other poor child who had ended up here. In time she would be just another skeleton in the pit should someone else happen to fall in.

  It didn’t seem fair for things to end this way for her. She had always trusted in God, always believed in the Bible. She had tried so hard to be a good girl and not repay the cruelty of others in kind. Not until last night.

  That was why she had fallen down here. The Lord had sent her down here because she had strayed. She had said awful things to Samantha, her best friend in the whole world. But she had been on her way to try and remedy that when the storm hit and she ended up down here. Perhaps God hadn’t believed she really wanted to work things out with Samantha. Perhaps He thought Prudence hadn’t been sorry enough in her heart.

  This was her penance. Reverend Crane had often preached about the need to be disciplined. That was how you steeled your body against evil. These sermons usually came when a child had to be punished for a crime against The Way. The reverend or Mr. Pryde would whip the offending child in the main square with everyone watching. According to Reverend Crane, the pain they endured, like the pain Christ had endured before the crucifixion, would cleanse the offender’s soul.

  Prudence didn’t have a whip down here. She didn’t have anything she could use to cleanse her soul. Perhaps, though, once she had endured enough pain down here, God would send someone to rescue her from the pit. She closed her eyes and imagined an angel with fluffy white wings and a golden halo descending into the pit. She grabbed the angel’s hand and then felt herself ascending out of the hole.

  A familiar growl interrupted her daydream. She looked up to see yellow eyes glaring down at her. The weather must have cleared enough for the vicious creature to return. Its teeth flashed at her to remind her what awaited her should she reach the top of the pit. Or perhaps it would tire of waiting for her and jump down to finish her off.

  Prudence knelt down in the mud. She planted her forehead against the side of the pit and held out her arms in supplication. “Lord, please see it in your heart to free me from this terrible pit. I have tried to be a worthy servant of you. I promise if you release me from this place, I will try even harder to spread your glory. I promise I will make things right with Samantha and I will never speak another word in anger again. I will stop eating so much. I will be kind and helpful to all of the other children and Miss Brigham. Please, Lord, please.”

  The only answer to her prayer was another growl from up above. Undeterred, Prudence continued to pray. It was her only chance for salvation.

  ***

  Rebecca felt something heavy and warm against her body. She assumed it was her blanket and tried to lift it, but it was too heavy. For that matter, it was too thick. She opened her eyes to find an arm draped over her.

  She shook the arm until she finally heard a groan, followed by a yawn. “What’s going on?” David asked as he sat up.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, keeping her voice low so no one else in the church would hear.

  “I was trying to keep you warm. You were shivering.”

  “But boys and girls can’t…you know.”

  “We didn’t do anything.”

  “You kissed me.”

  “So? You seemed to like it.”

  “I did, but…”

  “But what?”

  “But it’s not right. I’m a girl and you’re a boy.”

  “Am I supposed to kiss a boy?”

  “No!” Rebecca felt her face turning warm. Why was David being so difficult about this? “You know what happens when boys and girls do that. Remember Helena and John?”

  “So what? The reverend is dead. So’s Mr. Pryde.”

  “But if Miss Brigham found out—”

  “What would she do? She couldn’t hit either of us hard enough to leave a mark.” He grinned at her. “Besides, you got all that padding to protect you.”

  “That’s not funny!” She turned away from him, not wanting him to see her crying.

  “Why are you being such a baby about this? I thought you were more grown up than the rest of the girls.”

  “I’m only nine.”

  “Fine. From now on I’ll treat you like the other little kids.” He pulled on her hair hard enough to yank her head back. She cried out in pain.

  “Stop it!”

  He grabbed her arm and then jerked it behind her back. She squealed from fresh agony. “What do you say, Tubby?”

  “Uncle!” she shouted.

  He let her go with a shove and then got to his feet. “Stupid baby,” he muttered before he walked away.

  “Whatever was that ruckus about?” Miss Brigham asked. She knelt down beside Rebecca and then ran a hand through Rebecca’s hair. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m fine,” Rebecca said. She blinked away tears. “Is it morning yet?”

  “I believe so. The Lord has protected us from this terrible storm, as I knew He would.”

  Rebecca nodded. She listened carefully, but she couldn’t hear anything other than a few children snoring. Miss Brigham was probably right; they had survived the storm. “We should go out and see what damage there is.”

  “Good idea. David, will you accompany us outside? We might need a strong young man’s help.”

  “Of course, Miss Brigham. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you girls.”

  Rebecca’s face again turned warm. The look David gave her was one of pure hatred. She couldn’t try to apologize, though, not with Miss Brigham here. “Maybe I should stay here with the others,” she said.

  “They can take care of themselves for a few minutes, dear.”

  “I suppose.”

  David took the latch off the front door. He held it open for Miss Brigham and Rebecca to go outside. As soon as they did, they put hands to their faces in unison. “Oh no,” Rebecca mumbled through her hands.

  The town was gone. The storm had reduced everything to rubble: both dormi
tories and the shops. The church had suffered less damage, most of its wooden shingles peeled off but otherwise it remained intact.

  To her surprise, Miss Brigham fell to her knees. She looked up at the sky and held out her arms. “Oh Lord, whatever we have done to displease you, please forgive us. Please help us to restore our wonderful little town to its former glory.”

  “Looks like the Lord has done enough already,” David grumbled.

  Miss Brigham’s shouting had brought the other children out of the church. They assembled around Rebecca and David. Annie tugged on Rebecca’s dress until Rebecca looked down at her. “What are we going to do now?” Annie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “I suppose we’ll have to try and rebuild.”

  “First we ought to go and see how many of the animals survived,” David said. He pointed to a couple of the other boys. “You come with me.”

  “I’ll go too,” Wendell said.

  “We don’t need any girls, Wendy.”

  “I’m not a girl!”

  “You look like one.”

  “Do not!”

  “Quiet, children!” Miss Brigham snapped. “It’s this sort of discord that caused the Lord to punish us in the first place. We must strive to be meek and without sin, just as Jesus was.”

  “That won’t rebuild this place.”

  “That’s enough of that sinful talk, young man,” Miss Brigham said. “While David and the others survey the damage, I want the rest of you children to pray with me in the church. We will ask God for forgiveness. I’m sure if we truly repent then He will bless us again.”

  David and two other boys set out for the barns while Miss Brigham started to herd the others back into the church. Rebecca took one look at her and then took off running to follow David.

  Chapter 11: Safecracker

  Samantha had rolled into a sitting position on the floor while she cried. Eventually the tears dried up, leaving only dry hiccups. As she fought against the hiccups, she saw a black metal box on the floor. A knob stuck out of the middle of the box with numbers and lines painted on it. A safe, her mind recalled.